How AIMI Automation CEO Zachary Hedges grew AIMI Automation to $2.8M revenue and 300 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is zach hedges he exhibited a passion pro and affinity for marketing from an early age started his first marketing communications company at the age of 16. by the time he was 25 he leveraged his expertise to build a diverse client list that included many big brands that you know in 2014 transitioned into the sas arena and launched mdc dot an all-in-one crm and marketing automation platform he also earned two patents through that work this led zac in 2018 to develop his most innovative product to date pre-built marketing artificial intelligence the first ever social media marketing technology power that writes your content builds campaigns for you and analyzes the results it's called amysocial.com a i m i social dot com exactly right it takes the top yes appreciate it thanks for having me today is this using gpt3 stuff no actually we launched this company in 2017 uh we created our own uh learning models our own content creation models we launched our first product at the end of 2018 um you know really kind of as a starting point didn't do a lot of marketing didn't try to you know we wanted to bring in some companies learn understand uh what's working and not working we had over about a thousand businesses uh small businesses we worked with on that first version of our platform wait how did you do that how did you get a thousand people on it well we already had as you mentioned in my bio i've been in the software as a service space for over nine years so i already had a core team of outside sales professionals that were already selling other products that we had so when we launched the uh pre-built marketing we transitioned that sales team over and so we used the the val you know the amazing word of mouth right and and social media uh to drive that earlier customer base uh into this new product um and so we you know we leveraged that to bring on those thousand businesses how many sales people was that uh that was about uh started off with a core of 50 grew to about 300 at its highest point were these commission only sales people or they fixed expenses on your on your p l they were actually paid customers who who were also sales folks as well so they were actually people were you paying them like a sales rep because they have a base pay that you were paying no no they were pure commission based so they're affiliates they were peer affiliates referral partners yes we called them around partners um you know now we got it now what did so what did you this is look an affiliate program on day one is really compelling how you structure it is even more interesting how did you structure it what did they earn in terms of percent commission uh they earned it well it was a two-tier affiliate program so we just paid two tiers first tier was around 30 other tier was around 10 percent of commissionable volume uh we also have bonus pools so quarterly bonus sales pools based upon the gross sales of all of all tiers um in there what we did for amy social is we did was uh we put on over 300 people within 72 hours 300 customers within 72 hours using a pre-launch strategy uh for so four months before we launched amy social in january of this year we drove people into a facebook group and we promoted the value of the product and educated them and got them really excited about it what's the name of that group i'm sorry into a facebook group what's the name of the group that's uh well now it's our amy social official facebook group okay got it okay so we use it for all customers anybody that wants to know about the product but prior to launch we use it as a pre-launch group and so we grew that group to over a thousand thousand people who were interested in using the product you know constantly kept you know nurturing them it comes from my my days in the crm marketing automation space lead nurturing dripping on them sharing the value sneak peeks of the app how they're going to use it got them really hyped up to want to use it and then we did is we gave them a pre-launch price for 72 hours before we launched on apple and google we said we're going to open it up and you're going to get this lifetime price we sold it at half price to everybody that wanted to buy it was it it was uh 60 dollars uh we we retail right now for 124 um how do you do this well i mean why do you kill all the the reasonable sass business is that you can have freedom as a human being build a family go on vacation relax but when you sell a lifetime value you now don't have recurring revenue to rely on they pay 60 your biggest fans they pay 60 bucks one time and then if there's not a clear strategy to upsell them to the monthly recurring plan you you know no it's monthly it's 60 a month okay you said pre-launch price for life yeah but it was a monthly price they paid 60 a month for lice got it so this is not a lifetime deal they're paying no i'm sorry maybe i confused yeah i know lifetime lifetime reoccurring like pre-launch price so so we came out the gates with about three 250 people out of that thousand so 25 conversion at that price um and we were already tracking over 20 thousand in in uh you know recurring monthly revenue what were the other eight what were their 750 paying or were they free users they were free because we had a freemium model so they were on the free plan and you know obviously you know the sas game is a fickle business right you never know where somebody is but you know our our at that time our core market was the solopreneurs these individuals one to three man shops you know who have a lot of trouble with social media marketing or content creation in general who are looking for you know something that really took all the heavy lifting and the guesswork out of keeping you know consistency of posts and marketing their business educating their audiences where they don't have to sit there and get into the canvas and figure out what to say i'm a writer am i not a writer i'm a designer what should be my you know how many posts per day what should i say what should i do and so that's what our product does it's artificial intelligence that really creates the complete social media marketing strategies yeah the product exactly the product makes sense to me but but there are hundreds that play in this space some none of them have patents like you do but what really here in my opinion is the differentiator and people that win this space or those that dominate a distribution channel right and so like hearing your distribution strategies is way more valuable to me than under like going deeper on the product because i get the product there's there's a clear need for it what is mrr today um it's it's it's a little over 25 000. okay got it so so you want when you did the amy social launch that was this year you signed up 250 at 60 bucks a month that's 15 000 a month or right out of the gate and you've added about 10 grand more over the past six months uh yeah we actually officially launched february 1st because we launched on apple first in january and then in android and then officially launched february 1st so so we really spent two months out in the marketplace and and you know we're finding a need now for agencies who want to use amy to help take on more clients right they want to customize her so they can automate the content creation for their clients but now we're moving into those models and enterprise models and all kinds of other things as well as you know these things are ever evolving you know what was revenue at the end of 2020 in december 2020 how much did you do uh you know i don't have it on our hands you know we went back into uh you know creation mode we went back into the lab so we weren't we weren't marketing the old product we knew that the the first version of our app in 2020 wasn't what we wanted to scale with so that's why we came back and developed amy social so i really don't have those numbers for it but nothing nothing earth channel what did you in 2017 when you say you launched that was that the early version of amy social just advanced over the last four years yeah so we launched we launched pre-built marketing which was the first version of the app was desktop app only that was at the end of 2018. um and between 2018 and 2019 we did almost 700 000 in revenue in that in that year with those thousand customers yeah they were all paying 127 a month so somewhere in there i don't have the numbers but we realized that we you know you made it you know you make a great point there's a lot of people playing in the space they all do you know little bits and pieces we try to bring it all together under one roof and so we knew that we to do that we need to go back into the lab and that's what we did in all of 2020 literally just you know allowed our a lot of our sales people to sell the original app didn't do any marketing of our own went back in the lab with our team and created amy social and that's what we're going to mass market with that's what we're we're pushing hard out there so how are you adding customers today uh right now it's at this present moment it's through some pr marketing um through our sales team uh through funnels and things like that that we're implementing some some online advertising um last month oh oh well we've had a couple grand i mean we're barely we're starting to like i said we just launched the product in february so we're starting to implement our marketing strategies and really i understand i know i understand i'm trying to understand how you're what you're testing right to get going so when you take a couple grand so like 4k on ads last month where are you testing oh uh facebook linkedin a little bit um some google ads some you know what's that any ideas working best better than the others um you know it depends you know i'm finding that with with facebook even with some advanced targeting it's a little difficult because you know we're finding that we need to be a little more vertical specific you know our app is customized for over 30 verticals but it's hard to pinpoint verticals specifically you know if you're selling a wellness product a shake or something like that it's a little easier on facebook because you can have a broader audience but if you're looking for a house cleaning company a b2b play finding a little difficult we're starting to understand and dive deeper i've always been a part of linkedin i haven't been linkedin connections things like that but diving into more of the ads on linkedin how we can leverage that to be a little more targeted i think we're going to find more value over there but i don't really have any results yet to to share with you as far as that it's still just kind of got it tell me more about your team how many folks total on the team we have five five individuals uh two and myself so it's a three-man we're like a three-headed dragon you know um uh it's really it's really quite quite amazing what we've done with three guys here and the kind of product we put together so and of the twenty five thousand dollars in revenue that you did last month how much of that did you pay back out to affiliate that's commission oh about thirty percent okay god and and how many how many affiliates are earning at least a dollar from you a month would you say um over 62. okay what's the secret to building an effective affiliate program you know a lot of people can sign up affiliates but to get them to actually promote and drive a sale is a whole nother animal it sounds like this is like sort of your special effects here in terms of distribution it's about building community you have to people have to believe in you and your vision of your app right because i've built many software products already and they always start with a vision and then they grow things work don't work you know people you have to have people that believe in where you're going to be so that when you give them the app they have an understanding when they're saying that yeah there's going to be bugs there's going to be issues there's going to be ux issues and ui issues and things that you just didn't account for and they have to have that belief and they have to have that so it's about building community and trust and really articulating your vision and then sharing that it's a lot of communication there's a lot of hand holding you have to communicate you have to do meetings you have to you know present you have to keep driving that community some will fall off some will come in and go you know what i really love the concept the idea of the product but it's not for me right i i don't know how to sell it i'm good at selling this but not necessarily tech just because you sold this doesn't mean you're gonna be good at selling technology right even though you know some business owners you may have some some enterprise people you know it's it's a different art and so so you're going to have to go through that like i like to say you're going to have to kiss a lot of toads to get the princess will you use manager affiliates there's a lot of these tools out there do you use one of them no i actually use my own custom con crm and marketing automation system i built nbc how many customers are you know working with today uh like i said almost 300 customers so okay so 300 paid and they're paying what still are they paying 60 bucks a month on average um on average it's 60 but it's also up we have we have a bunch paying the full price of 127. what's the average across all of them oh um if you average it out it was like yeah okay and how many customers are you adding per month currently um about a hundred and fifty at least users yeah users you know what i mean because we have a free we have a problem how many how many customers um what is it twenty percent okay so you're covering twenty percent of the 150 so that's about 35 new customers per month from 150 leads yeah roughly you know it it's like i said it's only been two months so you know i don't really have a i wouldn't take my uh my numbers and you know what i mean it's two months of business with you know this is an interview about you so that's why i'm getting your story no i know you're learning right so what are you doing when a trial signs up to get 150 a month what are you trying to get them to do because you know if they do that thing they're way more likely to convert the paid at the end so so the first thing we want to do is want to get them through onboarding which we which to be honest we had to go back and re-fix the original onboarding that we had when we launched realized wasn't working was actually bringing conversion down we saw that what is that is everyone talking about onboarding but for you specifically what is it so pretty much it's literally literally we had a five-step process we brought it down to a one-step process literally create your account hit a drop-down menu pick your industry i'm a you know a plumber or this or that remodeling and then boom amy builds a whole strategy before we have them go through add your logo pick your colors you know you know what i mean really customize her and we realized that people were getting stumped they were getting kind of getting paralyzed in the process because i don't know what color i should use what should i what should i tweak and so we did it post-mortem instead show them the content show them the value as quick as possible let them see what the value proposition is and then nurture them through drip campaigns and emails and driving them into our facebook group to then want to go through our help desk article and learn the nuances to then customize her to then deploy the campaigns and so those are a lot of the changes we had made in in march and and and we relaunched our new onboarding in march so a lot of our data like i said a lot of this stuff a lot of our sales are coming from our sales people they're reaching out to people they know they're they're your affiliate they're your affiliates they're your affiliates yeah exactly so they're they're they're qualifying them they're bringing those sales in um but we're really to be honest figuring out that organic game that organic game of bringing folks in you know without the need of a sales person right themselves qualifying themselves and seeing the value and then and then going through that update freemium to upgrade process um so have you raised capital are you bootstrapped we're bootstrapped how much are your own capital i'll be put in personally me per oh well six figures and you know our partners have put way way more than that um it's been over the course of it's been over the course of eight years you know we've been we've been working together on multiple software products so how is that structure there's a holding company all the products underneath yeah we have a holding company structuring yes and so i guess again the reason i asked is because this is part of the founder journey right everyone's exposing their own capital at some point it can be nerve-racking how much person have you put into six figures you're saying 100 grand 200 more yeah i'd like to not discuss that you know what i mean because i don't i just don't want to you know i don't want to discuss you know personal investments on a podcast but i'll tell you that this has not been an easy journey and if anybody thinks that being a sass founder is an easy journey then you know yeah there are those few stories where somebody creates a product and within two years you know has a billion dollar evaluation yes they do happen but if you look at the majority of them and you know because you've interviewed a lot of them they have a lot of failures they have a lot of tough points that better go through a lot to finally figure out either the product the right way of distribute distributing it in the position to finally get there so if any of your viewers are watching this it isn't easy but it's it's fun and you got to have the fortitude uh to keep sometimes to to brush yourself off you know after a bad month and um and keep going keep innovating and keep figuring out what's working and not working so yeah we know it's tough because i i and i think founders all the time when they come on the show and they're very transparent because we've had founders come on who share personally how much they put in right and what their risk looks like and then people realize listening they go you know what got it i'm in the same spot there's hope i can do it even if i put you know whatever six percent of my total life savings into this bad way i gotta make it work so understand you don't wanna get more detail there also understand you have your own personal capital and we're obviously rooting for you on that note let's wrap it through zach with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um the art of war by sun tzu you would call it that way number two their ceo you're following or studying [Music] um you know i i don't study maybe i should be um but uh i don't know maybe elon musk he always he always interests me number three what's your favorite online tool for building amy my favorite online tool for building amy um at lassen which product we're investing in oh i use their their their jira and their and all that stuff number four how many hours of sleep you get every night how about eight okay in which situation married single kids um divorce with kids take care of them half the month so how many kiddos i got two boys 11 and nine i'm 36 36 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 i wish i knew i was 20 yep um to get into software as a service earlier be honest there you have it amy social adding ai to your social marketing both planning strategy and posting needs they've got 25 000 a month in revenue from about 300 customers launching a really killing with an affiliate strategy where 62 affiliates made at least a dollar for any social last month about 30 percent of the 25 grand in revenue went back out to affiliates a great way to obviously grow your team without having fixed expenses for sales people on your balance sheet they're building this with five people three engineers with zach and tell zach thanks for taking us off hey thank you hey if anybody's watching this and this gentleman here promotes one of his webinars you need to jump on them because they were absolutely amazing blew my mind so the nathan webinar is worth every minute appreciate that zach thank you nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 pm central additionally 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