Building a SaaS: The Journey of Harris Kenny

I recently joined Justin Jackson on Build Your SaaS to share my real story: the messy path from quitting my job in 2019, starting and shutting down early products, running an agency to stay afloat, and eventually landing on OutboundSync.

In this episode, I talk about the trial and error, the highs and lows, and the moment I finally found traction that showed we were onto something.

If you’re interested in our company, in the trenches yourself, or thinking about making the leap, I hope my journey gives you a real look behind the scenes at what it took for us to build a profitable SaaS in 2025. Well, from 2020 to 2025.

Watch

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:58 The Journey of Quitting a Job

05:52 Navigating Corporate Structures

08:52 The Transition to Entrepreneurship

14:45 Discovering SaaS and Learning

17:49 Building an Agency and Cold Emailing

24:55 Navigating Agency Challenges

28:24 Identifying Market Gaps

29:21 The First SaaS Attempt

32:58 Lessons from Failed Products

40:58 Exploring New SaaS Ideas

44:13 Navigating App Overload

46:55 The Card Importer Idea

48:02 The Importance of Foundational Work

51:21 The Genesis of Outbound Sync

53:57 Understanding the Market Dynamics

57:57 The Role of Relationships in Business

59:56 The Job to Be Done with Outbound Sync

01:03:16 Transitioning from Services to Software

01:10:23 The Role of Tiny Seed

01:18:53 Iterating on Hypotheses

01:28:10 Embracing the Unknown of the Future of OutboundSync

Transcript

0:00:00 Hello, and welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2025.
0:00:08 I’m Justin Jackson co-founder of transistor.fm. And I’m Harris Kenny founder of OutboundSync sync. Yes. Now Harris and I have known each other for a while.
0:00:20 Uh, longtime listener of Build Your SaaS, right? Oh, yeah. And I wanted to have Harrison because he sent me an email with the subject line.
0:00:29 And I did it. I built my SaaS and Harris has been sharing his story with me over the years. I know he’s had multiple attempts.
0:00:40 And I think what was exciting to me, Harris, is just, this is hard. Like, doing this, building a SaaS, building a software as a service product and getting it to profitability is really tough and usually takes multiple attempts as we’ll hear.
0:01:01 So I wanted to have you on because I think your story will be encouraging to folks who are in it.
0:01:08 Yeah, for sure. Well, I appreciate being on, man. I mean, yeah, I listened to the show for years and so, and yeah, I had a bunch of attempts and always kind of look up to you from afar.
0:01:21 We almost met in person at podcast movement when it was in Denver and we missed. Yeah, how did that because I was looking at that email too and I was like so you had emailed me like oh I’m going to go to podcast moving in Denver and then we just never cross paths.
0:01:34 Well, I was only there for a little bit It was when I was things were really crazy at that time.
0:01:38 Okay I didn’t remember what year that was But things were a little crazy at that time Yeah, I didn’t have a lot of time.
0:01:46 So I was okay I want to go and I’m like I hope I’ll catch Justin Yeah, but if I don’t catch him So I just like it was like well what you’ve talked about for years of just like no margin.
0:01:55 Yeah, I’ve just been living a no-margin life for a while And so it was one of those situations where I like I was late and I had to leave early and I was I hoped I caught you about a distance Yeah, but like there’s a future with more margin where you’re like my friends in town I’m gonna go do this thing
0:02:11 and like I have time to do that and I just like haven’t haven’t had that Yeah, I mean, I think that’s gonna resonate with a lot of people as an aside This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while is you’re a part of this mega maker community that I’ve been running since 2013.
0:02:29 And I’d like to do some more like real life meetups with mega maker folks and maybe I have to take my son to university in Toronto this summer.
0:02:42 So I was thinking, oh, maybe we could do a meet up in Toronto. Where are you based out of, by the way?
0:02:47 I’m based in Denver. You’re in Denver. Okay. So yeah, I’m going to try to do some like on both sides of the continent and yeah, hopefully we can still hang out in person.
0:03:00 Definitely. I mean, assuming nothing tragic happens. I mean, I’m here and I would love to. And so I joined Mega Maker but then left.
0:03:07 And I had joined a bunch of things on left, kind of like in the early days. Yeah, and why did you why did you leave you just felt like it was too much?
0:03:15 Not like what what was What was the reason everything? So like I got off Twitter. I left microconf I left Megan.
0:03:22 So I spent a period in the beginning I quit my job in 2019 Yeah, let’s go back to that. Okay, 2019 you quit your job quit my job I had had a bunch of bosses and I was my wife and I were thinking about starting a family and having kids and I just like couldn’t envision being able to do the things I would
0:03:42 want to do as a husband and dad in these work environments I’d had for the previous decade. Just because they were, it was long hours or stress.
0:03:51 Just not like, well, not a flexibility. It’s like, you know, and like, well, what if I need to go to an appointment and the boss that I had at a time was, it’s like, well, we don’t really want you here.
0:04:01 It’s like, well, yeah, but like, I can just like do this stuff later on my computer. Like, it’s not. Yeah.
0:04:07 And I just didn’t feel like I would be able to do it the way I wanted to be. I remember like, I had a great, like when I got into tech in 2008.
0:04:18 I had a great boss. But even then, I remember there being some things that graded on me. One was, I didn’t like other people looking at my screen while I was working, like because in truthfulness, this, like my day now, if you looked at my screen, you might not have any idea of what I’m doing, you know
0:04:45 , it could look like I’m wasting my time, it could look like I’m just sitting there thinking. A lot of my time these days is spent thinking.
0:04:54 And I, so I didn’t like people looking at my screen. And my joke back then was if I kept Excel open on my screen all day, people would assume that I’m working in productive, but I could be doing absolutely nothing, right?
0:05:09 And then the second thing was I just, it felt so not humiliating, but to ask for time off, always felt like this, like, I’d prostrate myself in front of, like, can I please have some time off?
0:05:25 And it just always felt like, why do I have to ask for permission? I want to be in a position where I don’t have to ask for permission to, you know, take some time off or whatever.
0:05:36 Well, do you remember Shawshank Redemption? You ever said movie? Mm-hmm. You know what? Like after they leave and they’re out, sorry, spoiler alert.
0:05:44 Yeah, yeah, spoiler alert. It’s like 20 years old, but spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen it yet. You know, they have a hard time, like going to the bathroom because they’re so used to like asking for permission, you know?
0:05:53 They’re like, we know and they’re like, I just like reminds me of that. And yeah, I mean, I felt like, It just felt arbitrary.
0:05:59 I mean, I was in a role where I was at that in that in that position Performance-based part part of it was like commission or performance kicker based on the team meeting at sales goals But nobody else was yeah, so like I would need things.
0:06:12 I would be like hey, like Could we get this could I get like I just did a Case study with a customer.
0:06:18 Yeah, can I have can I put it on the website somewhere? Yeah, and the web teams like yeah We don’t have like time for that.
0:06:23 I’m like okay, but I need to be able to share it with people. Yeah Yeah, so then I ended up putting it up on GitHub or something.
0:06:32 And then they linked the GitHub thing from the support center because the support team was really to let me put it in there.
0:06:38 And it was like, why is this so hard? And it was like, hey, I want data about who we’ve sold to.
0:06:46 And they were like, yeah, our system doesn’t really, like it’s in there, but there’s no UI. So I had done a little bit of SQL and database stuff in business school.
0:06:53 So anyway, so I was just downloaded like DB VR. and I was doing my own SQL queries, doing all of this stuff when it’s like, this is definitely the DNA of entrepreneur.
0:07:01 I think like there’s that feeling of, it’s not truly oppressive, but there’s these corporate structures that can just feel like they’re gating you in.
0:07:12 And if you’re a fast horse and you just wanna run, this feeling of being gated in is such a frustrating feeling.
0:07:20 Like, and good companies and good teams, I think we’ll reward that behavior, that kind of taking initiative, and I’m going to make sure this happens, or here’s a great suggestion, or like, let’s do this.
0:07:37 And I think kind of old oppressive teams will, they just kind of suffocate or suppress you or make it harder for you to contribute in a meaningful way.
0:07:50 That’s how I felt. Yeah. Like I think that like the company was well-run and profitable and doing well and so I was like this is probably a me thing but I was like look I’ve had like a few jobs at this point like at some point maybe I’m the problem here and like maybe I need to do the different thing
0:08:07 because it’s like nothing that they were doing there was like obviously on its face like how could you how dare you know it wasn’t it was just like grading it just felt like suffocating but yeah but it made sense like yeah this isn’t the web team’s problem.
0:08:21 It’s not that big of a deal, like, sorry, it’s not a priority. But anyway. Oh, yeah, I think this is the, I think this is the realization is it’s if you’re a fast horse and you want to run, there’s just some structures that aren’t going to be work for you and that’s fine.
0:08:42 Like if, if the boss or the team or the culture or the business model or the market Just necessitates something else Like if you really want to remote job, but the company is really a on-prem Culture and you know, you need to be there.
0:09:02 Well, you’re just not the right fit for that place Totally. I think what drives a lot of founders is That feeling of you know what?
0:09:12 I’m never gonna be really I mean, we’re never really satisfied at all but I’m never going to like really be kind of in my zone of genius until I’m able to be doing this on my own.
0:09:25 Like nothing will satisfy this itch until I’m in charge and I’m cognizant and I’m it’s all reliant on me but yeah.
0:09:36 That’s what I was that’s definitely it right yeah. So I was like Okay, I said if I can get a project for 50% of my income.
0:09:47 So at the time, we had had our first house, we had our first mortgage. But that was like, so I didn’t need a W2 to get a proof of the mortgage.
0:09:58 Yeah, that’s a key point. Yeah, always get your mortgage before you quit your job. Definitely. Because you can always drive Uber.
0:10:08 But they’re not going to approve you if you’re driving over but, you know, there’s like a difference between showing you make money and actually be able to make the money, right?
0:10:14 Yeah. Or whatever your right share of choices. Yeah. So or whatever door dash. So I was like, okay, we have the house.
0:10:26 My wife was finishing her PhD. And which was like itself a long journey. and I was supporting throughout which happy to do, like more than happy to do, but just like kind of the financial realities in situation and we hadn’t had kids yet.
0:10:41 So it felt like, okay, this is the window. Yeah, if I can get half of my current pay in contracts or projects, I will quit my job.
0:10:49 Mm-hmm. And I had built up a pretty good network from my previous jobs. Mm-hmm. I helped scale a 3D printer company from 14 to 2019.
0:11:01 We’d gone from $1.7 to $20 million in revenue. That’s like a hardware manufacturer. It was really hard, but I learned a lot and I met a lot of people because there’s a really high visibility thing.
