Office Hours - Get Help With Your Whole Digital Ecosystem
Hey Indie Hackers!
We're Marie + Ben, the husband-wife duo at Oki Doki.
We help business owners design their whole digital ecosystems, starting from business design (customer research, business model design, planning and design their offers) as well as the digital ecosystems to support delivery (Design, UX, Development, Marketing Automation).
We are a hybrid products/services creative agency. We run our SaaS for course creators Doki.io, while also offering a range of services that support our clients and customers.
We have a variety of products and services, from our SaaS, to high touch retainers, design implementation, productized services, masterminds, consulting, and more.
Our revenue is really well diversified, and we've found lots of creative ways to build scalable revenue models beyond just our SaaS.
We get to see behind the scenes of tons of product and program launches, so we've seen a lot of what works, and what's just hype.
We wear a lot of different hats for a tiny two-person team, but we wouldn't have it any other way!
Curious about ways to bridge the gap between products and services? Want to brainstorm different revenue models, or new offers that might kickstart other revenue streams? Want to talk about online courses (the good, the bad, the ugly)? Let's chat!
We'll be holding an #office-hours session on Friday 31st of May at midday Pacific Time and we'd love to talk to you.
Share your challenges and we'll pick 6 of you from the comments to email the details on how to attend.
I am currently in the middle of reworking our companies business model. I would love a second brain to think through the impact a new business model could have on our community, process, revenue, sales, marketing, etc. Huge fan of your work, philosophy and overall internet contribution vibes.
Hey! thanks for doing this! excited for it!
a couple quick q's so far:
how did you find customers for your SaaS (outside of converting your pre-exisitng customers from the agency side)?
how long have you been at the SaaS play and what % of your revenues does that play support? vs how much of the business still comes from the agency side?
Great questions!
• Most of our SaaS customers in the beginning were word of mouth through clients, friends, colleagues, friends of friends, people we knew within forums, online communities and Facebook groups, etc. We used it as a tool to help our early clients launch their online courses, so it became a natural consulting tool for us.
• We've been working on our SaaS for ~4 ish years, and the software/MRR itself represents a fairly small overall percentage of our business (maybe 20%?)
Most of our revenue comes from client services (large-scale design + development projects, custom apps), coaching, consulting, online courses, paid masterminds, etc.
Our software has actually been a really great lead generation tool for our higher end services. People book a demo, realize they need much more help, and end up signing on for longer-term engagements. One of our favourite clients came from a designer who heard us on a podcast, signed up for a demo, got the client to book a demo, which led to coaching, which led to design, which led to over 18 months of retainer work!
This was not our original intention, but truthfully, both Ben and I are services people. It's where we excel, it's what we love, and it's what brings in really great revenue for us!
@mariepoulin
Thanks for the upcoming office hours!
I'm currently trying to transition from web-development with 3 people into our own product for developers, and my personal goal is to raise product revenue to sustain my family, and leave client work as a secondary income, maybe even turn it down totally.
Was it ever a plan for you? Go all-in on product? Software generates ~20% of your business, as you said in other comment, is it a strategic split, or is it a consequence that you don't put too much effort into software, focusing on client work more?
Thanks again!
That is such a great question.
Admittedly, it was never the plan to "go all in." Our original goal was to have it generate enough revenue to pay one of our salaries.
I think the ~20% is both a strategic decision not to go all in, AND a consequences of not devoting all of our time to it.
After building our SaaS and being immersed in the software side of things, it solidified for me that my strengths are in working with people + strategy, not in marketing a low-touch product.
Our software is just an entry point to the conversations I'm more interested in having.
It's maybe a bit more of a unique business model (or go against the idea of relentless growth), but it honestly works really well for us, and I think has us both being way more on the pulse of what's happening with real people, and allows us to play to our strengths, and do what we love to do!