Alphatrust revenue, CEO Bill Brice, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2022.

this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per talk 5 and6 million he is help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit sold Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka many of you who have met in person have seen my unbelievable dashboards that I built you know I'm an anal analytics like crazy person I love the data and I love presenting the data in beautiful dashboards that my team can use on their mobile devices their phones and TVs throughout the office now the way I do this without having to hire a big development team is at Nathan ler.com analytics it's using a company called clipfolio and I'll tell you more later on in the show how I use them it's naa.com analytics this is episode 640 and up tomorrow morning you'll learn from James Sweeney he has 25 billion that's with a B in medical technology exits guys he may be the best in the world in the Medtech space he himself has raised over $2 billion across those companies and he's now sitting on a new photo therapy billion dooll bet you'll want to hear what it is tune in tomorrow good morning everybody Nathan ly here my guest this morning is Bill Bryce he's currently the Chief Executive Officer of alpat trust Corporation which he launched in 1998 to capitalized on the sustained long-term shift from paper-based document businesses to fully electronic document processes a noted entrepreneur bill is considered one of the industry pioneers and is leading and is a leading Authority on electronic signatures especially around generating real economic impact and brand enh enhancement he served as chairman of the board for the signat electronic signature and Records Association is currently a member of the board of directors now bill is not a one hit wonder before this company in electronic signatures he started his entrepreneural career when in college by co-founding Bryce foods and as chairman and CEO he grew the company into a global Enterprise best known for its chain of I Can't Believe It's Yogurt frozen yogurt stores the company grew to 1500 franchise locations in 43 countries with manufacturing operations on four different continents for his work he was awarded the entrepreneur of the Year award from the international franchise Association which is the world's oldest and largest organization representing franchises worldwide Bill Bryce are you ready to take us to the top yes let's go that's who who who in who when they graduate college is thinking about yogurt well let me tell you actually we're based in Dallas and that's where I started that company as well and uh back in this was back in 19070 7778 and you know I guarantee you there were no Texans interested in frozen yogurt uh no it's a product that actually got started out in California back around that time and we were the first company to bring it to Texas and we started the franchise here and it started out as a bunch of comp stores around Texas and we built it up and learned what we were doing and after about 5 years we turned it into a franchise and went from there now Bill what do you mean by that you said it was started in California and you brought it as a franchise to DST were you the actual owner of the concept or did you just buy access to to the franchise no the the product frozen yogurt was was kind of first invented and popularized in California in the mid to late 70s uh but we we found it out there and in terms of the product people were selling it at Mom and Pop stores and things like that uh we thought it would be a good Market here so we were kind of pioneers in the market here in in Texas um so we just operated our own chain which we created we owned it um and and then we turned it into a franchise and began to franchise it and you did that very successfully 1500 franchises across 43 countries if I wanted to come and and franchise one of these Concepts what would I pay you both upfront and and an ongoing basis well I getting back then so we're talking about you know 19 late 80s early 90s kind of dollars but uh back then they probably to build one of those Source would have been about $150,000 of which there would be a $220,000 franchise fee PID you know that the company would receive and they also the company also collected about about six five six% royalties B A Lot some of juice are advertising yep and those are that's on Top Line right that's gross not net yeah y exactly y so what I want to uh I want because we didn't do this in the intro I want to get to kind of how you WRA that company up and then got into electronic signatures at at its Peak uh the Yogurt Company what was it doing in terms of annual revenue and then how did you exit that business uh that company uh the systemwide revenues in that company probably got up to about $1 1560 million um but we uh uh back in the in the early the mid we sold the company 1996 and it was sold because someone was coming along and buying up uh and consolidating frozen dessert franchise operations and they they made us a good offer and and sold and went on down the road Bill what what is a you don't have to say the specific offer but how is a franchise operation like yours how was it valued uh it's it's actually sold pretty much like most businesses at least back in the day you know used to be companies were were sold based upon you know multiples of earnings or cash flow it's a it's it's a little different for you know getting used to these days when companies are sold on multiple of sales yeah interesting so I know isn't that crazy so yours was yours was cash flow something a cash flow multiple oh yeah okay got it and what was a good what was considered a good multiple back back in those days you know I don't know I was I was born in ' 89 so you got to educate me here sure um well probably uh in things are sold on multiples of EIT do typically and so you know probably um somewhere between six to 10 times was the was depending on your growth rates and things like that would would be kind of where you would see on a multiple of EV interesting okay so you go okay I'm done with this being valued bottom line I'm now going to go into electronic signatures where I get Topline value based only on growth and I can still lose a lot of money every month but be a billion- dollar company right well some people can tell tell us about alpat trust why' you launch it well I mean frankly we we uh we did a lot of software back in the yogurt business because we were doing manufacturing and and managing a lot of inventory and a lot of stuff and so we did um all lots of fun stuff around Justus in time inventory and and you know real time processing of manufacturing operations and it's all kind of boring stuff but it was kind of fun to optimize it and make it make it make it sing uh so we got out of that business and and get to look around that was of course we're talking now 1997 1998. stop is bubbling internet's bubbling um people are all looking around how are they going to make a bunch of money um but but I was always kind of annoyed by uh the tremendous amount of pain that paperwork was in a business operation we had farling operations and people still sending stuff I mean I get email people were sending stuff around in inter office envelopes and and you know everyone had to sign off manually on paper and it just seemed like it was a real pain so seemed like a pretty good idea to maybe tackle we automate that because you know uh computer business has been about automating processes since the 1960s more or less at least in the business world so why not tackle that one so we've been tackling that one for almost the last 20 years and did you keep kind of your Tech team that was building all the Jus in Time Manufacturing stuff from the yogurt company or did you go out and Recruit new developers no completely different completely new team okay and what did you did you just fund this with your own Capital to start yes that's the nice thing about the way we did it and I still like that we did it this way we were completely privately owned and and uh and privately funded and been profitable for a long time and still day still do St oh great so uh you know we're we're happy about that and and uh uh it also enables us just to just to you know focus on what we do and not have to meet a bunch of external expectations yeah and so give us a sense of well what's the business model first off so so actually let's even go simpler if if someone listening right now wants to buy your product what exactly are they buying sure well we're in kind of a specialized segment of the market if you think of most people think of us as an electronic signature company so and if you think about that people have probably heard of companies like like DocuSign or or Adobe has a an online product called Adobe sign um and then people may have used it for like applying for a mortgage or or uh you know people send them stuff now you know in an email click on a link and a document pops open you can click and sign it or Draw it on your phone or something so that those kind of services have been around for or 10 years or so and we think of those as being retail so uh you know you...