How NJ Media and Sharpify CEO Niks Jansons grew NJ Media and Sharpify to $1.5M revenue and 25 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is nick jan since he built he's building two tools nj media which helps architects to attract more clients digital media and also sharpify a simple and powerful crm tool for smbs he's 27 years old started in 2019 uh now doing and on track to do about seven hundred thousand bucks here in 2021 nick you're ready to take the top yes nathan all right so njm it's not is it njmedia.com people are gonna think it's a media business but are do you have sas recurring revenues here no no we're current that's uh primarily an agency the the another business we have that's kind of the sas tool okay and so what's that tool uh that tool is called sharp fine uh why we're doing that because nj media is a lead generation agency that we are currently doing around 60 to 80 000 euros a month and we saw many of our customers struggling to convert leads so we made a small crm which kind of helps them to manage them talk with them communicate them activity planning deal planning so they can close more deals so let's focus on the agency here for a second what year do you launch them uh we started 2019 in the beginning of that so the first year was 109 second year was around 360. and this year it's gonna be close to seven seven seven hundred seven hundred fifty something somewhere i love it you you hold up the magazine real quick you showed me before the call see you just give me the data because you know what i'm gonna ask you got the magazine that's great so this zero you can go to 700k now is it are these folks sticky or do they they pay you for like a month and then leave usually what we did so one of our mentors teaches me to sell upfront expensive package which is around three thousand four thousand and then we are selling them a continuity that seems very cheaply but still we have problem with churn so uh our our stickiness on average is like three months uh which we are trying to fix because ng media when we started we were doing basically every type of service business and now we're specifically working with architects and uh interior design companies outside of latvia so i'm from latvia a small market locally so we wanted to grow to like we wanted to do 2 million this year we didn't do that but we want to grow it outside so we're that's why we niched down a little bit yes you still doubled year over year and i can tell from your background you know you're doing when it comes to interior design very clean very nice aesthetic are were you an architect that's my wife that's your wife i'm not an advocate that's my wife that's my wife okay design that's my wife so why choose why niche in architecture it's like i was doing initially sas business and i looked at the market and i was like damn this is so red like many people doing that many people competition big and then the second niche which i was about with digital agencies like helping them to grow because many agencies struggle to get to 50 a month so maybe that one and also it's a red ocean and then i saw hey we have good clients damn there's like nobody doing this stuff and the dudes who are doing that it's super old school guys and that's why we chose this niche and uh first month we launched it it was a middle of october uh november we spent on ads 5.5 thousand we got cash collected 6 000 and revenue was 19 000 and this month probably gonna triple that number for those uh for architects this is inside of that or on sharper yeah that's in that that's only nj media online okay okay interesting so tell me about sharpify when did it launch we are still building it we have the website ready everything is ready we're still building that we like led it to have people in the middle of this year so some users do it and we have it like a free plan so many many people out there just use the free plan we have like 50 60 people losing the free plan and we have one customer actually who's actually paying we're not kind of pushing it because we're still in development i want to like i have one coder so one guy who's quoting me at the soft and i'm paying him a salary and how much i just want to make uh it's 2 000 euros yeah yeah yeah uh interesting and um is he in or she in europe uh yeah he's like a friend of mine he comes to our office we have like a cool office for like like really cool office just but you own 100 you own 100 equity in sharpify both yeah but yeah yeah okay and both nj media and shopify you 100 yeah those are two separate entities but yeah yeah we want to make it mix mix them together later on yep okay cool and then how many ng media doing about 8 000 bucks a month right now on revenue 700 000 this year how many customers do you have right now paying you sorry what did you ask how many customers do you have right now paying you on nj media like recurring customers we have like stable recurring customers like 20 30 like stable recurring most of them we get new onboarding for them because we have one supplementary product for nj media which is a course for beginners big beginner entrepreneurs which we sell around 1000 to 1500 euros depending on if they use the incentive deal we uh offer them so we're in latvia we're selling also a course and the service so it's like and next when you do at nj media 60 to 80 000 per month in revenue are you profitable yeah yeah of course i'm like i i don't i don't um like for close to 40 yeah so what do you what do you think that capital because you own 100 what do you do with it i just put it back inside of the business buying buying office gear we have like really cool office like investing in people trainings i buy courses like this year i've spent like 30 000 euros on courses alone i just put it back because one of my other mentors said you have to like put it back on everything you have and to make a significant amount i think my goal is like to have 100 million euro company not uh will it be nj media or sharpify you think the my idea sharpify probably is a shitty idea because it's super red ocean so i'm thinking about to pivot the shopify tool for specifically architects i think that's my kind of idea make it more valuable but i still the crm is a bad marks to do it i think and have you seen that media to date or have you raised capital yeah of course yeah everything everything so you've bootstrapped everything yes everything's bootstraps no no no nobody gives me money i have any any plans to raise at sharpify no if i if i'm thinking about the ideas right i'm like looking for the ideas i'm thinking about them i'm gonna plan to do interviews in january for architects and if i have some idea and i understand okay i want to do it fast and i need the money i now i have contacts actually i could get money from my friends who have businesses like call gear for making like like millions a month and he could maybe give it to me if i need so yeah i don't have it yet planned out but maybe later what would make you take capital i don't know like if i think i need it you know like if i have this so the idea okay i have a plan i see huge uh demand and i just don't have the resources to take from my own money to just do it maybe i could hire two guys to program maybe they could do it you know um because my nj media is basically a consultancy which is very um no it's it's there's a huge margins big margins so we have like um room to operate right how many are full-time at the agency um like 12 13 people yeah and how many of those were engineers one one so we just like seven yeah like seven people me included are like sales guys like selling things and five six people are working with the clients ads and we have one guy who's like coding things and like doing that stuff very cool well if people want to follow along watch the story and go to nj hyphen media dot com as nick's good jumps into his new sas business we'll see how if he pivots it or stays with it at sharpify dot io nick in the meantime here let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book i will say to one of the recent ones which i really like and shout out to him if he sees this video it's alex romozy 100 million offers very good book like really good book damn like that book and the second aesthetics rule by grant cardone actually like number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh the the same guy alex formosu number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business uh the i i think the zapier click funnels i like those two those are the best number four how many hours i sleep to eat every night uh i know precisely like 6.5 i use aura and what's your situation and we know you're it sounds like married so any kids uh no no not yet kids we're gonna do that but married married and no kids and how old are you nick i'm 27 i think 27. i'm 27 or 28 i was like thank you how old am i what that thing's funny all right take us home here something you wishing you when you were 20. um damn like i i was very bad in uh like i was smoking drinking until i was 23 and uh i i thought i...