307: Addressing my Weaknesses
Download MP3Now, I'm a pretty okay developer. But when it comes to marketing and sales, I really need help. And for the longest time, I've held myself back. That ends today. My current SaaS business, PodScan, is at a point where some very important decisions need to be made.
Arvid:I've got something quite big in the works, and I'll be talking about this next week in much more detail, but it made me think about the long term needs that a business like mine has, and how I can personally fulfill them, and where I have skill gaps that I will have to work on. So today, I will explore how I will address the business challenges that lie ahead of me. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com, a platform that helps founders sell their businesses, which I guess is also a business challenge even though it's a happy one for later. I don't think I need to take care about that just now, but still, it's something that I've been thinking about and I will need to prepare for it. Let me give you the lay of the land of where this particular solopreneur stands, in terms of what is working, what is not working, and what I'm trying to actively prepare for.
Arvid:My strongest skill lies in product work development, pretty much. I'm good at building software that works. PodScan is now a stable system that transcribes tens of thousands of podcast hours into a massive database every single day, and I dispatch 100, if not thousands of alerts for keywords and for key themes and topics to people that actually use them to make money, which is amazing. Scaling this has been challenging, but that's kind of what I've been doing for decades now. From the development perspective, I feel that I can go quite far without having to look for help.
Arvid:Although honestly, I think I have had massive help building this tech by just by usage of chatgpt and GitHub Copilot and PHPStorm's AI assistant, that probably accounts for several hours in any given day that I work on this stuff. I really use it a lot. Even my MySQL client has a built in query generator AI that I use to quickly just ask it, like, you know, give me the count of all these these items in that particular table that have this and that and that, and it just creates a perfect SQL query that I just run and get the result from. I talked about this a few weeks ago. AI in tools, that's just an expected part of any piece of software now.
Arvid:Right? AI is a side dish, but it's kind of an expected side dish, like bread at a restaurant when you go to a place and you kinda expect them to give you some bread and butter before, you know, they even come and ask you what you wanna eat. That is the expectation, And I know this is a kind of North America centric view, but you know what I mean. That you have these certain expectations, and if you don't see them in products, you think, what's wrong with them? Why are they not adopting this kind of technology?
Arvid:So you kinda have to have it. And I've been leaning into this particular use of that technology a lot. Unfortunately, AI is at a point where you need to be an expert in the field that you wanna use it in to be able to use it effectively. Of course, it will speed up my coding. Right?
Arvid:I know what good code looks like, and I've been writing production ready code for years, So I can quickly tell if the AI created something that is good or bad. But the moment I look into my skill gaps outside of coding, AI assistants turn from these glorious saviors into quite a gamble to use. Because how am I supposed to know if that Chatgpt marketing email headline is going to be a good one when I never truly learned how to write a good marketing email? Like that's a problem. Like I I could trust Chat gpt, but I'm not sure if I can take my knowledge of coding and how good ChatGPT is at that and just extrapolate it into everything else.
Arvid:So AI assistants are at best a helper tool on the sidelines. I still need to either learn more or hire. And let me tell you something, struggling with hiring has been a long time self imposed limiting belief for me. That I only recently have started working on. I think it's a common belief among solopreneurs that we can and we kinda have to do it all.
Arvid:The solo becomes part of our identity. And even though we hang out with other indie founders on Twitter or the many forms of the web and Reddits and whatnot, we feel lacking when we hit a part of our business that we just cannot seem to handle. And last time, I continued to run against that wall of a challenge again and again. Well, it led to severe burnout. I mean, I I had to sell my business, which was still a great accomplishment because I just couldn't keep doing it anymore.
Arvid:I decided that this perspective ends for me right here with PodScan. If I need help, I will hire this time. And hiring is not just necessarily like hiring a full time person. That that was my my limiting belief was like if I hire it has to be somebody working 40 hours a week for me. Well, no.
Arvid:There there are different levels. It's kind of a gradient, right? It's it's a spectrum here. I can hire full time. Sure.
