Demio Discover: Recent Episodes
David Abrams
Uncover the Journeys from the Top SaaS Founders Across the World. Join David Abrams from Demio as he interviews the leading CEO's and Founders on their journeys LIVE on Demio. The journey to building a SaaS company is not easy, it's paved with a thousand bumps and hurdles, but we're looking to find the winning secrets to help you shortcut your journey to success.
Interested in Joining Demio Live on the call? Join us live at http://Demio.com/Discover
Meet Josh Pigford. Maker. Dabbler. Founder of Baremetrics which provides subscription analytics & insights for an advanced understanding of your business. Purveyor of Cedar & Sail. Bearded. On this episode, David Abrams and Josh Pigford walk through the initial steps that Josh went through as he scratched his own itch to create the all in one SaaS analytic Dashboard. From the ups and downs, learn the major lessons (like financials and burn rates) that Josh sayus were crucial in their growth from 0 to almost 100k/ MRR in just a few short years.
01:10 - Josh's Story: Scratching Your Own Itch
04:20 - Validating With A Small Twitter Audience
06:30 - Getting The First Customers: Word Of Mouth
09:10 - Getting Offered Funds
13:00 - Hiring People And Founder Overoptimism
15:40 - Burning Rate And More Funding
16:25 - The Accounting Side of The Numbers
19:10 - Nasty Churn Rate, Burn Rate and Expense Metrics
21:10 - How Early In A StartUp Should You Really Focus On Expenses
23:00 - Getting Profitable: Payroll Cuts and Expenses Cuts
26:00 - Keeping Your Team Motivated During Hard Times
27:30 - Lowering Churn Rate
29:00 - Keeping Levels Of Usefulness And Value That Customers Expect
30:20 - Metrics Entrepreneurs Aren't Paying Enough Attention To: Profit
30:40 - Metrics Businesses Are Getting Stuck On: Churn and Conversion Rates On Trials
31:55 - Big Lesson From Failure: Not Paying Enough Attention To Expenses Like Hiring
35:00 - Q&A
36:40 - Entrepreneur Excitement Of Starting Things vs Moving To Stability
39:10 - Josh's Why: Making Things That Are Valuable To People
40:00 - Lightning Questions
Mike Hardenbrook is the Co-founder of Growth Geeks (a marketplace of vetted freelance-marketers or geeks) and Growth Hacker TV which is an educational resource for startups, to acquire, monetize, and grow a user base. Mike is also the Chief Strategist at Workify and a Mentor at Techstars with select founders and companies.
His latest project is The Cold Email Academy.
- 00:30 - Mike's Journey
- 05:55 - Timing and Validation
- 06:40 - Building MVP and Audience
- 10:00 - Bootstrapping vs Funding
- 14:30 - Getting Chosen by Techstars
- 15:30 - The Marketing Plan: Outbound Marketing
- 17:30 - A Proven Process for B2B Cold Email
- 23:45 - The Next Steps After You Get Their Email Address
- 25:50 - How To Find Anyone's Email Address
- 28:00 - Recap Of Critical Concepts and Systems
- 29:10 - Just Get Started With The First Email!
- 29:30 - The 3 Components You Need to Nail
- 31:40 - Failures That Were Big Learning Moments
- 36:15 - The Lesson Learned With Freelancers
- 39:40 - Lightning Questions
In this episode, David from Demio will jump forward in the journey to current day Demio. We'll start talking about the current problems we're facing and what we are doing to really fine tune and understand who are perfect target customer is for Demio. In a conversation on churn, we recognized that we have to truly define the "perfect" avatar and why getting a better product-market fit is the fastest way to cut down churn and improve your product.
Here's the lessons learned and the wins we've found along the way.