0:11:11 So anyway, that’s a whole other story for another day. But I had this other job in the meantime and work to my network.
0:11:18 And I got my commitments basically. So I graduated on April 1, 2019. I got my commitments. I quit my job, May 1.
0:11:25 And these were commitments for projects? Like you were clients? Oh, okay, so you emailed a bunch of people said hey, I’m looking to make the jump Yeah, I need some clients will you be my client exactly and you got commitments from enough of them that you felt like Okay, I could and what do those commitments
0:11:44 look like like there was just a pipeline of work like you had Well, they work or let’s do it like signed closed contract signed.
0:11:51 We’re gonna start next week So I was like, okay, I’ll I’ll work weird hours. I’ll make this work until I can get to 50% got it.
0:11:58 I waited till people were like, okay, we’re going, we’ll pay you kind of thing. Did you have a goal in mind?
0:12:03 Like, I need to get this number of people on retainer or it was just half of my income. I forget exactly what my income was at the time.
0:12:09 Yeah. But it was just half. I figured if I could get to half, then I could get the other half.
0:12:13 It’s what my guess was. Yeah. So I, so one contract, basically one contract was enough, but it was only a two month contract.
0:12:22 So I was like, okay, I’ve got two months of half my income. Yeah, let’s go. Yeah, I quit my job and I figured once I quit I would and I talked to some other kind of a mentor type people at the time And I thought like once I quit I’m gonna unlock 40 hours a week of time.
0:12:36 Yeah, and so like I’ll be able to do way Way more with that time So and that was right by the end of June or by the end of May by the time I got to June So I was I was back to my old income within a month.
0:12:46 Oh wow. Yeah, I was like, oh, okay Okay, okay, and and and it was just me in my house with one laptop So it was like all profit margin with no expenses and so it was a really good start.
0:12:55 Yeah, but that drive some people Quit their job. They have all this extra time And they find it’s actually the opposite without somebody driving them without somebody pushing them They Don’t have that relentlessness you need To go out and find clients.
0:13:17 Yeah, and I think that’s a good litmus test is like, once you have the time, do you have the drive?
0:13:26 Like there was times where, you know, like after I’d quit my job, there was times where, for example, course sales were like enough.
0:13:38 And I was like, I gotta go build some WordPress websites for people. And it’s just this like dogged, relentless drive to say, I’m gonna do whatever it takes.
0:13:51 I’m going to email a hundred people until I sell, you know, 10 website contracts and I’m going to build them all and then, you know, live to see another day.
0:14:01 Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I think the anticipation of like that we would be starting our family, I mean, our, let me think about the timeline here, this was from my teen.
0:14:16 So like within a year or so, our daughter was born. And so I think that was like, I had this in my head of like, I gotta, I gotta kind of get this thing off the ground.
0:14:24 Yeah, um, because things are, so that was to me was a big moment. I can’t like, I can’t disentangle that.
0:14:29 Yeah, yeah. Dependence is a huge, that’s true actually. Like, before I had kids, I didn’t have that same drive that I did after once I realized, wow, this is, um, this is expensive.
0:14:45 This is just like, just keeps going up. Yeah. And expensive in a sense, like it’s expensive with your time, your energy, but your money.
0:14:53 It’s just like you can’t just live in a one bedroom condo anymore. You’ve got to, you’ve got to get more space.
0:15:00 You got to get a car. You got to get a car seat. Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, there’s just hard, hard cash flow hits that come with that.
0:15:06 Yeah. So, so 2019, you, you launched this, you get some clients. COVID hit in 2020. So, Yeah, what what did that affect you at all or what yeah?
0:15:19 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So terrible timing Just couldn’t have really couldn’t have done it worse in a lot of ways Why cuz it it affected it Oh, it was just so stressful And then we were expecting at the time.
0:15:32 Yeah, so like you know every time I got to the I mean in the beginning It was really unknown and then especially because we were expecting during that time.
0:15:39 It was really anxiety and do sing. And I think the biggest thing I realized was like, what if I get sick?
0:15:48 So I had these clients and it’s going well, but like they’re just really paying me to talk to them. Yeah.
0:15:53 About stuff. Yeah. And like we’re getting some results definitely. But like a lot of this business is just like I’ve been doing this in I was working with a lot of hardware companies at the time.
0:16:02 So I just had a lot of like offhand things of like, oh, well, you should talk to this distributor. They would like totally pick that up.
0:16:07 And like I knew that because I had been doing it for seven in your six years. Yeah. So that was like worth it for them.
0:16:13 Yeah. But I was like, what if I get sick and I can’t take that call? Yeah. Like, are they going to keep paying me?
0:16:17 Probably not. Yeah. So it felt very fragile. And so this is when I started discovering and I joined, I forget the exact date, but like I joined MegaMaker and I started to listen to Build your SaaS and start up to the rest of us and I joined the microconf.
0:16:33 Were you familiar with software as a service or web apps or was that, you came from like a world where you’re selling hardware.
0:16:41 Yeah, I was, I didn’t have software background. I mean, I didn’t like ERP consulting in 2013 as a, as a count executive.
0:16:48 I mean, so no, I mean, I never worked for a SaaS company at all. I never worked for a company that had a dollar in SaaS revenue.
0:16:56 How did it even come on your radar? Like, how did you, like, I found Rob Walling stuff first and that tipping off in SaaS and then I found build your SaaS and transistor.
0:17:06 And then it just kind of like was like because because what I wanted was like to take care of my family and to build and to build a good business So then it’s like yeah, what kind of business?
0:17:14 And so because of like the pressures of COVID and family and like I’m in my late 30s right now. Yeah, so and I’d like finished business school I like I had I think very compressed learning cycles.
0:17:26 Yeah, like Very quickly like this is a good idea. Let’s go. Okay, but it can be better and just like I didn’t It’s taken a long time to get here, but within this, there’s been like really tight learning loops.
0:17:37 Yeah. And then it was like, oh, like this is it. Like I went out to work on my own, because I want my own business, because I want to be present.
0:17:43 It’s dad and private family. And like, this is the best way to do it. It is a SaaS. I need to figure out how to have a SaaS somehow.
0:17:50 I mean, it doesn’t seem that long. And if you think about it, it’s been six years. Yeah. It’s been six, five or six years since you even kind of realized what the SaaS market industry, category, how it works.
0:18:04 So that’s pretty compressed. Yeah, I mean, I guess in hindsight, yeah, it feels like a long time. It feels like a long time.
0:18:13 But I mean, once we once when once once that my actual idea hit, it was like, it took off really quickly.
0:18:20 So it’s a lot of tight hard learning. And then but but like having to maintain cash flow the whole time.
0:18:25 Yeah, there’s no like, oh, I’m going to want the sabbatical and think about it. It was like, I’m staying up late to try to figure out how to do this thing because during the day, I’m going to client calls and stuff.
0:18:34 I think what’s interesting is that poll that you just described. I think is quite common for people investigating, especially this space because that was always the promise is like, okay, what do I desire?
0:18:50 Well, I don’t want to work a job. I then you try consulting and you’re like, okay, consulting works, but you have to keep this thing every sales cycle is, you’re starting from zero again.
0:19:02 I mean, it’s not really zero, but it can feel like that. Oh, no, definitely. Yeah, I mean, basically is, unless you start developing IP and, you know.
0:19:11 Yeah, I mean, I guess the reason I say it’s not always from zero, because you still have your network, like you still have former clients, you can go back to you and say, hey, let’s do another engagement or whatever, but it can feel like you’re always starting from zero.
0:19:24 And then there’s the stress of that and like delivering projects on time and, you know, and like even like having to wake up early, I had to wake up early and do calls with people in Sweden.
0:19:36 So it was like, I had to wake up at 4 a.m. or something. I was like, oh, this is tough.
0:19:41 And so then you search for, okay, what are some of other options? And you’re like, oh, recurring revenue. Like if I could just have, you know, instead of having to rebuild that every sales cycle, every month or every quarter, just every month, new stuff can come in and then you go look for solutions 
0:19:59 and it’s like, oh, I could build a SaaS business. Exactly. So that’s how I kind of land on it. But then I’m like, okay, I got to learn about SaaS.
0:20:08 You join all these things. And I’m like super active on Twitter at the time, just like absorbing, absorbing, absorbing. And I feel like I was just in like just downloading, just constantly downloading little things and thinking about surfing and these are all these analogies and the stair set method 
0:20:25 and but I think in general what I was feeling was like okay this is like too much learning. I need to be like doing now.
0:20:39 I need to like start like testing ideas. I’m like where is this idea going to come from? Um, yeah, can I turn this consulting business into maybe something that’s like a little bit more of an engine so I can free up, make more money or just free up a little bit more time.
0:20:53 Mm-hmm. So it kind of converted into a little bit more of an agency because at the time, like email deliverability started to become like a little bit of an issue discussed in some of these corners of the web.
0:21:05 And most of my clients, they didn’t, they wanted to talk to me. But if they were really hard like and clear, they would say, well, I want leads.
0:21:12 Yeah. Yeah, like yeah, like I’m talking to you and I like your advice and there’s some really good ideas in here But like ultimately, what do we need?
0:21:18 We need new leads for our business. Yeah, can you get us leads? Yeah, I had never done that before The companies I’d work with in hardware it’s different the go-to market is really different Yeah, and so I just started learning cold email I bought a cold email course for like a hundred bucks Okay, and
0:21:33 so I started learning cold email and started building an agency around outreach Yeah, as like an extension of this consulting service And so then I started getting really deep in that into that world and we became a HubSpot solutions partner and we were doing outbound and then then I like the the landscape
0:21:49 started to like sort of emerge of like okay these are the tools I’m using these are gaps between these tools this is how they charge this is like what’s annoying and then within that I had had like a few different ideas but so I left the communities and stuff not because I didn’t like them but because
0:22:04 it was like what I need next is not here yeah what I need next is out somewhere in the market and like nobody here is going to be the one who’s going to be my first customer or and so and so and I only have so many and at this point my daughter was born as I was like okay I don’t know that much time 
0:22:20 so I got to go and so I like I literally deleted Twitter I literally left like everything did I just started spending like all this time on LinkedIn yeah and and to kind of like so that was kind of that like that like transition period in the beginning of what was like testing ideas of it.
