On getting new business: "Pick up the phone and tell anyone who will listen to what you are building, why you are building it, and why they should care." Says, Russ D'Argento

Interview with Russ D'Argento, Founder & CEO of FINTRX

Russ oversees business development and enterprise-level sales on behalf of the organisation. Russ is also responsible for negotiating strategic relationships and partnerships for FINTRX and its suite of products. In addition to his role at Capital Hedge, he also serves as Sr. Consultant of Family Office Marketing and introductions for Windham Capital Group - a 20-year-old for fee placement firm in the hedge fund space. Russ holds a BA from the University of Connecticut (Storrs) where he was a four year standout on the Huskies baseball team.

• Hello Russ, can you please explain a little about your business background. How you started doing what you are doing now, and your journey?
  • My background is in the hedge fund asset raising space. I was targeting the private wealth/family office space and discovered rather quickly that there was a substantial gap in the market within that vertical of research. Not only in the quantity and accuracy of the research, but also in how the information was digestible. I was convinced there had to be a better and more efficient approach to expanding your reach in the family office space. It was at that point that the creative juices to build a streamlined platform to accomplish this began to flow & FINTRX was born.

• What was it like in the first week or two of starting your own business?
  • Terrifying, exhilarating, and motivating. For me, the excitement and joy are found in the journey. While it was scary and certainly daunting, the possibilities and exciting road ahead trumped the obvious downsides.

 

• How did you fund your business in the initial stages and how has that changed as time went on?
  • I self-funded and bootstrapped the business from inception with personal funds I had built up from my asset raising past. I did, however, have many opportunities to take in outside capital through the years. In hindsight, I would do it that way again if I could turn back time. There is real value in building and operating a new business with limited funds. By default, you learn to have your hands in every facet of the business and there absolutely long term value in that.

 

• Would you say your business is profitable? Are you happy with what you're making? Have you set any goals for 2019?
  • Yes, we are quite profitable and continue to aggressively re-invest in the business to drive it forward and onward.

 

• What's the most important thing you're working on right now, and how are you making it happen?
  • We continue to push the envelope on innovating better and more efficient ways to deliver the best family office research & data to our global suite of clients. Our culture here is the best idea wins out - a true merit-based approach. Through my eyes, that is the clearest path to push the business forward and further the gap between us and the market.

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Making it past the 12-month mark is no easy task. A year is going to fly by, everything is on fast forward in the world of new business. My best advice would be to treat your early clients with incredible care.

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• Tell us about your support network - did you have the backing of your friends and family?

Emotionally, absolutely. Financially, no. I view the mixing of those two buckets as a slippery one and candidly one that posed more downside than upside.

• What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Two things. 1) The competitive opportunity that comes with building a business. 2) Creating relationships with our team while we all pull in the same direction. It is the closest replica I have found to mirroring that of sports & that dynamic with your teammates.   

• Tell us how you got your first few clients?

Pick up the phone and tell anyone who will listen to what you are building, why you are building it, and why they should care. There is no special sauce in the early days. The hardest part is to zoom out to realize that you are making real progress, even when it feels like you are spinning in place.

• Any tips on how to make it past the 12 months mark?

Making it past the 12-month mark is no easy task. A year is going to fly by, everything is on fast forward in the world of new business. My best advice would be to treat your early clients with incredible care. Speak to them often, let them be your guide to where you need to be headed. Use their pain points as idea generation. Some of our early clients are still with us today - many of which have become very close personal friends.  

Visit https://www.fintrx.com for more information.