Arvid:If there's enough work for that person, I can hire part time too. I can hire contractors on a project level. I can hire contractors for a couple hours. I can even hire agencies or software businesses, SaaS solutions to do the thing for me. So there's a, you know, a spectrum and I can pick and choose what I need, so I will.
Arvid:So what will I need to hire for? Well, let me just go through the stuff that I don't really enjoy when it comes to the business, and whom, what or how I can hire for that. The biggest thing for me is financials. Like bookkeeping, having updated p and l's, and tracking churn and retention, all of this can get quite complicated, and while I do enjoy it occasionally to look into it, there's a certain boring regularity to this kind of stuff that just makes me deprioritize it. And it kinda ranks down in my my list of things that I have to do to a point where avoiding it actually becomes costly at some point, and I don't think I need that.
Arvid:I can give this to something or somebody else. And I'm gonna talk about what I'm gonna do here as well. The next field though that where I just seem to stumble around aimlessly in the dark is design. Both visual design and experience design. UX, UI, and that kind of stuff.
Arvid:I really love the hard cold true or false reality of coding. Right? Either it works or it doesn't. That's always very clear, but making aesthetic changes that might impact retention, spending hours tweaking, like, paddings and margins, again, not really for me. That.
Arvid:I get by and the tools that I use like Tailwind and premade templates, they really help, but a mature business needs a mature process for this. The same goes for my marketing efforts. Building PodScan in public has provided me with almost, what is it now, 700 something dollars in monthly recurring revenue so far, but I need more than just sharing business updates here. I need lead generators, a product marketing strategy, like media presence milestones, and all that jazz. I'm not a marketer, but I'm just a founder with an audience, and I'm not a sales guy either.
Arvid:PodScan, at this point, has a lot of self serve options. So, you know, marketing should create some kind of conversion there, but the lucrative enterprise plants, they don't sell themselves, unfortunately. How can I close deals if I don't reach out, if I don't start the conversation? Between financials and design and marketing and sales, I know that I have skill and knowledge and excitement gaps really. So here's how I think about closing them.
Arvid:3 out of these fields are very people centric. Right? Marketing, design, and and sales. The only thing that I believe I can completely deal with using digital solutions is the financial side. And digital solutions doesn't mean that people are not involved.
Arvid:It just means that the interface between the solution and my challenge is completely virtualized. I have Paddle that I use as a merchant of record, and the spectacular profitable analytics platform that they bought, that's all I need for this. Right? The process here is to make a check that regularly looks into the vitals of my business and just figure out if things are good, if things are bad. That's something I can turn into a process where I just go into the platform and look at it.
Arvid:And the monthly bookkeeping that I have and will have and that will grow over time, that's also dealt with. I recently actually founded Potscan as a company and I used first base dot io, which is also the company that I used to found the company for permanent link, my first SaaS venture after I sold my my business in in 2019. And Firstbase offered a bookkeeping service for, like, roughly a $100 a month. It depends on how much revenue you have or how many expenses you have. So I just booked that alongside the company formation package which was not that expensive.
Arvid:I think overall I maybe spent $1,000 on all of this like registering registering a mailbox, an agent, actually having the company founded, and a couple little add ons. I I walked away with like under $1,000 or something for a US c corp company. And I will eventually need to hire for these things. I'm aware. Like, the moment PodScan is making, like, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 in revenue every month, the $100 won't cut it.
Arvid:You know, I'm aware of that. But even then, it probably will be a part time position. It definitely is not a priority. And design is also important to me, but equally not at the top. I think PodScan at this point is a data platform mostly, and the APIs that I provide are the most valuable assets.
Arvid:I know that I have the alerting and mentioning side that and and that stuff still needs some some solid UX, but it by far does not matter as much as having good data, quality data from which alerts and mentions are sourced. And the I know this might be the developer in me talking, and I'm I'm dealing with this internally. I'm reflecting on that sometimes, but focusing on providing quality data right now is my biggest priority because it's also the biggest opportunity. Like other people can build businesses on top of good data. I can build something on top of average data, but, you know, other people's businesses, there is a clear value metric there.
Arvid:If they make money, I make money. If I build random things on top of data and focus more on the random things than the data, then nobody else will ever use it. That's my internal logic here. So if you think this is correct or incorrect, let me know about this because that's something that I, as a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur trying to figure out where in the market this product should be, that's something that I'm struggling with because I I have many options. Right?
Arvid:That's kind of the bane of making your own decisions is just a massive optionality of the market, like pod podcasting as a market in itself. There's so much you could potentially do that, you know, analysis paralysis kicks in and you have too many choices, and the paradox of choice happens, and you don't really know what to do. I have settled on 2 of these things at this time, data platform and alert mentioning sitting on top of it. So that's where I'm at. And for my design needs, I will have to take a few steps anyway because I cannot just say I'm never gonna figure out design.
Arvid:I need to deal with this. I I will have a UX designer or 2 audit the existing interface and the landing pages and everything that is kinda customer facing for these obviously complicated things that could be easier, low hanging fruit, major mistakes, and omissions. I think this will be project work, nothing permanent, at least for now, until I get to a point where it would make sense to have a designer both coordinate and then sign off on major changes to the platform for consistency and, you know, corporate branding and these kind of reasons. I think it's just too early for me to be too strict about visuals, when the business itself might still pivot into 1 or the other direction. But I'm still not completely sure where the product market fit for this is.
Arvid:I have an indicator. Right? I have revenue, but I have to still unravel a couple things before I can make like, a solid positioning choice here. And that can really only happen as I keep talking to customers, or better yet have somebody supporting me in this. And marketing, in the podcasting space, and even just talking to people in the podcasting space, that's not my background.
Arvid:Right? I'm I'm technical. I don't come from the the media world, but I know it's somebody else's. One of the first hires that I will have to make will likely be a part time marketer with experience in talking to people who either sell to or support or even produce podcasts. I'll be using tools including PodScan itself to find these prospects, but I need an expert in reaching them where they're at, right, in in talking their language.
Arvid:I I also know that the data platform side of PodScan can massively benefit from my building small lead generation tools, kind of think of podcast summary directories or per podcast chat bots, all these kind of product marketing ideas that you can kinda drive, interest and drive eyes onto the product, And that will make people excited to build on top of the API, but I just need somebody to figure out what this might be, what is needed in the field, and how I can help my target audience. And maybe most importantly, I need to learn how to sell. I never had to, but I recently watched this founder led sales video, MicroConf Connect. They had, like, a MicroConf Remote, conference. And, Craig Hewitt of Castos, which is a podcast hosting company of of all things, He was talking about founder led sales.
Arvid:And this showed me just how afraid I am of doing sales. Like, the things he talked about was so novel to me in many ways. I was like, what have I been doing over the last couple years? Like, why have I never learned how to sell products? I've always been in super low touch businesses that I never really had to convince somebody to buy it, but, here's another excuse.
Arvid:Right? I think, I'm an English as a second language speaker. I'm an introvert. I don't know much about sales. That's not a strong situation to start from.
Arvid:And there's a lot of justification here that I really need to deal with, but I will have to start to to sell. It would be a waste not to try because I have a great product. I have a great position. I have an an audience. I have some kind of reputation.
Arvid:Not sure about that. But, you know, like people will at least give me the benefit of the doubt, and I have been building something really helpful and meaningful for other people to use. I just came off a conversation with a customer and they were talking to me about how they used the product. And I found myself stunned because they used the product exactly as I had intended for it to be used. They were using it to source podcast guests appearances for their boss.
Arvid:They were using it to look at their competitors and what they were talking about, and they were using it as a lead generation tool for people needing their services. There was those three things were the exact things that I built PodScan for, and it was really cool to get to talk to somebody who's using my product on a daily basis. What issues they have with the product, what challenges they still have that are unsolved, and how much time I actually saved them. It was amazing to hear this. So not giving other people the opportunity to actually experience that themselves to actually save that time and make these conversions well that would be a waste of potential.
Arvid:So I need to overcome my inhibition and actually just do it, right? It would be a waste. So to learn this I will both do what I always do, just try to figure it out, read about it, just try it, jump in, but I know I can also speed it up by learning from someone who knows how to get sales. From somebody who's actually experienced in that. So in my hiring priority, a salesperson sits right at the top right now.
Arvid:I can handle most other things, but if sales can substantially, and will I guess substantially impact the bottom line of this business, I need to make moves here. So between AI guidance, teaching myself to do things better, and hiring part time help, this is how I think about the next steps for PodScan, and I hope you found this interesting and somewhat usable and insightful. I know the situation is different for all of us, every founder has their own stuff to to go through, but I I just wanted to share the process of how I think about these things with you, so maybe you find some inspiration there. Hey. And if you, at any point, notice that I did something really stupid and that my thoughts are, completely orthogonal to reality, I would love for you to tell me.
Arvid:Right? Reach out to me on Twitter, send me an email, or whatever you wanna do. Go to, what is it, podline.fm/arbit, my prior product, and just send me a voice message that could work too. I just wanna know if I'm completely off or if if the direction that I'm going in makes sense to you. And next week, I will be sharing something rather exciting that will make all of this a little bit easier, but that's still in the works.
Arvid:Can't say much about this now, but I will tell you next Friday. So I guess you, yeah, you you better tune in. It's gotta be big. That's it for today. Thank you so much.
Arvid:I will now briefly thank my sponsor acquire.com. You know what I talked about this earlier. Right? Acquisitions or having this business eventually be acquired, that's always on the on the table for me. Like I always, I'm thinking about, like, what's the valuation?
Arvid:What would I sell for? What do I want to sell for? What's my minimum? What's my maximum? And it's I'm I'm actually at the stage where I'm actively preparing for this.
Arvid:Right? And all the things that I talked about like marketing and, you know, design and just financials, all of these things are important for the business to grow. And all of these things I approach by trying to make the business as sellable as possible at any given time. Right? When I when I think about marketing, I have my just the way I reach out to people, my email templates, they are all in a folder that I can easily share both with potential hires, hopefully very soon, and in the future with anybody acquiring the business.
Arvid:They could just take my playbook and just take it in, absorb it, and keep running my business if they wanna to ever acquire it. Same goes for my product development work. Everything is well documented and structured so that it will be easy for me to sell. And even the things right now that I'm conceptualizing that I'm not even I'm sure if they're ever gonna happen or not in the business, I document them all so that the process of what I'm going through, the process of how I work through my thoughts is retroactively reachable and accessible to anybody who will buy this business from me in the future. Because I hope to eventually sell it.
Arvid:Of course, I'm not gonna say no to $10,000,000 or anything like that. Right? Why would I not? That would be very interesting for a business like this or maybe 20. I don't know.
Arvid:Haven't set up my my minimum line yet. I think when I talked about this last, it was somewhere around 4 or $5,000,000. I think we're gonna correct this up to, like, an 8 8 figure exit. That's kinda where I wanna go with this, but that is future talk. But it is important to think about it now, and the people over at acquire.com will help you think about it from the start.
Arvid:They will help you list your business if you're ready to sell, they will help you prepare your business to be listed, they will help you to prepare your business to be so valuable that it can be listed and will be bought. They've helped 100, if not thousands of people sell their businesses at this point. And like I said, I'm thinking about it from the start, right? I'm not even at a point of profitability yet. I still have more expenses than I I get the revenue in, but I'm getting there.
Arvid:I'm getting closer. And I know that from the start, making this a sellable business makes this a better business. So just look at it. Just take a look at acquire.com. Go to try.
Arvid:Acquire.com/arvid and see for yourself if this is the right option for you right now, if you're ready to sell or how this can be the right option for you in the future when you've built something that you really wanna sell, and then go to the next thing. I highly recommend it. Thank you so much for listening to the Bootstrap founder today. You can find me on Twitter at Avidkar, a I v I d k a h l. You've had my books on my Twitter course there too.
Arvid:Go to potline dotfm/arvey to send me a message. And if you wanna support me on the show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast, and your podcast player of choice, and leave a rating and the review by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder. That makes a massive difference if you show up there, because then the podcast will show up in other people's feeds. Any of this will help the show. Thank you so much for listening.
Arvid:Hope you have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
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