How AskMyAdvisor® CEO Savere Ouellette grew AskMyAdvisor® to $126.5K revenue with a 1 person team in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is brian ollette he's helping you add red hot referrals from your top clients quickly with this company ask my advisor dot co brian you're ready to take to the top yeah yeah good to uh get i'm glad you're here man so hey is this a saps tool or an agency it's a sas tool it's it's actually um yeah it's my first delve into this so i've been uh i've learned a whole lot since september rolled this out september 12th started building this thing out about six seven days a week working with uh you know my i got an awesome programmer in india so i've learned about the 13 well 12 and a half before daylight savings time but 13 hour time difference which is uh i didn't know they were on the half hour in india so that's been interesting to deal with but uh yeah i've been working on this straight since uh september 12th that's great so it's launched september 2020 and what are you selling so what this so what this is just maybe give a quick snapshot of my background kind of how i got here give like a 60-second background so my background originally through college out of college was financial advisor so i did in college i worked moved out of moved to chicago after graduation worked on the chicago board of trade which has now been rolled up since then but i got my license out there began building my business wanted to spend away i'd always grown up in seattle [Music] spent some time away got back to saddle paint weber brought me on i worked there and was a financial advisor for a decade uh in that time i uh you know we had the crash in 2000 so i ended up selling my book in 2004. kind of lost my taste for the business a little bit in 2000 probably three-ish and i'd been kind of watching the internet going on and uh so i want to do something online so i started a company in 2004 left the business completely completely did a different industry started a sports apparel company that's still run this day and that's an angel and private equity fund invested company that's been run it since 2004. um 2010 i had a sports agent buddy of mine who's developed a database of sports agents and i was like well that's interesting i never thought about tapping in that market when i was a financial advisor we're up here in seattle and you know we had that first wave of microsoft retiree so that was really the focus for financial advisors was i learned more mostly most these athletes you know sports illustrated report about 60 of these athletes conservatively we're going broke in retirement and i had no idea the number was so high so we began i spent about three weeks at that point in 2010 researching the industry and realized you know what this is a great opportunity i'll partner up sports agent he's got the database i'll sell the financial advisor so i launched pro athlete direct well as i've been doing that the last 10 years and developing working with a lot of retired athletes turned financial advisor a lot of olympians gold medalists all this stuff and then baron's top 100 advisors a real elite group of financial advisors i'm looking the sports agents are a great center of influence but you've still got to develop the relationship and not only that there's only about 2500 of them who actually have clients right even though there's 10 15 000 say they're sports agents give us don't bury the lead what do you work so so tell us what you're selling now so what happened so i began to realize that your best set of influence is not these sport days though they're great it's your top 10 to 15 clients and your top 10 to 15 clients already have a reach of thousands of people what happens is financial advisor you're not typically going after those clients like like you can't so what ask my advisor does it's a q a platform so q a is the best way to quickly identify what a problem is and then the advisor can provide a solution surrounding deal with all this back and forth you immediately identify what a problem is and you can provide a solution so are you a marketplace you're taking a cut in the middle when you connect them no so this is completely separate so the with the sas part of this the app itself that we've created it creates within less than 15 minutes a landing page a q a landing page for the advisor to share with their top 10 to 25 clients nobody else okay once they have that they're invited to share with people in their life that have questions and this is where the connection makes so with these financial advisors and not just our clients are accountants attorneys financial advisors realtors this is a place to make a connection so the key thing with developing any client base you have to have a connection in a relationships begin all different ways but at some point there's a connection we are a connecting company got it and so what are these what do these folks pay you to launch these landing pages okay so we're we're just rolling out now so i've got people just beta test this right now we're brand new how many beta testing we're young we're young we've got about seven people beta testing those and how did you find those beta testers those are always hard folks to find yeah there i've got you know i've been doing this for 10 years so i've got you know existing financial advisors that were you know been clients of mine already i had a high renewal rate with pro out the direct so those are using i got close you know confidants of my friends of mine that are using it and then some people in the real estate uh two people in the real estate business using it and i'm only targeting those ford you know accountants attorneys financial advisors uh realtors with this and when do you kind of launch when you plan to launch