306: Johannes Radig — Traveling the World and Raising Prices
Download MP3Today on the Bootseer founder is Johannes Radig, a German indie hacker and digital nomad who shares his journey of building a business while traveling the world. We talk about his nomadic lifestyle and changing it to becoming more of a localized entrepreneur and the challenges he faced along the way, quite literally because he went from place to place. He talks about the importance of customer interviews, we dive really deep into that, and the pivot of his business from an audit tool to an onboarding SaaS, why it had happened, how it happened, and why it had to happen. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later.
Arvid:Now here's Johannes. It's not often that I get to talk to a German indie hacker on the show because there are really just a few of us, but it's especially rare to talk to somebody who comes from my hometown and to someone who moved far away to a far away place to run a digital business from. A German on the Canary Islands, that's really cool. Do you consider yourself a digital nomad? Is that still something we do?
Arvid:First of
Johannes:all, thanks for having me, Albert. Yeah. If I'm, I am I do consider myself a digital nomad who has settled in Tenerife, I would say, but I'm still traveling a fair bit, because I also really enjoy traveling still. But this is this has become my base. Yes, for sure.
Arvid:That's really cool. So I I know you have, like, a history in in nomading around. Right? Like, you were more more actively traveling through the world. Can you maybe like, what's the intentional thing to to do this as, like, a a business thing?
Arvid:Like, did you travel because you wanted to run a business at the same time, or did you just travel and then you happen to become an indie hacker or a nomad that builds stuff?
Johannes:So, I used to live in in London, and it's a great great city. But at some point, you kind of feel like maybe there's there's more to to be seen in the world, and and, I've always enjoyed traveling a lot. And so during my last job before I became an indie founder as well. I kind of just heard about this normal, this thing. I was like, well, this this seems to be interesting.
Johannes:Is this not something we can try out? So I was talking to my, at the point, my my girlfriend, now my wife, and we're both really excited about this this, this concept. And so in and so we basically just we booked the flight. Like, we maybe around September, October time, we looked into flights in the coming summer, and then we we found one really cheap flight from from London to, to Cuba. We were like, okay, let's just book that and make that the date.
Johannes:And so that's when we, I already had conversations with my boss at the time as well to you know prepare him for this, that this will come, and then we just embarked on it really and that was in 2018. Yeah.
Arvid:That's crazy. So so can you can you walk me through this? Like, you fly to Cuba, and then what? Did you already have something in mind? Like, what
Johannes:did you say? Great question. Because for those who have been to Cuba, they will know that Internet in Cuba and working remotely in Cuba do not go well together. My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, Sarah, let's just say Sarah. Sarah had a job, to basically working as an online teacher, in to to teach Chinese children.
Johannes:Ovid, there's another thing that we can maybe touch on because that was Yeah.
Arvid:Holy cow.
Johannes:Previous company. And, so she was teaching Chinese, children, English. And so she had to be online also at very, you know, ran very early in the morning, cubit time. And so we so in Cuba, you don't have, like, private, residences don't have internet. So basically, you find internet in public squares, and you have to buy a kind of scratch card with a code.
Johannes:And then you, put in this code when you log into this Wi Fi hotspot, and you kind of pray that it kind of works, and most of the time, it doesn't really. And so, Sarah found a hotel nearby that's that had Internet. So that there's there are a few hotels, but it's probably, like, less than 10 in the whole of Cuba that have Internet and, kind of told from there. But, basically, she ended up being fired from that job because it just didn't work, which was probably a a blessing in disguise because it it probably wasn't the best job for her anyway. She enjoyed it, but the pay was wasn't very good.
Johannes:But yeah. So that's how it started. So Cuba was basically, we quickly realized working from here probably isn't gonna be too productive. And, so we just basically postponed it until we we, made it to Mexico a couple of weeks later, and then we started to properly work remotely.
Arvid:Okay. That's a that's such an interesting path to travel. Because if when I think about indie hacking, like, and in digital nomadism combined, right, in the the culture and the community that we're both in, I think about Bali. I think about, like, Thailand or Vietnam, like, places in Southeast Asia. The fact that you went to Cuba, Cuba of all places, and then to Mexico, which is also again, like, not towards Asia, but further away from it.
Arvid:I mean, that's a globe. You know, further away also means kinda closer, but you know what I mean. Right? That's an interesting choice. So so you it it sounds like you didn't re either you didn't do the research or you didn't really care about the the specificity of where you go.
Arvid:You just wanted to travel. Like, what's the kind of motivation other than just traveling, or or do we just, like, oh, well, let's go there?
Johannes:No. We definitely we really wanted to go to to Central and South America, so that was definitely something we wanted to explore. Mexico, actually, is still North America. So North, Central, and South America to be precise. And, we I I had never been at actually before, so that was my first time, on on that continent.
Johannes:And we just thought we will make it work. So, obviously, yes, Bali also at the time was already more famous for remote working, but it still wasn't big. Like, it was it was famous for backpacking mostly, I think, at the time. And, yeah, that's why we thought, okay. Let's let's try out Central South America and see, see if we like it.
Arvid:Did you?
Johannes:Yes. Absolutely. It's yeah. I mean, we really enjoyed it. I mean, there's a lot of stories we could we could talk about from hiking up a volcano in Guatemala, an active volcano and, having marshmallows fried in the lava to, meeting many interesting people and incredible landscapes, incredible culture.
