Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:09

Okay. Let's do this. Hello, bootstrappers. Welcome to Bootstrap Web episode number 11. It's the show for business owners like you and me who believe that to get to where we're going, we've got to learn by doing.

Brian Casel: 00:20

I'm Brian Casel. You can follow me on Twitter at castjam or on my blog, castjam.com. Today, you're gonna hear my interview with Dan Norris, is joining me once again to talk about his newly launched startup called WP Curve. It's a company offering twenty four seven on call support for WordPress sites. So that's pretty interesting, and we're gonna get into that.

Brian Casel: 00:47

A lot has changed since Dan joined me, and it was only about two months ago here on this podcast. He was on episode number two of Bootstrapped Web. And I I mean, in in that two and a half month time span, he basically validated this this totally new business idea literally overnight. And within a week, I think he doubled his monthly recurring revenue between his other business, Informly, and WP Curve. So we talk all about that and how this is all coming together so quickly.

Brian Casel: 01:26

And in other news, as many of you know, I'm currently working hard on my upcoming book called Design for Conversions. I'd say I'm about one third of the way there in terms of writing content for the book. The surprising thing to me at this point is how challenging it is to keep things short. The chapters are actually turning out to be much longer and more detailed than I anticipated. But honestly, I'm really enjoying it.

Brian Casel: 01:55

I mean, I'm finally getting the chance to flesh out these ideas and lessons about designing a marketing site for a new startup. It's been fun to kinda dig in in a longer format and get this stuff out there. I just hope some founders can actually find the book helpful as they go about marketing a new startup. So if you wanna get a free chapter of the book, head over to castjam.com/book and enter your email. Okay, and now on to the main event, my interview with Dan Norris.

Brian Casel: 02:36

Alright. So I'm here once again with with Dan Norris. You know, quite a few things have have changed since the last time I interviewed Dan, was really only I think it was only about two months ago. So we're definitely gonna catch up on on quite a few things. Dan, welcome.

Brian Casel: 02:50

Thanks for joining me again.

Dan Norris: 02:52

Yeah. Thanks Brian. It's funny. Things happen so quickly around here. Like just yesterday we're going on one particular strategy and today we're doing something different.

Dan Norris: 03:02

So like two months is like a total, total lifetime.

Brian Casel: 03:05

Oh, yeah. It's like an eternity.

Dan Norris: 03:07

Yeah. We we should we should do a podcast every week.

Brian Casel: 03:09

Absolutely. So so, you know, the main focus of this interview is going to be your your brand new company called WP Curve, where you guys are actually offering twenty four seven customer support for WordPress, which is actually kind of surprising that that has never really been available for people with WordPress. I mean, it being kind of an open source platform, there's just you you get kind of email support and help from developers, but getting that on call 247 is definitely an untapped area for sure. So we're gonna get into that a little bit. But, you know, before we get there, we kinda need to get a quick update on where we left off in your previous interview, which was about a month or two ago, talking about your other company informally.

Brian Casel: 03:59

So at the time, you were going through a a kind of a big pivot or actually more like a deep pivot. Right? You're kinda going back to what you were focusing on originally. Can you talk a little bit about the aftermath of of what's been going on with with Informly?

Dan Norris: 04:16

Yeah. So so luckily, that hasn't actually changed really at all. So, I mean, the the decision then was basically to no longer offer the analytics dashboard to business owners and instead and no longer offer the content marketing analytics product and instead just offer the agency reports which is effectively web design company signs up. They connect to Google Analytics and it builds a whole bunch of reports for all of their clients and it sends them an email each month with a PDF report with their logo on it and a bit of text from them saying hello. And it's like a relationship building thing.

Dan Norris: 04:50

That hasn't changed in two months. And I think the only thing really that's changed is we've added a couple of small features, a couple of bug fixes and we've got a few more paid customers and it's growing, I would say steadily. It's not going to take over the world anytime soon but I think the decision I made there and the assumptions I made are correct in that it's sort of almost looking after itself in a way and it's continuing to grow slowly and I'm kind of happy with where it's going with our focus not being on that really at the moment.

Brian Casel: 05:22

Very cool. And I mean, at this point, it's basically kind of running itself. I mean, the core features are built, right?

Dan Norris: 05:29

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's not I don't really believe in running itself because I don't think I just think it's a bit of a myth, the whole passive income thing, but Sure. I mean, it definitely doesn't run itself but the actual software is built like, I mean, before I was sort of thinking about it like something that was alive that I had to constantly build new features for and add new services. And when we cut it back to being a simple reporting tool, then it's effectively built. I mean, the customers aren't really like the customers who are paying for it and using it really love it.

Dan Norris: 05:59

And they don't really desperately asking for new features. They're kind of happy with it as is.

Brian Casel: 06:04

Very cool. And I mean, the support that goes into a product like that, I mean, it it seems like it's a fairly straightforward feature set, you know. Once you kind of get your reports all set up, that's all there is to it, right?

Dan Norris: 06:19

Yeah. There's not a whole lot of support. I mean, there's really, it's sort of one the things I had with Informly to start with was there was never because I'm from a background of services businesses, which WP Curve is, I'm used to like talking to my customers every day and informally was just never like that. I mean, it was just really rare to hear from someone using it. Even people are paying for it.

Dan Norris: 06:43

They just, the reports go unless something happens like they accidentally unsubscribe one of their customers or, you know, yeah, I mean something like that, then they contact us. But it really is pretty limited support.

Brian Casel: 06:57

Sure. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of something I'm pretty jealous of that for sure. I mean, I've been kind of struggling or working through a little bit of growing pains with Restaurant Engine. And I wrote a blog post about this last week about how I'm now transitioning the customer support duties onto my assistant, and that's been kind of a growing period for me to kind of let go of that. Mean, there really is so much support getting people up and running and answering questions that it's kinda becoming unmanageable, but working through it.

Dan Norris: 07:31

Right. Yeah. Well, all businesses are different, but I guess one thing I'd say is this, I don't have many paid customers for Informly. I've still probably only got 25 or so paid customers. So if I had, I mean, I don't know how many customers you've got but if, I mean, I've got hundreds of people who try it out but those people that they just tend to try it out.

Dan Norris: 07:50

And I mean, some of them can see the value in it and they become paying customers, but some of them can't. And we've got sequences set up for everything with Infusionsoft. So there's, yeah, there's not a whole lot of support but I'm sure if I had a couple of 100 or a couple of thousand customers then it'd be a different story.

Brian Casel: 08:07

Sure, sure. So let's get let's head right into WP Curve. So what I mean, what happened? Right? You you made that transition with with Informly, and then I just remember it must have been, like, two or three weeks after that, I I see a post from you talking about now you're in the WordPress customer support business.

Dan Norris: 08:27

Yeah. So WBCurve, it's it's mainly small small jobs and maintenance. So it's basically like our customers doing something on their WordPress site and they want someone to fix it who's a developer. So it's not like, I mean customers will sometimes ask how do I do something or do you have any good plugins for this or whatever. But more often than not, the value is in they've gotten to 90% of what they can do.

Dan Norris: 08:53

And then that final 10% needs a developer to fix up some CSS or to fix a conflict with jQuery or something like that. And that's what they use us for. So we give them unlimited small jobs per month for $70 a month. And yeah, live chat 20 fourseven. Most of it is actually done through email.

Dan Norris: 09:13

Pretty much all of it is done through email. People will log a support ticket and then we will solve it.

Brian Casel: 09:19

So It's kind of like the unique benefit is that you are on call twenty four seven on chat, but still people are treating it like traditional support with email tickets.

Dan Norris: 09:29

Exactly. I mean, way I see it is people want just want to have the confidence that they know they can mess around with their site and they can install plugins and they can create content. And they just know that if anything goes bad they can jump on live chat if it's urgent. If it's not urgent they can send us an email and most of this stuff we get back you know, within twenty four hours and we'll fix whatever the problem is or we'll recommend a better plug in or whatever the case is.

Brian Casel: 09:58

Yeah. Know, that's really great because if you think about it in WordPress, you have so many themes out there and and so many plugins. And, I mean, granted a a lot of the premium themes, they do offer support. I mean, if you're selling your theme or plugin, chances are you you also offer support with that. But even that is pretty inconsistent.

Brian Casel: 10:17

You know, some companies are are better about support than others. And then of course, if you're downloading a free theme off of the directory, it seems odd to even expect any real support. It's nice knowing that WPP curve is there, that's what you guys do. You don't even have a product. Your product is offering customer support.

Dan Norris: 10:38

Yeah. Well, the WordPress marketplace is really, really tough because you have you have a bunch of people who will go and buy a theme for $40 and they will expect support and will expect it to work the way that it looks like it works. And I know people who sell these themes and sell plugins and they hate support, universally hate support because they don't make any money from it.

Brian Casel: 10:59

Yeah.

Dan Norris: 10:59

There's actually, there's a lot of opportunities in this space, but I mean, the one we're going after is really companies who see value in just paying $70 a month for something. Are a lot of people who buy a theme for $40 who have no intention of paying $70 a month what we offer, which is fine. But there are also legitimate businesses out there and agencies and consultants that just have people who are busy and they want their problem solved. They don't wanna go to an agency and take a couple of weeks. They don't wanna go on Odesk and you know, hand their passwords out to some other overseas contractor and go through five of them before they get a good one.

Dan Norris: 11:38

And they're just happy to see the value in paying $70 a month. So our challenge is finding those people and weeding out kind of everyone else who who doesn't see that benefit.

Brian Casel: 11:48

Yeah. Absolutely. So so how did how did the whole idea for offering WordPress support come about?

Dan Norris: 11:56

Right. So I I don't know if you listened to an interview I did with product people with Justin. But I

Brian Casel: 12:04

you know, I think I I think I did catch that one.

Dan Norris: 12:07

Yeah. So I went into a lot of detail on on that one and that was probably like a good hour long discussion. So, I mean, know you've got a lot of stuff to go through today. So how about we, I can just kind of answer that one quickly and then move on to the other stuff. Is that sound alright?

Brian Casel: 12:22

Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Dan Norris: 12:23

Yeah. So the short version was I've been in this industry for a long time and I constantly hear from people. I mean, I had like three or four phone calls yesterday. Everyone tells me the same thing. They tell me that the web designer that I've worked with, like the agency doesn't support them.

Dan Norris: 12:39

They charge them too much and they take too long to get stuff done. And the reason for that is because the agency doesn't make money off small jobs. They make money off big projects. And they tell me horror stories from going onto marketplaces. And every entrepreneur I know has got horror stories from going onto Odesk, Elance and trying to find someone to do little jobs on their site.

Dan Norris: 13:03

And I just, I don't know. I mean, I just kind of had this idea. I don't even know if it's the actual idea that is the reason why it's taking off or if it's just, there's a lot of people with this problem and it's just kind of lucky that I'm in a good position to solve it. But I found myself in a position where I really needed to make money within a month. I'd given myself a year to turn Informly into a business and a month before the end of that year, was losing $1,500 a month.

Dan Norris: 13:31

And I only had $500 a month worth of revenue. So I really had one month left to turn it around. And I was in a position where I had the team in place and I had, I built a list up and I know this industry and I just kind of launched it and it started taking off.

Brian Casel: 13:46

That's pretty incredible. I mean, I most, I know most people would maybe look to, you know, taking on a few consulting projects to bring in some cash. But I mean, you you kinda came up with this idea and launched it, you know, really, really quickly. And we'll get into in a minute about how, you know, talking about like like an MVP and things like that. But so I I mean, I just wanna kinda clarify a little bit.

Brian Casel: 14:09

But you were you were you were work you are still working on informally. So at the time, I mean, did it come out of some kind of need that that you personally had with maybe running informally? Or was it more, like, you know, from your background working in the web design industry, knowing people have this problem? Like, where where did they did you is it an idea that that you kinda had on the shelf for a while or or where how did that come about?

Dan Norris: 14:36

Oh, man. I don't know. I have so many ideas. I have thousands of thousands of ideas every day. Did my brain just doesn't stop.

Dan Norris: 14:42

Sometimes I write this stuff down, sometimes I don't. But I think it's more a case of for the year that I was working on informally and nothing else, I would I turned down so much work. I mean, I get stuff emailed to me all the time with people wanting to get stuff done. A lot of it, like a lot of it is, I don't know if this is like an actual idea I've been thinking of for a while. I think it's just a combination of the problems I've seen.

Dan Norris: 15:10

And I mean, I really wanted to build something that could be a scalable business, something that we could grow. Like I, for some reason, my motivation, the way it works is I don't really get excited when I get a project, but I do get excited when I get a recurring customer.

Brian Casel: 15:24

Sure.

Dan Norris: 15:24

And I really liked that recurring model. And I think it's better for customers and it's better for me. And I just find building a business up like that is really, really motivating because every like this month, our business has grown by 65% on last month. And that's just like every time I get a new customer, like going to Google, put that calculation in and just get excited because it's, to me, it's like, it's a really, really simple business model. And I know people have this problem.

Dan Norris: 15:54

And the only question for me was, was I going to be able to get enough people to commit to a monthly recurring service for this? And thankfully it seems that that's not been a problem at all.

Brian Casel: 16:08

Nice. And, you know, I'm not gonna push you to reveal anything you don't wanna reveal, but I know you're pretty transparent about informally. Are you as transparent about WP Curb in terms of the number of customers that that have come on? Or

Dan Norris: 16:21

Yeah. I'll tell you, but I'll get in trouble because I got a co founder now. I'm not sure if you saw that.

Brian Casel: 16:25

Yep. I I did. That that's actually my next question. But you know, if you don't wanna give a

Dan Norris: 16:30

No. No. I do. I do. And he's not on the call so he can't stop me.

Dan Norris: 16:34

But, he he wants me to kind of ease back on the and we had a couple of calls with some guys. He we we spoke to Heat and Shore, which is really cool. And he kind of said the same thing. It's like, it's cool to be transparent with your stuff. But if you're trying to get partnerships with bigger companies or investment or whatnot, then that kind of becomes a problem which we're not trying to get investment but we are trying to get partnerships.

Dan Norris: 16:56

But yeah, so customers we've got so across both of them now, we've got 51 customers.

Brian Casel: 17:03

Across both of them, you mean informally and Formally, yeah. Okay.

Dan Norris: 17:07

But so I mean, the way it worked was before I started WP Curve, think I had about 20 Informly customers. It might've been less. Let me think it was about $500 a month recurring. I launched WP Curve and within one week I'd gotten that $500 a month. So I'd gotten the same amount of recurring customers as it had taken me a year to get with Informly.

Dan Norris: 17:32

And that's now five times as much. And that was about six weeks ago. So we're up to about 2 and a half grand a month.

Brian Casel: 17:39

That's great. So tell me about Alex McClaafferty. Did I pronounce his name correctly?

Dan Norris: 17:47

Yeah. Just calls himself Claff or the Claff.

Brian Casel: 17:50

So give me the story about how how you met the claff and how you guys decided to partner up. Okay.

Dan Norris: 18:01

Well, I wrote this blog post, which I think is I'm not sure if this came out when we last talked, the startup validation one. I'll give you a

Brian Casel: 18:08

link Yeah. To I remember that. It might have been a week or two after.

Dan Norris: 18:11

Yeah. So

Brian Casel: 18:14

It started it started validation bullshit, and that was that was a really, really great post. We'll definitely link it up here.

Dan Norris: 18:20

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So that was it did really well that post. It was I don't know.

Dan Norris: 18:25

Sometimes you just I know we've talked about this before. Sometimes stuff just takes off and sometimes it doesn't. But anyway, this this got quite a bit of attention and Alex commented on it and I kind of went back and forward about, we actually talked about co founders in the comment because he kind of said something about, have you ever thought about doing this? Then we had a Skype call and he found himself in the position in The US where he's just moved there. He's an Aussie and he's just moved there and he's waiting for his stuff to come through.

Dan Norris: 18:51

And he basically had like a month or two where he could just work. He can't get paid. So he just wanted to like do some free work. And he's always been someone who wanted to start his own business and for whatever reason hasn't. And he's been following me for quite a long time.

Dan Norris: 19:10

And we just had a Skype call and I'm like, yeah, you can start doing some stuff for free. But I mean, the important thing was that he straight away, he was meeting with people and he was trying to drum up business and like, we're working like around the clock on this thing. And he just proved straight away that he was prepared to get shit done. And he's got a complimentary skill set in that he's more skilled in like face to face networking type stuff. And I really need that.

Dan Norris: 19:39

And I've always known I need that in my business, but I just have never really found the right person to kind of do it with. And I was in a position at that point where the business wasn't making any money. And I also, I just launched WP Curve, which is a twenty four hour service, but had absolutely no capacity to provide a twenty four hour service because it was just me. And I just had my phone next to my head in my bed in case it went off. And yeah, it was just, I don't know, call it what you want, but it was just like, this just seems pretty good and we've been working together ever since.

Dan Norris: 20:12

And yeah, we're just busting our balls on this thing and he's doing great work. He's working around the clock as am I.

Brian Casel: 20:21

So, I mean, let me just kind of get this right. So he reached out to you to kind of offer his services for free, and that was kind of a way of networking in hopes that you would kind of become a future client of his or how did that a little confused about how it became like a partnership.

Dan Norris: 20:42

Well, I mean, he just told me that he'd been wanting to start his own business for a long time. I could tell he's excited about this. I could tell that I needed a partner, especially launching this twenty four hour a day thing.

Brian Casel: 20:52

Yeah. Sure.

Dan Norris: 20:53

I mean, I could potentially I mean, I've thought about having a co founder for years. I've tried different ways of doing it. And before when I tried it, I actually had an active profitable business and that is really hard. But at this point I found myself in a situation where I had nothing, just an idea, inability to really service the idea and a shortfall in skills that I'm gonna need to make this idea work. And he had the skills I needed.

Dan Norris: 21:21

He was based in the right location. He had the passion. He proved he could get shit done. It it just all seemed to be perfect timing. I don't know.

Dan Norris: 21:28

This could like really go to shit. Nice. But so far

Brian Casel: 21:31

Well, yeah. So far. Looks like you guys are doing doing pretty well right right off the bat. So how are I mean, first of all, it's obviously nice that you guys are kind of based on two opposite ends of of the globe, offering twenty four seven support. I mean, how how else are you guys kind of splitting up your roles and responsibilities in the company?

Dan Norris: 21:53

I guess I'm focused more on operations and actually getting through this work. And I'm doing still doing content. I'm still doing quite a bit of content and he's doing more of the, like the sales and the influencer type growth hacking stuff. So he's trying to basically find influencers who are people who have the audience that we want, build relationships with those people. He's trying to sell basically and he looks after sales and more or less looks after pricing although I won't give him free rein of that otherwise he'll like put it up to a thousand dollars a month.

Dan Norris: 22:33

I'll start crying.

Brian Casel: 22:36

Oh, he's doing a good job. He actually reached out to me like three weeks ago trying to sell me on the service. I was like, I'm already keeping my eye on you guys, you know.

Dan Norris: 22:45

Yeah. No. He's pretty ruthless. Watch out.

Brian Casel: 22:47

Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Norris: 22:48

Yeah. I've never really been that good at like, I'm I'm good at making sure stuff gets done and I'm good at, like, making sure customers are happy and stuff, but I'm just not really that good at selling. I kind of need someone who can push me in that direction. And I mean, he probably needs someone balance him out as well. Like, I think if it was just him running a company, it'd probably be pretty scary.

Dan Norris: 23:12

Just as scary as if it was just me running a company.

Brian Casel: 23:14

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about logistics. I mean, again, we're talking 247 on call support. Somebody has to be manning that that chat all day. So how how did it let let's go back to even before I think you launched you know, before you you met Alex, you were running at yourself for for a week or two there.

Brian Casel: 23:36

What was going on? I mean, you're talking about sleeping with your cell phone next to you. I mean, how did you make this thing work?

Dan Norris: 23:43

Yeah. So I mean, when it was just me, I just had a live chat tool on my site, which is OLAC. And I already had that from before because I'd set it up for Informly. And I just put the app on my mobile phone and during the day I would just be on my computer and at nighttime, if the chat went off, then I would wake up and deal with it. And I mean, was like the ultimate minimum viable product.

Dan Norris: 24:06

I thought of the idea on a Saturday. I launched it on Tuesday and I had customers on Wednesday. So it was at absolute minimum of what you could do. I mean, I suppose you could argue that you could you could do without even putting up a website, but other than that, it was pretty much absolute minimum. Yeah.

Dan Norris: 24:22

Unbelievable. Yeah. Since since then, we've so I've got a developer in my time zone who's full time. He's worked worked for me for years. He's amazing.

Dan Norris: 24:31

And he does most of the fixes. And then we've got a developer on call in Alex's time zone. And sometimes we'll get the get the developers to man the chat but more often than not, it's just me and Alex. And there's quite a lot of overlap in our time zone. So like we like I'll work I'll work on the chat in my time zone and he'll work in his and then at nighttime there'll be there's still at the moment, I think there's still a couple of hours where I've got the chat thing set to like wake me up if it goes off for like an hour or something at night.

Dan Norris: 25:02

But yeah, I mean, we've, I think what we're probably going to do eventually is just like, as we get more clients, we'll get more and more developers and we'll get eventually, we'll probably get someone on to actually manage the the like the actual work with the clients. At the moment, it's just me and Alex doing that. Like actually dealing with the clients. But most of it comes through email, like 95% of it comes through email and people still prefer to deal with that way. Like they get on live chat if they get something urgent, but like we're not a hosting company.

Dan Norris: 25:33

We're not, if their host goes down, like we can't really fix that. We're just doing small fixes. So we don't get people ringing us in the middle of the night that are totally desperate that their sites crashed.

Brian Casel: 25:43

Right.

Dan Norris: 25:43

More often than not, we just get people who have installed a plugin, it's broken something and you know, they want it fixed and and if it's done within four or five hours, then they're they're really, really happy.

Brian Casel: 25:55

Gotcha. And so so right now, it's it's you and Alex who are actually the ones on the chat. So if someone were to to pop a chat in there, they're gonna be talking to you or Alex. And then basically, you're taking people's requests and forwarding them on to your developers and and they get it done and you kinda relay back and forth.

Dan Norris: 26:12

Yeah. We've got a process set up. So we've got we use Trello for our task management system and the clients have access to a Google Doc. So we have a Google Doc for each client which just has every little detail about what we do on the site and what files we've changed and they have full access to that so they know exactly what's happening on the site. They can comment on that.

Dan Norris: 26:31

And we've also got a help desk system, but we tend not to use it. We tend just to have it there as like a record of the jobs, but we normally just email people back and forth still. So it's only, so we've got 51 customers. I think it's probably like 30 WP curve customers. So it's not like we're getting thousands of jobs a day.

Dan Norris: 26:49

It's pretty manageable at the moment still just with email.

Brian Casel: 26:52

You guys are kinda manning the the chat and you're, you know, you're forwarding it to developers. I mean, how much of this would you consider to be in in still kind of in the MVP state, know, minimum viable product? I mean, can you speak to that at all? Like, are there things that that you're still doing manually that you kind of plan to automate later or or how does anything there?

Dan Norris: 27:15

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. I mean the way I think about MVP is what I did in week one was an MVP. Like literally coming up with something, putting a buy now button on in one day, having a phone with a chat thing on beside my bed and not spending more than five or six hours and then sending an email to my list and asking people to sign up. I think that was the MVP. Everything from there forward has been, I mean the good thing about this is and that was something I talked about in that post that startup validation post is when something takes off then it's really, really easy to validate it.

Dan Norris: 27:54

I mean, me this is pretty much validated because we know how much it's costing us per customer more or less. We know on average how many jobs people are requesting. We know people like this because people are signing up at an amazing pace. And we didn't really do any work on validation. We just put it up and everything we've done since has just been a case of growing.

Dan Norris: 28:18

I think with any business, you always wanna automate as much as you can eventually but one thing I didn't wanna do with this business which is a mistake I've always made in the past was trying to automate everything too early. Sure. And I mean, I would like to see this within a year get to two fifty customers. And then, I mean by that stage it's probably a bit too much for me and Alex to manage. And we need to get to a point where we've got people who can manage the calls as well as developers who can do the work.

Dan Norris: 28:48

Absolutely. If not developers who can do both if that's possible. Because the stuff we're requesting is so specific. Like it's only small jobs. So it's not like there's no sort of project work or scoping or anything like that involved.

Dan Norris: 29:03

So we are gonna wanna get to a point where we've got like a level one level two thing where like a lot of the small stuff can just be dealt with and then we would come in for some of the like because we do advice and stuff like that which you can't really get a virtual assistant to do.

Brian Casel: 29:19

For sure.

Dan Norris: 29:19

But yeah, I mean at the moment I don't see it as an MVP. I think it's a business now and our job is to grow it and when things become too much of a headache to automate them.

Brian Casel: 29:29

Yeah. And I mean I think with a business like this, it

Dan Norris: 29:31

really

Brian Casel: 29:31

is all all service. I mean, that is the product that you're that you're offering. It's not the type of thing that you really need to build too too much custom software. I mean, all the tools I mean, if we're talking about tools in in inside a business like this, they're all available out there. I mean, you you've got Yep.

Brian Casel: 29:50

Olarc for the live chat. You you know, you could use a software like like HelpScout or or desk.com to, you know, have have a ticketing system. Like you said, Google Docs, I mean, it's it's all right there. I mean, it's just kinda putting the pieces together. And then I I guess the real the real work comes into putting together the the the procedures and the and the systems and and the management levels and things like that.

Dan Norris: 30:13

Yeah. The hardest work for us is going to be to make sure we can scale the quality of the developers because our developers are amazing and we just need to make sure that all the developers we hire in the future are just as amazing. And if we grow at the speed we wanna grow at, we're probably gonna have to hire four or five more developers within twelve months. So that's, I think that's probably gonna be the main thing is making sure we can get developers at the same level of quality which I think we can because I've had good developers, you know, all my business life and I've been able to find them.

Brian Casel: 30:43

Yeah. And you know, you're work you're working with WordPress and that's Yep. The pretty much the greatest community of developers, you know, of any other group in terms of the web. So

Dan Norris: 30:55

Yeah and there's ways we can there's also ways we can manage that better. Like at the moment, I've got my lead developer who's just amazing doing a bunch of work that could easily be done by someone who doesn't have his skills. So there's all those kinds of efficiencies which we can get as well. But yeah, tools wise, I mean from a development point of view, we are building a few plugins. And so the way that works, I see it more as a content marketing thing where like an example of this week someone asked us when they order, when their customers order from WooCommerce they want their customers automatically be added into their email marketing system as customers.

Dan Norris: 31:32

So we're gonna build a plugin. We've already built most of it that enables them to add those people into their email marketing system. And like that is not a small job but in this case we're doing it for the client because we can then own that plugin and release it for free on our website and use it as a a lead generation strategy.

Brian Casel: 31:52

Sure. And that that's actually a good segue to my next question. So let's talk about marketing a little bit. How are you going about marketing and and and what are the different strategies that that you're working with?

Dan Norris: 32:02

Right. So this is actually pretty exciting. It feels like we're doing this properly. Like in my last businesses I just kind of tried to throw a lot of stuff out there and hope that something stick. But in this case where we're really targeting and this is something that came about through, I met with Noah Kagan when he was in Brisbane and this is something he just wouldn't shut up about was like, find out who this person is who really needs your service and why they need it and define who that person is which we've done.

Dan Norris: 32:34

And from there our main strategy is A, producing content for those people but more importantly engaging influencers in those communities and either doing content for them or signing them up as an affiliate. And I can give you a perfect example right now. One, we did a post a week ago for Laura Rhoda who's influential in that kind of entrepreneur, small business community. And she's an affiliate and she did a post on her blog and someone who happens to be Australian who's also an influencer in that same market read that last week and called me yesterday and she wants to sign up as an affiliate and also wants to send customers to us because she gets loads of people who have these problems. And that's more or less how we're marketing this is finding these influencers, doing whatever we can to help them, creating content for them, doing specific things for their audience and trying to get them to promote the service.

Dan Norris: 33:34

And then on top of that, we've got a whole list of stuff we're experimenting with. Most of it has to do with content. And then obviously there's word-of-mouth

Brian Casel: 33:44

and

Dan Norris: 33:45

just making the most of customers that are happy with the service and making sure that that message gets out.

Brian Casel: 33:52

How about just like direct partnerships? I mean, I I certainly see how how influencers can can really help help, you know, spread the word and and and get a wide reach for, you know, for a new company like this. But what about, like, direct partnerships with I mean, I would think theme companies might might wanna kinda outsource their support or offer a higher level of support through you guys or even just consultants doing doing WordPress sites. You know, I mean I mean, a lot of times, I I know that in in the past when when when I would do WordPress web design for for clients, it would be I'd work with them for a couple of months and and launch the site, and and I'm there to kinda fix any unforeseen bugs. But beyond that, I'm not gonna be on call twenty four seven.

Brian Casel: 34:37

So I would think that that shops like that would would be open to partnerships.

Dan Norris: 34:42

Yeah. We actually thought the same thing. And when we started, we really went after those agencies pretty hard. And we probably had calls with 20 or 30 different agencies or like freelancer type guys. And this is what Alex has been doing is he's been to these guys on the phone.

Dan Norris: 35:00

And it didn't really work as well as we thought. Like we were thinking we would either get people on as affiliates or we would do a white label situation where we could actually support their clients and they could pay us vice versa. But it didn't really work that well. I don't know if it was because of the people we're talking to or

Brian Casel: 35:20

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a hard transition, especially for the client who you're working with with one consultant and then all of a sudden you're working with this other company. But

Dan Norris: 35:31

Yeah. My theory on it is that if we're targeting like web agencies, then what web agencies need is cheaper development and better development. And what we're providing is not really the cheapest way. Like if they've got 10 clients and we charge them $60 per client then that's quite a bit of money for them to pay each month. It's not really the cheapest way

Brian Casel: 35:56

Sure.

Dan Norris: 35:56

To get development done. They could go and hire someone direct overseas or you know, do they could do any number of things to get it done cheaper. Like they're motivated more or less by that. Whereas consultants and influencers are motivated by making sure their clients get put in good hands and they're not directly trying to offer this service which I think is the differentiator. Someone's trying to offer, you know, WordPress services then they don't seem so keen to use us because we look like an expensive provider to them.

Dan Norris: 36:26

That's my theory on it and so far that seems to be the case. It's not what we thought originally because we thought that this would be like our way to really grow this quickly like to sign up bulk deals. But it hasn't really happened and I'm feeling at the moment like we're better off staying away from that and just focusing on influence and just focusing on signing up individual customers. That's one thing that's working for us actually is just having like a clear goal each week. Like we will get this many customers.

Dan Norris: 36:53

And it's just a really simple way to understand what you should be focusing on.

Brian Casel: 36:57

Gotcha. And so how about

Dan Norris: 36:59

With the theme shops, I'll talk about that very quickly because we did have a bunch of ideas around that about how we can do those. Like build something. I probably can't say too much because maybe one day we will do this but we do have a bunch of ideas about some kind of software that we can use for these guys. But again, my thoughts on that is that these people who are downloading free themes or paying $40 for a one off for a theme are not our ideal clients. And there's like, it's kinda like going for the bottom of the market.

Dan Norris: 37:34

And with a recurring service, we're effectively asking people to pay $70 a month which is quite a lot of money as a lifetime value compared to buying a $40 theme. So I think it's a totally different market and I think we would need a totally different business to actually do a good job in that market. So my preference is staying away from them at the moment.

Brian Casel: 37:53

Yeah. You know, actually with theme shops though, I I mean, I still run my my theme shop Theme Jam which is kind of a a small little side side business.

Dan Norris: 38:03

But You have some businesses, man. I can't

Brian Casel: 38:05

keep up. It's ridiculous at this point. But, you know, I I mean, I I still kinda get the the odd customer support request on that, you know, a a handful a week. But, you know, a lot of them and and I think most theme companies deal with this is is a lot of these questions require a a small customization to the theme, you know, maybe tweak some CSS or or, you know, tweak some some PHP or whatever it is. And the the answer is, you know, I I can't help you with customizations.

Brian Casel: 38:33

You know, I sold you this theme. I I'm I'm here to support the the theme and the installation and and configuring the options.

Dan Norris: 38:41

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 38:41

You know, I mean, so in those cases, I I often just refer them out to, you know, just random people, you know, or or job boards. And and I mean, in this case, I would refer to WP, you know, WP curve. If you need customizations, you should talk to these guys. You know, I I think a lot of theme theme companies

Dan Norris: 38:59

would But do these people are these people the type of people who wanna pay for a monthly service for this or are they just looking for a quick fix? And that's my point is a lot of the people who buy these themes are not the same people who are prepared to pay for an ongoing relationship with someone. You know, they're really just looking for something to be fixed quickly and that's not the kind of business I wanna build.

Brian Casel: 39:21

Yeah, that makes total sense.

Dan Norris: 39:23

I mean, it might be wrong. I mean, it might be wrong. Might find theme devs who send us loads of work that I might prove to be wrong with that. But that's my gut feeling on it.

Brian Casel: 39:32

Yep. Cool. So so how about, you know, kinda getting back to to the content marketing piece. How much overlap is is going on or do you plan to do between Informally and WP Curve? Because I I know on on Informally, you know, you you've you've worked quite a bit on on building up that blog and putting out the content.

Brian Casel: 39:52

Are are you any any kind of overlap or sharing of resources or blog posts or things like that?

Dan Norris: 39:59

Yeah. At this stage I think the plan is to actually move a lot of that content over to WP curve and informally we'll have the agency content because it's targeting agencies. So on there I've probably written like 150 posts in the last year on that site. Most of it was targeted the original Informly audience which has turned out to be the customer base for WP Curve. And it's just small business owners, entrepreneurs, those kind of guys and influencers who want help with all kinds of online marketing stuff.

Dan Norris: 40:29

You know, I've got guides on there for retargeting and ad words and SEO and content marketing and all this kind of stuff which is not really that relevant for agencies. So it's not really relevant to the product informally anymore. But it is really relevant to WP Curve. So most of that will come across to WP Curve. The agency stuff will stay on informally and our focus is gonna be on WP Curve.

Dan Norris: 40:50

Gotcha. Which sucks a little bit because I did build up a really good resource there. But one thing I learned in the last year was like it's really important to have targeted content. So like you need to have a strategy where you know who your customer is, you create content that appeals to that customer. Not just your fanboys or the people who like your content but actual potential customers for your business.

Dan Norris: 41:20

You create content for those people, you create opt ins that take that content to the next level and then you create sequences behind those opt ins that kind of narrow the people down who really are ready to buy right now and make sure you pitch those people on on what you're offering. And so we need to get all of that working for WP Curve so we know who who wants WordPress help right now, make sure those people know exactly what we do and make them an offer.

Brian Casel: 41:43

Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, I I think the thing that I really like about what you guys are doing with with Informly and WP Curve and, you know, this is this kinda makes that process of migrating the the content over a little bit easier is that, like like you said, it it's kind of the same audience. You're still building you know, a lot of the audience from Informly would would find value in WP Curve. I mean, they're they're both targeting website owners.

Brian Casel: 42:10

Right? So I Yeah. I think that's just really smart of you guys to kinda merge the two and and kinda grow it that way.

Dan Norris: 42:19

Yeah and we've found that most of the people who sign up for WP Curve, the vast majority have got some relationship with me that goes back months if not years. They're on my list and they've been actively checking out my content and actively downloading our giveaways and eventually they become a customer.

Brian Casel: 42:37

Nice. So one final question here. Things are certainly looking up for you guys. Really exciting, brand new company off to a great start. But you know, there there's gotta be something that that's challenging you right now.

Brian Casel: 42:49

So what what's what would you say is your biggest challenge with with anything? WV curve, Informally, all of it?

Dan Norris: 42:56

The well, the biggest challenge is earning because it's a 100% recurring business which means if you divide, you just pick like a $40 wage for example and you multiply that by two for two co founders all of sudden you need to be making $80,000 profit a year which is quite a lot of money. And we won't be doing that until we've got about two fifty customers or so. So that's our biggest challenge at the moment is how do we get there quicker because we both wanna make sure we get paid for what we do. But how do we not compromise on the long term strategy of just doing this 100% recurring, this really simple offering of WordPress maintenance, small fixes. So in a year from now, we haven't compromised on the growth of that recurring business.

Dan Norris: 43:48

But in the meantime, we're able to do one or two jobs here or there to make sure that we're also earning a wage.

Brian Casel: 43:53

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I think that that's one of those things that for for anyone listening who who has not launched the, you know, a SaaS business or, you know, has been thinking about it for a while, listening to all sorts of podcasts and blogs, It it kinda seems so glamorous. Even even the well known guys, even the well known companies out there who are who are really killing it, you know, bringing in customers, it's still a a long slow slog to get that that recurring revenue up to a certain point that can actually pay, you know, a a comfortable salary.

Dan Norris: 44:28

Yeah. It's a you it's you're playing a long game. Unless you're really hit on something unusual, then you're playing the long game and you're working for I mean getting to two fifty customers in one year is not going to be easy. That's a lot of growth. Like that's 20% growth in the first six months, 10% growth a month for the second six months.

Dan Norris: 44:47

And growing 20% when you've got a 100 customers is a lot. You're signing up a customer almost every business day. So

Brian Casel: 44:55

incredibly difficult. I don't think that people really realize how like when a subscription based business is so much harder to to bring on just one customer than a one off.

Dan Norris: 45:08

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 45:09

You know, it's it's it's I mean, you know, you're really kinda clawing for every single customer. I mean, you know, I know on restaurant engine for sure, I'm getting on the phone, you know, multiple times just to sell one customer Yeah. On a regular basis. I

Dan Norris: 45:23

think it's worth it. Like, if you can get to and my last business had a pretty big chunk of recurring revenue as well. And it was the only thing I liked about that business because you develop great relationships with your customers and you develop some kind of certainty and consistency. And that's what I want from this business. I don't wanna be on that roller coaster anymore in two years time where you just, you have no idea whether this month's gonna be good or you and you think it's gonna be good and then all of sudden something bad happens and all of sudden it's a crappy month and you're making half as much money as you thought and you're worried that your customers aren't gonna be looked after.

Dan Norris: 45:55

I think this kind of business model is something that provides a much better outcome for everybody, but you need to do the hard yards to to get there.

Brian Casel: 46:03

That's absolutely right. And you know what? There there's a flip side to that coin. Right? I mean, the the SaaS recurring revenue model, another, you know, another common misconception when when you look at a a product like this, like, oh, you gotta have thousands of customers or or in order for a product to make sense to to be successful, you need to, you know, get get massive amounts of customers and a huge audience.

Brian Casel: 46:25

I mean, no. Not really. I mean, if you if you just find 200 to two to like two, three hundred hardcore loyal customers who are not gonna leave, I mean, that is a solid business right there. And it's something to something to build on.

Dan Norris: 46:39

Yeah. Well, best thing about it is it's the motivation thing. It's like, if you get to a position where you've got 200 customers and you've gotten there within a year, then you're just completely filled with confidence that, you know, next year you're gonna be have way more customers than that or even next month that you're gonna have more customers, you're gonna be making more money doing better work. And it's not that really up and down kind of cycle that you have with typical consulting business.

Brian Casel: 47:04

Yeah. Yeah, totally. So Dan, thanks for taking the time once again, you know, catching us up on the latest happenings over there.

Dan Norris: 47:15

Yeah, man. No worries. Thanks and if anyone's got any questions about anything, just check out wpcurve.com/blog. I've got an email list on there. I send an email every week and just email me Danwpcurve dot com.

Dan Norris: 47:27

I respond to every email and I really love hearing from people.

Brian Casel: 47:30

So yeah. You can even hop in the live chat. You'll probably get them too.

Dan Norris: 47:34

Yeah. Exactly. Alright, man. Thanks.

Brian Casel: 47:37

Okay. Alright. Thanks, man. Okay. So great conversation once again with Dan Norris, And here are a couple of takeaways from that.

Brian Casel: 47:49

The first takeaway, you know, both of of Dan's products, while they're seemingly very different, they actually serve much of the same audience. So if you're a business owner and you're a website owner, you probably find value both in and informally, as as that gives you updates on the performance of your website. And then WP Curve, which provides development support for your website. Just very smart to to have that overlap. And and that's kind of a pattern that I've I'm definitely seeing across many of these interviews.

Brian Casel: 48:22

You can go back and listen to my interviews with Brennan Dunn and Nathan Barry. Both of them kinda speak to this idea of of audience overlap, when it comes to running multiple products. The second big takeaway here, it's this idea of of entrepreneurship as a skill. You know, did did you guys catch that part of the interview where Dan said he was basically losing, $1,500 a month, and he had only one month left before that, before, you know, he he could no longer sustain that. So what did he do?

Brian Casel: 48:56

He went out and launched a brand new idea, validated and attracted paying customers. Sure. WP Curve is a great idea. And and you know what? Dan has tons of of these ideas.

Brian Casel: 49:07

He could have made any of them work. Why? Because he's built his skill set as an entrepreneur. He can carry that with him through any new idea and any new chapter in his journey. You know, entrepreneurship is not about kind of winning the lottery and hitting on on a single golden idea, you know, like the next Facebook or, you know, whatever.

Brian Casel: 49:32

Entrepreneurship is about knowing how to create value again and again. Finding a customer that you can deliver some type of value for. And Dan has truly demonstrated that he was able to do that and continue to do that as an entrepreneur. And we saw that with his launch of WP Curve. So really inspiring stuff.

Brian Casel: 49:58

And that does it for today's episode of Bootstrapped Web. And I hope you guys enjoyed this one. And If you're looking for more, head over to castjam.com and you can enter your email to get on my newsletter, where you'll get something new from me once a week about design, bootstrapping, startups, all that fun stuff. So, you can do that over at castjam.com. Thanks for tuning in guys, I appreciate it.

Brian Casel: 50:23

See you next time.