pricing so we've got pricing already built in and now what i'm talking to is my strategic partners so my strategic partners are going to be i've got i've had a good good luck over the last few decades of getting earned media hold on i don't want you away from pricing i don't move with pricing so you already have pricing up so what what is the pricing today so price so we've got it's an annual access fee which is 14.97 for the year and then the annual other the monthly fee is 147 a month okay and what we're doing are they paying are any better testers paying it beta testers are simply we're we're testing the crap out of this app making sure it's i mean it's it's second grade easy it's designed to be second grade but worked you know these things like i said this is my first bill so you've put pricing on this market but no one has paid yet but you're ready to accept paid customers yes i see okay so you've got the seven folks from your back and around your network now big question i have for you is it sounds like you're sitting on a rocket ship with this apparel company that's pe-backed why are you now launching a side project where that's my advisor this is not a side project at all this actually is my main is my main project here's the problem with an apparel company you've got you've got to make a hard good right so everything i'm making is in shenzhen china there's cost involved with that there's shipping there's all these expenses right i moved to coaching which coaching's great you build a coaching platform you bring people in but it's not as good as this is what this is i want to have by june 15th i want to have 10 000 members of this i want 2 500 accounts 2 500 attorneys 2 500 financial advisor 2500 realtors and the idea is once we build this in once you bring strategic partners in once we bring get the story out the idea is we build this the membership up of these elite advisors and bring them all together now really the key thing the software itself creates the landing page right so 15 minutes you can have a landing page ready to share with your top 10 to 25 clients the pareto principle is true you know your top 10 25 clients account for most your revenues with these advisors and now they're able to share with people their lives have questions the beautiful thing about covid it's brought up all these questions people have right so now you got a specific place to go and q a with the advisor and create those connections every member gets shoved into a network we built the network with this software and the beautiful thing about this original what was going to be was a facebook group right so i'd roll everybody into a facebook group and i'd run my coaching through there and conversations give them the talk there's problems with facebook as you know there's a certain thing i wanted control of everything and i've got these you know over the last 10 years i've worked with the the most elite advisors in the country and i'm like you know what forget facebook we built the facebook group from the ground up so literally why are more using it then i mean what you you've been doing this for decades you only have seven beta users and no one paying yet why is it anywhere now i've been doing this for decades the software i just built in september you know but you were in the network of decades that should be as i mean you only have see only gotten seven people from your network you've built over decades to start using your new software tool i mean why is that more now that's a good question so what's what's happened is i've gotten so into the development side of this like i said since september you know it's simple by design yeah well you know this stuff you know space better how much have you spent on developing so far it's it's six figures i mean it's a significant investment and it's a four-figure investment every single week on this thing developing that's been going since september 12th and it's solely it's a significant investment does it make you nervous that you're putting all this capital in before you've got proof from a you know customer saying i'm willing to pay for it well the good thing is it's not like i came into this it's like this is a good idea i've been doing this for 10 years and then another 10 years as financial advisor so i know exactly i come from the space and then from the other side of the table i've been working with these people in the space this is a need that needs to be needed to be filled so it's not this is not an improvement on something this is really is a brand new opportunity that here's the deal your top clients have always been your best referrals right i get the product like i know i keep sharing the product i totally am on board the product i get it yeah but there's a lot of great products that fail because they get no customers because they have no distribution it's like i'm just why haven't you converted anyone to paid yet you're saying all this great stuff why is nobody paying yet yeah i haven't rolled it out to pay uh i mean that's the whole that's my that's my issue that and that's one of the reasons and you've been you've had some uh last couple webinars have been really good because i've gone so into the set the development side now i got to sell this thing i mean that's really what this is that's a part of why i'm on this call right now i'm just nervous for you like i don't care how rich you are i don't care if 300 grand into an mvp is expensive to you or cheap to you i just hate spending money before you've got pre-sales and this strikes me as this thing where i'm like dude stop spending on development like how do you convert one of these seven-page users and tell correct a credit card for 147 bucks a month and get them paid and tell me how it to them tomorrow yeah no that's great and that's right where we're at right now i mean the the development side's taken you know it's taking longer than i expected and uh now it's time to sell this thing when do you think you'll have your first customer uh you know it's like now like right now i mean literally it's more on my end so now like i talk about strategic partners right so now it's it's getting the story out and now it's just so it's the earned media is big it's something i've just i've had you know i have i've got a background in media back when i was a financial advisor and then i've got i've just gotten our media over the years quite well so the idea is that's a great one i love third party endorsements getting out there and getting the story out there the other one is key people that are working with these existing advisors now can you name them be specific well you know all the all the major financial publications are the ones i'm comfortable with so those are the ones i've either talked about me before or i've got relationships with already so that's who we're talking to financial advisor magazine did a piece in october and then i'm talking about those media sources and then i'm talking to a lot of the associations and a lot of people uh directly tied to my ideal customer i'm also in my third round of compliance with a major uh am i going to say who it is and because i know you're going to ask me uh it's one of the top investment firms that we're rolling through compliance right now and the beautiful thing i know how compliance works uh it's tough right it's the it's the place great marketing ideas go to die on contact right this is built simple this whole app i built knowing the compliance issue so getting a partner like that that's got over 10 000 financial advisors well that would be a good customer too and that model that system i take to them now i can start plugging in with all the accounting firms attorney firms financial advisor firms and uh real real estate we're running out of time here let me just understand the team is it just two of you guys right now you and the developer is all me and i got my developer in uh in india i see interesting okay and and and okay when will you bring like what will you ever hire someone full-time or do you think you'll build a fully remote dev team you know mostly contractors this so this is the beautiful thing you know you do something for you know 20 years and you kind of see i've created this to how i i can manage a lot of the pieces of this once we get hundreds and thousands of members and you bring people in to manage that but this is designed to run itself so like i talked about the network the ultimate value here is the think tank i create within the network which is that facebook group on steroids we've created i can have ambassadors from each of those accounts attorneys financial advisors realtors that help manage that news feed and help manage that content so i'm able to bring people in to run things and it's you know it's a greater skill you know they'll be the need to bring people in but uh right now this is designed to be simple it's really designed to be simple if they're simple and no one's using it it doesn't really matter if they're simple and you know it's making 100 million bucks a year then it's very interesting so we'll see what happens in the meantime brian let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book it's bigger i go back to think and grow rich number two is their ceo you're following or studying well i was just looking at you know i'm sitting down here and uh looking at jeff bezos's house today so jeff bezos it's fascinating to me number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business uh ask my advisor besides your own i'm using karcher right now for for everything so karcher probably right now carter kartra what is that clickfunnels competitor archer is the mic feels same uh or he's a founder he's not with them anymore but it's like a joby and uh click funnels number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night i'm a good uh five five and a half hour sleep that's good and what's your situation married single kids uh married three killer kids really got a dog and a dog busy guy all right how old are you busy busy dude what's that how are you a fresh 49 49 all right last question baby what's something you wishing you when you were 20 i wish i knew when i was 20. oh wow that's a fascinating question man that's a long list uh first thing would be um oh man that's uh a better plan you know better uh better plan better system in place of my my one month one year five years out guys ask my advisor dot co helping sell landing page creation software to open up q a dialogue and for specific sectors that he's been in really for a long time attorneys accountants these kinds of folks he's pre-revenue right now spending caught six figures to build up the mvp but a lot of confidence to use strategic partnerships to get those first paying customers coming in at 147 bucks a month brian we're rooting for you man thanks for taking the stop awesome thanks nathan have a good one man 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 remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else i don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack community for b2b sas founders you want to get in there we've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing you can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying sign up for that at nathan laca.com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode if you enjoyed it click the thumbs up we get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive i am on these shows but i do it so that we can all learn we have to counter those people we gotta push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya