How ProDash CEO Josh Millang grew ProDash to $1.3M revenue and 30 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is josh malang he's a senior market insurance distribution leader top .01 percent producer for captive carrier and then developed a successful team before starting a retail agency in 2008. he built that agency over 12 years and later sold it for 1.5 million dollars now building producer dashboard.com joshua takes the top yeah all right what's the company and is it pure play sas it's not really we're uh you know was trying to figure out how best to describe it um you know we're a b2b really product service and consulting firm so we work with people who are independent senior market distribution in the insurance space across the country um and really try to identify the missing structures they have to leveling up their business and oftentimes it's their tech um but we also have several other products and services that really kind of enhance their business and help them really kind of grow and so what are some of those services is there anything that's close to a recurring fee um it's only all of it i'm a big big fan of recurring revenue having sold um as you mentioned my my practice and uh you know about the third of our revenues are occurring in our or not retail practice um but actually with this uh so we have our tech and we actually do white label customer service for people so we're able to um proactively and reactively manage their existing blocks of business um using their branding so people actually pay us to who are these people be specific medicare yeah sure uh these are insurance agencies insurance producers that work in the kind of retiree market across the country um and so they they pay us to proactively service their clients so we take care of retention upselling cross-selling uh we charge them a flat fee to do that and then we also do a rev share with them on any additional upsell and cross sales so we've got recurring revenue in that space we also have tied in a we found that a lot of these individuals are really solopreneurs they work out of their house they don't have any infrastructure or staff and that's why the service play is in there um but also none of them really have any branding and so we built out this kind of brand in a box thing where um we charge people to really create a brand um create kind of a one-page website help them with some point of sale materials and things like that to educate their clients on um and then one of the other things we've done that kind of spawned from that is also um really kind of a an seo play i partnered with a firm out of utah a lyft local that does a really good job of this helping these solopreneurs really create uh incoming traffic in their local markets and establish themselves in terms of their uh their prominence and relevance on like the google google map searches and things like that so that's joshua with all these products if you add up total revenue from last month where'd you come in at um last month we actually just we signed on our first uh channel partner last month um so so we actually generate about about 120 000 revenue in our first month with the channel partner uh well sorry why is the channel partner relevant to your total revenue is that your only revenue yeah no so the channel part is relevant because for about nine months we're really marketing out of our database selling uh this technology kind of talking to people about a new crm that might be a value for them that we added on the service model kind of the same story um i found that uh if we could engage with a channel partner somebody who was a wholesaler that had a lot of these people as downline downstream entities that had these agencies and producers sort of in their in their hierarchy if you will um we built out a rev share with them so that we could do a co-branded marketing campaign to them uh to their downline because their downline really needs a lot of these structures product services that kind of thing so um once we started doing that we got access to our first one that had 15 000 downline producers and we started doing webinars every couple weeks and generating a ton of traffic so uh we put 120 000 worth of revenue on the books uh just in the first month of doing that so that we're stupid okay but ignore that ignore that one channel partner you as a business selling all these products you just described over the first three minutes of this show how much revenue did you do last month 120 000. okay so so that's not just from the channel partner that's from all your lines of business yeah it's really because of that so prior to that we had about five grand a month in recurring revenue from about 50 you know customers that we had on the tech platform over the last several months we kind of had one at a time um and then we also did the same thing on the service side so we brought on about half a dozen service customers uh we're managing about 15 000 clients um but then we opened up this kind of the floodgate if you will and and made a ton of made a ton of new revenue now you're now you've seen made a ton a lot of new revenue but you said the channel partner relationship is one where it's a rev share so if you are just processing 120 grand in revenue that's not actually potentially your revenue or is it yeah so we we'll carve off about 30 of that okay got it so you've got about 35 000 in revenue from from that channel partnership right 30 carve off 35 000 revenue to them okay got it so you're how much revenue are you keeping from processing 120 grand of revenue 90 85.90 okay got it so you've got 85 or 90 000 in terms of gross revenue hitting your books from this one channel partner and why are they willing to give you such a big cut why don't they build this themselves and do it you know no one has you know so a lot of these issues um these wholesale firms really have a a different perspective because i was a you know a producer guy an agency builder guy and so i'm effectively one of the customers that they have those 15 000 customers and so um they're really good at the relationships with the companies that we do business with the insurance carriers and things like that um but they don't really dig in and get into the retail side in terms of really client facing and that sort of thing so um they're just missing some things that that really uh have kind of always hindered them from really being that complete resource for for the producers and agencies they've got and so now really between like the vision that people have for their individual businesses having this great wholesaling relationship they have and kind of plugging us in we've really got this kind of three-legged stool situation where um we provide a lot of the missing things that this these wholesale firms really have never had i'm missing something though because if i'm a wholesale firm and i've identified a line of business that could do 80 grand a month in revenue or about a million dollar run rate i'm not going to go just give that to some to some guy i'm going to hire engineers and build it internally that's meaningful business so what do you have that is unique that makes these firms want to work with you or just build it it really is it really is nathan it's that it's that retail agency building producer experience so they have not been in clients houses educating them on their insurance and their you know retirement income planning stuff they really exclusively are in the wholesale space representing carriers and and getting people set up with their businesses so they just don't have the experience that i have and so that's really what it comes down to so i can really provide value for their downline you know agencies and producers by really being um providing the support and kind of resources and structure for them to help them grow their business in the form of this you know the product services and consultation as a business and all in 2020 how much revenue did you do uh 2020 we did by 800k okay and so where was that coming from uh because you said that you just bumped up this hundred twenty thousand dollar a month account before that's five grand a month uh great question so about five percent of that was from our revenues from our tech and service model as we're kind of building it out um the rest of it was from the recurring revenues we had from our original retail agency business and then i've kind of piece by piece sold off you know those those business lines we had a property and casualty division uh we had a medicare supplement division we had a fee based planning and uh securities division kind of sold all those off so that's really uh probably i would say 50 of the revenue was recurring revenue from our existing business five percent was from um you know the new stuff uh that we're that we're building out in protodash and the rest of it is from selling off pieces of the business so really to kind of fund this thing um we've been uh investing a ton in in infrastructure staff and also into that tech platform through our vendor so so how much recurring revenue just your recurring revenue how much recurring revenue were you doing about a year ago um a year ago right around right around before i started selling everything off we're at about 450k off our original business in an arr exactly correct okay got it so so you're looking at like thirty five thousand dollars a month in revenue and a little bit closer like 40 and it was all off of insurance recurring revenue from insurance products mainly health uh also some fee based investments we managed a couple 401k platforms um but...