How Visme Grew to About 10,000 Paying Customers, Doubling Every Year (Interview with Payman Taei)

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:01Hello, everyone. My guest today is Payman Taei. He's an avid technologist, loves new trends, tries to stay updated. His background is in biology and has led to him to truly believe in the art of evolution. Everything changes with time. Either follow or create new trends or you'll be left up behind. He founded a company called HindSite, which is an interactive ad... Digital agency in 2001. And out of that in 2014, he incubated his current company, Visme,

00:25one of the leading presentation infographic tools online empowering over a million businesses, nonprofits, and individuals from over 90 countries, including NASA, IBM, and Sony, to help improve the way ideas are visualized into engaging presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. Payman, are you ready to take us to the top?

Payman Taei

00:43I'm good. Nicely said, my man.

Pronunciation and Brand Name

Nathan Latka

00:45Alright. So give give me the name correctly pronounced.

Payman Taei

00:49Visme.

Nathan Latka

00:49Visme. That's a... Do you ever have issues with that? Like, when your sales reps are on the phone and they're like, yeah, go to visme.com and they're like, how do you spell that?

Payman Taei

00:56No sales reps, but it's more of people reading about it, content marketing and so on, and depends. Europe, they tend to say visme, and then in US, they tend to get it right, they just say visme. Interesting. Okay. As long as they find us on the web that, you know, that's okay. They can call it what they want.

Business Model and Pricing Plans

Nathan Latka

01:12Yep. So presentations, infographics, how do you make money? Is it a pure play SaaS model?

Payman Taei

01:17Yep. We are a SaaS model. Everybody starts free, so they can play around with it. And there's certain, you know, features and templates and assets and additional functionalities that unlock... Are unlocked in the premium plans.

Nathan Latka

01:29Okay. And and, I mean, give me a sense. Are you working SMB, mid market, or enterprise? What's the average, you know, plan per

Payman Taei

01:33Well, it's... So we have a couple plans, and we have an enterprise. And, basically, there's a free version, and there is the standard model, which starts off at... You know, I'm gonna tell you the monthly price because, of course, in yearly, you get discounts. So that's $19 a month. Okay. Then we have the complete plan, which is a higher plan, and that's $30 a month. But people go, you know, annual, they get a good 30 or

01:56so percent discount off of each of those. Enterprise is a little bit more expensive, and we also have team plans, which basically is the complete plan, just number of times the number of users that purchase it.

Nathan Latka

02:07Yep. So it's like $19 a seat, basically.

Payman Taei

02:10Yeah. You know, 19 starting, and then there's 30. So we have, you know, both sides. A lot of people start standard, they go upgrade.

Nathan Latka

02:17What what do what do you say the average is just to avoid going on every customer cohort?

Payman Taei

02:21Yeah. It's it's right in between. So if I was to pretty much give you a quick estimate, we'll be take the take the average or so. It's it's in the low twenties actually. A lot of people go annual, so they get a nice discount, and that's what actually brings the per user cost down a little bit. But at the same time, they stick with us for a while.

Origin Story and Beta Status

Nathan Latka

02:37Yep. Alright. Give me the backstory. When did you launch it?

Payman Taei

02:40Alright. So we are still in beta. If you notice on the website, we're pretty much might be the SaaS with the longest beta period ever, which will very, very soon gonna be changing. But we started developing this thing back in 2012 or so as just a side project at HindSite. HindSite is just a digital agency. We used to do a lot of flash work. I did a lot of award winning flash design work and so on.

