How Andre Haykal Jr. Grew List Kit to $1m ARR in 90 Days

Hi, I'm Lucas James. And I'm Jordan Ross. And we're the co hosts of how to Scale An Agency. After scaling our own agencies to over $185,000 per month in sales and working with agencies doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, like Hawk Media and Neil Patel, we've made this show to interview the top digital marketing agency owners and highlight the fastest ways to scale your agency. If you would like to join the best digital marketing agency community on the planet and let us help you scale, go to Twiz IO to sign up today. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of how to Scale An Agency. I'm on with Andre Heikl Jr. Of Liskit and many other businesses like Cold email Mastery, et cetera. And I'm really excited to have him on the show for the second time actually. So thank you so much for being on, man.

Yeah, thank you, Lucas. Appreciate it. Excited to catch up.

Yeah. So one of the most exciting things you're working on, at least you're posting about all time, is this ListKit company. And Liskit, for people who don't know, is essentially a better version of some of these lead gen tools like Apollo. You have a little breakdown on your website of Liskit vs Apollo vs ZoomInfo without going into, I guess like the checks on here and the crosses of why it's better or worse. Maybe you could give us like a 1, 2 sentence summary of why you built this and why it's better than other tools for lead generation.

Yeah. So just some background on myself. Again, thanks for having me on. Really excited to share more about List Kit because I don't think the story is really out there yet because we've been so busy building the actual thing, which has been very difficult, which I'm sure we'll talk about the failures along the way and all that stuff. But really the reason we built Liskit is because I am an agency owner. First off, I run a Legion agency that does cold email outreach. And to do cold email outreach, you need the emails or the leads to actually send the emails to. Right. And the process to scrape the emails or export the emails from some of these tools like Apollo and ZoomInfo are not only super expensive, but also took forever. And like as a CEO or as a founder of this cold email lead gen agency, I found myself spending so much time like in spreadsheets and trying to organize these leads list and not enough time actually building my agency. So it was the first bottleneck I ever ran into as an agency owner. And ever since then, since three years ago, I like set out on this side mission to build a SaaS or a better version of Apollo or Zoom Info, and really had no idea what we were getting into because big data is a much bigger industry than playing in the agency space. Yeah, the story's been interesting, but it's really just to simplify and make things cheaper while also spending less time doing the lead gen side of things.

And you do have an AI component that's coming out, correct?

Yeah. So basically the way any of these tools work is it's all based on user input, which is also similar to how like AI works. Right? Like the quality of the output is the quality of the input. And one of the biggest bottlenecks when you go and use a tool like Apollo or ZoomInfo, it's funny, a lot of times, like I'll go into Apollo, make a search and I'll be like, oh, the Apollo leads suck. But the reality is it's just my search is not accurate to what I'm actually wanting to see. And so it's called an icp. Right. Like when you're trying to reach out to people to either get on a call with you for your services or whatever it might be, they're in your ICP or your ideal client profile. And most people that do outbound or just do Legion in general, they don't know what their ICP is. And so that's the number one bottleneck we're facing right now is in Apollo's facing it. ZoomInfo. Same thing. So we want to use AI to help you to accurately describe your ICP just with like a series of questions. So that's how we plan on using it. We also plan on using it just through look alike. So there are people that visit your website to learn more about your services. Those are the types of companies that are most likely interested in and an ICP fit to work with you. And so we can take those websites and actually not just build a list of leads from those companies, but a lookalike of those companies so that you can 10x or a hundredx that sample size.

Right, right. No, that's. That's awesome. And I think what's interesting is you have these companies like Apollo that were built without AI and they're trying to add in these AI features. And then you have people like you who are starting with having something like AI, at least because the company is pretty new. It's one of those things where you really are kind of adding it in right at the beginning. Right. Do you think that liskit, because you're starting with that, can actually eventually be as big as something like Apollo or ZoomInfo? Like, do you think it's fundamentally different to start off with AI at the beginning, or do you think it's just another feature that's just being added on? It's not as important?

Yeah, I think, I think if I'm being honest, like in a couple of months it's just going to be another feature. Like, I don't think it's worth having the conversation with Apollo or ZoomInfo just solely based off of AI, because the reality is like Apollo raised over $200 million in the last two years. Right. We're completely bootstrapped. So the level of playing field is not even. And ZoomInfo is also one of the companies that went public during COVID and so they have an even bigger bag to pull from. So, like, we know we're never going to compete on features and how fast we can deploy certain things. So our biggest, you know, opportunity and competitive advantage, at least we believe, and we're getting the feedback from our, our community telling us that this is true as well, is community and education. Right. Because we are some of the best cold emailers in the industry. We've been doing it longer than the guys over at Apollo and Zoom Info and so we know like what's actually needed in a product. So it's not that like we have AI, it's just we know how to use AI. So I do think our AI features will make more sense and actually produce better results. They might not be as advanced and as cool looking as Apollo and Zoom Info, but it's more about results from our standpoint.

I love that. So when it comes to. I'm going to make you a little uncomfortable for a second. I'd love for you to talk about your successes and I know sometimes that can be hard for people to talk about how much they've accomplished, but I do want you to talk about it because I've seen it over the last few years that I've known you and it's been really cool to watch it as an observer on Twitter and elsewhere. So can you maybe quantify that? What have you achieved on whether it's these businesses or with social media that's allowed you to build this? Because I want to set the context for the listener. Because honestly, you've done a lot of really cool stuff that I've seen and I think giving people that context can help make sense of what you're building here with Liskit and everything. Like, could you walk us through that? What have you done so far with these businesses that's given you sort of that confidence to launch this software tool?

Absolutely. So we've done a really good job building what I refer to, refer to as an offer ecosystem, which is really just like a stack of different offers for different levels of buyers. So at first it was the agency, which was our done for you offer, which did really well. We scaled that agency to a hundred thousand dollars a month in less than two years that opened the door to do a coaching program while the agency still continued to grow. And then with our coaching program, we hit, I think it was a 3 or $4 million run rate last year. So that, you know, did extremely well. And really, as these things were growing, it just created more need for product. And so because we had a Legion agency, a coaching program, teaching people how to do cold email, and then we introduced the lower ticket offer, Cold Email Mastery, it just introduced the opportunity for ListKit to come in the fold. Right. So List Kit, like, on its own, is a great product, it's a great idea, but it's very difficult to get a company like that to compete against Apollo and ZoomInfo day one day. But because we have the ecosystem of the agency with over 100 clients and of the coaching program that had over 400 students, and of cold email mastery that we've sold to over 5,000 people, they all need list kit, and so we could sell directly to them day one. And so within the first 90 days of launching, List Kit fully bootstrapped, going up against someone like Apollo, who's raised over $200 million in the last two years, we were able to achieve a $1 million ARR, which is like unheard of in the SaaS world. And again, it's really because we've built the offer ecosystem. It's because we've built the agency before. And I know a lot of your audience are probably agency owners and a lot of them are probably thinking of, like, going the SaaS route, right? Because it makes sense. It's the exit opportunity. And so if you're stuck in the agency game right now, like, understand like, that will make your SaaS more successful when you do pursue it. And so stay in it, right? Like, it's not agency or SaaS, it can be both.

So one thing that I want to also highlight is when you say community, I mean, one of the main ways you're building this community, I mean, even though you did just have a in person event. Right. Which is awesome. That's something that's really cool to hear. But one of the main ways is through social and social media. Can you kind of walk me through to give people hope when it comes to making content, what that looks like to actually generate revenue and sales? Because I'm a very inconsistent person. So I think I speak for a lot of people in the audience where they'll start something and then get bored of it or just get overwhelmed and not continue it. But I feel like I've just seen you continuously post content and your team continuously post content. Can you answer two questions? One, how big of a piece is content and social to this entire strategy? Like when you actually look at how it drives revenue? And two, how do you create a system to get that content out every day, week, month without stopping? Like what's your secret?

Is great questions. I mean the most important secret there is team, right? So like when there are, there are days where I don't post content or where I don't feel like posting content and I might not be talking about ListKit that day, but one of my three business partners are probably going to be covering for me. And so there are days that I miss because I can, because the team's there to support. And so my secret is always just working with more people that you know, believe in the same vision or mission that you're building, number one. And then number two, like content is the most important piece. Like list kit. Again, it's a great product. We fully believe in it. We're going up against big competitors. So I don't think we'd be where we're at currently without like that influence on social media. And it's not that like we're talking about it in the light that it's better than Apollo or It's better than ZoomInfo. What we're doing through our content is we're actually, it's a new concept that I've never heard really anyone talk about, but it's really the value that comes from creating content, which is you're creating your tam. Right? So most people don't know what cold email is or they're not doing cold email even to begin with until they come across our content and some of our products like cold email mastery. So because they're learning cold email from us, they're just going to be open to using whatever tool or whatever things we recommend to them to use to get the results. And so if we tell them to use liskit, they're going to use Liskit. A lot of the guys that use Liskit don't even know Apollo in ZoomInfo even exist, even though they're, you know, 100 or a thousand times bigger market cap companies than Liskit and they've been around way longer. And so what content does is it gives you the authority to build or create your tam. And then once you create your tam, they're just listening to whatever you say from there because they already know I can trust you.

Yeah, I saw something you guys actually posted, or I think it was you guys. There's so many emails that come through, I'm pretty positive. But it was something about like just doing more volume than you even can imagine, like just sending more. And I think this is, you know, in a lot of ways, like the Alex or Mosey influence, because I was reading like a hundred million dollar leads and everything. And like, I think you guys are influencing it really well. And also coming up with your own style that's separate from him too. But I think what's cool is just seeing that really they're, they're really the limit doesn't exist. Right. Like, you guys are continuously pushing more and more and I feel like you almost have to do that when like you say you're going up against Apollo and these big companies, you really can't sacrifice anything. You have to just keep pushing past that barrier that you may not even. That might not be there, but it might be just a mental barrier. And you're like, hey, we need to push more content out, get more to more people. Now I do want to do like a bit of a 180 here and talk about your experience building the app. Because more and more, especially with the advent of ChatGPT, more people are starting to build with no code. More people are starting to build with just SaaS products in general. SaaS is more accessible now. And you talked about at the beginning of the podcast, before we started recording, that you had actually started to build with Bubble IO and then you shifted into building something that's completely custom. Can you just walk us through why that was, why you shifted? And also if there's situations you would recommend people build in bubble in general or not maybe. I'm just curious.

Yeah. So again, the number one secret, before I even give you this answer, it's going to be team. Right? It's very hard to do some of these things on your own. And you also probably you just heard me talk about the success of Liskit, like 90 days into launching a SaaS, we've already achieved a million dollars. ARR. Like, that's unheard of, especially when you're bootstrapped. Part of it is because we have the ecosystem in the community, but another part of it is because we have, you know, like a really good product. But there's a lot of failure that got us to that point, right? So we launched a product in 90 days after we achieved that accomplishment. But to launch the product, it took us nearly two years. And what happened in the first year is we decided, hey, let's just build it, no code. Because that was kind of like the trend that everyone was recommending back in the day. And it just didn't work out. And the reason it didn't work out is because I don't know enough about, like, the technical side of things. I'm not a cto. We didn't have a cto. And so we were really just going in blind and we didn't understand, like, the full scope of what we were trying to build. Like, I think no code works great for really simple solutions, but like, we're building a very complex app that is supposed to search through like 800 million people records by keywords and 67 other different filters and then like verify the leads that are requested in real time. And like, the solution is not simple by any means. And so it took us about six months or 12 months really to go through the process of realizing no code was not for us. And that process cost us more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of investment. Like, we lost $100,000 and had nothing to show for it. And unfortunately at that point, like, I was feeling very depressed, unmotivated like that this was a dead end and I should just go back to focusing on the agency and the coaching program. And again, here's where the offer ecosystem is so beautiful. So last year we were hosting our first event here in Tampa for Client Ascension, and one of the students flew in from Lisbon, Portugal, and he was here early. So we just went to the cigar lounge and just kind of, you know, had a conversation and network and learn more about him and what he's up to. And I was just telling them about Liskit and how we're giving up on it. And he was just instantly just lit up like he understood me. He knew exactly what we were looking to build. And he has this background that is very technical. And he was a CTO that exited multiple SaaS companies. And right there we knew it made sense to partner and team up. And so we found our CTO through the client Ascension community partnered up and within six months he had built a fully custom app with a team of like 12 developers that I've just not even met any of them because he's managed them before us. And so that's like the story of Liskit is like, we almost gave up, we wasted a lot of money on it and nothing really happened until we found, like, that key business partner.

Well, I can tell you, real talk, I think every. It feels like every SaaS company founder, whoever tries to get into SaaS has some sort of, like, depression era. And I had that too, because I had a huge launch with the sec, the first version of the software that I made myself back in 2022. And then when I launched the second version, I just rolled it out way too quickly and it was not good. Like, the second version was way worse than the first version, so tanked in a lot of ways. And I was like, depressed for like a month or two. I was like, damn, should I just give up? Like, not going to keep doing this. But then, you know, to your point, I kind of pulled myself out. That whole thing. I was like, let's just rebuild and do it the right way this time. Not, not the fast way necessarily, but just the right way. Right. Like, build it the right way, you know. And so it is interesting, I think, message here from hearing my story. And your story is like, anybody out there who's trying to build a SaaS, I think on the whole it is worth it because really when you're at a point like where you're at or where I'm at, where it's like you want to potentially sell one day, you start looking at the agency multiples and they're not that good. They're not that good. You're going to sell for like 1x, maybe like 1.2x or something, revenue. So the value add you could bring in your enterprise from a software is, I think, worth it. It's worth the downs, it's worth the lows. And I think, Andre, you're a perfect example of, like, coming up out of that situation and, like, still making work and having this great launch. And so it's inspiring me to keep pushing and I think it's inspiring everyone else who's listening to this podcast to keep pushing too and not to give up. So I commend you for that. And I know we only got a couple more minutes here, so if anyone.

I'll give your audience one warning and then one, like, key recommendation as well. So, like, the one warning is very easy for agency owners to like, look at the SaaS world and be like, man, like, I wish I was in that. Because of the multiples or because it's easier, right? It's like the typical, like they just think if they jump to the other opportunity, it's going to be better somehow. But, like, everything's difficult. SaaS is as difficult or even more difficult than agency. And so everything comes with difficulty even though it might not look like it from the outside. So number one, like just don't just jump to SaaS because it looks cooler or the multiples are better because that's just surface level. Right. And then number two, if you are going to make an attempt at SaaS, like, be ready to go all in. And if you're full time at your agency or spending most of your time there, like, understand you probably need to find a business partner like I did through my cto. And not only that, but even just having a business partner is great. But because the software is complimentary to my agency offering and to what we're teaching in our coaching program, everything just connects and clicks. And I think that's the only way running multiple big businesses is even possible is again, if you have a great team of partners and co founders and everything's complimentary. Right. It doesn't make sense to build like a SaaS in a completely different industry just for the sake of it. So that's just from my experience.

I absolutely love this. I think you're right on the money and I think there's so much to learn from this. So I appreciate you coming on for the second time and I know that once you guys hit $10 million a year in revenue, we'll get you back on the show and document that entire process too. So it's been a blast having you on. You gave me a link which I'm going to put in the show notes for people to access and get 50 free leads. Is there anything else you want to share with the audience before we hop off here?

No, not really. I mean, 50 free leads. So basically what we're doing with Liskit is we want you to see, like, how quality our data actually is. And so if you're interested, without even having to sign up for the app, we'll give you 50 free leads. Now, this is kind of like a test, right? Because when you go to the website, it's going to ask for your name and email, but it's going to ask you for your ICP as well, which I mentioned earlier. On in this interview is like the one thing our audience struggles most with. So if there's anything you get from this interview, if you're doing lead gen, understand the number one place probably to focus and spend more time on is defining who your ICP actually is. Because whether you use Apollo or ZoomInfo or Liskit, it doesn't matter. You're not going to get great results until you truly understand and identify who your ideal client profile is.

Yeah, I love this. Well, thank you so much Andre for everybody listening and another great interview with Andre Heichel and really excited to see where things go with List Kit. Definitely sign up and give it a whirl. So thank you man. I appreciate it.

Appreciate you as well. Thanks for listening. Sweet.