Johannes:It's it's been really great. So, yeah, if you haven't been I don't know. Have you been to to South America, Central America?
Arvid:I have been to South America, but it was a cruise. I I went there with my grandma. Like, my grandma was in in her eighties, I guess, and she always wanted to go to Tierra del Fuego, like the the fire island on on the southern tip of South America, because that was a childhood dream of hers. Like, she she was born in 1933. And, like, back then, Germany, not the most, you know, joyous time to be alive, like, with the war and all that kind of stuff.
Arvid:Also, the educational system was a bit weird. Let's just say that. Right? So she didn't get to see much of the world, obviously, and she didn't learn much about it, but she saw on a map that part of South America. I really wanted to go there.
Arvid:So I took her. I took her on a cruise. We went to Buenos Aires. We we've, just traveled all the way down to the southern tip and to Chile on the other way back. But I never made it, like, past Argentina towards the north, which I would love to go.
Arvid:Like, that's that is a a very interesting part of the world for sure. But, yeah, that's that's that's my experience there. It sounds like you had a really good time there. Right? What what made you then where did you go from there?
Arvid:Because you ended up somewhere else. Right?
Johannes:So yeah. So we we spend we ended up spending, about 2 years traveling across the whole continent all the way down to to Patagonia, actually, with a few stints where I also had to go somewhere else for work reasons, but, we basically traveled all the way down. We didn't go to every single country, but we spent, we usually spend about 1 to 2 months, sometimes even 3 months in in the countries we visited. So we had a great time. And then, and then we we hopped over, to to South Africa.
Johannes:So that was, another country we wanted to visit. And we found a flight from Brazil at the time to to to visit South Africa and obviously very different, but also super interesting, specifically Cape Town, Johannesburg, Jayburg. I I like to say Johannesburg because, obviously, my name is in it. So, Jayburg is usually what the what the hope
Arvid:is to say. That's funny. How did you make money along the way? Like, were you already building things, or were you, like, working as a freelancer at the time?
Johannes:Yeah. That's a great question. Sorry. I didn't even touch on that. So, yeah, I was, I was working as a freelancer.
Johannes:And, specifically so my background is mostly marketing, apart from being a founder later on and doing everything, basically. Right? So my expertise lies in marketing, SEO, but also, you know, paid channels like Facebook, Instagram ads, basically all the advertising channels that are out there I've, at some point in my career, touched on. And so I've I helped, different companies, with that, with, SEO and also running running ads for, like, for example, a d two c startup and and, had a few different clients along the way. Yeah.
Arvid:Well, that's cool. So, like, I I just wonder, like, when did the spark for building your own thing happen along this path? Like, where you know, I I mean, now we are in the story at least. We're somewhere in South Africa, which is also a great place. I got to visit there just before the pandemic changed the world, which was, really fortunate.
Arvid:That was funny enough. Kinda ties things together a little bit because you mentioned Sarah was doing this online English teaching. We had a business that was facilitating some administrative stuff for online English teachers. We sold that just in 2019. And because we sold that, we got to travel, and that was where because and, like, for that reason, we ended up in South Africa at that point, got to see all those places that you mentioned as well, including Jay Burke, which is a very interesting place for sure.
Arvid:So how did you make it to the Canary Islands where I think you're more stationary now? Right? And and, it doesn't have to do with you actually building a business at this time, like, that you've tried to find a place, you know, to to build a home kind of a, you know, an an office in?
Johannes:Yeah. Great question again. So, I've always had this, I guess, dream to to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur. I was felt that this is kind of what I meant to do. Actually, it was also part of my family life.
Johannes:So my my dad and also my stepdad are both entrepreneurs, and so was my mom also to most of her career. So it was always part of my life. And so I thought, okay, at some point, I need to try something. And the the freelance work, I would say, also really gave me a lot of confidence in my my skills and being able to work by myself or ideally with someone else. And so basically, I had this idea and what the first thing I did so this might be interesting.
Johannes:I the first thing I did in the beginning of 2020, you know, New Year's Eve, you kind of, you know, have things that you want to do in the year. So one of the things I did was I reached out to people in kind of good good friends of mine, but professional friends, let's say. So people I really respect, in the marketing world, business world, and just ask them, like so ask them a relatively broad question about, things that they think should be done better or should be, what there should be, like, a better software for. There should be some kind of automation for what something like that. Like, it was pretty a pretty broad question, and it wasn't probably wasn't a great question either.
Johannes:But at least it was a starting point. And, actually, from that, I got a few really good responses back, and, that led us or led me first to the the path of what has what data became Leadsie. So that was the starting point.
Arvid:Leadsie is an interesting thing. I I do wanna I do wanna talk about this because it's it it feels that you just said something. I I don't know if you noticed that, but you said ideally building it with somebody else. That is not necessarily the the solopreneur perspective that you get to see in in in the hacking and in digital nomading where people just say, I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna do whatever I want.
Arvid:Right? It sounds like you you are, of course, you are in a partnership, like a, you know, a romantic partnership, but also in a business partnership. And that is that is not something that most indie hackers the indie part to many is very independent. Right? So how does that play into this?
Arvid:Like, did you did you build this with a cofounder from the start?
Johannes:Good. Yeah. So it's it's interesting. So as I said, beginning of 2020, I reached out to some people. And then I, something that I'm I've been doing for a couple of years too is I'm mentoring startups.
