# How I Took a Productized Service From 0 to $30K MRR in 9 Months – Brian Casel – MicroConf 2016

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glvuje_8i4k
Duration: 11 min
Language: English
Words: 2101
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/glvuje_8i4k

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[0:11] So, I'll just get right into it. Uh so, since last MicroConf, I've had pretty exciting year. Uh let's see, I sold my last business, Restaurant Engine. Uh that was about midway through 2015. Uh that was a six-figure exit. Huge learning experience. Uh really exciting. And I also launched my current company, Audience Ops, which I'm going to talk about uh

[0:35] most of this talk here today. But if that wasn't enough, I also hit the road with my family and our our 2-year-old, our dog, packed them in the car, and basically lived in different places around the US for for the last six or seven months. Just returned back to Connecticut. And uh so, that was a lot of fun to kind of travel and and, you know, enjoy time with my family, but also work on the road and work on this new business, launch it, grow it, um from Airbnbs, from coffee shops,

[1:06] a lot of times literally from the car. So, it was a lot of fun, kind of exciting. So, today I'm going to be talking about Audience Ops. That's my current company. We are a content marketing company, uh launched initially as a productized service, um where we basically do a done-for-you blog writing, content promotion service for uh software companies, mostly B2B online services, that sort of stuff. Um This is the uh this is basically the story of the past 11 months or so. Uh oh, and by the way, the the concept for Audience Ops, I literally formed the idea and and started writing the initial notes of what became

[1:44] Audience Ops while I was here in Vegas 1 year ago for MicroConf. Um uh literally going into MicroConf, I did not know what my next business was going to be. By the end of MicroConf, I knew exactly what it was going to be. I didn't know the name, but um within 30 days of MicroConf last year, it launched. We had about three paying customers,

[2:04] about five within the first two months. So, pretty quickly we got up to about five five to six MRR five to six K MRR in the first month. So, that that was good because it helped us learn a lot really quickly. We started delivering the service, you know, learning what it takes to deliver a service like this and figuring out the the beginning process. And around two or three months in, I kind of intentionally paused all sales to just focus on our process, our systems, get some people in place, and really get that nailed down so that we can start to scale and and and, you know, support the

[2:40] capacity required for a product like service like this. About six or seven months in, I kind of opened sales back up and started ramping up sales. Every month since it's been growing pretty rapidly. Just a couple days ago, I think we crossed 38K MRR. It's been profitable since the beginning, continues to be. We're We're at about 14 people right now and growing. So, I'm just kind of trying to manage this growth and and learn my way through it. I'm I'm not really used to working in a in a in in a business that's growing this fast, especially in in terms of people and client list and revenue. So, a lot

[3:18] to learn and that's what I'm going to be talking about right now. So, the first thing that I want to talk about is better fundamentals. Going back a year ago, I was thinking long and hard many months over, you know, so I was exiting this first business, trying to figure out what my next business is going to be. I wasn't really sure what that was going to be yet, but one thing kept circling around my mind and that's I want to make sure that I get the fundamentals right or at least make them better than they were in my last business. And what I'm talking about when I say fundamentals are

[3:49] the the the that the big building blocks of a business. I'm not talking about things that you can just tweak or improve incrementally over time over the course of growing your business. I'm talking about the things that can only really be figured out from the very outset. When when you're first starting out, when you're forming the idea of what business to start. And so for me, two things came up here. One was

[4:12] picking the right market. And what I'm really talking about is is picking the right market for me. So in my previous business, uh we were selling a website design SaaS service to the restaurant industry. I have no personal connection to the restaurant industry, and that I mean I I kind of hustled and and and you know, pushed through it for about 4 years, but that really became a a pretty big challenge to growing this business. You know, when I don't have this personal connection to this community. So I knew that in my next business I wanted to focus on something that served online businesses, software companies, online

[4:46] services. Um and that brought two key benefits. Number one, uh in the short term it allowed us to get our very first clients very quickly. And that And we continue to see that benefit. You know, people that I know in my in my networks, people that I warm emailed early on, um folks from my audience, they they they know about Audience they refer they refer Audience Ops. But the long-term benefit of of picking the right market is that it allows me to go long on this

[5:14] one. I'm going to be energized. I continue to be energized and and interested to keep pushing and keep doubling down on Audience Ops because I'm solving problems for my peers. Problems that that I have, that I've had in the past, that I continue to have. Um that's something that I'm obviously really passionate about as I'm sure everybody in this room is passionate about you know, doing for for your customers. So that's something that I just continue to push on. Um The other fundamental that that I had in mind as I was forming, you know, the idea for the next business is

[5:45] um this idea of aspirational pricing. Um I've heard Rob talk about it a bit. I've heard heard other people talk about this idea of, you know, going after a problem that that allows you to to charge a higher price point. Obviously, the simple math of of charging more, you know, um, we we kind of all know how that goes. But But what it allowed me to do was open my mind up to tackling a much bigger problem that I that I may have otherwise thought about doing in say a $49 a month SaaS. Um, getting into a four-figure a month recurring price point, we can start to

[6:18] look at a at a problem that is really tough or really, you know, just really tough to tackle, but something that businesses are willing to pay for. Um, so the question that I want you guys to think about is how can you improve the fundamentals in your next business? So, whether you're starting something new or you're transitioning like I was from one thing to the next, you know, something to think about. Um, and I'm going to have these these questions as I go along. Uh, the next one that I'll just kind of rush through right here is is uh, fire yourself. So, I talked about early on,

[6:48] um, spent about three three months or so really refining our systems, pausing sales, just kind of doing the wait waiting list thing. We've got a creative process that basically allows the service to to deliver without me being there. I mean, I'm here in Vegas. Audience Ops this week is producing somewhere between 40 and 50 blog articles for our for our clients this week. You know, from the writer, it goes to the editor, it goes to the graphic designer, the project manager, the assistant. All this stuff is getting done with with really talented people, and it's a creative process, but it's a process. We're doing things in a very methodical way. We've

[7:24] got a really strong production line that allows me to to, you know, not necessarily get involved in the day-to-day or not require me to to get involved in the day-to-day operation of the business. But it's now also getting to the point where, okay, we're we're a year in, and I'm starting to look at the things that I am doing every day. Like I've been doing all the sales and all the

[7:45] marketing. So I recently hired a sales person and a marketing person to start to remove myself from from those things. I'm basically firing myself from things that I've been doing. And the reason for that is uh to basically allow me to focus on building. And that's that's really the uh the the the last bit that I want to talk about. And so that's the question that I want to give you here is is what is one job that you're currently doing that you should fire yourself from? And what

[8:11] would that allow you to do? And what what would that really look like? And so that's the last bit here is is to focus on building. I think that's something that we should all be striving for no matter what type of business you're you're working in. Um We're founders. We're entrepreneurs. We're We are builders. And that is the the thing that we add the most value to our business. Not customer support. Not necessarily coding or pushing pixels around. Obviously, we're all going to be doing these things at at one point or another. But the idea is to is to give yourself the time and the oxygen to focus on building and focus on

[8:45] growing the product line. In my case with Audience Ops, we've established ourselves with the productized service. But now now we're growing that that product line. We've already released two WordPress plugins. So we're getting a little bit into the software space. Later this year we'll be releasing a training product uh around content marketing. These are products all to the same audience, but all coming from Audience Ops. And I'm spending my time working on these you know, building out the expand building out our product line, expanding our footprint uh while remaining under the umbrella of being a content marketing company. And so that's that's really what I get to

[9:21] spend my time on. And that's what excites me. I'm sure that's what excites everyone in this room is is building and and creating new things and doing that for a living. I mean, we get to do this for a living. That's that's pretty that's pretty awesome, you know? But how how can we do or or how did I do it in in this case? The How The question is, how can we make this sustainable, right? How can we pay the bills? How can we establish a company that that is sustainable, that's continuing to grow, that makes it worth your time, worth your employees' time, and what I found in recent years is the

[9:54] productized service model. I I talk about a lot. I teach about it. What it What it allows What it allowed me to do is give the time give the business the time and oxygen that it needs to be sustainable. And uh And so that's that's basically uh my talk. And that's the last um that's the last question that I want to leave you guys with here is what would it actually take to give your business more time and oxygen so that you can keep building. Um I can't actually believe that I came in a little bit below 12 minutes, but uh That's my personal site castand.com, uh

[10:27] where I have a newsletter and I and I talk a lot I I teach a lot about uh productized services there, among other things. I just recently set up a now page, the Derek Sivers uh now page thing, so that's up there. And that's it. If you guys want to talk or have any questions about this stuff,

[10:41] I'll be around uh tonight and tomorrow.

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