7 learnings from £100k MRR (100% bootstrapped & remote)
Fame hit £100k MRR in Sept:
(100% bootstrapped and remote)
Here are 7 things I learnt:
1. Teflon for tasks
👉 Paying invoices
👉 Sourcing candidates
👉 Running the inbound sales process
Are all things that I’ve done since day one.
But not anymore.
Andrew Wilkinson once said on a podcast interview that his secret to success was that he’s lazy, he’s like teflon for tasks, they slip off him.
My end of year goal is to be completely removed from day to day operations.
Free-ing myself up to focus on higher leverage tasks: process innovation and talent development.
2. Managee’s become managers
Employee churn is a silent killer.
You lose morale, client relationships and process knowledge with each lost employee.
For some reason, we haven’t had any significant employee churn since starting Fame, and to keep it this way we need to decentralise management.
In other words: your managee’s, need to become managers.
And you need to train them.
Here’s what I’ve found to be the managerial secret: understand what the employees want, and then give it to them.
E.g. if a new team member wants to be flexible with their family commitment, allow this (along as their work is getting done)
Or if a new team member wants to learn something from another part of the business, allow this (along as the work in their primary getting done by themselves or someone else they have trained.)
In short make the deal so good, they can’t leave.
3. Capture vs create demand
Yes I hear you demand gen clones: creating demand is a thing.
Capturing demand can get you to £1m ARR, but £10m? Maybe not.
It’s time to start creating demand.
How?
Create and distribute content that educates ideal customers about the problems that your product/services solves.
Simple… but making the content good enough so that your ideal customers actually want to consume it? Not easy.
4. Process creators versus process implementors
Fame, just like any business, is a collection of processes.
Processes need to be created, and processes need to be implemented.
Typically, process creators are more expensive to employ than process implementors.
E.g. creating an outbound sales process for a Series A stage B2B SaaS business is a HARD task, and will need to be created by someone who has experience, and is expensive.
However, if you or someone in your team creates the process, you can hire someone cheaper (but still good) to implement this process.
For example, I’ve run 2-300 inbound sales calls whilst creating the inbound sales process for Fame, so is now fully tested/documented so I can now hire a process implementor to execute.
For each role you hire for, know the difference, and assess your candidates appropriately.
5. Non-essential costs
We still don’t pay for Slack, Trello or Freshdesk (despite nearly every team member using them every day).
Why?
Because doing so would mean that in some way, that cost would need to be passed onto our wonderful clients.
And passing on cost to a client, to pay for something that we don’t think directly increases their happiness, doesn’t sit right with us.
After all, our primary value is: Client Client Client.
Choices like this enable us to increase the “consumer surplus” or the “brand” value of our service: the difference between what a client pays, and what they get.
This “goodwill” seems to find its way back to us in the form of inbound demand that we cannot attribute (reducing customer acquisition cost), until we’re told “Oh yes, someone mentioned that you were good in a Slack community I’m part of.
6. Don’t fuck up the momentum
Peter Thiel famous told the Airbnb founders to not fuck up the culture.
But what he I think he really meant was: don’t fuck up the momentum.
Past product market fit, a business starts the transition from the jet ski to a cruise ship.
Ops, finance and hiring becomes more important.
You, as a founder need to ensure the business keep going in the same direction, and you need to make this crystal clear to your team and your clients.
You also need to keep growing at all costs, which may mean reducing profitability in the short term.
Changing direction, or a slow down in growth, confuses and demoralises. Which could lead to the dreaded employee churn.
7. A culture of documentation
Working procedures are only as valuable as their “last updated” date
If someone stumbles when moving through a process, updating the documentation to clarify, will save time and frustration for every future execution.
This compounds up to the point where you are your team execute significantly faster and cheaper than all competitors.
Enabling you greater profitability or even better: to reduce prices to speed up growth.
Hope that helps 🤓
What I am learning very quickly from other commentators is that momentum is everything.
Don’t take X MMR as a win. Keep going!
YES!
This comment was deleted 10 months ago.
Your emphasis on creating demand, not just capturing it, is a fresh perspective. Crafting content that educates and resonates is no small feat, and you're right that it's a game-changer.
The differentiation between process creators and implementors is a valuable takeaway.
Amazing journey Tom! I learned a lot thanks
Great insights! Thanks Tom!
:)
Wow! Golden nuggets here, thank you for the post!
My pleasure, thanks!
Thanks for the post, it was helpful for me.
No worries!
This is a interesting and useful write up, thanks for sharing with us.
This part really resonated: "Here’s what I’ve found to be the managerial secret: understand what the employees want, and then give it to them."
Where I work we've lost countless engineers over a reluctance to make slight adjustments. It's not the momentary refusal I don't think. It's the refusal to do something reasonable becaue of some sense of it not 'being the norm' e.g, you have to come into the office on X day because that's when we come in.
Great insights from @TomHunt on building a £100k MRR biz:
Delegate tasks
Empower managers
Create demand
Hire process implementors
Be mindful of non-essential costs
Don't lose momentum
Foster a culture of documentation. #entrepreneurship #growth
Thanks for sharing
Interesting post. but what i find hardest is that i am the biggest critic of my own product. When i start building i see no competition in the market and then when i am 90% done i find similar products and then i feel mine is not good enough and i keep delaying the launch.
The other issue is i have not idea where and how to launch i just have ideas in my head not sure how to fix that.
Exactly the in my case too. When near to the launch, I found my product very average in front of competitor's.
Great Post. I am wondering if paying for services like slack could actually make certain processes more efficient and in the and save money. Although I guess running lean encourages creativity in implementing workarounds.
Yeah I'm not convinced that it would right now, happy to be proved wrong though!
Great post! I actually found the last point to be the biggest learning throughout my last start-up journey. There is a big difference between knowing the fact and actually documenting in a way that it's updateable, consumable, and actually helpful in a year's time. I didn't figure it out till the end but will make changes in my current venture. Do you guys just use google docs etc. or some specific tool?
Yep, just Google Docs seems to work fine :)
Sweet lessons! Congrats on achieving the milestone.
Thanks so much :)
It's well detailed and a good guide. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks man!
This is a fantastic write up, thanks for sharing.
My pleasure entirely :)
I am skeptical about point 5. Sure, you love your clients but it is not sustainable business. Imagine at some point all the free plans disappear or get more limited and if that happens at the wrong time you will run into problems. I would definitely factor in the cost as an operating cost.
Great post. I'm quite glad to that to see that my company's founders are doing pretty much all the things mentioned here, especially 7, they sure love documenting things.
Your insights and explanation are highly helpful. Also, it is crucial for every member, especially in a small team, to embrace a common set of values and a shared vision for the company. This unity is what ignites their motivation and empowers them to deliver outstanding results to their clients. By fostering a sense of purpose and a clear direction that resonates with each team member, we cultivate an environment where their contributions are truly meaningful, leading to unparalleled service and satisfaction for our esteemed clients.
The key to creating a successful product is to stay focused on solving a real problem for your customers, as highlighted in the post. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of launching a new venture, but it's important to remain critical and seek feedback from potential customers throughout the development process. Additionally, momentum is critical, and it's important to keep pushing forward and avoiding getting hung up on small setbacks or competition. Effective documentation and organization of processes are also essential for long-term success. While paying for services like Slack can improve efficiency, running lean can encourage creativity and help find workarounds. Finally, creating content that resonates with buyers can be a significant challenge but is crucial for driving sales and growth. Overall, the post offers valuable insights and guidance for entrepreneurs seeking to launch successful ventures
Thanks man!! These are wonderful :)
Your 7 learnings are spot on, and I especially appreciate your emphasis on the importance of creating a product that solves a real problem for your customers. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of starting a new venture, but it's essential to stay focused on creating value for your users.
For sure, thanks for the kind words Marie!
Creating content that resonates with buyer is a challenge
You got it!
Great and helpful. Thank you :)
:)
Nice article that covers some key points for consideration. Not too long and informative nevertheless, thanks for sharing.
My pleasure!
wow, great journey. I have just started my SaaS recently, its MRR is just 600USD. A long way ahead to run to achieve what you did. Thank for your inspiration.
My pleasure!
Amazing and simple article!
:)
Great article, Thanks....!
Anytime!
Good articulation, I like this article. It's no non-sense stuff, straight to the point. We too are following the path of free Slack and Trello.
Yes!
Great post. Great information and great way of articulating it. A lot of actionable steps that I can put in place thanks to this post.
:)
Hi Tom!
Great article.
How do you balance building systems/processes VS spending time on growing the business?
Great question... I basically focus my time on the one that needs the most work, then switch to the other. Ideally I would have someone else in the business to focus on one of these as their full-time role, but don't have that right now
Thanks for sharing, Tom! Very important.
:)
great thanks
:)
Love this, thanks for sharing!
No problem
Hi
:)
This is interesting and very informational
My pleasure!
Thanks @tomhuntio some excellent pointers. Alan
Anyime!
Thanks For you guide. Recently one of my client told me to join it and your post helps me alot.
:)
Your 7 lessons shared are shared by me and I wholeheartedly agree. I think I would also add to your point 4 is that also see this from the Clients perspective. Help the Client implement, using what you have created. Quite often Clients don't know how it and this can cause them to stop using the product.
For sure!
Tom this productized service model is awesome. I love how you've done it for the podcast space. Love how you've also added bCast as the podcast hosting software.
Just out of curiosity, how much impact has Fame had on your SaaS product bCast?
Just curious to know if a productized service could help scale a SaaS product, as we're thinking to do the same.
Yeah I wouldn't say it has scaled the SaaS product, Fame definitely give revenue and product feedback to bCast though :)
Great piece of info! thanks for sharing this. We are trying to scale up and it's really hard to find good talent and keep them onboard and motivated, specially when we are pretty much bootstrapping as well atm. These are great tips, thanks you!
:)
Great Work keep It Up.
https://www.neonx.vip
can you share something on day 1 you launch? what was the strategy used?
Found the first clients through network,a dn was very low cost to get case studies!
Creating vs. capturing demand is an interesting one...
Did you start with capturing demand to get Fame off the ground? Or did you focus on creating demand directly from day 1?
Captured demand until $1m ARR, mainly Google, both paid and organic :)
Thank you for sharing your experience!
Anytime!
this is invaluable - thank you!
:)
Thanks for the great post!
:)