Johannes:Actually, funny enough, startups that are on the VC tracks, so they get VC investments and they join an accelerator program, specifically with 500 Global. That's a VC I've been working for mostly. And so at the time, beginning of 2020, I was in a program in, I believe it was Saudi Arabia, so working with startups from the the Middle East region. And my I met someone there, always already in the previous program, but someone I, you know, got along really well with. And I really, you know, just enjoyed his company, and I was talking to him about my business or my business idea at this point.
Johannes:It was not a business. And, but I started, started to do some work on my own. So I started to hack something together with no code tools to, to build this first prop this first kind of leaky. I'll talk a bit more about what it actually was. But so I hacked something together with no code.
Johannes:I can code a little bit, but it's it's it's very basic. And then and at the same time, also started to do some validation by reaching out to possible customers. So specifically, they were, yeah, marketing agencies actually already already at the time. So I, you know, tried to find ways to to code email them and actually pretty quickly had interviews lined up. So during the program, during this accelerator program, in the evenings, I basically and also the morning sometimes, I took some time to talk to potential clients, of this new solution, which I hadn't even, hadn't even built at the time.
Johannes:Right? That's actually something we could talk about, as well, why that's so important. So so this person that I met there, his name is Robert Desmond. He I guess he was really really impressed by that I guess to some extent and I think he also deep down wanted to do his own thing And, yeah, we just started talking about it, and that intensified over the coming months. And then we started to do this venture together.
Johannes:And I'm extremely happy that it happened that way because I think doing it alone is, by multitudes more difficult and yeah I think having a co founder is is makes it easier in many ways and so I'm very glad that that I was that's how it happened.
Arvid:Is is he a technical cofounder? Would you call him that?
Johannes:Yes. Yes. So he's a he's a developer, and he, yeah, he's the technical side. He's he's the CTO, essentially, of the of Leadsie, and, he's also great in many other areas. So he we we complement each other a lot.
Arvid:That's good. That's good to hear. And I guess that's that's really what you need. Right? If you look in a cofounder for a business like this, you want somebody to complement your skills.
Arvid:I mean, the the I've I've talked to Rob Walling about this, and he's seen a lot of people in tiny seed and inside the microcurrent community. He's seen examples of founders that get another marketing founder in, so they just have twice the capacity to do marketing. Right? So it is not just you always have to find a technical and a nontechnical founder. There are also groups of people with just 2 technical people, and they figure it out along the way.
Arvid:So it's it's just interesting to see that you went for the complimentary approach. Now let's talk about Leadsie. What does Leadsie do? Or maybe what did Leadsie do in the beginning in your little prototype, and what did it grow into?
Johannes:Perfect. So, so in the beginning, my idea was more around helping, companies, startups, because I was working with startups, but generally companies, of any size to to to be to be better at Facebook ads, Facebook and Instagram ads. So what I've noticed also through my mentoring was people are just doing so many silly mistakes, just burning money, you know, and the only one who's happy about it is probably Facebook, but not even them because they they're not gonna see more money coming, right, if they're not successful. So, so what we built was a essentially, like, an audit tool. So a tool that would allow you to say, hey.
Johannes:You know, you get temporary access to my Facebook ad account, and then the tool would tell you recommendations, and also give you a bit more visibility of, like, what are your best creators, what's performing well, which audiences. And then so kind of going through best practices, like, kind of like a checklist of what are you doing well and where where could you maybe make some improvements. That was the first product. And then relatively quickly, we wanted to sell this to agencies as a way to generate leads. So many agencies usually, as part of their lead generation, they offer, a free audit anyway to their potential clients.
Johannes:And we wanted to help them generate this audit at scale, basically, with this with the tool that we have. There are many similar tools that exist for that, by the way. So for SEO, it's very common thing, but nothing existed. Still nothing really exists for for paid, specifically Facebook, Instagram ads. And that's what we built.
Johannes:But that's not what Leadsie is doing right now. So Yeah. Maybe you can ask me what went wrong.
Arvid:That is an interesting question because, like, that explains the name too. Like, that that lead focus and the lead in Leadsie, that would rings a bell because right now you're building a very different tool. Like, it's it's kind of a social media account onboarding tool. Right? Like, what how how did that shift?
Johannes:Yeah. Perfect. Great question. So yeah. So we we kind of we got some early validation, and we felt like this is something really that agencies want.
Johannes:But after building out, let's say, a prototype, like, something that actually worked pretty well, and working on it really for probably, let's say, maybe 6 months or so. We we didn't once we were kind of asking them, like, so let let's, you know, please pay for this now, they all went quiet, basically. I'm simplifying a little bit, but we didn't get a lot of, payment intent, and that's always a sign that there's something a little bit off. I don't want to go too much into details why that was, but we definitely realized this is not going to be an easy sell. Right?
Johannes:And we kind of went back to the interviews that we had done. So something that we so both my cofounder and I feel like that is very, very important when you're building a business is talking to your customers and to your potential customers. And we've we really did that a lot. We we did, I'm pretty sure, over 50 interviews with different agencies. And and so we kind of went back and kind of reflect it.
Johannes:What else did they tell us? And when we did these interviews, we always asked about the entire kind of process. So, how do you find new clients, for example, and then so what happens when you onboard them and so on. Right? So that the whole process to understand where are pay points.
Johannes:Right? And how where could our product potential product help potential solution help. And, this problem of onboarding and specifically getting access to clients' accounts basically always came up. Every second conversation, the agencies would say, yeah, this is this is such a such a pain point. This is so painful.
Johannes:They what they usually had to do was jumping on a Zoom call, with with the clients at the end of the day after you know, they would send some instructions. The client would just kind of not do them or not do it right, or be completely confused. And then they would have to go on a Zoom call and then walk the client through and be like, yeah. Yeah. No.
Johannes:You have to click there, I'm not this note that, you know, like it's just it's super painful, right? And and so, yeah, with this realization, we were like, okay, well, maybe we can actually build something, that actually solves that specific issue. And we did, relatively quickly, and we saw a lot more traction much quicker for this product. And that's why we then, at some point, decided to to shut down the audit.
Arvid:Well, you needed it to get there. That's that's what I'm realizing from this. Right? Like Gliedly as it is right now would never exist if you didn't have the necessity to really dig into the problems and challenges of your customers, which is cool. Right?
Arvid:It's cool that you built something that allowed you to get to this level then to jump on the next level from there. I think that's a it's an important step for most India hackers to understand that your first thing is probably gonna suck in a in a in a neutral way. Right? I'm I'm not saying it's badly done. It may just not have the fit that you need, but it will facilitate conversations.
Arvid:I love the fact that you did like 50 of those interviews. That's really cool. And I love the fact that you zoomed out. Also really important. Did did you do anything else during those these interviews that gave you, like, an indication of budget or indication of payment intent that might not be apparent or very obvious to people, particularly people like me who are more technical and don't like to talk to other people that much.
Arvid:Right? Unless it's about a cool topic that we both enjoy, you know, like German hip hop. But let's get to that later. Like, the is is is there anything that you can share for India hackers to to use in these kind of conversations?
Johannes:Yeah. So, I mean, there are obviously different tactics around, like, what can you do to really understand if someone is happy to pay for a solution? But it's it is tricky. So in our case, what we didn't do is we didn't just say, hey. This is the problem.
Johannes:It's not the tool. Just pay for it. Right? Like, we did we didn't do that. Not sure if that was a mistake or I don't know.
Johannes:But, we, we definitely, it was kind of first, we just gave the product out for free, and then we were thinking, well, if it generates value, then they're gonna pay for it. Right? But they they kind of drag their feet. Right? And so we kind of felt like this there was something clearly, wrong here.
Johannes:And one of the one of the specific interview techniques around value that I can maybe share is, this is from a really great mentor we we work with, is kind of asking them how much so it's difficult question. How how valuable is this to you? Right? Like, no. Like, first of all, they don't wanna say, yeah, this is the I I would pay 1,000 of dollars for this.
Johannes:Right? Because they don't really want to pay more than they have to. So one of the techniques we we used was we kind of asked them, about other tools that they're paying for, and then we asked them to compare the value with another tool. So are you, is it as valuable as an Asana, let's say? Right?
Johannes:Which I don't know. Maybe $10 a month or mostly free even? Or is it is it as value as, you know, some specified, agency solution that costs, you know, north to $300? So that was a way for us to understand the value of what we're offering and then also for for the current products. So maybe that's something that that can be helpful for.
Arvid:Mhmm. Yeah. And and it seems to give you an indication of prices too. Right? Like, what prices to go with?
Arvid:Did you do a lot of, like, pricing experimentation in the beginning, or do you still do that?
Johannes:We we kind of, as I said, started with, like, these sort of interviews. And then from there, we set a price. And probably in the there's something else we did, which I probably should touch on. So we set some price, some arbitrary price based on kind of what we thought was gonna be fine. Obviously, it was gonna be way too cheap, for sure, like it always is in the beginning.
Johannes:Yeah. Sure is. What something else that we did, which might be a bit controversial, is we actually went on to AppSumo. So that was in the beginning of 2021, I believe. So that was relatively when we had the product in an in a decent place.
Johannes:And, we wanted what we wanted to do is we wanted to get real people using it. We wanted to get usage and we wanted to get feedback on that. And I would say overall, it was a good experience, because we got a lot of feedback. But also the the sort of customers that are on AppSumo, they are not necessarily, first of all, really do they're def they are most definitely not your best customers. And many of them may not even use you.
Johannes:We still have people contacting us now, you know, 3 years later and say, oh, yeah. I just sold it to someone else. Can you please change the the the username or whatever? The, you know, move the move the account over. So it's still like it's it's a bit painful.
Johannes:We actually still do it because we're nice, but it's, that was interesting. And, we also had to fight to get our to get the listing of AppSumo's website because well, basically, you know, it's even if you stop your offer, you you're still ranked like, you're still on the website. And when people search for your brand, they might find the AppSumo offer. And they're like, well, you know, this used to be used to cost, I don't know what it was, $60 for, like, a very limited lifetime deal, and they would this would anchor your pricing very quickly. Right?
Johannes:It would be like, well, this was used to be the price, so it can't cost 99 a month now. Right? So that was something we had to navigate. I mean, pricing what we definitely realized at some point, we were too cheap, and we started raising our prices, gradually. And we're probably gonna do that again, at some point when we feel like we are we can justify it, so when we add more value through, different different integrations or features, let's say, that really, you know, generate more value for our clients, and I think we're confident to raise prices.
