Biography of Christian Dillstrom

Christian Dillstrom

The Global Business Influencer

The Most Read Business Article Author in the World

Growth Hacked 60 Top Global Brands in last 10 years
Global Growth Ambassador of the USA Southeast Region

London, United Kingdom

SKILLS SUMMARY

Growth Hacking

• 10 years global growth hacking experience.
• Growth-hacked more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies.
• 113 marketing and sales innovations and over 350 million of his marketing solutions are currently active on the Internet.

Blogging

• The most read business article author in the World.
• Blog texts about growth hacking are read by 15-31 million global business readers every month.
• Truly global business readership with readers from 240 countries.
• Global name recognition among business decisionmakers around the World.

Startups

• Has founded and managed 4 global start-ups
• Has consulted over 300 start-ups around the globe.

Marketing

• 13 years agency experience.
• 7 years of global start-up marketing experience.
• Online and mobile marketing member of teams winning six national level advertising agency awards in a single year.
• Marketing automation and marketing technology strategy and hands-on specialist.
• Can tie marketing and sales together with real-time sales leads.
• Can capture with marketing also mediocre signals and turn them into sales.

Social Media

• 10 years global agency level strategic and hands-on coding experience.
• Has invented and created dozens of social media marketing products/services.
• Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, content and photo marketing.

Project Management

• 28 years professional experience.
• "Key to successful project" honorary statement from multiple clients.
• Mixed stake-holder, security level, local, near, overseas/virtual, multi-cultural and -time zone project management.

User Experience

• 18 years of commercial experience.
• Biggest current UI work has 131 million multi-device, mobile-first web pages, adjusting to used device display size and geodata of a user and it works in 240 countries.

Coding

• 38 years of experience - 10 as geek and 28 as professional.
• Web, cloud and mobile coding.

WORK EXPERIENCE

US Southeast Region Collaborative

Global

Global Growth Ambassador of the USA Southeast Region

Nov 2019 – Present

My main task is to help US Southeast region's growth opportunities and strenghts to be recognized by global and local business and political decision makers.

Secondly, I am helping startups and established businesses of the US Southeast region to growth hack their sales. I am also advising them about strategy, marketing and sales.

US Southeast is home of 65 million people and 1.4 million businesses including 57 Fortune500 companies.

8 states:
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee

with 25 Dynamic Business Cities:
Miami, Atlanta, Tampa-St. Petersburgh, Orlando, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Columbus, Savannah, Louisville, Lexington, Jackson, Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Winston, Salem, Charleston, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga

Christian Dillstrom

Global

Business Blogger

Feb 2017 – Present

I started my blogging career at LinkedIn Pulse in 2015, and my first article received very quickly millions of readers. Of course, it helped a lot as I was writing about growth hacking.

To be frank, I was very surprised about popularity of my articles as I wrote those first articles just to get Google Search result exposure for my latest start-up. But I am not complaining... :)

Gradually number of monthly business readers of my LinkedIn Pulse articles increased from 4 to 17 million. That also brought problems as LinkedIn is not coded for a user to receive thousands of messages. As a result, I could not even open my LinkedIn messages without my browser crashing. Also, LinkedIn admin started cause my grief and my previous good relationship with them started to turn sour although their current owner is my client.

So, I needed new home for my blog, and I talked with Google, who is also my client, and they were very welcoming. As a result, in February 2017 I moved my blogs to Google Blogger.

First, I received quite a big increase in number of readers, and in May 2017, my best month so far, I received 31,908,428 business readers. Since that month, a number of my monthly business readers has varied between 15 and 31 million making me the most read business article author in the World.

Today, I understand my influence among business decisionmakers as most of them have read at least one of my blog texts and my responsibility because of my influence. Therefore, I am starting in my blog to interview interesting business people around the World.

If you, my dear reader, would want to be interviewed, please contact me and tell me about you and your business. I am sure my 15-31 million business readers would love to learn about you and your business.

