Productize Podcast

Exciting news! The Productize brand has been acquired by long-time Productize community-member, Sam Shepler 🎉 In this episode, you’ll hear Brian and Sam talk openly...

In this solo episode, I share the audio of my new workshop called What “Productizing” (really) means in 2021.  In this talk, I share 3 new concepts to help you think differently about how you can level up and grow your service business in 2021. Enjoy!

This is my conversation with Philip Morgan who helps independent consultants thrive.  Philip has become known as an expert when it comes to positioning your services as a consultant. And that in itself—the process developing expertise—is something Philip has focused in on in his offerings.  We talked about how he has productized this and helps his customers form habits and build the muscle of writing, publishing, and formulating their expertise on a topic, then turning into tangible IP. Unfortunately—This conversation was cut a bit short due to a power outtage!  But we managed to chat about some good stuff for a good 20-minutes or so.  Enjoy! Follow Philip Morgan on Twitter Philip Morgan’s company

Today I’m talking to Sean McCabe, the founder of Daily Content Machine, a productized service which cuts your long-form video content into 7 “clippable moments” (as Sean puts it) and publishes those to your social media on a daily basis. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talked about his launch of the service, how they run their operations behind the scenes. We also covered Sean’s long and winding path through teaching creative people entrepreneurship, building an audience, and running training and online communities. Follow Sean McCabe on Twitter Sean McCabe’s company

Hey listeners — Just a quick episode to announce today that I’m taking a break from new episodes of the Productize Podcast for a little while. I decided that I need to focus my creative energy on products—mainly ProcessKit these days—and that I can’t put as much energy as I’d like to into preparing and doing interviews on this show, for now. I expect I’ll be back on this feed at some point! Maybe whenever inspiration strikes or when I just want to pick somebody’s brain on air. I just don’t think this will happen on the normal weekly schedule like it has been for the past few months. Basically, this show has, and will continue to be, a “seasons” based show, and for now, it looks like the 2020 season is wrapping up. BUT… I do have another podcast called Bootstrapped Web. That’s been running even longer than Productize Podcast, and I’ll continue to publish episodes there. Rather than an interview show (which takes more prep time), Bootstrapped Web is where my buddy Jordan Gal and I hop on the mics for some real talk behind the scenes of our building our businesses. Tune in! If you’re looking for all of my best content about building a productized service businesses, well all of that still lives here on Productize And Scale. And don’t forget to connect with me on Twitter, @casjam. Don’t be a stranger! Stay safe.

In this interview I talk to Dan Andrews of of well, a lot of things! He is the co-founder of Dynamite Jobs, the co-host of the well loved podcast Tropical MBA, co-organizer of the Dynamite Circle, and quite a few other businesses he has either exited or moved on from. Dan discusses Productized Services, and how he has used that knowledge to run the TMBA Podcast consistently for over/almost a decade. He also dives into his new venture Dynamite Jobs discussing what led them to starting it, and covering what has and hasn’t worked so far and lessons they are taking from that to run this business moving forward. (1:45) Enjoy! Key Takeaways [3:28] – Productized Services are a straightforward way to identify and put yourself into a markets cash flow. [24:45] – Business opportunities can be found by identifying and observing cash flow in a market. Communities are a great place to do this, but also a great place to take your product/service first to validate with early adopters. Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Dan’s company, Dynamite Jobs Dan’s podcast, Tropical MBA Dan’s community, Dynamite Circle Dan on Twitter Productized Community AudienceOps

In this interview I talk to Jordan Johnson of RipplePop. RipplePop is a Productize service model that may sound familiar, but it has a twist. RipplePop is a WordPress Developer as a Service. However, instead of tackling small maintenance from any available developer, they provide a dedicated developer for each client and a range from part-time to full-time hours. Jordan breaks down the origin story for RipplePop, how they recognized the commoditization of the WordPress Developer market, and the steps they took to keep their service relevant and profitable. He has a strong opinion about the type of company he and is co-founder are trying to build and it is a great interview. (1:50) Enjoy! Key Takeaways [15:30] – It is okay to stop somewhere healthy. As a service business, you can keep it in a profitable location without scaling, and use that to fund the next opportunity. [26:15] – Opportunities do not always have to be a grind and pulled up from your bootstraps. Just as viable is being open and watchful for the timing of an opportunity. Sometimes you try to make it happen, other times it just falls into your lap and is up to you to take advantage of it. Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Jordan’s company, RipplePop Jordan on LinkedIn Productized Community AudienceOps

In this interview I talk to Mike Rubini of Rubini Solutions. Mike Rubini is a Jazz Musician turned entrepreneur. He currently runs over 5 SaaS products focused in what he identifies as micro data. Mike started off as a Jazz musician, but transitioned over to entrepreneurship when he realized he would not be able to make the money he needed as a musician. Since making this transition he has started multiple service and software businesses. His goal? To make enough money so that he can play Jazz, what he really loves, as often as he can. (2:00) Enjoy! Key Takeaways [22:40] – One benefit of having many micro-products under the same business is the ability to share expenses. [52:00] – You do not need the newest or most popular software framework to build good software and a profitable business. Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Mike’s company, Rubini Solutions Mike on Twitter Productized Community AudienceOps

In this interview I talk to Foti Panagiotakopoulos of Growth Mentor. Growth Mentor is a marketplace model with a community foundation for helping you level up your growth skills. You have access to mentors of all skill sets for helping you break through the problems blocking you in your business. Foti talks through how he stumbled on this problem himself and the steps he took to validate, grow, and sustain Growth Mentor. A marketplace is commonly identified as a difficult business model for bootstrapped founders, but Foti has an interesting mindset that I think you should listen to as well as the mistakes he feels he made along the way. (1:54) Enjoy! Key Takeaways [9:10] – When it comes to looking for a mentor, you will find more success if you force yourself to get stuck first. This helps you focus your question, and will help with identifying and making the most out of a mentor. [49:50] – When building a community, think about both active and passive value provided. What value will your members get when they initiate interaction with the platform/community? What value do you provide even when they are not actively engaging? Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Foti’s company, Growth Mentor Foti on LinkedIn Productized Community AudienceOps

In this interview I talk to Mike Gammarino of Bluprint Partners. Mike founded Bluprint Partners in 2017 to help emerging eCommerce brands build operations that scale. Prior to Bluprint, he served as the internal operator on the founding teams at BeachMint and The Black Tux; both VC-funded startups in Los Angeles. Mike covers a lot of ground in this interview. He gives us an overview of what it is like working in the world of physical products, and the opportunities he identified that pushed him in the direction of starting Bluprint Partners. Despite the different markets in physical and digital products the business fundamentals that go into identifying, starting, and building a productized service are universal. There is a lot to learn in this episode. (2:05) Enjoy! Key Takeaways [11:00] – Understand the language of your target market and optimize your offerings to represent the result they expect to see. [21:00] – Sometime is can be difficult to identify what to productize in a service. Offer a less productized offering as a method for gathering more experience and data. [30:00] – Paid discovery has a lot of benefits for you as a business, but it is a good idea to make sure that you are also delivering something that provides value for your client regardless of moving forward with them or not. Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Mike’s company, Bluprint Partners Mike on LinkedIn Productized Community AudienceOps

In this interview I talk to Tyler Gillespie of Applause Lab and Proofreading Pros. Applause Lab is a video testimonial service focused on eCommerce businesses, and Proofreading Pros is a Software with a Service focused on…you guessed it proofreading and editing. Tyler has also run and exited from a productized service in the content space, and does consulting for other business owners looking to productize their services business. He walks through his journey as a founder of many productized services. What was the most interesting was how he approaches every business he runs as if he is going sell them, and discusses the steps he makes to achieve that. (5:49) Also, Brian answered this question on YouTube, How to productize when every project is different? Brian covers three steps to tackle this problem regardless of where your service business is now (1:22): Figure out who your best business/customers are and target them. Identify the highest value problem for that customer. Standardize it. Enjoy! Key Takeaways [20:00] – There are very few people out there willing to put in the work to focus on and win sales. That skill mixed with the ability to find good people to outsource to can get a service off the ground in no time. [38:00] – Building a service to sell involves a lot of planning before you think you are ready. You job is to de-risk the business and revenue you are generating for someone coming in to run it. Today’s episode is brought to you by Productize. If, you’re sick of the client services treadmill there is a better way, Productized Services. That’s why I built Productize. It’s a private community and training program for people like you and me. Join our private slack, our private forum and get matched into your own small mastermind group with other members. Give and get honest, constructive feedback to grow your productized service business this year. Plus, get access to my Productized Course. It gives you everything you need to start, grow, and systematically build your productized service business. You already get lifetime access when you signup, but get an extra 10% off here. Links Tyler’s company, Applause Labs Tyler’s company, Proofreading Pros Tyler on LinkedIn Brian’s YouTube video, How to productize when every project is different? (subscribe to know when new videos drop) The 4-hour Work Week Startup Chile Productized Community AudienceOps

Today I’m talking to Laura Elizabeth. She is the creator of Client Portal, as well as Design Academy. Client Portal is a WordPress plugin that gives your clients a place to access their designed files or whatever files you are delivering as a freelancer. In Design Academy, Laura offers a curriculum for developers who want to learn how to design. Laura successfully transitioned from doing the freelance thing into doing digital products. We talk all about how to go from zero audience into raising your profile, speaking at conferences and growing your email list, which can enable you to launch and pre-sell products. Enjoy! Episode Notes [9:19] Case for Client Portal. Keeping the plugin simple and not going into the SaaS model. Annual license vs monthly subscription. “Things were always getting lost in emails. I’d finish a project and six months later someone would come and say “Hey Laura, remember that logo you did for us? I’ve lost the files again, can you resend them to me?”“ “There’s a lot of overhead in SaaS that makes it not worth for a lot of products. So yeah, I’m happy keeping it as a WordPress plugin.” [14:24] From full-time job to freelancing to digital products. Getting practice from freelancing to make something look good. “College hasn’t prepared me with how to make something look good. What they prepared me for was how to think about ideas and how to solve problems. But they didn’t teach me how to make those ideas look like they weren’t done by some amateur kid. So I applied to freelance jobs just to get experience.” “To be honestly I felt massively. I could not crack productized consulting at all in web design. Every project just was different.” [24:02] Building an audience from zero for Design Academy. Getting at conferences, guest articles, an raising a profile. Getting featured in Smashing Magazine. “Everyone said you have to build an audience before you can sell anything to them. I spent years just building an audience. All I had was a landing page saying I want to teach design for developers. Sign up to find out more.” “Writing is the most vital skill you could possible have.” [31:01] Selling $10k of HTML templates. Preselling $40k of Design Academy course to accelerate development. How to write copy based on clients’ feedback. “You have to make the effort to talk to early subscribers. Having loyal subscribers is really powerful.” Links Laura Elizabeth on Twitter Laura Elizabeth’s course, Design Academy Laura Elizabeth’s product, Client Portal Laura Elizabeth’ website Basecamp UpWork Jane Portman – Jane on the Productize Podcast Smashing Magazine Smashing Conference A Simple Web Developer’s Color Guide – Laura Elizabeth on Smashing Magazine clientexperiencecourse.com

Today I’m talking to Henry Poydar. He is the founder of Status Hero, a little SaaS app tool for teams who need to get status updates from their fellow teammates. Works like a replacement for the daily stand-up, and members get updates into Slack or email. We talk about Henry’s story, how he bootstrapped this app, how he transitioned from working in a large corporation to consulting, and then starting up his own software business. He coded most of the app himself and had success bootstrapping his app in the last 3 years. Enjoy! Episode Notes [2:36] Extending the trial for enterprise customers. “The idea is to eliminate meetings. Specially with today’s remote teams across timezones, it’s difficult to get the tech right, meet everyone on a zoom call.” “I found that the extensions are the qualifiers. You know a bigger company is interested if a trial extension keeps them onboard.” [8:11] Before Status Hero. “I was lucky. I got into the web at a time where full-stack actually meant something.” “Getting on a plane every week on a Sunday and coming back on Friday is a really tough way to live.” [13:21] How working from home compares to working in a larger organization and startups. “I noticed that in a startup, compared to a large organization, the signal to noise ratio inverted. 9 out of 10 emails matters. I a company 1 out of 10 emails matter.” “It’s ironic that creatives avoid distraction to get into deep to work on software that’s designed to grab people’s attention” [23:50] Legit MVPs and how to use Product Hunt to launch your product. Cutting features for an easier selling process. “You really have one shot launching on Product Hunt. You can’t afford to have a crappy MVP.” “The best outcome for something on Product Hunt is to get email addresses into pipeline, not trials, not customers, because you’re in awareness stage.” [30:48] Doubling revenue when switching pricing from tiered teams to per user. “Pricing was very difficult because my initial users weren’t startups who were price sensitive at all.” “At the time and still now everybody advises against per seat pricing.” “I wanted the automated credit-card sign-up make-money-while-you-sleep thing to work. I wanted it to be low touch.” [35:01] The truth about app integrations as marketing channel. “I think that taking on managing folks is a massive responsibility, it takes a lot of mind share.” Links Henry Poydar on Twitter Henry Poydar’s app, Status Hero Henry Poydar’s website Josh Pigford from Baremetrics on the Productize Podcast Josh Pigford – How freemium nearly caused our business to implode Techcrunch Constant Contact Bantam Live CRM Ski Juice PokerCharts Product Hunt Patrick Campbell from Price Intelligently on the Productize Podcast MicroConf Nathan Barry from ConvertKit on the Productize Podcast ConvertKit Status Hero integrations Slack WeWork Intercom ClubHouse Asana GitLab GDPR Zapier

Today I’m talking to Meg Cumby, from Meg Cumby Consulting. She is running a solo productized consulting service. She offers testimonials and case studies as an outsourced done-for-you service for her clients who happen to be consultants as well. It’s interesting to hear how her process is very focused and streamlined, starting from sales, going to the application form, and in the way she engages with clients. It’s all very predictable, simplified, and it permitted her to run it solo. Enjoy! Episode Notes [3:48] Coming up with the idea of a done-for-you testimonial service. “The word that kept coming up was awkwardness when asking for a testimonials to your clients.” “It just saves a lot of pain if you take out the sales copy from your customers.” [8:35] The consultation step by step. Benefits of showing the pricing upfront. “This is the beauty of having an incredibly focused service: people that contacted me are pretty much always ideal clients.” [13:45] The difference between testimonials and case studies. Questions to ask. Benefits of having a third-party to give feedback. [23:43] What the deliverables look like. Recurring services vs one time products. [30:50] Getting pilot clients at conferences and online communities. “If you have to start something, why not starting with the market you are familiar with?” “Being in communities is huge.” “With clear positioning comes clear word of mouth.” [35:54] Running processes solo. “The biggest thing that just having a process helps with is minimizing the decision making.” “I don’t have an SOP. It doesn’t have to be this big fancy thing, you just need to know what comes next.” Links Meg Cumby on Twitter Meg Cumby’s Consulting Service Sean D’Souza on the Productize Podcast The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza Double Your Freelancing

Today I’m talking to Vincent Nguyen (pronounced like win). He is the founder of Growth Ninja. That’s a Facebook Ads productized service. This is a very technical interview. We dive deep into the nitty-gritty of running a service. We talk about how he work with clients, how he structured his service, and his unique pricing model for this kind of service. Enjoy! Episode Notes [2:27] Performance-based pricing model. “Growth Ninja is a performance-based Facebook Ads company.” [8:42] How Vincent chooses and identify his clients. Why someone would outsource Facebook Ads. “Time is finite. Facebook Ads is a full time job. If you are doing it in-house you’re at the mercy of an opportunity cost.” “Scaling is the most difficult part of Facebook Ads. People wonder why doing great spending $100 a day, they add a zero and performance goes down.” [12:56] Examples of a scaling problems and counter-intuitive challenges. Optimizing for Facebook whims. [19:36] Strategy to start a campaign with Facebook Ads.  What to show first time to a complete stranger. “My first priority is to make cold traffic work as soon as possible.” “If only do warm traffic, how are you going to scale?” [24:05] Thoughts on servicing B2B vs B2C companies. “One question I always ask is what is do you know your expected revenue per lead?” [27:23] How Vincent started Growth Ninja from a dinner with Neil Patel. The story of his video for a position in Empire Flippers. “When I started Growth Ninja my mindset was so messed up. I wasn’t even taking it seriously for the few first months.” “I thought about GN as a company from day 1. I knew that that’s so much more powerful angle with lot more credibility.” [38:04] The day-to-day of a solo operator. Time spent in administrative, analysis, and creative. “In year 2 I started to realize that my expertise wasn’t in everything.” “You have to be careful when you are trying to push someone past what comfortable with their own business because their identity it’s their brand.” [44:11] Logistics to get payed with a performance-based model. Issues with attribution. [47:18] What to keep in mind about Facebook Ads in 2018. “Don’t panic. It’s been on seemingly apocalyptic mode since I’m working on this.”   Links Vincent Nguyen on Twitter Vincent Nguyen’s company, Growth Ninja Vincent Nguyen’s blog, Self Stairway Facebook Ads Vincent on the Tropical MBA podcast: first and second episodes Empire Flippers Neil Patel Michael Hyatt Vincent’s video for Empire Flippers  

Today I’m talking to Janna Bastow. She is the co-founder of ProdPad along with Mind The Product. Janna is a Product Manager by trade and she built her product SaaS and product community for Product Managers We talk about what it means to be a Product Manager. Janna does a great job clarifying that for me as sometimes that definition falls in many grey areas. We deep dive into the story of ProdPad. Her SaaS app had a great growth from 2012 and Janna has some interesting stories to share about challenges she faced. Enjoy! Episode Notes [3:29] The origin of ProdPad and Mind The Product. Managing the 2 organizations. “When we launched ProdPad we assumed that the typical user would look like us, tech startup with up to 50 people working alongside a Trello board; but the reality is that larger companies have larger needs and have larger interest and budgets for this app.”” [14:09] What is Product Management. How to get into it. Comparison with Project Management. [23:05] Competition. Balancing what competition is doing with listening to customers. Liabilities of building new features. When to really pay attention at competitors. “Pay attention what the competitors are doing but don’t let them change your vision on the spot.” “I like to think about competitors as what your customers would be using if you didn’t exist.” “Founders are the first product managers. But after growing the team it comes a point where they can’t manage the company as well as they manage the product.” [28:59] Launching and growing ProdPad. Rebuilding the SaaS to move from a timeline chart roadmap to a time horizon roadmap. “That’s the role of a project manager, to tight the big picture vision of the company with What are we doing next?“ [44:51] Challenges. The big mistake to rebuild the whole app without a clear vision, while growth flatted out for an entire year. How they had more conversions by reducing the trial time from 30 to 7 days. “If you don’t have a reliable fast app there’s no point to build new features.” “I realized the only number I could play with was conversion rate from free trial to paying customer. And so we realized we didn’t need more developers or more sales people, we just needed product minded people which fortunately the company already had.” [55:47] Plans and trends for 2018. The rise of Product Management. “Nowadays we see the rise of the Chief Product Officer. So now Product Managers don’t report into tech, report directly to the CEO.” Links Janna Bastow on Twitter Janna Bastow on LinkedIn Janna Bastow company, ProdPad Janna Bastow community, Mind The Product Simon Cast, ProdPad and Mind The Product Co-Founder ProductCamp London Martin Eriksson – Product Tank and Mind The Product James Mayes – Mind The Product Jeff Last – How Good Bad Product Manager Trello Slack Google Forms

SPECIAL WP BUFFS DISCOUNT FOR PRODUCTIZE LISTENERS Insert PRODUCTIZEPOD at the checkout for any of the WP Buffs productized services CLICK HERE Today I’m talking to Joe Howard. He is the founder of WP Buffs, a WordPress maintenance productized service that had a massive growth in the last 3 years. He also runs WPMRR a robust video course that teaches WordPress professionals how to implement, sell and execute ongoing care plans for their clients and increase their revenue every single month. Alongside that, The WPMRR WordPress podcast entirely focused on growing successful WordPress businesses and monthly recurring revenue without taking itself too seriously. We talk about Joe’s journey, being a salary employee even through the launch of WP Buffs and finally going full time into his side project. Joe shares how he’s been able to scale the team with freelancers and lessons learned building a remote team culture. Also structuring the productized service, analyzing competition, segmenting different customers, pricing, marketing, and more! Enjoy! Episode Notes [7:06] How WP Buffs treats custom plugins compare to the more common ones. “Our goals is to remove all headaches from WordPress users.” [11:49] From Public School teacher to productize business, skipping freelancing. “The first company that hired me, they knew I didn’t have the skills. But then they saw my resume and were like “Man, if you taught in Public Schools, that sounds one of the hardest jobs ever. Marketing should be a piece of cake for you!”“ “The interesting part of doing work for government is that because there’s so many people these portals every day, the User Experience makes a huge difference in the overall happiness of someone’s day.” “That’s a huge advantage of small companies, the ability to make decisions fast and move quickly.” [27:21] Launch and getting first customers. Leveraging the weak points in competition. A business model involving nurturing agencies-clients relationships “Building websites wasn’t as scalable as a process as I wanted.” “There were 3 main gaps I saw. First was in the inbound marketing area. [Having some skills, I felt I could compete there]. Second, others were not working on weekends. Third, we don’t work directly with clients but with agencies.” [32:29] Running a remote team and making it feel a team. The water-cooler tactic to provoke serendipity. “For me, the feeling of working for WP Buffs is you have all the benefits being a freelancer plus the benefits of a full-time job.” “You can feel when it’s not just me driving the culture of the company, it’s everyone driving it.” Links Joe Howard on Twitter Joe Howard’s company, WP Buffs MicroConf Vegas 2018 WordCamp Europe 2018 DC Teaching Fellows Teach for America A Better Way to Hire & Scale Your Team – Brian Casel on the Productize & Scale Blog AudienceOps Instagram

Today I’m talking to Dustin Overbeck. He runs TownWeb, a web design and hosting service focused on town municipalities. It’s fascinating hearing someone selling to the Government market, as my previous guest Greg Berry. A curious fact of Dustin is that basically all of his customers are based in the US, but he and his family have lived overseas for all the 11 years he was growing this business, whether in the Philippines, China, or Romania. We talk how he evolved the team to remove himself from the business, the technical aspects of running a platform with over 400 customers, moving from a custom platform to WordPress, and a bunch of other stuff. Enjoy! Episode Notes [4:44] Selling an utility to Government. Features a municipality website has to have. “Our motto is to make clerk’s life easier, because generally that clerk is the person who receives questions for the council members, so we try to build the website to answer those questions.” “Everybody is like, can you put a checkout page and accept credit cards… and I’m: No, everybody pays us with a check. And it take weeks…” “Selling B2G is similar to B2C, but slower. […] Some project may take 2 years to develop because a website it’s just not a priority for some municipalities.” [14:41] Payment cycles and statistics of a B2Gov business. “The good thing about doing B2G is that they always pay. I’ve never had a non-sufficient funds check come through.” “Typically when people are with us, they don’t want to switch around.” “That was groundbreaking back then: we were doing database-driven design before WordPress was known for anything other than blogging.” [25:35] Doing the first town websites from China, when WordPress and UpWork still didn’t existed. Dealing with clients with a 12h timezone difference. “If I have any regrets it’s not hiring Filipino staff early enough to help out with technical support.” “After I went through that stage (of being afraid to outsource support), that was transformative, because it freed me up to develop other products.” “I knew their questions in the firsts 10 seconds, because when you have a productized service you have dozens of clients asking the same question.” [35:33] Lifestyle milestones. Reaching the break-even point. The problem of over-automation. The importance of a human, personal onboarding process. [44:09] Enjoying the lifestyle now. Taking flight lessons in Romania. “We can always move back to the US, I can always go back to the Philippines. It just feels good and right being here at this moment of life.” Links Dustin Overbeck on Twitter Dustin Overbeck’s company, TownWeb Greg Berry on the Productize Podcast UpWork Gravity Forms Drip LearnDash Zoom.us 4 Hour Work Week WordCamp Europe

I met Ryan Buckley at MicroConf 2018. Ryan’s story is of the roller-coaster kind. He is the founder of 3 different small SaaS that he was able to fund and code himself. Before all that he built Scripted.com which was a venture-backed marketplace for hiring writers. It was interesting to hear the story of it, as is an industry I know something about. He recently published a booked about the concept of Parallel Entrepreneurship. It is about running and growing different businesses simultaneously, balancing between then, doubling on your resources, and measuring the return on those investments. Enjoy! Episode Notes [2:44] Parallel Entrepreneurship. Learning to code his own SaaS. Philosophy to choose the front stack. “My thesis is that your first 100 customers they’re not really going to care if your page reloads [or has fancy UX].” “The main problem that your app solves is not how slick is your UI.” “Understanding Model-View-Controller was, it, after that I feel I can build anything.” [17:48] How he got into Toofr after working on a screenwriting software. Building Scripted.com and raising up to $16 millions. “Eventually we figured out it’s a lot easier to sell blogposts than to sell screenplays.” [24:00] The different business models Scripted tried through the years. Exiting the company, through layoffs, second daughter coming, and cancer. “It’s a competitive market. There is a race to the bottom in the price per word high volume game.” “Tying back to the Parallel Entrepreneurship premise, I found a buyer for Scripted through Toofr, that was coming along at this point.” [36:34] Parallel Entrepreneurship 2, or managing multiple ventures. “The high level concept is finding win-win-win situation.” [40:40] Context switching, or switching between learning mode and administrative mode. “The next version of this Parallel Entrepreneurship lifestyle is to not being completely solo.” Links Ryan Buckley on Twitter Ryan Buckley’s SaaS apps, Toofr, Inlistio.com, Voxloca.com, eNPS.co The Parallel Entrepreneur Book Ryan Buckley on Medium MicroConf 2018 Scripted.com Heroku PostgreSQL DB Ruby On Rails Bootstrap React js Knockout js Vue js Angular js Node js Ryan Kulp on the Productize Podcast MVC – Model View Controller frameworks CodeIgniter Laravel Laracast Navigant Consulting Google acquires Writely Ten things I learned in 10 years of doing this – Ryan Buckley My Thyroid Got Cancer – Ryan Buckley Josh Pigford on the Productize Podcast

Today I’m talking to John Doherty, from GetCredo.com. Credo is an interesting marketplace where if you need SEO services for your business they will match you with an SEO agency. High touch SEO agency matchmaking as a service if you will. John is a long SEO expert himself. He helps his clients better understand the process of hiring an SEO agency, and he helps agencies get matched up with better clients, well vetted, and qualified every step of the way through. It is very interesting the angle from which John facilitates all the process from start to finish, in a subject which is cloudy to most of us. Enjoy! Episode Notes [3:24] How Credo differentiates from a traditional marketplace. “I’m kind of an agency for marketing agencies.” [14:40] The day to day of an SEO professional. Building a marketing team. “An in-house SEO does a lot of meetings, because SEO involves the marketing team (content writing), the development team (technical fixes), the PR team (getting back links), the finance team (getting budget), the analytics team (measure the work done).” “The works of an SEO are never done. We call it a job security because there’s always more to be done.” [24:40] How agencies outsource SEO services. Why John did not go the agency model. “Startups have trouble hiring marketers because they don’t know how to measure it, to keep them accountable.” “I feel I’m on a crusade to make marketers grow up to business people.” [30:50] Launching Credo. Why a model where email is obscured like UpWork does, does not work with six figures transactions. “I won’t refer bad clients. My agencies are OK with that, because they want me to send them good clients. I save them from the bad clients.” “When I was running it as a marketplace, 5% of clients introduced to agencies were closing into a project. Now it’s 25%, which is above industry average for this business.” [37:03] Credo’s process to onboard clients. Avoiding client ghosting. “When you are the expert it’s hard to be OK with something not being done ideally.” Links John Doherty on Twitter John Doherty’s website John Doherty’s company, GetCredo.com UpWork Freelancer.com FreeeUp AudienceOps GrowthGeeks SMAD Virginia Joomla Zillow Group Distilled agency in NY Why I’m not building a search marketing agency – John Doherty Product Hunt Gravity Forms Gravity View