Johannes:And I think that's something that companies, startups, indie hackers, in particular, should do. Also, here's the here's the thing. Definitely raise your prices for your existing customers. This is one of the biggest learnings that we had. So, obviously, most you know, if you're a nice nice person, especially, I feel like this is something that maybe developers really also feel like it's it's almost compulsory.
Johannes:It's like, yeah, these early people that supported us, we cannot change the price for them. And I I even I felt the same, but, that's the wrong thinking, I I believe, now in retrospective. Because in the beginning, you didn't raise it for the exact existing customers. Why?
Arvid:Yeah. Why?
Johannes:Why? Because, I think you you're gonna leave a lot of money on the table. That's that's the main thing. And I I also think I mean, obviously, you don't have to raise the price for existing customers straight away. Like, it doesn't have to be, like, you know, tomorrow is gonna be more expensive.
Johannes:You can be nice about it because, you know, you're gonna have 6 months or some period of time to to show them that you you appreciate, obviously, yeah, that they're using you. But also, this is a business relationship. Right? You don't have to be too thankful they're getting value from it. So it's it's the main thing is you're giving a lot of, money on the table, and it creates it creates, like, also you have to manage old plans, like, legacy legacy things.
Johannes:That's never really good thing in your code or even Stripe.
Arvid:That's a So
Johannes:it creates a
Arvid:good point. Yeah. I've I've been thinking about this too, like, building my own thing right now. I already have, like, 3 tier pricing knowing that, oof, if I'd ever change something now, I'm gonna have a 4th tier. It's gonna be hidden, but still kinda there.
Arvid:Yeah. There's there's complexity in this. And I think you're absolutely right. I love that you used the word payment intent earlier because in a way, your existing customers are probably the highest payment intent, like, users that you ever have. Right?
Arvid:The people who already pay. Like, clearly, they have intent to pay. So they should also be the people that you introduce new prices to because that might give you the most sane feedback or most informed feedback of all. Like, if it's too high, they're gonna fight back. And if it's high enough to to just, like, show how the value has increased over time, then you're on a good path.
Arvid:I really, really like this as a thought that, yeah, you do it with the people who already pay you. Right? Who already have this this willingness to pay. Interesting.
Johannes:Exactly. So so one more thing to add here is, I think it's wise to look at your data and look at the customers who you're raising the prices for. And if you have customers who may be paying you, but they actually never really use you or very, very rarely, maybe consider not raising the price for them. Right? Because you kinda know they're not getting value.
Johannes:Right? So they may have just kinda forgotten about the subscription and, you know, like, okay, it's you it's not worth, kind of poking into that bee's nest, I guess you could say. I don't know.
Arvid:That is that's another interesting point because now now I think that there is a business opportunity even in just scoring the people for that. Right? What is the likelihood of somebody canceling when I increase the prices and what is the likelihood of them actually paying it? Right? That and a per on a per account level with the usage metrics.
Arvid:I can see some in the hacker just typing away at an idea just now from from this conversation. I'll yeah. I I would love to see this too because it feels like something could hook into Stripe or into Paddle and into some kind of metric service. Very cool. I wanna talk about AppStream for a second just as a, like, a a little general question about this.
Arvid:Would you do this again? If you were to build a new business, would you jump start it with this AppSumo lifetime limited lifetime deal? I would like to know what the limitations were. Did it do enough good to warrant the little stressful things that
Johannes:you now need to deal with? I would say I would really think about it a lot. I I I would tend to say probably not because now I also feel confident that, even if things are relatively slow in the beginning, that's okay to to spend some time to figure out how to get the the right customer, at least based on your hypothesis. Right? Like, in the beginning, you may not know exactly who is the perfect customer, but you can you know, you have to be a little bit patient to try to get that customer or change it if you feel like it's gonna be a different kind of persona.
Johannes:Whereas with AppSumo, it's like you kinda get anyone and many of them are just looking for a great deal, You know? So that's not not very help very useful. Obviously, it gives you a bit of a cash, injection as well, which can be helpful. In our case, maybe just also to to share that, both my cofounder and I, we both, worked as freelancers on the site until probably a year and a half into the business. So which is, I think, quite typical, I would guess.
Johannes:But that's something you you have to be prepared for to to to not accept, not not expect that your your new little indie hacker project is gonna pay you the bills. Yeah.
Arvid:Yeah. For sure. I like those things. And that's the fun part about slow growth. It's kinda linear.
Arvid:Like, it is super slow in the beginning and you start with your 50 dollar MRR, and then you get to a 100 a week later or hopefully or a month later or whatever. And then it's slow, slow, slow, but it's gonna keep being like, it's gonna go up. Right? So give it a year or 2, and all of a sudden you're going from 6,000 to 6,500 and on and on and on. So you you just reinforce these mechanisms that that yeah.
Arvid:Of course. That's how it works. Did you have a a kind of a an MRR or any kind of revenue metric where you said, now it's time to go full time on this? But how was that choice made for both of you?
Johannes:I can't remember exactly the number now, to be honest with you. I think, definitely, we had this we had this number. I I think probably when we were able to pay us each in a more than, I guess, more than maybe 3, €4,000, something like that, maybe, I would say, then we probably said, yeah. I think it's okay for us now to to just, you know, quit quit our quit any other activity, really. The mentoring we're still doing, by the way, more or less both of us, which because we just enjoy it.