Contact me via contact form of my blog www.dillstrom.com or by emailing me christian@dillstrom.com

SalesSalvage.com

Las Vegas, United States and London, United Kingdom

Lead Growth Hacker

Dec 2015 – Present

SalesSalvage.com does growth hacking to increase sale conversion and profitability of its customers. Our services are grouped to:

1) INCREASING AWARENESS

SalesSalvage.com owns a business directory with 116 million web pages. Therefore, so just by advertising our customer in it or asking its millions of visitors to like videos or other materials to different social media will create awareness among hundreds of millions of Internet users. We have over 350 million AD web pages at Google search ranking within top 10. We can create millions high ranking AD web pages for our customers at Google search engine. SalesSalvage.com runs large-scale, low-cost awareness campaigns at LinkedIn without needing to send a message. A customer defines a message, target country, location, professions and even companies. + other ways of creating awareness with an affordable budget.

2) LINKING MARKETING WITH SALES IN REAL-TIME

Unless marketing is linked directly with your sales, a huge amount of sale is lost. Example: A company's email campaigns had 1% sales conversion. Our techniques in campaigns delivered 18 times more contact details of interested buyers. Same methods also work with web pages, eCommerce, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, brochures, flyers, etc.

3) IDENTIFYING AND REMOVING SALES CONVERSION OBSTACLES

Company online stores, and websites are losing more sales than what they are getting. In average 75% of online shopping carts are abandoned. If 20% of those would be salvaged, sales would increase by 62%. 98% of average company website visitors do not turn into sales. If they would improve conversion only by 14%, their results will increase by 500%. Unfortunately, companies do not know real reasons why they are losing sales. Usability and AB-testing or educated guessing have not revealed these reasons. If they would have, companies would not be losing sales. We will politely get the real reasons from your exiting non-buying visitors.

Founder

Dec 2015 – Present

Angel Investor

Dec 2015 – Present

I financed two years of research, development, testing and spin out from 12social.com.

12social.com

Las Vegas, United States and London, United Kingdom

Managing Director

Jan 2009 – Dec 2015

Boutique social media agency based in USA and UK. 12social.com does growth hacking by inventing and producing social media, search engine and UX services to increase sale conversion and profitability of its global brand name customers.

All invented and produced services are global and multilingual; at the moment, hundreds of millions of those services are live and working in Internet at 130 countries.

12social.com has developed a way to create dynamic, hybrid Facebook applications and pages that can hop between medias and devices and fetch real-time data.

Developed services include Instant Remarketing, World's largest business directory, Real-time Salesleads, Native Google ADs, Facebook Full-Page Brochures, Facebook Full-Page Magazines etc. just to name a few.

Founder

Jan 2009 – Present

Angel Investor

Jan 2009 – Present

I financed research, development, testing and building sales organization.

Nevis Systems Limited

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Director

Apr 2005 – Dec 2011

Global mobile web, SMS, regular web and eMarketing applications, services and consulting.

Customers include Fortune 500'S, SME's and governments.

MOB.Li Ltd.

Boston, United States and London, United Kingdom

Managing Director

Feb 1999 – Dec 2008

Mobile service company that is still the only one to be able to produce mobile web pages that work in every existing mobile-phone browser and with every written language in the world.

Smart interactive text message systems that connect from any media to any predefined computer system and/or sales or customer service personnel.

Over 311 million of such mobile services have been produced to the 220 different countries in the world.

I oversaw marketing, products, user experience, user interface design, software development, project management, consulting, and off-shore outsourcing to China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Philippines.

Used application programming languages: XML, PHP, CSS-P, JavaScript, HMTL 3.2, HMTL 4.01, XHTML BASIC, XHTML MP, WML 1.1, WML 1.2, WML 1.3, iMode 1.0, iMode 2.0, iMode 3.0, iMode 4.0, iMode 5.0 and Opera Mini.

