Greg’s Update:

Fails:

  • I didn’t get to work on the 2nd blog post

Results:

  • System.ly Revenue –
    • MRR: $25,038
    • Total For Month: $27,528
    • We took one client from a half day session and upsold him into one of our plans.
  • Spent a lot of time working on my ads and testing new audiences with my ads person. What I’m realizing is that it is gonna take a while to really dial in something that works so I’m glad i’m willing to experiment.
  • We concluded week 6 of 6 for the pilot program.
    • I’m doing 2 bonus Q&A calls for the peeps next week while I work on repackaging the course.
    • In the course, I’ve made some upsell offers on ways that people can work with us moving forward through either our coaching/implementation plan and DFY packages and about half of the group has already scheduled their consultation to tap into those options which is exactly how I want the system to work.
    • With the coaching/implementation package being quarterly at about 1200-1700/month and our DFY packages starting around $2-$3k things should work out well. We’re also offering discounts when people buy multiple packages which we already have interest on.
  • With the next big push being re-packaging the course, I’ve blocked a lot of my week next week to re-recording that content so we can begin doing webinars again 2nd week of september.
    • I’m going to be re-working the webinar as well a bit so need to block time for that and modify slides etc so that the pitch is more accurate and not as Infusionsoft specific this time around.
  • I had 3 sales calls one of which went well and I should hear back today if the prospect will be moving forward which is a $7k quote for 2 of our funnel packages. Fingers crossed on that one.
  • I got all the website revisions back to the designer and I actually just received their updates back today so I’ll be reviewing those later today.
  • On Tuesday night Noah Kagan from AppSumo and SumoMe was in town and we got together at this party along with Andy Drish and had some good convos and always fun hanging out with inspiring people that push you and motivate you.
  • So, last week I explained how we have been dealing with one issue where we messed up something for a client and it’s turned into this messy messy situation and could potentially cost the client thousands in MRR. So needless to say we’ve been doing everything in our power to rectify the issue and plan for this to not happen moving forward.
    • I mentioned this because I want to share some tips on what to do when you fuck up. By no means am I an expert but I want to share what has worked for me.
    • When you work with clients very closely they even become friends. Heck sometimes your friends are clients. I consider many of my clients friends at this point.
    • So when something goes wrong…you’re dealing with it as a vendor and a friend which makes it challenging. Anyway, I got an email from the owner of the company that we have this issue with and, needless to say, they expressed their frustration and disappointment in me and the team and all that. The email hurt. A lot. I had to take a couple of walks around the building and think through how i’d respond because I didn’t want it to be purely emotional of a response. It couldn’t be skewed to “friend or too business” because the initial email was a bit of a mix. (therein lies the challenges of having friends as clients but at the same time there are many positives to this as well).
    • Anyway, I thought through my response and even ran it by someone that i trust to get feedback.
    • At the end of the day, the client came back and said a lot but the email started with “This email oozes of class, which you have plenty of. This could be a course in how to respond to an angry client, and friend for that matter :-)”
      • So I wanted to share a few tips if you’re going through this with a client.
        • 1) don’t respond right away or you risk responding too reactively. It might be too emotional and not thought out.
        • 2) talk through it with someone else that might understand.
        • 3) draft your email outside of email in case you accidently send (been there done that)
        • 4) acknowledge them and receive what they are saying and thank them for allowing you to show up in this situation to grow and become a better business owner. This is a tremendous opportunity to grow and show class. Do it because you should.
        • 5)  ask them if they feel that they are being heard and what they feel would be the best go forward plan as well.
        • 6) don’t just apologize and make excuses, but share what you have already done and will do to prevent this from happening in the future. This shows your initiative and care for the matter.
        • 7) Also, don’t accept all the blame (if it was genuinely a team effort and other factors were involved). I’m not saying point fingers but in most situations you’re in a partnership with your clients and they need to be held accountable too. It is possible to do this with tact and class.
        • 8) Be ready to lose the client and accept that and move.
  • Plans:
    • My main focus is re-recording and re-packaging S2S course
    • I also hope to advance our website designs to development.
    • I have my consults with members to discuss future work together
    • I have my coaching call with coach,
    • A few sales calls
    • My one fantasy football draft

Justin’s Update:

Fails:

  • Do a test run of the webinar with our team and then get something scheduled for the following week.
    • Get the actual live webinar scheduled and look to start driving facebook ads to it.
    • Reason: With sales and support updates and my focus on placing and interviewing developers, this just fell to the backburner.
  • We are working on a killer piece of content that I’m hoping we can finish off next week. Remember, we’ve changed how we do content to really focus on epic 3,000+ word pieces.
    • Reason: This is a monster piece and we will be hopefully publishing this next week.
  • I want to investigate 401k and group health insurance options and hopefully be able to move forward with that once funds come in as well. This will help entice new talent to join the team as well.
    • Reason: We’re going to shelve 401k for now and just focus on offering health insurance options.

Results:

  • LeadFuze software revenue is $30.4k MRR.
  • Had an article I wrote go live in HuffingtonPost. Always a nice link and good exposure as well as solid credibility.
  • The nice thing about re-evaluating your support and sales process is finding opportunities to improve it. Damian and I spent time this week really diving into the current situation not only from a support standpoint and getting tickets created from Intercom into ZenDesk if it can’t be answered right away, but also looking to dial in our qualifying call process. Now that we have daily webinars rolling, the initial qualifying call for new users can take place and if they are a 1 or 2 user potential account we will direct them to the daily webinar. If they have potential for 3 or more users then we will direct them to book a time with Damian for a one-on-one demo.
  • Went through all of our tickets in Zenhub and prioritized so we have a clear starting point for the new dev team.
  • Hired one developer to come onboard while I wait for the investor funds to come through to bring on more. This was a developer I worked with years ago who did a great job and has only gotten better. So I’m excited to have him join the team. Especially given his experience with React.js. I have another coming onboard in a full-time capacity next week. He’s also a developer I’ve worked with in the past on different projects. Neither are super experienced with Go, which is what we’re primarily built with, but this is a relatively newer language that’s up and coming still, so that’s not too surprising.
  • Although I shelved the webinar and facebook ad campaign for this week, we did get our on demand webinars rolling. They can be accessed every 15 minutes and we have a live one going daily as well. This is helping maximize our sales process right now since Damian and I will be handling the support burden as well at the moment. We are funneling as many prospects through there as we can for now.
  • Got a lay of the land on the support side of things. Right now we’ll have Damian handling support in the mornings, his wife will actually be helping out during the middle of the day, and then I’ll be handling tickets at the end of the day.
    • I do think the product manager should be involved in support. Given that I’m taking on this role, I think it will help determine which issues are a priority. At the same time, I can set the table for fixes that need to take place at the end of the day so that they can hopefully be resolved the next day.
    • We’ll be doing this for the foreseeable future as we want to wait to hire someone locally until we’re in the office. Obviously, we will see how much of a burden this becomes and make a decision on adding someone from there.
  • Had a recap call with Dominic as well just to get next steps mapped out there as well. He shared some of his thinking and plans for some of our current issues which was helpful.
    • Overall, I’m past the stressed out phase and now sort of looking forward to this next chapter. It’s an opportunity to evaluate current processes and refine them.
  • This morning had a next steps call with a guy that I originally found on FounderDating. He’s coming onboard to lead the dev team. This will be big as he has experience building out and leading a dev team, can make server architecture related decisions, etc. These were some things our previous CTO wasn’t as experienced with. We’re going to work together the rest of this year in sort of a part-time basis to see how we work together. Then, the plan is for him and his family to move here at the beginning of the year. Luckily, his wife has two sisters here in the Phoenix area so that always helps.
  • Listened to Fred Stevens-Smith, the Founder of Rainforest QA, on the SaaStr podcast talk about how losing people is a good thing, because you learn more about what you are specifically needing in those roles. The message really resonated with me as we begun interviewing this week for development and customer support.

Plans:

  • Get the new development resources setup. Will be spending a lot of time here mapping things out and organizing development tasks.
  • Get into a good rhythm with support tickets and this process
  • Hope to get investor funds into the bank

Resources Mentioned:

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