0:22:35 So, this is so key. Like, there’s a, you’re going to need some foundation of knowledge. But after you’ve got a reasonable foundation, you need to go out and do stuff.
0:22:52 You need to go out and start building things. And I felt this like, I started the product people podcast in 2012.
0:23:03 And, you know, after a year of doing these interviews, I felt like I got to stop doing these interviews and I’ve got to do something.
0:23:14 Like, I got to launch something. Exactly the same as you. Like, ah, this is until I start putting this into practice and really feeling it, it’s just like anything.
0:23:26 It’s like I can describe to you the mechanics of snowboarding. But until I get you out on the hill and you start to actually try it out, the head knowledge is fine.
0:23:39 Like for you to have the basics, but you need to start, you know, you need to just start going down the hill at some point.
0:23:46 Yeah, exactly. You got to land on your butt and be like, okay, yeah, that was fine. So that’s, I think that’s great that you had that self-knowledge probably driven by the fact that you didn’t have very much time.
0:23:56 That was it. It was like oh man, and it was kind of like a little sad because it was like oh like this is fun Like I’m like talking to these people like this is funny.
0:24:05 This is my community. I’m home alone. Yeah I have no real co-workers. I Like all my friends have jobs and then we have a young kid and so I don’t have a lot of time in general like when I’m not working I’m trying to be a dad as best I can trying to be a husband.
0:24:19 Yeah, and so So it was like a little sad, honestly, but but I just didn’t feel like I had that like All of these things, I felt like I didn’t have a really good alternative.
0:24:30 I just felt like I’ve got to do this. If I want to move forward, I have to make some changes here, and it’s going to be a little uncomfortable, but I just don’t, what’s the alternative?
0:24:41 Yeah. Okay. So you get this agency going. Agency’s going. And it’s working? Or what happened? Like it’s working. It’s working.
0:24:48 I’m acquiring customers, like I’m starting to like feel what it’s like to get on a wave a little bit. Because with my consulting, like, I had this feeling of like, yeah, I’ve got these relationships, but like, I don’t have that many relationships.
0:25:02 At some point, this is going to go away and then what? Yeah. But now with the agency, it was like, oh, this is a problem.
0:25:07 People are landing in spam. The new leads, like, I can productize around this. There’s some tooling around this. Like, and so it was working.
0:25:14 I was getting customers, retaining customers. It wasn’t taking off because it was me. I had contractors who some of whom were really wonderful.
0:25:21 But like, I was never able to fully delegate. Yeah, it had these ebbs and flows as I tried to balance sales and delivery, but then, and this is like the worst, you’re not supposed to do this, this is like the worst advice.
0:25:34 I think maybe the lowest paying client I ever had in the history of my agency. I mean, I have to go back and check that.
0:25:41 I mean, he was paying me almost nothing. Yeah, because some months are like, sure, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you exactly got a hustle.
0:25:48 Um, he was like, you know, I really want this, um, cold email data from smart lead. I really want it in HubSpot.
0:25:54 Hmm. And I was like, oh, yeah, like we’re upstart hunger. Um, everyone in HubSpot always talks about inbound inbound in bound.
0:26:03 Yeah. Um, in fact, everyone in the HubSpot ecosystem is constantly like, at this time, really posturing against outbound. Like that’s the whole positioning of HubSpot is inbound.
0:26:13 So they’re constantly criticizing it. And I was like, well, that’s kind of an interesting thing to be like like the outbound person in HubSpot system, like nobody’s saying that, and then it made sense to me.
0:26:24 Like, well, yeah, of course you would want this there. Yeah, you get a lead and then you need to manage it and they become a deal and then you close the deal and then they become a customer like, yeah.
0:26:33 Yeah, right, like duh. Why isn’t anybody doing that? And what I didn’t realize at the time, but I now realize is that like, these tools were very like on the edge.
0:26:41 They were like growth hacking tools and bigger companies that had those requirements weren’t using them. or they weren’t using them like they used the rest of their tools.
0:26:49 So it was like a bet basically at the time of like if this way of generating new leads takes off, then new tools will be required to like coordinate or orchestrate the new tools with the old tools if it takes off.
0:27:07 Okay, so a client is paying you to help them manage, when you say outbound, you’re talking about sending cold email, trying to get leads and this client says, this is good.
0:27:21 They weren’t paying, they weren’t a high value customer, but they said, this is good. I really want this, like once you get me a lead, I want this to move into HubSpot, which I’m using as my CRM.
0:27:34 And then as you were looking at HubSpot, you’re like, oh, this is weird, because HubSpot’s whole philosophy was all around content.
0:27:42 Like you use content to attract leads. So there are inbound leads, they sign up on your blog posts, because to get the PDF.
0:27:51 And then you manage the relationship that way. But not a lot of people using HubSpot were starting with outbound. Yeah.
0:28:00 Yeah. At least not publicly. Yeah. But then I realized like actually quite a few of our household clients are doing outbound.
0:28:06 Yes. And actually house bought themselves has a huge sales team yeah with like a few hundred sales people and they totally do outbound yeah so this seems like a gap like this is an opportunity exactly yeah so what did that translate into what what did you do with that information um so well i so i started
0:28:27 to build something so i started to build it in make.com okay um smartly had web hooks and i thought okay well i can take these webhook payloads like as these events occur in smart lead an email is sent to reply as received.
0:28:40 As these happen, I can take those events, map them and push them to HubSpot. Okay. Like I remember saying how hard could it be?
0:28:49 You know? There’s this quote, we do things not because they’re easy, but because we thought they would be easy. That’s the entrepreneur’s mantra.
0:29:01 Yeah. So that was it. The pinboard, the pinboard guy said that. It’s I think about it. It’s on my LinkedIn.
0:29:07 I think about it all the time. I remember literally being like, Oh yeah, like, how are you going to be?
0:29:10 And I said that to him. And so jeep. So this is um, um, May 2023. So, uh, okay. Did we miss a part here because you did try to build intro CRM?
0:29:21 Oh, yes. So my agency was called intro CRM. Okay. Sorry. I covered some of the, I miss, I skipped some of the SaaS stuff because it was never a SaaS.
0:29:29 Okay. I tried doing intro CRM as a SaaS. And now my agency just became intro CRM. But we never, I never had a single paying customer, I built something in bubble.
0:29:37 Oh man, sorry, I forgot. I haven’t thought about that in like, in like a while. That’s okay. Yeah, yeah. So you’re first so bad.
0:29:44 I don’t even remember it. Your first attempt was a CRM. Yes. So you were doing this agency and then you’re like, okay, I’m going to try to build some software.
0:29:51 Yes, right. And then you built this tool called InterCRM in bubble, but it didn’t really take off. It didn’t really work.
0:30:00 No, not at all. So it was like, like my thought was like I was using base camp. Oh, man, sorry.
0:30:04 Oh, man, totally based on this chapter. Mm-hmm. Um, so I was using base camp. And I was like, Oh, base camp, they’re discontinuing high rise.
0:30:11 Like there’s no CRM, like base camp, and they’re not doing high rise anymore. There should be a simple CRM for everybody.
0:30:17 Yeah, everybody can use this opportunity. And I mean, high rise was, I think doing, I don’t know, three to five million a year or something like that.
0:30:24 Like it was, it was a on base camp scale. It wasn’t successful, successful quote, but for most of us, that would be an amazing business.
0:30:33 Exactly. And I thought, like, okay, and I really looked up to Jason Fried and David Heiner-Hanson and part of my idea of like going from agency to SaaS was like exactly what they had done.
0:30:42 So they were really influential in my mind at the time of like, you know, I think they, yeah. I think that they, I don’t know, it’s hard to know.
0:30:52 When I’m being like self-critical, I would say, well, they were really, they were really running a design agency. They were really craft people.
0:30:57 And you know, what was I doing? But I think I’m probably being a little hard on myself. I think like I was doing hard stuff and I think it ultimately has translated into a good product.
0:31:05 And so it’s like sometimes it’s hard when you see these people from afar. You kind of yeah, it feels like unattainable of like, but they’re just normal guys too working hard and doing great things.
0:31:14 But they’re, you know, just people too. In hindsight, I feel like I created too much distance in my mind between what they were to do and what I would be able to do.
0:31:23 You know, yeah, they’re just humans too. I mean, they are very gifted in many ways. But the Um, they, uh, earlier in my career, I applied for a job there and flew to Chicago and, um, spent a day with the team.
0:31:39 And that was my sense after that day was I had like kind of put them up on a pedestal, but then after spending a day with them, I’m like, oh, these are just human beings.
0:31:47 Like, they’re, there’s, they are, again, they are good at what they do. They’re skilled. Um, but there wasn’t, it wasn’t like magical.
0:31:58 It was just like, these are just people doing work. And they’ve achieved something probably be like the first ones to say that, right?
0:32:05 Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d be like, I mean, I don’t think, you know, they just had to have a brand.
0:32:09 They did it early. They’ve done it at an incredible scale. And I think. So yes, so interest CRM was my first SaaS idea.
0:32:18 I built it with bubble myself. I got help from, so my first idea was in integration. I was like, okay, so there should be a CRM that integrates with base camp.
0:32:29 Because I thought the first tool that people adopt is project management software. Yeah, because like you have a couple of clients and you don’t need a CRM yet.
0:32:37 So you start with project management software, like Trello or Basecamp and then you start to get more clients And then you realize, oh, I kind of have to manage these leads.
0:32:44 I need to CRM. And so my thought was the first thing that should integrate should be the CRM, but the core system of record is actually the project management tool and they kind of go back and forth.
0:32:52 So that was my first idea. And so I had Lola, Lunchpile Labs. She built the integration for me. We integrated with Trello and Basecamp.
0:33:01 And, oh gosh, I can’t remember it now, but there was, I think, maybe a third project management tool that we integrated with.
0:33:07 Because I was working with all these founders and they were in project management tools all day. Oh, yeah, like so they would maybe use this and they’re not using HubSpot because it’s too bloated.
0:33:14 Yeah, and there’s too much to do And so you tried to sell it to first but it just didn’t work I was like well, so we like we have this basic CRM and it comes with these services.
0:33:23 Okay, and they were like we just we just want to work with you We don’t we don’t want your CRM got it so then so when you pitched people on it.
0:33:31 Yeah, they were like Like we just want the services part. Yeah Why do you think they didn’t want the CRM?
0:33:38 Like, what were they using instead? They just like didn’t check it, didn’t log into it. I had like an amazing client and she was just very kind.
0:33:47 And I felt like if anyone she would have just like logged in just out of like curiosity and sympathy and pity.