Founder

Feb 1999 – Dec 2008

Angel Investor

Feb 1999 – Apr 2005

I financed four years of research, development, testing and building sales organization of MOB.Li Ltd.

Tradecho.com

Helsinki, Finland

Chief Technology Officer

Sep 2007 – Sep 2008

Global AD-funded mobile web service that follows the stock exchanges on behalf of small investors. Service also includes quick statistical and graphical analysis tools.

Service sends alarms to the investor’s mobile phone when set conditions are met.

The followed stock exchanges were: NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX, S&P (Indices), Dow Jones (Indices), Commodity Systems, Toronto, Bank of Canada, Canadian Venture Exchange, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Milan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Taiwan, Bombay, Australian and New Zealand.

I have been on charge of product, ICT-strategies and implementation including user interface design for the Multilingual mobile web pages.

Due to nature of financial data, XML was heavily used.

Start-up was frozen because of the global financial crisis forced NASDAQ to withdraw.

Founder

Sep 2007 – Sep 2008

OP Financial Group

Helsinki, Finland

Consultant

Oct 2007 – May 2008

OP-Pohjola Group is the biggest banking and insurance group in Finland

I consulted with Nokia owned NICE services and Fujitsu Services OP-Pohjola Group’s business- and ICT-departments in following projects: Pohjola Bank CRM, OP Bank brand refresh, Pohjola Bank and Insurance brand refresh, OP-Pohjola-group salesman’s electronic desktop, OP bank eCommerce payment services, OP Bank Internet portal for the Businesses, Pohjola Bank collateral financing software, OP bank debit and credit cards, Pohjola Insurance Internet service for the business customers and Pohjola Insurance Internet service for the private customers

Every project I was part of belonging to TOP 15 projects of the OP-Pohjola Group

Consulting demanded wide reaching international experience about Internet and mobile services, eMarketing, understanding brand and MGM, business and ICT processes and projects and improvement of productivity and quality

Hands-on part of consulting included in most of the projects user interface design and creating web pages to be used by over a million users a day using XML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash with ActionScripting

Planeetta 10 Oy

Helsinki, Finland

Senior Advisor - eMarketing

Sep 2005 – May 2008

Award winning advertising agency. Customers include Mercedes-Benz, Citroën, Honda, Smart, Olympic Committee.

123TXT Ltd.

Boston, United States

Managing Director

Jan 2003 – Mar 2007

SMS and web applications, services and consulting.

Founder

Jan 2003 – Mar 2007

Angel Investor

Jan 2003 – Mar 2007

Planeetta10 Oy

Helsinki, Finland

Director Emarketing

Mar 2005 – Sep 2005

eMarketing consulting to the following brands: Mercedes-Benz, Citroen, Smart, Sanoma-WSOY Oyj, WSOY Pro Oy, Forma-Publishing, ESA group, Lippupalvelu Oy (Ticketmaster Finland), ISS Oy, Fortum Oyj, International Business Systems IBS Oy, Veho-group, Veho-Autotalot Oy, Auto-Bon Oy Ab, Onninen Oy, MiviTotal, Oikotie, Kotivinkki, Talo&Koti, Trendi, Veli, Joululehti, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, Itä-Häme lehti, Esan Jakelu, David Sportsware, TEK and Kokoomus.

I founded eMarketing departments to Helsinki and Lahti, and managed their ten employees.

I designed and implemented of eMarketing strategies and invented, developed and did productization of electronic services.

I was part of the team to win six different Finnish direct marketing awards at 2007 and I did the eMarketing strategy and implementation of the winning AD campaigns.

I also developed product for the dynamic control, real-time tracking and analysis of Flash-AD-banners. With the service AD agency and its clients could in real-time using their mobile phone or extranet change content of their already published Flash-banners depending on their failure to bring enough visitors. Flash-banners could also be produced using information from the client’s databases.

In total I have been doing strategy and implementation of over 150 AD campaigns including user interface design and web page creation using XML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash with Action scripting, PHP and MySQL-database.

ReadyLoaded Inc.

Boston, United States

Managing Director

Jan 2002 – Dec 2003

Regular and mobile web content preloading service for the web sites.

Founder

Jan 2002 – Dec 2003

Angel Investor

Jan 2002 – Dec 2003

VisitBroker Inc.

Boston, United States

Managing Director

Feb 2001 – Dec 2003

Website visitor brokerage - Google AdWords before Google AdWords

Founder

Feb 2001 – Dec 2003

Angel Investor

Feb 2001 – Dec 2003

Johnson Diversey Inc.

Northampton, United Kingdom

Consultant

Dec 2002

Presentations and workshops for directors and managers about future trends of Internet and business opportunities in it, Internet-marketing and -advertising, NOW economy and changes it requires on customer communication and sales and business impact of quality of information.

Workshops for Johnson Diversey Inc United Kingdom web team personnel and IT managers about using Internet, Extranet and Intranet as communication tool between customers, mobile salesmen and telesales, usability in client interfaces and building interface from IBM mainframe for web sites of wholesalers.

Bear Stearns & Co.

London, United Kingdom

Advisor

Aug 1999 – Feb 2001

Evaluating start-ups on behave of fund managers and advising fund managers about different problem solutions on start-ups they have funded.

Unilever PLC

London, United Kingdom

Consultant

Feb 1999 – Feb 2001

Consulting directors, IT-managers and -staff about future of Internet, eCommerce, Wireless and how to do successful business in those and Internet-marketing and -advertising.

Coaching Unilever/DiverseyLever Internet personnel on following a subjects:

o Hypertext: ideology, architecture and design

o Browser-technology: Microsoft and Netscape

o Programming: HTML, DHTML, CSS, XML, ASP, ActiveX, Java, Macromedia Dreamweaver, CGI, Perl, JavaScript

o User Experience

o Database: Macromedia Dreamweaver Ultradev, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, SQL-language

o Security: PKI, SSL, Hacking, Cracking

o Server and networking: Hardware, TCP/IP, IIS, Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT 4.0 Server, Unix, Apache

o Document Handling: Adobe Acrobat, Caere Omnipage

o Graphics: study of colours, self-made pictures, picture converting and scanning, ready-picture editing, vector graphics, interactive graphics, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash 4, VRML

o Streaming: Microsoft Streaming Media Technology, QuickTime, AVI, MP3

Johnson Diversey Inc.

Northampton, United Kingdom

Consultant

Feb 1999 – Feb 2001

Johnson Diversey Inc is a manufacturer of cleaning and hygiene products and global provider of commercial cleaning and hygiene solutions.

The company offers a range of business-to-business products and services to customers in over 160 countries worldwide.

Johnson Diversey Inc employ about 11,000 persons and have estimated sales of $3.2 billion.

Law office Yrityslaki Oy

Helsinki, Finland

IT Manager

Aug 1992 – Dec 1998

Charge of whole IT for corporate law office including recruiting and management of ICT personnel, infrastructure design and maintenance, hardware, software and network purchase, setup and maintenance, application programming and training.

IT Specialist

Jun 1992 – Aug 1992

Law office had offices in Helsinki and Tampere, and it employed 25 people.

EDUCATION

Harvard Business School

Business Administration and Management, General; Manage Mentor

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

IT with Management

CIM | The Chartered Institute of Marketing

International Marketing

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Business In Sight Senior Management courses

COURSES

• Client/Server

• Database

• HTML

• Java

• JavaScript

• LANs

• Microsoft Access 2000 MOUS

• Microsoft Internet Information Server 4

• Microsoft Office 2000

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Basics

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Series (MCSE/MCP 70-210)

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Series (MCSE/MCP 70-215)

• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0

• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0

• Networking

• Networking Essentials

• RDBMS Fundamentals

• SQL

• TCP/IP

LANGUAGES

• English

• Finnish