How Modio LLC CEO Adrian Thompson grew to $156.9K revenue and 400 customers in 2023.

hey folks my guest today is adrian thompson a self-described humble introvert as humble introverted nerd again his words not mine background and motion graphics animation worked from freelancer to studio founder and now has developed a storyboarding application to make pre-production easier experimenting with new ways to make money and build a life that he enjoys at the plot dot io adrian you're ready to take to the top absolutely all right so um tell us what the company does and sort of who's using this is it b2b or b2c or something else um surprisingly a wide variety of people using it in ways that i would have never thought the reason i built it is because i actually own a motion graphics studio and in the early days i knew we had to storyboard and there just there wasn't a tool that existed so we were using apple pages templates and then eventually moving to google docs just because there was some crude form of collaboration there and it was just so tedious to make changes to that and i was always studying entrepreneurship and i just kind of wanted to try something um i never thought it would be a storyboarding tool but actually the funny thing was i had that idea and i actually saw a competitor launch um and it gave me the inspiration it kind of you know validated that idea and i thought well if this if this then and ironically enough they were also a motion graphics studio so i thought well if they're solving the same problem that they have then my idea is actually valid and i went ahead and started mine at the same time so i use that um you know as a way to encourage me rather than discourage me so that's kind of the uh well i forgot the first question you asked i feel like i went on a tangent there no no you nailed it this is a tough problem i mean we just had an event and so the the video designer sent over the five minute reel and the the best option i have to add notes is to play the video open apple notes and then say at second 37 change the line here do to do versus what you guys do or people are familiar with frame dot i o as well since there's no space it makes it so much easier it looks like exactly so frame io solved that problem for reviewing finished videos but there wasn't really an application to solve it for the storyboarding part which so my in my background i used to be a freelance animator and i got so upset um being spun in circles by people that could afford to waste my time essentially so i actually never got to benefit from storyboards because every agency that i work for would just skip the process altogether because they could afford to have me make the thing three or four times rather than having it done right the first time so that's honestly what i got so frustrated with freelancing that i studied how to start a business and and founded my studio out of that essentially i love anxiety yeah all right so so let's reverse engineer let's talk about where the plot is today and reverse engineer the full story so what are customers paying on average per month today to use the tool um we just increased prices this last month it's been something i've been working on so so obviously um this is a side project of mine and i think there's a lot to talk about here i think i have a lot to learn from you which is i was excited to get your email because um like this software is a side hustle of mine this is not something i've been able to focus on full time and um so it it honestly hasn't gotten the love it deserves but so it for a long time it's been ten dollars only um ten dollars a month for unlimited access like we didn't have tiered pricing like like i should have a long time ago i realized you know i'm leaving money on the table by not doing that um finally was able to get that launched just this last month so now we have three tiers ten dollars for a solo plan 15 for a team plan with five collaborators per project and then a business plan for unlimited collaborators at 20 a month that's great and so how many paying customers today only about four hundred ish four hundred and only about it's a side project that's been yeah yeah i mean well i was just taking a look at the other people interviewed you got some impressive candidates here i feel like i'm gonna be you know hopefully the relatable guy in the box you want to know a secret between just between us us friends here no one else you know you can have someone on doing 100 million bucks in revenue or publicly traded sas founder and that might be inspirational but it gets way less listens because it's not actionable 90 of my audience is you so so it's going to be very valuable so they're still trying to get their first 10 20 30 customers so 400 customers paying 10 bucks a month you're doing about 4 000 bucks a month in monthly recurring revenue right yeah yeah oh what's going on there youtube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with sas founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews i've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out i'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for valuation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a sas business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your frowner path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your sas company you're going to get a different valuation a vc is going to pay a different valuation private equity firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when i hover over here right so the teal is what a vc would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on youtube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raised they sold 22 to their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of sas valuations than what you can get now inside of founderpath and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're going to go back to the youtube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform i hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview you're you have become an affiliate big bold across the top of your website has that been your main growth channel no surprisingly that hasn't been very successful i i do have a couple people getting some traction and it's not something that i market so this is something that one of my biggest weaknesses is marketing and sales i'm just uh i like i know i'm a creative type i like working behind the scenes i like just not not a lot of people interaction and i and i struggle with encouraging people to you know help their or solve their problems with things that i do so um that's that's been a struggle of mine to help to help grow and i thought affiliate affiliate marketing um would be a way to go i just don't i don't push it to any channels and i don't have a big social media presence so it's kind of just the normal traffic on the website i think we have like 50 people signed up to that at the moment interesting okay so 50 affiliates that's interesting it means so then i guess the begs the question how did you get 400 customers if it's not the affiliate program so yeah yeah that's a good question um off the bat so i learned a lot about seo all of my essentially i'd say 90 to 95 of my customers are all seo so i you know in the early days i looked up what the keywords were how were people finding storyboards what were they searching um and i got on the front page of the of the term storyboard creator because that was the most trafficked word it got how did you learn that um so google's search function used to be different you know google's always changing their interface but uh through google search console you used to be able to find uh broader selection like i think now you can search one term and see how much traffic it gets but in the older versions of the google search console you could get a wider uh array of terms and see which ones got more hits but they changed that like five years ago so it's so now i think you have to search one term at a time or if you rank on a word you can kind of see how those how you rank on that page so if you're able to hit certain keywords then you get more data but i feel like it's gotten harder at least in my opinion i'm not an seo expert but i was really deep into it about five or six years ago when i was uh just launching well let's keep going on this path okay so let's say someone listening today also finds a keyword that they know if they win it there's a big prize you know it's the case for storyboard creator so what's the next step how do you create content to rank for it so i it's funny as i interviewed a couple seo people um i took some meetings just to kind of pick their brand and learn from them uh i don't know if they knew i was doing that but i kind of just wanted to learn some some tricks of the trade and essentially getting the keywords i think i think obviously google's evolving over time and and ranking is constantly changing and i don't know if anybody knows their true algorithm but what i learned uh was getting the keyword in as much as possible backlinks having supporting content throughout your website that kind of redirects to one place posting on other platforms and obviously linking to your website's a big deal but um a lot of a lot of small tedious things like inside of your images there's these alt tags you want to make sure that you're using keywords and those alt tags you essentially want no space to go unwasted for keywords your header is very important having the keyword in it um using it throughout your front page very important embedding it in images so that's kind of what i tried to do like so i would create videos on vimeo and youtube and link those and use those same keywords obviously and link it to my home page and i was still even though you're not focused on this today you still rank organically in the one two three four five fifth spot for storyboard fifth or sixth depending on who what what browser you're using but you still rank on the first page of google for storyboard creator right above some notice more competition creeping up i was actually getting a little down on my stuff lately because uh some funny enough some i get a lot of requests for um for what they're called sponsored posts or whatnot um and what a couple of them were from new competitors springing up and i was like oh i didn't even know these guys existed so i was like i need to get back on my game probably because there's a lot more competition coming i don't it's surprising to me because i think the storyboarding the story space is very small it's a very niche uh market in my opinion and if i knew what i knew now i maybe wouldn't have chosen it as the thing i went all in on so it's interesting the thing is though it's a very storyboarding is a very interesting wedge to upsell a lot of other stuff to those same animators and design teams etc which is why you know canva you know ranks number one for this keyword right now right yeah um have you ever flipped the script when you got an outreach and said hey you want to buy the whole company for 100 grand i've that thought's crossed my mind a lot um i i and i when i think about that then i i wonder if i regret not pushing hard enough before doing that um i would hate i would hate to wait too long to where the where the app is uh outgrown by competition it's no longer valuable i would hate to see it wasted um when the positives i think when i think that thought is like man i'd love to see somebody make it the best it could be because i think i i just have so many limitations my time being won and just kind of my know my knowledge in growing assass like i think i think i i've done everything that i could from having no experience and trying to do it on the side um and obviously all being bootstrapped like i don't have any investors or i haven't had any coaching or help getting it set up so it's kind of just listening to podcasts and reading books like trying to figure it out on my own when did you write the first line of code for a plot um so i'm not personally not a developer i hired a guy to create the mvp that was in 2015. so we're almost fascinating so what did you how did who was that guy how did you find him um a friend so i grew or i was uh living in the bay area a new uh ui designer was a friend i went to church with and he worked at a company uh he he knew many developers he's a ui you know designer at this company um and he knew his friend wanted to do some freelance work a lot there's a lot of board developers in the bay area at the time because they're just doing boring corporate stuff and when they hear somebody starting an mvp they kind of want to just do it because there's less you know red tape they can kind of be creative and do their thing so would you would you pay him to get the mvp off 15 grand to get it off the ground wow which i thought was reasonable yeah where'd you get that i mean look where did you from the studio so i mean i've you know i've operated the studio since 2012 and i grew it um and i was you know i had i saved my money and i've always known i wanted to invest in something like this uh this wasn't my first passive income project my first step into like digital products was creating scripts for adobe after effects which are just ways to automate uh tasks that after effects didn't build natively into the system so i built i hired a guy to create a couple of those and that gave me like a couple like a thousand dollars in monthly passive income so i was able to keep stashing stuff away like i would create a savings um you know being of being a studio or a business owner the first five years is pretty unpredictable so i like to have cash on the side and that's what i i decided this was a time to to do something take my swing essentially that's right but see the thing is like you don't you can't go all in because the studio makes so much more money right that's like your livelihood exactly i couldn't i couldn't yeah and i have three kids and a wife i can't afford yeah that big of a gamble like starting the studio was my gamble when we were just you know just me and my wife so i wasn't willing to like shut down my studio but those are thoughts i've always had because uh how can you really do your best at something if you don't give it your full time and that's kind of been my dilemma as an entrepreneur because these aren't even the only two things that i'm doing yeah so my time is just split and i just constantly feel like i'm i'm not i'm kind of like leaving a lot on the table because i clearly can't be the best of four different things at the same time yep yep yep really interesting now if you're doing four thousand a month today what were you doing about a year ago do you remember um it's been about three to five thousand consistently for the last three to four years so there's been really no growth like our best month has been six or seven thousand when so because people can pay annually so sometimes it'll be a spike of annual payments yep um but that's like been best case scenario and that's where i've been getting a little antsy and thinking how do i how do i kick i'm in a plateau phase like how do i get out of how do i get to the next phase i've tried a lot of things i've tried um hiring facebook ad guys i've hired two different agencies to to run facebook ads i've tried reaching out to uh you know influencers i can't even get a response i i think maybe i was aiming at too popular of influencers i was trying to find youtubers you know that 50 to 100 000 subscriber range i i literally couldn't get a response i think i got one response but they were booked out for the whole year like they weren't taking anybody and i got really discouraged trying that so i gave that up i tried um getting into schools i spent a solid year emailing schools i think every day just trying to get like a wedge into students having you know familiarity with the software maybe they'll pay for it when they get hired you know after school but that just proved so difficult trying to get their their curriculum was so strict and they just weren't interested in changing what they were teaching and it was i just feel like i've had a lot of walls in that regard trying to figure out like a growth hack so to speak um one thing that worked well is you know i figured what are people googling and a lot of people that don't know about storyboard software or googling templates because that's the way that you create it before you look for a microsoft word template or adobe photoshop template so i created free templates um and that's a search term that i also ranked for so we have people that will download our templates and then on the template itself i have advertising saying hey you could do this on plot it's easier so that was that one that's the only hack i think has worked consistently well it's very interesting you know how people think about growth because like the immediate thing i go to is you know what i wonder how many video editors are on upwork they all get frustrated with clients with how they do feedback like if i was growing polly all i would do is i would go on upwork i would hire every single person with video editor in their description for what they do and and give them a very small meaningless task for pay their hourly rate that's my cac but require they use plot that's funny the free version because then they're likely going to stick with it for their next second third fourth fifth project and become a customer that's like how i would do it that is funny and i actually have gotten my so clients through my studio i have gotten them to use plot as well yeah so i have a couple big enterprise clients that use it because they work with me you know creating videos super interesting do you keep a separate set of books like if someone would buy it could you send them a really clean p l and balance sheet and all that stuff i could so my books are all combined at the moment for ease but i definitely could i track i've tracked every expense i've spent separately in a spreadsheet for plot nice and obviously stripe has its own thing so yeah all the subscription data is separate on its own so yeah i could definitely sort the finances out pretty quickly for interest super super what would the pro what i mean so if so like would you know what the number would be like is it the real number is what's the number where you tell your wife tonight at dinner then you say you walked away and she goes i'm leaving you should have taken that deal oh she she would be supportive either way i think my number would have to be north of a hundred thousand but i don't know you know i've always wondered if that's even worth it to somebody like i don't know if that's like 200 why is that why is that the number i mean how long would it take you to make 100 on this and free cash flow that's yeah that's the other thing i thought i've kind of so what i've been doing is obviously reinvesting subscription revenue to my developers because i want to improve the product so i've i have had that thought like what if i maybe just sat for a few years and collected a check and then sold it so at least i built some because i'm honestly about at a i'm at a break-even point essentially so if i if i don't hire a developer or don't you know pay developers i could just collect some profit for a while thought about that um i guess 100k is my number because i think that's kind of what's fair for the state of the business and it would kind of be enough money to make me satisfied with how much time i've put into it mm-hmm um it would be i think it just because it would be hard to accept less than that otherwise i feel like i should i should keep working at it you know yeah yeah yeah it's hard to measure opportunity cost right which is what effectively this is it's gonna be really hard to pay get someone to take you know take a hundred thousand divided by four thousand right that's 25 years right of revenue right and assume that's assuming it's all profit right so it would be hard probably to get that so you're probably gonna stick with it uh and probably gonna keep doing the same thing for the next you know 10 20 years but you know you're learning a bunch doing it which is also valuable so yeah really interesting um let's uh let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite business book and i i love everything seth godin has written um i'd i'd say uh linchpin by seth godin probably linchpin number two is there a ceo you're following are studying i mean gary vaynerchuk is i consume a lot of his content so it's got to be him hey i just had an idea if i invite you to speak at our founder event in austin on september 8th on stage and then i basically ran a competition where people had 30 minutes come with the best idea they could on how they would grow the business and then they presented five minutes each like on the things and then you picked the winner and then we would award like a grand or five grand or whatever for them to go execute that thing on plotly could we and then film the like mini documentary would you be open to that wow wow yeah that'd be super interesting guys if you're yeah if you if you guys are listening that's going i have ideas for for for uh adrian uh just like email me or something nathan at nathan lika.com or nathan at founderprep.com that'd be really interesting to do this live the nice thing adrian what you have here is you have something that can be sold you have a working software product it's just a question of distribution um all right number three what's your favorite online tool uh for building plot besides your own favorite tool that has helped us build plot yeah like whatever you use to collaborate communicate sketch you know whatever well i mean it's obviously not possible without github that's something i had to learn how to to use um i mean slack honestly slack i use in all my ventures so far it's been priceless all right number four how many hours i sleep to get every night actually well that varies but i honestly i'm a seven to eight hour sleeper when things are going well if i if i'm having a little bit of a season of anxiety it'll be closer to six i like getting up early as well married with three kids and how old are you i'm turning 34 tomorrow ah happy early birthday very cool thank you thank you all right last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. and that's uh that's a tough one i think uh i i think i already knew it um consistency and patience pays off um it's something that i've heard other people say that were older including gary vaynerchuk um i think i would just reiterate that whenever i was feeling i've struggled with depression anxiety just wanting to get things done faster wanting to see results faster i think reiterating that to myself would be encouraging that guys the plot dot io launch back in 2015 because his own studio his own studio built he was frustrated with how to get video and you know feedback on animations effectively from clients he built it to manage his own work now has 400 customers mainly from an seo play which is just super genius super targeted 400 customers about 4k and mr today but been basically flat the past four years so it is consistent but not growing right it's a yin and yang who knows what he'll do next probably hang on to it keep using himself keep learning it it's fun to have a side project you can dabble with an experiment on but in the meantime i encourage you guys to check it out adrian thanks for taking us to the top 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's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya