Q&A: Private school growth woes, DIY cabin kits, Shopify app and Twitter influencer. Ep. #019. Small Business Ideas and Entrepreneurship

Reverse engineer exactly what they're doing and treat it just like that. Because the biggest red flag to me about your whole funnel right now is that someone's really excited about what you're doing and they fill out a form and then they don't speak to a human for over a week. Welcome. Welcome to episode 13 of the Kerner Office. We had a great show today. Four people called in. Our first caller owns a private school in amarillo, Texas, population 200,000, and he's struggling to grow. He's having trouble growing. And it's actually a licensed private school, like a franchise with a couple hundred locations around the country. And so I helped him through that. And then we had another caller that was selling a similarly high ticket priced item. They sell cabins, do it yourself kind of Lincoln log type cabins that city dwellers buy to put out on their rural land for their friends and family. Next caller has a Shopify app that does something pretty unique. They allow Shopify store owners to place a clippable coupon on their product page, which seems obvious. Amazon's been doing this for a long time, but it's not obvious. So it's basically the digital version of going to the grocery store and seeing like the paper coupons in the aisles and ripping them off and feeling indebted to go use it to go up to the front of the store and actually pay for it. So I like to call it strategically introduced friction to cool idea. He's having trouble growing as well, so I talked him through that. And then our last caller had a unique problem. He has a good handful of followers on Twitter and he posts cool, interesting business content. And he doesn't want to be rude to all the people that DM him asking for help or advice. But he also wants to help. And so I walked him through that. So I hope you enjoy today's show. Please share it with your friends and family. Subscribe like yada, yada, yada. Do all those things that I cringe at myself for asking you to do. Michael, how you doing, man?

Hey, Chris.

I'm good.

How about you?

Good. I've had your question in front of me for a couple of weeks and it's really interesting. You're out in West Texas. Like, how many people start an untraditional school in west Texas?

Apparently just one.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to talk to you. I always rate the questions from one to ten and I think you were a solid eight and a half. Thank you. Yeah. So tell me about Amarillo Acton Academy.

Yeah, so it's a learner driven school. It was created. Acton was created by a guy named Jeff Sandiford in Austin about 12 years ago. He has an Acton MBA program. And the story is, why can't there be a school in the 21st century that is relevant? Nobody disagrees that the school system is a joke. Traditional school does not replicate anything like what we see out in the real world, whether you're an entrepreneur or not. And so he built the school kind of based on the Acton MBA, which is a no frills, 12 month, really fast MBA program. And so he launched the school. Several people said, man, I want to do this in my city. So then he created the ability to basically be an affiliate.

And so is it like a licensing agreement?

Yeah, I guess so. They have zero input on how we run the school. They basically give us access to materials and stuff like that, and we run the school as we see fit. So it's the exact opposite model of the traditional school where the young people are in charge. We don't have teachers. We have Socratic guides. They're not even allowed to answer questions in the studio.

Are you willing to share revenue numbers?

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So how long have you been opened? And then if you could just share, like yearly or monthly, whatever is most relevant.

Yeah, we started in 20.

20.

20. Right in the middle of COVID with six timings. All right. Great timing, actually. We had four families. We had six learners and four families. Fast forward to today. We have 20, and we charge 8,500 a year, and our revenue is going to be around 120. I don't know what the math is.

You said six learners or eight.

We have 20.

Oh, 20. I say. Yeah, you started with six. Okay, so 170 grand a year, roughly. Okay. And has that been growing steadily for the last four years?

Yes.

We had a few families leave last year. Our middle school is real small, and so some of the families felt like, hey, we want our kids to be around more than just three or four other kids.

That's tough.

And so, yeah, so we had a few leave.

But was that the feedback that they're just. You didn't have enough critical mass at that age?

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, I guess that's why I'm asking. The question is, like, important. My question is, how old are your kids?

8, 10, 12, 14.

Okay.

So, yeah, I just. I don't know if I'm not getting the right message across, if I'm not communicating this correctly. Everyone, I sit down one on one. Everybody leaves a conversation going, oh, My gosh, this is amazing.

Yes.

This is so great. You're doing, you're doing what needs to be done. Okay, great. I don't know. I don't think so.

It's just, it's such a big change and I want to go back to the question you just asked where what's more important and I don't even think that's the right question because I don't think you're going to change their mind. If they think that having friends at school is more important. I would think, I would say you just attack that from a different angle because that's just, I don't think they're going to change their mind. You're clearly naturally more biased than your potential customers because you love this and this is your baby and you know all about it inside and out. But to them, I think they're just looking at this like a huge life change and it's, it's like we should move to Europe. Oh, that sounds amazing. Let's move to Europe then. It's ah, too hard. This is an actual conversation that I've had with my wife. So do you have any idea of what your percentage close rate is from people that are interested or receive the info packet or talk to you in person?

No, it would be very, it'd be very small. We had a, a lead magnet on our website and, and I get notified when folks sign up for that. And we probably have three or four a week that will request more information and they'll go through a three email series, all of them with some kind of call to action to either schedule a call or apply and they run through that. Nothing really happens. And then I have assistant, I run another company also and so I have my assistant in that company to help me out. So she'll follow up with the ones that have gone through it. After a week she'll hop in there and email them and say, hey, any questions? And usually it's just crickets.

Now let's talk more specifically about your funnel. So they go to the website, they fill out the form and then they get a three email series. And then what? Is that the order of it?

Yes.

Okay, and then at what point do you reach out and try to get them on the phone?

About a week after the last email.

After the, A week after the third email?

Yes.

And how long does it take for those first three emails to go out?

Every two days. Okay, one every. So six.

Six days.

I'm going to pull up your website here. So they're clicking. Request more Info specifically, right?

Yes.

Okay, so how many people click, schedule a phone call, verse request, more info. Do you have any data on that?

Oh, I would say hardly anyone schedules a phone call once a month. Maybe very few people schedule a phone call.

Okay, so when they do though, are they more hot to trot? Are they more likely to close?

No, because what we found is the ones that do, it's more like they were just, you know, they just have a very specific question, like, hey, is this a. They didn't read through the website. They're like, oh, this is a private school. You charge tuition. Like, yeah, they're like, oh, I'm looking for a charter school. Sorry. Thanks. And they're just like in a hurry.

Okay.

Oh my gosh. I can't believe the school is in our city. This is so amazing. Tell me more about it. Yeah, that hardly ever happens.

How are you driving traffic to your website today?

I'm not.

Just organic, correct?

Yeah, I don't pay for ads. We have a really strong, pretty strong social media presence. My wife does all that stuff. And so we're really active on there and we've had people that reached out to me and I followed you guys for years, love what you're doing, and then ask for more information. So really we don't have anything that is paid. That's driving traffic. Mostly because I'm just scared of Google Ads. I've never used Google Ads in any of my companies. I'm scared of. It seems like a scam.

I don't really know.

Maybe I'm wrong.

With all due respect, you're wrong. I'm sure I've felt the same way. And one of my business partners still feels the same way, even though. And it's not Nick, it's another one. And I love him to death. But even though we have seen positive ROI from Google Ads for four years straight, he still just. And I've told him like a month ago I was like, I'm gonna turn off ads and just watch. And I turned off ads and traffic died and he went and turned it back on himself. So I get it. And there's a lot of people and I've read stories of companies, mostly billion plus dollar companies that have just turned off all Google Ads and didn't skip a beat. That happens. But that's because they're not tracking it closely or they're tracking the wrong thing or they're doing like brand campaigns for brand awareness. Like a Coca Cola billboard on the highway. Like, who knows if that actually works? But I Don't do that stuff ever. Because I'm like you, I'm cheap. I don't want to waste money on ads, especially to a multi trillion dollar company that is happy to take it and have they know all the tricks in the book to take it. And so I will only do paid ads that show me a very clear attribution. And so I love the idea of Google Ads for this business because it is local and because Google will tell you exactly who in your county is searching for terms that might be relevant to your business. I don't recommend that you go out get an agency. I recommend that you actually invest some time to learn it yourself. Google Ads is In my opinion, 80 20. Right. Like you can spend a few hours learning the 80% of it and see a positive ROI and an agency, they might help you scale it better. But you're not, you don't really need to scale it because you're not looking to take over the world. And they'll help you hone in that last 20% while they'll really refine the keywords and they'll add in some new keywords. But I don't think you're really going to need that. I think Google Ads could help. Have you spent time interviewing or talking to other Acton license licensees to see what they're doing or how they're doing?

Yeah, a few. And I think it. Amarillo is a very unique situation. The other ones are mostly in bigger cities. And so in Austin there's probably six or seven of these and they're all on a wait list. I think a lot of it has to do with income.

Right.

So yeah, just everyone's. The private school in Austin is 30, 40 grand. So the Acton Actons down there are charging 15, 20,000 a year. And that's the cheap version of private school.

You've got 200,000 people in Amarillo, you've got just under a million in Austin.

Right.

So if Austin has six or seven, theoretically, if the demographics were the same, which they're not, then you could support a, an actin with a wait list. Right. Theoretically. And I believe even without doing data, I think you believe that too. Right. That it is possible to completely fill up your wait list.

Yeah.

And let me be clear. If we had 60 out of 200,000, I'm looking for 60 learners.

That's it. Yeah. If you were to take your 20 learners and take their parents and how would they rate their satisfaction with you on a scale of 1 to 10? Like how much are they just in Love with what you're doing.

All in. And we actually have to do a net promoter score and turn that in every quarter to Acton. That's one of the things that we do. And it's on a scale of 5 and we're 4.5 every time.

Do you know how that compares to other locations?

No, they don't share that with the network. I haven't seen. But you can't drop below a four. I think before you start getting. Maybe you shouldn't be inactive anymore.

Yeah. If I were you, I would do several things. I would get other Acton owners on the phone as soon as possible. Because you could bang your head against the wall trying to learn all these things. But I guarantee you, you're going to find one person that just makes one little comment that just sets off the light bulb for you. Oh, no. They're gonna be like, don't. No, don't do that. Like, you gotta go through the schools or you gotta go through the whoever. And it's just gonna be this light bulb moment that will save you a lot of time and a lot of money. So I would just cold call them.

Honestly, they would be fine with that. The network's super generous. There's only 300 Actons all over the world. And so they're very generous with their time. If one calls another one, we would always help each other.

When was the last time you called, like corporate and asked them for help?

You can't really do that. There isn't. There's one guy that's over the whole network. It's a very skeleton crew, if you want to say. It's very similar to CrossFit. That's how CrossFit got started. They put the thing out there. And you affiliates, you could take it and run with it. Whatever you want to do is great.

Okay, so that's the first thing I do. I would talk to the other owners. I would look seriously into Google Ads because Google is more intent. Like Facebook ads are fine, but you want to find people that are searching for, like, alternative schools, alternative schools near me, or unhappy with my school or something like that. It might not be as direct as you're thinking.

And where do I start with that? Because I have done that a few times in some of my other businesses. Like, I'll get on there. I have a Google Ads account. And I just get overwhelmed so quickly. And where would you start? If I had zero experience to learn.

About Google Ads, I would start on YouTube. I can't recommend anyone specific, but I would bet there's dozens of very high quality YouTubers that specifically talk about like the how to of Google Ads. You can go take a $50 Udemy course. I had a friend that did that in short term rentals and it changed the game for him. That might be a little more structured for you, but if not udemy, then just YouTube.

Is it Udome?

Sorry. U D E M Y. The letter U D E M Y U To me, yeah, it's a course platform. And another thing I would do, which I'm even more optimistic about is I would take a page out of the whole click funnels. I would go to like the cringiest course gurus you can find and look at how their funnel works because it works. There's this Airbnb mastermind and this. I don't know what it's called. I don't want to promote them, but I think it costs like 12 grand to learn how to be a short term rental owner. And this website does like 20, 30 million a year selling these high ticket courses. I would go find one like that. Okay. And just reverse engineer exactly what they're doing and treat it just like that. Because the biggest red flag to me about your whole funnel right now is that someone's really excited about what you're doing and they fill out a form and then they don't speak to a human for over a week. I think that you need to take your form and you need to shrink it down and just do name, phone, email. That's it. Not kid's name, nothing else name, phone, email. And then you or someone needs to get them on the phone immediately and strive to get them to your facility in person as soon as possible, I guarantee you your close rate will just explode. It's a lead. And every second that goes by that you don't get that lead, preferably in person, if not on the phone, they just get colder and colder. And especially with such a big life decision like this, you gotta talk to him faster than that.

Okay.

But yeah, that's what I would do. Go find a really cringey guy on Instagram and look at what his, his process is and copy it and just put something actually ethical behind it.

Yeah.

Yep. Cool.

Thanks for your time, Chris.

I appreciate what you do.

Anytime, Michael. Let me know how it goes.

I will. Thanks.

All right. Yep. See ya.

See ya.

David.

Hey, how are we doing?

Hey, good. How are you, man?

I'm doing fantastic.

All right. You got a little kid there.

I always have a little kid. That's just my life right Now.

Okay. Who's that?

My youngest. He's two. His name's Owen.

Owen. Hi, Owen.

He can't hear us because he's in the headphone. Hope he's not too loud.

There it is. No, that's fine. All right, you've got a bootstrap company that's about to hit 10 million in revenue, right?

Yeah, we're tracking and do about 11 or 12 run rate right now.

Awesome. Good for you. And what type of company?

So I know I can't get too specific, but we're in the outdoor space, the weird niche. We sell small log cabin kits and ship them all over North America.

That's cool. Okay, who's your target customer?

So our Target customer is 40 to 65 years old. They live in the city, but they have a rural property outside the city. And they are generally small business owners, professionals, middle class, upper middle class people. I would say their values are like family. They want an extra space for their family to stay so they can have everybody at the cottage or everybody at the lake house or the like.

Okay, and how much do your homes cost?

Not only homes are like small kind of bedrooms essentially, but somewhere between about 6,000 low end to about 20,000 on the high end.

Wow. Super cheap. And that's for a kit.

That's for a kit. So you build that yourself. And part of the experience is that you're building a bunky with your friends and family and they're like a Lego kit or like a Lincoln Logs for adults, if that makes sense.

That is awesome. And they're meant for the homeowner to put together themselves. It's easy enough for them to do that.

Yeah. About 85% of homeowners built themselves. We've got a really great set of manuals and build videos and build support to get people through it. So no one has tried and failed. Everyone that's tried to do it has pulled it off.

Wow. Now, what type of foundation do they need to put these down?

Depends on the area, but you can get by for like with as little as just put some gravel and some patio stones down. Or you can make it as complicated as like a full length cement pad if you want to go nuts.

Okay. And what about electrical and plumbing?

Doable in a lot of areas. Once you stray into plumbing, you're into permits required, so a lot of people avoid it for that reason. But the electrical side of things, you can just run conduit on the walls. It's pretty straightforward to do that.

It's not glamping it's not a tiny home. It's a proper cabin that you put together yourself. That's 10 to 20 grand.

Exactly. Right.

Okay, that's really interesting.

And although we do sell to a lot of glamp grounds and like we have, we're trying to get the beat. Like our B2B dimension is a lot of people coming through the B2C funnels and still buying it for a campground or for a wedding venue or for a trailer, that type of thing. And so B2B is like. I'm like, well that makes sense. We should be able to reach out to B B2B clients. But we have not really nailed that yet.

Okay, so you're mostly doing B2C.

Yeah, exactly.

How are you finding them?

So primarily pay per click on social media and then we do a big promotion every year. We give a bunky away but still pay per click. Feeding that Funnel into a. A 30 day win this bunky. And then oh, you didn't win to buy one.

Okay. What percentage of your leads are closing site unseen? No sales call versus after a sales.

Call, the site unseen thing, it's rare. Like people are usually emailing in once or twice. There isn't a lot of randoms just come in. And we're not an E commerce source. We've experimented with having E commerce but generally with a larger ticket item, they're going to want to fill you out. They usually call once or twice, email in. There's three or four touch points before they feel safe enough to give us money over the Internet. And then we also have visit. Like we have a factory where we make them and so people will come in and see. We have a little village of bunkies there as well. And then we're. Yeah, so people will see them sometimes in person, but it's a good, it's a good minority of people that have never actually like physically been there. And then we're working on a virtual tour. So we've got a virtual tour experience that you can take a salesperson, guide you through a couple models and sell you that way.

That's awesome. And have you ever done like a group sales call or a webinar or anything?

Yeah, like abysmal show up rates right now. So I've been, I've been running them bi weekly and like, you know, 50 people sign up and one shows up. Yeah, we're trying to tweak that. But the contest that we do, the giveaway, I'm doing a series of live streams where we'll do one on the foundation One on stains. And so there's like an educational dimension to that. And if they go through that 30 days and they're tuned into those live streams, they're pretty solid by the end of that. So we're a big bulk of our sales come through at like the week after the contest closes.

Okay, and what, how big is your email list?

It's about 350,000.

Oh, wow, that's a great list.

A lot of that is chaff. There's some wheat in there, but a lot of people that want the free bunk. You're not necessarily going to buy a bunky. Right, so there's a lot of. Yeah.

How often do you email everyone as opposed to just segments?

We try to segment as much as we can, but we've got a monthly newsletter that goes out once a month to everyone.

Okay, so if you're going to cross 10 million, then you're selling like few hundred of these things a year.

No, like the goal this year is a thousand.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah. So like last year did 900 roughly.

Okay, okay. Yeah.

The average is around 11.11k.

Okay. Yeah, I guess I went high there. Okay, so your original question, now that we've got all that out of the way, is at what point should you specialize your sales process versus maybe not specialize them at all and just keep it broad, like account manager to marketer to salesperson.

Yeah.

How does it look today?

Yeah, so right now it's just a duct taped hodgepodge of what's organically grown up. We've got like people that have been with us since day one, a few people, and they're very much, oh, I want the whole customer journey. I want to like take them to the factory, show them the bunky. I want to sell them, I want to help them with their delivery, talk to them. Like they want to do all the steps of the way. I call that the Sherpa model. Like they take them up all the way up the mountain. That's what they want to do. I've always been more inclined to. I just want to sell them and then give them to someone else. And they get invoiced and they get. I want to make sure the delivery happens and that we have a pretty good track record of delivering on time and people being pumped. But I can see benefits to both angles. So it's like Sherpa all the way up the mountain with maybe a little bit of support here and there versus one person just has appointments. One person just does a middle call. One person closes like that's the baton method. And it seems like a lot of people go in that direction. It's a lot more measurable, and you can see who sucks a lot easier. But it's. I don't know if we're at the right size to do something like that. And I don't. I'd like to figure out from someone who's been there and cross that chasm from 5 million to 15 million or 20 million.

So you're exclusively doing the Sherpa model right now then? Right.

So right now, I'll tell you the salesperson. We do have outbound people that just call leads. So they're making 130 calls a day. Their whole goal is set appointments. But a lot of times people call in, so inbound leads. So you might talk to someone. They'll say, hey, let's go on a tour. Book a virtual tour or book an actual tour. And they might take them to the point of close. So it's like a weird hybrid of both. So we have this appointment centers, two of those people, they're from the Philippines. Then we've got a couple people in the factory, like showing people bunkies or doing it virtually. And then we've got another person remotely in Britain that can do the virtual tour, but not using like a Zillow kind of tour, able to do virtual tour. So my thought process is the more we can make it digital and not everyone has to be at the factory, the better. Yeah.

Have you ever experimented with an appointment setter that was based here in North America as opposed to the Philippines?

Not yet.

I would definitely try that. Just because it's such a high ticket item, such a big purchase, the amount of savings that you get is probably negligible if you can get your appointment set rate up just a few percent. Right.

Yeah, that's fair.

I would a B test it as well. Keep your Filipinos and add a couple and just side by side. How many calls are they each making versus how are they comparing? Because it's not even the. And I know Filipinos have great accents, but it's not even the accent. It's just the weird kind of cultural quirks that might only show up one every three or four phone calls that really make a big difference where someone in North America can just make offhand comments that are much more reliable, much more relatable to the person than someone overseas might.

Yeah, that's good. Nice. Thanks.

You're doing a hybrid model. Do you know of any competitors that are doing one or the other? Like, who are you looking to for an example on this?

Like the problem with our little niche is I really, I struggle to find a super analogous competitor. Everybody in the like it's the kind of model is like a guy named Chuck with a corner lot that sells sheds and there's hobos living in them and that's the model for the shed. Bizarre. Not super analogous to what we're doing. And then there's other smaller competitors test. But we've so far in the small cabin space, the bunky business, we're probably five or six times as large as anybody. It's hard to say. And then we email our competitors like what happens after that? And there's no real. I don't feel like I'm in a process or any type of sales funnel. So we're trying to lead the charge here. What I try to convert ourselves is like other high tech items like hot tubs, boats, like anything like that that I could say, oh I can learn from that, that vertical. But it's not necessarily us or I guess outdoor living, like outdoor living is probably the most. Because they're selling high ticket stuff sometimes too.

And if you were to say, let's just pretend for a minute that your whole sales cycle, not just the sales cycle, but the whole life cycle of a customer is 100 days and then at certain point they actually pay and then at a certain point their cabin is completed. Where would you put the payment in that hundred day timeline?

So our model right now is we take 65% up front to make the bunk. You help us cash flow it and then 35% a day or two before you get it. So that's the. But it's not 100 days. Like there's 700 day closes on a lot of our clients. Like so we're trying the whole point of appointments and let's book a tour is shrink that down. Ideally 100 would be. If I had a hundred day closing, it would be a fantastic. Now sometimes it is two weeks, but oftentimes it's two weeks. But like I've been watching your YouTube channel for two years. So yeah.

What about between the time that you first speak to someone and you collect the 65%, what would you say? An average is there?

An average is there? It just depends how hot they are. So if they're hot it might be like a day to 10 days. We often give people 10 days to pay that if they start chipping away at it, we'll call them in. So that's yeah probably like one to 20 days.

Okay. I feel like you should test the specialized model. I think that if you were to just get a killer closer to get them there, someone really friendly, and then just get someone really nice to see them through the end of it. Because they're not going to get their deposit back, I assume. Right. If they continue wanting to go through it.

Yeah, it is a refundable deposit, but it's only when we sell your bunky to somebody else. So we don't take people's money for no bunky, but we have a kind of. It's refundable as soon as someone else buys it, basically, which is usually pretty fast.

How many take you up on the refund?

Our refund rate's pretty low. It's maybe one in 30.

Okay.

Over the course of a season.

Yeah. I feel like you should. Did you hear the last call that I was just on?

No, I was in the waiting room.

And he couldn't hear anything, so I gave him the advice because that was another high ticket item. To take a page out of the cringy course gurus playbook on Instagram. That's try selling high ticket, like $10,000 masterminds and courses and just analyze exactly how their funnel is and it's. That's finally or like highly refined over years and years of gurus selling on the Internet. Right?

Yeah.

And you've got a setter, you've got a closer, and then you've got a third person that actually fulfills. Yeah, I feel like that is the.

Model I'm leaning towards. That's what my intuition tells me to do.

Yeah, that's what I would do. Like in my crypto business, we have something similar because we sell a thousand dollars product and we. There's a lot of hand holding that needs to go into that product for years after they buy it because we also host the product. And so in that sense, it's easier for us to keep it the same person because there are going to be a lot of touch points along the way. It'd kind of be like if your customers were still interfacing with you for years after the house was built. Like they had to. It might be a different strategy, but because of the fact that they're good to go once the house is built. I like the idea of specializing in your case or at least testing it. You don't want to, of course, go all in on it because you've got a good thing going.

Yeah, that's fair. So your advice is essentially like lean. Yeah. Get a few. Like why you have the appointments. I just set it up in that kind of handheld way. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, like just three setter, Closer. Fulfiller.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that makes sense.

That's what you're doing today.

Fulfiller. Like by fulfiller, it's someone invoices them and then another person. Make sure the funky physically gets to them and all that logistical fun.

Yeah, the logistics is what I mean by fulfiller. Yeah.

Yep. That's the model right now. We can just lean heavier in it, I think.

Yeah. Okay. I hope that helps. I'd love to see how it goes.

Yeah. Appreciate your time.

Okay, thanks, David.

Okay, my pleasure.

Bye. All right, Seva, I hear that you have a SaaS business that you're trying to grow.

That's right.

Yep. All right, let's hear about your business. I want to hear all about it.

To give you some background. I've been working with Shopify for 8 years, started doing development work and ran an agency for many years. A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to create my own product for Shopify. I had a lot of knowledge for.

How the platform works.

I knew what customers were looking for, and last year I settled on what I was planning to do and I ran with it.

Before you proceed. So you already own a Shopify agency or at least you did at the time?

Yeah, I still run it now and I'm trying to transition more into having the SaaS be my full time.

What type of a Shopify agency?

It's mainly just a development agency, so we do a lot of theme customization work. Custom theme development integration. Yeah, that kind of stuff.

Okay, so what gave you this idea for the app? And then what is the app and why did you feel so strongly about it to spend a couple years on it?

The app itself is called Clip Coupons. It's based on introducing coupons directly on the product page. Once the seller is on the product page, you can offer them a discount code where they go to checkout, they forget the code, they mis entered, they get upset. There's all these issues with manual discount codes. The alternative is automatic discounts. And automatic discounts, while they're great, a user may not necessarily even know they're getting that discount because it's automatic.

Yeah, I like that. As like strategic introduced friction. Exactly. A little bit of friction that make them more likely to get to checkout.

Exactly. And the app itself helpful to many store owners. Our app is free and it's a strategic decision to make the app free. It's a massive investment. So Every week is just money going into development and into our VA team and customer support team and marketing team. So I can't sustain it forever. But my question to you is one, at what point do you know in this space that perhaps it is time that you can start charging for the product?

Okay. Do you have any data on how effective your app is at increasing conversion rate or average order value?

I've been very hesitant to put out precise numbers. I think right now we're still trying to figure out exactly what those numbers are.

Do you know the numbers internally?

I have an estimate, yeah. But it's very rough. It's only been a few months that we've been testing this out.

Okay, and how does it look?

It's definitely increased. We've seen stores that with the coupon, it could be anywhere from a 2% increase in conversion all the way up to 10%.

And what is your hesitancy to release that data? Just because it's. You have a small sample size?

Small sample size, varying sample size across stores. There's a lot of things that go into kind of the effectiveness of coupons.

What have you done to grow so far? How have you gotten these first users?

We're like at a very interesting type of growth. Like, I can show you something like that.

Oh, wow. Okay. Is that mostly organic?

It's all organic.

You publish it in the App Store and just let it go.

Yeah, running some ads, very minor on the App Store and I just brought on someone as a full time marketing person. So just spinning up like social media, going full time into content. I think our main play is going to be app partnerships, from what I understand, seems to be working pretty well.

Are you able to a B test pricing? I don't know how it works on the back end on the App Store, but would you be able to run paid ads towards your app with a price tag on it to see how they might perform?

Yes, to a degree.

And that would compromise anything.

It would have to be like you'd run a certain price for a month and then change it and run another price. To be honest, the Shopify app store architecture is not as great as people make it out to be.

Okay. Have you ever thought of making your own Shopify Facebook group? Like four Shopify store owners? I know a guy that has built a Shopify app crazy fast. And the way he did it was by first starting a Facebook group for Shopify store owners, not selling anything, and then building his product in public in the Facebook group, even though it's already built right hey guys, what do you think of this feature? What do you think of that feature? And he's the only admin, so he can talk about it as much or as little as he wants. And then over time, it just becomes this very organic marketing vehicle to drive traffic to the app of people that feel indebted to you. I know it sounds. It's harder than I'm making it out to be. Just, oh, let's just create a Facebook group and people will flock to it. But a lot of times, if you find a category of Facebook groups that's popular, for instance, real estate, find a subcategory of that that seems to be underserved. I started a Facebook group a couple months ago specifically for off market RV park deals. There were a ton of Facebook groups for real estate, a handful of Facebook groups for RV and mobile home parks, but nothing for off market. And I got this idea from my friend. I can't claim it, but people just come in organically and it's top of Funnel. So it seems like you're using the App Store for top of Funnel. But what if you had that downline a little bit and you had some sort of a community that you could push down the funnel to the App Store?

Yeah, that's actually really interesting. Do you think that this is something that would be promoted organically within the group, or is it something that's like part of the group? Like this app is sponsoring the group or whatever it is?

It's really neither. It's the admin slash creator of the group just openly post about how the app is going. So he's not commenting on other posts and he's not doing sponsored posts. He's just talking about building in. Oh, we just had this annoying customer that asked for a refund, yada yada yada. And they just come to know this app and then come to use it. I also think that you should get on the phone with your customers. Most Shopify App Store owners, they don't think to or they don't want to because it's high friction. But they will tell you exactly what your app is lacking. Whereas even if you have a feedback form or I see you have great reviews, if you get them on the phone, give them an Amazon gift card or something, they will get very specific on what they love about it and what they don't love about it.

One of the things that we noticed is that there are some compatibility issues and doesn't necessarily have to be because of our app. But for example, like there's Other apps on Shopify that offer functionality like quantity upsell so they have a little thing where oh, buy three, get 50% off or something like that. And what happens is a lot of those apps, just the way that they work, they actually. Oh, because our discount takes place in the product page, those discounts usually take place in the cart page. When they apply it, it just overwrites our discount. So a lot of times people come to us, your app doesn't work.

If that is a pain point, then I would suggest doing exactly that, building it into your app if it's not too cumbersome. Have you. Are you able to change your pricing model or when you do introduce a pricing model, are you able to charge a percentage of like savings or a percentage of the.

Yes, but I'm hesitant to do that because I've been reading online like some people that have done that and some customers get upset because the pricing isn't so clear upfront. So then they get the bill at the end of the month.

There's a lot of apps that make or that charge a lot more money than you might think on the surface because of the usage based pricing. But if I were to suggest three things. I would suggest either piggybacking onto some existing Facebook groups for Shopify store owners or starting your own and just getting it going. You can use built with to find a list of Shopify stores to advertise them to. I would also suggest talking to your users actually on the phone if possible seeing ask them straight up, would you pay for this? How much would you pay for? And you can even tell them like, listen, be honest with me and I'll make this free for life. Like I just want feedback. What would you pay for? And I'll keep it free for you. The third thing I would do is I would go ahead with your data that shows your increase of conversion rate and I would put that front and center on your app store. If you want to put an asterisk on there, fine. But anytime you present data, there's a million what ifs or variables that could change the outcome of that data. And you can be as transparent or as opaque as you want on that. But I think that would make a really big difference because as a Shopify store owner myself, I want to juice that conversion rate every bit that I can and any tool that I can find that will help me do that I want. So I would put that more front and center.

The third point that you mentioned with advertising the conversion rate increase, how would.

You go about that?

Would you set that up as like a case study and then present that to someone so they have a reference to it or. I'm just trying to think of a way to do it that people are not going to get upset. Like how can you claim this number? Like where are you getting this information from?

I don't think that's going to happen. I think it would take a large amount of customers to be seeing that or experiencing something contrary to what you're stating for there to be someone upset. I think you're overthinking that. I think you should do a case study and email that out to your current customers and then take like the TLDR of that case study and put that front and center.

Makes sense.

But yeah, I hope that's helpful.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. I guess in, in your mind, do you have any feedback on the app itself?

I think it's a great idea. It reminds me of when I. We go to the grocery store, we go to H E B and they have paper coupons in the aisle and I'm just like, what are you doing? But they know what they're doing. And my kid always rips all the coupons off whether or not we're buying the item. But it's just, it's strategic friction and it's the same thing, but in real life you grab the coupon and it's okay. Now I need to take this somewhere and hand it to somebody. It's just a digital version of that and I'm pretty shocked that it didn't exist already. So I do think that your idea has merit and it has legs. I would be very hesitant to hire a full time marketer or to really pour resources into it because I think this is something that you could bootstrap fairly cheaply.

So to what degree do you think you could bootstrap it? I'm just curious.

Just by doing these three things, by actually getting on the phone yourself with these users experimenting with the paid ads a little more. I just have. Maybe I'm too cheap. I just have a hard time understanding what a full time marketer would do at this stage in the process of your. Of your app. I feel like you're too early along for that.

Full time, I would probably say full time employee, part time marketer. But the main thing that I figured would be really helpful with was our content. So being able to create YouTube videos to explain our app and different functionalities and social media posts and stuff. And then it turned out that we actually had a big demand for bringing on someone to help with customer support because we're getting a lot of queries and so it turned into more like a full time position and helping with that as well.

Now with multiple roles then.

Yeah, basically.

Okay, that makes more sense. Thanks for coming on. Let me know how.

I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for your advice and I'll keep you posted how things go. Maybe we could reconnect at some point.

Okay, sounds great. Thank you.

Love that.

Thank you, Chris. Take care.

Yep. See ya, Christian. All right. You've got a unique problem. Let's hear about it.

Yeah, Pretty simple. Let's say, for example, somebody followed me and I'm having, like, people, important people following me. Let's say 50k followers, 100k, 150k. And I'm just wondering, like, some of them want to pick my brain and I'm just wondering, should I charge them a consulting call? When should I do it? When should I not do it?

Let me add some context for people that are listening or that will be listening, that don't know. So you're talking about Twitter specifically, right?

Like, yes.

You have a Twitter account. Yep. That, that posts business stuff. We'll keep it broad. Right. You post interesting business stuff and then people reach out and they're like, hey, you seem smart. I want to make money doing what you're doing. Can you help me? And so you're asking like, what do I do with that? Do I charge? Sell my time? Do I sell a product? Do I sell a service? Is that right?

Absolutely. Yes. I bet you get tons of those.

Yes. Yeah.

And where you.

Where are you leaning today? What do you want to do?

If I can make money with the consulting calls, I will. But at the end of the day, I've helped a lot of people by not. Not charging them, but some of them are sending to me 10, 15 questions in a DM. I'm like, dude, I'm not gonna be able to answer all of this, so you're better off setting up a consulting call with me. But I also don't want to be rude. That's my main question here. I don't want to be rude. Especially for those that might find it as a rude answer if I say that to them, putting into perspective that they have a bunch of followers. Dude.

Yeah.

I don't want to come across like a, let's say like a bot head or something like that.

Yeah. So I've dealt with the same problem. I think there's a way to do it where you're not Rude. I think that you should have a copy paste kind of explainer. That's. Listen, statistically speaking, if I said yes to the amount of people that DM me, I would have no time to run my actual business. So I just can't. And so I think at that point you need to put them through a filtering mechanism. I've tried several different things I've charged for my time before, and it's actually shocking how few people are willing to pay for your time.

Yes, I agree.

Like when I started, I charged 200 bucks for an hour or a half an hour. And this is, this is high ticket stuff. Like you could find out in an hour exactly how to buy a mobile home park. That makes you six or seven figures. But people like the conversion rate on that that paid calendly is tiny. And so I eventually took it off because I'm like, I feel like this does more harm than good. Like, I'd almost rather not do any of this than make a few hundred dollars here and there. And then I put it at $1200 per hour just to weed everyone out. And guess how many people paid for that? Zero. Like, not one person has ever paid that, which is honestly fine because I don't like hopping on these calls because it's. It doesn't seem efficient and I feel indebted. Like, I don't pay for consulting calls, so I feel indebted to them. And so I always want to go over, I always want to deliver a ton of value and make sure they're super, super happy and it ends up being fine. But it's just that's. It doesn't move the needle much to make it work.

And it's not.

Yeah, it's not scalable either. So I totally agree with you.

So I think you should do one of two things. I think you should. You should create a course. And I say course, but I really just mean a PDF. Just take all your tweets that are relevant, upload it to ChatGPT or do it yourself or give it to your assistant and have them just put it in a coherent, like an ebook, right? Call it three to five thousand words, probably doesn't take that long. Go to gumroad, upload it to Gumroad, make it twenty bucks or fifty bucks or something and just tell them, hey, just have a copy paste. Listen, if I were to say yes to everyone, I have no time. Like, I really don't mean to be rude. I just don't have the time. And so I put this together because I already Know what you're going to ask and this is going to answer 90% of your questions. Go ahead and buy this. If you still have questions at that point, you can say I'll just hop on for free or I'll charge for my time after that point. But most people aren't even willing to pay 20 bucks. They just want something for free, right? Yep. Even if they have a lot of followers.

I agree.

Yes.

I think another thing you could do which has been my solution to this is you don't like, you've got to get people into an email list or a free newsletter or something just so you can touch base with them. So when you do sell something more high ticket, maybe that's your fundraising, maybe you're selling an agency service that's two grand a month. When you do sell that, you don't have to go blast it out there to everyone. You can only tell the people that you feel are the most interested that gave you their email months or years prior.

Okay, so would you consider any different approach to, let's say someone that is.

Famous or an influencer or something like that?

Would you take any different approach?

I would, yeah. I would do it on a case by case basis.

Okay.

That's what I wanted to confirm.

Yeah, I make exceptions all the time for this. Like sometimes people reach out to me that I look up to and admire and it's, dude, I just want to talk to you. Like I want to ask you questions. And then it becomes more of a give and take instead of just a take.

Okay, perfect. Hey Chris, thank you very much. That's all I want to do. Confirmed. I had that idea in my mind already. I just wanted to pick your brain. You're very wise to it.

Thanks man. Thanks for calling. It was good chatting with you.

I appreciate your time. Thank you, Chris.

Take care. No problem.

Bye.

Yep, see ya. Thank you for watching or listening. If you're live streaming right now and we will see you next week.