Johannes:But at that point, we were like, okay. We both luckily live in places that are not too expensive. So I think in London, it would be would have been hard, with with, I think maybe it was over €2,500, could be, or something like that. In London, you cannot really survive for that money. Probably you save in Silicon Valley and New York and many other more expensive places, and in Germany, most of Germany as well.
Arvid:Yeah. That's right.
Johannes:But yeah. The Canaries Canaries are actually relatively cheap, which is which is quite nice. And, my cofounder lives he's from the UK, but he lives in Poland. He has a family to feed, so there's definitely that consideration. And I think he maybe continued to work a little bit longer with with with, one day a week with, doing some other consulting to get a bit more money in.
Johannes:But, yeah, at some point, we could stop that.
Arvid:That's that's very, very cool. It's it's nice to see, like, that you you both found smart places to live and operate from. I think that, like, you're right. In most places, 2 and a half €1,000, which is, yeah, I guess roughly the same in in US is depending, right, on the economy and all that. That is that is definitely enough for most places, but definitely not enough for some.
Arvid:And most places where indie hackers congregate, or general generally, where developers congregate are bigger cities because that's where the bigger employers are. So if you wanna take the the change from being an employed salaried engineer to being an indie hacker in a place where you have to spend 4,000, $5,000 or whatever euros on rent and food every month, is gonna be tough. Right? You're gonna have to run this as a side project for a long, long time. So I guess that if you if you were in London, how long would it have taken you to actually run this project?
Arvid:Did you ever do the math? Like, how much longer you would have done it on the side?
Johannes:Great question. I I don't even want to think about it. Alright. It definitely must it's much much harder. I mean, yeah, you can also live on less, even in bigger cities, but then you have to move out of the city.
Johannes:Then, I mean, at least you don't have to commute so much if you kind of probably work from home, but it's definitely the the life quality is is is a bit more a bit less than if you if it's much cheaper around you.
Arvid:Yeah. For sure. Yeah. One thing that that you just said to me, like, in in terms of, risk is is very interesting. I wanna dive into this a little bit because you said, like, he's still working one day or was working one day on the side to kind of balance that off and make enough money to to sustain the family.
Arvid:And I think in in all indie hacking, all entrepreneurship, this kind of risk assessment is always one of the most important things to do right. Right? So, like, is it okay for me to stop working as a freelancer or should I quit my job or should I go go halftime or whatever? Is the risk of my business exploding too high for me to make this choice, or how easy is it to get back? So I'm I'm particularly interested in this because you are working effectively with agencies who are using somebody else's credentials on somebody else's platform to do some work.
Arvid:Like there is a lot of platform risk stacked on top of each other. Right? You're you're you're working with clients that are shaky that might lose their clients. Their clients are depending on platforms like Facebook or Google or Twitter or wherever the ads are being run. Right?
Arvid:Like, how do you deal with those risks in particular that you're stacking all these platforms on top of each other?
Johannes:Nice. Yeah. Good question. I actually feel like we haven't even well, I haven't really said what Leadsie is really doing. So let me just do a really quick one.
Johannes:Like, what's so what we ended up building is a solution that helps agencies get access to their clients' accounts in a extremely easy way. So they just have one link, which is sent to their clients, and then the client can give access to, you know, Facebook page, ad accounts, all the different assets, as they're called, to, to all the different Google profiles, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, Merchant Center, and so on. There's lots of things there, as well as TikTok as well. So but all through one link, and it walks the client through, and it it makes it much, much easier. So that's what we ended up building.
Johannes:So you're right, of course we have platform risk, which is it is what it is. We we've we've lived we are living with it. We also definitely had to go through some problems with APIs where, for example, Facebook at some point just decided to switch something off, and we were like, okay. This is a big problem. But you sort of work around it.
Johannes:How do I deal with that? It's you know, we we're just enjoying the ride, and we're just doing what we can. I think we believe that what we're doing is still and it's like it's not threatening Facebook, and it's kind of like it's something that they probably that there's no I feel like that there's no real, there's no crazy risk that they're gonna switch this off for some reason, but it could happen. I don't know. Like, the risk is there.
Johannes:So I also think, what is what what helps me personally is to think about, okay, what's the worst that can happen? Right? So let's say, leads he fails and, we have to shut down the business, which really hopefully is not gonna happen, and there's a lot of other platforms we also have anyway. But if it happens, then there's over there are always always other opportunities out there, whether it's another indie hacker project or working for someone. We've met some really great people along the way through this.
Johannes:So I think, you know, you just got to be open for for think about what's the worst that can happen. There's a nice exercise that Tim Ferris recommends, which is the fear setting exercise. So really writing down what what are you really scared about and then what what's really the worst that could happen? And often you realize it's it's really not that bad. And maybe it's also the the nomading, in South America that made us realize that it's like we can live with very little, very nice lives and and I think we can, we could always go back to that, if if needed, which we hopefully don't have to, but it's it's a possibility.
Arvid:This is a very reasonable approach. I really I really like like honestly, it's very German of you. Just like it was straightforward, you know, like, yeah, this could happen. This could happen. We'll figure it out.
Arvid:I I personally I subscribe to the same, like, process, the same thinking, and fear setting is something that I regularly do because of this, because it allows me to see, okay, and if it fails, well, good, I learn something. If if it doesn't feel good, I'm gonna keep learning something. Right? Like, either way, there's learning. Either way, there's a a move towards something else.
