I make $2M/year selling AI to boring businesses

0:00When I started [music] this business, I envisioned this. [music] We've just gone over 2 million a [music] ready to find. Let's see how good he is. It feels like a full [music] and I came across voice AI technology. Even though you need a golden [music] calculator to divide. So program of the day. I'm going to meet

0:29Chris Baxter is the co-founder of Ivi. If I say it right, it's an AI startup based in New Zealand and right now they are in Bali. The funny story about them is that I was supposed to meet them in July and in July they were at 1 million AR R and since then they went from 1 million to 2 million AR. So my goal today is to understand how they did that. how they grew from zero to 1 million AR with only two co-founder and how they went from 1 million to 2 million in such a short time. So we're gonna meet him at Muay Thai Changu right

0:58now for a Muay Thai training. We're going to visit his house and we're going to do a tour in apparently a golf cart. I'm super excited about this new format. So let me know what you think about it. I'm with my man Chris. He came in this crazy. So that's how you're moving around,

1:17right? Got to got to ride in the buggy. Good fun. Good fun. Should we shoot up to the gym? Yeah, let's go. [music] What's your routine actually in B? Like, do you train a lot? Basically, I'm ging four times a week, paddle once or twice, and then Muay Thai once. And when you do that in the afternoon

1:37usually? Uh, usually at like 2:00 p.m. 2 p.m. So, you walk in the morning and then you do your sport today. Yeah, we're working morning and then like lunch and tennis ball. All right, we're going to see that today actually. Hello. Hello. Hello. Jan, nice to meet you. I see you, bro. How are you?

1:55Good.

2:04One person walk with me. One personile

2:14keep it quiet too hard. Let your success be. [music] Yeah. So the technique when it's like that you're faking to train so you can relax a bit. When you arrive at the pad you're full of energy. a million, but I'm aiming for the sky. One day I feel a stadium. Watch the crowd. Talking about my heart. Now they're watching every move. This next

2:47is just a lot more to prove. Ready to find. Let's see how good he is. We'll find out. He was playing a guy you don't really know, Muay Thai. And now he will beat me up. Kick is okay. No elbow. No push kick to the face. No push kick to the ball. Future in case like a professional. Okay. Tlo

3:11one. Somebody told doat that I'm trying to indulge [music] in that in my track. See the bing. See the motion clap when you're throwing it back. These females planning on doing me wrong. So I'm grabbing a do post the location after we gone. Can't slip and let them know where [music] we at. I don't know about you, but I value my life. I value my life cuz imagine I die. And I aim at 100 M. Yeah, there's so much [music] news I ain't done yet. Like [ __ ] a flight attendant. I don't party, but I heard there so [ __ ] it. I might attend it. Got

3:40a kick back sometimes and wonder how life would have been if I never did. [music] So coach, what do you think? More train. He said it. He said it. I got to do it. You train at the gym four times a week, then you do better and white. Why is that? I want to get big like you. Yeah, that's my goal. But just having like a a body that's always able to do anything. Like if I want to go on a big hike, perfect. I can do it. If I want to go to the gym and push strong weight, right? I

4:09want to do Muay Thai. Were you like that back then when you were not taking care of your SS when you were working in real estate? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Are you like that? Not as much. And the reason being is because I was prioritizing like work over health and personally. [snorts] And is it buddy or being a farm bill

4:29that change you? I think it's it's when you get to a certain level, you realize great, okay, I'm I'm making a bit of money now. I can kind of sustain myself, but then my health isn't good. So, you want to bring that up to the same level. So I think at the start I was just like all in on the business gyms sometimes like on and off but then yeah when when you get to a certain point you just want to make sure all of the aspects of your life for sure right now the the work is the one that's going the best because it's had the most

5:03focus. Yeah at sports you always I think it does. I think for me I use sport to kind of clear my mind. So every day, you know, I just be working except for the sport that kind of pulls me away, gets me to allows me to think, use other parts of my body, not just my

5:22head. So I I think it is important.

5:30[music]

5:34Let's go. You good? So why did you decide to uh come to Bar Australia? So I was in New Zealand. I was in real estate. Yeah. And I knew that I I I figured out that I didn't want to stay in one city and just stay in USA. So I saved up as much money as I could and I was going to just start in New

5:55Zealand, like start a business. But I thought about it and I thought the money would last so much longer. Yeah. A place that was a little bit cheaper than UK. So I was like, you know what? [ __ ] it. I'm going to go to Bali. We just go by myself, try it out. And so I

6:09did. That's that's how I ended up here. So you came alone? Yeah, you came by myself. And how did you meet your doctor? Uh he was my best friend from high school. So we met when we were like 15 years old. And how did you end up reading a SAS actually? Because you were in real estate which means that you had no clue

6:27what was the Serena. Yeah. And then you ending a S and you're making 2 million a year. So how did you end up in that? Okay. So I just started researching on like as soon as AI came out I started researching like what sort of businesses could be possible and I used like Chachi BT at the time to come up with ideas exported thenics and [snorts] I came across voice AI technology before anyone knew what it was before it was even a thing and I went well that would be really cool but I couldn't do anything until the technology got better. So as soon as voice AI technology matured,

7:02that's when I realized that this was my time. And so that's when I quit my job and went, "Right, I'm going to build a business around it." And yeah, I told my best friend about the business idea and he was like, "I'm a developer. Let let me build it." And so I went, "Sweet. That's that's what I love. Let's do this. That's amazing." Anyway, was that when was it? Yeah. Uh uh

7:242 and 1/2 years ago. 2 and a half. Yeah. [music] No one is staying here. You want to move in? Like you're [music] just you and your partner here. So it's me, my business partner and then another friend as well. There was an Italian guy. How did you know that? If you watch I think maybe three video ago, I was interviewing three Italian guy which is the co-founder of Sleek and I was organizing a dinner and I met them at the SAS dinner in Bali and at the SAS dinner there was your

7:55Franchesco. Yeah. Franchesco. ah and say like oh you need to meet this guy because like they built a SAS they're doing like really good you need to interview them so that oh I got your WhatsApp and go got here today so yeah that's how the connection was nice we shout out to Franchesco yeah shout out to Franchesco Nicolo Stefano and Matias [clears throat] oh this list [laughter] so this is Pixie meet Pixies is the house cat we adopted him this is So, Central Changoo, which I just like love, but then you've got like a little a little bit of peace and

8:31quiet. Yes, you do. Okay. So, this is the dining room. Um, so this is where we breakfast and munch and just have have some fun. Bers, I saw on Google map. I [laughter] can see that you do party. We've done a few parties. That's upstairs. I'll show you the the party spot. So, this is the gong. So, we we have someone that that helps to cook for us for breakfast and lunch, but we have some problems where we didn't know what time it was ready. And we didn't really know cuz we work upstairs and then the chef's downstairs. So now whenever we have a meal, he rings the gong and

9:09everyone in the villa knows what time the meal is cuz the gong is you enjoy. Down [ __ ] [laughter] It's where we'll have our our meal cade. Nice. And that staff room over through that door. Yeah, very true. This is my bedroom. So, look at that. He's getting massage. Massage. [laughter] I didn't know we were going to do a

9:39hike. A hike? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's cool. And then this is the rooftop. This villa isn't actually much money at all. And like we were looking at all these different villas and then we found this villa and no one wanted it because it has an outside dining room. Makes sense. And so we saw it and we went we love the outside dining room. That's awesome. This is the the office. This is Louis

10:07our co-founder. Nice to meet you. Likewise. How you doing? Good man. Look at that. The spaceship Yeah. This is the the operational room. Yeah. How easy is it to walk together because you're off for a long time, right? Yeah. I mean, I find it works pretty well. Um Yeah. I usually I get up a lot earlier than Chris. So, I I work the the mornings. He works like

10:30afternoons, evenings. What time do you get up? I wake up uh about 4:30. Um, I'll do a little bit of like meditation and then I'll just come up to the office and just work like super hard focused work until 10:00. Then we've got breakfast and then back to work and we have lunch at 2:00 and a little bit more work and then I'll finish the day off. I'll play paddle or go to the gym and yeah, just relax, go

10:54to the beach. So, who walk the most? It works the most. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty even. Yeah, I try to pick a fight. [laughter] So, let's talk numbers. How old are you? Uh 25. 25. Yeah. How much are you making right now? Making well personally not much. Personally, not much. And the reason being is cuz we're putting so much back into the company. The company we've just gone over 2 million ARR which is and

11:21your reoccurring revenue. You built actually the SAS from 0 to 1 million AR. Just the both of you. Yeah. Pretty crazy. like we just it was just us and we built it to a million ARR and we realized at time we were like well how are we going to like go further? How are we going to expand more and we didn't really ever think of

11:42hiring anyone else? We didn't cuz we'd never done it before so we didn't know it was possible and then we realized oh [ __ ] we can hire other people to help us that's much easier. So that's how we expanded to 2 million. And how did you go from 0 to 1 million? So we did marketing ourselves for like actually the first year. So the first year. So I was doing like cold email outreach, um meta ads myself, um just word of mouth, trying to build up partnerships, that side of things. So it was all just pretty hard. Now we've got a marketing agency, so they focus on

12:15all the marketing for us and like do that side of things. You hire your five people. Who were the first hire? uh first hire was an additional developer, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So, it was to help Lou. The problem was Louie was so under pressure with like customers asking for support and that side of things. So, we hired a

12:35developer to just assess on that first. Okay. So, first developer and then after first developer, then salesperson. So, to to give me more time to do other things because I was just like the saleserson as well. And then we hired another developer and a third developer. And then we hired two consultants. And now we've just hired two days ago a customer success ah no I forgot. We've hired one customer support person as well. And we've just hired a customer success person. How did you decide who to hire first? Because you say developer first which means that you were overwhelmed with the product part then you hire a sales and then did you have

13:16like too much customer so you had to hire more developer to take care of the product or did you decide that? Basically I think the main deciding factor is we realized to stay like in front of our competition we needed to keep innovating and make sure that our current customers were happy. And so to do that we had to get more development power to build new features and to make sure all the support was being done for our

13:40customers. Was it based on the number let's say like you had the eye share so you say oh we need to make the product better or was this just a good feeling on your side? Actually we have we've always had pretty good churn and that's props to Louis like he's built like an amazing product and he's like a genius so I'm lucky to have him. Um but every move that we've made in terms of like customer success, customer support is just trying to get

14:04it better. You can always improve. What is your business about body clean? Okay, so basically we we answer phone calls for allied health professionals. What that means is like physiootherapists, chiropractors, usually they can't afford to employ a receptionist and they they don't want to do the calls themselves. So what do they do? Well, they they have to use a system. So, we've created like a a phone answering service that uses AI to answer all their calls for them and helps patients never have to go to a

14:34voicemail. That's amazing. And thanks to that, I bet that they actually make more money because they don't miss call. Do you know like approximately how much it is? We've saved and generated for uh private clinics over $14 million. So, we have uh just over 500 customers, so about 540 at the moment. And that is clinics specifically. So if you talk about practitioners then we've got about over 3,000 practitioners and the average cost

15:01of our service is $269 Australian. And what were the bottleneck when you you were building because I'm sure like everyone like me right now I'm stuck at 24kmr. The bottleneck is churn like we have to deal with churn and there is also an acquisition problem. What were the different step for you the different ceiling that you got? Okay. So when we very first started our problem was that churn as well and we realized that to build an amazing product we couldn't do products for every industry. So we started out as an agency just trying to build AI phone receptionists for any industry we could get our hands on who

15:42said yes to us. But we realized that they were all average products. So as soon as we we thought, okay, if we if we allocate all our resources into one niche and just grow that one to make it the best product ever, let's try it. And that's how it worked. So I know that a lot of people will watch that don't understand why you have to niche down. And I would like you to explain actually why you should niche down or just like target one ICP and just do that again and again

16:10and again. It literally makes everything so much easier. So in terms of like finding customers, right? If you're saying, "Hey, we're we're like an AI receptionist creator." Well, all the customers who might be interested, they go, "Okay, but does he know my industry?" Probably not. If I say, "Hey, we make AI receptionists for uh chiropractors in Australia who are

16:36between 1 and 10 practitioners." Great. Now I've I'm just focusing on those people. the people who match that criteria are going to say, "Okay, he's an expert for us." So, finding customers so much easier. Did you change your price when you decided to niche down? So, we first like price when we first uh focused on our niche in medical, we priced it and everyone was like, "This is so cheap. This is amazing." We were like, "Cheep? Oh, okay." So, then we we

17:04decided to put it up. What is your finale if you can share this? Yeah, for sure. Look, honestly, we get customers coming in from every place you can imagine, but the main one is Meta. So, that's where most of them come from. That's from our marketing agency. Uh they do meta ads and Google ads. Then we've got referrals. That's another massive one. Um so, just from other clinics who use our product, they tell their friend, their friend comes and

17:28that's how they find us. Is that an affiliate program? Like, do they get paid for that? There is an affiliate program. Honestly, um people just come without the affiliate program though. Usually it's not pushed that hard. And how is the growth now? I bet it's exponential because last time we talked it was July. You were at 1.3 and now you

17:44are 2 million. Yes. This month, which is August, is the very first month that we cracked 20% growth. Every month previous to this, it's been around like 10%. So we've just doubled the growth this month for the first time, which is super exciting. Where does it come from? Hiring a team. I think hiring is a big one. So, every single month this year, we've hired one

18:06new person. And that's because every month, we'd increased our revenue a little bit more that we go, "Great. Okay, now we can outsource that to a new employee." And how do you find these people? It's so hard. Honestly, recruitment is we we hate it. Um, it sucks. Especially using recruiters. They are so expensive. Like, we spent so much money on recruiters. But I think it's just time. It's really it's just focusing and

18:34and using your time to find people. If you can give like three mistake that you did hiring, what would it be? Okay, first one very recent. I said over over a call I asked about uh if the person like what their plans were in the future, if they were planning to have a family. I learned that that's a big no no. You can't ask if they're going to have a family. Okay, so I got in trouble for that. That's one. Second one is uh contracts. So because we're in Bali, we're so used to contractor type setups

19:08in terms of like agreements. Um so when you send that to someone who's not used to nomad life, they freak out. They're like, "Why isn't it a full-time employee agreement?" And so that's how we actually started losing a lot of people. And I didn't realize until someone actually finally told me and I went, "Oh, well that was a mistake. I'm not doing that again. I'm going to explain that better." So those

19:30are the top two. Time honestly you have to you have to promote your ad everywhere for your job and just spend so much time going through applicants. What is like the ratio uh the conversion rate between like you know all the leads that you get um to hire someone and the person that you hire at the end? Is that

19:51like hundred of people? No. Thousands. Thousands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've looked through like for this one hire that we finally secured two days ago, customer success. It took us 2 months to find the right person and thousands of applicants, like probably about 3,000. We have a goal for the end of the year

20:11or like maybe in 12 months. The goal is to get to a a point of ARR that we're really comfortable with. So, we want to double what we're currently doing. That's our next goal to double our revenue. And from there, we'll make a decision on what to do next, what the next goal is. There's always going to be

20:28another one. Congrats for that. To me, it's crazy. 25 years old. I feel old and poor now. But thanks, guys. Appreciate my old again. [music] Back into my [music] again. You're going to the beach. is changing when the traffic is like that. This is Jenu. That's where all the young sexy people live. [music]

21:00Are you an actor today? Maybe. Maybe. How many times do you come to the beach? To the beach? My first year I would say three times a week. Now I would say once a week. Is there anything that happened in your mind when you actually switched and it started to work for you business-wise? I think I I looked at my future one day and I and I realized that the path that I was currently on, which was in real estate, was going really well. Like I was I was going to do really well in in career um because I like to work really hard. But that end vision of myself

21:48wasn't where I wanted to be. I was like, you know what, that's that's not the life I want. I want something more exciting, travel the world, like be able to just do go wherever I want, whenever I want, just love and live life. So yeah, that's what made me change. And when you started to work for yourself, I bet that you had a few fail at the beginning or did you start straight away this

22:09company? Okay, so I decided that I wanted to leave real estate. Took me 6 months to actually leave real estate. cuz I was on a like earning good money. It was so hard to leave. So 6 months left real estate the first year made no money at all. Zero. And so I was just living off savings. But I knew because I was in in Bali my savings could last that little bit longer. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to keep going. I'm just going to keep showing up every day doing exactly what I need to do. One day it will work. I just had that faith in my

22:40mind. And then that's how after one year finally we got our first first customer. And was it from this company already? Yes. So how it worked is we started off in that first year as an agency. So when I say we never made money, we never turned a profit. We were always just covering expenses and maybe not even covering expenses. So after a year we finally got our first proper client and made a profit, started making money. The first year we had a goal to hit 40k a month and uh my my business partner said I was crazy. He was like, "Cro, there's no way we can hit 40k a month." And then

23:19after about 6 months, we did. And he was like, "Oh, 6 months." After about 6 months. Yeah. Why do you think it? We both showed up every single day and we both work work extremely hard. And I think because we're both on the same page with everything we do, that's how we can we can just move where other people can't. Some people are consistent like super hard working for a couple days a week, but then the other

23:45days they go out partying. Yeah. And it it just doesn't compound. So consistency was the key for you. Consistency for sure. And did the growth happen in the same way that you were walking? like also consistent. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've been 10% growth average since we started basically. Last month was the first month we kind of cracked that and went

24:06to 20%. So, you never had like a big block. You never plateaued with your SAS. I think when we had blocks and when we uh when we realized things needed to change, it was when we realized that we couldn't do it all ourselves. That was a the biggest thing that we realized. We were did a whole year, got to a million ARR and then realized, [ __ ] we can't push past this by doing it ourselves. We're we're driving ourselves

24:37working too hard. Like it's too much. So that was the key for you. Yeah. And how is it to now like manage people? Like does it take like a big space in your mind like to actually have these people that you have to give a job to or you know all this thing? because I've been there like I help people and I know that that was always something I had in my mind. I had to almost work more because of their Yeah, it's true. You now have to think like you're responsible for eight people's lives like for their for their salaries. They need to if if your company fails then

25:10they lose their house like crazy, right? So I'm a terrible manager and that's because I've never done it before, right? So I'm I'm genuinely I'm learning every single day. every single day. And the consultants that we've employed recently, they've started teaching me, I'm learning so much on how to be a good manager and like what what to do with

25:30employees. So, this guy helps you. So, we've got uh someone in Bali who's focusing he's got a heap of experience. He's about 45 years old and he's helping with growth and revenue. That's amazing though. So, kind of a mentor for you. Kind of a mentor like we're Yeah, we're paying for a mentor. Yeah, that's cool.

25:50And what were the key lessons for me? Okay, a massive lesson that I learned, I think the biggest one is that I was not putting enough pressure on the people in our team. And what how he calls it, he says it's healthy pressure. So, you have to put healthy pressure on your staff to make sure that they're always performing

26:10well and um and and they're pushed. Like, people want to be pushed. people want to perform for their job and their their company that they're in. So, how do you do that? I think it's having the tricky conversations. That's all it is. It's blocking out time each week to meet with your staff to go through uh their KPIs to see where they've hit where they

26:32haven't hit and making some deadlines. So, did your job actually change since you hire people? Like before I get I I bet you were just taking care of the sales of the cause and everything and now you're more of a manager. 100%. Like I I never thought that it would change like this but I was I've become I was the saleserson and the

26:54operator and now I'm like a manager. I think it's better. Yeah. Yeah. It's better. Why? Because you can do so much more. So if I hire five more people um then they their time is just compounding for the business whereas I'm only one person I can only do one job at a time. If I can help to employ other people that can do other jobs then we can just move much

27:23faster. You started to hire at 1 billion AR. Do you think it would have been smarter if you started before or do you think it was the perfect time for you? Um, I think we could have definitely hired before, but it wasn't too far off. [music and singing] That's [music] it. That's two things.

27:52[music]

27:57So, we just had a really cool lunch and prepared by a chair that you have here. I think a lot of people in Bali um have that they either order food, they try to delegate a lot of task. Do you do that on purpose for you to have like maybe more time for yourself or more time to focus? I think it's so important because like if you're if you're a founder and you're trying to do like lots of work, work really hard, every single hour in a day that you get extra, it compounds so much. So that's why I try and delegate as much stuff as possible. And that's

28:36like the great thing about Bali is it allows you to do that. So yeah, that's why you got a chef. we've got all these all these people to help out so that we can work harder. And when you were younger, did you envision this life? Did you think like I will have this life one day. I will live in a beautiful house in Bali and like have this lifestyle and have this successful business. Did you envision that or not at all? When I started this business, I envisioned this and now that we're here, it feels so normal. It's crazy. And like you just think of the

29:10next vision, right? But I think sometimes you have just like take a step back and just be like, "Wow, this is actually amazing the life that we're living." This is an important one. Like why do you say that you get used to that? Is it like for me personally when I reach a goal, I don't even see that I'm reaching the goal. I'm always thinking about the next step already and I don't appreciate the fact that I'm at the level I was dreaming about a few years later. Is

29:36that what happened to you? For me, I've had to train myself cuz I was exactly like that. I've had to train myself to live now. And what I did differently to what you just mentioned is I used to think of this life. I used to envision that I was going to be here and want to be here and I wasn't living in the present because I was in that vision. Now that I'm here, I actually don't have a vision of where I want to go next. I'm just trying to live in the present as much as possible. How do you

30:08do that? I think just by training yourself. Just I guess I'm now living my dream to be fair. So it is easier. Like I'm living the dream that I used to have and now that I'm in the dream I'm just I'm not creating a new dream yet. Not yet. I'm just trying to focus where I am. Right. Beautiful man. Congrats for your big work and what accomplish and [music]

30:34my heart been [singing] telling me yes. Man been telling me no. lock down. I've [music] been inside long time. I ain't been on my home. When they call, don't answer the phone.