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Patrick Campbell and ProfitWell

June 4, 2019

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Patrick Campbell was curious about how people price products, and how pricing affects conversion – so he built ProfitWell. We discussed pricing, estimating time, tech stack, and so much more. His insights into how to price are fantastic.

[Read more…] about Patrick Campbell and ProfitWell

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Transcript

Intro: Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 126 of How I Built It. Today my guest is ProfitWell co-founder and CEO Patrick Campbell. ProfitWell, formerly Price Intelligently, has worked with all sorts of companies, including big commerce WPEngine and MasterClass, and they focus on doing things figuring out the best pricing for subscriptions. As a matter of fact, Patrick talks about how he became obsessed with subscription growth. He wanted to figure it out and share that information with people, so we talk about how he built ProfitWell, and we also talked about what he’s learned as far as pricing goes. I enjoyed this interview because it’s something that I always wrestle with, I’m sure a lot of you out there also wrestle with it. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell after a word from our sponsors.

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Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, “How did you build that?” Today my guest is Patrick Campbell, the co-founder, and CEO of ProfitWell. Patrick, how are you today?

Patrick Campbell: I’m doing well. Excited to talk about building and all the fun stuff that comes with growth.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for coming on the show. For the audience, why don’t you let us know a little bit about who you are and what you do, and what ProfitWell is?

Patrick: Yeah, totally. That’s always the question because I could talk for an hour or I could say a small missive of who I am, etc. I guess I’ll give the boring version with a little bit of spice to it here. So I’m from Wisconsin originally, we’re based in Boston though. My background is in econometrics and math. I started my career working in the US intelligence community in DC, and then I moved to Boston to work at Google. Basically, I was in big bureaucratic organizations, Google and the US government, so I wanted to jump out and jumped into the startup community here. About six years ago, I got the bug and started what was then called Price Intelligently, and we changed our name to ProfitWell. Basically, we are obsessed with understanding subscription or recurring revenue growth. Our big mantra is, “We want to understand subscription growth better than anyone else, and then share that knowledge and then imbue that within our products.” The products that we offer, we have a free subscription financial metrics product. You plug in your billing system, Stripe, Braintree, Zuora or whatever you’re using, and you get access to your MRR, your churn, etc. Then the way that we make money is once you log into that free product, you’ll see “This is a problem, this is a problem, this is good.” When there’s problems, we have a couple products. One that helps reduce your churn by attacking your delinquencies, and another that helps with your pricing, which was the Price Intelligently product. So we’re pretty obsessed with the subscription world, and that’s hopefully a good little background with some nice highlights.

Joe: Yeah, that’s perfect. So you’re from Wisconsin, but you’re based in Boston. Are you a Boston sports fan?

Patrick: I have to say yes, or I’ll get attacked. I’m definitely a Wisconsin sports fan still. Green Bay Packers especially, and I love the Bucs and the Brewers, but it’s hard to love those teams because the Packers have been doing well for a while, but it’s hard to love the other teams that haven’t done as well. But in Boston, it’s super tough because everyone– I feel that we’re so spoiled out here with all the championships and such that’s creating terrible fans. People who are like “We didn’t make the finals this year, and it’s a terrible season, everyone should be fired.” I don’t know, when the Brewers went over 500 and didn’t make the playoffs, it was a great season. It’s just a funny thing. I don’t know, and I like the whole “Championship or bust” mentality out here. I think it’s interesting, and I think it’s helpful.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in New York, so I am a New York sports fan. I have the same mentality with the Yankees. It’s like “The Yankees didn’t make it to the playoffs, it was a wasted season.” That said, Mets fans are a little bit different, they’re grateful to make the playoffs. It’s always fun to see the expectations of different fandoms, but we’re not here to talk about sports even though I initiated and I could talk about that all day. I just had to know, as a New Yorker, if you were a Red Sox fan.

Patrick: I mean, I will say I hate the Yankees, to add some fire here.

Joe: That’s fair. So, you worked in the US intelligence agency and then Google, and you mentioned that those are large bureaucratic agencies, and you wanted to jump into the startup community. What was maybe the biggest bureaucratic headache that you– Or, what was maybe a common headache that you saw due to big bureaucracy?

Patrick: That’s a really good question. I think the common one and the biggest one are a little bit different. The biggest one which you’re annoyed at, but you also realize why it’s important. When I worked in the intel community at one of the agencies, it would take three to four forms to change a print cartridge in a printer. Now you sit there, and you’re like “Oh my God, that seems ridiculous.” Then again, you’re like “OK, if you think about being in an intelligence community, printers are places that you can have attacks, or you can have people collecting information and such. So having logs on logs does make sense, but it’s also like ‘Maybe it shouldn’t have been four forms, maybe two forms would’ve been OK.’  “That’s kind of how everything is, so when you’re a young, I don’t know, arrogant kid, trying to take over the world and do really– Just hungry. The bureaucracies, that’s tiresome. I think the bigger, more persistent and/or common thing that I think was frustrating was this whole concept of “Communication management.” If you’ve ever worked in a large organization, you spend a lot of your time– It’s not quite politicking, but it’s “I have to make sure that I am being presented in the best light when I do this presentation,” and then there’s “I have to take on this extra project, because that’s how I get promoted.” There’s just a lot of this stuff that’s outside of the core work and also makes it complicated, because all of a sudden you say something that is not even inappropriate but mildly rubs someone the wrong way and so now you have to go apologize. There’s just a lot of stuff that comes with a large organization, so when building an organization of ProfitWell, and we’re now about 60 people, that becomes one of those things where “How do I, with the knowledge of not wanting that inside an organization, how do I make sure that I cannot snuff that out because some of that stuff’s important, but make sure that it’s efficient and it’s the type of conversations?”

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point. I think a lot of people probably start their own companies because they see something that they didn’t like in their full-time employment or in the traditional job market, and being cognizant to not make that part of your company culture is then a big challenge. Especially because these giant companies have been able to scale and maybe that’s part of scaling. I totally understand that. I worked in higher-ed, and I was never really good at the politics stuff. Again, being a New York Italian, I always spoke my mind, and that got me into trouble because I always told my superiors the things that they didn’t want to hear, but I knew were right. Luckily I’m self-employed now, though.

Patrick: There you go. That’s how you– That’s how you cut all those things, you cut through them all, go full self-employment.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. What gave you the idea to start Price Intelligently, now ProfitWell? Because I love this idea, and as more and more people get into thinking about subscriptions and monthly recurring revenue, I feel like it’s easier than ever to get into that now. But doing it right is hard to do, things like find the right pricing and prevent churn. So what gave you the idea for this business?

