Build a $25K/Month Software Business (Full Strategy) | 067

[00:00:00] Nathan: When you’re in that position where you’re scaling your creator led SaaS, people will tell you your business will never work. They’re wrong. Yeah. In this episode, we get really practical on how to take a SaaS to 25, 000 per month and beyond. The direct sales flywheel is how I grew Kit from 2000 MRR to 100, 000 MRR, 250X in 24 months.

[00:00:22] Laura: Is that like the main thing that you personally focused on?

[00:00:25] Nathan: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. There’s six steps to the direct sales flywheel and having an, It’s going to be really important. Let’s talk about churn.

[00:00:32] Laura: We’re at about 15 percent churn.

[00:00:35] Nathan: Early on, we had very similar levels of churn and people would describe this S curve.

[00:00:40] You’re going to have slow growth. Things will ramp up from there and then it’s going to level off and your business will flatline. In reality, that never happened. Churn is a leaky bucket. And so if we are just losing all the water out of our bucket, we can start to identify those problems and work towards it.

[00:00:55] Laura: Right now I’m like, okay, do I focus on trying to sell this price point? Do we add another tier?

[00:01:01] Nathan: You have effectively a single price point. One thing that that means for your business is you don’t have expansion revenue. Kit would not be the business that it is today without expansion revenue. What I would do pretty much immediately is I would

[00:01:13] Laura: Okay.

[00:01:14] That is amazing.

[00:01:19] Nathan: Laura, something that I hear all the time is creators who want to get into software. And they have all of the success building a digital products, business revenue. They have the audience and they’re like, software is the next frontier. Many of them start and burn out in some way, they don’t get traction or they just say, you know what?

[00:01:37] Actually, this is much harder than I thought, but you’ve actually done this. You’re in the middle of doing this.

[00:01:42] Laura: It’s funny that you say. People often think, wow, this is a lot harder than I thought, because yes, that was definitely what I’m experiencing. Building,

[00:01:50] Nathan: building a greater lead sass is more difficult than you expected.

[00:01:53] Definitely.

[00:01:54] Laura: And it’s like, I always say, like, I knew it was going to be hard and it was going to take a lot of time and I knew it was going to be expensive. And it’s already surpassed all of three of those, even going into it with that.

[00:02:05] Nathan: However hard you think it’s going to be

[00:02:07] Laura: double that,

[00:02:08] Nathan: even if you already thought like that’s accounting for the fact that you thought it was going to be very difficult.

[00:02:13] Laura: Yes, exactly. So yeah, we had our first customers about eight months ago and we’re at about 5, 000 MRR currently. So pretty fast growth.

[00:02:23] Nathan: Well, if it makes you feel better, you’re eight months in. And at 5, 000 in revenue, it took me, building ConvertKit, now Kit, two and a half years to get to 5, 000 a month in revenue.

[00:02:35] So you are way ahead of me. And I’m hoping that with some time that we spend together today, we can help accelerate that even more. Let’s do it. So what’s the goal? Like, if you think of the next milestone that’d Rootabl from a revenue perspective, what, what should we target?

[00:02:54] Laura: I think 25, 000 a month is a great target.

[00:02:57] Nathan: That sounds good. For everyone watching who doesn’t know what Rootabl does, give the, you know, 30 60 second like highlight pitch.

[00:03:04] Laura: Yeah. So Rootabl is an affiliate tracking platform. So most of our clients are course creators or they have online communities and they want to help their customers or their friends promote their offers and earn commission through promotion.

[00:03:20] Nathan: That sounds good. So let’s jump up on the board and just, you know, over the next hour or so, plan out like the next steps to go from 5, 000 to 25, 000. The main thing that we’re going to focus on is scaling your creator led SaaS. And what I want to do in that process is show you the direct sales flywheel that I used to scale kit.

[00:03:40] Now our two businesses are not exactly the same, and so it won’t be a one to one copy, but we’ll make it. You know, abstract enough or universal enough that I think there’s a lot of lessons that we can pull from it. So first let’s talk about Rootabl today and where we’re at. Okay, so revenue right now, 5, 000 MRR.

[00:04:00] Yes. And how many customers is that?

[00:04:04] Laura: I think we’re at about, it’s about 50.

[00:04:08] Nathan: Okay.

[00:04:08] Laura: Yeah.

[00:04:09] Nathan: And we’re trying to go to 25, 000. Okay. So 50 customers. What has been the biggest thing to help you get to that 5, 000 MR?

[00:04:25] Laura: The two biggest things that have gotten us to those 50 customers are my previous list.

[00:04:31] Nathan: Okay.

[00:04:31] Laura: So my other business, so my list is about 1, 500 people.

[00:04:34] Okay.

[00:04:36] Nathan: And the existing list?

[00:04:37] Laura: Existing list referrals. So people who are already using it, we do have at the bottom, like for every affiliate that’s on the platform. It says at the bottom powered by Rootabl. And then an integration we did with Mighty Networks.

[00:04:51] Nathan: Nice. Did you plan that, that you came out for the podcast the same day that Gina came out for the podcast from Mighty?

[00:04:57] I

[00:04:57] Laura: did not, but the reason that this integration even happened was because I met her at Craft and Commerce.

[00:05:04] Nathan: Nice. Yeah. I love that. Those connections are, are so important.

[00:05:07] Laura: Yeah.

[00:05:08] Nathan: Okay. So those are the three biggest drivers. I mean, pricing is a very important thing.

[00:05:12] Laura: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Nathan: So let’s talk about that.

[00:05:13] Laura: Let’s talk about pricing.

[00:05:16] Nathan: I’m getting the feeling from 50 customers and 5, 000 MRR that your price is a hundred bucks a month. Yeah. So I’m not great at math, but I think that one I could do.

[00:05:25] Laura: So it’s a 99 a month or 888 a year. Like my goal is to make sure that Rootabl is profitable just on MRR alone.

[00:05:35] Nathan: That makes sense. And then let’s talk about churn.

[00:05:38] Where’s churn at right now on a monthly basis?

[00:05:40] Laura: Yep. So we’re at about 15 percent churn and I think a 40 percent growth rate last I 15%? Yes.

[00:05:51] Nathan: One thing that I want to comment on the churn is that early on with kit, we had very similar levels of churn and everyone would always look at that. We had our metrics public.

[00:06:03] I think when we were about three K MRR, I made this dashboard where all the metrics were public in real time and people would continually look at that and say, this business will never grow. And they would describe this thing to me. Over and over again. And what they would describe is this S curve, but basically you’re going to have, you know, slow growth in this ramp up, things will ramp up from there and then it’s going to level off.

[00:06:25] And you will never with this churn, you will never see this. What’s going to happen is your initial growth is always going to be a fixed number. for the most part, and your churn is always going to be a percentage. And so when those things happen, there is a point that it levels off and you will, you know, the percentage is greater than the incoming growth and your business will flatline.

[00:06:49] I like mathematically, they’re correct. In reality, that never happened. And so as I’m expecting that people see that number, you’re like, Oh, that’s so, so high. That’s a huge problem. I think it’s an area to focus on, but it’s not a huge problem because you don’t yet have, you’ve been around for eight months, so you don’t yet have this long like stable customer base.

[00:07:14] That’s sticking around for a long time and where that churn is going to get really, really low because they’re doing their second, third, fourth affiliate launch with you, that, you know, you’re embedded in their business. And then the other thing is your product is going to keep getting remarkably better.

[00:07:25] Laura: Yeah.

[00:07:26] Nathan: And so for us, our churn just went steadily down, you know, from the 15 percent to 10 to 12, like to eight and, and down from there. And now it’s, it’s under 4%. And in like a small business world, like 4 percent is. It’s pretty good. We’re always trying to drive it lower but so I would just keep that in mind that even though this is high and people will tell you like your business will never work, they’re wrong.

[00:07:52] Yeah. And you can point to Kit as an example of that. So since we’re on trend, let’s spend a little bit of time there. What are the biggest reasons that people cancel right now?

[00:08:01] Laura: Yeah, I would say the two biggest things are they’re just having trouble getting set up. And or it like doesn’t actually integrate like they thought it did within their business or within their platforms.

[00:08:14] Nathan: Okay. So there’s two things, the difficulty to set up and then a mismatch when it comes to expectations.

[00:08:20] Laura: Yes. And then the other one, which I think is important too. I think related to a lot of this stuff is like, if they do an affiliate launch in September and then they’re like, Oh, we’re not doing an affiliate launch till next September.

[00:08:34] What happens now?

[00:08:36] Nathan: Yeah. So then that there’s an, a seasonal aspect to it and you get these businesses. I was talking to a creator the other day. Who’s also running a SaaS company, where their business provides a huge amount of value every year or every couple of years. And they’re at about a million a year in revenue, 1.

[00:08:57] 5, I believe. And I’m not sure they’ll ever overcome that on their business model because they don’t provide value often enough. And so what they get is people signing up for a certain job to be done. They complete that job over the course of two to three months. And then they, they don’t really cancel.

[00:09:18] They say, thanks. And they put it on the shelf. And then two years later, they’re back for this huge new project. And they’re like, great, we’ll turn it on. And so like SAS doesn’t actually make sense for that business model. Because. The value is not delivered often enough. So that’s interesting. If our whole goal was to deliver, to solve churn by delivering value more frequently, what would we change in the business?

[00:09:45] Laura: I mean, a couple of things could be like helping them. Sell more things more often, right? Like if you are a business, you’re probably not only selling one thing once a year. And it’s like, are there quarterly promotions that you’re going to do? We’re also targeting right now, specifically course creators and communities.

[00:10:04] So communities have ongoing, right? So anybody who joined through the integration with Mighty Networks. automatically, like if they’re getting referrals, it’s going to be an ongoing thing. Right.

[00:10:16] Nathan: So you might find that in your ideal customer, it’s not actually the person doing a million dollar launch once a year.

[00:10:23] Yeah. It’s people who are selling multiple products or recurring revenue products.

[00:10:29] Laura: Yeah.

[00:10:29] Nathan: Makes sense. So we are, we’ve narrowed our ideal customer profile. Slightly.

[00:10:33] Laura: Yeah.

[00:10:34] Nathan: That makes sense. And that ties in, that makes sense why the promotion or the integration with Mighty has done so well.

[00:10:39] I like that.

[00:10:40] Laura: I mean, the other thing is like, we do done for you pay out. So if they have a payment plan we’re still tracking and paying that out. But I, I would love to, I mean, like my dreams for Rootabl is we’d be providing them with so much value all year round anyway, including like events and connections and.

[00:10:59] More of the network aspect, but it doesn’t exist yet.

[00:11:02] Nathan: It makes me think of, in the previous episode that we recorded a while ago, with you and I, where we dove into, like, your philosophies behind you know, managing these affiliate programs and, and we got into the flywheel. And something that you talked about a lot is the other steps in the flywheel.

[00:11:19] You know, not just how do we attract and then like do the launch, but how do we really activate and then appreciate? And so the more value that you can drive in the activate and appreciate those happen off season for the launch, right? And so then, like, if you’re really helping me build up, nurture those affiliates and appreciate them so they’re teed up for next time, then I’ve seen like, Oh, here’s the value that you, you drive year round, even if I’m doing a once or twice a year launch.

[00:11:53] Laura: Yeah.

[00:11:53] Nathan: Are there things that you could change in the product that would help either position existing features that way or, you know, new things that you could build that would drive more of that?

[00:12:04] Laura: Definitely. I mean, one thing, I mean, I’ve got like too many ideas. That’s part of the problem. But one thing that we’re talking about doing is having a higher tier where we’re also activating.

[00:12:17] So we’re like training your affiliates on and like having office hours where your affiliates can come like book in or learn how to promote better as affiliates. So that’s something that could be. More year round definitely the network and like connecting people together. The other thought I have would be like really pushing the annual more and like how you’re going to have it for the whole year.

[00:12:44] And within that year, we’re going to do XYZ with you.

[00:12:48] Nathan: Yeah. Cause you have, what is this a little over three months for free? Whereas a typical annual might be 10 percent off for two months for free. Cause you’re understanding the seasonal aspect of the business.

[00:13:01] Laura: Yeah.

[00:13:02] Nathan: Okay. The reason that I wanted to start focusing on churn is because, well, most people would dive in and say, all right, let’s do a top line MRR. And we can’t solve everything with churn, but we can start to identify those problems and work towards it. Cause churn is a leaky bucket. Yeah. And so if we are just.

[00:13:20] losing all the water out of our bucket, 15 percent a month. And we just say, you know, we just need to get a fire hose in here and that’ll take care of it to an extent. But if we remember this graph, like that percentage is just going to keep growing with a total number and we will cap out unless we solve churn.

[00:13:37] Laura: Yeah.

[00:13:38] Nathan: So it’s important to start there. I think we have some good ideas for solving the seasonality. The expectations, I think, are interesting.

[00:13:46] Laura: Yeah.

[00:13:46] Nathan: What’s the expectation mismatch that you see happening most right now?

[00:13:51] Laura: Like the, the creators that we’re working with are so good at what they do, but they’re not so great necessarily at the tech.

[00:13:59] So they might not even like fully understand what their tech stock is of like, Oh, well, I need to put the code in my lead pages plus Stripe. I have to connect Stripe here. Oh, but I take payments in PayPal. Like, they’re a little bit confused about all the places that need to connect into Rootabl. And we have, like, so many SOPs on, Okay, this is how you connect in with this platform, and this platform, and this platform, and this platform.

[00:14:21] Nathan: Okay, so that ties into the, the setup. It sounds like.

[00:14:25] Laura: Yeah.

[00:14:25] Nathan: Where often they don’t understand how to make an aspect of it work, or that they Got to one problem. They’re like, oh, we’ll solve it in this hacky way and then another problem We’ll solve it in that hacky way. And then you try to bring in a third party service like Rootabl and it’s like, well you They’re like, oh, yeah, we use mighty.

[00:14:43] Well, except for these all these And so that’s complicated I want to get into concierge migrations, which is you know, a concierge setup process. But before we do that, oh man, there’s so many places I want to go. I think that makes sense. Let’s go to the direct sales flywheel where we’ll talk about that and then remind me to come back to pricing.

[00:15:05] Okay. Because I think there’s a pricing is another big point of leverage. Yeah. So the direct sales flywheel is how I grew kit from 2000 MRR to 100, 000 MRR. Officially 98, 800, but who’s counting in 12 months. So January 1st of one year to December 31st of that same year.

[00:15:24] Laura: Okay. That is amazing. And also, is that like the main thing that you personally focused on?

[00:15:29] Nathan: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent.

[00:15:30] Laura: Okay.

[00:15:31] Nathan: What I spent all my time on. All

[00:15:33] Laura: your time. Okay. Yeah. Because that’s like my big like, what do I do? Yeah. So many options. Yeah.

[00:15:38] Nathan: So let me break this down and we’ll talk through the different steps because it really touches on how to solve some of these expectations. Yeah.

[00:15:44] How to solve the setup and then also how to focus on Okay. All right. So there’s six steps to the direct sales flywheel. So first we want to identify the leads and having a narrow focus is going to be really important. What I did initially with Kit is I went really broad. I was trying to do email marketing for anyone who had similar problems.

[00:16:07] To the ones that I faced and that had me in all of these different niches. And what I did instead is I focused in very narrowly on one niche, and that made all the difference because now all of a sudden I could list out all of my potential customers. So I focused in on email marketing for professional bloggers, and then I went deeper than that, and I went into very specific niches.

[00:16:29] So, we’re talking email marketing for professional paleo recipe bloggers who are women.

[00:16:34] Laura: Wow.

[00:16:35] Nathan: Right? Because now I want to be able to list out. Like, you give me something that specific, I can find all of them on the internet, right? But if I said, go find all your potential customers on the internet, you’d be like I don’t know.

[00:16:46] And I looked at who else in my, in my existing customer base was already successful. Like, who’s the most successful in that space? There’s a men’s fashion blogger in New York. Okay. Who else is like him? Let me go list out 10 other people. And so you get very, very specific in that way. What I’m curious about for you, and we’ll get into this in a second, but start thinking about it, is of your existing 50 customers.

[00:17:11] Yeah. What are those common trends across the 10 that are the most successful? We’ll come back to that. The next step is outreach. So actually reaching out to them directly. And I would just say something really Simple, like, hey, what’s frustrating you with MailChimp? The reason I ask is I run ConvertKit at the time which is an email marketing product for professional bloggers used by, and I would name drop the person that I had used to identify like, hey, you’re like to draw that little circle, right?

[00:17:45] So that other men’s fashion blogger in New York. So here at least there’s something highly relevant and then a name drop, like. Any other customer that I thought they might know. So what’s frustrating you about Mailchimp? You know, I’m running ConvertKit, this is what we do, and you know, I’m trying to build a better product basically.

[00:18:03] And everyone, the frustrations question was easy to answer. And they’d say, Oh, like, here’s where I’m hung up on, here’s the frustrations. And from there, I’d reply and say, Oh, actually, I was frustrated with similar things. Because I came from MailChimp and built my product to compete with them. Then we tried to go to a sales call.

[00:18:22] On there, you know, we’re trying to actually close the sale. Everything from there. The follow up was really important. I had to actually write this out as a dedicated step because otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I, I still am terrible at follow up. And so having it as a step in my flywheel is really important.

[00:18:39] Then we would migrate them to the platform. If they said yes, you know, in the sales process, ultimately try to get a testimonial from them and then we’d use that testimonial to testimonial and referral, like who else is like you, that kind of thing. The testimonial would then go into future outreach. Them as a customer would help me identify new creators.

[00:18:58] Right. And so. around and around it goes. And this flywheel, you know, I mentioned it earlier, but this is how we went from 2000 MRR. I guess I’ll write this down. So that was 2k to 98k and then to 500k the following year. Right? So this, I mean, it was insane.

[00:19:22] Laura: Yeah.

[00:19:22] Nathan: Like 250x in 24 months.

[00:19:25] Laura: Wow.

[00:19:26] Nathan: And it came down, like, especially this jump from 2k to 98k was entirely the splot wheel.

[00:19:33] Laura: How much did you grow the team in that time? Which?

[00:19:36] Nathan: Yeah, it’s a good question. So there were three of us. at 2k. So myself, I was doing all sales and marketing and product design. And then David, who led all of our engineering, that was actually a huge inflection point was bringing him on where he’s like really focused on making this a great product.

[00:19:54] And then Dan who handled customer support and all of that, and he was doing things for my creator business. And then, you know, he would bridge over into this as things, things grew. And then by 20K MRR or so, we brought on another person on customer support and a part time engineer and then they, that engineer became full time.

[00:20:17] And then it ramped up pretty quickly from, from there. And so probably a hundred K MRR, we were 13, 12 or 12 people. And that was just to handle, I mean, at that point, like the next month, 98K, 130K the next month, like we were adding 30, 000 MRR every single month and that just compounded. And by 500K, the team was probably 25 people,

[00:20:42] Laura: 28

[00:20:43] Nathan: people, something like that.

[00:20:44] Laura: And you focused on this, this whole time?

[00:20:47] Nathan: Yeah, that was, that was my whole goal. Because what I found is that people would always say, word of mouth is how we grew. And I was like, oh, word of mouth. Like, how do you do that? Like, what is that? That’s not an actual lever that you can just pull. Like, how do you do it?

[00:21:01] And what I found is that this flywheel drove word of mouth. Because it got those first customers. So it was actually six months from 2k to 10k MRR. And so January to June was It’s a 10K. That next month in July, we added 50 percent growth in one month. And then it like really started to go exponential from there.

[00:21:24] But it was because that’s when we started to get word of mouth kicking in, right? That’s when the testimonials were good, when people were like, well, who uses you? Right. Another step that was really important was the migration. And this is where I want to talk about what you’re running into is the setup.

[00:21:41] Because the biggest objection that I had on sales calls was people would say, Oh, I’d love to switch, but it’s just too much work. And in that, like you, you always have to give a reason. Just say no. If I’m like, hey, sign up for Kit, become a customer, all of this, you can’t like just look at me and then awkwardly like turn and just walk away.

[00:22:05] Laura: I mean, I could. You

[00:22:06] Nathan: could, but you wouldn’t because it’s against the rules of like social engagement.

[00:22:10] Laura: Yeah.

[00:22:10] Nathan: But on the internet, it’s a hundred percent allowed.

[00:22:12] Laura: Right.

[00:22:13] Nathan: I can read your sales page and I can hit the back button.

[00:22:16] Laura: Yeah.

[00:22:17] Nathan: Which is totally the equivalent of turning on and walking away with no feedback.

[00:22:20] But in person, you have to give a reason. Will you buy my product? Yeah. Yeah. It’s too expensive, it’s not right for me now, whatever else, but there’s feedback in that. And the one that people would always say is it’s too much work to migrate. And so one time on a whim, I said, cause no amount of, it’s not too much work, all this stuff, we convince people.

[00:22:42] And so I finally said we’ll do it for you for free. And someone was like, Okay. Like they’d put all their objections on this one thing and I just removed it. Yeah. And so that’s where our concierge migrations were born, which was a very fancy way of saying, like I had two monitors up and I had their MailChimp account and their kid account and I copied and pasted.

[00:23:05] And then on this monitor I had Netflix because it was super boring, but we just do it, do it all. Yeah. And so this was like a 2 an hour activity early on because I’ve been trying to get a 50 MRR account, but it was totally worth it because I found that every customer I got made it, meant I had more testimonials, made it easier to get to the right people to get them to respond to my outreach and more credibility on the sales calls.

[00:23:31] And it just, you know, the feature set was better and on and on from there.

[00:23:36] Laura: I think the thing in, in this part is, like, I can identify a lot of people who could use Rootabl. I also don’t, it’s not like, oh, it’s like a MailChimp to a ConvertKit, right? I’m like I’m kind of sometimes having to also sell them on having an affiliate program, it feels like.

[00:24:00] Or should I, should I not do that?

[00:24:03] Nathan: Is the, well, let’s go back, since we’re on the identify step. Yeah. Let’s think back to what do, out of those 50 customers, what do the best customers have in common?

[00:24:12] Laura: The best customers already have an affiliate program. Okay. Already have affiliates, already know what they’re doing.

[00:24:20] Mm

[00:24:20] Nathan: hmm.

[00:24:21] Laura: Yeah, I think if we, if we get more people who haven’t launched with affiliates before, like we’re gonna need to beef up helping them figure it out.

[00:24:30] Nathan: Right. So I think that’s a really important key. They already have affiliates. If we got into other attributes about them, maybe they’re all on Mighty.

[00:24:40] Right? Like if you can get to this idea of the reason that you focus on a specific niche is that someone feels like, wow, this is made exactly for me. So I might even try something on a separate sales page that I make that it’s saying we are you know, the best affiliate program for creator led businesses on.

[00:25:02] Mighty networks. We do

[00:25:03] Laura: have a page that says that. Okay.

[00:25:05] Nathan: And own that very, very directly.

[00:25:07] Laura: Yeah.

[00:25:08] Nathan: Because then if we want to identify people, it’s like we’re looking for those who, people who already have affiliates on Mighty.

[00:25:14] Laura: On Mighty.

[00:25:15] Nathan: You could list out all of those people, right? That is a prospecting exercise that you can go through and you can find them.

[00:25:21] Laura: Yeah.

[00:25:22] Nathan: And then, you know, your testimonials are super relevant. Your outreach, it’s all very, very targeted. Because we’re just trying to go from 5k of MRR to 10k. with something that narrow.

[00:25:34] Laura: Yeah.

[00:25:35] Nathan: Right. And we want 10K of sticky MRR.

[00:25:37] Laura: Yeah.

[00:25:38] Nathan: And I, I think something like that would do it.

[00:25:40] Laura: Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:25:41] You

[00:25:41] Nathan: can also, I don’t think you need to do this. But you can also narrow it where you’d say within a specific niche.

[00:25:47] Laura: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Nathan: Right? In business and entrepreneurship, in crafting, in faith based communities, right? You could choose a couple of those to go deep in. And so whenever I get stuck listing out, like in the identify step, I add another slice and see if that gets me more people.

[00:26:05] I think you’re onto something with them already having affiliates because then you’re not having to run an entire launch for them, right? You’re not having to sell them on a concept. Like it’s, it’s a lot easier. And then the halo effect of that, as you talk about in your case studies, what went well, you’re on podcasts, other things, then.

[00:26:26] And we can get into the other aspects of it.

[00:26:28] Laura: Like what numbers are we talking about in order to, to hit this? Like how, like what conversion rate would you say is like, okay, this is a successful flywheel or like, oh, this isn’t working.

[00:26:39] Nathan: Right. Okay. So at this stage, we’re just trying to go from 5, 000 to 10, 000 MRR, right?

[00:26:44] Cause we’re trying to get that traction going. So in that case, obviously 50 customers gets that done in our pricing. But. You know, we gotta work backwards from that. So let’s say we need, after churn,

[00:26:56] Laura: Yeah.

[00:26:57] Nathan: We’re gonna need 75 customers.

[00:26:58] Laura: Okay.

[00:26:59] Nathan: And so then you can start to think, Alright, I guess, so I need to do 75, we just put some numbers to this, 75 migrations, Yeah.

[00:27:10] Potentially. And we can start to work backwards. How many sales calls do you think that I need to do for that? Is it 125? If it’s a 50 percent close rate,

[00:27:21] Laura: that’d

[00:27:21] Nathan: be 150, right? And then if we keep working backwards we’re going to outreach to probably 90 percent of the people. that we identify. You know, but to get on a call, maybe again at 50%, right?

[00:27:40] And so if you’re at 300 and if we work back to the identify step we’re gonna, maybe there’s 50 people that we identified that then we’re like, actually, they’re not a good fit. And so I’d say here we’re 350. So I My conversion rates are guesses in many ways, but like, I think you could identify 350 people, work them through this process over time, and end up at an additional 5, 000 MRR.

[00:28:12] How does that land on like, it’s a big number and a small number simultaneously.

[00:28:18] Laura: Yeah, and I think as long as this stuff Is the right people like I think that this is going to be a lot higher. I think it feels very, yeah, cause right now I’m like, okay, do I focus on trying to sell this price point? Do we add another tier?

[00:28:37] I mean, I’m still in the, like all the things. So I feel like if I were like, okay, I’m going to spend three months and just do this, like that feels very focused already. Yeah.

[00:28:47] Nathan: Now what we want to start to think about is what can we do at each one of these steps? To achieve leverage.

[00:28:53] Laura: Mm.

[00:28:54] Nathan: And something that you talk about is not wanting to do cold outreach, like to Totally cold outreach.

[00:29:01] Yeah. So now we’re thinking, okay, how could we. How could we improve this step right here? And I think something that makes a huge difference, I wish I understood this better early on, and that’s personal brand. Because there’s a zero to one on personal brand that you can do that makes a huge difference.

[00:29:21] You already have the most important aspect of personal brand, which is expertise. So many people that I talk to are like, I’m going to build a personal brand. And I’m like, Cool. What are you going to teach? And they’re like, my journey of how you’re trying to figure out how to build a personal brand. And they’re like, all right.

[00:29:39] But if you come in with credibility and expertise, then you’re just broadcasting that. And so what I think about a lot is as I go, you know, I’ve identified the right people, I’m reaching out to them. If this messaging in the outreach starts to hit and starts to resonate, I’m not going to reply right away.

[00:29:59] Well, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to look you up. Do you have any idea what you’re talking about, right? You’re going to say, Hey, I’ve run launches for Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, right? And maybe some of those are links to a case story where you actually break it down. But then I’m going to be like, all right, well, who is this Laura person, right?

[00:30:21] Is Sprinkle even her last name, right? You know, and I’m going to dive in and I’m going to go to Instagram. So what am I finding on Instagram? Am I finding You know, just a whole bunch of photos of your last outdoor adventures. Or am I finding reels that break down, Hey, this is, you know, these are the relationship rings.

[00:30:41] This is a flywheel for running a successful launch where I’m like, Oh damn. Not only has she done this for other people, but she knows her stuff and she can explain this to in a way that like. It resonates with me, even someone who’s like barely done affiliates, right? And so then you think about your conversion to the sales call is way higher, and it has almost nothing to do with the content in that email.

[00:31:05] Laura: Right. It has

[00:31:05] Nathan: everything to do with the, the personal, the personal brand that I found afterwards.

[00:31:09] Laura: And

[00:31:10] Nathan: so that zero to one is really, really important.

[00:31:12] Laura: Yeah.

[00:31:13] Nathan: And it’s actually not about the, the size of your audience. It’s about the quality of the content. And so you could even do like, if you spent. Three days and said I’m gonna get to Ten great reels a dedicated podcast interview.

[00:31:30] Laura: I want to take notes

[00:31:34] I’ll be bigger

[00:31:39] So ten Reels.

[00:31:42] Nathan: And then a a long form podcast that demonstrates credibility. So you can say one podcast.

[00:31:48] Laura: Okay. One podcast.

[00:31:51] Nathan: Conveniently, we recorded that on a show as impressive as the Nathan Berry show. Straight cred. Exactly. Yes. But having that. Right? Like that lets people know immediately that you have this credibility.

[00:32:09] Yeah. And so I’m thinking like, look, even if the software sucks, I might as well get on a call with her because I’ll learn something, right? This is the expert on this topic. Right. And so your conversion rate is going to be, conversion rate to a call is going to be really, really high.

[00:32:22] Laura: Okay. So like, do this, I’ve done, and then start this flywheel.

[00:32:30] Nathan: Yeah, you can do them simultaneously.

[00:32:31] Laura: Mm hmm.

[00:32:32] Nathan: But, Yeah. Like I would break down like what are the things that most demonstrate your expertise and I might teach them in different ways.

[00:32:39] Laura: Yeah.

[00:32:40] Nathan: Right. So on the podcast that we recorded, we conveniently that’s checked off, done. But there are things that we talked about that maybe you want to teach in a tighter format.

[00:32:54] Like can you teach the relationship rings in 60

[00:32:58] Laura: seconds,

[00:32:59] Nathan: right? One version, you might have that clip. Outta the podcast, but then you might also have a version of you, a top down shot on the desk. Yeah. You know, edited together in like a much more social style of doing that. And you could do those. And so the other videos, you know you’re gonna be do, Hey, these are the three biggest mistakes that course creators make in their affiliate launch.

[00:33:21] Here’s how to get the most out of setting up readable. You know, a bunch of those things and that way when I come through the personal brand, it’s really flushed out.

[00:33:30] Laura: Yeah.

[00:33:31] Nathan: What do you think about personal brand of anyone that, you know, where this has resonated with you? Maybe you’ve been pitched on something or you researched someone and you went like, Oh, they actually know what they’re doing.

[00:33:42] Yeah. Was there anything else that they had that you think is important?

[00:33:48] Laura: I mean, it’s funny, like right when you asked that, I just think. Like if I go to someone’s Instagram and they have a lot of followers, I’m like, I take them more seriously immediately. Even though like I’ve been behind the scenes of so many businesses where it doesn’t necessarily matter.

[00:34:03] Nathan: How many followers do you have on Instagram right now? A little over 2, 000. I think it’s the order of magnitude of followers that all round to the same. I think 000 are the same number.

[00:34:14] Laura: Yeah.

[00:34:14] Nathan: From a perception perspective. I think 10, 000 and 25, 000 are roughly the same, you know, 100 and 900, roughly the same in the credibility.

[00:34:24] So you, I think you have enough now that. Like has that credibility.

[00:34:30] Laura: It’s not like starting from zero.

[00:34:32] Nathan: Yeah, and For someone to be like, whoa, she really knows what she’s talking about from a follower count. You’re gonna have to be at 25, 000 right and that’s very hard to do.

[00:34:44] Laura: Yeah,

[00:34:45] Nathan: if you’re coming to learn that I am NOT the person to learn that from Some of your tips later And

[00:34:49] Laura: so

[00:34:52] Nathan: So like that, from a effort versus impact perspective, it would have an impact, I’d say a moderate impact, but it’s a very high effort.

[00:35:00] Laura: Yeah.

[00:35:01] Nathan: For sure. Now, someone else who has, if they have 12 followers and they’re trying to implement the strategy, it’d be very worth it for them to get to 200.

[00:35:09] Laura: Right. Yeah.

[00:35:10] Nathan: Right.

[00:35:11] Laura: That makes sense. The thing that I need the most help with is like reminders to like focus because my brain goes like, Oh, we did so well with this integration, like we should integrate with.

[00:35:22] Well, a little platform called kit or like we should integrate with teachable and like I have those conversations going But yeah, I feel like I’ll I’ll like get pulled out of this easily.

[00:35:31] Nathan: Okay, so Scheduling and measurement are really important. Thanks. Okay, you and I are very similar in like getting excited about all the things and then like jumping from thing to thing flywheels because they help keep you really consistent.

[00:35:47] Right. And so first from an integration perspective, you should definitely integrate with kit because we have this little thing called the kit app store which we’re promoting very heavily right now. And so you can buy it that way. Yes. So on scheduling. What matters is that you have the time set up like every single week to make this happen.

[00:36:08] I don’t have my phone on me right now, but if I did, I would show you a lock screen that has my biggest priorities in it. And it says my number one priority is driving revenue growth for kit. And I’m going to do it in these five ways. And I have this, I have this grid, which I could draw out. I don’t know where I’ll put it.

[00:36:29] And the grid looks like that. It’s nine. It’s nine boxes for the grid, but they’re in different sizes. And my number one priority is in this box, which takes up four. My second priority takes up two. And then I have three like small things that I’m keeping track of. So first I have that, like every time I look at my phone, I’m like, okay, what am I supposed to be doing?

[00:36:49] And it’s like, this is what’s driving for me. Driving adoption of the Creator Network for Kit is my number one priority. My second priority is the Flywheels course. Third is building out our affiliate webinar Flywheel, and then I’ve got two more related to like day to day operations of Kit. So that consistent reminder is really important.

[00:37:08] The next thing that’s really important is the calendar scheduling. So when you have a Flywheel, you have to do two things. First you need to identify what cadence this flywheel operates on. I personally believe the best cadence for the direct sales flywheel is a weekly cadence.

[00:37:27] Laura: Yeah.

[00:37:27] Nathan: Because it forces you to stay on top of it really consistently.

[00:37:30] The next thing that you need to do is you need to schedule in the time blocks for each of those things. What will often, often happen is people will say like, I’m going to do a huge amount of identifying and then a bunch of outreach and then I’m going to get caught up in the sales calls and then I’m going to do some migrations.

[00:37:47] And then I’m going to wonder why I don’t have sales calls and then hold on. Oh, I guess then you do a huge amount of identifying again. And so if you map out your calendar, like, let’s say this is our week, right? Then we’re going to have dedicated blocks for different things that we’re doing. And this day is when I have all my sales calls.

[00:38:08] potentially, right? But here I’ve got, here’s what I’m identifying reads. Here’s when I’m doing the outreach.

[00:38:16] Laura: Yeah.

[00:38:16] Nathan: Right. And each of these steps have a pre scheduled recurring Calendar events. And then from there, the last thing that I’m going to do is I’m gonna make a spreadsheet and this is the kind of thing inside the flywheels course.

[00:38:33] I’ve got all the sample spreadsheets that people can use, but essentially you’re making a spreadsheet where across the top. You’ve got your weeks and then down the side, you have how many leads did you identify? How many did you outreach to? How many calls did you get? And on from there, right? Yeah. And so then we’re tracking it on a weekly basis.

[00:38:55] And early on those first handful of weeks, we’re going to be doing way more identification and outreach. Then we’re going to be doing sales calls, migrations, right? Like week one, zero migrations. We do zero migrations. You know, but you’ll start to see the flywheel fill out in that spreadsheet. And then the last thing that’s really important is whatever cadence of flywheel you have, in this case weekly, you need to have a 15 to 30 minute meeting on your calendar.

[00:39:25] So this is going to be at the end of the week. End of the week. And this is where we’re measuring and reviewing.

[00:39:31] Laura: Okay.

[00:39:32] Nathan: And so that’s where I’m going in and filling out, okay, what did I actually do?

[00:39:36] Laura: Right.

[00:39:37] Nathan: What numbers did I get and why is that?

[00:39:40] Laura: And,

[00:39:40] Nathan: and just zoom out and be like, okay, what’s working? What’s not?

[00:39:44] You know, I’m really noticing I’m doing a lot of outreach and it’s not getting calls booked. Right. What could I improve in that step? Maybe I’m going to try taking this podcast interview that demonstrates expertise. We have a link to it from the. Maybe that’s not working. I’m going to take it out of the email, right?

[00:40:02] Seeing where we’re getting bogged down. I also, in each step, I like to record a friction score, and this is just something really simple on a one to five scale, how much work did I feel like this was, and I can watch that trend over time, like initially, maybe the identify step has a four out of five friction and it’s just hard, but then later.

[00:40:24] You know, I noticed a few months later. I’m like, no, that was pretty easy. I identified 50 leads this week, and that wasn’t hard. I can see, oh, this flywheel is getting easier with every rotation because I’m removing friction. Migrations might be a five out of five for quite a while, but you’ll automate more things.

[00:40:43] You’ll go to your co founder and say, hey, if we had this one thing automated. This would drop it from a 5 out of 5 to a 3 out of 5 in friction.

[00:40:51] Laura: Yeah.

[00:40:52] Nathan: And with that process, you can do a couple things. But you can narrow your, like, entrepreneur attention span and stay focused on the exact right things. You can measure it consistently and you can iterate on, like, what’s working and change it from there.

[00:41:12] How’s that land?

[00:41:13] Laura: It lands Super well. I have a follow up question. Oh, yeah.

[00:41:17] Nathan: That’s what we’re here

[00:41:18] Laura: for. All the follow up questions. Because, so far, I like, I feel like I’ve been doing some version of this. Less sophisticated, but some version, right? Like, reaching out to my existing list, hopping on. And right now it is like, oh, we’re using this tool.

[00:41:35] Do you integrate with that? And we’re like, well, of course we do. Let’s go set up a thing. You know, not like a full integration, but like something right. Enough that it works exactly. Enough that it works. So like, where do you find the balance of this is what we do and we’re not like building something else, right.

[00:41:52] To like get more people in versus.

[00:41:56] Nathan: Yeah, I think it goes back to the identify step. Okay. So who is best served by your current functionality?

[00:42:02] Laura: Yeah.

[00:42:03] Nathan: Because you could end up with a friction score where we have all of these steps dialed in and migrations is still 5 out of 5.

[00:42:11] Laura: Yeah.

[00:42:11] Nathan: And that’s because you didn’t tailor your search to the people who are supported by your existing functionality.

[00:42:18] Laura: Yeah.

[00:42:19] Nathan: And so I would think a lot about How expensive is it to bring on this customer? Sometimes you want to chase that MRR and there’s a short term and a long term expense. If it’s a short term expense, hey, we just need to unlock this one feature that we wanted to build anyway.

[00:42:34] Laura: Yeah.

[00:42:34] Nathan: Then absolutely. But if you’re like, Oh, we need to build this thing.

[00:42:37] It’s kind of outside of our vision for the product, but it’ll unlock this MRR. So let’s do it, but we got to support it for a long, long time. And you know, like, gotta be really thoughtful about that.

[00:42:52] Laura: Yeah.

[00:42:52] Nathan: And so I would keep this migration step in mind when we’re doing identification and outreach.

[00:42:58] Laura: Okay.

[00:42:59] Nathan: That makes sense. Because then your co founder will like you better. Yeah.

[00:43:03] Laura: That may be a thing already. Yeah. Because it’s

[00:43:04] Nathan: so hard when you’re in that position where it’s constantly like, oh man, this one feature would unlock this revenue. Yeah. And that’s where, you know, focusing on a couple of various specific platforms and going deep within those communities.

[00:43:18] Yeah. Right? We talked about personal brand. Mm hmm. I think that if you choose the communities that you want to go deep in, like what if inside Mighty Community? Right. You were the most helpful person.

[00:43:30] Laura: Yeah.

[00:43:31] Nathan: And you answered every single question about affiliates.

[00:43:34] Laura: Yeah.

[00:43:34] Nathan: There’s actually an email product in the e commerce space and they have this huge competitor called Klabio and they’re a much smaller player, but what they did is they deeply embedded themselves in a few of these communities and the founder and a few of the team members were just so helpful that people would be like, I just want to use these people because they’ve helped me so much for free.

[00:43:56] And so within this narrow community, you become so well known. And so it’s like, okay, who uses Mighty? Who tends to do that? Who has our type of creators and how do we just answer all of those questions and be on top of that? Yeah. Maybe that’s a step when maybe actually schedule it. Yeah. Where 30 minute blocks.

[00:44:18] twice a week. I’m going to jump into these three communities and answer any question about affiliates with just the most useful answer.

[00:44:27] Laura: I love that. It doesn’t pitch your

[00:44:28] Nathan: product.

[00:44:28] Laura: When we launched the integration with Mighty, I did 10, 10 trainings in their different communities and it was amazing. So I’m like, maybe I do like a recurring, yeah, like a recurring monthly something or.

[00:44:43] Nathan: Yeah. So it could be an official training or it could just even be as simple as like show up every

[00:44:47] Laura: week.

[00:44:47] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:44:48] Laura: Yeah.

[00:44:49] Nathan: I love that. You can also plant questions. Hmm. Right. Something that. That happened. It’s not, you’re not like going to a friend and say, Hey, will you ask this made up question that you don’t actually have in this community?

[00:45:03] But what you can do that’s much more authentic is someone comes to you with a question. Hey, I’m trying to figure out how to integrate this with mighty and it, you know, or here’s my bigger launch. And how do I think about it with my mighty network and all of that? Yeah. Give a great answer and say, Hey, would you do me a favor?

[00:45:18] Would you post that same question in the Mighty Pro community? And then I’ll come in and answer it there. Yeah. And then ask other community members like, Hey, what would you add? Right? Because then it takes an authentic question and it brings it in to a really tangible place.

[00:45:33] Laura: I love that. And even. Like, as we gather testimonials specifically from Mighty users, how can we shout them out within the Mighty community?

[00:45:43] Right. Right. So it just like comes back around.

[00:45:45] Nathan: Yeah. I think those things are, are really, really good. Yeah. The other thing, this is a slight twist on this flywheel that I want to get to, and that is, if there are people who Talk to your ideal customer all the time right affiliate managers There might be an entirely different flywheel that we create either early on or down the road It’s probably beyond the scope of this episode But where you’re saying, oh, these are the people that are Being asked already.

[00:46:14] Hey, what software platform should I use? Yeah, and then you’re building on a process Okay, how do I get in front of all of them? How do I give free licenses? To those people, what could I provide to those people? Because they’re the ones who are effectively prescribing software. Totally. You know, on a weekly basis.

[00:46:30] Laura: Yeah, well, I mean affiliate managers, launch managers, all of that.

[00:46:35] Nathan: Right, so you could, if you were hosting. I’m like,

[00:46:36] Laura: let’s do everything! Right,

[00:46:39] Nathan: and so that’s where you’d sequence things out.

[00:46:40] Laura: Yeah.

[00:46:41] Nathan: Right, because we can, if you run this flywheel to an additional 5, 000 MRR.

[00:46:45] Laura: Yeah.

[00:46:45] Nathan: You’ve doubled your business.

[00:46:46] Laura: Yeah.

[00:46:47] Nathan: And Then it gives you more credibility and leverage to go into the next things.

[00:46:53] Laura: Okay, okay So I feel really good about doing this with these particular numbers and you know Hopefully doubling MRR and are you saying like keep doing this until 25 or add something else?

[00:47:06] Nathan: Yeah So I think that you want to have a check in point to see is this working because there’s still a chance that yes It’s worked to grow kit it might not work to grow readable, or we might need to have some major check ins or changes.

[00:47:19] So you have to have this balance of committing to a flywheel for a certain amount of time or a certain level of results before you second guess it, right? You don’t want to send 25 emails and get two sales calls and be like, Oh, this is, that wasn’t the conversion rate I expected. Yeah. You know, nevermind.

[00:47:37] And so I like a commitment of saying, Hey, I’m going to do this. Every single week for 25 weeks or MRR, whichever happens first. Okay. And then at that point, I’m going to take a step back and say, all right, what have I learned? And does that tell me, okay, I should dive back in and do the exact same things, just applying the learnings all the way to 25, 000.

[00:48:04] That was my experience. Cause I started to see every step just get easier and easier and easier. Or is it time? To focus on something else, right? And to add in the next flywheel. Cause you might find, okay, I can now run this. It was taking me 40 hours a week to run this. Now I can run it in 15 hours a week and it’s not actually a volume play.

[00:48:26] Maybe at that point I’ll hire a sales team member who’s handling those things. And now I can think about the next flywheel that I’m adding.

[00:48:32] Laura: Yeah.

[00:48:33] Nathan: But I would have those commitments of it’s, it’s made up, but I would say 25 weeks or 5, 000 a member are.

[00:48:40] Laura: Okay. That’s a long time.

[00:48:43] Nathan: There’s this talk By a woman named Gail Goodman, who’s the founder of Constant Contact.

[00:48:48] And it is called the Long Slow SAS Ramp of Death. And she gave it at Business of Software in like, I don’t know, 2012 or something, a long time ago. And it’s basically about the compound value of software and how it takes absolutely forever. And then it turns into something insane.

[00:49:05] Laura: Yeah.

[00:49:06] Nathan: And so I just have to set expectations on how difficult that is.

[00:49:10] Laura: Thank you. And you suck.

[00:49:12] Nathan: Exactly. You can feel multiple emotions at the same time.

[00:49:16] Laura: Totally. Two things can be true.

[00:49:18] Nathan: The one thing that I want to touch on right now is pricing.

[00:49:20] Laura: Yeah.

[00:49:21] Nathan: So you have effectively a single price point, just in monthly versus annual.

[00:49:26] Laura: Yeah.

[00:49:27] Nathan: One thing that means for your business is you don’t have expansion revenue.

[00:49:31] It’s very difficult to overcome relatively high churn in a like focused on small businesses. Without expansion revenue kit would not be the business as it is today if we did not have the expansion of when someone goes from 3000 subscribers paying us $50 a month to 4,000, they pay us $80 a month and up from there.

[00:49:54] And so I would love to see you have another price at 200 or $250 a month. Mm-hmm . Is there anything that comes to mind that you could offer in that?

[00:50:06] Laura: I mean, a couple of things I’ve thought about tiering out, because right now these are unlimited, like unlimited affiliates, unlimited campaigns. I mean, specifically because tech wise, we can’t really stop you from.

[00:50:18] Nathan: There’s a really important point there is that what is described in the marketing doesn’t have to be the same as what’s enforced in the product. So you can play with this, like make a sales page, a pricing page that says, it’s this and your co founder can be like, but people can do whatever they want.

[00:50:35] That’s fine. We’re just setting expectations. Right. For what we’re going to actually enforce down the road.

[00:50:42] Laura: Yeah. So, I mean, it could be, yeah, number of affiliates.

[00:50:45] Nathan: Yep.

[00:50:46] Laura: It goes up. It could be number of campaigns. I mean, it could be dollar revenue and dollar commissions as well. I don’t know that there are any features.

[00:50:58] In the moment that we would want to take out, but there are features we wanna add that maybe they could unlock.

[00:51:04] Nathan: Yeah. And it was such a pretty board until I screwed it up. . Those are the kind of things that you should think about. Yeah. What I would do pretty much immediately. Is I would go make a 250 a month account, even if it’s not enforced in any way.

[00:51:19] Even if all it does is make the 99 a month look better. And you could say like, Hey, this is for up to a hundred affiliates. The 250 plan is for beyond that. I might say it’s for a hundred to 250 or something like that. And then beyond that, it’s call us.

[00:51:40] Laura: Okay.

[00:51:41] Nathan: But the 250 plan includes a consultation call.

[00:51:46] Mm

[00:51:47] Laura: hmm.

[00:51:47] Nathan: Right? And then you’re charging for that. And then you can, if you want, you can offer a consultation call for free for someone on the 99 plan. But then you at least have those options and you’re setting expectations with your customer base that you’re not going to be 99 forever for everything.

[00:52:02] Laura: Yeah. Like I’ve been using it kind of as a get in now because it’s unlimited.

[00:52:09] Nathan: We’re

[00:52:09] Laura: going to limit it soon. So just like.

[00:52:13] Nathan: I would.

[00:52:13] Laura: Yeah.

[00:52:14] Nathan: Because I don’t think that it’s actually, I don’t think that’s a level of urgency that is serving you super well. You might like, you might be talking to people and saying like, Oh no, that’s actually a huge thing.

[00:52:24] Right. That’s working really, really well to drive urgency. So. Or

[00:52:28] Laura: maybe we do like an email campaign and then add it. Yeah. Kind of like, this is going away.

[00:52:34] Nathan: Right. And see if that drives you. And you could bring in a handful more people.

[00:52:37] Laura: Yeah.

[00:52:37] Nathan: The other thing that I’d love to see you do later on. is to think about referrals very specifically for your customers and build a flywheel for that.

[00:52:48] Where you’re like, how do, it might be as simple as in the sales process and the testimonial, you’re playing with the messaging of like, Hey, who’s another creator that meets. A couple of these criteria, who’s another creative that you know of on Mighty who’s got at least a hundred thousand dollars in course or community sales.

[00:53:07] Laura: Yeah.

[00:53:08] Nathan: Right. And that’s pretty specific. It’s like, I don’t know anyone, like no big deal. Right. But they’re like, oh, well my friend so-and-so does, oh, would you mind making an introduction to us?

[00:53:17] Laura: Yeah.

[00:53:18] Nathan: You know, or I’m happy to outreach cold if, you know, that’s not a fit. But then you can start to build that up and you’re like, okay, now I understand how an improvement in the testimonial step of the flywheel is going to lead to more sales calls because I’ve got some warm intros

[00:53:33] Laura: going

[00:53:33] Nathan: around.

[00:53:34] Laura: Amazing.

[00:53:35] Nathan: Sounds good. Well, let’s sit down and kind of recap where we’re at. So Laura, we just dove into how to scale your SaaS for about an hour. And I’m curious, what were some of your biggest takeaways that you got from it?

[00:53:49] Laura: I think my biggest takeaway is around focus and also around like, I love that you even drew out the calendar.

[00:53:56] ’cause I’m like, I could totally do that. Right? I can just like put it on my calendar. I feel like right now I’m showing up every day. I’m excited. It’s like, oh, got a bug here. Oh, maybe I should do an email. Oh, la la. Mm-hmm . And now I’m like. Just follow the plan. Right. Just do the things on the list. And then the other big thing is like, this is already what I’m good at.

[00:54:19] And so I’m like, Oh my God, I get to grow like doing things I love, like talking to people I love to talk to. Yes, please.

[00:54:26] Nathan: I think that’s such an important point because sometimes we come away and like we hear a strategy on a podcast or something like that. And it’s like, Oh, that sounds amazing for them.

[00:54:34] And I should do the same thing. Wait, no, that’s amazing for them. And so seeing like, Oh no, these are my strengths. And, and it’s, it’s a lot of things that you were already doing to get to the 5, 000 MRR that you’re at now, just like actually codified and measured and scheduled.

[00:54:52] Laura: Yeah. And I mean, also your, your personal story was so inspiring of like, this does work.

[00:54:59] It’s not. You know, it’s like, that was real money, like real, it’s a real thing. You got real results from it.

[00:55:05] Nathan: I think another one for me that I want to talk about more in the future is the zero to one on the personal brand. Because I think that a lot of founders here, you have to build a personal brand and they think, okay, so now I’m going to be building Instagram channel and I should probably start a podcast.

[00:55:22] And is half my time going to go to like being an influencer. And so instead of talking about this, like zero to one. But the personal brand is serving, you know, the rest of your reputation and it’s another sales and conversion point like to demonstrate that expertise. And so I think you can dive in and say, I’m going to go zero to one, I’m going to do these exact things and then I’m going to pause and I’m not actually on a content hamster wheel.

[00:55:49] Laura: Yeah. I love that because. I was like, I don’t want to create content actually. And so being like, create 10 pieces and then that’s it. Like that’s so doable.

[00:56:00] Nathan: Yeah. And then you can reflect that at any point, any other action items or takeaways that you have?

[00:56:05] Laura: I mean, I’m definitely going to add another pricing tier and, and yeah, dig more into, into the relationship with mighty.

[00:56:14] I mean, we will be adding the kit integration as well, obviously. But yeah, no, this feels like. Really doable, really exciting. And I’m like, I want, I want to beat the numbers that we’ve identified. Right. I’m going to, I’m going to hit the 5k way sooner than 25 weeks.

[00:56:30] Nathan: Yeah. And I think you absolutely will.

[00:56:32] The reason that I said the 25 weeks is I want you to, to set expectations, to be focused on it for a long period of time.

[00:56:38] Laura: Yeah.

[00:56:39] Nathan: Cause something that I find with flywheels is they’re amazing for long term results and usually worse for short term results, right? Like you could put. Heroic level of effort in for three weeks and probably get more results than like at that three week or five week mark, then taking the flybills approach, like the systematic approach.

[00:57:03] And so I just always want to set that expectation of like, no, we’re in this for the long game.

[00:57:06] Laura: SAS

[00:57:07] Nathan: is all about compound returns, which means you have to do the things to start compounding early and you have to give. You know, the compounding enough time to operate and no one deliberately interrupts compounding They do it accidentally.

[00:57:23] And so that’s why the calendar and the spreadsheet and You know, I would make a prettier version of this flywheel and I would put it on your wall You know next to your monitor or something Did you remind you like this is the number one thing that we’re focused on

[00:57:39] Laura: That sounds good. Great. I’m excited.

[00:57:41] Nathan: Yeah. How are you feeling before? And how are you feeling now after the episode?

[00:57:44] Laura: I was a little nervous. I was like, what is he going to ask me to do? No, I feel really, I feel like this is really doable. Yeah, I’m excited. I remember asking you like, will you be our advisor? And you were like, no, but now I got your brain anyway.

[00:57:57] So you didn’t even have to give up equity

[00:58:00] Nathan: for it. That’s perfect. So if someone wants to. So if you follow anything in your journey or better yet, they happen to know the perfect customer for Rootabl, where should they go to learn more or get in touch with you?

[00:58:16] Laura: Yeah. So they should go to Rootabl.com. So R O O T A B L.

[00:58:20] I don’t know why I’m looking over there. I know how to spell it. Dot com. Or you can also email us hello at Rootabl.com.

[00:58:27] Nathan: Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on.

[00:58:28] Laura: Thank you.

[00:58:30] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe, and make sure to like the video and drop a comment.

[00:58:38] I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also, just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.