How AutomationLinks CEO Brad Smith grew to $630.1K revenue and 101 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is brad smith he started a company called automation links after being in an auto accident that forced him to stop his local fitness business after receiving requests about how he's able to receive so many new customers from his website he started helping other local businesses with their websites systems software and follow-up brad focuses on a relationship-first approach when it comes to his clients online systems brad you ready to take us to the top i'm ready let's do it and you've buttered me up pre-interview because you grabbed your book in the book you held up have you have you started reading it yet or no well i bought it this morning yeah just in case you asked i love that man you're that's smart i always do before you get on interview right that's smart where'd you take you on take you on instagram also i love it dude thanks for that we're out of curiosity where'd you grab it well barnes and nobles but it's like ten dollars more there yeah it's it'll be worth it i guess book publishing man it's so interesting it's like probably put 27 bucks in barnes noble but you know amazon will put it out at 18 or 19 i think so it's funny how the world works today i'm gonna get my money back you will you will no we are getting just incredible feedback on the book so far uh you should start on page 243 check that out after we're done here let's talk about you though enough about me automation links uh we talked about the company does i mean is this a lot like is is this a professionalized service or is it no it really is codified like zapier or these kind of tools it's a service so we basically turn people's websites into sales funnels so it's pure service based um almost like getting a new website okay so here's why i like this every great sas company starts off usually as a service business uh they they you know click funnels start off as a service service business a lot of these folks did so when did you launch the company so two years ago okay january 2017. and and i mean getting that story a little bit it sounds like you went through a pretty brutal auto accident and you really this kind of forced your hand exactly and actually i was only part-time uh for all of 17. so last year we basically been full time for a year and a couple months okay got it so launched about a year and a half two years ago um really can yeah full-time uh walk me through uh today the team size how many folks you guys have so we have four um and then three freelancers okay so four full-time three freelancers now are you the sole founder um my wife too so she's business director here oh i love that that's good all right so yeah that makes a lot of sense and then what have you guys scaled to in terms of maybe total revenue last year so uh last year i think we were at 140 okay thousand yeah 140k and how do how do you manage are you breaking even oh yeah yeah we're everything we do is um i hardly spend any money on anything so very conservative with that well i mean brad break that down for me i mean these are like the early days in the trenches right 140 000 but you have four full-time people i mean that that doesn't i mean that doesn't pay salaries down there in florida how are you how are you getting by so i've got they started as interns and just this year we really got the four full time so it was basically my wife and i last year doing all the work not spending any money on ads just doing all the one-on-one work so just this year we started hiring name some things you and your wife have done personally to keep your expenses really low so you could focus on and keep reinvesting in the business yeah so um cutting family costs right to really grow this but then also doing all the relationship stuff like i talk about we make our own videos uh we do all the marketing ourselves you know we're out there networking with people so um that's how we are able to keep it really low okay when you said cut some family expenses what do you give an example yeah so no vacations right um just cutting back on everything we can with the family any kiddos yeah we have two two step kids i have two step kids okay so just cutting back on my daughters they're not all not old enough to work yet i have my 14 year old working i love that that's great yeah that's all my videos i love it that's amazing all right okay good so so you're scaling it you're two years in how much revenue do you think you'll do this year um i think we're going to be right over 200 000. okay so so not a ton of growth but you know add another 60 grand to that um what's driving the growth is it really just you know you selling more customers exactly yep so we were at a couple customers a month every month last year right so now we're about 10 to 14 new customers every month this year okay are you are are these are you sending them up on retainer or they're all one-time projects no they they pay up front and then they pay monthly actives okay so um when people pay give me like an average contract what might someone pay up front if i said hey brad i want you to pay to do my redo my sales funnel on my website yeah so my average right now is two thousand dollars and then uh 200 a month is another average okay 200 per month okay so let's go past the initial setup let's say brad's done you did a great job you set up my site you edited it what am i then paying 200 bucks a month for so you're basically having us manage it split test it uh do some blogs and seo updates okay and are these um i mean are they stacking nicely in other words if you get 15 this month and you do all the 2000 stuff for each of them i mean four five six months from now are they all still paying 200 bucks a month definitely okay so how many people today paying 200 bucks a month i've got 100 customers 101 today see we count every single one so that's good all right 101 customers today um 200 a month is average what 200 a month yeah yeah 200 yeah i was going to say you've listened to the show because you're you're jumping in my questions before i ask them which i love i should just be quiet and let you do it that would be great um that's good so 100 people right 100 people paying 200 bucks a month obviously 20 grand a month there but that's about 240 grand a year right so that's obviously you just how many you must added like what 10 20 customers fairly recently yep yeah 14 last month so we're like i said we're growing pretty badly there's a there's a lot of people listening that they're like oh nathan we love it when you have lassian on and see event and these like billion dollar brands on but they really like it more when i have people like you on because you're actionable versus they're like they're like aspirational right but you're going to be more practical for them so how are literally name what you're doing or break down what you're doing on a daily basis to land these new customers where are you finding them i do a video every single day and i'm going to touch on that because actually a couple years ago when i've heard you're supposed to do videos and content marketing right so i started doing a video it took me six months to talk myself into making my first video i was so nervous but that's what i do that's where i get all my customers it's just from making marketing videos every day and i mean how do you come up with inspiration what to put in the video yeah so obviously out of my hundred customers i'm getting a new question or a new ticket support ticket on a daily basis right i take those and then i repurpose them into answering that question okay and and you're getting these questions via where like email or forum or what yep so facebook messenger we do our customer support and also email okay um answering customer questions and like give me up give me the title of the last video um let's see here well it's been a lot of marketing on my relationship marketing that i've been talking about but let's just say um my last video was about um something about blogs right so i just went in and answered a question about how long the blog should be and um how they should write it and come up with the ideas okay so you create the content where do you post the video youtube i've got uh youtube podcast uh facebook facebook group i have a great facebook group over 3000 members in there oh wow what's it called instagram uh trusted business owners trusted business okay interesting and how did you build that um actually i to be honest i got the idea from you how you interview people yeah so last year i started interviewing i did an interview series and uh inside the group and then i was adding people for that and basically about 70 of those people i interviewed ended up signing up with websites at some point interesting yeah i see our trusted business uh owner facebook group um yeah about 3 000 people in it this is great and you're supposed to again tons i see i see what you're doing here got it yeah putting all the videos and things in here um interesting okay now how will that but so how will this get a new customer though how will someone you talked about how this obviously caters to your current base but how will somebody new see this so instagram also in youtube and also on the facebook um page yeah what do you mean so you put it up on facebook and everyone everyone who's currently already a fan who already knows you obviously sees it but how does this how does it bring in new leads like what does what does the actual transition from brad i saw your video to brad let me pay you 2000 bucks to do my website what does that actual outreach sound like um it's actually funny because i'd say the majority comes through a facebook messenger hey i've been watching your videos um you know the last couple months and i agree with what you're saying um and i'm i think i'm ready to make the switch so i'll schedule a call with them got it okay very good now um i assuming you're bootstrapping this right oh yeah okay so bootstrapped um you said you are profitable you set up four folks the three remote folks are you are they in florida or you used a website to find them website to find them okay which one fiber okay and break it down for us man is it working for you or not some people say fiverr is too cheap i'm gonna use something else like upwork or top towel what do you think about fiber yeah it's funny because i've probably gone through three in each division so designer mockup you know everyone for the website stuff and uh i landed on three that are working on a consistent basis now so they're all basically my third or fourth person that i've tried um so i've tried them all and none of them did good work and then the fourth third or fourth try they're doing a good job got it okay so you just basically you just burn and churn when you find one you like you just stick with them do you move them off of fiber or you just keep paying them through fiber i tried moving them off yeah i should say i know it's like a contra a little bit of a controversial topic but i know plenty of people that do this they kind of use fiber to find the talent and then once you're paying them like more and more money it makes sense to move them off the platform yeah i don't ask but if they i gotta give them uh get their email somehow to get them connected with everything so yeah and then talk to me about insurance you got 100 paying customers today right of the 100 today will they all stay next month or what do you turn them per month so my annual turn i think is around six percent okay so i i have one cancel every other month okay so if you sign up uh what you're saying is of the hundred you have today a year from now you'll still have about 98. yep yeah okay pretty good now are you driving expansion revenue on the 200 per month or is there are there any upsells or no yeah i've got an upsell um 600 a month for my coaching one-on-one coaching okay now but is that sticky i mean do you have anyone that's upgraded to that has been with you for more than a year on that yeah i've got a couple okay yeah okay can you i just recently started promoting it i see okay um so it's not not meaningful expansion revenue yet today okay and then what about acquiring these customers i mean are you doing any direct paid spend to get them or it's all kind of the facebook group the interviews the youtube videos zero zero okay okay that's not that's great i'm gonna start getting into it soon um i got a couple of things i'm putting together but i don't need it right now i get a lot of word of mouth referrals also yeah i mean look if your churn really is that low right six percent that means the average customer is going to stay with you for 200 months right at 100 bucks a pop uh i mean you can calculate lifetime value on that i mean it makes total sense for you to be putting paid spend on this if those economics truly do hold i want to get i'm getting my team perfected now that's something i've never had experience with um and i'd say i'm 90 there yeah and once that's in place and i can handle handle more than i'm definitely going to do it so let me let me roll up with you for a second if i said brad okay agency stuff is done margins are too low you have to you have to cut all that right now and start building a software product that you think your 100 customers would all pay for what software product would you build oh man i'm not telling everyone okay you're already thinking about that i'm kidding yeah so basically click funnels but more towards the website okay i don't understand that when i think click funnels i think website funnels yeah so they're not it's really hard to make a full uh website out of that so you have small businesses that still need that local website right the local content page and all that so what we do is we take that website and we turn it into a sales funnel while still keeping the website look or feel uh for a business got it you're saying click funnels is just the funnel you want to be like click websites the whole website exactly cool everyone go by the domain real quick and then go sell to brad in a month when he really wants it just kidding brad all right man good stuff let's let's uh let's wrap up with the famous five here number one what's your favorite business book uh sell or be sold grant cardone number two is there a ceo you're following or studying yeah taki more he's actually a coach what's his website a million dollar coach million dollar coach okay number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business i got two uh sam cart which accepts all our payments and then hubspot yep both good number four how many hours of sleep you get every night eight and mer you actually see you said you're married with two kiddos right yep and uh how old are you i'm 32. 32. when you think about that i don't know what that's good that means you i mean the age is just a number right that's right uh last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew brad um continue with the relationships when i was in my 20s i thought it was all just come naturally you get online you can just start selling things and put up a fake picture and i stopped building relationships for a little bit and now that i'm back into it it's taking off guys keep building relationships we've got automation links with brad did 140 000 last year hoping to break that 200 000 mark this year he's getting that from 100 customers paying about 200 per month so 20 grand a month there founded the company again in 2017 again helping companies right build automation systems for their business especially kind of local businesses that don't typically have these resources brad thank you for taking us to the top thanks appreciate it