Patrick: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think there were two vectors in starting the business, and the first one was I would say that young hubris that I was referencing before. The “I can do better.” All this other stuff and being frustrated in larger organizations, and so that made me jump out of the larger organizations, and then even at a smaller organization, I worked at this company called [Jim Vara] between Google and starting Price Intelligently. But even in that smaller organization, which was about 100 people, I still felt that hubris and so I don’t know if that was– Then I’ve grown out of that in a good way. But I’m thankful that I was a little bit of a gruff, early 20-year-old millennial if you will, back in the day. Because I think that pushed me to not just settle for a traditional 9-5. The “This is an idea,” where it came from– I was tasked, I was a strategic initiatives person where basically I would find little problems here and there. “The support people need training, or the order management system needs a product manager,” just little stuff like that. The one thing I got tasked with was pricing. So there was just– They gave a kid, basically a young middle 20s person this whole pricing thing, which was all of a sudden something where I had a little bit of a playground where I would see changes we would make would either have giant wins in terms of revenue or have giant losses. So that was one of these things where I was like “Interesting. This is fascinating.” Especially when it came to most companies and most businesses, we put so much sweat and so much effort into building something. Then, when it comes time to price it, we’re kind of like “I don’t know, just put a nine at the end and put the most expensive tier on the left and we’ll call it a day.” There should be some more science here, so this got me fascinated with digging deeper and deeper on a problem. Then what we discovered was that pricing is not just the number, it’s your packaging, your positioning, who you choose as a customer. That opened up the entire vision for where we’re going in terms of this whole subscription growth, subscription science element. So, yeah. That’s the mild origin story or the ideation story if you will.

Joe: I like that. You said there should be more science here, which I mean, definitely. I feel like more often not, I’m just picking a price that I think people will pay and then seeing if people will pay it. But you’re right. You said, “It’s not just pricing, it’s packaging, it’s positioning, it’s knowing the customer.” I’m actually really curious about the research aspect of it. I always ask, “What kind of research did you do?” But in this case, it sounds like your product offers a large amount of information presented with the research around it for maybe psychologically what pricing works, and stuff like that. Would you be able to explain that a little bit?

Patrick: Yeah, definitely. Let me pick a depth here, and if you want me to go deeper, or if I go too far, then you can always cut it. It’s like, “How do you price?” In that sense, there’s a short version, and then there’s a medium version, and there’s a long version. I think that it comes down to if you think about what a price is. Your price is, the phrase I like to say is, “It’s the exchange rate on the value that you’re providing.” So, what that means is that you’ve put all this effort into whatever you’re doing and then all of a sudden you’re like “I created this much value and because we don’t barter things anymore, or at least formally, I’m going to put a number on that so that you can give me some cash equivalent for whatever that product is.” When you start to use that mental model, everything in your business from your sales and your marketing, all the way down to your product and finance, starts to become either driving someone to a point of conversion or justifying the price for the product that you’re offering. So, all that means is that you need to measure that precipice. There’s a bunch of models you can use in different ways that you can collect data. Everything from using souped-up conjoint analysis, which is expensive and takes a ton of time, all the way to just having qualitative conversations with your customers in the right way. This is all under “Customer development,” as it’s called. All of those things, what you’re trying to get at is measuring for the right customer and determining the right customer. What is their perception of that value? Because that perception is reality. Then using different value propositions in order to figure out, “Does this value proposition move the value this much, or does this value proposition move that much?” To give you a little bit of practical advice, if you and I were having a conversation on the phone here and I was trying to understand research about the computer that I’m conferencing in on here. What I would do is I would go, “OK. The computer has a bunch of benefits for you. It can make you more efficient, and it can give you a bunch of entertainment. It can help you with research, and there’s probably a bunch of other stuff. But out of those three, what’s the most important and what’s the least important?” You might say, “The productivity efficiency is the most important one. I don’t know, I need the research element and the entertainment I’m going to use, but it’s probably the least important.” Just with that data across 30 people, all off a sudden I start to have some semblance of “OK, for this computer, it’s an efficiency device. It’s the bicycle for the mind as Steve Jobs once said.” Then I might ask you, “OK cool, so that’s awesome. This is something that’s important for your efficiency, your productivity, and all that fun stuff. At what point is this so expensive, you wouldn’t purchase it?” You might struggle with giving an answer, and you might be like, “Probably $1,500.” OK, cool. Then I’d say, “At what point is it such a good deal you’ll buy it right now?” You might go, “$500 bucks” for a MacBook Pro or something like that. Then all of a sudden, I have again across 30 people, I might have a really good understanding of “OK, we’re somewhere around $800 to $1,000.” People think about this as efficiency. Entertainment is the least important, and it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant, it just means it’s the least important relative to the other stuff. I start to have a mental model of my packaging, my positioning, as well as my pricing. If you’re doing this in a more formalized manner– I’m using some extra statistical juice, if you will, to do this at a  scale. But that’s really what pricing comes down to, is understanding that buyer and measuring that understanding. You don’t always have to agree with them, but you want to understand what they think in order to make sure that your positioning and just boosting that value.

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Joe: I probably consistently underpriced some of my courses, because I’m not sure what people are willing to pay. Even though I’m providing them the value of– For $200 I’m going to teach you a skill where you can turn around and then make $1,000. That should be a no-brainer. But on the same token, I was having a conversation with my dad over the weekend, because there’s this pen that I want that is $250, and he can’t possibly fathom why I would pay that much money for a pen. I said, “People pay $100 for a haircut, or highlights or a massage that lasts an hour and this pen is something that I would use every day for the rest of my life.” So it’s really, “What is the value of the thing that you’re offering, and what are people willing to pay for it?”

Patrick: The value changes too. So, the other example I love to give is if I asked you– This is how we think about value as human beings as a spectrum. So if I asked you, “This computer versus this water bottle in front of me, what’s more valuable?” It’s pretty easy for you, all things being equal to go “This computer.” But if I put you in the desert, don’t give you water for five to seven days, or whatever the maximum you can survive is, all of a sudden you’re like “Eff this computer, give me the water.” That’s what’s interesting too because that $250 pen– I don’t know anything about your family, but maybe your dad they scraped by every penny, etc. The idea of something that you could theoretically get for free, or for a dollar and paying $250 for it, for any reason seems preposterous. Whereas you might appreciate the finer things, that kind of thing. Or you appreciate  stuff, and normally if you’re more dev-oriented, that’s what you do. So yeah, it’s super fascinating.

Joe: Yeah. That’s again, a really good point about the value changes. My car needs a repair, but I don’t need to repair the car right now, because I don’t rely on it for work. I work from home. But if I had to drive every day to work, I would make sure my car was fixed immediately because that’s my means for making money. So, you covered a lot of really great stuff and understanding the buyer and why that impacts price. As I get to the title question, “How did you build that?” or “How did you build it?” Maybe we could talk a little bit about the technology because a lot of technical people listen to the show. But also, how did you build the mechanisms to help a user like me understand my customers?

Patrick: Yeah. It’s actually a really fascinating question, because I think that there ‘s– If we were starting, and this is the irony of building a company or building a product, if we were starting Price Intelligently today with the knowledge that we had from the past six years we probably would build it very differently. That’s why we’re doing a bunch of different things on that product to change it. The reason is because we’re a bootstrap company, so we haven’t raised any outside venture, or any capital at all. It’s funny when people say “Outside,” I’m always like, “Did you raise inside?” It’s interesting wordplay. No outside, no capital in general. Just me in a room, busting my butt for 18 hours a day for nine months to get the thing off the ground. But we used to have a pure software product, so it was just essentially a survey tool. We baked our algorithm into the survey tool, and then you could send out this survey, and you could get the answers, and then it would do the number crunching for you. What we found is that one, the reason that we do it this way is because to sell something on the pricing front, you run into a bunch of problems because you do need to measure that perception. But measuring that perception through A/B testing or measuring it through any other market signal is just not accurate and not great. So A/B testing, most of us, we could build a product for A/B testing for very high traffic consumer sites. Amazon can do an A/B test in 30 seconds, basically on price. The problem was that all of those companies typically build that themselves because they have a big stack that they want to imbue that into. For all of the rest of us, we have to go do this research. The problem we ran into was basically people– They didn’t want to do the work to get the data. So we didn’t solve that problem completely, but we solved a lot of that problem for people. Then all of a sudden, it was like “I have the data now, and I’m smart,” they didn’t say this, but they’re smart people and intelligent, “But I don’t know what to do,” because they don’t trust themselves because they’ve never worked on pricing before. They’ve never worked on anything come to pricing. They may have taken one course if they got their MBA, but then it was all theoretical. What we had to do is basically, from a user perspective, we started getting people asking us, “Can we just pay you to help us?” And we’re like, “We don’t want to do services.” Services are bad when it comes to software, that’s what everyone says. But what we noticed is the margins were really good because literally, all we were doing was giving them support, unlike the data and just answering questions. Then it evolved further from there, but it moved into what’s called a “Tech-enabled service,” where basically you can’t buy our software without buying us, you can’t buy us without our software. Now we basically run the software for our customers, and what that’s done is it’s basically just opened up the ability for us to have that trust factor with our customers and also help them implement quickly. The reason I said we wouldn’t build the exact same product today that we built over the past six years is because we started realizing– We’ve realized this for a while, and this is what spurred us building ProfitWell and ProfitWell Retain, and some of our other products. Is that we either need a product where it’s heavy usage, heavy workflow and that’s what’s going on with Price Intelligently and how we flow through with our customers, or we need to build a product that just absolutely does it for them. That with pricing is something that’s hard to do. I think we found out how to do that and that’s what we’re building right now, but it’s one of those things where that was a huge realization that we found to understand how to deploy this understanding and this science if you will.

Joe: Gotcha. That’s interesting. To summarize what you said, your initial product was essentially a survey tool where you could gather information. I signed up, and I could then survey my customers or people that looked like my customers and get information. But a lot of people, forgive me if I’m confusing this now, but a lot of people already had their own way of doing that, and they didn’t know how to process the information. Is that accurate?

Patrick: Yeah, it’s like if I– You’re an engineer correct?

Joe: Yes.

Patrick: I don’t know the first time you learned whatever language you’re super proficient in, or maybe this is a better metaphor– You’re coding in Python or something like that, and you all of a sudden are given a fresh language that you’ve never used before. It’s not that you’re not smart and can’t figure it out, and any engineer can use another language and the building blocks and figure it out. But you still probably want to ask someone some questions, or go into some communities and ask them questions, because you’re not entirely confident. You can guess and check because you can do that with code well and do some tests. But when it comes to your pricing, you can’t guess and check, because you can’t just put a bunch of stuff out there constantly, and you want someone to help you “Is this the right thing to do? Should we do this? What do you think?” That’s where we came into play.

Joe: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have the knowledge of programming, but I’m good at this one language. If you give me a different language it’s going to take me some time to figure it out, and if you are already launched and you have people potentially ready to buy your product and if you don’t have the right price, you’re losing money every minute that your pricing is wrong or that people are ignoring you because your price is too low or too high, or whatever. That’s the value there is that you helped me find the right price faster.

Patrick: Yeah, 100%. Then the other aspects around pricing, your packaging, who your buyers should be, all that fun stuff.

Joe: Gotcha. That’s great. That’s super interesting. So, are you familiar at all with the tech stack? Can I ask you what programming language or what platform you’re built on, or is that a different team member?

Patrick: So, I’m definitely not the head of engineering or head of product anymore. And even when I was it wasn’t– To give me that title would be because no one else had it. So, I’m more of a data science than anything. Basically what I’m saying is, early days I could debug things and figure it out. Now it’s way beyond my scope. It’s a Python stack, and we use a modified Django framework. Basically, in order to take advantage of a lot of the modules and things like that are made for Python and data. That was particularly important when we get into some of our other products. ProfitWell, which is a metrics product, because accuracy is the number one thing. That product, just as a refresher, is bringing in data from a billing system and then spitting out your MRR, your churn, all that fun stuff. Anyone who’s built analytics in a product knows that 100% accuracy is– 100% anything, but a 100% accuracy for metrics is incredibly difficult. For us, we had to instead of pulling from the invoice object, which is in every billing system, we had to go down to the event object, which is the most granular piece of all these billing systems. Basically, build all of these metrics from scratch, and it was honestly just a game of Whack-a-Mole for a year. I think the Stripe ingestion, we have 1,500 edge cases that we account for because everyone uses Stripe a little bit differently. Yeah, it was just something that’s pretty intense, and long story short, that ‘s– There’s some things I know more about our stack I would say, but I don’t know if they’re going to be helpful or would probably be embarrassing to me. To say something like “MVC framework, blah blah.” People are like, “That’s not what it’s called.” “OK, sorry.”

Joe: No, that’s great. I’m just always interested. I mean, Python generally is a very good language, especially for processing datasets. I’ve come to learn, at least, is what people tell me. I’m a PHP guy myself.

Patrick: Old school. I like it.

Joe: Yeah.

Patrick: I know the mild digs to give with different languages and such, but yeah.

Joe: Keeping it, old school.

Patrick: Instead of those Ruby guys.

Joe: Yeah, those Ruby on Rails guys. But apparently, JavaScript is this new up and coming thing that I should learn.

Patrick: JavaScript– Just the people– We had a couple developers come in, and they’re from IBM, and it was a big JavaScript shop, and we converted them to Python, and one of them was like “Yeah whatever, it’s fine. I can code in any language.” The other one was like, “We should switch everything to JavaScript.” They’re ironically more fervent than the Ruby on Rails folks, I found. Which is kind of interesting.

Joe: Yeah. For me, I know enough JavaScript to be less dangerous or whatever. But for me I feel like every other day it’s like “Have you seen this new JavaScript framework? You should learn that.” And I’m like, “Should I?” Because I learned Angular, and then React came out. Then Vue came out, and now something else is out. I want to write code.

Patrick: Yeah, refactoring for React, that was a fun project for us.

Joe: I heard the heavy sarcasm in your voice there.

Patrick: It’s just funny. The funny thing that I find, especially as a non-engineer, is basically looking at– That’s also, there’s a couple side notes. One side note, it’s funny whenever you ask– I used to run this founder meet-up in Boston, and whenever you would ask, it was for people who didn’t have founders, looking for founders or co-founders I should say. Whenever you ask a technical founder, “Are you a technical founder or more of a business founder?” They’re very clear, “I am a technical founder.” Whenever you ask a business founder, “Are you a technical founder, or a business founder?” They’ll go, “It’s a little bit of both.” No one stays in their lane, and I’m just like “No, I’m not a technical founder. I know I’m not. I know enough to be dangerous but dangerous in both directions. Helpful and terrible.” It’s interesting. I can’t even remember the other tangent, which I think was more relevant for what we were talking about, but yeah. Oh, React. The thing that comes up is, as a non-technical founder, it’s estimation, “When is this going to be ready?” That’s not the right question. But you do need to know when it’s going to be ready, or roughly when it’s going to be ready. So with React, it was like “Yeah, we’re going to refactor it.” I think it was something like five weeks, and it just took so much longer. It was just one of those things where it just kept coming up.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Whenever I come up with an estimation, I always double it no matter what. “How long do you think this will take?” I think it’ll take four weeks, so it’ll take eight weeks.

Patrick: Yeah, that’s what I’ve started to do in the back of my mind, whenever I hear something. Which I think is fine, because I think we’ve determined you can either have a deadline on– If you have a new feature, let’s say. You can have a deadline on when the feature is going to be ready, or when the launch is going to take place. We’ve chosen “We’re not going to have a deadline on when the feature is going to be ready.” That means when it’s ready, we have to tamper down engineering a little bit and be like “It’s not going to go out right away.” It’s going to go out within a reasonable amount of time, but you can’t expect everything to be dropped. It’s just fascinating. Especially when you start getting to a certain scale, and we’re not even that crazy scale yet. How that interaction plays out.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a very good point. I lost my train of thought there.

Patrick: It’s all good.

Joe: Here, I’ll clap my hands. Joel, if you could edit that part out. I’ll start at “That’s a good point” again. I think that’s a really good point, and I’ve read a lot of things from the BaseCamp guys about when they plan launches or features and things like that, and it depends on how your company works. But I think that, in general, human beings are optimists and that’s why we always get the short estimate. I think that nothing is going to go wrong when I do this, and therefore it’ll take me four weeks, but then two weeks in and you’re like “Oh my God. I have no idea how React works.”

Patrick: Yeah. We also spend– We don’t spend nearly enough time estimating, right? If we spent three weeks to estimate something that was going to take three weeks, you might be completely accurate, but you’re like “If it’s going to take five weeks, it’s better that I just started working on it.”

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really good point too. As we wrap up here, I always like to ask, “What are your plans for the future?” I know you touched on this a little bit and ProfitWell has changed over time, but what’s some big thing that you’re working on coming down the pike that you’re, of course, willing to announce? I don’t want you to give your roadmap and then be held to it.

Patrick: No, it’s OK. You never give out your roadmap, or you never give dates of your roadmap. I think we– We’re pulling on this thread as the whole subscription science “Search for truth” concepts. I think that really where we’re at right now is just combining our brands, trying to get the right story to be told to combine the different products that we’ve built and then going deeper on everything that we’ve been doing. So if you think about any business, but especially subscription or recurring revenue businesses, you acquire a customer, you monetize that customer, and then you retain that customer. We want pure end to end deliverability– Or, excuse me, we want pure end to end basically analytics on everything from top of the funnel, all the way through your engagement. So we came out with our first version of engagement data that’s connected to your financial data last year, and we’re going to continue to pull on that thread and then also add top of the funnel data as well. We want it to be turnkey, not “You have to spin up a bunch of APIs and do a bunch of stuff,” but “It automatically does it for you.” Then with that, all of that data combined, it’s going to make our paid products which focus on basically solving some of these problems just that much deeper. That’s the non-specific answer, but the specific answer is we’re just going to keep going down this rabbit hole. Some specific things we’re coming out with that I’m excited about, there’s a whole talk that we could have about our approach to content. We’re focused very much on this whole media strategy. There’s a lot of video, and there’s a lot of blog, there’s just a ton of stuff that we’re coming out with. We’re basically going to be launching a bit of a network in the next couple of months here that you can access, and it’s going to have a bunch of different shows around subscription growth and things like that. That’s something we’re excited about when we think about content as a product, and so I feel it’s OK to throw that in the product roadmap discussion.

Joe: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think it makes a lot of sense. People have been saying “Content is king” forever, and it’s still the case. Good content is what drives organic traffic and trust and things like that. So as we wrap up here, I do want to ask you my favorite question. I’m excited for your answer, and that is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

Patrick: Trade secrets. We’re pretty open with a lot of our secrets. We’re pretty open with everything we find out, so we have this show that we publish every week called “The ProfitWell Report,” which is just benchmarking data that we’ve discovered on different stuff. Everything from “Is it important that you sleep, in terms of growth?” All the way to “How do you optimize your annual subscriptions?” Things like that. I think– OK. So here’s two things, I don’t know if I’d call them trade secrets, but two things I think are super important that I feel are definitely going to be true based on the data. For one, I think in the next couple of decades there is going to be a need for every product to have some free element. It might not necessarily be a totally free tier, but it might be a side product that has a pricing greater or a marketing greater, things like that. Some of the businesses have already come out with it, and the reason for that is because content is getting so dense, we’re in this market where it’s like “Let’s make content better and better,” and good content will probably always be relevant. But we’re heading into this world where it’s getting harder to acquire customers, and so the best way to do it is to nurture them through some free product. We’ve seen that people who convert from a free product to a paid product typically have better NPS, better retention, better expansion revenue, etc. I think that the unit economics are going to continue to play out and you’re going to need some free element. This is why we gave away ProfitWell for free. Just because we saw that it wasn’t a great monetized feature product, I should say. Now we’re expanding on it, that’s the most trade secret I can give, and I’m more than happy to share the data for the show notes on that.

Joe: I think that’s fantastic advice because I think another way to put what you said is we’re very much in a trust economy or the beginnings of a trust economy. Traditional advertising doesn’t work for people, and people want to trust the people that they’re giving money to and the best way to develop that trust is by showing them you do good work by giving away part of it for free. In my case, I might create a free course to show people I know what I’m talking about. Then they start to trust me as an instructor and then they’re willing to buy my paid course because they like how I teach.

Patrick: 100%. Absolutely, 100%.

Joe: That’s great. Patrick, thank you so much for that piece of advice and for joining me today. Where can people find you?

Patrick: I am @patticus on Twitter. I’m also really active on LinkedIn, so just Patrick Campbell on LinkedIn.

Joe: Alright. I will add both of them to the show notes. Is @patticus, is that an homage to Atticus Finch, by chance?

Patrick: You know, it’s funny. Sort of. I think that’s the rationalization. It was in my sixth-grade chemistry– No, not chemistry. It couldn’t have been sixth grade then. Yeah, sixth-grade science class. There was this band called Atticus.

Joe: Oh, my God, yeah. I used to listen to Atticus, yeah.

Patrick: Yeah. I wasn’t a huge listener or fan or something that. But one of my classmate’s friends basically listened to them, and he was just like “It’s Patticus. It’s Atticus, but Patrick.” So that’s where it took off. It just was a childhood nickname and it never really fully caught on, but I’ve just embraced it. It’s one of those things where you’re trying to find a Twitter handle and having a pretty common name like Patrick Campbell pushed me to that.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. I will include links to all of that. Including a link to Atticus, the band, in the show notes. Which you can find over at HowIBuilt.it. Patrick, thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate you taking the time.

Patrick: Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Outro: Thanks so much to Patrick for joining me today. I enjoyed a bunch of aspects of this story. How he was a bootstrapped company, how he recognizes that the way he built it when they first started is not necessarily the way they built it now, and so they’re changing a few things. He talks about the dangers of estimation for time and cost, of course. I like his advice about never giving dates on your roadmap, and his trade secrets about them being open about what they find out is great too. It falls into the same credo as the WordPress base, which is primarily where I’m from. So, thanks again to Patrick for joining us. My question of the week for you is, “How has this conversation shaped your view of pricing? Are you going to change your pricing model at all?” Let me know by emailing me, Joe@HowIBuilt.it or on Twitter @jcasabona. Thanks so much to our sponsors for this episode. Castos, Plesk, and Pantheon. If you liked this episode, go ahead and share it with somebody you think will also like it. I think there’s a lot for a lot of people here, so feel free to tweet it out or email it to a friend or a colleague who you think will benefit from listening to this episode. Until next time, get out there and build something.

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Jennifer Bourn and Profitable Project Plan

July 24, 2018

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Jennifer Bourn is the founder of Bourn Creative and creator of the Profitable Project Plan. She’s also a freelancer who’s doing it right. She has worked out the perfect system to get and manage client projects; in this episode we’re going to talk all about how she built it.

Show Notes

  • Jennifer Bourn
  • Profitable Project Plan
  • Bourn Creative
  • Jen’s A/V Setup
  • Blair Williams and MemberPress
  • Episode 18: Pippin Williamson & Restrict Content Pro
  • Delightful Downloads
  • Zoom Webinars
  • InfusionSoft
  • Rev
  • Volt Heated Slippers
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Transcript

Intro: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 86 of How I Built It. In today’s episode I talk to Jennifer Bourn, founder of Bourn Creative and creator of the Profitable Project Plan. Jennifer is a freelancer who’s doing it right – she has worked out the perfect system to get and manage client projects, and we’re going to talk all about that came to be. I’m excite to get into it, but first, a word from our sponsors.

Sponsor: Today’s is brought to you by Pantheon and Creator Courses. You’ll hear all about Pantheon later in the show.

Creator Courses is a website dedicated to teaching you how to build on the web. Their catalog of courses is continually growing and it’s becoming the best place to learn how to build specific projects with task-based objectives. You will always learn by doing. Currently, you can learn how the new WordPress editor with their Introduction to Gutenberg course. Head over to buildpodcast.net/gutenberg, and use BUILDIT at checkout for 40%.

And now…on with the show.

Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, “How did you build that?” Today my guest is Jennifer Bourn. Jennifer, how are you?

Jennifer Bourn: I’m great, thanks.

Joe: Thanks for coming on the show. If you don’t know who Jennifer Bourn is, well, I’ll let her introduce herself, but she is a fantastic person. We’ve met up at multiple WordCamps and I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with her.

So, we’ll be talking about the Profitable Project Plan today. Jennifer, why don’t you tell us who you are and what you do?

Jennifer: My name is Jennifer Bourn and I am founding partner of Bourn Creative, A full-service design and development agency based out of Sacramento, California. We are celebrating our 13th year in business this year, so we’re really excited about that.

I also do a lot of freelance writing and I have my own site, JenniferBourn.com where I am helping designers and developers run profitable businesses without sacrificing their health, their family, or their sanity.

Joe: That is always a good thing to hear, because a lot of freelancers sacrifice some or all of those things in order to make ends meet. I believe the whole idea behind the Profitable Project Plan is that we don’t have to, is that right?

Jennifer: That’s correct.

Joe: I should also include, I forgot to say this in the intro, but aside from all of this stuff that Jennifer Bourn does she also gave me two fantastic recommendations last October. One was how to manage my business, and we’ll probably talk about that a little bit, but the other was for these heated slippers that I subsequently got my wife for Christmas.

Jennifer: They’re the best things ever.

Joe: I just remembered that as you were talking, I’m like, “Well, I have to tell everybody.” I’ll link those in the show notes, because they’re great.

Jennifer: They’re the only shoes I wear all winter long. And Brian has to be like, “We’re going on a date night. Those shoes are not coming.” And then I’m sad, and I think, “Do I really want to go somewhere?”

Joe: Yeah, right? You’re ready to go with your heated slippers. So, I just wanted to include that, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about how to make freelancers more profitable.

So, first of all, you’ve been doing this for 13 years. You are doing very well, it seems. And I’m glad to see the advice being passed on to other people. How did you come up with this idea?

Jennifer: Profitable Project Plan actually wasn’t an idea that I had that I then created, it was born from a need I had in my own business. I’ve been working as a designer for 20 years, but as an agency owner for 13.

I started freelancing, and for the first several years I was on my own and I was doing everything myself. If you’re listening and you’re a freelancer, or you’re in the early years of agency, you know what that’s like.

You’re wearing every single hat in the business, and you’re juggling admin, and the doing of the work you’re being hired to do, and if you focus on doing the work then you’re forgetting to follow up, and maybe you’re not closing some sales that you could have closed if you did better on the admin side, and if you focus on all the sales you run out of time to actually do the work, and then you don’t sleep and you’re cranky, and it’s a mess!

I got to that point in my business, and I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore. I need some help.” And everybody I talk to is like, “Hire a virtual assistant. You need to get an employee.” They’re telling me all these things, and I’m looking at this, and usually at that time you’re also undercharging.

So, I’m at this point in my business and I’m looking at this, and I’m like, “I can’t afford to hire a virtual assistant, or an admin person, or a project manager who’s non billable to absorb all the admin costs.” And I’m looking at virtual assistants or project managers or things that want $75, $85 dollars an hour, and I’m like, “I’m one person. I almost charge that.” Like, how would I even make that work?

It was just one of those things that I was really struggling with, and at the time I saw an ad for some software. It was like, “Double your sales!” And I’m like, “Yeah. Like I have any more hours to work in the day. That’s never going to happen.” And then I saw another ad for the same software that said “Replace an employee!” And I went, “What? What?! Wait.” This is revolutionary to me.

I started thinking about it, and the software was actually for e-mail marketing and things like that, but I focused on “Replace an Employee.” So I created a system in my business to automate every administrative thing I could automate. The communications and the hand-holding, and the education of my clients that was sucking all my time. I built it all into this software to automate it all so I didn’t have to hire somebody, and that software did the job of a full-time admin person for me.

It was amazing because it freed up my time so that I could spend more time on the stuff that really mattered with my clients. Making a really deep connection with my clients, and working on strategy, and the design, and the development, and creating a really amazing product, which is really what they’re paying you for. Not chasing down all the little to-do’s, and the education, and answering 2,500 questions. The system was taking care of that for me.

I started talking about this at WordCamps and at different events, and people would ask, “Can I buy that system from you?” And I would say, “No.” At this point, this is my secret sauce. Like, “No freakin’ way. I’ve spent hundreds of hours refining this. No way!”

But we finally got to a point with Bourn Creative where we’d moved upmarket enough that our clients have changed a little bit, and business is doing so good, and I think as you get older you get to a point in your life where it’s just not all about you anymore.

You start thinking about, like, “I’m pushing 40,” and I’m starting to think, “What kind of legacy do I want to leave, and what kind of impact do I want to have?” I want to be able to help other people, as we’ve been able to enjoy life to the fullest in these years because of the systems we’ve created.

I see people I know that are so talented not taking vacation, and not out there enjoying life. We started talking about it and I thought, “Ok. We’re going to put this out there. I’m going to package it up and sell it as a Profitable Project Plan, because I want to help other people enjoy their business more but enjoy life at the same time.”

Joe: Man that is– Well, there’s a lot of great stuff to unpack there. I mean, I’ve been freelancing for 15 years, more or less, full-time and not full-time. You get to a point where you have a finite amount of hours, but you don’t want to make a finite amount of money.

And so you need to fundamentally change something if you want to go to the next level, otherwise you might as well just work for somebody else. I mean, that’s the truth of the matter. And like you said, I think I’m making that move as well.

I want to move into products and teach people the stuff that I know, because it’s becoming more enjoyable for me. I’ve been teaching since college and I want to, not pass the torch, per-say. But I want to help people enjoy the things that I got to enjoy since high school, essentially.

So, the Profitable Project Plan– I will get that by the end of this show– is something that you built out of a need for yourself. That’s a common story on this podcast, and I’m sure with a lot of business owners. They find a need and they fill that need for themselves and they realize, “Hey, other people have this need.”

You also mentioned that you saw an ad for a system to replace an employee. Did you do other research when coming up with this plan? Is that software still integrated into your plan?

Jennifer: That’s a good question. The software at the time, it was late 2008 and it was Infusionsoft when they were brand stinkin’ new. I went to an all day event in February of 2009, I bought it and I implemented it right away. We used Infusionsoft to run Profitable Project Plan for years, but their engineering wasn’t keeping up with other third party products.

With the ability to integrate different products with each other, we started at one point evaluating, “Do we go with a mediocre all-in-one that isn’t really progressing with their engineering? Or do we ditch it, and we go with other options that are the best at what they do and then integrate it all together?” So we chose to do that in the late 2013, 2014-ish. Partly because my husband had cancer and we didn’t know.

Joe: I didn’t know that.

Jennifer: Brian had gallbladder cancer. And at the time, the mortality rate on that is like, once they find out you have gallbladder cancer you’re basically dead. But he was the silver bullet that they found early enough that it was OK, but at the time we didn’t know what our life would look like, or how much he’d be able to work.

So we were looking at trimming expenses like crazy and that was one of the decisions that helped us push that, because we were paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month for Infusionsoft. Then we moved over to other things that maybe total $100 bucks a month, and they do the exact same thing for us.

Sometimes making more money isn’t about pushing and making more sales, sometimes it’s about changing up what your expenses look like.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I just celebrated about a year of going out on my own, at the time of this recording, full-time. That was the first thing I did, I was like, “What am I paying for that I definitely don’t need?” And it’s like a double sided coin, or two sides of the same coin, maybe. “What can I pay for that will definitely make my job easier?”

I think so far this conversation has been, “How do we balance that?” Because you are willing to pay for software that will replace an employee, but you’re also not willing to just frivolously spend money to do that.

Jennifer: Exactly. I think that’s something to look at, is we made that decision to trim those expenses when our life was up in the air and we didn’t know what it would look like. But once he got the medical All-Clear and he was fine and we were ready to go, it’s not like we went back to all of a sudden, “Let’s buy all this software!”

It was like, “Wow, look! We can get by on so much less, we have two options now. We can either work less because we know the amount of money we need to make is less, and we can spend more time playing and having fun and enjoying life. Or, if we work more then we just make more, but we don’t have more time.” So, we chose the first.

Profitable Project Plan supports us in that, in that it’s a complete client management system, from sales call to post website launch follow-up.

Joe: Wow, that’s fantastic. Now we’re moving to the title question, which is, “How did you build it?” It’s interesting because I naturally don’t want you to give away the secret sauce, I want people to check out and buy by the Profitable Project Plan.

Maybe we can talk in generalities, how you made it to this point where you knew how to manage your business. Does that makes sense?

Jennifer: Sure.

Joe: Cool.

Jennifer: We’ll start with implementing Profitable Project Plan. All of the content for the course already existed because it’s the content I use in my own business every day. What I had a frustration with over many years of taking online courses, and enrolling in business coaching programs, and all of these things.

People would tell you all the success they had, but then give you a different version of it. You’d get some like, public, glossy version, but not the version they’re using behind the scenes. And it always drove me crazy. So I said, “If I ever am going to do this myself you’re going to get– everything that I use, you’re going to get what I use, no holds barred. The same thing.”

Profitable Project Plan includes the e-mails, the client education guides, the scripts. Everything that I use to work with my clients is included in that. So, we didn’t have to do a ton to develop content, but in terms of actually delivering the course obviously we use WordPress. We deliver it through MemberPress with Delightful Downloads, and we run Stripe as our payment, and AffiliateWP for our affiliate program. It’s really just that simple.

Joe: Nice. So, MemberPress, we did have Blair Williams on the show, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes if you want to learn how that was built. Delightful Downloads is not something I’ve heard of before. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jennifer: Delightful Downloads assigns any downloadable media to a membership level. So, let’s say somebody in your program is like, “I’m going to send this link to this PDF to a friend of mine.” If they’re not logged in under that membership level, the link doesn’t work. You can only download it if you’re logged in at the approved membership level that you set.

It’s just a way to manage your downloads in the back-end, for your membership courses, or online courses, or anything like that.

Joe: Very cool. I’m definitely going to check that one out, because that sounds excellent. AffiliateWP, big fan of that one, Pippin has also been on the show. Then Stripe for payment, naturally. Because Stripe is the best.

Jennifer: Yeah, and to record all my videos I used Zoom Webinars, and then ScreenFlow to edit them all and get them all pushed up to my membership site.

Joe: Nice. I’m going to link to one of your blog posts about your whole set up. I read that, I loved it, I bought a bunch of stuff. Like that [gorilla case] thing?

Jennifer: Oh, yeah.

Joe: My recording area looks so much better because of that.

Jennifer: It’s so pretty back here.

Joe: Instead of a mess of wires, now everything looks great, everything is on its own power strip like you said. So, yeah. Definitely will link to that blog post as well.

You said that you use Zoom Webinars, are these live with the members?

Jennifer: Yes, I do. Profitable Project Plan is my flagship course, we run it twice a year and we run it live. It’s 12 weeks long, nine training sessions and three implementation weeks in case you missed something. You forgot to watch it one week, you got busy, you need to catch up or you’re trying to implement and you don’t want to fall behind.

The lessons are delivered live and there’s live Q and A every week. If you’ve got questions about contracts, or the sales call, or whatever we’re working on that week, there’s live Q and A so you can get your question answered while you’re taking action and getting things done.

The mini-courses that I’m working on, which I’ve launched one, and that’s Positioning E-Commerce Projects for Success, those are evergreen. Those are pre-recorded, you take it, you go, you’re done. Profitable Project Plan is live.

We kicked around the idea of doing an evergreen course, but all the feedback from students so far have been that they really like the interaction of live and being able to ask questions on the spot and exactly what we’re talking about. It doesn’t mean I won’t ever go evergreen, and mix in live Q and A’s, but right now we’re delivering the course live and I really like it that way.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Pantheon. WordPress 5.0 and the new editor, Gutenberg, are coming. Are you prepared? Do you want to learn about the changes in advance? Pantheon has gathered resources to help you prepare including webinars and tutorials. Pantheon has also made it easy and free to try Gutenberg with your site before the official launch. Visit pantheon.io/gutenberg. Let them how How I Built It sent you!

Joe: That’s great. First of all, it’s hugely valuable for the students. There are certain things that work well as evergreen, as you’ve pointed out, you’re doing evergreen stuff. My course on How to use Gutenberg is evergreen and most people like it that way. My forums for that course are dead because I answer all of the questions in the course. basically.

I also ran a coaching program about a year ago where live in-person was hugely valuable, because I would tell them something and then I’d get questions. I’m sure it’s also hugely valuable for you too, because now you’re hearing questions in real-time, what people are thinking about, you could probably see your students, maybe. Do they have their webcams on?

Jennifer: Not in webinars.

Joe: Gotcha, ok. I know that was always something that I appreciated in the classroom, is I could see student’s faces and tell when they’re confused. But the fact that they can ask questions as you’re talking is good feedback, so that’s very cool.

Jennifer: It’s nice because we can take those questions and roll it into the content for the next time, so we can answer those questions in advance. It actually goes on sale again very shortly, the next version of Profitable Project Plan starts August 7th. And we’ve rolled in questions that clients and our students have asked in the past sessions.

We’ve rolled in suggestions that they’ve made like, “You know that would be super awesome? If you could do this.” And sometimes it’s like, ‘No. There’s no way we’re doing that. That’s not even part of this course.” And sometimes it’s like, “That’s a really good idea. I can definitely do that.” So each time we run it we’re just continuing to improve.

Joe: Nice. That’s fantastic. I have one more question about that, because this is something that I usually struggle with, is I’m sure you have a at least somewhat global audience. If not, you at least have people in different time zones. How do you choose? Do you just say, “We’re recording at this time, this works best for me. If you can attend live, great. Otherwise you can hit the videos.” Or do you pick a time by committee?

Jennifer: It is the time before they pay. On the sales page you can get the schedule, and you know the time. So, if it works for you great, if it doesn’t work for you and you’re okay watching the recordings, you know that in advance before you enroll, before you sign up, before you pay.

I always hold my live classes on Tuesdays at noon. Noon Pacific time, 3:00 p.m. Eastern. For those in Australia it’s the afternoon. It seems to be that seems to be the most versatile time for most people. There’s just a few time zones where they’re like, “This is the middle of the night. I’ll watch the recording.” I also have a Facebook group connected with it too, so they can watch the recording and then pop questions in the Facebook group, and I can answer them there for them as well.

I’m a big fan, if you’re going to have a set time for your course, stick it on the sales page and let people know before they even get started. So if they aren’t available to do it live, then they can make that choice on whether or not the recordings is going to be right for them.

Joe: Great. That is excellent advice, I am going to write that down. I’m going to take that advice if and when I do another live thing. That’s fantastic.

We are getting close to time here, and there are a couple more questions I usually like to ask. The transformations– this is relatively new, launched with the last year?

Jennifer: I ran the first beta in summer of 2017.

Joe: Ok, cool.

Jennifer: This will be the third full course, the fourth if you count the beta.

Joe: Gotcha. Have you seen major transformations since you launched?

Jennifer: Transformations of the course itself.

Joe: Yeah, any big changes, or something you’re like, “I’m definitely going to do this for the first one,” and it didn’t really work in the beta, so you changed it.

Jennifer: In the first one, I just was like, “This date to this date works for me,” and I didn’t really put a lot of thinking into the how it would overlap with our vacations. I definitely learned over time, now we definitely assess our vacations. The last version of Profitable Project Plan I timed it so the Q and A weeks, the implementation weeks, were weeks that we were gone and traveling.

Because I can answer Q and A from the road. I did one from the hotel parking lot in Holbrook, Arizona when we were going to Petrified Forest National Park. Because when you’re not leading a training, and you’re just answering questions, there’s less pressure there.

I’ve definitely learned a little bit about scheduling, and the course itself has transformed a little bit, in that the first time I ran it, it was all talking head. It was me talking and teaching. Each time I run it I have been adding more slides, more examples, more things like that. I think to just switch it up visually a little bit, and provide some more interest so it’s just not my talking head all the time.

The course itself in terms of content is pretty rock solid. Each time we run it I take the advice, I always do a survey at the end and I look at, “Where can I improve and make this even better?” I never think that you should rest on your laurels and think, “This is good enough. I ran it once, I’m just going to run it over, and over, and over, and over.”

I think every time you run it you’ve got to look at, “How can I add some value to this?” Your students are the best place to figure that out, because they’re going to tell you, “You know what would be great? If you could add this.” Some of their suggestions are going to be really good and aren’t going to take you much time.

Joe: That’s great advice. That’s a recurring theme among the proper online teachers, I’ll say. Is that courses should not be passive income, because people are constantly learning from you. So I really, really like that. Are there any plans that you could share for the future of the Profitable Project Plan? The course, any evergreen courses or whatever?

Jennifer: We’re kicking around the idea of making the core content of Profitable Project Plan evergreen, and then doing a weekly live call so that people can join when it’s right for them. Right now, because we only run it two times a year, when sales close it’s a waiting list. We’ve got hundreds of people on a waiting list that are like, “When is this going to go for sale again?” And when I put it for sale, may not be when they’re ready, or financially when it works best for them, right?

I’m always of the opinion, “Make it as easy as possible for people to do business with you.” Make it as easy as possible for clients to say, “Yes.” And that goes for memberships and courses as well. So, we’re kicking around the idea of maybe turning that part of it, still doing live, but part of it evergreen. So that students can invest when it works best for them and not necessarily just when it works best for me.

Joe: Great. That sounds fantastic, we’ll definitely keep an eye on that. You mentioned that August 7th is the next time it goes on sale. So, I’ll make sure to–

Jennifer: It starts.

Joe: It starts.

Jennifer: Yes.

Joe: It starts August 7th, ok.

Jennifer: Yes.

Joe: Gotcha. I’ll make sure to have this out before enrollment closes, then. Because we want people to take it after hearing about how great it is.

Jennifer: Me also!

Joe: So, as we come up on our half hour, we’re doing great on time. I like to ask this question of all of my guests. Do you have any trade secrets for us?

Jennifer: That is a really, really good question. I think the biggest secret that’s really not a secret, is that it doesn’t have to be perfect to launch. I think there are a lot of people that have ideas on courses, and ideas of things that they want to create, and they want to do, and they never do it because it’s never everything they’ve ever dreamed of ever wanting it to be and totally perfect.

When I had the idea of doing Profitable Project Plan, I gathered up all the content that I created for my business and I ran a beta super cheap. I didn’t do it for free, because I don’t believe in giving away your sauce for free. But I ran a super cheap discounted beta, I got 40 people in that beta, and I ran it, and I just tested it the first time. They did a survey, and I got great feedback and improved it. And the second time, I did a survey and got great feedback and improved it.

That process has worked so well, that when I created the mini course of Positioning E-Commerce Products for Success, when I had that content originally I offered it as a bonus to my Profitable Project Plan students as a “Thank-you.” A surprise bonus at the end of the course. They got that free training if they filled out the survey and provided me a great testimonial.

I didn’t say great testimonial, I said, “Provided me honest feedback,” but luckily all their honest feedback was super awesome and I got great testimonials out of it. But I said, “If you fill out this survey and give me your honest feedback, I’d love to gift you with this free training.” I delivered the Positioning E-Commerce Training, and I recorded it, I sent it to Rev.com, had a transcribed, and then that transcription became the base of the course that I created. Once I had the actual course created, then I sent an e-mail out to my list and I said, “I’m looking for beta testers.”

“If you want to take this course for free, e-mail me back.” I do that for my list as a thank you for being on my list. You’re gifting me with the opportunity to show up in your inbox, when I beta test stuff, you’re going to be the only people I ask. So, several people responded. I ran the course one more time to test it out with them in a beta, and they got to take the course for free. They filled out a survey, so I got to launch that course and that sales page from day one with some great testimonials, and I got to work out any of the kinks in that content before it actually went public.

So, you don’t have to wait until it’s perfect to get started. Do a beta, do a free training or a webinar, something to work out some of those content details, and then just keep making it better every single time that you do it.

Joe: Great advice. Absolutely great advice. I can’t add to it, so I’m just going to ask, where can people find you?

Jennifer: You can find me at JenniferBourn.com. That’s probably the best place that links to all my things.

Joe: Perfect. Jennifer Bourn, thanks so much for joining me today, I really appreciate it.

Jennifer: Thank you, this was fun!

Outro: I would encourage anyone who freelances to take a look at the Profitable Project Plan – not only to you get a great online course and resources – you get face time with the instructor, who’s fantastic.

And Thanks again to our sponsors Pantheon and Creator Courses. Definitely check them out. Both are teaching you all about Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0.

For all of the show notes, head over to howibuilt.it/86/. If you like the show, head over to Apple Podcasts and leaving us a rating and review. It helps people discover us! You can also join the Facebook community over at howibuilt.it/facebook/. I want to build a strong community for this podcast, and Facebook is the place to do it.

Thanks for joining me, and until next time, get out there and build something!

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© 2019 · Joe Casabona · Built on the Monochrome Pro / Genesis Framework

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