0:33:54 And even she had never logged in. So I was like, okay, this like nobody cares about this. Yeah. Do you think it was, I mean, this is what’s interesting to me.
0:34:03 oops, I’m gonna here I’ll just share this for anyone watching I can show the the original kind of website you had here oh yeah oh my gosh yeah I haven’t seen this in so long so I mean it to me I think what’s interesting about this is your hypothesis seems reasonable and so then you know there’s different
0:34:28 questions is it is it the way you’re marketing it is the way you’re positioning it, is it the actual product isn’t solid?
0:34:36 So those folks that weren’t logging in, what were they doing instead? Like what were they using instead of your CRM?
0:34:44 Were they just using no CRM? Like there wasn’t actually any movement there? Yeah, they would like use nothing or they would use a Google sheet or they would just kind of manage it out of their inbox.
0:34:54 I think there’s like a version of this but I don’t think I have found a market fit to build it.
0:34:59 it has to be like a product-led thing. It would have to be like, you just drop in and like, now, with AI and these AI native tools, I could imagine there being a CRM that connects with Gmail.
0:35:13 And it’s like, and if your business is small and simple enough, if it connects to your calendar and your inbox, it will maintain their data model for you and create little deals for you.
0:35:23 I could actually see that today. Yeah. And that would be good enough for this kind of user because the problem is the entry, like logging in, logging out, updating fields, like nobody, it just wasn’t worth their time to do it.
0:35:34 Like, yeah, yeah. And then they got big enough, they hired somebody to do it. Yeah. And then that person wanted a real tool.
0:35:41 Yeah. And then they would, so so you were in this kind of in between, yeah, intro serum as a software product was like in an in between state.
0:35:50 Yeah. That was like not quite right. Yeah. It just didn’t quite land. But But I was right that people, like the core idea of like these things don’t talk to each other.
0:36:01 Yeah. That has like a thread that has been true for a while. And like even back to the 3D printing company, and even back to the ERP consultant company, like partnerships has been like the thread of growth through like 15 years of my career through the companies that I’ve grown.
0:36:15 Yeah. That is like a continuity thing. Yeah. Like the idea of like these things don’t talk to each other. That is now fundamentally what Abund think is built on today.
0:36:22 I think that is such a crucial observation. It doesn’t mean your hypotheses will always be correct, but that alone is just true.
0:36:35 And in an AI world, I feel like that’s more true than ever. Like everybody’s typing into chat GPT and Claude, but there’s still not a lot of glue between like Claude could tell you to go do something.
0:36:51 But then you’ve got to, there’s this chasm that you’ve got to, you’ve got to jump over you, you’re the one that’s got to go do what it just told you to do.
0:37:00 Yeah, and there’s going to be more and more glue needed between these things. Yes. And I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunity just in that.
0:37:09 And even, you know, like Zapier integrations break all the time or they’re not quite right or there’s just all of these holes, all of these little opportunities, all of these little friction points where it’s like, ah, like another one I’ve observed is if you go to a retail store, I would ask owners 
0:37:28 about what they were doing and they’re still entering inventory manually. And you’d think a man, like there’s a bar code on every product they get in, and you’d think that or you’d think that the supplier or the distributor could just send them some sort of JSON, some sort of data that would just populate
0:37:48 their point of sale system, but still in 2025 and still with modern point of sales like Square, they’re still entering data in manually.
0:37:59 And again, maybe there’s not enough money there or friction, like the economics of all that of the opportunity might not be there, but the thread is correct.
0:38:11 And I think you’ve identified like there’s going to still, there’s still so much manual data entry right now. There’s, there’s lots of opportunities here if you’re like looking.
0:38:23 I think so. Absolutely. And here’s the thing. So someone would say, well, yeah, of course, you got to enter this thing into Clawed and then you got to go to the other thing.
0:38:30 Well, that’s where MCP servers come in. And that’s why, you know, agentech work flows are so exciting. Yeah. Look, the, I mean, ask any developer.
0:38:39 Hey, um, so tomorrow, I’m going to publish our database schema. No, nothing will be lost. No security issues. I’m just going to publish it and post it online.
0:38:49 And like, do you, do you be proud of that? Do you have any issues? maybe with the tables and the labels.
0:38:55 Do you feel like our database is well-documented, if you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow? Yeah. I mean, how many developers would be like, yeah, no problem?
0:39:01 Yeah. Open Kamano, let’s, like, let the world see. And so if that’s the case, if the developer who’s building and maintaining a code doesn’t feel like it’s exceptionally well-documented to them, then that is clogging a node to do.
0:39:11 Yeah. It’s going to stumble. It’s going to stumble in the tables and it’s going to stumble in the, and you can say, well, they’ll figure it out.
0:39:16 Wow. Yeah. So all these nuances, especially like when you get to the edge cases, and the edge cases are sometimes what matter the most.
0:39:21 I think this is what’s real. This is why every time I look at a demo, like somebody releases some sort of demo, it’s like, okay, this is not a real company, this is not a real use case, this is not, nothing, this is all fantasy, but, you know, come into my world, and it’s even like the, like right now
0:39:43 , when I am trying to level audio, I use this tool called eulene audio meter or whatever. It tells me the loudness in loops.
0:39:55 But then I take a screenshot of that, bring it into Claude, then give it the, there’s these built in Apple audio filters.
0:40:06 I say, here’s the audio filter AU Dynamics. Tell me what to use here, like how much gain, how much release time, all that stuff.
0:40:15 That is friction, and you think, you know, there’s a modern world, like maybe with Apple shortcuts I could do something, or maybe, and the truth is it’s still a lot of friction to get something from one system to another.
0:40:31 And for most users, that still exists. And there’s just a lot of opportunity there, like if there was a tool that, in my case, like maybe a web app or something that automatically gave me a loudness score for my raw audio and then told me what to do or just automatically did it for me, I might pay for
0:40:58 that, right? So yeah, it’s interesting, but on the other hand, maybe I wouldn’t discover problems. Yeah, well, that’s where it gets complicated.
0:41:06 Yeah, but no, I think that with AI, I mean, imagine if you had a library, you know, like a physical library, but like no card cab long.
0:41:15 Yeah, yeah, it’s like, okay, well how are you going to find the book? And I mean, at some point you’re expending.
0:41:20 And this is the thing I think people aren’t talking about. They say, oh, this is the worst. It’s never going to be.
0:41:23 It’s always going to get better. Like, well, maybe there’s also like a lot of money being spent right now. And like, at some point, there’s going to need to be a return on these things.
0:41:31 And at some point, they’re going to start charging more. And so, yes, I understand that in theory, things will get better.
0:41:36 But like, nothing gets better forever. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that grows infinitely is cancer ourselves. Yeah, you know, and then you have like system collapse.
0:41:43 So it’s just like I like AI We use it. I tried building a GPT wrapper. So yeah, those other SaaS ideas.
0:41:49 So yeah, just CRM didn’t work But then I got into this they wanted the service So I did the service and then they said okay, well, I’m giving them lead lists to give me feedback to score them So I can make them better lists better fits.
0:42:02 Yeah, because I’m using like database tools like zoom info and Apollo And I’m giving them Google sheets and so I was like, oh, this is a SaaS I built it with glide, I give you like a sample set of leads, you can swipe through it like a dating app, say which ones you like, say which ones you don’t, I’m
0:42:21 going to take that feedback and I’m going to go build a better list. That also seems like a good idea.
0:42:26 Yeah, it wasn’t like the worst, you know, I mean, it’s kind of like LLM concept, right? It’s like reinforcement training from the person who knows.
0:42:36 It took a lot of work and again, they weren’t spending the time on it, I don’t know. It’s just for whatever reason, it didn’t quite click, people didn’t want to do it.
0:42:46 Or they were just getting too lost in the weeds. And I was like, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. But we just need to send some email.
0:42:53 And if it’s not a fit, they just won’t get back to us. It’s okay. Yeah. It’s not to be perfect.
0:42:57 So I don’t know. You know, that’s such an interesting thought I just had. Because you’ve mentioned this twice now, which is like they couldn’t take the time or make the effort to log in, or they couldn’t take the time or make the effort to log in in this case, score some leads or whatever.
0:43:15 Yeah. I think there, this happens a lot more than we realize, which is there’s just a certain category of applications, questions where you’re not going to get people to log in and that’s difficult.
0:43:35 It’s like I’ll use this as an example. I actually love this tool and I pay for this tool, but I think it’s still a good example is SEOTesting.com.
0:43:45 I love this product. You know, they’re friends of mine. I think it’s a great product, but my interaction with the product is basically at this point, 95% just through the emails they send me of here’s this month’s top keywords, here’s the winners and losers.
0:44:04 Am I setting up a lot of SEO tests? Not really. And that’s I think that because there’s just only so many apps I can log into regularly.
0:44:18 Right. And even like, like, oh, I’ve got these analytics. Like, you’re going to log in and get these analytics. It’s like, well, the only apps I really do that for is like revenue analytics because money is important.
0:44:34 And then kind of performance-based metrics on content, like, you know, blog, like, you know, website analytics and podcast analytics and YouTube analytics.
0:44:45 I’ll look at all of those. But anything outside of that is just like, oh, you want me to log in and score a bunch of leads.
0:44:53 It’s like that seems like a good idea in as a concept. Like, yeah, I would like to do that. I would like to get better leads.
0:45:00 And yeah, I could see even a fun interface, like a dating app, like I could see myself doing that. But at the end of the day, it’s another thing to log into.
0:45:10 Exactly. I only have so many spaces in my life for things that I log into. Exactly. Yeah, that’s Yeah, so it just like it didn’t it didn’t quite click.
0:45:21 Um, it was so then the third idea that I had was draft studio. This was like an early G G P T wrapper product.
0:45:27 I actually use it internally. So in cold email, there’s this thing called spin tax where you give it a word and then you give it variations of that word.
0:45:35 So hello, hi, hey, hey there. Greetings. Good morning. Good afternoon, whatever. Yeah, and so you could like take an email or you could take a phrase drop it into draft studio It would spin up permutations of that and then spit out spin tax that you could just drop into smartly So that your emails would
0:45:50 be different from each other, which would help with deliverability. Yeah, actually I liked it I used it a lot. It was useful as AI has accelerated and it’s just like made some of these things less necessary now people are making fully unique emails every time, just like, I just kind of knew it didn’t
0:46:06 have a long-term potential. I liked it as an app and I used it a lot. I did have a few people who used it a lot and liked it too.
0:46:12 Yeah, but it was just, it was just a, as a GPC wrapper, it was too simple to really go anywhere.
0:46:19 And I kind of always knew that. Yeah, and that also seems like the kind of thing that eventually, if I could figure out a process for doing that in chat GBT or cloud, I would just do that.
0:46:30 Totally, yeah, so like that but it was okay, but it was technically a SaaS I built it in glide I thought about charging for it And then and then so so that all of those things happened between like when interest CRM I registered that domain in 2020.
0:46:44 Yeah, and then I started building up on sink in May 2023 Okay, so that was I think it was my fourth idea My fifth idea which I’ve like almost not really talked about very much, but it was Card importer.
0:46:56 There was like the hotspots default card importers actually really not great Okay, and so it was like a really basic take a picture of your business card skins in the hotspot It’s actually a really big like it’s a thing.
0:47:06 There’s a lot of hotspot comments and forum about wanting these features I posted YouTube video. I still get messages on LinkedIn about it.
0:47:13 Yeah, I mean like hey his card reporter like still available Yeah, I actually think it like there’s something but it’s not a it was my fifth idea and app on seeing was taking off So I just didn’t do anything with it, but of the idea is it was probably my second best Idea, but it would need more around
0:47:28 it um, to like become something. Yeah, but I guess my point is like, not all of my ideas were bad.
0:47:35 Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what’s interesting is none of these ideas actually seem bad. They all seem like reasonable bets and it’s kind of like you can follow all of the advice for looking for business ideas like you go into the forums and what are people commenting about?
0:47:53 You had consulting clients and you’re listening to their pains and their friction, and that’s all a part of it. And basically you’re doing all of that work, which by the way, I think like 90% of people don’t do that work.
0:48:10 But it’s that work that sets you up for some good at bats. Yeah, and I think the truth is is like you look at professional baseball players.
0:48:19 These are people who have trained their entire lives to hit baseballs. And they have a hard time hitting baseball, right?
0:48:28 So you can do all of the foundational work, but their their chances, their odds of hitting a baseball are much higher than mine are.
0:48:39 So all of that foundational work matters. You’ve got to do all that work to get up to the plate and have a reasonable shot at hitting the ball.
0:48:49 And then even then you might hit it, you might foul, you might walk, you might just get a line drive, you might get a home run.
0:48:57 Like those Those are all opportunities, those are all, I’m sorry, you know, potential outcomes. But it’s still like a lot of players get up to bat and they strike out.
0:49:10 Right. Right. And they’re good players. Right. So what’s the number? It’s like if you bat 300, you’re in the hall of fame or, you know, there’s something like that.
0:49:17 Yeah. I mean, I’m actually not a baseball fan. Yeah. I’m not either. There’s some number where it’s like not that many.
0:49:23 And if you actually hit that many, you’re like one of the best of all time. Yeah, I mean this is the this is the whole point.
0:49:28 I think this is why sports is a in some way sports is a bad metaphor for business because sports really is zero sum and business has there’s more opportunities like there can be multiple CRM software providers and you know you could still win.
0:49:46 So I but I think what’s instructive about your story and my story and really almost everybody I know, almost very few people get up to bat and hit a line driver or a home run their first at bat.
0:50:03 And I also see there’s an entrepreneurship, there are a ton of people who have not done the foundational work. They don’t have clients that they’re observing and getting like seeing where their pain points are, seeing where the gaps are, seeing where the opportunities are.
0:50:19 They’re not looking at the forums. They’re not exploring and evaluating ideas in this way. They don’t have a network. They don’t have any skills.
0:50:28 And so, you know, that what is the success rate of any given entrepreneur stepping up to bat? Well, it’s nearly zero because there’s an infinite number of people who want to do it.
0:50:40 But like I said, I think 90, 95% of them aren’t even doing the basic foundational work to even have a chance of hitting a baseball.
0:50:51 Definitely. You do the basic the basic foundational work to give yourself a chance. And then that’s after that, it’s like we’ll see what happens, you know.
0:51:04 I’ll hit this one. And okay, it was, you know, I barely got on base. Yeah, well, it’s like the harder I worked, the luckier I get, right?
0:51:13 It’s like, I definitely think this was like a lot of work. But so because of all this, when outbound sync, like when I did that.
0:51:21 Yeah, so outbound sync. And started talking about it, people. I was like, is the idea that you’re working on right now?
0:51:26 This is the one that worked. Yes, I’ve been doing this for two years. It’s profitable. We’ve got three people on the team.
0:51:32 We’ve been growing 10 to 20% every month literally since we since October 2023 Like it like and but there were there were things that were happening with it where I was like this has never happened before Okay, okay, so what’s different?
0:51:46 Let’s explore that so you went through these other ideas All of them are like you maybe you get on base, but it’s not really or maybe you don’t even get on base Yeah, and then maybe by domain.
0:51:57 Yeah, maybe by domain So, what was the genesis of outbound sync? What was the observation that you’re like, oh, this is what we’re doing?
0:52:06 So, I had that client, he said he wanted them to talk to each other, I said okay, sounds interesting, built out a basic version of it, and then I started posting about it on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn’s my only water cooler at this point.
0:52:17 Okay, because I figured like the people who, if I’m gonna build something based on the space that I’m in, they’re gonna be there, probably.
0:52:24 So I start posting about it there, I push about it in some WhatsApp groups, and I get some people biting.
0:52:28 So, outbound, a lot of people are in WhatsApp groups, just by way. Okay. Okay. It’s very international. Like, very, there are some biases, but in general, it’s pretty meritocratic.
0:52:38 Like, I’ve got a lot of people who I talk with who, like, I don’t know their name, I don’t know their face.
0:52:41 I don’t know anything about them. Yeah. But, like, they’re in these groups and if they’re kind of like anonymous, like, hacker chat, kind of growth hacker chat.
0:52:47 How did you get in those WhatsApp groups? Um, that’s a good question. I don’t, well, when I was running my agency, that’s when I got exposure to some of those chats and like other agency owners are in some of those groups.
0:52:59 Okay. And they’d say, Hey, you might want to join this group. Yeah. Hey. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And like one of them, like they had like just like they were promoting it.
0:53:07 It’s like, Hey, join my group. And there’s no caution in it that I just kind of joined the group. Share us practices.
0:53:11 There’s kind of like a guild. You know, there’s like, it’s kind of like there’s honor among thieves. Yeah. The like the best outbound people like all know each other.
0:53:18 And they all talk. And they all share notes. And they don’t consider themselves as really direct competitors in a in a traditional way.
0:53:25 Yeah. Like it’s very interesting. It’s very unusual. I do think this is a key thing to I do think this is a key action that a lot of founders don’t take, which is you said I’m going to get off everything that’s a distraction and I’m going to go where my clients are.
0:53:54 So And then you’re also getting in these WhatsApp groups. Yeah, and I think when you’re thinking about where to invest your time, I don’t think people realize that in a given industry or category, this is what I think actual participants in a given industry or category have such an advantage over somebody
0:54:14 who’s just flying in because it looks like a good business opportunity, is you have to be simmering in that community.
0:54:21 You have to be soaking in it. You have to be in the water every day and there are just things you can’t experience and they’re really subtle unless you have this constant drip of being in a WhatsApp group every day and seeing what people are talking about and you’re building those relationships and you’re
0:54:43 making these subconscious observations. Yes. Right. Unless I’m doing that, like, I think it’s pretty hard. I think it’s hard to build a podcast hosting application if you’re not a podcaster.
0:55:02 There’s just something about knowing the pain, about knowing lots of other podcasters that are trying to do it to, of knowing what it’s like to conceptualize a show, and then record into a shitty mic, and then try to publish it, and then be listening to it, and hearing background noise, and like cringing
0:55:22 , and that whole process, until you understand it in an organic way, like I could describe it to somebody, but until you’ve experienced it, And so you know the pain of releasing something publicly and having people not respond to it or trying to get distribution for it or trying to get people to notice
0:55:45 you just don’t understand. And it’s the same thing with outbound sales people outbound leads people like do I really understand that category as an outsider?
0:55:57 No. And so if I try to swoop in and and I’m going to compete with Harris Justin Jackson tomorrow, I’m just going to start a new app.
0:56:09 I, you have such an advantage over me. Even with chat GBT, I could get all the like intellectual information like tell me about the outbound world and it might be able to, you know, even pull in stuff from Reddit and stuff and get.
0:56:22 But it’s still not the same as being in the water as surfing that spot every single day showing up with all the other surfers looking at those waves, seeing the weather and how it rolls in like nothing compares to being in it.
0:56:38 And I think it’s actually almost there are some entrepreneurs that have been able to serve an audience or a category that is not their own.
0:56:50 I think it’s exceedingly rare and almost always there’s some Venture funding in it where you have runway to really give yourself a crash course in it.
0:57:00 I Think it’s so tough. I think you got to be in it to really have an advantage, especially as a bootstrapper Definitely, and so what’s funny about where we are today is that those two places I was spending my time represent like the two parts of the business.
0:57:17 We can we’ll keep we’ll keep riffing but like the agencies are not our direct customer today. Okay. But there are peers and they are the channel that we sell through and I consider them friends.
0:57:28 I mean, I’ve had agency partners who have gone through some personal things and like I’ve done a resume out of the details but I’ve done personal gestures for them just because like I love them.
0:57:37 Yeah. Just like I love them and if they if they if so like truly I consider them like comrades like it And if they were here, if someone needed something, I would do something for them.
0:57:47 And I have done something for them, not because it’s like a marketing thing, but because it’s like, hey man, I love you, we’ve been in this stuff together.
0:57:53 Google shut down all these things. Or Microsoft, you know, this happened, we’ve kind of been through these experiences together. Yeah.
0:57:59 And so, you know, like that’s real. Those are real friendships. And there’s real trust to get built there over time.
0:58:05 But the funny thing is that they are not our direct customer. We still sell to the people who are on LinkedIn.
0:58:09 and ultimately the bigger companies, that’s where the revenue operations and the sales leaders are. But it’s because I spent time with them and understood the space, that was like a really, and I’m still in those WhatsApp groups.
0:58:20 I mean, I mostly, I just use them like for joking around. I don’t, I don’t be like, hey everybody, we have a Webinar we’re doing next week.
0:58:28 We just like, I just like post memes and like give people a hard time and stuff. Yes, yeah, yeah. You know, like just to be, like that’s like my role in those communities.
0:58:37 Yeah. You know, we have fun. We’re having fun. And again, that’s hard to replicate that, to have that kind of rapport with people in industry.
0:58:47 Yeah, totally. So we should really paint a picture. So outbound sync, what does it do, like what was the job it’s doing for people?
0:58:56 Yes. So the job should be done. So we get the data. So we have this low code thing. People are interested.
0:59:01 I started having big calls with people. I realized this is not going to work. Like I manually owe off thing into accounts.
0:59:07 people to someone just ask about sock two. We have a make scenario. I’m like sock two. I don’t know. Here’s make security documentation.
0:59:13 Yeah. We refactored into full code. We go to market. It takes four months to build it, two months to refactor it.
0:59:18 October 2023, we go to market. And the like, the job to be done is, okay, if you, well, I started with, if you’re using smart lead, yeah, and you use HubSpot, we get your data from smart lead into HubSpot.
0:59:31 Okay. I was like, that was it. It was like simple enough. If you’re using these two tools, but today if you, it’s kind of inverted.
0:59:37 I would consider as a HubSpot app or a Salesforce app. If you’re a team using HubSpot and you’re doing outbound, well then if you’re using these tools we can bring your data back into HubSpot.
0:59:49 So like fundamentally, we’re a HubSpot app, we get this data in and then as a HubSpot app or a Salesforce app, we get the data in, job one, job two is make the data useful.
0:59:59 So like I got a lead, now I can route that lead to the right salesperson based on their territory or whatever the rules are, I can give them the context of that full thread of a conversation.
1:00:09 Got it. I can see all the sent emails before that. So reply routing. Yeah. Because growth hackers were doing this in the beginning.
1:00:19 So they would be like, to their founder led customer, there’s a Slack message. And the founder would be like, right, I’ll jump on a call done.
1:00:25 Yeah. But now if it’s like, we have mid-market customers with 1500 employees, they need to route it to the right person that rep needs context, they need to know what the campaign was.
1:00:34 There’s like so many more rules that are not possible the way it was being done before. So routing them replies.
1:00:41 That’s like a huge pain point. So there’s like a fire hose of leads. Yes. And then your app just says, okay, I’ve got to get these leads to the right people in the organization.
1:00:51 Yeah. With the right context, with the right information. Exactly. Got it. And we empower the internal revenue you out revenue operations or house bought or Salesforce admin to build the rules for that.
1:01:04 Routing or the like channeling the firehouse, we allow them to build it themselves inside of HubSpot and Salesforce. Got it.
1:01:10 So I’ve like sort of finally came to grips with like I’m going to not going to try to make people log in to anything else.
1:01:15 Yes, you are where they already are. Yeah, you want to be in HubSpot. I’m going to give you this data in HubSpot.
1:01:20 You don’t need to log in, you log in our application one time, and then you’d have ready to look at it again.
1:01:25 Yeah, we build pipes. Got it. Like, just use the sink. Don’t worry about where the water’s coming from. And does it show up in HubSpot and Salesforce as an official app?
1:01:34 Yes, so we’re in the marketplace in HubSpot and we’re working on Salesforce app exchange. That’s more of a process. But the biggest surprise learning I had in the beginning was that you actually don’t need to be in the marketplace to get distribution through them.
1:01:49 Yeah. So when we talk about building a SaaS or starting a SaaS, We had dozens and dozens of HubSpot customers before we had a marketplace listing.
1:01:57 So it’s because I was able to get HubSpot, I post a LinkedIn and HubSpot users were like, we’re using SmartLead, I want that in HubSpot.
1:02:04 And they just reach out to me. Got it. And they installed as a private connected app. So I was not using HubSpot as a direct distribution channel if that makes sense.
1:02:11 I was riding the HubSpot Wave, but HubSpot wasn’t putting me on the board. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?
1:02:17 So if you posted on LinkedIn and said, if you have this problem and you use HubSpot, here’s the solution. Exactly.
1:02:23 And so people that were using HubSpot, it was enough for them to go, oh, I use HubSpot and then go, oh, I have that problem.
1:02:29 Exactly. Okay, now I’m gonna pursue the solution. Exactly, because they weren’t even thinking to search for it in the marketplace because no HubSpot, so few HubSpot teams were even using these tools.
1:02:38 So there was no search discovery motion, the place that at this time, even still people are learning about these new cutting-edge things in Slack and on LinkedIn, there’s no like, hey, we need to go buy a digital salesroom tool or we need to go buy a landing page tool.
1:02:56 Go search in the HubSpot Marketplace and see what’s available. That wasn’t a thing. Got it. For more stuff like there is for more established categories.
1:03:05 Yeah. And so, well, this is interesting. So, so you launch this thing and you’re primarily getting customers through LinkedIn and relationships?
1:03:17 Well, initially, because I still have my agency, all the revenue came from my clients. And once again, I forced, I tried to bundle them.
1:03:24 And but this time it worked. I said, listen, I run an agency. We specialize in helping teams that use HubSpot get new leads, and we have this tool to give you those leads.
1:03:34 It’s called Upbound Sync. And they’re like, yeah, sure, we need leads. If you get a HubSpot, great. We want them there, we really want the leads, but we also do want them in HubSpot.
1:03:41 And that was my first few customers. That was all my initial MRR, but it was because of that. And then when I started to get people come in and say, hey, man, your agency looks great, but I just need the app.
1:03:51 That’s when I was like, I have a SaaS. Like, not like a software, I don’t have a SaaS company, but I have a SaaS because someone is paying me only for this Heroku app that I built with the developer.
1:04:05 Yes. So that was like the beginning of that. And so we were only selling direct for a while. So people would find us directly and then eventually I wound down my agency And then it was like all software revenue Yeah, and you shared your graph with me Yeah, it’s pretty like it’s like 10 15% a month you’d
1:04:24 say in terms of growth Let me just look at it here on my side Let me see I can I can share one we’re not like doing the build-in public thing with numbers But I can share my screen with uh sure.
1:04:34 Yeah, there’s a little share button down there. You should be able to use that Yeah, so this is like the transition.
1:04:39 I’ve not talked about this with anybody anywhere yet. Nobody’s asked. Yeah, this is the journey to the journey from services revenue to software.
1:04:49 So purple is my services are consulting revenue in green is my sass. This is gross top line, you know, money made.
1:04:58 And so if you’re just listening, I mean, it’s pretty much across fate. I mean, you’ve got you can describe it probably better than me, but, but yeah, I mean, this is kind of on one hand.
1:05:06 So starting in 2023. Most of your revenue is consulting. And then you see around, well, I guess this would be just at the end of 2023, you start to get software revenue.
1:05:20 And then the software revenue just grows every single month. And then gradually, the consulting revenue, we’re not graduate, actually, it comes off, you know, you can see the transition point where you’re just like oh it’s time to switch to software and I mean yeah we don’t have to share the numbers 
1:05:39 but like you’re doing well like this is you’ve done it right. Thanks man. Yeah for sure. I feel like we’re we’re there.
1:05:48 I mean I’ll tell you this transition point may 2024 so friend of the pod friend of so many people Rubin Gamma’s when things were taking off I emailed Rubin and I was like hey man I think things are going pretty well like tell me about tiny seed, like, I’ve got this agency.
1:06:04 I have these expenses. Like, we have child care costs. I have a mortgage. We have two cars. Like my, I mean, my wife works in health care.
1:06:10 She’s got a great job and she’s making money, but we just have a lot of combining coming. I can’t not make money.
1:06:16 Yeah. What if this keeps going well? And then like a month later, I was like, oh my god, I need help.
1:06:23 Like, I’m having calls with people that are way better prospects than I’ve ever had before, asking questions that I am not at all equipped to answer.
1:06:31 and I don’t have time to answer. And the hardest thing that I don’t think people, unless you’ve been in it, it’s really hard to explain, is that like, if you have a multi-thousand dollar a month retainer client, and then you have like a multi-hundred dollar a month sass client, how do you balance tasks
1:06:48 between those two things? Like it’s different, the math doesn’t math. Like one, this pays my mortgage, but this one is valued at the top line.
1:06:58 My services are valued at bottom line, like EBITDA or whatever, like how much profit they’re generating, the software is valued on paper at the top line of how much the MRR is or ARR is, but like this isn’t a lot of money and that is a lot of money, but this is technically worth more and then like this
1:07:12 is a little fix, but it’s just a little bug and this is like something where if I don’t get back to them, they’ll fire me right away.
1:07:18 And so like it’s literally, it’s impossible to decide what to do at any given moment because the comparison is it’s it’s apples and oranges yeah and so that was like the appeal so so I kind so I started kind of coming back into like oh yeah tiny seed oh yeah like this is like there’s a thing for this
1:07:37 and so we ended up throwing our hat in and getting into tiny seed and I made the decision to shut down my agency even though at the time my SaaS revenue was um 20% of what my services revenue was.
1:07:52 I felt like the momentum was just sort of undeniable, but I couldn’t. I needed a bridge. I just couldn’t get it to grow fast enough to pay my bills.
1:08:06 And I didn’t know what I was doing. I had never gotten this level of success before. And so I didn’t know how to like my the learning I had done in the beginning, it got me here.
1:08:16 And then all of a sudden I like slammed into a ceiling of like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know who to ask for help.
1:08:20 Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know, like, what should I be prioritizing right now? And so for us, like, that was like a god’s end of like, okay, this will allow me to bridge the gap.
1:08:29 Yeah. And, and then hopefully it works. If it doesn’t work, that’s really stressful because I just shut down this thing that it’s been paying my bills since 2019.
1:08:37 Yeah. But it has been my like, my lifeline. Yeah. Now I’m committing to this. I switch, I mean, this is like a little detail, but it was an LLC.
1:08:45 So I was able to do owner draws and it was very tax advantage. And now I’m switching to a C-Corp, where I can’t pull money out of the business.
1:08:51 And like, I can’t do the, I don’t have the flexibility that I had before. So all of a sudden, it was like, yeah, business has to work.
1:08:59 And so it was a really, but it felt like, again, like I didn’t have a choice. I can felt like this is so obviously a better choice that even though it’s a hard one, it’s the right one.
1:09:08 And so that turned out to be the case. I’ve never heard anyone describe like the real, I’ve never heard anyone describe the way that sorry, I’ve never heard anyone describe using tiny seed as a bridge before.
1:09:25 So you’ve got this like clear momentum with the SaaS. It’s growing month over month. But in order to transition from consulting to this new thing, you need something to bridge the gap.
1:09:38 And it sounds like in your case, that was both money but also just having more people in your court that could help you, could help strategize, could help make decisions.
1:09:50 Both definitely. Yeah. Did you use the money for hiring or it was just as runway for yourself? Yeah, all three.
1:09:58 So I use it a little bit, runway for myself. I brought on CSM. I brought our engineer on full time.
1:10:04 What’s a CSM? Oh, sorry, customer success, success manager. Oh, okay, yep. Um, and then a year-on-full-time, and then we also got, um, sock two, which was totally worth it.
1:10:15 Um, but like just like upfront capital intense things, capital intensive things. Um, and the other thing that happened is at the tiny seed, like when the founders all met up, I had all of a sudden agency started texting me and they were like, hey, dude, I heard you’re winding down.
1:10:33 I’ve always been curious about that on sync. actually have a client that needs this. And it was because I shut down my agency.
1:10:38 I think they felt a lot more comfortable working with me. Yeah. And so I set up our partner program may when we joined tiny seed.
1:10:44 And now it’s like 80% of our business. 80% of like revenue leads. Oh wow. Yeah. So now like so agencies who I’ve been friends with this whole time and I’ve always been like sharing notes with them.
1:10:56 Yeah. Now they have clients who come in and they say, listen, we’re a 1500 up, 1500 employee company, series D company, we have money, we have people, not the problem.
1:11:05 We just need the best. We need someone who’s willing to take chances and do really interesting things. And like, that’s what agencies are for.
1:11:11 Yeah. And like Nike works with that agencies, right? Yeah. So, so that, but they say, but we use Salesforce. Yeah.
1:11:19 And so we need this data. We need in Salesforce. We need to be able to attribute it. And it needs to be compliant.
1:11:24 And so that’s what we solve. We solve all of those problems and we let these really brilliant Grove hackers do their thing and then we connect them to the people who have the willingness to pay and the desire to pay But have rules that need to be followed and so that has become this huge flywheel for
1:11:41 us and we’re helping them grow We’re helping them move up market because they’re getting bigger and better customers because they can tell these stories I see so this is not like a standard like affiliate program This is a program, a partner’s program where you are giving the partners leads.
1:11:59 They bring them to us. We refer some. I’ve referred Anthropics, so that’s a pretty good one. But we don’t have a ton of leads.
1:12:07 They bring them into us generally. But what we bring is we bring the tool and then we bring a lot of support.
1:12:12 So we set up a Slack Connect channel with them and with their customer and our CSM is in there. And so our customer So if have CRM questions, if they need to get in the weeds, like we say, hey, we will help think through this with your customer so that you can do the thing that you’re good at.
1:12:28 You are not a Salesforce admin. Yes. You understand how to shift their signals and how to get the right people.
1:12:34 We’ll make sure that it’s a lead in Salesforce with the right fields populated, create it at the right time. Yeah.
1:12:38 Signed to the right person kind of thing. So for your partners, you are enabling a whole new category of business for them and giving them a superpower when they have a new client, they’re like, oh, wow, I can use outbound sync for this.
1:12:55 Outbound sync is going to provide me with all the support and the tooling to do this job that might be too big for them to do normally or whatever.
1:13:04 Yeah, it’s just hard. It’s just it’s just it is a software required. The only way to do this is with software Yeah, and the funny thing is that these people are like they have their own like a dev resources typically They have tons of really sophisticated internal tooling It’s just like hard enough and
1:13:19 enough of a headache. Yeah, that that I that there’s enough of an opportunity for us to build something Yeah to for you to for them to outsource it to you Yeah, and so happy to by the way like I’ve had people tell me like dude I’m spending, I’ve got a bunch of vendors where I’m spending a bunch of money
1:13:34 . Half of them think it’s the only one that I don’t even feel like negotiating with you because I don’t ever want to think about that source.
1:13:40 I mean, that’s a great signal. I mean, that’s the whole beauty about SaaS is you’re basically socializing the cost of software but also support across thousands of customers.
1:13:55 Exactly. And so, you know, I’m looking at your pricing right now. It starts at $99 and it goes up from there 249, 499, and then Enterprise, so that’s a pretty good deal.
1:14:08 For 499, you’re getting email and Slack support. I think we go over the top with support. Yeah. I think if someone, if someone were to come in today, they’d be like, you got to dial that back.
1:14:19 Yeah. I mean, I think we go over the top with support at Transistor 2 and I’ve been a Transistor customer.
1:14:24 I agree. And it was awesome. And I like, I love the experience. I think that’s just like again, it’s one of those things where if the whole world is going to AI chat bots and support docs or poorly paid customer support people that aren’t professionals, then what’s one way to stand out?
1:14:45 It’s having unbelievable customer support and it takes less people than to support 36,000 users on transistor, which is probably, I don’t know, 8,000 paying accounts, that’s two full-time people to do that.
1:15:04 So it’s an investment, but it’s less people than you might think to do that work. And people remember, you know, and then you get better feedback.
1:15:14 The AI support thing, I’ve had such negative experiences with that, and the thing is like because we have years to the ground like we’re able to ship better features and it’s I don’t know I mean that’s the other thing is that you know AI might answer people’s questions and it might give you analytics
1:15:28 on the most you know but it can’t see the subtext it can’t observe things it can’t make notes and say oh man like I can really dig in here and see what is causing what’s motivating this customer and then also what’s causing their problem and those are opportunities.
1:15:48 And if your job as an entrepreneur or a founder is to correctly identify opportunities, like that’s your whole job. And it’s like, what are the reasons I used to do that?
1:16:01 Well, part of it, it’s these back channels, these WhatsApp groups and Slack channels and all that stuff. Part of it is me having an audience on LinkedIn and watching what’s going on there.
1:16:10 And a big part of it is observing real customers and instead of just answering their question and moving on, just taking a break as it paused.
1:16:21 Hey, let me dig into this with you a bit. Like, can we jump on a call and talk about that?
1:16:25 Can I just ask you some more questions? Very few people are willing to ask one follow-up question. I think we need to be asking two or three or four follow-up questions.
1:16:36 That’s where you kind of really dig into things and the, you know, AI just wants to move on Right and resolved anything else.
1:16:45 Yeah, and our propensity as humans is to want to move on But the founders job is to say let’s slow this down Hey, tell me more about that like what’s going on there?
1:16:57 What are you using right now? Okay? And is there like you’re paying for that? Okay? is it working for you, what’s working, what’s not?
1:17:07 That’s the magic right there. Yeah, I mean, I totally, I mean, I totally agree. So yeah, I mean for us, that’s super important.
1:17:18 And we, yeah, we’re in this funny spot where like all the time people are like, why can’t I just do this with Zapier?
1:17:26 I think it’s like a really good bootstrap business opportunity. Yeah, I don’t think it’s a venture-scale business, but it’s like tiny seat was willing to take a chance on it and like we I needed that bridge.
1:17:36 Yeah, and there’s just no way I could have done otherwise. I mean that no that was like a couple months where I was doing both was by far the hardest period.
1:17:43 Yeah, the last six years. Yeah, by far. Yeah, I remember I was on a call with a guy. He was in Poland.
1:17:49 We were on a call at three a.m. Yeah, he’s like, dude, what time is it? I’m like, oh, it doesn’t matter.
1:17:54 Like can you just tell me if this is working yet. Yeah. Like it was excruciatingly painful. Yeah. And, you know, we went through some family medical stuff in between, which I’m only talking about publicly, but it was extraordinarily difficult.
1:18:10 And we’ve like subsequently had a second child. And so it’s like life just is happening. Yeah. Well, all of this is happening too.
1:18:17 Yeah. But yeah, there’s a lot of reasons why this is like a weirdly cool opportunity. We’re sitting between a few things.
1:18:21 A lot of reasons why people think like, Zapper could do it or make could do it. couldn’t I just do that with chat GPT.
1:18:26 Yeah, and but because we’re listening to customers and we’re finding these weird little problems like I’m on a demo call and I show someone like oh and like you can do this in Salesforce.
1:18:33 They’re like oh, that’s okay. That’s it. Yeah, but like you wouldn’t know unless you we talked to like 50 other Salesforce people.
1:18:40 Yeah, we built that one tiny little feature where it’s like it’s not documented anywhere, but it’s just how that part of Salesforce works.
1:18:49 Yeah, and if you talk to someone who knows, then you know, and if you don’t, then you won’t build it.
1:18:53 and being able to observe those their reactions and everything. So everything you’re telling me, Harris, just reminds me of this article by Rob Snyder called How Loom Found Pull.
1:19:05 And the idea is that you want instead of like pushing a solution all the time, you want where there’s just natural pull.
1:19:14 People are naturally being pulled towards your solution. And he has this this pull hypothesis that I think is so great.
1:19:22 It goes, what are we designing for? And number one criteria, there’s a project on there to do list. Number two criteria, that is unavoidable right now.
1:19:33 So there’s a project on there to do list and it’s unavoidable, they need to deal with it. Number three, they consider a list of options to get it done.
1:19:41 So, okay, we got a problem, we need to get it done now. Here’s our list of options. We’re going through this right now with transistor because we’re trying to find an HLS video streaming hosting solution.
1:19:51 So we’re going through a list of providers, but they think their options have serious limitations and I think we’ve all experienced this, right?
1:20:00 Like here’s something. So this is a poll hypothesis and they go through looms whole company story and their first one was open test didn’t work.
1:20:14 Great hypothesis. Just like you had I think some really good early hypothesis didn’t work. Then they go to the second one.
1:20:22 Here’s the second one. Open test is the product version two. That didn’t work. Okay, now we’re going to create a product called OpenVid.
1:20:31 And they’re getting closer and closer. And then finally, they get to Lume, which is, you know, very successful video recording and sharing tool which was acquired by Jira for 975 million and what I like about this story and your story I see it mirrored in both is that Rob asks the question like was that
1:20:57 original hypotheses wrong maybe not because there’s actually some other companies That release products exactly with that hypotheses and it worked.
1:21:08 So there’s a mix of success factors, you know, timing and maybe the skill of the founder or these connections or the product approach or whatever.
1:21:19 Any given hypotheses can work, but all you can do as an entrepreneur is keep iterating and keep trying to find And the thing that’s going to work for you, work for your customers, work in your world.
1:21:38 And yeah, it just seems like you went through this exact journey multiple. Yeah, I mean, if you if you scroll up that thing, I mean, this totally mirrors.
1:21:47 So like today, like I had a like this week, we’ve been like recently, we changed our pricing and since we changed our pricing and we, me, I changed our pricing in like late April after I went to microconf.
1:21:59 And I listened to Marcos Rivera. It’s called like street pricing. Yeah. I listened to his microconf talk literally five times and then plus all the other random stuff.
1:22:07 Okay. And I think we’ve really since then conversations have been going even better. So it’s like for us, like who are we designing for?
1:22:14 It’s revenue teams using how it’s about in Salesforce. Yeah. So they typically have multiple salespeople and they’re running this, like, outbound motion.
1:22:25 They need to connect, there’s a project on the list. Literally, someone said, two people, both sales calls this morning, both said, I have it on my list to figure out how to get these two things to talk to each other.
1:22:34 Yeah. It’s unavoidable because they’re spending the agency is the secret sauce for us because when they’re really serious, they hire an agency.
1:22:42 And so we’re spending a lot of money on this really good agency. So we need results and we need to attract what’s happening.
1:22:49 Yeah, that’s the like secret to why I think why it’s working so well is because they’re committed to the outcome versus internal teams like play around with outbound but like varying results and it’s there’s no urgency.
1:23:00 Yeah, so it’s like they’re shipping campaigns next week. We’ve got to get everything connected or whatever. They look at Zapier or Make or anything or building themselves or not not integrating them is like always an option.
1:23:13 And then ultimately some of those teams decide that App Bonsink is going to help them get the data the way they need it.
1:23:20 Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, maybe there’s a way to like kind of forcibly shoehorn this into any story, but I do feel like as I go through this, it feels like we have a version of this today.
1:23:30 And I think this is the point is that if you can’t honestly and realistically and reasonably fill out this hypothesis worksheet, already that’s a no-go.
1:23:45 Now the hypothesis worksheet does not mean you’re automatically going to hit a home run but the way you just described it I can there’s just these key points it’s like this is a project on their list that’s unavoidable right now how do we know that they’ve hired an agency they have put they’ve invested
1:24:04 time and money and resources this is and this is like everything in a business like John and I have been struggling with sales tax forever if you listen to this podcast and it’s been on our list forever and then it reaches a boiling point where it’s unavoidable.
1:24:22 We’ve got to deal with this right now. We are going to invest real time, real money. How do we know?
1:24:28 Well it’s become the Justin’s number one priority. It’s my number one project for the next two three months, we are going to get this done.
1:24:37 And in our case, we hired somebody, a contractor to help us just like, I was meeting with them every week.
1:24:44 We’re strategizing. We’re trying to figure out what exactly do we need to do? We’re booking meetings. Like, that’s how you know it’s serious.
1:24:52 And again, there’s no guarantees, but the stronger the signal is here, And the less you dilute yourself, like when there’s real money being invested and you have that key observation like you had, which is they’ve hired an agency.
1:25:11 This is serious. Like now this has gone from nice to have or yeah, that sounds good or to know, we were pushing.
1:25:20 We’re doing this. Yeah. This board level metrics, like we have customers who are like the VPN marketing is like, I board meeting next week.
1:25:30 I have a question about this up on sync data because our internal admin is going to build a report for me for my board meeting.
1:25:37 Yeah. And you can in customer interviews and investigations, you can ask questions that will reveal this, which is what are you doing about this problem right now?
1:25:49 So you say it’s on your list. You’ve got a project that’s unavoidable that you say is unavoidable. You say it’s on your list.
1:25:56 What are you actually doing to solve that. And if they’re like, eh, not much, I haven’t really looked for anything yet.
1:26:04 Like, what have you considered? Ah, not much. It’s like, okay. This isn’t sure it’s on your list, but I don’t see actual motion.
1:26:14 Like, the customer has to be in motion in a real serious way for it to work. This is like, I built that that project with a college grad called Swagfan.
1:26:25 And it’s like, yeah, yeah, making swag. Now, I use it. It’s great. But that is not a serious project on most people’s list.
1:26:38 And so it’s never gonna have that same pull that something else would, there’s something way higher on most founders lists and most marketing people’s lists then we gotta get swag out right now to our fans and influencers and everything.
1:26:55 Well, so the urgency thing, I mean, for sure, there’s so much to that. Last thing on this is where I think it’s super interesting is like the value goes both ways for the agencies too.
1:27:04 They wanna be able to prove results. Yeah, and so when we get the data into that important system, they can show the customers the value.
1:27:12 So for them, it helps with retention too. Yeah. And it helps them get credit when there’s conversion that they didn’t directly drive.
1:27:19 Mm-hmm. So I email a company, let’s say you’re doing the sales sacs thing and I end up emailing like Helen for some reason and I’m like with numeral, numeral solves sales sacs for SAS companies.
1:27:29 Email Helen. Helen’s like, this isn’t my thing, but I forward it to Justin. Yeah. Then Justin goes to numeral, his website, signs up.
1:27:35 The called agency that email Helen, and then the next day you sign up for numeral like that’s a conversion that they’re normally never getting credit for.
1:27:45 Yes. So like there’s, we’re so in the middle of lots of things but so we’re, I think we’re in the middle of it, like trying to create win-wins across things and just solve a knowing problem so that different people can talk.
1:27:55 And like, the swag fan thing is a funny example of like, yeah, like, who’s feeling that? Who’s like, God, I really, I really need this swag.
1:28:02 Exactly. Yeah. So there’s a lot of weird ways where I don’t know. Ultimately, like, I’m not sure why this is working right now.
1:28:07 If you add it all up, I don’t know, I just, it feels like it’s going really well. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
1:28:12 And I couldn’t really, if I had to recreate it, I couldn’t because I couldn’t really boil it down to like, okay, here’s three things or here’s the five things.
1:28:20 But this is the important piece I want people to take away. This is a journey. It’s like you deciding as a founder, I’m going to do this and at the beginning, you think it’s going to be a one or two year project.
1:28:36 Like I’m going to I’m going to quit my job and I’m going to get this done in two years and I’m going to have a great business.
1:28:41 And the truth is this is a lifetime project, and you are on a journey of iterating and trying to get closer to your goal.
1:28:53 And again, every at bat you have, you got to be doing something, some fundamentals, to give yourself a better shot.
1:29:03 But you also have to go up to bat. You have to make some swings things like you did. And then eventually something will hit.
1:29:13 And you won’t know completely why you’ll have some ideas. As an outsider, I think I can see a lot of characteristics about why outbound sync worked.
1:29:22 It just has a lot of built in momentum. You’re in an existing jar, uh, juggernaut of an ecosystem with HubSpot and Salesforce.
1:29:35 There’s so much money in motion there. And so for you to capture some of that value or create new value inside that ecosystem, it just makes sense.
1:29:46 And I think people need to follow this example and understand there’s no guarantees. So you could get up to 10 times and it might not work out.
1:29:58 But what you’re doing as a founder is you’re basically betting that if I keep at this, if I keep improving, If I keep learning, if I keep iterating, one of these at bats is going to produce something.
1:30:12 And yeah, I did. I’m just so pleased for you, congrats on getting it to here. This is such an awesome success story.
1:30:20 Thanks, man. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I learned so much. I mean, I feel like I was learning so much for so long from you, so when we connected and talking about coming back on here, it felt like a really, yeah, like a full circle thing is happy to do it.
1:30:33 You know, like, yeah, I feel like it’s the end of the beginning now. So now like the work begins, but it feels like we’re default alive.
1:30:41 Not like really anxious about paying bills or the the threat of not being able to pay bills sort of somewhat soon.
1:30:48 And so now I’m hoping I can breathe and start even taking some bigger risks than we have before. Like in the last six years, every time I placed a bet, it kind of had to pay off or I had to do or or be such a little bet that it could lose.
1:31:01 Oh, yeah, I mean, once you get out of that scrappy bets stage where like good investors, good people who make people who are good at making bets Eventually ideas that they are betting Resources that they can lose right so it’s like this is a pretty good bet But if I lose this bet, it’s not the end of
1:31:23 the world whereas when you’re at the beginning and you’re bootstrapping and you’re scrappy It’s like if I lose this bad Yeah, like it could be rough, you know, and it felt like every bet leading up to transistor was like that for me.
1:31:39 It was like, yeah. Okay, like this is, I am kind of betting the farm every time. Exactly. That’s why it’s so hard, but yeah, now at this stage, I think you’re about to enter a really fun stage.
1:31:53 Running a company is always hard, but at this stage when you have more resources and more breathing room and more calm and more margin, then it just becomes about showing up every day.
1:32:03 I just think my job is showing up every day and moving this giant rock further down the path. Like I’m just pushing it a little bit more and those efforts are kind of multiplied in a way that didn’t happen before because there is existing pull.
1:32:20 So yeah, I’m excited for you. For folks who want to check out what you’re doing, where should they find you on LinkedIn And at the website, yeah, about sync.com.
1:32:31 And then yeah, LinkedIn Harris Kenny, look me up. As we’ve been embracing our partners, I post really weird, funny stuff like about Pokemon and I’ve been posting memes.
1:32:40 And just like we’ve gone to ICP and so I’m just having fun like posting for them. Oh, sweet. So yeah, so if you like kind of funny goofy LinkedIn, go there.
1:32:48 If you’re looking for inspiration, it’s not the place. Sweet, sweet. Well, thanks so much for being here. I’m going to read out our supporters because we haven’t done our Patreon shout out to noisle.
1:32:59 So thanks to everyone who’s still supporting this show on Patreon. We’ve got Pascal, we’ve got Greg Park, we’ve got Mitchell Davis, we’ve got Marcel Fallet, we’ve got Del Condo, we’ve got Ward from MemberSpace.com, Vandercassie, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitver, Colin Gray, and Dave Junta.
1:33:19 Thanks everybody. Thanks, Harris. See you soon.