216. The Anatomy of a $35,000/month SaaS Company

0:00Imagine being 16 years old and already building a digital marketing business. That was Clay. For years, he did what most agency owners do. He sold anything clients would pay for, websites, SEO, Google ads, and he scaled that generalist model to almost$17 ,000 a month. But behind the scenes, he was exhausted, constantly working and realizing he was building assets for everyone except himself. Then came one simple question from his wife, what's the one thing you do for everyone that actually works? His answer, Google reviews. And that became the spark for a full pivot. Clay Fired Clients rebuilt businesses as low ticket SaaS called Review Harvest and created a scalable system that no longer required trading time for money.

0:46And today we're breaking down the entire journey, the painful revenue drop, the 50 free review offer, the no longer in retention strategy and systems he built to scale. His SaaS is going to be really good for first time entrepreneurs that don't know what they want to get started with. We have an entrepreneur that has done it multiple, multiple times. So Clay, thank you so, so much for being here today. So excited to have you on. Dude, I'm stoked for it. Thanks for the intro. Yeah, it's gonna be good. And before we dive into, you know, that advice for first-time entrepreneurs getting started with validating ideas, scaling their businesses, we gotta rewind you back to 16-year-old Clay when you started experimenting with digital marketing and like turning that into a business.

1:21So like, truly, what was that like first spark for you to get started with business at like 16 years old? Yeah, no, for sure. It was honestly because I was the kid that was doing the landscaping, that was doing the pet sitting, that was doing everything in middle school or in high school or whatever to try and make some side money. And I would get into the school year and I was like, all right, well, I can't do landscaping all the time because I'm at school or it's getting cold. And so just watching YouTube videos, just like, oh, you can make money online. Great. And so watched some YouTube videos, cold called and then walked in like just cold pounding the pavement, talked to some business owners and kind of got like my first gig after a week or two, did it for free, hated it.

1:58And I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to do this again. but but kind of kept going from there what was that first like gig that you did in like i mean you're 16 years old was it scary doing cold i think cold calling even at like 25 26 is like still kind of scary i mean what take us to that yeah the cold calling i did not see much success with so i was like i just go face to face i'll just go face to face so i walked around our area and it was a just a little local chain of clothing brand like it's a clothing brand local to our area we're on the coast it's called coast tippy i was like i'm gonna run your facebook ads for you and you're going to get more sales.

2:29And they're like, okay, cool. And they're like, we don't have any content. I was like, I'll get content for you too. And like, what do you charge? And I was like, $500. And that's just like a number I could just come off the top of my head. And they're like, uh, I don't know. And I was like, how about this? I'll do it for free. And then after you can pay me$500. And I did it for free. It did not go good. They did not get any additional sales. I never got the$500. That's totally okay. I didn't, I didn't want it. I didn't do a good job. So every entrepreneur needs to have like a failed venture, maybe.

2:59And maybe that was a good first training wheels lesson. I'm curious, though, were your parents entrepreneurial at all? Or was this truly just like a mindset that was seeded in you, I guess? Yeah, my dad's kind of always been in and out of entrepreneurship and stuff like that. My mom, not so much. My mom's totally cool to punch a clock. And so, yeah, I don't know where it kind of sparked for me, probably my dad. And also, I think when you get into self-help, I got into self-help books and stuff like that pretty young, reading all the things, how to win friends and influence people. It just so naturally, entrepreneurship comes out of that because you're like, I'm going to own my future.

3:33I'm going to make it work. So yeah. Continue with entrepreneurship. So you had a generalist agency. Talk to us about that because it was doing around whatever,$17 ,000 a month, let's call it. Yeah. What were you doing and why did you stop doing that? $17 ,000 a month. A lot of agency or a lot of owners, first time entrepreneurs are like, Oh, man, that's kind of the dream. So tell us what it was. And why did you stop? Yeah, for sure. Well, I honestly, it was literally just me texting and calling as many people as I could that sort of knew me or that were in my area. And I would just try to sit down with them at a coffee shop.

