Table of Contents
Timestamps:
- 03:02 Tell us about yourself and what you do on a daily basis?
- 04:27 Adding the element of coaching drives more activation. Is this why you’re doing it?
- 05:57 Are these video-based trainings or is it one-on-one coaching?
- 06:37 Are you doing most of the coaching/consulting yourself?
- 06:58 Are you planning on scaling and hiring or is this just a testing period?
- 08:00 I’m surprised that Proof is B2B. I would have thought your main customer is e-com?
- 08:56 When you were coming up with a concept of Proof, was this built for yourself out of the need for your own companies?
- 10:52 What were you and your partners doing before Proof?
- 11:34 Did you ever picture yourself as a software person?
- 15:27 Would you feel the internet marketing skill set you had is why you were able to scale so quickly?
- 16:39 What do you see as that next step to get from where you are to five million dollars?
- 18:28 How did you overcome Facebook Ads?
- 24:00 When you initially started you were giving lifetime access. Have you shifted the MRR model?
- 30:53 How has coaching impacted your career?
- 35:10 What kind of strategies have you been using in terms of price point?
- 53:50 You don’t get a second chance with people. Where do you stand on that?
03:02 Tell us about yourself and what you do on a daily basis?
I’ve been an entrepreneur for seven years. Three years ago, I launched Proof, a company that helps businesses increase conversion rate by showing social proof pop-ups on your site. Over the last year, I’ve started to add more website personalization. Trying to increase conversions for B2B companies is where the focus is headed.
We’re launching a new program called Atlas that helps B2B SaaS companies to scale through paid ads and building out a paid traffic funnel, which is a huge part of how we’ve scaled Proof. Getting back into the coaching training a bit more is like a supplement to the software.
04:27 Adding the element of coaching drives more activation. Is this why you’re doing it?
We’ve seen that a lot of companies we’re talking to want the traffic side too. We did the conversion rate optimization, and they want to figure how to get more traffic to their site. We happened to know how to do that, and I think B2B SaaS companies have no idea. They’re all engineers and non-marketers. I’ll train you on how to add more traffic and as a benefit, you’re going to be able to use our tools and increase conversion rate.
05:57 Are these video-based trainings or one-on-one coaching?
It started as one-on-one with me. A couple of companies had approached me, and I’ve been helping them. They were loving it and got good results. After that, I said why don’t we turn this into a classic 12-week high-ticket coaching, some videos, some one-on-one with me, some group calls, all of that. That’s the model we’re testing out right now.
06:37 Are you doing most of the coaching/consulting yourself?
Yes. We’ve got other coaches, B2B SaaS, or agencies that have worked a lot with a B2B SaaS. But most of the time it’s just me, sharing my expertise and what we’ve been doing at Proof.
06:58 Are you planning on scaling and hiring or is this just a testing period?
Yes. I think we just want to see how good results can we get for people. I know it’s worked well for Proof and for other companies, but, I still don’t know that we have the exact proven process. We’ve got about twelve companies working one-on-one right now. Hopefully, we’ll see several get great results from there.
08:00 I’m surprised that Proof is B2B. I would have thought your main customer is e-com?
We’re not that much in e-com. The reason why we’re not in e-com is because Shopify makes it so easy to build apps. There are million proofs on Shopify and that means there’s a ton of competition. We said, let’s just be the off Shopify tool. It works in B2B as well. So, I would say the popup itself is a mix of B2B, B2C. I think as we’ve moved into personalization, we’ve picked B2B as a focus.
08:56 When you were coming up with a concept of Proof, was this built for yourself out of the need for your own companies?
Yes. We were running traffic to an order form for a membership course. It’s 47 bucks a month, seven-day trial, you got to pay a dollar to start your trial just to verify the card. We were trying different things to increase the conversion rate on that order form. We’d seen on hotels.com and booking.com these little pop-ups, and I said, let’s grab the app that does that.
We built the widget that popped up on our own site and we saw the conversion rate go up. It was a little bit over double the conversion rate by adding that on there. We tried it on, and we thought, maybe this is a tool we could go and sell. We launched a webinar, pre-sold it and I had 80 people join and pay a thousand bucks for a product that doesn’t exist.
10:52 What were you and your partners doing before Proof?
We started as an agency. I couldn’t figure out how to scale it. I got into coaching and training on how to do marketing. That was our first successful business.
11:34 Did you ever picture yourself as a software person?
Our very first thing was in software. We did other things, but we always wanted to get back in there. I think we were just looking for a way to do that.
15:27 Would you feel the internet marketing skill set you had is why you were able to scale so quickly?
Totally. Facebook ads are not going to get you to a hundred million dollar a year company. You’ve got to have a great product and get some viral growth. And you’ve got to have some word of mouth marketing kick in.
16:39 What do you see as that next step to get from where you are to five million dollars?
You’ve got to have viral growth. Your users have to either tell more users or invite more users. You’ve got to find that flywheel. Ideally, once you have a thousand customers, some of them tell their friends, they share it, you get more people on board. You have to hit those viral effects in order to start to scale quickly.
18:28 How did you overcome Facebook Ads?
Our product back then had a bunch of problems. I wasn’t well developed. Our churn now is five times lower than it was then. A product is not the price point. It’s something that solves a problem for a particular audience. I never hear agencies talk about churn. In SaaS, it’s everything. All we talk about is churn. If you can keep people for 15 months, you’ve got a business.
24:00 When you initially started you were giving a lifetime access. Have you shifted the MRR model?
Yes. We’ve shifted fully to MRR and ARR and I love it. I love it for two reasons. One because it’s a great indicator of how your product is doing and the other is that it makes the business more sellable.
30:53 How has coaching impacted your career?
Here’s my little strategy. I do love to invest in getting coached. I also love being a great case study and testimonial for them. So, I’m the first guy to ask if I can film a testimony video for them. I make them look good and I get some publicity out of it. I do like investing in those programs and I’m trying to learn from people smarter than me.
35:10 What kind of strategies have you been using in terms of price point?
We’re probably the most expensive in the market, but that’s for a reason. You’ve got to have a distribution model that works for your product, and your price point has to support the distribution model. It’s okay to be very premium. Yes, you’re going to turn some people off, but also a lot of people don’t even care. They just want to use the best.
53:50 You don’t get a second chance with people. Where do you stand on that?
I think it’s risky unless you know the problem. If you position it well, and you let people know, they can be forgiving. I found that they want to help us find all the bugs.
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