Sid Bharath is a marketer and previously the VP of Growth at Thinkific, an online course platform that he’s helped grow to the leader in the industry. He’s also a marketing consultant and has worked with other software companies to help them grow. In this episode, David and Sid discover his 5 step framework that Sid uses to start the growth marketing process for any Early-Stage startup and how they use an ROI calculator to determine their first marketing steps
- 00:10 - Sid's Journey into Growth Hacking
- 04:40 - The Thinkific Fast Growth Experience
- 07:55 - Best Channel, Swap Partnerships and Influencers
- 09:20 - The System to Identify The Best Channel To Invest
- 12:30 - Listening to Customer Support for Customer Feedback
- 14:20 - Collecting Data to Choose Best Customer to Focus On
- 18:00 - 5 Step Framework for Growth Hacking: Customer Persona,
Customer Journey (Problem Unaware > Problem Aware > Solution Aware >
Product Aware > Decision > Retention), Trigger Points Prioritization,
Testing, Scaling The Channel That Works * 29:45 - Big Failure Lesson: Focusing * 35:15 - Sid's Why: A Fascination With Technology * 36:50 - Quick Fire Questions
Brennan Dunn started as a freelance developer, then after starting, scaling, and exiting an agency, he decided to start a software company, Planscope which he sold in early 2016 and co-founded RightMessage, a software company that helps bring on-site personalization to the masses. He is also founder of Double Your Freelancing.
- 00:20 - Brennan's Journey
- 03:20 - Validation of Software With Feedback
- 04:20 - Finding His Co-Founder
- 05:40 - MVP: Building A Course Before The Software
- 07:15 - Learning What People REALLY Wanted
- 08:40 - The #1 Thing People Say: "What do I do with this?"
- 10:05 - Building A Direct Competitor To Something vs When There Isn't
Much Out There * 11:35 - Software: Start With Education and Let Outcomes of Education
Dictate Product Strategy * 13:05 - Marketing Strategy: Content (Free and Premium) and
Educational Webinars To Strategic Partners' Audiences * 17:50 - How to Approach Potential Strategic Partners: Detailed Plan
of Value + Proof of Results * 23:35 - Failures Turned Into Lessons: Trial & Error, Being Pretty
Analytical and Marketing Assets * 28:50 - Brennan's Why: "A Better Internet" * 35:15 - Lightning Questions
In this episode, David from Demio will explain how on our journey, we entered free beta and recognized we had a big problem with our SaaS - customer usage. We realized that without usage we would get no feedback and no real understanding of our MVP hypothesis. We quickly understpood that we needed to create Activation Points for our users to get in, running a webinar, and getting feedback to us. This caused a spike in customer usage and reduced churn along the way. We opened valuable feedback loops with our users which also enabled us to create a better application.
Here's the lessons learned and the wins we've found along the way.
Chris Brisson is CEO of Call Loop, the goto voice and text messaging software that over 45,000 business owners use to grow their business with mobile messaging and his latest venture Salesmsg turns texts into sales.
- 01:00 - The Story Behind Call Loop
- 04:45 - Building a Software Company Is Hard
- 06:20 - Validating The Idea
- 07:45 - The Next Step After The Initial Customers
- 09:45 - Breaking "The Magical Number"
- 10:50 - Churn Rate and Pay As You Go Model
- 14:30 - Big Lesson Learned: Sell Early and Often
- 16:20 - Getting Customers: SEO, Pay Per Click, JVs and Partners
- 18:20 - Packaging to Approach JVs
- 20:50 - The Fastest Way To Get Momentum: JV's Webinars
- 21:05 - Figuring Out The Audience
- 23:20 - Chris' Why
- 25:25 - "Is The Purpose Big Enough to Continue Doing What I'm Doing?"
- 26:50 - Lightning Questions
In this episode, David from Demio will explain how on our journey we learned the importance of doing things that don't scale early on. From a marketing perspective, we have heard from nearly every single one of our guest interviews the power of feedback from customers when doing manual process or talking to customers one on one. Although running things that scale can sound like a time-saving, energy efficient part of your business in the early days, you must do things that don't scale to get you educated on what will actually work. And of course, to make sales. You'll also learn our top method to getting our first 50 customers early on!
Here's the lessons learned and the wins we've found along the way.
Serial entrepreneur, speaker, investor, former founder of Clarity.fm. Dan is a perfect example of someone who has overcome all odds to achieve massive success. Having built and sold 3 technology companies (first becoming a millionaire at 27), Dan now dedicates his time to coaching high performing SaaS entrepreneur to scale their businesses in a predictable way.
- 01:40 - Dan's Journey to Clarity.fm
- 04:30 - The Project Phase and the Business Phase
- 08:35 - Micro Version of Reality Distortion and Charities
- 16:00 - The Phases of Fundraising no matter how many times you've had
it before * 19:15 - How Dan got his First 1000 Experts on Clarity.fm * 20:15 - Dan's Superpower * 22:35 - Content Marketing should be Strategic in Nature * 24:05 - The Relation between Hustle and Progress * 24:35 - Product Hacks * 26:20 - The Phases of Product Ideation * 29:20 - A Big Learning Opportunity for Dan * 33:05 - Marketplaces and Pricing * 37:20 - Growth Hack: Always Go Manually First * 41:00 - Positioning is Everything * 41:30 - The Core Customer Framework * 44:40 - Failures, Lessons and Restarts * 51:30 - Lightning Questions * 56:15 - Q&A
In this episode, David from Demio will explain how on our journey we learned the importance of Hiring Slow and Firing Fast to get the right people in your business. From an early stage hire, to filling an immediate role in your company you need to always be aware to make sure you are hiring for a cultural fit and someone who is willing to go on the journey with you.
Here's the lessons learned and the wins we've found along the way.
- 00:35- Brian's Journey to SamCart
- 03:50- The Unique Angle They Chose and Avatars
- 09:35 - Getting the First Customers with MVP
- 14:10 - Favorite Marketing Strategies: Paid Traffic and Affiliates
- 17:40 - The One Thing Every Listener Should Be Doing for Marketing
- 18:30 - Budgeting for Advertising and Testing
- 24:40 - Failures turned into Lessons: Pricing and Customer Support
- 30:20 - CEO Type Mistakes
- 32:30 - Brian's Why
- 36:45 - The New Version of SamCart and The Vision for It
- 41:07 - Lightning Questions
- 45:15 - Q&A
In this episode, David from Demio will walk you through how lack of patience itself can be a killer to a founder or co-founder. Walking you through the Demio journey, David helps you learn how a long term vision and understanding of how micro hustle can save any business from burnout and self-sabotage.
Here's the lessons learned and the wins we've found along the way.
- 02:00 - Todd's Story
- 09:00 - Not Giving Up
- 13:00 - It's a Numbers Game
- 19:00 - The Evolution of E5 CAMP Method
- 20:15 - Life, Impact and Legacy
- 25:15 - Big Key Lesson #1: Marketing is Different than Selling
- 29:20 - Big Key Lesson #2: We are In The Idea Business
- 32:00 - New Ideas: Seeing Combinations
- 38:45 - Big Key Lesson #3: The Power of The Unique Mechanism
- 50:00 - If Going Back, Would Todd Do It All the Same?
- 53:50 - Levels of Customer Acquisition Aggression and Maximum Allowance Acquisition Cost
Join David Abrams and Wyatt Jozwowski on the Demio Journey as we dive deep on our mistakes, lessons learned, and big wins along the way.
Here at Demio we've got a story to tell, as well and our new Demio Discover format will overview just that.
In today's episode, David Abrams gives a full overview of what an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is and how important it is for your business to succeed.
Do you have the full story of the Demio Journey?
No problem, here at Demio we've got a story to tell, as well and our new Demio Discover format will overview just that. We'll explore lessons learned, major breakthroughs, amazing wins, huge failures, and the best takeaways you can implement into your business.
In today's episode, David Abrams gives a brief recap of the journey thus far and explains what's to come.
Start here if you're just tuning in :)
- 01:25 - Nathan's Journey
- 05:30 - Finding your Passion
- 08:30 - The Importance of Design
- 13:50 - Podcasting, Instagram and Content Quality
- 21:10 - The Power of a Magazine and Amazing Guests
- 27:00 - Starting vs Scaling
- 29:00 - Big Lesson: Learn from smart people who have done it
- 31:35 - Q&A (SaaS, Memberships, Advertising, Facebook Free Groups...)
- 01:10 - Eric's Story
- 06:00 - Giving up, Gut and Unsolicited Feedback
- 07:30 - Growth Strategies - Consistency Over Time
- 12:15 - From 3 to 22 Million/Year - Hiring Great People
- 13:12 - Lessons from Poker: Controling Emotions to let go
- 15:05 - Content Marketing and Authority
- 16:50 - Podcasting - Building Relationships
- 18:45 - Staying on Cut Edge of Marketing
- 20:25 - A Day in the Life of Eric Sui...
- 22:00 - Systems and Processes
- 23:00 - Hindsight and Perseverance
- 27:10 - Charity of Choice
- 27:25 - What Eric would tell his Younger Self before starting
- 02:25 - The Live Chat: Pros and Cons and the Value of Great Customer
Support * 06:05 - Jack's Story: Coding and Discovering the Power of Deadlines * 16:25 - Limiting Beliefs, Small Obstacles and Figuring it Out * 20:45 - "Setting the Criteria" in Order to Reach the Conclusion You
Want * 30:05 - Urgency and Scarcity Principles Applied to Funnels * 32:00 - Entrepreneurs: Working for Someone Else vs Working on Your
Own Thing * 33:30 - The Tactical Triangle Concept and Chapter * 37:30 - Applying Past Lessons: Small Improvements on Stick Rate for
Revenue Growth * 38:55 - Growing Pains and Hiring Skills * 40:45 - Management and Leadership through Empowerment * 47:30 - What's Next * 50:40 - Customer Support Training * 52:50 - If Starting Today from Scratch...
- 01:40 Don’s Story
- 13:30 Creating a Saas Business
- 18:00 Getting Funding
- 20:55 The Pitch – Pop Pop
- 24:40 Motivation and Burn Out: Why You Do What You Do
- 29:15 Competition and Leadership in a Market
- 32:35 The Importance of Having Perspective on Hard Days
- 33:45 Key Lesson: Keep It Simple
- 37:35 Q&A
- 03:25 Joel’s Story – Engineer to Entrepreneur through Sales
Presentations * 16:05 Taking a Leap of Paith, Failures and Identifying THE big
opportunity * 23:45 The Missing link and Most Common Mistakes People do with
Webinars * 26:11 Pain Points and Key Desires * 29:27 Metrics and Benchmarks for Webinars * 35:24 Audience Targeting and Market Research * 40:48 Marketing Awareness Pyramid and Content Marketing * 50:40 Q&A
- 01:35 Sunglasses Spark, Shutdowns and Side Project Plug In Success
- 09:30 “Everything was a lesson in itself” Mindset
- 11:33 Painful First Lessons Hiring Developers
- 14:55 Finding a Big Partner to Launch a Product
- 19:42 User Interface Design
- 23:00 Big Lessons from Launches: Prepping, Timing and Backing Up
Everything * 31:15 Multi Projects, Launches and Teams * 32:25 Upviral Story * 36:30 Shooting to the Moon but also being Realistic * 38:45 How to Value/Price your Product * 42:00 Getting into a Recurring Business and Long Term Vision * 44:20 Finding and Hiring Developers: Trial Projects * 46:08 Hiring and Company Culture * 47:50 “If you launch something you’re proud of, you’re launching too
late” * 48:50 Staying Motivated when Products don’t take off * 51:05 Running a Software Company from Europe
- 01:38 – Jon’s Journey
- 07:23 – Big Takeaways: the right mindset – Tenacity, Will and Determination to stick with it and Always be Testing to Find the Winners
- 10:04 – The Importance of Understanding the Emotional Intent
- 11:40 – How to Research Customers and Buying Habits
- 15:02 – Baby Steps and Thinking Bigger
- 18:56 – Investor Mindset and moving to Shopify
- 20:25 – Managing also the Backend: Customer Service and Fulfillment
- 22:25 – Customer Service in Stores vs Customer Service in Saas
- 24:55 – Segmenting Customers and Messaging
- 26:54 – Developing an Ecommerce Platform, Customer Validation and Pre-Selling
- 37:05 – Balancing Having a Grand Vision and Executing it: Patience
- 38:55 – Emotional Support Systems and Business Partners
- 40:04 – Key Lessons from the Journey so far: Patience and Craziness
- 41:40 – Q&A
- 02:38 Matt’s Journey: Born an Entrepreneur, Crashing and Starting Over
- 11:35 Mindset Shifts: Doubts and Focus with an Entrepreneurial Mind
- 14:00 Looking Inward to Find Your Own Path
- 17:15 Key Lessons: the Goal should be figure out how to get life balance but to get there you start by getting unbalanced
- 20:15 Habits: “Miracle Morning”, Routines and Mind Hacks
- 30:00 Matt’s Software Startup Journey
- 33:10 Trusting and Upgrading yourself and Life Inventories
- 34:20 Measuring Growth and Life Visions
- 40:40 Q&A
- 01:18 Kevin’s Story
- 07:12 “Back to the wall” Moments and Outcomes
- 09:40 Finding your Big Goal and the 3 Reasons people become entrepreneurs
- 14:25 Sales Training Keys – Details, Results and Promises
- 20:35 Baselines, Trials and Conversion Rates
- 21:10 What Exactly to say when selling to a small business owner
- 25:00 Kevin’s Ninja Trick to gain immediate Trust from a business owner
- 27:00 Struggles, Wins and Computer Geeks
- 29:35 The importance of the right people in place to carry your vision/idea and ways to incentivize them
- 31:50 How to change the mindset “I’m saving the money by doing it all myself” and the Dangers of Burnout
- 37:50 Q&A
- 03:15 Joe’s Story and his Why
- 10:38 Service business and Software business
- 13:55 Finding the right pain points to solve and understanding the marketing angles
- 15:42 The need for a USP that makes a splash so you’re not a “me too”
- 20:55 Big takeaway: stay focused on serving the same tribe
- 22:16 Big takeaway: go deeper with your customers
- 24.40 Building systems & processes so you can keep inventing as an entrepreneur
- 26:03 A process to role out a new offer
- 34:00 Q&A
- 01:45 Zach’s Story
- 03:57 Past lessons applied to the new business and Scaling with
Confidence * 09:58 Recommendations for Testing Budgets * 14:13 Zach’s insights on campaigns and landing Pages and Benchmark
Metrics * 19:55 How to best market FunnelDash benefits if you are an ad agency
or freelancer consultant * 23.30 Dashboard Templates design and business strategy * 38:00 A big lesson learned from their first client * 40:30 Q&A
- 02:50 Dave’s Story
- 09:15 How LinkedIn changed all for Dave and the big lesson: “Be where
your market is” * 11:08 The reality of starting out and the need for niching down * 13:30 Doing work for free to build skills and feedback * 15:20 How Dave got into software and building Proof * 19:30 Developing products based on internal needs and software as a
business * 20:09 The marketing lessons Dave brought from his consulting
experience to his software business and the importance of having a
great product for longevity * 25:42 The Agile Methodology: MVP and learning from users * 33:00 Q&A
- 01:40 Kyle’s Story
- 06:15 How Kyle’s Dad planted in him Entrepreneurial Seeds
- 11:30 Thinking vs Action, Morning Routines and Tasks List vs Outcomes
List * 22:40 Validating: Minimal Viable Product and Minimal Marketing Funnel * 35:40 Q&A
- 03:20 Luke’s Story
- 09:43 “Money is a By-product of Value”
- 10:55 Mindset during Scaring Periods and “that car”
- 13:43 The Importance of Mentorship Early On
- 14:36 Mental Shift: Fear of Failure vs What Happens if I Succeed
- 15.40 The Learning Bubble vs Going Out and Taking Action
- 16:50 Trait: Commit to Something and Actually Finish It.
- 18:47 “The Confidence Gap” book and Mental Fears
- 20:05 Perseverance as an Entrepreneurial Trait
- 22:40 Core Values, Goals and Dreams
- 25:40 Age is just a Mindset Block
- 27:30 More Value You Provide, More Financial Return You Get
- 33:55 The Advise Luke would Give to Himself Earlier On
- 40:10 Q&A
- 2:00 – Los’ Story
- 5:25 – Why and How Los got into webinars
- 12:00 – Big takeways from Los’ story
- 15:03 – The need for Mental Perseverence in entrepreneurs
- 16:00 – The Comparison Complex and identifying your Why
- 18:20 – The Mindset Upgrade needed for entrepreneurs and what David’s
reading at the moment * 21:00 – What advise would Los give to himself if he was starting out
– Content Creation * 22:00 – Building Relationships and Return On Relationships (ROR) * 22:54 – One marketing and sales system that Los is doing right now
and you can apply in your business * 27:30 – Tricks from Los and David for people starting with webinars * 29:45 – The one thing Los is excited for 2017 * 32:27 – “Perfectionism is the enemy to action” * Q&A Session