Simplerorevenue & funding

Intro this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per talk 5 and6 million he is help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit soul Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka okay top tribe this week's winner of the $100 is Rich Jones Okay Rich Jones he is stuck in corporate he wants to break free he's binging on the show for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning simply subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it all right guys I talked about this earlier but I schedule like so many meetings it would blow your mind I mean all my podcast interviews right hundreds of buchs I talk to monthly I schedule and you know what I do it so efficiently I get them all to agree to my calendar so all the calls are back to back to back that means I'm not switching in between tasks all day long I get them to batch so I can be very efficient it's so critical and I use a tool called acity scheduling to do this at Nathan la.com schedu it eliminates back and forth between me and people I'm trying to meet with it makes it very simple and most importantly they help me keep my noow rate very low because they send out reminders helps you look very professional so go to na.com schedu to sign up and you get a great deal you know you guys know this I hit people hard I make great deals and Gavin the CEO has given us a great deal if you sign up like normal people okay on their website you only get a 14-day free trial to use my link na.com schedu to get 45 days free okay it's the best it's free go to na.com schedu right now to sign up and I'll see you there Nathan lacky here this is episode 582 coming up tomorrow morning you'll learn from the CEO of Soo his name is aim they did 1.5 million in 2016 Revenue now they're up to 200 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue helping 200 customers close more leads using social data Nathan ladka here good morning What is Simplero folks Our Guest today is Calvin Kelli he's the CEO of a holistically focused multi-million dollar all-in-one solution driven software company called simpo that exists to raise a level of Consciousness on the planet he's passionate about helping online business owners do exactly what brings them most alive while he himself enjoys the same Calvin are you ready to take us to the top yeah absolutely I'm here good so tell us what simplero does and what's your business model how do you make money right simpo is is a tool for people who sell courses online or coaching programs or any kind of information stuff that doesn't need to be shipped so e-commerce for things that don't need to go through the mail and it does everything that you need for that kind of business so it does the email marketing marketing automation it does all everything related to money and getting paid delivering the content to the people that need it at the right time whether it's drip or whatever and um landing pages and all all of those things all in one package so it's got everything you need and and none of what you don't and we make money by selling a subscription so it's a it's a software as a as a service product and what your what year your launch the business in what did I launch it in I launched it in 2009 I built it for my own use because I was teaching spirituality to entrepreneurs and then in 2010 I started actually charging other people's to use it people had been using it for a while at that point um but just for free and then it just grew from there and and what you at now in terms of January 2017 in terms of customers paying for the platform customers is a little under 700 um yeah and what is the so can you tell us a story about one of them that are using you specifically how they use you yeah um the robin green for example she's an acupuncturist um out in California and she had her own private practice doing acupuncture and um her husband got laid off from his job and so she had been looking at online courses for for a bit but not taking the plunge and so she decided to to take the opportunity so she basically told her husband look you don't need to go find another job I will I will figure out how to how to teaches stuff online and her specialty was doing acupuncture with kids and so she like created a course for other acupuncturist in how to how to do acupuncture with kids and launched it and she made 60k within the first couple months of starting and so that was enough for her to tell her husband you don't to go back you handle kind of transaction and money and you know funnel stuff as well yeah yes we haven't handled everything so um by the time this interview goes live we might even actually do your website but that's kind of the only part that we haven't done so far so you still need like WordPress for your website but everything else is we handle and is all we automated everything that can possibly be automated and um yeah so just take care of everything so that people can focus on you know teaching and relating to Their audience and what is the so you have a bunch of different pricing plans 100 per month up to 400 per month U instead of going into each one what's kind of the average that a customer is paying you um I'd say it's probably about 150 we we we charge both a monthly fee and and a percentage of Revenue and what that does is basically skews it so that that you know the more money you make the more money we make so that our interests are aligned like our interest is to make sure that you are as successful as you can be because that makes us more successful Which business uh which kind of Revenue model makes you more money the transaction percentage approach or the SAS approach you can't really break it down like that because what it does is like once people reach a certain Revenue number they're going to up their their monthly so so that it lowers the the U the the percentage so so it's not you know we get if you break it down by like how much of our Revenue actually comes from each that would not Monthly recurring revenue give you an accurate accurate picture um I don't know that I follow you there so if you just take your total revenue and you say 80% comes from the monthly fee and 20% comes from transaction fees right it's more like 10% comes from trans transaction fees and 90% from monthly fees but what I'm saying is what I'm saying is that if you are if you are on the the the like plan with the lowest monthly fee as as you pay more monthly fee you pay less uh um transaction fee down to zero so so we max out at 400 a month or 333 if you're in the annual plan and that at that plan there is zero transaction fees so oh got it so that's the reason that you if you making enough money you would go there and then you're not paying any transaction fees got it okay that's actually really helpful to understand got it so if you're paying 300 well 400 bucks per month if you're paying monthly 333 if you're paying annually there's no transaction fees there exactly which people would do if they're doing a huge amount of volume right exactly okay got it that makes sense and then is the math simple before we learn more about your story can I just take 700 customers times about 150 bucks per customer per month to assume you're doing somewhere around 100 Grand per month in Revenue um yeah we're we're north of that but yeah so I guess I don't know I I always like to say I'm really great at math but I suck at numbers I'm so bad at memorizing numbers and and actual thing I think our annual average per customer is about 2100 2,200 um so so you're it's fair to say you're monthly you're doing somewhere between call it 100 Grand and 150 Grand right yes abely okay and then what about economics wise so has anyone signed up for you and then stopped what's your gross customer monthly turn so I actually don't know that number what I do know is our retention average retention is over 15 months between 15 and 16 months so um I don't know how many we lose per month in percentage H honestly and just to be clear that the uh the uh well sorry so if the lifetime value is 17 month or sorry 15 months you could just do one divided by 7% monthly churn which is what would give you 15 months of kind of duration of each customer um uh what is the what is the uh well how did you get to the 15 number you're just looking at your your user base and saying that's an average yeah exactly so so the the thing there though is that we have a lot of people who who will be with us for just you know one two 3 months because they then they realize you know this is not a business I want to be in or for whatever reason they don't stay with us and then then we have people who've been with us from the very start so it's it's more like averaging that number it doesn't tell you a whole lot in that sense but um it really varies what is the uh you launched back in 2009 uh talk to me about your your team today where are you guys based and how many of you are there yeah so I'm based in New York and we've got two people in Denmark um and then we've got three people on the west coast part-time but we're a tiny team so so the only actually um yeah me and and one guy in Copenhagen full-time and one another person in Denmark part-time I'm I'm Danish and I started in Denmark um so um that's why we we have a significant custom customer base there as well and then three people on the west coast that are all part-time so if you add up while you're full on parttime what is that like six or seven Employee count um yes something like and then two full-time yeah hey that's good that's like you know I'm making this I'm kind of doing the math on my head that's like almost 500 Grand per full-time employee per year if if people just focused on profitability and revenue per employee you'd be at the top of the Heap yeah yeah I mean I'm all about making things really simple and systematic for for the most part everybody on my current team started less than six months ago and and for the most of the of the time that this product has been there I pretty much been doing the whole thing myself development and keeping it up and customer service and so I'm all about systematizing everything so that I can handle it and basically you know even when I've been on vacation or whatever I've I've been taking care of things and generally been able to do everything in like less than an hour a day including customer service yeah what is the uh have you raised capital or self-funded self-funded self-funded yeah this is this is this is great this is these are like the stories Calvin I like hunt for that I just love because too many people get stuck in and the let's go raise a bunch of capital and build a huge team and lose a lot of money and hope for a billion dollar exit but you've built a beautiful little machine that's creating buy of cash for yourself every year exactly so let me ask you an interesting question um what do you do with the money I mean this is hugely profitable you only have two full-time people doing over a million bucks per year in Revenue you have plenty left over at the bottom what do you do with that do you go on vacations you treat your wife or you know what do you do I invest heavily in myself um actually something that I do so either either learning courses workshops um um I have a Healer that I work with on a monthly retainer um all all that kind of stuff what do you pay your healer I pay her about four grand a month okay got it got it so you're a lot of this money you're you're again you're paying yourself kind of out of the business as the distribution then using it to invest in yourself that's why you're so happy and calm right now yes exactly no seriously I mean so so this business is great and and I have great plans for it and we're we're investing heavily in in both features and and and where we going to go with it but um this is just the beginning for me I you know I have other things that I want to do like what what's next I I really want to be the person that that kind of shows the world a different way to live um it's like integrating the spiritual side and and the the entrepreneurial practical side like money and and heaven and and masculine and feminine and left brain and right brain and like my big dream is to be a special adviser to the president of the United States maybe not the coming one but the next one or whoever um on conscious nation building I look at the world and I'm like why did we design things to be this way that does not make any sense at all what what's one thing you would change if you Rising the president right now whether it's Obama or Trump or whoever I mean the big question that is like how do we how do we maximize um the contribution and and happiness of each individual person right it's all about like who are you specifically and how do we help you develop the things that are uniquely you into what makes you most happy and generates the most value for society so Calvin how would you how would you so I I'm going to play president here for a second I'm going to not do it justice but we're we're in the we're we're in the oal office right now I'm president you're advising me and I'm going say Calvin I would love for the world to be happy currently the world and the economy is kind of hinge on kind of two things job growth and GDP so how do we measure happiness because we can't communicate growth in happiness if we Measuring happiness can measure it went from point A to point B how do we measure it I think so so as you will probably have noticed already I'm not a big metrics guy that is totally not my game um so I'm not I'm not the person to ask that question but what I've noticed is that there is that sweet spot for every single person where they are supremely happy where work doesn't feel like work and where they they they happen to be contributing the most that they have to contribute so so it's all about design figuring out like from from schools to to um to work life to institutions how do we how do we support people in in finding that spot and staying there I guess Calvin my question like the idea you just presented to me um feels lazy because and I'll tell you why we don't we how do we know if it's working or not how do we know if people are more happy than they were six