[94] From "Accidental Solution" to $50K Launch of a Productized Service, with Dan Schwartz
This is Bootstrap Web. We're back for another episode. It's just me today, Brian. Jordan will be back with me next week, and we'll we'll talk about our updates and and other topics coming up in the in the coming weeks. But today you're gonna hear my interview with Dan Schwartz.
Brian Casel:He's he's a student of my Productize course, And a couple of months ago, he launched a Productize service offering that that just did extremely well out of the gate. Over 50 k in sales in the first opening, which he sold on a webinar, and repeated that process a couple times. We're gonna go through what went into that and how he's now iterating his early success with with the done for you service to build it out as a SaaS solution. A really remarkable story and the way that he's been successful with it in just a matter of months. So we're gonna get into into all the kind of actionable, inspiring little tidbits of of his story from beginning to end and to take us through today.
Brian Casel:I think you guys will really enjoy that and get a lot out of it. And so this recording is actually one of a whole batch of new case study recordings that will be released within the the Productize course, in the next version of the Productize course that's coming out early next year in early twenty sixteen. So I've been talking to other students of the Productize course and other people who are running successful productized services this year. I'll be adding another case study of my own with things that I've learned, running Audience Ops this year along with a number of new lessons and and templates and and some more advanced strategies to go along with the with the first batch of of content that's been in there for the past year in the Productize course. So, that's kind of my focus this month in December is to work on this next iteration of the course, and and, I'm having a lot of fun with that.
Brian Casel:But without further ado, let's jump right into my conversation with with Dan Schwartz. Enjoy. Alright. So I'm here, for an interview with Dan Schwartz. Dan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:How's it going, Brian?
Brian Casel:Going good. So, you know, I've you and I have talked before, you know, you've through the productized service process and we'll we'll definitely do a deep dive in into that and and the business and some pretty pretty remarkable success that you had really really fast. Much faster than than most of the other, you know, people that I know who've been doing productized services. So we'll definitely do a deep dive into that. And we'll hear all about it.
Brian Casel:And and even your next steps as you started with a productized service and and then you're leveraging that to to grow into into a SaaS, and we'll kinda talk about that transition. But, I mean, first, like, why don't you kinda introduce yourself and and, you know, what what does your business look like today, and what are you working on right now?
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah. So my name is Dan Schwartz. I am a musician slash entrepreneur based out of Baltimore, Maryland. Former musician, Brian and I were just were just talking about you're you're kind of always a musician once you're a musician, but right now I'm I'm more identifying as sort of a just an entrepreneur type.
Brian Casel:It's kind of sad and and fun at the same time. Right? Like Music used to be, I'm sure like you, used to be such an integral part of my life, but now working on the web and working on businesses, it's sadly taken a backseat, but that's the reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it can always come back. We'll talk about some of my experience in the music business, but right now I am focused actually in the real estate space. I have been investing in real estate in the Baltimore area since right after I graduated. I graduated in 2010 from University of Maryland, and stubbornly didn't apply to any job at all. I figured that the best way to avoid the rat race was to not get in it at all.
Speaker 2:So that kind of led to finding some sort of opportunity that could earn quick income. So I looked into the challenge of learning the real estate business, got into real estate wholesaling, and over the last five years have done, you know, well over a 100 deals and kind of figured out a lot of the different pain points associated with doing real estate deals and marketing for real estate deals, and generating leads and managing leads. And kind of out of circumstance, I built a system using a platform called podio.com. And this is a web based CRM platform that's totally customizable and it has an open API. And I kinda built a framework for my own business based loosely on the models of some other folks in the real estate space that were kind of touting the benefits of using Podio.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different kind of real estate investor CRM platforms out there, but there's not a lot of ones that automate some of the features that make doing deals a little easier so you don't forget about incoming leads? I know you use Trello. Right, Brian?
Brian Casel:Yeah. We use Trello quite a bit. So in my current business, AudienceOps, I don't use it so much to manage leads. We kinda just use it to manage our production process. But I did use it for as kind of like a CRM in my in my last business.
Speaker 2:You know, we should do an audit call and see if Podia would be a better solution for you. I guarantee you that we could create something way more robust than Trello.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Bet. I mean, I've seen Podio for years as as just one of the many project management tools out there. I think when I first looked at it, I looked at it thinking, you know, it looks pretty slick, but it looks really complicated to set up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely is. So that kinda is what led to the current circumstance. So, took the time to build this platform for my own business and essentially put a couple videos of my system on YouTube and put my email address on those videos and posted it on some of the niche Facebook groups that I thought it could help, you know, help people help organize their leads a little bit because generating leads is the easy part in real estate, but actually monetizing them and keeping track of and following up with people that are interested in selling their house has to be a systematized process.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so you, I mean, you took this this software Podio, which is really a generic project management tool that can like web agencies use it and like all sorts of different businesses use it. But you took it and put it to work in this very niche, you know, in in the real estate space doing a very specific thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when you when you sign up for Podio, it's just a blank slate. And you can create different apps, they call them different apps. And an app within your workspace is essentially just a different element of the structure of your operation. So one app could be seller leads, another app could be buyer leads, another app could be current deals or whiteboard as I call it.
Speaker 2:So you you have these different structures that you create and you kind of drag and drop each line item that you want within each structure. And you build out this way to track and it serves both as a like a repository for data and also a way to create custom views based on the status of each item. So if a new lead comes into the system, a new seller lead for instance comes into the system, you can mark it automatically as new. You could create a category field and the status could be the different statuses within that field could be new, dead, needs follow-up, etcetera. And you can create views based on those statuses and it's very powerful and you can all these different apps can talk to each other and update the status fields from other apps and you can make it as detailed as you want, but the problem that most people have is they have to do it.
Speaker 2:They have to actually build it and think about it.
Brian Casel:And by the way, like, can you clarify, like, are you selling to real estate agents, real estate investors? Who who specifically is this for? And then like, who what is like the the pain point that that the the solution kinda solves?
Speaker 2:So I am my own target customer. I'm a real estate investor. So we're we're selling this to real estate investors that are actively marketing for real estate leads and don't have a proper structure in place to follow-up with the leads, to monetize the leads, create offers for the leads, track their marketing, and kinda put people on a consistent follow-up schedule. Most people are using like spreadsheets or most people honestly just forget about a lead once it comes in. And with
Brennan Dunn:When a
Brian Casel:lead would be a property that Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lead a lead would be a seller.
Brian Casel:So Okay.
Speaker 2:In the real estate business, you send out mail or put up a website to try to get people to call you and say they have a house for sale. And, that's when that's when you make the deals happen.
Brian Casel:And so and so your your system, like, I know that you have kind of a number of templates set up for Podio, which you can then apply to a real estate investor's Podio account. Yeah. Like, how do you describe the the productized service or the package that you that you offer?
Speaker 2:So the actual service is you'll get a pre templated workspace on Podio. So you you when you sign up for Podio, otherwise you'd have to kind of build it yourself and kind of piece together some sort of structure. What we've done is we just created the best, most generic template for real estate investors that works in my business. And over time, we've tweaked it so that it works based on, you know, talking to hundreds of different users and seeing how they're using their workspace. We've created a really good template that you can instantly get access to, plus you get all the automations that occur within that template.
Speaker 2:So the automations happen through another platform called GlobiFlow. GlobiFlow is a is a third party piece of software that connects into Podio and essentially through webhooks, you can program these individual workflows like, if a new lead comes in, then send a text message to this number and the text message says, do you have a new lead? Call this number now. Stuff like that, or if you click on if you click on mark deal is dead, then it sends a task to your virtual assistant to remove that lead from your marketing list, etcetera, etcetera.
Brian Casel:And so you're like, when you have someone buy this package from you, or buy this like product or service, what what happens from there? Like you do you manually go in and set up their Podio account and
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the way it's set up now, and this is it all started, we can talk about how I got my first clients and then how I decided to build it into a company.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And that's definitely what I wanna get to soon, because I know that was like a pretty big initial launch and know that you guys have been doing pretty big things with it since then. I'm just curious, like, just to get an idea of what that looks like after someone buys it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So within twenty four hours, our team will come in, install their Podio workspace, which is the template of all the different apps in Podio, and then they'll have to go in and manually install one by one each of those automations. That kind of brings the Podio apps to life. So that once leads start coming into their system, it'll actually you can press buttons and it'll work through the process automatically. So within twenty four hours, my team will come in and manually install everything, and naturally people will have questions and they'll need to know how to use the system.
Speaker 2:So we also built a very comprehensive set of videos, training videos on a website that they get access to, as well as our support team. So we have people that are readily available to do stuff for people at an additional cost, so if someone needed an extra integration or they needed to hook up a call system, like a phone system into their CRM or they needed to set up like a Mailchimp integrations, they can send out long term follow-up emails, then we have a support team that can actually help them do that. And then we also have a support team that can that's just there to answer questions.
Brian Casel:Very cool. And what is the pricing look like in the different options for all this?
Speaker 2:Well, right now, we were selling it for $14.97, and it's just a one time fee. So and we were selling them on webinars mainly. So the $14.97 one time fee gets them all of the workspaces and the workflows, and then just gives them access to the training content for like an unlimited time. So it's not the best model for like recurring revenue.
Brian Casel:Yeah, but you know, that's interesting though, and I know that you and I have talked about this before, I mean, you know, $1,500 one time fee is pretty solid. It you know, I mean, it's a one time thing. You're I mean, most SaaS, even most productized services have a lifetime value. Even if it's like a monthly recurring revenue, still their lifetime value is less than that. So to to be able to capture that revenue all all at once, especially when you have that that level of a price point, I think that that definitely makes sense.
Speaker 2:I think it's all about it's all about the niche you're in. So, with real estate, like a typical one deal, like if I got a deal and I wholesaled it, which is primary user is gonna be like a real estate wholesaler. And they're gonna be making anywhere between 5 to like $20,000 per deal. So, $14.97 or even $19.97 isn't hard to justify the cost of that, if it's something that's gonna allow you to even just do one deal, then you're gonna pay for it many times over. So, think you need to find a niche where a one deal has is more than a thousand dollars.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely. I I couldn't agree more. So how did the initial launch go? And what what what did like if if you're willing to share any numbers on that, what did that initial launch look like?
Brian Casel:And then we can even go back after that to figure out what were your first steps. But, yeah. How how did you get it initially into the first customer's hands?
Speaker 2:So initially initially, I was actually people were just reaching out to me on YouTube, and I was just I was just installing the workspaces without any automations, but then I realized that that the real value is in the automations. So, what I did is I actually partnered with a person in the space, Joe McCall, who has an active follower base, and Joe is someone who also actively promotes Podio as like the go to tool for Podio, or for managing your leads. So I pretty much partnered with him and I said, hey, listen, basically took your system and brought it to life, Let's set up some sort of promotion where together we can work on building this, making this awesome, creating a bunch of training content, and then marketing it to your list. Joe is also well connected in the space, so we also were able to line up a couple webinars with some other heavy hitters in the space. So the first webinar we did was crazy, there was like 350 people on it, and I think it converted at like 15% or 20% or something like that after all the follow-up emails.
Speaker 2:So I think we ended up making around 50,000 just on that one webinar for the first launch. And that yeah. It was was it was incredible.
Brian Casel:And that was just was that webinar promoted to his list?
Speaker 2:It was just his list. Yep. And these were all people that were already familiar with Podio. Some of them are already using Podio. So it was very it was a very targeted promotion to the people that really would benefit from the value of the system.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. And so just I'm curious, like your relationship with Joe, I mean, how is he able to kinda trust you with this and get this thing along?
Speaker 2:He actually reached out to me from a couple of my YouTube videos and also the Facebook group that I created. I was constantly trying to figure out new ways to use Podio to just save time and do cool stuff. And every time I discovered something, would make a post about it and sort of got a following of people that were also into automating their business. Joe eventually caught word of it because Joe had been selling his workspaces, but there was no automations in the workspaces. So he had an existing client base that were already interested and ready to receive something that was more advanced, and I I kinda saw that opportunity.
Speaker 2:I didn't see it when I first started, like, making YouTube videos, but I eventually became clear to me when people kept emailing me about it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so that was kinda like the first launch and that was what, a few months a few months ago now?
Speaker 2:That was in May. Yeah. That was in May.
Brian Casel:Okay. So that's promoted to Joe's list and and then you did a few more similar webinars to to other contacts of his Yeah.
Speaker 2:We've actually only done like four webinars and we kinda don't have like an evergreen sale for it. So it's been very like in order to get the program in between webinars, have to like reach out to me directly. So there's a lot of scarcity involved with the offer as well.
Brian Casel:So what were kind of your first steps in terms of like making this, turning it into a product and planning for that initial launch on that very first webinar?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, the launch actually, it very much a ready, fire, aim type of scenario. We didn't expect that so many people would purchase it, like we I planned for the best, hope for the best, planned for the worst, but it ended up being like we kinda learned really quickly how to scale this up after that first launch. And I had brought on a virtual assistant that I I basically trained the virtual assistant how to do these installations, how to set up all the workflows, what to do step by step, how to install the workspaces. Luckily, it's just like a standalone, it's just a templated system, so there's not a lot of custom changes, and any custom changes that people would make, we wanted to just show them how to do it themselves, instead of having to create such a customized because that that would be more of less of a product and more of a like a consultant client relationship, which is what I was not going for.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I think that's a really key point that kind of gets lost in a lot of people, but it's so important when you're when you're building out a product high service like this. Because, if you can make it so standardized and so predictable that, like, the way that you install and set up this platform is the same way using the same set of automations and the same, you know, apps and and step by step processes. That's what ultimately allows you to hand this off to a virtual assistant. I mean, any any other kind of service where there are all these different variables or you kinda need to, analyze different things or make different decisions on on how to approach something, that's what makes it a little bit more complicated to to work into a scalable, you know, delegatable system.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And I honestly, I owe a lot of that to your productize course, which kind of you were able to clarify what was in my head that I couldn't, like, get out of my system. So by, like, internalizing the idea of standardizing something and then training someone to do it, and then being totally clear with your potential customers that this is a standardized thing and it's not, I'm not your one on one personalized consultant. You make that totally clear upfront, then people will you might lose one or two people, but the majority of people are gonna be like, okay, yeah, can work with that.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Brian Casel:Yeah, exactly. Because I think it's it's all about positioning and and positioning yourself as as the authority, but also the solution to a very specific problem. I mean, they these people joined that webinar. They registered for that webinar, and then they took the time to actually show up because they have this problem. Like, they know that they've been frustrated with something that's taken them too much time, or they don't know how to set it up.
Brian Casel:And you're coming in here recommending, like, look, this is the solution. We've we've optimized this, we've seen results, You know, I can point to these results that I've seen with this. This is, like, you're you're telling them this is what you wanna do. You know, compare that to what most, consultants, their their workflow looks like, which is, you know, hey, mister client, what do you wanna do? Or or what what are your needs and how can we meet them?
Brian Casel:It's it's kind of going the, you know, the opposite direction where it's like, we've identified this problem, you agree that you have this problem, we're gonna give you this solution and you can choose whether or not you wanna buy it.
Speaker 2:Right. And another key distinction is, if you decide to work with a personalized consultant, it's actually gonna cost you more and it's gonna take way longer because you're building something from the ground up, rather than taking something that's proven to work and getting it immediately. And, yeah, or they can do it themselves, which no one wants to do because it, you know, takes days, weeks, months, it took me two years to figure this system out.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. So so you did that initial webinar, and then you did a few more. What were kind of your next steps from there?
Speaker 2:So the next steps for there were improving the the general functionality based on user feedback. So every webinar we did, we kinda tweaked a little bit of the general functionality just to make it work a little better. We added some more features, like we added a direct mail workspace, which is a separate workspace. We created in Podio using webhook technology in the back end to automate the stuff that happens internally. So we didn't actually use any third party software, we used I just hired a developer to create a program, basically it lets you send postcards, a sequence of postcards to individual properties.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people were requesting, you know, if I'm standing in front of a house and it looks vacant, I wanna I wanna reach out to that owner, how do I what's the fastest way I can do that? So we built this platform that pings lob.com, which is a direct mail API. It sends the it sends basically a preset sequence of postcards to lob.com and sends the postcards over time to the owner of that property.
Brian Casel:So, Cool, that's it's a like a totally automated thing that would normally require a bunch of manual setup.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I don't even think it would be possible in a manual setup. So we kind of I created this workspace and kind of software ized Podio. Like, this workspace is a standalone, gives you an end result that could be a standalone app in itself. And, I think that right there, kind of sparked a light bulb into what this thing could become.
Brian Casel:I actually kinda wanna jump back to that initial launch. I know I'm going a little bit out of sequence here, in in the webinar, mean, you you you guys were pretty overwhelmed with the the response and the number of sales that came through. I mean, I don't wanna kinda give the impression to our listeners here that it was so that everything went went great and it was rosy. I mean, what kind of challenges did you did you run into there? I mean, what what was like the support load like, you know, when you had that many sales and and how did that
Speaker 2:The support load was the biggest issue. Support support was the biggest challenge of this whole thing. If you have you're in the CRM space or you're gonna do something similar to what I'm doing. You've got to make sure that you have a team of at least two people helping you kinda handle the incoming queries. So, we set up a in Podio, we set up a little help desk scenario.
Speaker 2:You can embed forms onto websites that route right into Podio. So I put a support form on our website, so people and then made that like the only way that you can you have to submit a ticket in order to get help. And, it forced and honestly myself, I was doing a lot of those initial support queries, and it was taking up the majority of my time, and I was not having fun doing it.
Brian Casel:Really? You don't have fun doing customer support?
Speaker 2:All day long. It wasn't it was kind of a nightmare. It was great to talk to the customers and get feedback though, and kind of figure out some things that I could implement into the system to prevent that question from being asked again. But over time, you'll get a lot of repeating questions that you can just create a video and put it on a website and just have something that they can refer to right away. I didn't have like a well documented knowledge base other than the training videos that I created.
Speaker 2:So, all of those questions that came in that were unforeseen, people understood that this was like a new company, so they were cool with like the slower than usual response times. But over time, me personally, I wanted to make sure everybody was hooked up as quickly as humanly possible. So, we brought on, in the Podio space, there are a bunch of companies called Podio Partners that kind of specialize in providing support for Podios related companies like myself, And, they helped me kinda find two Filipino VAs that are podioininjas pretty much. And, I trained them in my system specifically, and basically handed over the reins to them, which was a huge, huge weight to lift off my shoulders. Think the last time I talked to you was like right when we hired them.
Speaker 2:So, you gotta work that into your cost, it's kind of expensive, but with something like this, the support and keeping the customers happy is like just as important as the product itself. So, that was probably the biggest nightmare I had, but I also think it was pretty valuable because it's it allowed me to interact with the customers on a direct level.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool. And so something that I wanna get into before we get get into kind of what, you know, your next iteration of the product and how you're building that out as a more automated SaaS going forward. Before we get there, I just wanna talk about the question of using Podio or using any existing third party platform as the basis for this entire business. I've I've talked about the benefits of doing something like this many times, but there there are definitely also some risks.
Brian Casel:I mean, the benefits that I that I see them are, you know, especially with the productized service. I see this happen a lot where you can kinda take a a popular third party tool and layer your productized service on top of that. And, you know, whether it's setting up Podio for a specific niche the way that you've done. I mean, I've seen people set up, you know, like a done for you Mailchimp setup service. I've seen the same with Drip and Infusionsoft.
Brian Casel:AB testing, conversion optimization, you know, they'll set you up with, Optimizely account, something like along those lines. So I think it's great to kinda piggyback off of the popularity of an existing tool because you already it already has that built in audience who is either using the tool or thinking about or wants to use the tool. And they're kind of searching for answers, you know, related to that to that tool and that and that brand name. And you can kinda come in as the expert to go along with that. Did you see that happen in in your case?
Brian Casel:But then there's also the flip side of like the risk of of building on top of a platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, luckily, Podio has has been gaining popularity over the last few years. So I had that helping me, but I also have that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm totally platform dependent. In the event that they went out of business, which there was actually recently a rumor that their parent company was gonna like disown them, pretty much. But it was just a rumor, albeit a scary rumor.
Brian Casel:Or even like their product might change. Like what if their AI like changed or something like that?
Speaker 2:Exactly. Their product might change, so your platform dependency kinda relies on the speed at which you can adapt to their changes. Which is all good, it's a risk I'm willing to take because I know that this particular platform is large enough and has enough popularity and user base that it's not gonna go anywhere anytime soon. However, it's also good to kinda maintain a relationship with the the higher ups at the company as well, especially if you're if you are operating at the level we are, you're gonna wanna make sure that they have your blessing. And they wanna you wanna make sure that they know you're bringing them a lot more customers and that it's a win win situation.
Speaker 2:Because you don't want them to screw you, especially if your livelihood is dependent on their platform. So it's definitely an issue.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And you know, it's it's a it's a hard decision to make, but but you're right. I mean, sometimes I think that that risk is is worth taking. And I I think for anyone listening, if you're if you're working on a product high service related to a a third party platform, I think it's it's definitely worth the effort of of kinda exploring the pros and the cons of this. I mean, I know in my last business in in, Restaurant Engine, that was completely built on top of WordPress.
Brian Casel:And and that's a that's an open source software, you know, with I there's a company kind of associated with it, Automattic, but there's but WordPress itself is is an open source software, you know, contributed to by thousands of developers worldwide. So it's a little bit and there isn't necessarily like a team or or a company that I can build a relationship around, you know, to have kind of personalized support for this platform that my business is was dependent on. But that was a that was a decision that I made early on. Mean, again, I I kinda risk I I thought about the pros and cons of that and and the cons are that, you know, number one, the the software is continuously changing and updating and evolving and and I have to be, you know, up to date on that and make sure that things, you know, get worked out as updates to WordPress come out. The pros that I that I saw it as I mean, number one, I knew the platform well.
Brian Casel:Like in your case, you know you you already knew Podio well and that was your that gave you the ability to launch this really quickly and identify the problem in the first place.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And I think ultimately, it all comes down to the problem and what the end result is that you're trying to deliver in the first place. So essentially, you can't think too much. If you're an entrepreneur and you're just trying to start a business, you can't think too much and worry about platform dependency. You wanna worry more about how am I gonna figure out a way using what exists in the universe to meet this person's need.
Speaker 2:So I think that's kind of this this is the iteration we're on now, like we're using the Podio interface to solve the need of efficient lead management for real estate investors so that they can close more deals in less time. And it just so happens that the system that exists in the universe happened to be Podio and some of the technology that exists around that. So that's what I chose as a means to deliver the value that people needed. So you shouldn't focus too much on the means, more on making sure that you can actually deliver the satisfaction of solving that pain point.
Brian Casel:It's your unique advantage. That's what allows you to get into this business really quickly in the first place because your next iteration, which we can talk about now, you know, building it out as a SaaS, if you had started with this, if you had started with the idea of I wanna build this this software as a service, I have no connections, no following, I just have this idea that'll probably solve a problem. I mean, launching that, getting it from zero to 60, you know, and getting it off the ground and running is a much heavier lift than if you than if you had started with a productized service, generated a bunch of revenue and knowledge and a customer base, and then kind of, you know, taking that next step which you're kind of working on now. So can you tell us about what what what is the next iteration here?
Speaker 2:I've been very fortunate to have sort of a very organic, authentic growth to this. Starting off with just a simple YouTube videos of of my setup like as of like a year ago, I I started posting videos. And then people asking me about it, and then me kind of making the decision, well, maybe I should just make this a company. There was definitely a moment where I was kind of on the fence about wanting to do this, because I knew it would be such a technological pain in the ass to figure out. But you make that decision, and then you just kind of adjust course along the way, being totally honest with everybody and saying, hey, this is what I can do now, and I'm with you all the way, I'll help improve this over time, and that's just it.
Speaker 2:Like, can't you gotta be patient with whatever your whatever value you're delivering. It's not gonna be the Facebook of its niche right away. So you start with what's available, you build that MVP, if you will, and in the process you talk to your customers and you build this platform out, and then you then eventually you figure out, like, what you can do next to reach a broader audience or even improve that existing offer, so long as what you have now is still serving the needs of the people. So, basically, the next iteration of what I'm doing is a tool called Investor Fuse. By the way, you can check out realautomation.biz to see sort of just the landing page that we have for the service I'm currently providing, which is kind of an amalgamation of bunch of is that a word, amalgamation?
Brian Casel:I have no idea. A
Speaker 2:collection of a bunch of different third party integrations tied into Podio's API.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. So the realautomation.biz is the site where you've been promoting kind of the product high service version of this.
Speaker 2:Right.
Brian Casel:Now now your next iteration is to launch investorfuse.com, which as I understand it, this is gonna be more of a SaaS. That's that's it it's still kind of it still interacts with Podio, but it's a little bit more automated and and kinda pulls a lot of these pieces together?
Speaker 2:Exactly. So it basically removes the clunkiness and ties everything into one monthly membership automation tool that connects directly to your Podio account. So you'll get a workspace just like you did with with the current offering, and instead of having to sign up for all these extra tools to automate stuff and to include email and to include sending documents and to include electronic signatures. You don't need to do all that, it's just part of the monthly membership that you'll get with InvestorFuse. So InvestorFuse essentially is just a SaaS automation tool for Podio.
Brian Casel:Like what's going into this at this point? Like what what stage are you at in terms of building this out and getting it ready to launch?
Speaker 2:So the stage I'm at now, I have a developer, and it was the same developer that I used to create that postcard workspace that I was describing earlier. That someone who who just came into our organization via process of improving the current offering. So, like along the way, as building stuff out, you're gonna meet people and work with them, and you can know if you like working with them or not. And I was fortunate to have found a really good developer who has a great team that he manages and he was totally on board with the idea of kind of building our own little automation tool that does a very specific set of workflows for real estate. And we basically created an arrangement that allowed me to not have to spend so much money upfront to hire him, but more of like a revenue share moving forward.
Speaker 2:And we agreed on the terms and he said, alright, let's chart out the milestones, and my goal is to have everything released by mid January. So it's currently in development.
Brian Casel:Cool. Have you already started to announce to your existing list or your past customers that Investor Fuse is coming and how is that?
Speaker 2:I did. I actually just I just announced it two days ago. So, the overall response is excitement coupled with fear of having to switch systems again. So, it's something that I've had to address because it's kind of an unwarranted fear because it's gonna be very similar to what I'm currently providing, just better. And people are like, well, why did I get this if I can just get this?
Speaker 2:And the simple reason is because it doesn't exist yet. It's just something that, I mean, we're gonna help, I'm also gonna give all of my current clients that wanna switch over to Investor Pews, we're gonna give them a discount. You have to make sure you take care your client base if they have to do something like that, like switch over. And then we're gonna hand hold them through the process of switching over. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So it's it's, you know.
Brian Casel:Is there still going to be a a productized service component to Investor Fuse? Or is it designed to be a completely do it yourself automated tool?
Speaker 2:It is designed to be a completely do it yourself automated tool. We're still gonna have a really good support system with really good training and daily training webinars and a very world class onboarding process. Like, that's a goal of mine, is I just wanna make sure that every aspect of this is made clear, have a really good set of onboarding emails that goes out, make sure people are on top of it. But I want it like we're building it so that the major changes that people would wanna make or the major different little automations that they wanted to tweak, they wanted to create their own email sequence for instance, they can go in and change it pretty easily within Podio itself. So we're making it a standalone system, not so much productized, but we might still have the done for you service available if people needed extra stuff.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's kind of like an optional upsell. Yeah. Very nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Brian Casel:So I mean, you know, this is all really exciting. It's it's been awesome to see, I mean, really fast growth. And and the way that you've identified this this pain point, you know, kind of scratching your own itch for a while there and then and then launching it as a as a amalgamation of of different tools. You know, I I think that was that was brilliant. And the way that you're pivoting now to, you know, launch it as a as a SaaS, it's just the the perfect progression of of, idea to, you know, solving a problem to productize service to software solution.
Brian Casel:I think it's fantastic. So I mean, I I know that you've also been kind of, blogging about your experience and and releasing things there on your personal site. That's at dasbeats.net. Das?
Speaker 2:Yep. Dasbeats.net. Very much inspired by Kaz Jam.
Brian Casel:Very cool. And, yeah, as we talked about earlier, you're you're a musician as well. So but, yeah, you know, I see you're you're publishing a lot of really good stuff there. So people should definitely kind of tune into your newsletter over at dasbeats.net.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Actually, if if you opt in, you'll get access to a blog post I made that's like a step by step how to get to inbox zero on Gmail as fast as humanly possible. Something that I kinda figured out how to do earlier this year, just reduce my stress levels a bit. So if you guys wanna kinda hack your Gmail a little bit, then you can opt into the newsletter and you'll get access to that at
Brian Casel:dosdos I dot think I'm gonna opt into that myself right now because my inbox is at like inbox 40 right now. It's out of control.
Speaker 2:That's not too bad. It's not as not as bad as inbox like 7,000, which is what I was at Yeah. Before doing this.
Brian Casel:Very cool. Well well, Dan, it was great to great to have you on. I think I think our listeners will will certainly learn a lot from this one. If people can reach out to you, again, that's at das beats dot net. Any anywhere else where people can kinda connect with
Jordan Gal:you?
Speaker 2:They can reach me at dandotspeeds dot net if you wanted to ask me any questions personally, or Facebook, you can just join the Investor Fuse page and you can find me there. Yeah, Brian, I just wanted to acknowledge, again all the work that you've done over the last year or so in building your platform. I'm super glad to have discovered the content you're creating, which is really, really valuable and timely and relevant information to kind of what's happening in the online entrepreneurial landscape. So I acknowledge you for being the voice for the Productize community and keep up the good work, man.
Brian Casel:I appreciate that, man. You know, it's just awesome for me to see someone, you know, putting this stuff into action and seeing these kind of kind of results. So that's that's awesome to see. I think
Speaker 2:I think there's still so much so much room for opportunity. So Yeah. There's plenty of opportunity even even in using Podio like you can either for real estate investing, you can create the similar thing for lawyers, you know?
Brian Casel:Totally. Actually, was another kind of question that I had just real briefly here as we finish up. I mean, do you do you plan to branch this out into other industries or are kind of focused in the real estate space?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna master the real estate niche and then yes, do plan on branching out into other spaces.
Brian Casel:Awesome. So I do. Yeah. A lot of lot lot of room for growth here for sure.
Jordan Gal:Definitely.
Brian Casel:Well, Dan, thanks so much for taking the time here and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 2:Alright, Brian.
Brennan Dunn:Have a
Speaker 2:good one.
Nathan Barry:Alright.
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