4:04And then at a coffee shop, I would just be like, yo, what do you need? I would just I had like a list of questions I asked to say where their problems were. And literally, they would say anything from like I said, website ads, Facebook ads, content, drone footage. I even like created like an SOP program with an app for somebody's also my employees. So it was like anything and anything they needed, I would do. But I did that in college mainly. So like in college, I went to the University of Florida down in Gainesville and like college at UF was hard, like classes were hard and I was a business major.

4:32And I was like used to be in like top of my class in high school and like, you know, school's pretty easy. Just study a little bit and you'll be good. Then I go to UF like, dang, this is different beast. And so I was like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur anyway. I don't need to make good grades. So I like found what the minimum viable like passing grade was in every single class. I did the bare bones possible for all schoolwork. And I just met with as many business owners as possible. So the time I graduated college, I was probably already making seven or$8 ,000 a month just from doing that random stuff for people.

5:00And then eventually after doing that for like another year, like I said, got to like 17 K and six or seven months. and I just like took a long look in the mirror and I was like, I was working more than, than I am now. And I was making a lot less money too as well. But it felt, it's so frustrating because I felt like I spent so much time on client delivery, trying to deliver, you know, the promise that I had made for this person or this business. And then my other clients suffered because of it. Right. And so I was like, I definitely can't scale this. I don't get to spend time getting more customers myself because I can't handle it.

5:33And so, yeah, that's what my life was like, what do they all like that you do? And I was like, reviews. And so history from there. We're going to jump into that review part here because that was like really what got everything started here and based on our conversation today. So listeners, stay tuned for that. I want to ask, why doesn't that generalist model work? Because some people might have a skill set where they're like, oh, like kind of like a jack of all trades, like master of none. Like I know a lot about business. Like why can't I just do everything? Why doesn't that work? And then we're going to dive into someone starting their first company.

6:00I almost tell people who are interested in online business and marketing for local businesses and stuff, I almost tell people to do that for a bit because I learned so much about what I liked and what I didn't like. And it's honestly a much easier way to get money. If you have like, this is this one thing that I do, it's a lot harder sell because you have to go find the people that need this one little thing, right? But if you're just like, I will do whatever you want me to do, you can talk to anybody, anybody as a customer, right? And so it helped me get off the floor and start getting some cash.

6:27But yeah, once you get to that 10 or$15 ,000 per month mark, you're doing so many different things and I wasn't charging high enough prices to hire somebody, right? So I was like, like you said, jack of all trades. I was decent at a lot of different things. There's no way at all I could hire people to do Google ads, to do websites, to do content, to do drone footage and still be profitable at the prices I was charging. And so that's when I was like, all right, I just gotta find the thing that I'm the best at. And then once you kind of create that into just a process, then it's a lot easier to outsource because I couldn't afford to hire five different employees, right?

6:58There was not gonna be one person that had my skillset. So talk to us about reviews then, because your wife asked you, what's the one thing you do for everyone that works? Your response was reviews. So talk to us, like, what was that light bulb moment? Like, how did this turn into Review Harvest? Yeah, for sure. So it was one of the clients I was doing ads for and content for, and they had mentioned they were spending a decent amount of money on Google ads. And I knew enough to know that, you know, if you're spending a lot of money on Google ads, you could probably try and rank higher organically just through SEO and, you know, optimize your Google business profile and you have to spend less on ads.

7:30And so I was like, hey, let's try and spend less time on ads. Let's try and get y 'all some reviews. They had thousands of happy customers, but they only had 23 reviews. And so I was like, okay, well, let's just like send out a text and email to all their customers and let's like get them, try to see how many reviews we can get them. And so I remember vividly like the next day after we launched the campaign to text and email all their customers, just like my phone just blowing up. Because I still had notifications turned on when they got a review. And so I was just like, review, review, review.

7:56And they're like texting me like, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. This is insane. And so I was like, whoa, this works. And so then I went to the next business owner I talked to. I was like, I'm going to sell them on this. This is like this. This works great. And I think I charged him like fifteen hundred dollars to do the same thing and set it all up and there's, you know, all the stuff. And so I was like, whoa. And he paid me and he got crazy results, too. And he loved me. And I was like, wow, this there might be something to this. Oh, man. So what is like that? What is that to it?

8:24Because, you know, I have two successful like clients to it. It's like the light bulb moments like, holy smokes. I have a legit like SaaS business here. And like, did you cut everything off from like everything else you were doing and just focus primarily on this? Talk to us about that. Yeah, for sure. It was a little bit of a slow thing. I think I had done it for three or four people before. I was like, all right, I think I need to go all in on this because really I was used to charging a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars a month or whatever to basically be their yes man to do whatever they wanted me to do.

8:50Like I had like no great definition of what the scope of that work was. And then I went to the reviews and I was like, hey, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get you reviews. We're going to upload your client list. We're going to text and email your customers. We'll respond to all those reviews for you. And we'll turn all those reviews into social media content for you. And it's going to be$1 ,500 and it's like$300 a month. And they're like, yes. And then literally I went home. I set up the account for them. I use a software called High Level to get started. Just white labeled it and put my logo on it.

9:17And it took me two and a half hours to do it. And I was like, he just paid me$1 ,500 and he's going to pay me$300 a month. And it's all set up. We're integrating a new system. It's just going to work in the background. totally automated. And so I was like, okay, yeah, there's definitely something to it. So I basically started peeling back my clients from who was paying me the least and the biggest headache. So I went all the way from$17 ,000 a month in recurring revenue from my agency to going down to$4 ,500 a month in recurring revenue in like six months. And that sucks. Like that was awful. But I knew that when I got back to$17 ,000 a month, it would be a totally different business.

9:53One that I could focus on growing the business, one that I could focus on hiring people to get myself out of the business. And so it's a lot more scalable. Are you ready to launch, grow and scale a business? Inside the Uplip Academy, you'll get a complete roadmap to shortcut your success with 25 plus step by step programs taught by active business owners, not gurus who share their step by step blueprints, plus ongoing live workshops, skills training, a business idea database, and community to share resources and celebrate your wins. Click the link in the description below to join the Elphab Academy today and start surrounding yourself with the people and tools that can change everything for your business.

10:34I'm curious, like what was that feeling like for you seeing the bank account go from$17 ,000 a month to like$4 ,500 a month? I mean, I'm sure there has to be some sense of like anxiety or like worry once you see something like that happen. For sure. No, it was so stressful. And like, luckily my wife was working a full-time job. We got married really young and she was working a full-time job. She was an assistant manager at Lululemon. And so my goal for like her and I goal expenses wise, like, Hey, we're going to live off of her salary. And like everything I'm doing is just kind of plus right now.

11:04And when your rent is half of her salary, it's like, Oh, things are really tight, you know? And so honestly, I think the hardest part was sticking to the fact that, Hey, I'm going all in on this. I'm going on this because saying yes, it was so easy. And I did it multiple times. It was so easy to say yes to one more agency client. I could use the cash, right? But I was taken away for the long term of all the things I needed to do to grow a review harvest. And so I just had to say no. And I'm a pretty risk averse person by nature. So I was like, yeah, it kind of sucked. I think just reading between the lines, just from what you did first of like that generalist, like I'll do anything to this of like, now I'm gonna like really focus on one thing.

11:40Talk about the benefit of that for like the growth for your own agency. Cause yeah, we've now switched it from generalist to focus on one thing. I want to talk to business owners here that need to hear this as well. Yeah, I think the number one thing for me that still helps us to this day is just the consistent messaging of, hey, we get people reviews. Like I have in my Instagram bio, I think for the longest time, it's just like Google review guy, because that was the biggest piece that was keeping me from growing the generalist agency and keeping a lot of agencies from growing. They just like, oh, they do marketing, right?

12:10It's like, oh, I don't need marketing, right? And nobody that your clients, people you talk to, people you have sales calls with, they can't, they don't remember your business. But if you just keep a very simple business and a very consistent message of, hey, we help people get more Google reviews, that's it. Really easy for people to remember. And it's really easy for our clients and people that know about us to spread the word. And so that was the craziest part about, you know, starting a review harvest was just kind of referrals, which is crazy. And then a large portion of our growth, but it's so easy for somebody to be like, oh, did you say something about reviews?

12:39Yeah, actually, I know a guy, like I went to high school with them. He's posted about reviews all the time. Like you should check them out. Like that happens like that happens every single week, you know? And so it's just consistent messaging. It really helps with growth. What I love about the reviews play as well is like every company needs them, especially like in the home service business. That's why like I love like this area you're in because I'm thinking for like my own business, Space Star Vatials is like reviews is like a lifeblood of a company. So like strategically being in that area, I think is like so smart because that is like every company, like who doesn't need your reviews?

13:08I think you're hitting on that like a ton right there. Yeah, no, for sure. And it's like, the cool thing is that the further we get down into the business, the more business owners out there are realizing that reviews are important. Like five years ago, a lot of business owners didn't know reviews are important. And now it's slowly getting to more and more business owners like, yes, I need reviews because that means I'm going to rank higher on Google means more people are going to call me, yada, yada. And so as the awareness gets out there, it's exciting. Another question that comes to mind here.

13:34So you guys work just like in your website, it's a lot of home service, like based companies, and you're not working with like, the software companies, or maybe you are, and I'm just missing it, but primarily home service based. Did you always work with that, like ICP when you're doing the generalist stuff? Or are you just like, I know home service based companies need this? I'm asking this question of like, knowing your ICP early on and making that successful. So talk to us about getting that one. Yeah, for sure. No, I really didn't. I mean, I'm here from the coast in Florida and the panhandle really close to the beach.

14:03And so actually, the first like 30 of our customers were all local, and they were all in like the tourism industry. So it's like bike rentals, golf cart rentals, vacation rentals, you know, boogie board rentals, paddleboard rentals. It was like a bunch of just tourism-based businesses. And obviously you had the seasonality with that. Like they wanted to cancel during the winter time because they're not busy. And so I knew that as I started to run ads, I just left broad targeting open. And I just noticed that home service business owners responded really well to it. We had the most amount of calls with home service business owners.

14:35And so over like the last year, honestly, we've transitioned to now I'd say 80 % of our business is home service business owners. And we've just kind of tried to keep the messaging consistent with that just to try and get the most juice out of the attention we have. I could have that consistent messaging. You've talked about that. Has it made a difference in like revenue of like really honing in on like an ICP? I'd love to talk about that as well. Cause like, I really want to hit for the listeners. And right now, like understanding your target market is so critical. Like if you can do it from day one, you're going to be steps ahead of like so many other companies and competitors.

15:08So has it made a difference like for your business? Yeah, for sure. When we really when I like about a year ago, so when I was like, all right, I think home services is the way to go. We hadn't even just our messaging yet. But just like in our head being like, all right, home services is who we deal with. We've over doubled since then. Like really, I think I sat around 13 to$14 ,000 a month for the longest time. It took me a while to get there. And then I just kind of flatlined there, but I was kind of growing slowly before it. And I think it was because I was serving, once again, a lot of different people and things were still good and I was still growing.

15:38But once I said, hey, we really work with home service business owners, what happened was I hopped on over a thousand calls with home service businesses. So when you do that, you learn how they talk, you learn what their problems are, you learn what their pain points are, you learn that they're normally in a truck, you learn that their technicians are supposed to ask for reviews, but they don't. You learn that they incentivize their employees for reviews. And so you learn all the nitty gritty trench knowledge that you just like, you just can't get taught. Like you can't just like copy and paste trench knowledge.

16:04Right. And so now I can use that in all my ads. I can use that in all my copy. Also for the onboarding fulfillment side of things, we learn what softwares they use. And so like, it's so funny when we hop on a call with a roofer and we're like, all right, what do you use for your system? Do you use AccuLynx, Jobber, I mean, JobNimbus, you know, what are you using? And they're like, oh yeah, we use JobNimbus. And then they share their screen to get them set up. And we know how to use the software better than they do. You know, and like, how do you know how to use my own CRM better than me? It's like, because we've done this a thousand times, right?

16:31And so just that sort of trench knowledge just helps smooth everything along and makes a better customer experience with leads to more referrals and more growth. I love the trench knowledge. I've never heard that actually. So I'm writing that down because I like it there. But it does speak to the value of like, essentially having that ICP, but the value of being in front of your customer and actually speaking with prospects or customers is so invaluable. because a lot of times for like space for visuals, I'll sit down with clients and they'll be like, oh, well now we're facing this challenge or this challenge or this challenge.

17:02And like, for me, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, okay, like how can we like serve those? So for again, those listeners, like have the consistent message, you know, your ICP, but also like the value of getting in front of a customer is like so invaluable. And even to what you're speaking there, Clay, as well. Yeah, for sure. I think I don't, I forget what book it is, but it's like no business problem cannot be solved by talking to your customers. If you talk to your customers, you can solve every single problem in your business if you talk to them enough. So you mentioned that you guys were kind of flatlining at that$13 ,000,$14 ,000,$15 ,000 range.

17:34I'd be curious, and I know the listeners are going to be curious here too, what are you guys doing today in revenue? Yeah, for sure. We did just over$35 ,000 last month in recurring revenue, and then we'll probably hit$40 ,000 in recurring revenue this month. It's been a really good month. And we kind of cracked something on ads in the last probably five or six months, and we've really been growing. And then just recently, I messed up something on our Facebook ad tracking. So the ads are not working like they were, but we're still growing from referrals and stuff. So yeah, it's been great. Well, talk to us about that acquisition strategy then because$35 ,000 in reoccurring revenue is like incredible.

18:09That is a very, very legit, healthy business right there. What are some of those levers you guys pulled to get there? Talk to us about client acquisition, how you guys are currently getting clients. Yeah, for sure. So the biggest way that we just like forced client acquisition has been Facebook ads. And so much of like, like we talked about with the consistent messaging, what's so valuable when you work with home service business owners, we're able to get lots of home service business owner testimonials, lots of content around home service businesses. And all of our ads are based around home services.

18:37And Facebook ads is so good nowadays with targeting, we don't even we just leave our targeting broad, Facebook knows from the messaging and the words in our ad copy and in the videos, who to target. And so we go Facebook ad to a landing page where we kind of qualify them, just make sure that they have a certain number of customers. That's been the biggest struggle of Facebook ads. When I was first getting started, it's like you get a lot of people who just like are just getting started in business and as a review company, like these are all real reviews, just so people know, like these are all real reviews from their customers.

19:06There's nothing fake here. And so if you don't have any customers, we can't get you any reviews. And so we basically send them through a little quiz funnel where we qualify how many customers they have. They have a verified Google business profile for the reviews and that they use some sort of software to collect their customer data. And then from there, we book a call, hop on a call and just get them set up on a 10-day trial. And we have lots of things with like, the tricky thing when you're selling to home service business owners is getting them to show up these calls because they're out in the field.

19:32They're in the truck, you know? They're busy, busy, busy. And so we've done a lot of unique things to try and increase that show up rate and make it easier for people to kind of get started with us. What are the unique things that you guys have like done with that then? Because I know from even my own experience of trying to get marketers on calls, it's almost impossible. So are you guys sending like 50 notifications before? Like what are some of these unique things? Yes, it's almost like a rite of passage now. Like we need to get at least one person to tell us we sent them too many messages and it's annoying a month.

20:00So we know we're doing it right, you know? But honestly, the biggest thing is getting people to book quickly. And so our calendar, you can book up to five or six days out. But if somebody books six days, five days out, we're calling them almost immediately and trying to get them to say, hey, we actually just had something open up today. Hey, we had something open tomorrow. That's the biggest factor for show up, right? Making it happen quick. Because when it comes to reviews specifically, and this applies to other industries as well, all of our marketing is supposed to get them really excited about us solving this problem, right?