From Sneakerhead to SaaS Global Leader- The Kennected Story of Overcoming Adversity
By: Dan Stein
Tags: Founder Interviews, Startup Life, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Startup Founders

Interview with Stephen Twomey, Chief Innovation Officer of Kennected

Interview with Stephen Twomey, Chief Innovation Officer of Kennected

Tell us about Kennected. What do you do?

SaaS platform for LinkedIn automation. We also have a training course and consulting arm for LinkedIn and lead generation strategies.

What is your startup’s origin story?

Kennected was born out of a marketing company that was successful but was struggling to scale. We decided to pivot after we realized all of our clients were coming from LinkedIn outreach. We saw how there was little competition in the LinkedIn SaaS model that offered a ton of high value consulting and scriptwriting. So we dove headfirst into the SaaS model and essentially brought all the founders from the other agency into Kennected. Now we have over 60 team members in sales, marketing, support and leadership. We have helped over 10,000 companies and individuals increase their lead flow and grow their business.

What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?

Three out of the five founders are under 26. Our founder actually started his entrepreneurial journey in highschool, out of necessity. His father had passed away and he had to put food on the table. He started hustling custom sneakers and parlayed that into a succesful event based company. He takes that same drive to provide for his family and has parlayed it to lead the fastest growing SaaS company in Indianapolis.

Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?

I wake up at 4:30 am. I do my self talk, reading and work out until 6:00 am and then I get the kids up and ready for school. I drop the kids off and am back at the office by 7:45. We start our executive meeting at 8:00 am and I am working with our development teams from 8:30 until about 11:00. Then I’m working with our content writers, designers and creative team to create our blog, video and social media content. Every day is different because we have 3 new SaaS products coming out in Q1 2021!

What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?

Having enough hours in the day. Honestly, we are hiring a ton of people right now, and building out the infrastructure to train and empower them is a growing pain we are going through. We are using Close.io to train and help keep our sales team organized.

What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?

Our biggest marketing is LinkedIn outreach. We use our own platform to grow our customer base. About 5 months ago we started running paid facebook ads as well. From the jump we started content marketing, blogging, video production to post on social media as well as rank for LinkedIn related phrases on Google as well. We get a ton of engagement on our company’s as well as the founder’s personal Instagram accounts, as well as our YouTube channels. Our next channel to explore is TikTok.

What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?

We use Monday.com for task mgt, G suite for managing all our documents and keeping our company video assets and more. Realistically we can run 99% of the company on Monday.com and G suite.

Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?

Gary V’s Instagram and YouTube channel. That’s super motivational and actionable at the same time.

If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?

Find great people to team up with. Doing it yourself is tough. If you dont have the funds to hire people right away, look at revenue splits or equity percentages. Getting the right team around you is so essential. I spent years doing it on my own, with staff- but taking my business to the next level started when I started building a team of partners that were super pro at what they do.

What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?

Life is a thrill when you skill is developed. Start learning a skill. Whether it’s paid ads, or how to connect with an audience, start learning a skill that people will pay you to perform. Then know your worth and charge based on the value that you provide.