Arvid:So that's that's really cool. I I and and you're right. Like, in a in a way, if Google were to turn off their OAuth authentication, which I guess is how they authenticate all their accounts or Facebook were to do this. But first off, they authenticate their own platforms with this kind of tool. So it would be very odd for them to just turn it off.
Arvid:But if they would, that something else would have to be there for people to give their money to Google or for to give their money to Facebook, and you could still facilitate that because that's something that when we had a a conversation when when we had a customer interview, when I did a customer interview with you for my pro, product, we talked a lot about jobs to be done. And I think that is a topic that I really wanna dive into a little bit here because first off, you know a lot about it. You've, you've mentored people on this issue. And to me, what you're currently doing with Leadsie is a replacement of a very manual, very chaotic, very all over the place job to be done that you consolidate into a software tool. If if the platform should change, it would fall apart again into a manual chaotic process, which you could then build another software tool to facilitate.
Arvid:Right? You you would be able to recover because you already know how to take this manual process and turn it into a a streamlined software solution. So maybe let's talk a little bit about the job to be done here. How did you figure this out other than through the the customer calls? And how did you figure out how exactly to build a solution for a job that somebody else needed to be doing?
Johannes:Great. Yeah. I I love I love jobs to be done and and talking about it and mentoring startups on it. So this is one of the topics that I usually cover in my, in my team, kind of mentoring, and talks with with startups. And why is it so why is it so useful?
Johannes:I think it makes you it makes you think about what is the core of somebody wants to that somebody wants to achieve. Right? So, you could look at what we're doing at a surface level, and, of course, there you you would notice or you would say, well, yeah, we get the agency access. And that that is true. That is probably that is a job that we're doing for them, but there's a lot more here.
Johannes:Right? So and you figure that out really talking to to your customer, but also asking the right questions. And so what we figured out is, for example, that there's there's a lot of uncertainty in the beginning when a agency starts working with a client. The client, you know, isn't still isn't really sure about the agency. So the agency has to build trust.
Johannes:They they want to be seen as this, like, you know, very state of the art, company that knows the latest trends and does everything, like, in a really good way. And so they want to project a very a good image. They want to make a good impression. I want to make a great impression, in fact. And what I talked about earlier, this this process of, like, yeah, you have to click there and then share your screen and then click this.
Johannes:It's just painful. Right? So this that's why this isn't one of the the most important realizations we've had that, you know, it's it's really all about making a great impression at a very crucial time in the onboarding. The second thing also is, the earlier the agency gets access, the the the quicker they can actually generate results. Right?
Johannes:And many agencies work on a maybe monthly, contract basis, right? Even if it's 3 months, like 2 weeks of waiting for access make a huge difference. And so that's why our agencies love us because it just gets them access much quicker. They can actually show that they're able to produce results, which then means they have better retention rates, and and that allows and then also probably better word-of-mouth. So a lot of things that that get together, which is why we've, yeah, we've now on like, we've had we've given access to over 140,000 accounts at at this point.
Johannes:Right? We connect about, almost 4,000 assets. So, like, accounts, but, like, also pixels and so on, over 4,000 per week. So it's it's really a big scale at this point, and, it's it's great to be part of
Arvid:that. I I love I love that none of the things that you talked about have anything to do really with technology. It all has to do with trust, with showing up, with proving value, but it has nothing to do with the OAuth 2 implementation or whatever. Right? Like, it's really cool because that is the job to be done here is to build a relationship.
Arvid:It build a relationship that people can rely on and then use the use to build their own relationships. Right? Like, the agencies that you help, they want to build good relationships with their clients and their customers. So you build this relationship by building a great product for them, and they build their relationship. That's really nice.
Arvid:It's kind of a relationship cascade that you're doing here. It's just very a very interesting thing. Very cool. That's that that is yeah. Wow.
Arvid:I don't know what it is.
Johannes:Thinking about yeah. Thinking about jobs to be done also really helps to identify who are you actually competing with. So, you know, maybe there's not another software that does the same thing, that that your tool does or that that we do. But, obviously, there are others other ways to solve the problem. So, for example, some agency owners may say, well, actually, I like spending time with the client and and walking walking them through, which is hard at scale, but there might be some arguments to say, well, this is actually not bad waste of time, maybe, for some of them.
Johannes:Or others may have hired a VA to do that job. Or others, may, you know, build a really fancy form that has loads of conditions depending on the the setup that the client has to make that easier. So all of these are competitors to what we what we are doing and building. Right? And and often that we see I see founders, this is called the mentoring side, that look at their product and, like, no.
Johannes:We don't have competition or, like, well, it doesn't it's impossible, really. Right? Because because everyone would have found a way to solve the problem to some extent, maybe not perfectly, you know, without a solution that they that that the indie hackers building, whoever's building, basically. Yeah.
Arvid:Yeah. I think everything has competition. Like, like, even even, like, Disney Plus or Netflix, that competition is isn't necessarily the other big cloud streaming video providers. That competition is you having something else to do. Like, you you having you know, you're wanting to do go play sports or hang out with your family.
Arvid:That is competition for them as well. Attention competition. That's a very interesting point. Do you use, all these many different things, which I bet there are many of. You just set forms.
Arvid:People probably email back and forth. They do these kind of virtual hangouts and walking people through. Do you use that in your own, like, search engine marketing or your pay per click marketing, like any any kind of paid that that you explicitly look for people who try to find other ways and then you kinda pull them into your own world?
Johannes:Great question. Yeah. Yes. Yes, of course. We try to.
Johannes:Right? We try to so, obviously, we have we do a lot of SEO. So, obviously, my background is SEO. This is also interesting. We actually didn't do so much SEO in the beginning because I was like, well, it doesn't seem to be so much traffic around this.
Johannes:But actually then, I wrote wrote maybe one really good article, and it's it's it's started to to rank at some point and get quite a lot of traffic. We're like, oh, we should do more. So, yeah, now we're we're doing a lot more SEO, and highly recommended to to anyone out there. Even if you think even if you think that there's not a lot of traffic around what you're solving, there there will be, to some, like, at least the people that you're trying to to find, they will be searching for something. So we have a lot of topics around what agencies are what problems they're facing when they're growing or automating, for example.
Johannes:That's that's an area. We have loads of guides on how to give or request access to all the platforms you can imagine. So that that's probably straightforward. And maybe we should have should have more on, like, how to hire a VA and then, you know, touch into that. But yeah.
Johannes:Yeah. So and also in our ads as well. Right? So we try to make them feel this pain point, show them some kind of videos of of people getting being in despair, looking at their Facebook business managers. This was actually our first ad.
Johannes:It was me scolding through Facebook business manager, like, getting, like, some kind of getting angry and and and and sad about it at the same time. And and it worked really well. So yeah.
Arvid:It's it's really cool to hear. And and I'm just I'm just seeing, like, a a very interesting journey here from from you just finding something that you were really good at, which is the whole ads space. Right? Building something for lead gen, figuring out this is not enough, talking to people, learning about their deepest need, which is not even just about onboarding, it's about relationship building and then building something that they really want to use because it gives them something to project towards their own customers. That that is an amazing journey.
Arvid:And what what sticks out to me what stands out to me is that it took every single step along the way to get to where you are today. I think that that is something that we often forget. Right? As indie hackers, we we always think we have the perfect solution. We have everything we need, but it takes all this experimentation and stuff along the way.
Arvid:It's very cool. What what is next for Leadsie? Where are you gonna go from here? Are you just gonna grow and just turn these 4,000 a week into a 40,000 a week, or are you are you gonna expand? Where do you wanna go with that?
Johannes:Also a really good question. So, yesterday, we did a a hackathon. That's something that's super interesting. The first time we did that. So about a slightly different way of using our tool for for influencer white listing, for example.
Johannes:So if anyone who is listening and is interested in influencer white listing and is using some tool or no tool or whatever, please reach out to me. But so, anyway, my point is we have a lot of ideas of things that really excite us and we believe are going to add value to to agencies and possibly also to to brands or other companies in general. But we also have some SaaS that are using us in some way. So it's not just agencies, but the core is agencies still. There are a lot of other integrations that we want to to integrate with or platforms we wanna support, so that's always straightforward.
Johannes:But, the cool thing is even after basically 4 years since the very inception of Leadsie, which took some turns, but we're still super excited to to work on it. And I think that's that's really fun and great, and there's gonna be some cool things that are gonna come for sure. Should watch watch the space.
Arvid:Yeah. I I was gonna say, what where do I go to watch the space? Where do you want people who are not not just interested in leads? I would love I'm gonna put the link to leads in there because I think it's it's a really, really interesting indie product to begin with that solves real problems for real people. I love this kind of stuff.
Arvid:But if people wanna follow the journey of the business and your journey, where do you want them to go?
Johannes:Perfect. Yeah. I mean, so for Leadsie, check out leadsie.com. And for myself, I am on on Twitter. I'm nowhere nearly as, successful as someone else on this coming this conversation here.
Johannes:So now I so, yeah, check me out. Joe Radig, so j o r I r a d I g, is my handle. I'm sure I was gonna link that in the show notes. And, you can you can get in touch with you there or LinkedIn if you want. But, yeah, these are the these are the main places to find me.
Arvid:I highly recommend it. It's really cool. I'm really glad that we we got to have this conversation. I think I learned a lot from you today. I hope you had a couple of opportunities to think about where where you come from and like how how, again, how important all these steps are.
Arvid:I think, like, looking back in retrospect, it's it's really cool to see what is needed to build a successful business. So thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom, all your insights, and those a lot of tiny little tips for indie hackers to improve many different aspects of their work. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show.
Johannes:Big pleasure, Albert. Thank you so much for having me.
Arvid:And that's it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers, and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue.
Arvid:That's the dream of every SaaS founder, right? Problem is, you're not growing. For whatever reason, maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or applying lack of interest, you don't know. You just feel stuck in your business with your business. What should you do?
Arvid:Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach, they really helped you to go down this road, 6 months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue, and you have this hyper successful business. That is the dream. The reality, unfortunately, is not as simple as this.
Arvid:And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who is facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time is the story that here, it just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything. So if you find yourself here, already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option, and that is selling a business on inquire.com.
Arvid:Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything. And acquire.com is free to list. They've helped 100 of founders already. Just go check it out at try.
Arvid:Acquire.com/arbit. It's me. And see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just wanna wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out.
Arvid:It's always good to be in the know. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder today. I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter at avitkahl, a r v e r k a h l, and you'll find my books and my Twitter course tattoo. If you wanna support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be.
Arvid:Do let me know. It would be interesting to see. And leave a rating and a review by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds, and that's I think where we all would like it to be. Just helping other people learn and see and understand new things.
Arvid:Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
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