03:04And so, of course, you know, the iPhone came out and that knocked things down. It really shook things up. And that's where in my bio, you hear about me talking about evolution and so on that really, you know, showed me how it works in the... In in business. So very quickly, Visme was just an... A little internal project to be for animations for nondesigners, or actually for designers initially, almost like a flash replacement. Long story short,

03:25by the time we launched a little focus group, we realized that people really don't care about that. Most of the audience are nondesigners, and they're just trying to create slideshows and so on. So real quickly, light bulb went off, and my mission started on wanting to make Visme the one tool that you use to create all types of visual content. So So I don't care if you wanna create a presentation or a visual report or a

03:45social graphic or an infographic, which is becoming more popular. There should really be one user interface, one tool that gives you great things from start to end. So that's how it all

Nathan Latka

03:54And why are you still in... I mean, 2012 was six years ago. Why are you still in beta? Is this just a marketing Well,

Payman Taei

04:01not necessarily. I'm I'm kind of a perfectionist. I really want the tool to be where I am comfortable with saying it is, you know, ready for prime time. I mean, the reality is that

04:11partially marketing, I could have taken this off two years ago. You know, this could have been off two years ago. Now, when I said 2012, we didn't really actually even present it to people with a very, very small group of people back in 2013. And we didn't even launch a premium plan until it was in sometime in 2014.

Nathan Latka

04:25So just to be clear, when, when was your first dollar of revenue? What year?

Payman Taei

04:29It was, I'm, I'm actually going by memory here. I believe it was, in mid twenty fourteen when we just actually turned it off. So everybody was in a free for a period of time, very, very slow. We didn't really do much marketing or promotion. Just let people come in and get feedback and use it. And, we very, very slowly started off as a premium model. And it wasn't really until just a couple of years ago that

04:50we got more serious with things and now we're going full base. And what

Customer Count and Revenue Transparency

Nathan Latka

04:53have you scaled to now in terms of total customers?

Payman Taei

04:56So, you know, of course, you know, there's free users, and then there's paid.

Nathan Latka

05:00Just... Not free users, yeah, just customers.

Payman Taei

05:02Yep. So customers... So there's two things that I don't really disclose openly, but I'll give you ranges. It is the actual total number of customers that we have paying, and it is also the exact revenue that we're doing, but I'd be happy to talk about other things. However, with that said, you know, it's over a million registered users, and out of that, it's really was around when it was 250, 300 users that we even rolled out

05:25the the pay plan. So it's really in the range of approaching about 10,000.

Nathan Latka

05:3110,000 paying?

05:32Exactly. Okay. Got it. Well... And and walk me through you before I even, like, pushed you really hard, prefaced it by saying, like, you don't like sharing this kind of stuff. Mean, why why... People will hear that and go, wait. Is he, like, why is he saying that? Is he hiding something? Why do you do that?

Payman Taei

05:44Absolutely nothing to hide. It's just more, you know, some... I feel like we're a private company, so there's certain information I'm very transparent and open about, and there's a couple things, you know, such as exact revenue numbers and a number of users.

Nathan Latka

05:56Strategically, where does it hurt you though? So some people would argue, hey, let's publish monthly income reports. It's a great piece of content. It'll get us new customers. Others will say, that's so stupid. I don't want my customers to see all my... Or my competitors to see all my Yeah.

Payman Taei

06:07Not it's not necessary. I think it's more of, you know, just more of a personal preference at this time. And at some point, I'm sure we're gonna be opening it up later on. You know, that's... It's just really more of a decision at this time that we have. But I don't think it's gonna destroy us or anything. I think we're happy with where we're going, where, you know, growth rates are great. What...

Growth Rate and Revenue Estimates

Nathan Latka

06:26What's a great growth rate? What do you mean by that?

Payman Taei

06:28So we are... The growth rates we're happy with, we're pretty much doubling every year. User base and also revenue has been pretty much close to ninety hundred... 90 to a 100% Yeah. Rate the last couple of years.

Nathan Latka

06:38Yeah. I mean, you give... By way, Payman, mean, you've given me enough information to back into a minimum. Mean, you know that. Right?

Payman Taei

06:44Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I

Nathan Latka

06:45mean, I can take 10,000 customers times a 23 price point and say you're doing north of $230,000 a year right now. I mean, a month right now. That's accurate, correct?

Payman Taei

06:53I mean, you could look at the, you know, I'm giving you around 10,000, so it could be a little bit higher than that, lower than that. So yeah, tell yeah. The numbers.

Nathan Latka

07:00Yeah. But but I mean, just to be clear, you could also, I mean, you're not you're not saying it's like one to 10,000. When you say 10,000, that's, you know, plus or minus a thousand in that range, right?

Payman Taei

07:10It's not 1,000.

Nathan Latka

07:11Yeah. Yeah.

Payman Taei

07:11Yeah. It's 18,000.

Nathan Latka

07:13So why are you... I mean, so let's say you're doing about $200,000 per month right now in revenue. I mean, why are you... I don't understand why you'd call yourself still in beta. I mean, you're generating profit Yeah.

Payman Taei

07:23I mean, we are we are profitable, and we're happy with... It's about the product, the product itself. And this is going to happen literally over the next month when we will be releasing out of beta. We're pretty much going be removing the beta out of all around the products. I just feel that there's a lot of products out there, and they come out of beta way too early. And, you know, in a way, I mean, look,

07:44it's hurt us because companies come look at us, they see the beta, and they abandon because they're like, you guys are not ready yet because

Churn Rate and Education Segment

Nathan Latka

07:48of What's your churn rate right now?

Payman Taei

07:51The churn rate is in the... So the... It's around seven to seven and a half percent, but there is one thing, though, about it, and that in our type of business, we have two types of users. About 25, 30% of our users are in education market.

Nathan Latka

08:07Oh gosh. Run like hell. Horrible market.

Payman Taei

08:10So they come in and they use it and they get a semester. We have a nice education discount and we have classroom discounts and so on. And so they get it and they really need it for a semester. They need it for a month or two. But the beauty of it is that they tend to come back some months later. So, you know, we, when I say that rate, I look at the churn rate as far

08:29as in the last sixty to ninety days, did they come back or not and renew. But some of these people actually go back, come to next semester, that might be five months later, eight months later. We don't really count that into our customer base, in essence, as far as paying customers when they drop off. If they don't renew within sixty to ninety days, they pretty much are a churn for us. But realistically, though, a lot of

08:49them do tend to come back. But the churn rate is actually lower when it comes to companies. Get team plans and some that go on an enterprise, or they're just, you know, one individual within an established business and so on. They really don't churn. They stay for a while. So that if I was to just base it on that one, it's gonna be lower. But if I look at the total average, then certainly it is in

09:09that seven, 7.5%.

Nathan Latka

09:11Yeah. And is that just because that's a low gross logo churn per month?

Payman Taei

09:16It is the gross. Yes. That is correct.

Nathan Latka

09:18Okay. And we look at And

09:20it's logo, not revenue, right?

Payman Taei

09:21That is correct.

Nathan Latka

09:22Okay. Got it. I imagine your revenue churn is probably lower than that because you churn cheap customers.

Payman Taei

09:29Yes. But then also the renewal rate. Remember that some of them go and come back and renew later. And in fact, some of the ones that drop off on a monthly, they didn't come back and just renew for a year. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

09:39That's really

09:40tough, by the way.

09:40I've talked to a lot of people that listen to the show, and many of them have the same problem. It's like a semi seasonal business, and they don't like counting them as churn because they've seen user stories where they come, they cancel for six months and they come back, and they just don't know how to report that. They don't know how to talk about it. I mean, how do you measure that?

Payman Taei

10:00Are... Honestly, we're not really measuring right now other than we do see that there's trends on it. And so we're working working that into maybe a secondary churn number, where we say our true churn rate, and versus the one that industry wise, as a SaaS model, people look at. And again, remember that a lot of times, we're kind of B2B, and then we have a B2C side of us. And the B2C side of us, the churn

10:21rate is certainly higher, right? Yep. And when I say B2C, that could be the education. That would be the individual just needs to create one presentation, and they're done for the next six months, a year. And so that certainly does affect that in that matter. I think we're gonna have to almost, again, maybe there's better metrics, maybe there's suggestions from others out there. But so far, the way I look at it is that we might have

10:41to look at it two ways: the average industry churn, and then the actual one that we look at in two different ways.

Bootstrapped and Team Size

Nathan Latka

10:46Have you bootstrapped the company or raised?

Payman Taei

10:48No. We have not raised. This has been fully bootstrapped. And so not a penny.

Nathan Latka

10:53That's good. That's good stuff. I like hearing that. And what's the team size today?

Payman Taei

10:58We are right now at, you know, taking our ad a couple of people. We just came on board. We're like at 15 right now. Okay, 15 people. So yeah, we're growing very... it's been, you know, Visme isn't like one of those stories, and I'll share that with you, where there has been this exponential growth. It's just been steady. It's kind of like a line. If I take our, you know, the chart from our user base to our

11:19customers, everything else, it's just a steady increase. And, you know, sure, I'd be happy with more of an exponential raise, but at the same time, though, we're to a point where we know that we've got traction, we have great feedback from users, and we just see kind of a long roadmap that will continue on. I don't see a drop off rate. I see an increase. And potentially, I think over the next year or two, there could

11:42be more of that.

Nathan Latka

11:43You shrug your... You you kind of hunch your shoulder a little bit while you're telling me this, like it's a bad thing.

Payman Taei

11:47Oh, I don't think it's a bad thing, but, you know, it's a great... You know, when you

Nathan Latka

11:50I think it's a damn good thing, by the way. That's how you get filthy rich. You build a company that you own all of, you'd drive revenues, and you start paying yourself more and more every month in dividends and reinvest in the company or elsewhere.

Payman Taei

12:00Well, absolutely. I I agree with that. I mean, I'll tell... I'll give you one example. So this one, we can... You know, I'll I'll be more open, and it gives you some

Nathan Latka

12:06You're gonna tell me your salary. Right?

Payman Taei

12:07Yeah. I'm gonna give my salary. It's pretty low, man.

12:12So, you know, in in in in my in humble opinion, though, remember that I run a web agency, and I still do. And actually, it's kind of, you know, very small and steady, just about five, six people on that one. And, you know, and I have to look at it. I mean, not everybody has an advantage, right? So when I first started it, you know, it wasn't a multi million dollar operation as far as my other

12:34agency goes at all. But it's just been, you know, I started in 2001, and little by little, you know, it generated income and paid my bills. And so when I started it, I just kind of incubated Visme out of that, you know, one developer and me, and just working on it. And little by little, you know, worked it into Visme. And in fact, the revenue, when we started the Visme product, here's the thing: I actually started

12:59this tool called... It it was an HTML editor. Okay? So back in, like, two thousand six, two thousand seven, when WordPress wasn't that popular, everybody's site was HTML based. So at my web agency, they would come and say, hey. We need... I need to edit my website, and the CMS system is too expensive. So we just created this very simple tool that people just connect with their FTP, connect to their site, just edit the content. That's

13:20it. Wasn't a site builder. And that actually grew to about a, you know, 8 to 10 k a month business, and I just took all that revenue and just put it back into Visme.

Nathan Latka

13:29What did you do with that company? You sell it?

Payman Taei

13:30No, no, no. It's still around. In fact, Visme is the name of the brand, and Easy Web Content is basically the formal company, the brand. So that product is actually just self running. I mean, it has, like What's doing

Nathan Latka

13:42now in terms of monthly revenue?

Payman Taei

13:43It... It's... It it drops off more and more each month, but it's down to, like, literally 3 to 4 k.

Nathan Latka

13:48Why do you why do

13:49you find someone real quick... Some some hustler college student with some parents' money to buy it? Like, why don't you sell it to somebody?

Payman Taei

13:55I'll tell you why. Because, you know, if I was to sell it, it's a reduced in revenue business. Right? So it's not gonna sell for a lot. It's not gonna sell for multiple times to that. But when I look at it, in the last three, four years, even you take it at, hey. Three years ago, was doing five, six k. And then before that, you add all that up and it's, and without any support pretty much,

14:14it's just generating that revenue every single month. And, you know, eventually, I I think you could generate a Wait.

Nathan Latka

14:19Why do you hold on? Hold on. Sorry. Why do you look at past earnings to predict future potential cash flow when it's declining?

Payman Taei

14:25It is... No. So I'm not looking at as far as it's gonna remain at 3 k. It's gonna go down every Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So what I'm looking at is that I still feel that it is gonna generate some revenue as it goes down to zero over a period of time.

Nathan Latka

14:39Got it.

Payman Taei

14:40It. It. Bars And very little.

Nathan Latka

14:42What do you think it'll make you in the next in the next six months?

Payman Taei

14:45That tool? Yeah. I I don't think more than I'm just gonna take out. I don't think more than 15 to 20 k.

Nathan Latka

14:51Yeah. So what if I wrote you a check? What if I wrote you a check right now for $15,000? You get the money now. You reinvest it. I get the company.

Payman Taei

14:57Well, because after that six months, I think we generate another 10 or 12 k, you know, and

15:02maybe maybe or or just goes down to, you know, blah blah blah blah. It keeps going.

Nathan Latka

15:05In all seriousness, let me know if you get interested in selling it. I'd write you... I'd write... The only reason you'd do it is if you wanted the cash now versus waiting the slow painful cash flow death.

Payman Taei

15:14No.

15:15I think... I mean, we're we're okay on this need the, you know, the cash that we're generating and so on, we're profitable. So really honestly, the the 15, 20 k wouldn't do much.

Nathan Latka

15:23Doesn't it doesn't it kinda hurt you a little bit to see one of your babies are slowly dying? You're you're not giving it the love to grow it because you have Visme?

Payman Taei

15:29And no, because I I I... Really, my passion is is towards Visme. Know? This was something that... Yeah. I I I think it was actually one of the best investments I ever made because I built it literally with, like, 10 or 12 k of development costs. You know? And it's generated, I think, over the last eight, nine, ten years, almost a million dollars.

Nathan Latka

15:46Yeah. But I'm saying, like, why do you let someone with some passion come in and get it going again, turn things around?

Payman Taei

15:51I don't think the HTML editor, you know, thanks for WordPress and all the other CMSs. I I... It's just, you

Nathan Latka

15:57know You think it's dead?

Payman Taei

15:59I I think it's... Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:59I really do. Okay. Last few economics questions here before we wrap up with the famous five. So 15 folks, obviously, you're bootstrapped, so you're running it profitably. Correct?

Payman Taei

16:08Absolutely.

CAC, Payback Period and LTV

Nathan Latka

16:09Okay. CAC, what are you spending to acquire customers?

Payman Taei

16:12So mid... Pretty much majority of our all users, they just come through our content, through we have a really good blog, through organic and so on. So when we actually spend money, which is very little on an ad space and is pretty much mostly on AdWords and so on, it's just a few areas that we want to tap into, and the infographics and so on, that we don't feel that we get the proper positioning yet. We're

16:35moving up. And in those areas, when I look at it, the CAC is under $75.

Nathan Latka

16:41Now what about what about fully weighted, though? I mean, what do you take... I mean, include your writers, your blog people, anyone creating content, and, like, divide the number of new customers per month into their salaries.

Payman Taei

16:52I don't have the number in front of me.

Nathan Latka

16:54That's okay.

Payman Taei

16:55But it's... It certainly is. It it is... It generates. I mean, it definitely is in a positive area, but I don't have that exact number.

Nathan Latka

17:02Got it. So $75 CAC at a $20 ARPU, I mean, what it takes you three, four months to get your money back. Is that about right?

Payman Taei

17:08Pretty much. I mean, yeah. Unless they... On a month to month basis, some of them just go early and pay 100 something dollars for a complete plan, that will... More than well.

Nathan Latka

17:16Then what do you assume these customers are worth to you over their lifetime?

Payman Taei

17:20The LTV, currently, we're measuring at around in the 200 area. Yeah. So around $210 is the last estimate that I did. But again, it really... It's the education and the one time user that really, you know, brings that down. It's significantly higher when we talk like, a team plan. You know, when we have a company that's got 25 users or 10 users and so on, they stay with us for years. They've been with us for three,

17:45four years since the beginning almost. Those certainly are very valuable.

Nathan Latka

17:50And your whole your whole team based up there in in Montgomery County or no?

Payman Taei

17:54So we have a couple individuals outside. We have, know, individual in in Japan, a few people in the... In terms of from the support bases, you know, and some data entry and someone in Philippines. But, yeah, the rest is all here. Right here in there.

Nathan Latka

18:06Are you?

Payman Taei

18:07I am right here in the Maryland area. So DC, literally fifteen, twenty minutes north of it.

Pinning Down the Revenue Range

Nathan Latka

18:11Yep. Good stuff. Alright. Last question here on growth, then we'll wrap up. So just, again, you said you're growing about a 100% year over year, call it two today. If you go back thirteen months, I mean, it's it's... You're you're doing about $100,000 then. Is that accurate?

Payman Taei

18:24No. I think it's a little off, but your your calculations, I know that you're running them. Yeah. They're not they're not exact. So your numbers are in somewhat of a range that it would give, but we were doing less than that actually.

Nathan Latka

18:37Okay. So that means your growth rate is potentially a little bit higher.

Payman Taei

18:40Yeah. It has. Last year, it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

18:43Okay. So so can we just put... We'll put a minimum. So less than $100,000, but more than $50,000. Is that fair?

Payman Taei

18:49I will put it somewhere in between that range. Okay. Good. Good. Good. And it wasn't as low. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

18:53Good. Alright.

Payman Taei

18:54And your that that you're calculating based on right now, they're they're not very accurate. They're in a range. So I Well, hold on. Hold on, Payman.

Nathan Latka

19:03So you're you're backtracking. And whenever... When someone backtracks on my show, what it tells me is I've painted a picture that makes them look way bigger than what they actually are. Well,

Payman Taei

19:11you're in a range where I think it needs a buffer of about 25%. I'll give you that. So you can go up higher, you can go lower.

Nathan Latka

19:18Got it. So so if I if I take instead of 10,000 customers, if I shave off 25% of that and say you only have about 7,500 multiply times that $23 price point, that puts you at about $170,000 per month. I I don't care about what you're actually at. I care about a minimum. That's all.

Payman Taei

19:34I I can't I can't disclose that information.

Nathan Latka

19:37But, know, that's I'm just using the numbers you just gave me.

Payman Taei

19:40Well, you're using estimates that I'm giving you. You're taking a number of 10 k that I'm giving you. And you

Nathan Latka

19:45said I'm 25% to... I'm 20... I need 25% rubber. Am I cut off 25% and you say, no, that's not right?

Payman Taei

19:51I'm just giving you that there is a range. So I I can't tell you exactly what down it is and high it is.

Nathan Latka

19:56And You you know, Payman, you just told me 25%. I'm not making that up. I'm just using your numbers.

Payman Taei

20:02I did say that. I'm giving you ranges.

Nathan Latka

20:04So 25% is not a range. That's a... That's an exact percentage.

Payman Taei

20:09You can go to you can go to 10,000 and take it up 25%. You can take it down 25%. We're somewhere in that range, and I can't

Nathan Latka

20:16What range, though? You haven't given... When you say up or down 25%, so the minimum will be 7,500. And I'm saying, okay, I'll give you the minimum times 23. The minimum MRR you're doing is $172,000.

Payman Taei

20:27I I can't disclose the numbers. That's...

Nathan Latka

20:30That... Well, that's a range. I mean, that would be the minimum. Right? Payman, this is what drives me crazy. People call on my show and they talk in circles about free users, paid users, betas, not betas. That's my average. That's not my average. And then they, like, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle when I try and give them a ton of credit, which usually tells me that I painted a picture that made them look way bigger than what

20:49they actually are. Why do you, I mean, why don't you just own that?

Payman Taei

20:52No, I don't think it's way bigger. I don't think it's way lower. So, you know, we'll leave it at the estimates that you're giving are not unreasonable. We we're happy with where we are. And as far as the numbers you're providing, you know, you could be off by tiny bit more, but it's it's close. You're close to where we are.

Nathan Latka

21:12And you're not comfortable just sharing a minimum? Like, you north of $100,000 per month right now?

Payman Taei

21:17Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

21:18Okay. But you're south of 200?

Payman Taei

21:20We are south of that.

Famous Five: Favorite Book

Nathan Latka

21:22Okay. Perfect. That's fair. That's a great range. That's a real range. It's something that's actually measurable, and it's something my audience can attract to and understand. All right. Famous five, number one, what's your favorite business book?

Payman Taei

21:33So I personally read a lot of blogs and not so much books, hard covers, but one of my favorite is the book Hooked. So that's a book that I pick up every so often. I keep putting down, I pick up, and that's by Nir Eyal. Yep. So that's a great book.

CEOs He Follows and Favorite Tools

Nathan Latka

21:50Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Payman Taei

21:53There's a couple. So I actually, you know, one is Ben Chestnut. I heavily look up to him from Mailchimp. You know, it's amazing what they've done, especially, of course, from a bootstrap aspect. And also, Hiten Shah. He's one of my favorites. Just great content, very open about how they build a SaaS and so on. So those are the two that I follow closely.

Nathan Latka

22:13Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business?

Payman Taei

22:16Visme.

Nathan Latka

22:17No. Besides your own.

Payman Taei

22:18No. Yeah. So, BuzzSumo, we use that a lot. Great tool. So... And, that's that's a tool that we've been on for a couple years.

Nathan Latka

22:27Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Payman Taei

22:29I tell every night, my plan is eight, and, unfortunately, it's five to seven. So my son woke me up five in the morning. I think it wasn't a five earlier last night.

Nathan Latka

22:39Kids do you have total?

Payman Taei

22:40I have one. Eighteen months.

Nathan Latka

22:42Alright. And married, single?

Payman Taei

22:44Married.

Nathan Latka

22:45Married, one kiddo, and how old are you?

Payman Taei

22:47I'm way old, man. 40.

Nathan Latka

22:49Not way old. Alright.

Payman Taei

22:5041.

Advice to Younger Self

Nathan Latka

22:51What do you... Last question. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

Payman Taei

22:55Yeah. So I would say is leave your ego at the door if you're gonna start a business company, and you know, and you gotta get ready to mop the floors, and because you're gonna have to get your feet wet.

Nathan Latka

23:06There you guys have it from Payman. You're gonna have get your feet wet, mop the floors, leave your ego out the door. He made it tough on me. I had to beat a little bit. But anyways, what a story. 2012 had an agency built Visme as a side project. It's since scaled. He's going all in on it and growing on about a 100% year over year, north of 7,500 customers doing somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000

23:24per month right now. Again, growing a 100% year over year. Average customer paying about $20 per month churns a problem. He's figuring out how to solve it. 7% gross logo churn per month when he does spend money to acquire customers. It's about $75. So he gets paid back in about four months with his team of 15 based in Maryland and other remote locations. Again, helping SMBs with visual and larger teams with visual content, visual presentations, and

23:45just making things beautiful. Payman, thank you for taking us to the top.

Payman Taei

23:48Hey, Nathan. Great stuff, by the way. Love your blog, and, love your, show here. And so, I hope everything goes well and needed support from us, let me know.