months ago like in other words it's great I and I would the reason I'm curious about this is I can tell You' thought a lot about it and you might actually have a fantastic answer here we're not going to get more people happy unless we can point and say yeah we're making progress more people are happy today how do we measure that I happiness is entirely subjective right there's the only way to measure it is to ask people but that's I mean and that's fra with a bunch of of of problems because you know people have bad memories and they they might not know I I don't have a good answer for you yeah you understand though I mean uh this is something wants to do but how are you going to convince anyone to give you resources to make the world Happy uh if we can't point to happiness growth right if there's not a a way to get a CO if there's not an unbiased test to ask everyone in the US or a portion of the us yes or no are you happy or not and by the way we have to trust people are going to answer that accurately uh how do you convince people to give you resources to fight it in the first place and maybe we'll leave that as an open question I think we will but the thing is but the point is too that it's it's not just going to be the happier place it's also going to be the more productive place right getting people to do the thing that that is their unique thing to do is going to add more value to the economy and well no that's something that's definitely I was going to say that's actually something that's very measurable productivity but I think you could argue that productivity gains are not a direct correlation to happiness gains machines paired with a person can make that person way more productive than if the person spent that same hour doing something that makes them extremely happy do you agree right and what I'm going for is the place makes them extremely happy and contributes a lot of Al and like productive what if something that makes you happy I love eating Cheetos that makes me happy that's not productive at all except maybe for the Cheetos brand who I'm paying money to buy the Cheetos for how do you make sure those two things are directly correlated that's the classic argument but that again again I mean you could it's a fair argument though right would you agree I mean how would you counter right but the I think there is there is the the surface happiness of like you know you know whatever I'm drinking a glass of wine and now I feel all mellow and happy and side versus the the thing that you're doing for someone else or with someone else and you're contributing to someone I think like deep inside we all want to be part of something and we all want to contribute to to the world in some way and that's the kind of happiness that we're looking at guys I get asked all the time Nathan you host all these interviews hundreds of them per month how do you do them efficiently and guys the answer is simple people always agree to my calendar backtack meetings I batch my interviews to stay very efficient and the way that I do it is I use a tool called Acuity scheduling at Nathan lat.com schedu and the reason I use them is very simple they keep my noshow rate very low because they send out reminders about when the interview or the meeting is coming up and also they make it very easy to schedule time right I don't have to go back and forth the email 10,000 times with people I'm trying to meet with okay at Nathan lat.com SL schedu helps me so much and by the way look I like have so many meetings the best at meetings okay I do them back toback very very efficient you guys know me many people say I'm the most efficient they've ever seen okay so I use the tool it's so efficient and by the way I got Gavin I said Gavin he's the CEO I said I want a great deal for my people he said Nathan well most people get a 14-day trial isn't that great I said no he's giving us a 45-day free trial at Nathan ler.com schedu that's not going to stay up forever so go get it now Nathan lat.com all right well guys with that calv we're wrap up with the final five questions Final 5 questions number one what is your favorite Business book or any book any book yeah yeah yeah no favorite book is there's nothing wrong with you number two two there's excuse me is there a CEO you're following or studying right now there's not I I was always a fan of Steve Jobs but hey number three is there a favorite online tool you have like acity scheduling m fast mail fast mail what do you use that for I for my email I switch from from from Gmail and I'm so much happier with fast mail why it's um their interface is just like super fast and clean and they they've integrated like it's super easy to set up forwards and Gmail was amazing when it came out but all of the new stuff in the the social inbox and all that crap I'm like I don't get it I don't need it I have my system for email and works really well number four yes or no do you get eight hours of sleep every night not every night but I really strive to I think sleep is super important and what's your situation married single do you have kids I am married I have two kids with my ex-wife they live in Copenhagen I live here in New York oh very cool and how old are you I'm 42 all right last question Calvin take us back 22 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew just really invest in getting to know yourself and who you are and how you're different and yeah and be that top drive there you have it invest in yourself get to know yourself and then go all in at being that from Calvin the founder of simpo back in 2009 metrics wise again bootstrapped which I love now serving 700 content creators who are selling courses each of the 700 customers paying on average 150 bucks per month doing somewhere around 100 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue about 7% gross customer churn each month which means each customer stays with him for about 15 months for a lifetime value of somewhere around 2100 bucks with a team of two full-time folks four part-time folks again building something special and focused on true happiness Calvin thank you for taking us to the top all right thank you so much Nathan if you enjoyed today's episode go back and listen to Russ yesterday he's the CEO of Doc send which raised $1 million and now has over 2800 companies paying them with well over 10,000 seats top tribe I love giving away free money I feel like Oprah giving away cars and I have something special for you today how many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about success they've had with Facebook and Google ads well all of you listening right now yes if you're listening you get a $100 in free AdWords here's how you get it okay again thanks for listening get the free $100 from Google right when you sign up with my website host provider HostGator go sign up now to get your free money hostgator.com Nathan again that's hostgator.com Nathan okay top dbe I'll see you right and early tomorrow morning and don't forget before you listen to any other episodes subscribe on iTunes right now for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday