“Stupid Simple” Apps Are Making Millions While You Overthink

0:00 the barrier to entry is a lot lower to build a business where you're making 10 grand a month which is life-changing for 99% of people in the world. I went to a website kind of like a biz by selling there was a company for sale and they weren't for sale for like 200 grand and that's kind of one of my skill sets is researching and copying. I was like, you know what?, I, think, I, can, build, something similar to this. Didn't have a mentor. Didn't have a rich dad or anything. So I'm just learning on the fly on my own. And within 2 or 3 months, that business was doing like 30,4 $50,000. We were probably doing a million first year. >> Just, want, to, emphasize, how, valuable, it is to go window shopping on bisbyell.com or whatever website. You can learn so much. It costs nothing. Sell it before you have it. >> Amen, to, that. >> So,, I, just, came, across, this, guy, on Twitter. His name is Will Cannon. You

0:45 may remember him from my episode on cold emailing here recently. Will is an expert in scraping and selling leads and he's also an expert in cloning other software businesses. He's a serial entrepreneur, but specifically, he's built two software businesses doing millions of dollars a year. He's a bootstrapper. He didn't grow up rich. It's very scrappy, and he has an amazing story. So, if you've ever been interested in starting a software business and you don't know how to code and you'd like to just copy what works this is the episode for you. So my kind of story is grew up poor single parent household, mom, and, dad, got dad, divorced when I was one year old dad left never saw him again to this day we grew up with little just me and my mom roof over the head food in the mouth but didn't have weren't able to have the nice things so ever since I was a kid I was like okay lemonade stand I remember in

1:30 high school it was like CD burners just first came out so I was like oh my god it was Napster and limeware so I was like my friend got a computer with like a CD burner I was like you can make your own CD this is amazing and so I was like I would sell CDs at school, right? I'd have like a like a a booklet and I'd say, "Hey, write down your 10 or 12 favorite songs." They'd write them down. I'd go home. I'd download all the songs off Napster. I'd burn them to a CD. I'd sell the CDs for 10 20 bucks a CD and I'd make 100 bucks a week or whatever it was. And at the time, I was like "This is amazing." So, I've always been an entrepreneur from the start. Had a couple jobs, did worked at Sears selling warranties to people that bought appliances, worked at worked in a collection agency. So, started working at 16 full-time. Right out of high school, me and my then girlfriend, who's now my wife, I said like, "What are you gonna do?" She says, "I'm gonna get my real estate license. I'm gonna get into

2:16 real estate." I said, "Okay, I'll just get into real estate, too. Let's do it." And we didn't know, but timing was amazing because this was during like subprime mortgage. Boom. Right before the crisis. So, got into that, got a license, started working for a company. First month of work for a company selling mortgages. I made that company $100,000 and I got paid 10,000. I thought I was the richest person on earth. like I'm like my life is changed forever. Like this is amazing. Like I'm going to work here forever. One day I'm sitting there. I get up to use the bathroom. I get back to my desk and he goes, "Hey, where were you?" I said "I was using the bathroom." He said "No no, no, no. You need to be on the phones." It was like and and I was like, "I just made you $100,000 last month. Like I know I looked at the numbers like I I made you so much and like you're like on me like that." And

3:01 so and they and at that time the they were like the owners, they were like crazy. They had every Rolls-Royce, every Lamborghini, every everything. And so it was like, it was like, well, I want the 100K. I don't want the 10K. So I was like, you know, I was like, I called her up and she had her license. She was working for a different mortgage company. I said, hey, what if we just started our own like mortgage company and she's like, let's do it. Let's like let's do it. I had a broker license, so actually I could take the next step. And so that was my last day. I called him. I left him a voicemail and said, "Hey, I'm done." We started our own mortgage company. And at that time we didn't have enough money for an apartment and an office because we were kind of just starting. So >> pick >> we, got, to, pick., So, we, started, the mortgage company out of the apartment to start and then we started scaling and we're like hey we need employees but employees aren't going to come to our

3:47 house like we got to get an office. So we got an office but we didn't have it was it was we're struggling the first few months. It wasn't easy to kind of build it up. So we got an office and didn't have enough money for both. And we, said, you, know what, we're, going, to just live in the office. So, we're going to get an air mattress. When the employees leave for the day, we'll pop out the air mattress and we're going to sleep in this office. And so, that was a really difficult time, but it was exciting though because I'm young. I'm in my early 20s. I'm like, "Hey, let's build this." So, I started building it up and eventually got enough money for you know, but the story there, which is crazy, is showered in a bucket in the bathroom of our office. We had a bathroom in the office, stood in a bucket, juryrigged a handheld shower device to the office, bathroom, showered like this was with my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, built, we built everything together. And so just crazy

4:34 story out of coming from nothing. And then we started making we started making so much money we couldn't believe it. We were like, what what you know, just mortgage boom time. So >> how, are, you, finding, customers?, How, are you finding all your mortgage customers? >> Straight, cold, calling., Just, boiler, room. We had boiler room >> just, literally, at, that, time, people, were you know the housing prices were going crazy you could anyone could get a loan so you could get a loan yeah whatever any anyone you call someone up if they had a pulse they were getting a loan so >> anyone, was, getting, I've, seen, the, big short I'm an expert okay well >> so, yeah, I, mean, really, we, were, just literally just cold call homeowners that meet certain criteria we're calling them hey do you need 100k you need 200k you have all this equity you know and they were everyone Everyone wanted a new car. Everyone wanted a new remodel, whatever

5:20 it was. So, you know, it was it was difficult because it was product market fit. >> Product, timing., This, is, what, I've learned going back is like timing is so important. So, start bought four houses bought a bunch of cars, went crazy and >> boom,, 2008, happened, and, literally, went from we were on top of the world back to nothing. I mean, back to nothing. I mean, within a matter of months, we went from making so much to basically nothing. And we were like, and we're done. We were upside down on four houses that all went down in value 40, 50%. It was really bad. It was four foreclosures. It was my cars repossessed. My prized possession of time was my S-Class Mercedes, which I loved as a kid. Boom. Watch the watch the tow truck take it away. It was a

6:07 really, really, really hard time. And I was we were like, "Hey, we just got to go get regular jobs. like we'd be a bit like we we're screwed. And so how this leads, to, kind, of the, story, which, is, at that time when we were building the mortgage company we're hiring a bunch of loan officers and to hire those loan officers we were buying lists of realtors and loan officers in California and we were cold emailing those loan officers with a pitch to try to get them to come and interview and come on our team. And so I had a bunch of lists. I had a list of realtors. I had a list of loan officer. I had these lists and I had people in my office, adjacent offices to me at the time that were like, "Hey, do you have that list of realtors?" I was like "Yeah, I'll sell it to you. I'll give give me 100 bucks or whatever." So, I was it was like it was like wasn't a big deal, but I was like, "Okay." I was like "There could be something here." So, I went to a website. >> Were, you, just, buying, these, from, other people or were you scraping them yourself?

6:52 >> No., Yeah., Buying, from, other, people., Just buying from webs. >> Yeah., So,, I, went, to, a, website., I, saw, on a website called I think it was called Bisben. It's kind of like a bisby sell. It could be still available today. I saw on the website that there was a company called listguy.com for sale and all that >> that's, a, good, domain. >> Yeah., All, that, company, could, be, still, in business today. And all that company did was sell lists. He had a realtor list. They had a dentist list. They had a chiropractor list. Every industry broken down. >> There's, a, lot, and, there's, a, lot, of websites that do this. I've bought from a lot of them. >> Right., So, I, I, thought, in, my, head,, hey,, I already have a couple of these lists. I have some internet marketing knowledge. Maybe I can buy and acquire others. maybe I can find some more and I can build a website like this. So I so I saw that business was for sale and they were doing I think I want to say like $10,000

7:38 a month in revenue or something like that. And they were for sale for like 200 grand or something like something in this range. >> Wow. >> And, I, so, I, think, I, may, have, signed, in, I may have not. I don't remember but I kind of inquired. I started digging a little bit >> and, that's, kind, of, one, of, my, skill, sets is researching and copying if you will. And so >> it's, fun, too. >> It's, so, much, fun., I, love, it., So,, I digged a little bit and I was like, you know what? I think I can build something similar to this and let's see where it goes., If, it, goes, nowhere,, we're, going to get regular jobs. We're already applying, me and my wife, regular jobs. We're just like, hey, if this doesn't work, >> can, I, side, note, you, for, a, minute? >> Yeah. >> I, just, want, to, emphasize, how, valuable, it is to go window shopping on bisbyell.com or whatever website and dig into businesses. Like, whether you want to buy it or not, you can learn so much digging into their due diligence docs. It costs nothing. Just I'm I'm not

8:24 suggesting anyone like breaks NDAs or does something unethical or steals proprietary info, but you can just learn. Like I remember I did the same thing. I was shopping on Biz byell and I saw this company that uh it enabled people to buy shipping like e-commerce brands to pay for shipping with crypto. It was like they were doing 300,000 a year in profit. They were selling for like 600,000 a year. And I I just thought interesting like I could copy this. I could I have a list of ecom brands like they only have like half a percent of the market and like it just gets your gears turning you know >> 100%., Yeah., I, mean, you, can, you, can figure out what margins are in general for a certain industry. You can figure out where they acquire customers if if they have more detailed analytics. You can find out what channels are more profitable for them. I mean there's so

9:11 much you can find out. I wasn't maybe as indepth about it at the time. I just thought, hey, I have some list. This guy has lists. He's making some money. I think I could do it. >> Fun, fact,, 80%, of, the, people, that, watch my YouTube videos are not subscribed to me, and most of them think they are. They see them in the feed, but they're not subscribed to me. So, please, it'll take half a second. Just click subscribe. And it would mean a ton to me. >> So,, we, started, a, website, that, was, called the data supplier. So, we started that we started that website and we were like, "Hey, we're going to we're going to buy a bunch of other lists." So, we had a couple already. We're going to buy a bunch of others and we're going to package these based on industry and we're, going to, sell, these, lists., And, I want to say within a short handful of months, maybe two or three months, that business was doing like 30, 40, $50,000. It was just it out of nowhere, it was >> how, were, you, finding, customers? >> Again,, like, at, that, time,, it, was, kind, of gray hat SEO. So, we were ranking number

9:58 one for email lists, realtor email lists, every email listing you can think of. We started ranking number one in no time from our on the borderline gray hat SEO at the time. And then we were cold emailing people. So, we were cold emailing businesses. We weren't we I don't think we were cold calling at that we're just cold emailing and doing SEO and that just started blowing up. And so we were like, okay, we're on to something., We, don't, have, to, give, her a good job. This is amazing. And so that kind of parlayed into the agency. That's the backtory of how we started the agency that kind of parlayed into the agency that we had, which basically worked with so many customers. Still had some Fortune 500s, but a lot of them were small, mediumsiz. They needed a clean list of their ideal prospects. We provided that and yeah, that led to that kind of 10-year run-ish of being kind of self-employed and kind of just selling B2B data and doing kind of cold email

10:45 and cold calling stuff. >> Oh, man,, that's, amazing., So,, when, you, say you were working ton of hours a week you were basically just like manually scraping, manually putting together these CSVs, emailing them to people and the whole time you're thinking this needs to be automated, this needs to be a SAS. But it's hard. Like it's hard to get over that hump, especially when you're making money. like you have to make a significant time and money investment to get there. Then when you get there, you don't know that it's going to, work., You, know,, maybe, people want that personal touch, right? What was the tipping point where you were like, "All right, we're done with this agency, model., We're, going to, go, full SAS." Was did something happened to make you really make that decision for good? >> Yeah., So,, I, mean,, I, knew, it., I, knew, it the whole time because I remember in 200 I want to say 11 or 12. So, I started up in 2017, but five, six years pri prior

11:31 I knew that that's where I wanted to go. There was a site called I think it was called Elance. So it was kind of like there was like I think at the time Yeah. Upwork it was freelancer freelancer and Elance I think they merged or something. >> Yeah., So, it, was, Elance., So, I, found, a team on Elance to build the first MVP of what I thought was going to be my first platform that was going to do that. I think it was called Sales Leads or Sales Leads Plus or something like that. It was it so that it we had the domain. We were ready to go. >> We, paid, them, and, they, just, took, our money. They just literally took our money. Didn't build a thing. Couldn't even get in contact with them. Couldn't get support. We didn't even get our money back. It left such a bad taste in my mouth and I was like, "Look, we're making good money. This it's hard work. It's a lot of, you know, but it's at the same time we we can have a life together. We can, you know, figure things out." Yeah. So, it left a bad taste in my mouth and it took another five years, which looking back like, oh

12:17 my, gosh,, if, I, would have, started, then, but you never know. But it took another five years for me to kind of get the guts up to say, you know what, let's try it again. Let's try it again. And so I remember trying it again because the other one was going to be B2B and B2C data. At the time there was a company called Sales Genie owned by Info USA. They had both B2B and TC. >> And, so, the, second, time, around, I, was, like no, no no, it's, just, B2B., Let's, focus, on B2B. Let's get away from the B TOC. So >> yeah,, it, just, took, it, took, time, for, us to for me to want to pull the trigger. Obviously, that, back that back that, back five or six years we accumulated a lot more money or we had a lot more assets. So it's a little bit easier of a swing. Hey, if this doesn't go well, it's not doesn't wipe out everything we have. That's kind of what happened. And it was it it was also just the the hours of just like, hey, I remember like Sunday Sunday nights I was like I had 100

13:04 emails. So I was like, I'm draft everything before Monday morning. I was up at late at night. I'm like, this is just not the life for me. So I was like at, one, point, I, was, like,, you, know what? We got to just try again. And then we tried again. >> Well,, necessity, is, the, mother, of invention, right? like you pushed yourself to the limit and that was what you needed to do to finally automate all this during those 5 years like what were you making in profit per year uh with the agency model? >> Yeah,, it, was, it, was, probably, depends, on the year. Some years are better than others but it was probably high six low seven figures. >> Wow. >> For, those, years >> really, good, living >> in, profit., Yeah,, really, good, living, but nothing too crazy. I mean we're in Southern California and Costa is crazy but yeah still really good living. I could have just done it forever. I you know it wouldn't have been a it's still not a bad business to this day. People

13:50 can do that and start with that. So good living. Yeah. >> Now,, how, were, you, ensuring, or, were, you ensuring that people weren't getting the same leads or like that the same leads weren't being hit up a thousand times right? >> Yeah., There, was, no, insurance, and, that was that that was the great part of it is, like,, hey,, if, I, have a, list, of realtors and let's say I verified that list and it's fairly valid, right? Customer A comes today, customer B comes tomorrow, customer C comes on Thursday. it. You're selling the same list over and over, especially if they want to at that time a bigger bulk list, right? So that's the beauty of it. You're you have a oneten cost to create it or build it. You have some small cost ongoing going to keep it as accurate as possible at that time. You're reselling it over and over and over and over to, you know, to to however many people. If a 100 people come to your door tomorrow to buy it you're reselling the same thing 100

14:36 times. It's a digital file. You upload it. You send a link. It was hard, but it wasn't because there's also a lot of people that came. They don't want just every realtor. They want something very specific. So, I'm manually manipulating CSVs. I had a team build a software to try to do it as where I can do it as best as I can, but you're joining files together. You're appending data where it's like, hey, I have these fields, but now I want to add a phone number, add an email, add a date of birth, add a whatever. So, there's a lot of intricacies to building out strong lists and then keeping them clean is the harder part and that takes a lot of time and effort. >> Were, you, continually, like, revalidating the phone numbers and the emails or No. Yeah, the emails, yeah, which are easier to verify and they have a smaller cost to verify versus phones. Phones, we had a call center in the Philippines where we take a subset of the list. Let's say the list is 10,000 people. We take maybe

15:22 500, randomize it. So, randomize 500 send it to the call center in the Philippines. They would hand manually hand dial every person and give us a disposition report and that gave us a rough estimate of what that full list would look like in terms of accuracy. And so, we want to have a certain threshold there as far as number of disconnects, number of wrong number wrong person, etc. But yeah, I mean verifying phone numbers is a little harder. >> Now,, what, let's, just, say, theoretically you have a list of 10,000 realtors. What did it cost you to acquire that list? And what were you selling something like like that for? >> Yeah,, next, to, nothing., I, mean,, at, that, I got sophisticated enough where I had relationships with so many people in the industry. I could get a I could get a list of and still can probably of every consumer in the US with just about every

16:07 data point minus, you know, maybe a few but like literally like your name, your date of birth, your address, all your interests and hobbies, your phone number, and I can, you know, 200, 300 million, consumers, for, like, a thousand bucks, like because of the relationships I had. So like literally next to nothing. So, you're buying your realtor list for $100 or some small amount and then you can resell that same thing for that same amount 20 times or infinity amount of times. >> Yeah., And, what, would, you, sell, them, for? Like >> Yeah., So, >> per, lead, or, like >> we, kind, of, try, to, double, it., So,, I, ran, a company where So, me and my wife were running this. So, she had her own company and I had my own company. I had a company where I'd sell in bulk. So I'd say it's a realtor list. Every realtor in the US 500 bucks. You want California list? It's 200 bucks. some just bulk list.

16:53 >> She'd, have, a, business, where, she's selling on a per lead model. >> So, it, could, be, anywhere, from, 50, cents, to >> Yeah., retail, and, wholesale. >> Yeah., Yeah., So,, and, people, would, come, to her and come to me, the same person. They'd say, "I want this." And then next week, they'd go to her, right? So, she had her own business that was selling on a per cent, per cents per lead depending on quantity and type and everything else. And I'd have a bulk one. And um so, we both would we'd hit them from both ends. People need to understand like I've purchased realtor lists a dozen times for you know I've launched 80 businesses right so sometimes I want to cold email them cold call them cold text them sometimes Bismar in North Dakota sometimes everyone in California most I would I would reckon that most people that buy these lists from you never end up even reaching out to a lot of them if not

17:38 most of them if not any of them right because like the initiative dies down or they they can't figure out the cold email software or they lose steam like so it's not like if you sell a list 100 times, those hundred realtors are are each, getting, beat, up, a h, 100red, times. That's it usually doesn't work like that right? >> 100%., Yeah., I, mean,, we, still, see, that, to this day where, you know >> there's, a, lot, more, to, the, list, that, goes into a a successful outbound sales campaign right? >> It's, the, messaging,, it's, the, timing,, is it did they have intent? Is there's all these other factors. It's how you're sending, it's your product or service like there's, you know, are you targeting the right ICP? so many factors that go into this that yeah I mean most of the smaller SMBs or mom and pop shops aren't successful with these type of

18:24 campaigns and so there's a lot of factors that go into it for sure. >> Now, I, know, that, you, got, tempted, to, start another agency to like actually do the outbound for these guys. Did did you ever get tempted to do that or did you do that >> within, the, agency?, We, did., We, so, we, so we we did some cold email stuff. We did some cold calling stuff. You know, it's more work and we found with there was enough revenue on just providing the list itself >> that, we, didn't, need, to, Yeah., It, was, like I was going to hire have to hire these people and do all this extra work and then >> email, servers, and, deliverability, and there's all these things that go into it. And I mean I have some friends now that do done for you cold email and it's like you know if you do it right and you're and you're on top of your game you can there's your own 100% there's a business in itself right there that anyone can start but yeah we just found there's enough money on the on the B on

19:09 the side B2B data side we can just focus here we don't need to go and add all these extra things into it. Yeah, I mean I remember I paid a guy on Upwork one or two thousand bucks to build my own custom bulk texting software built on Twilio. And then I paid another guy in Turkey to scrape Zillow every single morning for for sale by owner listings to get their phone numbers cuz that that was like the owner's cell phone number on, the, Zillow, listing, if, it, was a, FSBO, right? And then I would bulk text all of them every morning and and I would take the Z estimate and then I would subtract like 40% from it and just say hey I see your house is listed for 100,000 I can close fast all cash 60,000 today and 98% say screw you or no and 2% are like

19:56 let's talk you know and like there's just so many amazing things that come from from bulk scraping bulk outreach like the world is just completely your oyster. And for guys like us, oh there's a lot of rabbit holes to go down when you start doing that. >> For, sure., For, sure., Yeah,, that's amazing. So, what what happened with that? Did you end up >> We, ended, up, buying, a, few, houses, in, other states that we never saw in person and we completely lost our shirts and it was a huge mistake and I'll never do it again. >> I, bought, this, house, in, Mississippi, for like 40 grand that Oh, I just I've got stories anyway. >> Yeah,, I, because, I, thought, about, doing that, too. I thought about, if you want to call it lowballing, but yeah, I thought about that, too. Like, hey like, let's let's let's scrape, let's build out a list and then let's just hit up everyone with a specific kind of variable percentage down from what

20:42 they're listed at or kind of we we can we can um append some or what we think the value is and then go 30%, 40% or 7% lower. And then what's the harm in reaching out to all these people and saying, "Here's an offer. Take it or leave it." And if 1% accept and the numbers work, boom. >> Here's, the, problem., Like, this, is something that I learned that makes me short like open door is the fact that you just cannot replace that local knowledge. Like if I'm a realtor in this random rural Mississippi town, I know that like that house is in a bad school district or it's about to be reszoned into a bad school. I know things that chat GBT doesn't know, AI doesn't know the internet doesn't know. Like we think the internet and AI knows everything but AI has not captured 99.9% of conversations, right? It's not there.

21:29 It's not listening. It just captures what's already on the internet. But one-on-one conversations are not being recorded and there's a lot of gold in those, right? So, if you got Zillow trying to buy and sell homes, they lost their shirts and they have all the data. You've got Open Door trying to do it for like 13 years now. I don't even think they're profitable yet. I could be wrong. Obviously, the stock's going crazy because it's it's kind of like a GameStop stock, a GameStop stock at this point, but like it is just really freaking hard to buy and sell homes profitably unless you are a local right? Yeah, I agree. Real estate is very local. And one more, you know, you might see like, hey, home prices are going up, home prices are going down but there's specific local areas where they're, you know, they're doing the opposite. So, totally agree with that. Yeah. >> Yeah., All, right., So,, you're, printing money with this agency. You switched to the SAS. What did like your first three

22:15 to six months look like on the SAS model from revenue and profit wise? >> I, think, it, was, like, 2,000, a, month,, 5,000 a month, 8,000 a month, 10,000 a month. It just started going. It just right off the bat. >> Were, you, still, doing, the, agency, on, the side? So like you didn't turn that off >> at, first., Yeah., For, the, first, I'll, have to look back, but like for the first sixish months I was still doing that. So you still had that kind of revenue stream, but then once we hit till I think like 10 or 20 MR, it was like that was in short order. was four months five months in. It was like, hey, this is recurring revenue. This is not recurring revenue. This is different. And, so,, yeah,, I, just, p pivoted, all started pivoting all my time into that. And we got our first customers through cold email. We were using our tool to build out lists of people. We were cold email. >> Eating, your, own, dog, food.

23:00 >> My, eating, our, own, dog, food,, which, we still do to this day. >> So,, you, said, your, first, months, of, uple revenue, 2K MR, then 5K, then 8K, then 10K within a few months. Once your MR hit 10 to 20K, you shut down the agency. What happened after that point in the the uple story? >> Yeah., I, mean,, after, that, point,, so, me and my wife still running the business didn't have any employees. Obviously had outsourced dev team, didn't have any employees. >> Right, now, is, actually, the, perfect, time to start something. And you guys know I'm always talking about starting local newsletters, local newsletters for your city, job listings for your field, a weekly roundup for your hobby, you know just taking whatever you know and sharing it with people who want to learn. This is one of the lowest risk ways to build something that pays you over and over. And Beehive is by far the

23:47 easiest way to do it. You can monetize and grow your subscribers with their built-in ad network. You can sell digital products or paid subscriptions directly to your audience. And yes they've even got an AI website builder and a podcast integration. Now, I've been using Beehive for 2 years and I cannot recommend it enough. It is not just a newsletter platform anymore. It is the entire creator infrastructure. So don't wait for January. Start now. Head to beehive.com/chris for 30% off your first three months. That's beehiv.com/chris. >> So, our, son, is, three, or, four., We're driving him to preschool. I'm in the car, you know, we're in the car doing customer support on the It was just, you

24:34 know, bootstrapping it, right? And so it was like, hey, let's we're going to grow this business. and it's growing and the revenues are growing. We have financial ability now to start bringing in some people. So that's when he started bringing in people. So he brought in our first person um customer support. He's still with us to this day. And so like we we started bringing in people. We knew that if we're going to scale this business, we're going to need really good people. So then it was about and this is what most people find out is when you start to grow business is it and you know the people are such such a big part of it. So it was trial and error on bringing in people, bringing in a salesperson, bringing in this person. Okay, that person doesn't work. figuring out processes for how to bring in all these people, how to train them, which I hadn't ever been in a big organization so I didn't have any experience in it. So, just learning on the fly. So, it became about people. I mean, but look part of it was our timing was right. I

25:20 had a skill set to acquire customers profitably. So, the revenue just kept going. I think within the first year, we were probably doing a million the first year. A big part of that was by through cold emails, which I shared kind of the script that we used for that. And there was a bunch of follow-ups. It wasn't just one. >> Tell, me, about, your, like, e, signature business. How did that come to be? How did you find customers for that? >> Sure., Definitely., Yeah., So,, so, 2020 came, COVID, everything shut down and you know, I'm here in California and it was I honestly part of it was I wanted to test myself. I said I had so by by then I believe it was three years old. I don't remember we're doing a revenue at the time. Maybe we were at 2 million AR something some small millions of I said you know what I said I want to see if I can test myself and if I can build another SAS company. So I started looking at what I should do and I what

26:07 do I do? I go to G2. I start looking at all the categories in G2. I said, "Okay I want to do something similar." So I want >> Sorry,, explain, to, people, what, G2, is. >> Yeah., So, G, So, back, in, the, day, called, G2 crowd. Now it's G2 and that's basically a review site for B2B software. So software companies. So you can go there and you can see different categories and then you can go into the categories and see all the different businesses, how they rank in terms of people reviewing them publicly and you can see uh what people that have reviewed them well say about them. You can see what people have given one star, two star reviews say about them, what they do bad. It allows you to kind of do some market research. It allows you to see what's going on in specific industries. So I went to G2. I knew I wanted something similar to what I did with Uple and Zoom. I wanted a fragmented space. I wanted a big market

26:52 right?, So,, I, wanted, there, to, be, at least one or two companies that are doing that are worth over a billion and I want it to be where there's a lot of winners. So, I looked at a bunch of spaces. I looked at you, you're saying uh like QuickBooks, I looked at that space. I looked at a bunch of spaces and I saw the e signature space and so I thought that was interesting especially because of the timing where you can't be face to face, at least, at, that, moment., Couldn't it's harder to be face to face to do signing. So, people were sending a lot of stuff electronically for e signatures. So, I then I started looking at the the market dynamics. I saw hey right now globally at that time I think it was like this was 2020 1% of documents all documents worldwide that are signed are electronically signed. said, "What? Wait, what do you mean 99% or hand?" And it to me it was like "What the like there's there's room for this market to grow, but that was that's

27:38 that I don't even know if that's true but that that's what I found at that time." And I was like, "Whoa." I was like, I thought it would be 20% for EI or 30% or something. Maybe just because I'm in software, but so I saw that I was like, okay. I was like, there's a market here. It's that gap is going to change. It's going to be 991 and then 80 10 and eventually it's going to fall. So I was like, hey, it's a long road here for this market. But then here's what I did that most people don't do. Most people at this point, okay, I'm just going to build a software and test it out. I said, "No." I said, "I want to make sure and I'm going to the best of my ability that I think I have a the ability to acquire customers profitably before I build the business." That's the hard part. But so I started doing I started diving in deep. And so what I found was a lot of the companies at that time and

28:25 still today were a lot of their business was from these tools and templates and HubSpot pioneered this or you know probably companies before that but they're building these free tools that they're giving away and as part of the funnel of those tools they try to get you to sign up for their software or they're giving these free templates away. And so for the e signature space it was these online signature tools where, I, was like, hey, I, can, handdraw, my signature I can type my signature and I can create like this kind of signature that I can use for documents and on the template side it was these contract agreements marketing agreements landlord agreements all these agreements. So every company or most of the companies in this space in that space were doing this and they were SEOing for for these phrases. And so I knew at that time I

29:10 had an SEO advantage because at that point I had driven you know I don't know tens of millions of website visits from all the sites I've built throughout through through all this time. I've done a lot of gray hat black hat SEO learned a lot from it moved completely to do just things by the book and had a lot of success doing things by the book especially now than for uply. So I said you, know what?, I, think, I, have, a advantage here and acquiring customers profitably. So let me try this. So found the dev team on Upwork. Same dev team at that or sorry well we had a dev team for the business that uh up we built. We hadn't brought a team in house yet. So use that same dev team that we had originally found on Upwork to build the MVP for signaturely. I used the word the company signaturely in part for the SU advantage of having the word signature in, the, domain, and, I, said, you, know what

29:58 let's do it. So built the MVP and launched it and the other side of it too was like hey how do we price this right the idea behind signaturely because it wasn't just like I can acquire customer profitably I can build an e- signature business it was how do I put a twist on so at that time I started reading all the reviews on gio started reading all the reviews on all competitors so docyign was the biggest there's adobe sign which they've now changed the name a, bunch, of times, but, like, basically, was docyign and adobe are the two big companies right Adobe's big docyign just as e signature they're big started reading all the reviews on them, bad reviews, good reviews. The thing that kept coming up was they're too complex. It was like very hard to use or they had a lot going on >> right?, And, so >> probably, because, they're, building, for enterprise enterprise clients too, but

30:44 you're not even trying to do that >> right?, They, have, their, strategy, there. SMBs, there's a lot of churn SMBs there's, you know, they're price sensitive anyway. So I was like, "Okay let's let's build something so simple to use, so stupidly simple that your my grandma, you know, your grandmother could use it, right?" So, and that was our first kind of tagline was stupid simple signatures like just >> and, like, we're, talking, like, barebone simple like upload document, who needs to sign, no API, no contract life cycle management, blah blah blah blah blah. like no it's like just dumb stupid simple signature it's like the easiest tool that anyone could use and so we ran it by a bunch of people friends family like hey it's like and we kept iterating iterating got the MVP going and that was

31:30 the that was kind of the start of signature >> and, how's, it, doing, today, and, how, did, you get your first thousand customers >> we, started, doing, some, cold, email, stuff we knew we wanted to target small really small businesses so started doing some cold email and the SEO as planned took off and so We had a premium model. So you can sign three documents per month completely for free. And if you want to sign more than that or you need teams or blah blah blah, more access, business branding, blah blah blah, you can upgrade to a paid plan. And it started taking off crazy, but from a free level. So revenue wasn't crazy. Revenue wasn't like up where it's first year millionaire in the second year. It wasn't crazy, but the user base was crazy. They loved it. And they also didn't need most of them didn't need to sign more than three documents. These

32:16 were just like mom and pop shops that were using it here and there. And so we started growing in users really quickly. I think we had maybe over 100,000 the first year or two. I put most of my time into Uple because that's the bigger business. So I wasn't putting a lot of time into this and it was continuing to grow and it still is today. So today we have 1.9 million users. I think we're going to pass two million any minute now probably. But 99.x percent of those are on a free plan. They're free users that use the platform, love the platform, and the platform. And we get a ton of traffic. We probably get 800,000 900,000 visits per month to the website. And a big part of that is the tools and templates that we built. Those drive a lot of traffic. Those people go through

33:02 a funnel. So, it's not a huge business in terms of revenue, but it's a big business in terms of a user base that loves it. We eventually move to a free trial model where you put your credit card. There's a free trial. If you don't cancel with the seven days, you're getting your bill and it's a free trial model. So, we managed to move to that. It bumped the revenue up a little bit but not drastically because a big portion of these people want the free. So, we still have free a back like a back door offer to a premium plan. So it's a great business and I always looked at it like if I build up big enough one day and I do want to sell which I don't I don't want to sell right now and I get offers all the time. don't want to sell, but if I did at some point, I I would have this other business I could pivot to and put a lot of my time in energy to and that's already built, has a base and it has some customers and so I can then I can push and really grow that and that's how I look at that business. But yes, a great business and great customers and

33:49 we're still building and we're excited to keep, you know, keeping it simple. You know, we still we have an API now we have things now, but still keeping it very simple and offering the best support to our users and help helping them get documents signed and moving away from docy sign. Yeah, that's amazing. What are some business ideas that you're seeing in the lead genen space? Like stuff that's like tangential to what you're doing that you think someone needs to capitalize on, but you're too focused or too busy to to capitalize on. Is there any other like agency plays you see? Maybe it can be built on top of your software or alongside it, etc. Yeah. I mean, well what I mean, where our spaces going eventually with everything that's going on is, you know, right now you're going into a Zoom info, you're going into an uple and you're saying, "Here is my ICP

34:34 her title, industry, etc., etc. Maybe you're uploading some list of domains or lookike customers, etc., and you're running some signals and you're gathering some data. You're pushing those into systems and those systems are sending emails or making calls or you're sending to your reps, etc. This is slowly getting automated in a way right you know in the future it's you log into uple has access to your CRM Salesforce or hubot whatever you use we know what who your best customers are what they look like you know emails are being sent and eventually calls are being made on your behalf and your calendar is being filled with appointments without you literally doing anything like you not even going into a software and saying oh here's my no it's like just click Click a couple buttons, close your eyes, and

35:20 meetings are on your calendar. Like that's where it's going. And it's hard. You know, if people are building that and people are trying to build that, but it's not perfect yet. And but it will be 100%. You're not going to need to go have you're pro, you know, STRs aren't going to need to look, there's still going to be a space, a market for that. you're still going to be able to make cold calls and get into accounts and it's but things are being automated in a way that you know they're it's going to look a lot different in a year or two or five than it is today for sure. So that's one that's one of the things I'm seeing. I also have a a lot to talk about about that like a QuickBooks competitor because one of the ideas that I had was around there's a lot of services in and around being a

36:06 QuickBooks competitor that are profitable other outside of just the software itself. And these are things like for example for you for that business it's like payroll or health insurance or credit card processing. And you, know what's, funny, is, a, lot, of, times those other ancillary services around the software are sometimes a lot more profitable than the software itself right? Because if you think about it think about like >> let's, just, say, you're, going, to, build, a what a CRM for I don't know dentist or pick any industry, right? It's like if you have if you created a CRM for dentist and maybe you use lovable or curs or something like that maybe you use uh an outsourced dev team maybe you use go high level or some other software and kind of why it you build a CRM for

36:52 dentists and you build everything out for that whatever the industry is and let's just say you built a business where I'm giving this software away completely for free there's no charge this is a free CRM for dentists and I'm making it for whatever industry and I make it the best CRM possible for that very specific specific vertical, but as part of that, you have to use my XYZ whether that's my credit card processing service or my, you know, my payroll, my health insurance, because a lot of times those other services make more than the $100 a month you're going to make per user on the software. And so, I think there's a big business there that hasn't been tapped because as software costs to create software is coming down, it's in some way raised to the bottom. And if that's if that is the case, how are you going to monetize that? Well, in certain

37:38 areas like the CRM area or what even like a QuickBooks competitor, there's other services in and around the software that you can make a lot of money on and you can give away the software for free. >> Guys,, I, hate, to, break, it, to, you,, but you're not very likely to actually start a business based on something you see or hear on this podcast unless you spend a little more time with me and with other people that are doing just that. So come check out TK Owners. That's tkowners.com where hundreds of people are launching, starting, testing experimenting with business ideas that they heard from this podcast. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Check out tkowners.com. We'd love to have you. >> You, know,, I, haven't, really, seen, anyone doing this, right? I've seen like, for example barber shops. They raised I thinkundred something $150 million or worth a

38:24 billion or whatever it is. And they're building the best software they can just for one vertical, just for barber shops. If you're a barber shop, you have to have this. But the thing is, they're not even giving away for free. They're charging for the software, but they're also getting all these other things, the credit card processing, the health insurance, the the credit, the payroll all the other stuff in around it. They're building it all in one. I think there's a big market for building these all-in-one tools and giving software away completely for free, knowing you're going to make money on all these other areas. >> Yeah., Well,, let's, break, it, down, real quick. Let's say you're a dentist and not unreasonable for a dentist to do a million dollars a year topline, right? That's very conservative. Let's say it's 1.2 to keep the numbers easy. So, a dentist is doing $100,000 a month. Let's just say they're pushing it all through credit cards. Okay? Let's say today that dentist is paying 300 a month for

39:10 HubSpot. I mean, that's that could be reasonable, right? 300 a month for HubSpot. You come in there and say "Hey, I've got a CRM. It's better than HubSpot. In fact, it's a CRM only for dentists. In fact, instead of it being 300 a month, it's free." Cool. Awesome. What's the catch? Well, there's no catch. I just need you to bring your credit card processing over from whoever you're with to me. What is it per month? 3%. Right? Same as Stripe or anyone. But what you do is you just white label someone else's credit card processing and do what's called interchange plus pricing, which means for the 10% of customers that use American Express you're not going to make any money. For the 80 or to 90% of customers that use debit cards or other uh credit cards you're, going to, make, between, like, 2%, and 2 and a.5%. Right? And so then if you're

39:57 doing, a h, 100,000, a, month, in, credit, card transaction volume and let's say you average 1% you're making $1,000 a month from this client that like their CRM is now free. Their credit card fees didn't go up at all but a small percentage of that is just coming to you. And so you're making three and a half times what HubSpot was making for the same thing. But it's a win-winwin all the way around. Is that what you're saying? >> 100%, 100%., And, then, I, mean, obviously, you could layer on the other services, group health insurance, payroll, etc. I mean it's also a good idea for a company that's already like an insurance company or a payroll company or a credit card processing company. If I'm a credit card processing company, right, my instead of just saying, okay, I'm going to go to this walk in this restaurant, try to get their business in business, this is a like a whole another section of area they haven't explored. I'm going to

40:42 build a CRM for restaurants or I'm going to build a CRM for whatever and I'm going to give it away for free because I want their business. So, it's Yeah. I mean, look, it's a no-brainer. Like you said, if you're a dentist, if you're a chiropractor, whatever you didn't industry and you you have someone come to you and it's, hey, this is completely free. It's going to save you XYZ a month. You know, you have to use credit card processing or you have to use other services, but the pricing doesn't change there either. Or maybe in some cases you have some relationship where you can get even better pricing there. I mean, look yeah, every single dentist that you approach isn't. But if a small percentage of those do, and then you're you're ingrained, right? They're not going to then go pay for a CRM after they're getting it for free. And especially if you're narrowing down to one vertical and you're and you're serving that vertical really well. And there's probably like that's why I swear these others are doing well because

41:28 there's no one that was going after barber shop, CRM. No one. There's I mean, there was, but there wasn't anyone doing it in a real way, putting all their time and energy into, right? So it's it's it's interesting. >> If, someone's, listening, to, this, and, like, "Okay, well, first of all, I'm not going to start a credit card processing company." We're saying you don't have to go Google white labelled CC processing service. I just did it. There's dozens of them, right? You can just plug into their system. They'll take a little cut. You take a little cut. And then you're thinking, well, how am I going to build a CRM? You don't even need to vibe code it. Just use High Level >> right?, Just, use, High, Level., You, have, a three to $500 a month agency account and you can have unlimited sub accounts for free. And oh, dentist is too oversaturated. copy and paste it. Do it chiropractors, barber shops, whatever you want. Right? So, you don't need to build the the CRM. You don't need to build the credit card processor. You can

42:15 use the same service high level to do the outreach to find them. You could be eating your own dog food to find these customers. I love this. >> Yeah., Yeah., I, think, it's, amazing., And but let me also say too, you know there's a lot of talk right on X and and you podcast everything about how and look, I love lovable and cursor and replet all these tools. I love them and I think they're amazing and I think they're lowering the barrier to entry to build software and we're in a crazy time to pay. So things are changing 100%. Let me just say that first. But let me also say the notion and this is coming from someone that has built SAS tools to compete with really big companies. The notion that you can just like hey I can build docyign in 48 hours and I could

43:01 and I can get to 10 20 million AR. This is easy. I can I can I can you know I can buy club this way. It's a lot harder than it looks to get to scale and like millions of like let's say 5 or 10 million plus in AR, right? Like look getting to 100K in ARR is completely different than getting to 10 million in AR. And I just want to say that for anyone listening that you know because there's people that just think it's just really easy to do to get to scale. >> And, obviously, everyone, has, their, own definition of success, right? Some people 10k a month is that's all I need. I'm freaking I'm I'm mind is blown. And some people they they want to get to this next level. It's as someone who's tried and still trying. It's very hard because it doesn't take it's not just it's it's easier to do now because it's

43:47 not just the software, but there's things that come there's other parts of the business. >> Acquiring, customers, profitably,, building a brand. There's all these other things that you need to do to be successful. And so I don't want to make it seem like it's just easy to do, but it's a lot easier to build. And if you have a skill set around acquiring customers or you're willing to you have a drive to go learn like that's my whole life, right? I I'm learning from reading books, from watching YouTube videos, from listening to podcasts, didn't have a mentor didn't have a rich dad or anything. So I'm just learning on the fly on my own. And if you have the drive to do that you very well can be successful. It's a lot the barriers entry are a lot lower now. >> Yeah., But, also,, let's, not, get, it, twisted and think that building a $10 million AR

44:33 business is just easy and I can build this no code tool and boom and I'm up and running because, you know, there's a lot of talk around SAS is SAS is dead and you know, everyone's displacing and yeah, like SAS is probably on a downturn, you know, compared to where it was in 2021. But at the same time, you know, people choose Salesforce, for example, be not just because, well, in part because they're the market leader and sales teams know them. Okay, great. But, you know, are you Sock 2 compliant? Are you, you know, for docu There's all these things that go into the business that people should be aware of when they're going and they're trying to start and compete against a big competitor. It's a lot easier said than done, but it's possible, but it's a lot easier said than done to get to get to massive scale. >> Yeah., Yeah., I, just, want, people, to, know that they don't need to build massive

45:20 scale >> 100%., Exactly, right., They, don't >> like, you, just, don't. >> Yeah., The, barrier, to, entry, is, a, lot lower. And you to build a business where you're making 10 grand a month, which is life-changing for 99% of people in the world like like that should be your short-term goal. And then obviously yeah, try to scale from there, but like barrier to entry is a lot lower than it was 100%. >> Yeah., Last, question, for, me., What, tools do you use to copy others? Like if you're cloning another website or another SAS, another business, are there any like cool tools or tricks that you like to use to do that? >> There's, not, a, lot, of, tools, or, tricks that I that we use >> or, frameworks, kind, of, like, your framework of you went to G2, you saw that everyone hates how complex it is. Stuff like that. Like how do you look at cloning other businesses? >> Yeah., I, think, you, have, to, look, you, have to know your angle. Like I don't think

46:07 price can be your differentiator because eventually like I said there's going to be some software that's free that's making money on slary services. So I don't think price can be a differentiator. I think you have to have that one angle right whether it's ease of use or something else but also everything's being copied. So just be you know you come up with oh I'm going to, offer, XYZ, and, I'm, going to, do, this that other people aren't doing. Well now all the other people see that if that if people want that they're just going to do, that., So, features, aren't, can, you even really be a differentiator. So I think at the end of the day this is why it goes back to building the brand because what I see most people they have companies in their mind that are shortlisted when they're going to buy and so if you're going to buy XYZ software payroll whatever it is you

46:53 already have QuickBooks and one or maybe maybe one of your in your in your brain in your mind and so building a brand is such an key part of how you differentiate on the copying side. Yeah. Look, anything can be copied now, but the harder part is acquiring the customers profitably. Do I have a skill set or a way I can acquire customers profitably? And can I eventually get it to a point where I build a mini brand so I'm in customers minds? And so I think those are the two areas that you should focus on. Like look, if you're if you're if you're building a a QuickBooks competitor, you can go on QuickBooks site and you can go on G2 and there's there's frameworks and things you can do, but at the end of the day, if you can't acquire customers profitably, none of that matters. And if at the end of the day, you can't build a mini brand and be in some people's minds, none of

47:39 that matters. So I think those are the more important areas someone should focus on when they're copying is not just because you can go on every competitor's website you can run it through chat GPT or some AI to analyze everything and figure things out but figuring out what your differentiator is going to, be, your, short, differentiator whatever that may be and then figuring out and even pre-selling before you build like for example if you can cold emails you can cold email people right now before your QuickBooks competitors build you can run you can start cold email campaigns right now and see if you get some yeses. If you get some yeses then go build it. Figure out how to acquire customers first before you go build the thing. A lot of people like I'm going to build this. I'm going to do this. And it's so exciting and they get so much hype and they they build it and they're like, uh, what do I do now? Acquire customers. How do I do that? And like, no, just start the customer

48:26 acquisition. Run Facebook ads test right now before you even have it. Throw up a landing page. Do whatever. See if you can get people to through a funnel right now before you even have the thing. and then go build it once you have proven out you can acquire customers profitably. >> Amen., You're, preaching, to, the, choir. We don't have to wonder anymore. >> Chris, is, like,, I, know, this., I, This, is easy. It's great. Like >> no,, it's, like, we, we, don't, have, to, wonder if people want our thing before we build it. Like, we don't have to. >> Yeah. >> Sell, it, before, you, have, it. >> Sell, it, before, you, have, it., Amen., So, that that's Yeah. I mean, that's that's what I recommend. >> Will, you're, the, band., Where, can, people find you if they want to find you? >> Yeah., So,, I, just, started, a, YouTube channel. You can push willon or it's I >> We'll, collab, we'll, do, a, collab, link, on that. >> Perfect., We'll, do a, collab, link, on, that.

49:12 I built my personal brand website. I am Willilcanon.com. Build that. I have all my playbooks there completely free. So I wrote a playbook on SEO. I wrote a playbook on code email. I wrote a playbook on Legion. I wrote a playbook on everything. And it's not just like a Chad GPT written playbook. This is like all my 20s plus years of experience building out all these businesses. I put everything I know into these playbooks and they're completely free. Not selling them. You have to give your email to download them and I'll put you on my list. But I'm not selling them, giving them away completely free. And go check me out. I am Will Cannon. Um, yeah, I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm everywhere. Yeah, hopefully people got value and I appreciate you having me on Chris. >> Absolutely., Thanks,, man., What', you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner