How EcomVids CEO Jon Reyes grew to $3.3M revenue and 5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is john reyes he came up after hitting rock rock bottom found a way and through this period he wanted to find a way to really take control again and prepare to make an exit by the end of 2021 that exit has to do with direct response e-commerce video ads he's building a company called ecombids.com john you ready to take the top yeah absolutely so what's the company doing what do you mean by you want to make an exit by the end of 2021 okay so i don't have a lot of time but uh just to kind of summarize things uh i've had this company called ecom vids for about three years in march uh primarily we're a video production marketing company we focus specifically on e-commerce video creatives for facebook instagram pinterest snapchat amazon you name it we produced over about like 5 000 plus video ads in the last three years um but i realized the thing for me as a business owner is that i don't like the the business model itself i'm not an agency i don't want to go and create an agency just because client services can get really taxing and so um i kind of had this idea last year to get into the sas sas model um based on kind of like this this industry where there's a huge demand for creatives um and specifically drop shipping which is such a big vast marketplace um and so essentially we are converting our business to become um fully digital uh by creating the biggest online drop shipping e-commerce video library that has ever existed i don't know what that i don't know what that means so let me just kind of uh explain to you so you've probably heard of of companies like shutterstock motion uh videoblocks i know you've uh you've interviewed the ceo there basically what we're doing is we're creating a library um a stock resource place for online marketers drop shippers agencies you name it creating content that is way better than anything out there um as well as providing templates and resources john john sorry let me let me let me like go deep here so we can get specific otherwise we're going to end up spending the whole 15 minutes trying to figure out what you do these are these are video clips that drop shippers can use on their website to sell more con some work uh product exactly so video only or video images text everything everything you name it from a to z um okay and so and so how are is this something that's still sort of in the cloud in your head or do you have paying customers uh we are basically in beta phase right now um we have over 15 000 clips basically uh on our website right now and we are about to launch in about a month and a half okay so and how so the agency is what you've sort of been building before this doing like custom videos you've done 5000 how much revenue did the agency do in 2020 uh in 2020 we did uh shy of 2 million um even with kobe going on we had to shut down for a period of time so it was uh it was kind of rough last year was rough but um we we picked it back up and we're we're yeah we're doing great right now and how many folks are on the team full time um in-house we have about uh 20 people that's usa and then we have about another 10 to 15 um in the philippines and how many are engineers um so we do i have an offshore team um separate of about four mm-hmm okay and do you have any what's your price point you're going to launch this in a month what's your price point going to be yeah so um it's gonna be based off of credits um so it's gonna start at 49 bucks up to 200 a month and so those are all uh basically one dollar equals one credit all the assets on the website are going to be credit based um and you can easily buy more credits if you run out um but it is a recurring subscription yeah well what if they stop using like the i guess if they stop using credits and they're not gonna renew you're gonna have churn i mean this is really a pay-as-you-go model if it's credits correct right but there is a subscription aspect to it okay so if they're not paying a subscription fee to get credits what are they paying a subscription fee for um for monthly i mean essentially you have two options so if like let's say you have 40 uh you buy 50 credits a month um and you use it all up you can buy more uh i call a cart style but then you'll also get renewed you know the next month for that 50 credits again you know i understand that but that's a pay-as-you-go model so so my question is why would people keep paying a monthly subscription fee if they're not using the credits oh if they're not using their credits um that's a good question uh well we'd always incentivize people to be using their credits just for the sake of in the drop shipping model you always want to be testing and there's always new creatives that we're going to be putting out so in the facebook world it's all about you know what a lot of drop shippers don't do is they don't refresh a lot of their ads and they die out and they move on to the next product but the thing that we offer is that there's always new stuff going out so essentially you're incentivized to keep keep using those credits because we're always offering value yeah i mean when i look at your website right now i mean it seems like the skill set is like you guys creating very custom videos for brands like clorox or germex this picture you guys have about halfway down your sales page i mean why would people use templated stock videos to sell their very personal custom products well that's the thing we it's not going to be focused so much on those who are private labeled or branded uh drop shipping is i would say pretty vast in terms of you know everyone's selling the same blackhead remover everyone's selling the same you know back stretcher um and a lot of the times people are stealing videos and so from our experience we've shot the same product over and over and over again and rather than shooting the same product over and over again we're just like let's shoot it once and then give it to everybody so essentially it's a it's a starting point for beginners who don't have access to high-end production like ourselves um who don't want to rely on aliexpress or stealing videos or finding youtube clips to mash up and they get custom content that isn't burnt out so that's kind of where we wanted to position ourselves and and why do you feel like sort of the grass is greener for you on the sas like world i mean 2 million in revenue sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me especially with the team size that's as small as what you guys are i mean that's a good revenue for employee number um well for me um i i don't want to necessarily have such a large team anymore i love it i love my team so much um but in terms of uh value i would say we would have a bigger bang for our buck given a subscription model and scalability wise too because we don't want to continue scaling our team just as our company grows so that's kind of why we take that direction well who are you going to pay to keep creating more of these stock videos don't you have to keep making a much larger library up from 15 000 to you know 50 000 yeah absolutely so we have a network of different video production companies who we vetted um who are essentially our partners that we pay as contractors um and then we also have creators who are part of the program to help produce content so we kind of have this uh network that we built out um just have to pay them they're just not gonna be full-time employees there's gonna be contractors exactly exactly interesting yeah uh okay and and so what's the plan to get the first you know hundred customers paying 49 bucks a month so obviously we have a pretty big email list um and we have how big is the email list um about 20 000 okay and is it responsive like the last of me email how many opened and clicked uh we get about 2500 opens um i would say our open rates will be like anywhere between 15 to 20 percent and how many clicks if 2500 open uh that's a good question um probably around let's say like 100 150 and have you pre-sold the ideas to any of these people i mean have you emailed your list already and collected payments for people not yet that is definitely something i'm working on right now um so in the meantime while it's finishing up we're going to be kind of pre-selling building hype around it but my biggest my biggest goal is to basically just partner up with big sites like oberlo and all these like product uh would say product shipping sites or product research sites as well as influencers and china just become their go-to source for these videos to be made interesting very cool now have you done all this bootstrap to raise capital uh no it's all bootstrap that's great how much of your own money have you put into it uh we put about i would say 25 000 of just like development costs um and labor and who is we uh i would say econ bids yeah but i mean you do you have a co-founder who is we we have i have two other partners yeah we have i see and i do is just split equity 30 30 30. uh roughly it's it's 40 40 20. we had a third partner come in that uh was like later in the game we just focus on operations and why do you feel like i mean this is a hard model right i mean their netflix right in the b2c space for creating content spends you know what it was like a 13 billion a year creating content to keep users hooked i mean you're going to basically try and do the same sort of thing but b2b and not movies but clips of products that you have been doing videos for over and over again i mean for you right now at your stage in life you had a successful agency like why is this the right move for you is considering you only own 30 percent uh you had a successful agency you know a lot of brands you own a big email list why not go launch something that's a pure play tech business that doesn't require so much content [Music] um for me i feel like this this is like the path of least resistance in terms of what we've created as assets uh systems wise processes uh resources and it just feels like because we ourselves are really heavy on the um obviously like uh the post-production side like we we systemized so many things in in-house internally and we realized how valuable it would be to put this stuff out into the world um and uh basically just we we don't want to compete with other video production companies and other agencies we just kind of want to be the leader in a market in a specific sub niche because it hasn't been created before why hasn't anyone created this before does that mean there's no market uh it's hard i mean it takes a lot of legwork and it takes a lot of um i would say just i mean the sheer volume of content that we've produced is just unheard of for how how little we've been in business for um and so we've kind of adapted that and applied that model to something like this um and yeah it it essentially it just requires a lot of systems and processes that a lot of people wouldn't want to get into any plans to raise capital um if if it comes to a point where we want to scale fast um and perhaps like put more dev then yeah but i think right now we're in a good financial position to to fund it ourselves and what's taking so long i mean you have a list you have audience like you already have a content shot why are you not selling right now i should be you're absolutely right um it's it's all my list of things to do uh but go come on john but this is like the most important on your list of things to do like what you have to mow the lawn first no no no um it's basically um just the the right date for me is going to be in february uh that's when i plan on really building this hype up because the launch will be around march so yeah why like why that's like 90 days where your competitors can catch up you have what you need right now why would you not be setting up a landing page trying to pre-sell people on this idea even if the marketplace for the content and using the credits isn't ready yet um so that is the thing the development is almost ready so i'll have something to show for uh the next in the next week or so so i think that's when i'm going to be doing the big push what requires a bunch of technical work here i mean you already have the content created um not i would say not much but it was we had to go through two different web web redesigns because i wasn't happy with the first round so this is the second round and that's kind of what held us back but um i'm really excited about you know how things are panning out in terms of i'm nervous as hell for you because you have the ability to pre-sale and actually test the people will pay and you haven't done it because you're worried about a website redesign it just feels extremely risky to me um i've i've talked to a lot of people um and so you know i mean there's there's really no excuse um i could do it tomorrow if i wanted to but i feel like uh being the ceo of this company i have um i wanted to basically section it out in terms of my time because when i go all in i go all in and right now i'm focusing right now on e-commerce while this is building and then once that's ready i'm going all in on that all right let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book uh think and grow rich number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh i mean no not necessarily number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business i would say um asana give me like a video editing tool you probably see some cool tools what are you using i mean we use we use premiere pro for everything so adobe premiere pro number four how many hours you sleep to get every night about five to six i have two kids so okay and are you married yes married two kids and how old are you john i'm 31 31 last question what's something you wish you when you were 20 um get into spirituality sooner why is that uh because it just makes a lot of sense um if i was able to kind of channel my energy a lot better back then probably would have been able to create a lot sooner than wait a long time to learn valuable lessons guys ecom vids was launched in 2018 as an agency to create videos to sell products dropshippers would essentially pay these folks to create these videos to sell more product to 2 million revenue last year but he wants to build a sas model pay them 49 bucks a month to get 50 000 credits as you use the credits and consume new videos for your sites you'll keep paying that subscription plan he's pre-launched right now we'll see what happens when he launches in a month or two but the plan again is 49 bucks a month they've got a team right now of about 20 people four engineers email us to 20 000 people is how he helps hopes to get his first 100 customers john thanks for taking us to the top of course 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 p.m 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 lacka dot 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 got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys support all right i'll be in the comments see ya