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$70k ARR, 2.5 years, now calling it quits? on hold?

Aug of 2017, I quit my full time job to start VisualBonus. It has been the work best decision I have made. I thank God for everything I have learned and for a wonderful supportive wife.

At this time, VisualBonus is made a side project that has accumulated passive income. I'm not shutting it down or selling it, but it appears that the value I can provide agents with my market has capped without serious sponsorship by the large insurance incorporations.

I came from a strictly worker-bee, engineering job. Brainless, making close to no product decisions and doing a task list given to me bi-weekly.

Here is a list of wins and lessons.

WINS

  • Became a better developer
  • Learned to understand product development
  • Learned Personal limitations, strengths and weaknesses
  • Was home with wife and new born child <3
  • Improved marketing and sales
  • Learned the dangers of a unstructured work environment
  • Exercised creativity and tough decision making
  • Made money
  • Learned how to process and perform under pressure from clients
  • Learned, or started to learn how to ask for help and value advice
  • Learned balance of work + home life
  • Improved time management skills
  • Grew in my faith
  • Made the TOUGH migration from web developer to business developer

LESSONS

  1. B2B is difficult if there is no prior sales / marketing experience. I should have tried to sell prior to going full time; though I did learn basics through trial and error

  2. Development stack does not matter in the sale of a product unless buggy or non-performant. I should have started building what I was most experienced with.

  3. For my next product, my MVP should happen in 3 months or less. Anything larger and the complexity of the product most likely will outscale the efforts of a sole founder.

  4. Unstructured work environments (no boss) naturally breeds apathy and laziness. A healthy lifestyle should be the immediate focus before product development. In retrospect, my success, at least in the first month, should have been measured by networking, exercise, sleep schedule, focus strategies, time management, daily planning, etc.

  5. I should have expected bad or pointless seeming days. Some days that you only put out fires, or you got so frustrated I played games for hours. If I focused less on beating myself up and more on getting back to work, I could have saved 100s of hours.

  6. I will block of days for product development. Close email and phone and focus on building. Development for me takes focus and a 2 minutes distraction could cost me 30-40 minutes down time.

  7. Laziness might just be a lack of planning

  8. I will take more time making my pricing plan. Figuring out how much time it takes to onboard a user. I will also charge more than I feel comfortable charging.

  9. Free trials extensions DO NOT increase conversion rate - 14 days is just as good as 30 (but more money!)

  10. I will make sure that I am enjoying a majority of my work; especially because I am alone. Either focus on outsourcing the non-enjoyable tasks or set up accountability / encouragement for season where I must focus on frustrating, boring or repetitive work

  11. I will automate a simple sales funnel as soon as possible. Focus on follow ups and warming leads more and less blasting 1000s of cold emails.

  12. Copywriters are worth their hourly rate if they are good.

  13. I will never again put all my marketing eggs in one basket. If I am selling to one large corporation (like State Farm), I need a connection with the corporation itself. I will never again allow my entire marketing funnel to be closed overnight because I got on a blocked list, ugh.

  14. I learned that paying for cold emailing advice is worth it. $500 early could have saved me hours of trial and error, blocked domains and would have most likely made me more money.

Thank you IHs, you helped me tons! Onto idea #2; which I don't' have yet.

  1. 3

    Thanks for sharing your reflection and learnings @philipimperato! And don't worry, the idea #2 will come to you soon. With all these lessons and your new self-discipline powers, what comes next will be better and better. Keep us updated and good luck! 👍

  2. 2

    Excellent write-up, man! Thanks for sharing! It's really good to hear about the struggles that go on behind the scenes, rather than just the big flashing headline profit numbers.

    "Laziness might just be a lack of planning" - Gold. Great insight.

  3. 2

    enjoyed the read. agree on everything, except point 9. i believe your experience here, i made similar one as well, but on the contrary i have also seen huge swings to onboarding conversion by extending trials to even 90 days. i guess it all depends on the industry you are selling to and the quirks of those industries. if you are selling hugely complex implementation solutions with multiple stakeholders to enterprise b2b's a 30 day trial of whatever may not even get your solution a single day of trial use.

    Idea #2 will come though. Maybe a paid SaaS to figure out trial duration, extension and usage time for other SaaS? ;)

    1. 1

      Yeah, the onboarding process was simple and I was selling to one agent. Context mattered in that for sure.

  4. 1

    Thank you a lot for the write up – did enjoy the read!

    Would you mind sharing where you would spend those $500 in point 14?

    1. 2

      https://dayanamayfield.com/ helped me a ton, though her focus is more on the copywriting side.

      https://sleddog.media/ helped me a ton even though I only had him for a fraction of the time (he's $500 / hr)

  5. 1

    Hey @philipimperato, great writeup. Thanks for sharing.

    I'm wondering if you could explain point 14 better (I learned that paying for cold emailing advice is worth it)

    1. 1

      https://dayanamayfield.com/ helped me a ton, though her focus is more on the copywriting side.

      https://sleddog.media/ helped me a ton even though I only had him for a fraction of the time (he's $500 / hr)

  6. 1

    Hi Philip this is a great write up! It really hits home to me, because I always get stuck around the 5k MRR benchmark. I don't know what it is, but it just seems so damn hard to push past this spot. Seems like you are getting stuck in this same spot too.

    I'm trying to conquer this by starting multiple businesses. Currently I have 2 businesses stuck at 5k MRR. Trying to spin up a 3rd. I figure it's just easier to start something new, than force growth that seems impossible.

    1. 1

      That's fascinating! I wonder what the deal is... my friend told me it's easier to go to $1k - $10k than $0 - $1k... and he has a million dollar company. Maybe that is the benchmark where we need more than just a solo founder? If I get stuck at $5k again, I'll revisit this idea.

      1. 1

        Well I agree with him to an extent. $0-$100 is the hardest thing to do in the SaaS world. Once you hit $100 I find it pretty easy to get up to $5k, and then get stuck.

  7. 1

    Have you thought about hiring a VA to help you with customer support and other tasks? Looks like you could use some help :-)

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