Jonathan Green: Launching a software as a service business, the right way with always on time expert Jonathan's Zacks. On today's episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast.
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Jonathan Green: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast. I am so excited for our guest today. Jonathan Zacks is an expert at getting people to show up to meetings and getting people to show up on time, which is something we all struggle with, whether it's in our dating life or in our business life. People just don't show up and we get ghosted and we don't know what to do. I can't tell you how many times. I couldn't tell when a girl didn't show up. It was cause she didn't like me or because she forgot me or what happened. I'm like, should I call her again or let it go away? I don't know what to do so again, people show up on time. Very interesting to me. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today, Jonathan.
Jonathan Zacks: Absolutely. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Green: So how did you first get interested or what was the inciting event that said I gotta help people show up on time.
Jonathan Zacks: Sure. So, uh, really, it was this one instance where my co-founder Justin had, uh, an eye check-in appointment after a procedure a year later, and he got a call a week after he was supposed to be at that appointment to say, Hey, you missed your appointment. Do you wanna reschedule? And when we did the math on just how much time and money was wasted from that situation, we realized, uh, we should build something to address this problem because the fact that this I hospital wasted the medical staff's time, physician, anyone supporting staff, um, receptionist, all those people to not get him to show up for the appointment. And then was people's time to call after to say, Hey, do you wanna reschedule? They might have lost that patient for that appointment plus future appointments. And it just seemed obvious, uh, to us to, to solve this problem. And in addition, I had a lot of experience from the business point of view of running a consulting business for years, where we would do appointments remotely appointments on site, uh, at our office at client's offices. Um, and just, uh, really thinking through that No show how problem and how much of a, a drag it was on growth of the business.
Jonathan Green: What's the main cause of that? What's the main reason people no show?
Jonathan Zacks: Sure. So the thing about that question is that it's really not one reason. It's just an aggregate of many reasons and that's, that's a problem with no shows is you can't really attack it, uh, in a sense of, um, cutting out one reason. It's really just like, there are a million different reasons. Think of all the reasons why you might be busy in your life. That those are all reasons why you might miss an appointment. Um, you might be distracted. Something might come up at the last minute. You might realize, uh, that you can't show up, but you don't have an easy way to get in touch. Um, for example, you know, if you get, if you get a text reminder, but you can't reply, you might reply back saying, Hey, I can't make it. You don't get an error, the business doesn't get it. There are all sorts of reasons why. People might have tried to let you know that they can't make it, but you haven't gotten the message. And then, you know, just, uh, running late, they forget the wrong time. They, they go to the wrong location. They go to the location on the website. We have, uh, one customer whose clients consistently showed up to the address of the website, which was her home address, um, instead of the location of the business, because that was the official business address that she felt like she had to have and this and that and the other. And it's just like all sorts of reasons that that come up for people, uh, not showing. And then there's all the reasons of like, people just don't value it. They decide they don't wanna tell you, uh, that they're not gonna show up. They they're they're ambivalent about it. They might show up. They're caught up in the moment. Yeah.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. A lot of those sounded familiar to me. I remember growing up like the dentist. Like, oh, do you wanna make your appointment six months in advance? And I was like, are you crazy? I can't think that far into the future. like, that's such a huge, I don't know where I'm gonna be as a person in six months. And, but they always wanna have their calendar filled six months in advance and then like exactly for them. I think, I imagine they must have such a huge noshow problem because I don't remember something I planned six months ago. And I remember they would send you a postcard and they got more and more aggressive throughout my life. As more technology came, you know, there, when you have, they would page you, when people came out and you get the postcard, then you, now I'm sure you get an email and they would call you. And I feel like the sec, so much of the secretary's time was spent making sure, reminding people, you have an appointment, you have an appointment. So it is very interesting to think how much it happens. I miss appointments all the time. You know, I have to set whenever I want these podcasts, I have to set, like I have to tell my wife, I'm like, baby, if I forget, I have a podcast stay at this time, remind me, right. I set an alarm on at least two different phones. It is very hard because we get just life is so distracting. And I missed an appointment a couple of weeks ago on the computer. I was supposed to do a phone call with someone. And I was just in the zone. So I was at the computer where I was supposed to do my meeting and I was so in the zone, I was like, oh, I have a meeting in an hour. And I looked while my meeting was an hour ago, two hours just disappeared. So it's a very interesting problem that a lot of people I know are trying to solve in different ways. So maybe you could tell me, like what's the impetus or the uniqueness for your approach.
Jonathan Zacks: Sure. Yeah. So the uniqueness of our approach is that we, um, we are solely focused on that problem. So, um, we're not focused on, um, getting, getting you appointments. We're focused on making sure that people who you've already scheduled with show up to those appointments. Um, so, so this is a problem for, for businesses that, that have appointments, um, and they have a no-show problem, which if you have an appointments, you for sure have a no-show problem. It's just the question of the magnitude of it. And so our approach is really just to, to make it as easy. As possible to jump in and get people to show up. So as easy as possible on both ends for one, for our users who sign up for go reminders, you know, the interface is extremely straightforward, very easy get started. If you are one person, you don't have to enter your staff member. For example, if you're one location, it doesn't say, Hey, enter your first location. Well, that, that doesn't make sense. If you're. One person often and so on our appointment entry form, it doesn't list all those fields for staff member, location services label, unless you go and add one, and if you have a location, then it magically appears on the form. And so it's really just focus on simplicity and ease of use while adding powerful functionality under the hood to get people to show up.
Jonathan Green: What are those mechanisms like? What gives the biggest bump in the show rate? Is it texting? Is it sending more emails? Is it an actual phone call? Is it one of those ringless phone calls where you look you, I don't remember it ringing, but now I have a message. What's the thing that you notice of all the things you is kind of the biggest bump.
Jonathan Zacks: Sure. Yeah. So texting for sure. Texting is by far our, our most popular feature. We have text reminders. We have email reminders. Um, we don't do phone call reminders and it's very deliberate. We've considered it. First of all, we rarely get requests for it to complete my thought from earlier that I forgot to mention very easy from the person who's our customer and very easy for their customer. They don't have to download an app to get a reminder. They don't have to, you know, do anything. They don't have to log into a portal. They just get a text, they get a text or an email or both. And that's it. And so texts it's like 98% of texts are read. It's, it's a really easy com uh, communication method to get an important piece of info to someone quickly in a timely fashion.
So yeah, in the sense of making it easy for people and not a terrible experience is why we don't do phone calls. I think of phone call reminders as a way of training your customers or clients to not pick up the phone. I had a dentist for years who I adored and they would call me to remind me of their appointment. And when, you know, I it's, you know, once every six months or once a year. And so when I'd see my dentist calling, I would, I would think, oh, that there's some reason I need to pick up this call. And it was just this lovely receptionist reminding me of the appointment that I already mail. That I wish I would've just gotten a text for, I was in the middle of something important I'd pick up. So they trained me that little, that, that if I see their call, I'm not going to pick up. The problem with that is if there's a last minute change and they need to actually change my appointment, that would go to voicemail. I would like, uh, go to voicemail. So. You really want to save the phone calls for the times when you actually want the person to really pick up, because you need to engage with them. You need to change something. There's an emergency. You need to close the office for a day, something like that. And so phone call reminders for many people can be super annoying. Whereas text reminders is sort of this balance between email and phone. Where you don't have to, many people have, do not disturb on. They might not get the text that moment, but usually whenever they go to next check their phone, they're looking to see what text they got. And so it's a really great balance, um, uh, you know, uh, between the immediate, um, but the not intrusive. And so text reminders for sure. And then it's, it's about like what you put in the, in the message and the timing of the message. And I often think of reminders and our platform as sort of this crystal ball, to be able to see who's going to our show because for sure people are going to our show and what a business needs to figure out is how to figure out they have 10 people coming on a day. Can we figure out ahead of time, which one or two of those people will not show. And so timing your reminders to come at the latest, possible time, closest to the appointment with enough padding for you to be able to fill an open slot is the way to go. Because if you can find out if you can fill appointments in one or two days, And sending one of your reminders at two days is a great way of finding out, oh, someone replies, oh shoot. I have a conflict. And it's like, great. Now I have two days. I can fill that appointment with someone on our wait list or hopefully another appointment will come in for that, things like that.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. You mentioned something earlier about they reply to the text and no one knows out. I always notice if I sometimes you get an email from a company and it says like, do not reply to this email. No, one's gonna read it. And I always think of that as like a shot across the bow. It's kind of like they reminds you that moment in the wedding singer, he goes, I have a microphone and you don't. So you listen to everything I have to say, and you can't say anything back. And it's the same thing with text, like with a text reminder, like the thought of someone sends you a text and you reply and they never see it. Cause I do use one of the, a service that does that for reminders for when I have like a live event, like a webinar and it sends a reminder text, but if they reply. I don't know where it goes. I don't know if it's stored inside the app or whatever. So that's interesting is that one of the functions that you have and where does the text go? If someone replies.
Jonathan Zacks: Yes, totally. So we have a two way texting interface. And so it will go into go reminders and you can reply and basically chat. You can be on a computer or phone Ingo reminders, chatting, and the other person is getting texts back and forth. And in order to get those notifications, you yourself, as our users can get notifications either via text yourself, or email, or if it's in the Garmin's app, it will, it will ding. And so, yeah, I mean that, that, it's like a really, really big black box of like what happens when people are applied to text. There are some services that don't accept replies that will at least send an error back to say, Hey, your reply didn't get through contact the business that at least, you know, often. Like, like it's happened to me and I've been like, okay, I have to find the business' phone number. I'll do it later. And maybe I do, or maybe I don't get back to them, but at least I know there are other services that don't have a warning, um, about that text won't get back, but the text just goes through, it looks like it went through, but, but they just don't go anywhere. And that I feel like is really problematic because as a customer of our users, the people would be thinking, oh, okay, they got their, they got our message and as the business, it would just never appear. So that's a bummer.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. So there are a lot of services that do the text thing, like they'll, and they've been around for a while. Now I used one of the first ones, 10 years ago, and I used to send them like the roughest customer service messages cause when they would mess up, I would lose a big client and so. I'm like, you just cost me a four figure deal because you messed up something. And I would write like these heinous, like, and I've discovered the more heinous, the email, the faster they'd be to refund me so I was like, oh, lesson learned. So I would write just, I would just spend hours crafting zero. Cause they would lose me these huge deals.
Jonathan Zacks: Oh my God.
Jonathan Green: Because what, the thing I was testing at the time was if someone would enter their phone number on my website, it would immediately send them a text. They go, wow, that's amazing. And it would ask them a series of questions that I would use then to get on the phone, call this one, I was selling SEO services in 2010 and people like this is amazing. You're like a wizard. And they think they're really talking to me. And it was a way to keep them engaged before the phone call. So if I'm, if I, if I talk to 'em right away, I can hop on the phone, but I know that when someone gives you their phone number, the, the lead only is gonna get down cooler and cooler. So I want to call 'em as soon as possible, but if I'm in a meeting,
Jonathan Zacks: Absolutely.
Jonathan Green: The text keeps 'em warm for me. And that's what I was really using it for. And that was when the text was, the technology was very, very rudimentary. It was always problems with it, but people would be like, wow, that's so exciting. I want that for my website. And I'm like, you definitely don't, but it gets, it was cool. So I was using it for that reason. Now I've seen a lot more companies and that one kind of disappeared, but what's what makes you different? What's the uniqueness of your approach to these other companies? Have a similar product, there's text there's tons and tons of people that do texting. And certainly politicians are using texting and these things that send you a message. You didn't ask. .
Jonathan Zacks: Yep. Yeah. So as I mentioned, we're really focused around the no-show appointment, solving that problem and all our features and functionality comes out of helping people who have that problem. So while we do have a lot of functionality that is in other products, we have a mixture.
And a combination of features that really isn't found, um, in, in, in another single product. And so, um, you know, we, we have the text reminder features that are sort of traditional appointment reminder things we have online booking, send a booking link. We have the ability to send text blasts and email blasts from within go reminders to either groups or everyone. We have the two way chat interface. Um, so we have all these features are built around what are the needs of people with appointment based businesses who are dealing with no show appointments. Well, those people also sometimes want their clients to book online. Like, you know, schedule themselves. Although many of our users do not want that. They want, uh, they wanna control their schedule meticulously and they don't want people booking in the wrong spot because then they have to call them and rebook them and change things around and so on and so forth. But we have that feature. If you want it. You might wanna send up a blast out to people, not necessarily a traditional marketing blast, but Hey, we're having, we are having a promotion or Hey, we're closed there was what was it? Uh, there was like a leak in the office, so they had to close. That's a recent blast that I saw. They had to close the office and then a notification to reopen the office. So these are things that are not. Sort of built for only text marketing, it's all around the needs. Like the two way chatting is like, okay, people are now communicating with their customers through our app.
How can we make it easier to make that process work seamlessly for our customers? Well, that's like. Building a two way chat interface in our system. As we develop features, they're all around this, this core need of appointment based businesses and making sure that they can keep in touch with their customers. And so we have competitors who just do the appointment, reminder stuff. We have competitors who just do the online booking stuff. We have competitors who I, one person come to me recently. And we're talking about, about go Min's use case. And he was, and he, he runs a property management business and he was like, oh man, like I need exactly what you do. And I get pitched all the time on these platforms that are like run your entire property management business. Here are a million features that you don't need. And it's like, I don't, you know, he was like, I don't need those features. I need to get people to show up for appointments. That is my problem. And I don't wanna transition to like an entirely new system to do all my invoicing, all of this, all that. I just need to solve this problem. And so, so that's really what we're focused on and we do that better than the other products, because the other products are like, yeah, we have reminders you can't reply to them. You can't do this, but they don't do it really well.
Jonathan Green: You're running a SAS business software as a service, which is software that has the recurring payment model, which is the, everyone knows is really the future. It's because it's the most profitable. It's why word and Adobe switch to that business model much to my cha grand as a customer. But how can someone who is, has an idea for an app and goes through the process of how can they test if it's a good or bad idea? Quickly because I see sometimes people are like, oh, we put a, we spent a ton of money on like patents and all of this stuff before they've tried a minimum wild product model, right. Where they get a small group of people to test it. But how what's the process or maybe in the process you went through to see if this had market fit, if people were interested enough or willing to pay for it, what you need to charge for it.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah, sure. So the, the first thing, I mean, there are certain things we did well, certain things we didn't do, uh, well, and the things that we did well were really go to market with a very lean product, a very thin feature set, and just see if we could get people to use it and then see if we could get people to pay for it. So something we didn't do so well is we didn't really focus on getting people to pay as early as we could have. We switched relatively soon, but it was maybe months, maybe a year until we switched from a free plan to that. We couldn't get anyone to upgrade to a 14 day free trial. And so really moving as quickly as possible to that point where you're trying to get, see if people will pay is key. Like once we did that, it was like, oh, okay. People will actually pay for it. It was just, we had to change around things to see like what they would pay for and, and what levels and things like that. And so we started with one of those five to 10 features that I mentioned. And even with that one feature was very simple.
I think we started with like one text reminder. Um, then we added more, more ability to do multiple reminders. We added message sequences later, we added all those, I think, two way chat, so on and so forth. So those were all things after we had launched after we had paying customers after we were growing. So, yeah. And what I would say that what I would potentially do differently in the future is, I would even before we build anything, I would try to get paying customers or at least build a list of potential people who are interested and see if they, I could get them to prepay for a 50% discount or something to prove out that there, there will be paying customers because that's the key, like, uh, it could be great software, but if you can't figure out who to sell it to, or who's, who's going to get value out of it. You'll waste a lot of time with, with building things.
Jonathan Green: I find that in my experience, I've been doing this for 12 or 13 years now, a lot of people go, they get feedback from a bunch of people who are non-customers. And they go, oh, everyone told me this is a great idea. And for me, I always say this all the time. The only way you can vote is with your credit card. Cause it's very easy to say you like something like this happens at movies all the time. People are like this. Movie's amazing. Did anyone go see it? No. Well that tells you the real answer because if people like something they'll pay for it. Especially your friends. It's very hard. Like if you went to your friends and said, what do you think of my software? And they go, I think it's terrible. You're not gonna be friends anywhere. Right. So they're trapped. You're like forcing a social situation. You have to give positive feedback.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah.
Jonathan Green: It's really, really hard to tell someone. That you're friends with that their dream is a bad idea. And I think that's the problem with that method. So I think what you're saying is really, really cool because there's this fear. I think a lot of people have that, oh, if I release something that's not perfect, I'll get a ton of bad reviews and it will kill the business for the future.
They're so afraid of mistakes that they're trapped in, in action. So is there a mental way or even a checklist that goes, no, you have enough to test the idea to break out of that because I see this in every industry I work in like, um, I've done a lot of writing and ghost writing. I meet people like, oh, I'm on my 10th rewrite of my book. And I'm like, what? I, I, I have a standard policy, one edit, one rewrite, it's out of the door.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan Green: Every single book I've ever published has had typos in it. I have a page on my website where people submit typos and sometimes five years later, someone finds when I'm like, wow, a hundred thousand customer found another typo. And I have to be willing to accept that cause it's gonna happen.
Jonathan Zacks: Right.
Jonathan Green: But people are, they go, oh, there's never gonna be a bug nothing's ever gonna crash.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah.
Jonathan Green: And they try to have that mindset. And I think you have to have the mindset. Things are gonna go wrong, but I have a plan for adapting to it for when I get something is broken or there's a glitch, but there's this such a fear that a small mistake will destroy your business.
How do you approach that? Or what's some advice you would give to people that are in that kind of space?
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah. So the main thing is a small mistake will not destroy your business. Even a large mistake will not destroy your business. And in terms of planning for when those things happen, I think it's really just a mental. Aspect of planning, being prepared that things will happen. You don't have to have a plan for what to do. You can Google at that point. Oh, I just had this type of bug I just had this, that, how do I respond to this? If you are not sure. Um, you can ask advisors, but essentially the main thing is just like, how would you respond to it, if it was your friend? Uh, if you, if you mess something up for your friend, you, you just explain it to them. Say, Hey man, here's what happens. Uh, here's what we're gonna do to fix it. And you know, we're, we're doing these things to prevent it in the future and then that's it. And so I would say just like, don't do anything that you would be embarrassed if your family found out. Like, if you use that as the lens, like that opens it up to a lot of things, like you can put out. Would you be embarrassed in front of your family? If you put out software that accidentally had a bug? No, of course not. It's no problem. Don't do anything super sleazy that your family that you, you would be really embarrassed about and it would be shameful, but, uh, don't lie about things. Don't, you know, overcharge people, like those are things that are like, those are things that will really get you into trouble. Um, but, but putting out software that like doesn't have all the features that you think would make a great product. That is totally fine. And pre-selling someone on something that you haven't built yet saying, Hey, you're gonna get this great deal. We're building this. Um, totally fine. And you know what, if you get a bunch of people, but not enough people, you can refund plenty of products and companies have, have done that. The, the point of it is not. At that stage is not to be efficient, not to be scaled up, not to be automated. The point of that is to prove that people will pay for something. And so hopefully you'll be able to prove that yes, people will pay for this. And then you plow forward with, with building the smallest possible thing that someone will pay for. And, uh, and then, and then you iterate. .
Jonathan Green: Yeah, that's really interesting. One of the things I learned like 10 or 12 years ago was the idea of you have the, the order form, but it's not real. So someone enters their credit card or vision clicks the button, and nothing actually happens except for, you know, someone tried to buy, so you go, oh, people will actually pay for this. And then you build it out because
Jonathan Zacks: Absolutely
Jonathan Green: nothing worse. Whether you're creating a course or training or a software to find out after you've built it, that nobody wants it. And I've seen it in every, I see it so many times people have a really, they get a visit from the good idea fairy. I call it where they have. I have a really good idea. I had a friend never forget this. He wrote a book about how to quit vaping four or five years ago. And I was like, wow, I didn't know people were, I thought I was trying to start vaping. How did you find out they wanna quit vaping? Where's your data from? And he goes, oh no, I just had a feeling. And I was like, oh no, what,
Jonathan Zacks: yeah.
Jonathan Green: My first thought I'm data driven. Like I wanna know that it's a good idea before I put it out because it's a lot of work. And he, I was like, man, in 20 years you might be seen as forward thinking when people discover vaping's terrible for you. But right now people trying to switch to it.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah.
Jonathan Green: Everyone's thinking about smoking is bad. And I always see that where people. Especially when they get caught in, I have a good idea and they're getting positive feedback or it's from someone they have an emotional relationship with. It's like really bad thing for an author is just when they have a family member on the cover of their book and it's not good. They'll never change it because it's like this emotional thing that I'm, that I'm afraid of. So what I'm really interested, and I know your time is so valuable. I'd love to know how do you go from zero to one customer? For many people, that's the hugest hurdle. I know the first time someone gave me a dollar online, I was like, whoa, this is magical. It went from it's possible money online to now I know it's real. That bridge, I think is so important for a creator.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah, but before I get to that, just one, I wanted to touch base, or we're gonna give one example of something that, you know, we built things that people haven't used, but one example of something that we're very proud of is this one feature we started about eight years ago when we launched, we started building and then we were like, well, I don't know if this is necessary, let's not finish that feature.
We still haven't built that feature. So it's eight years later, we have not seen the need to build that feature. So it's just using that lens is so powerful because imagine if we had built that feature and if we had built a bunch of other features, we would've wasted so much time and energy building things and that's a real life example of something that we, it wasn't like. And if we had gotten to it six months later and said, oh, we really need this. We would've built it, but it just hasn't been a need in eight years. And in terms of switching from that to, to in terms of, uh, you know, getting from zero to one to get your first customer online.
I would say, you know, well, the way that we did it was Facebook ads. I don't know if that would work today. We don't use Facebook ads much right now, but essentially it was a situation where like I had a gut feeling that people would pay for this. And we built a, a, you know, a very lean product and we wrote some Facebook ads and got them up. And we're basically like tired of clients, no showing, or like sitting around, waiting for clients, stuff like that. And, uh, and we got our customers that. Um, we first got users, as I mentioned, we had a free tier. We, I think we have about two of those people still using it on that free level, but none of those would upgrade and, and so we considered lowering the limits or switching to free trial and, uh, and, and switching to free trial, um, worked. And so we haven't switched from that in about eight, seven or eight years. So I think like getting some way to get people to your website and making the process to get to paying you as restrictive as possible.
In the beginning we had thought, okay, let's see how people use it. It's not really that useful. , it's not really that useful to see non-paying customers, how they're using it. You really wanna see how paying customers are using it. And even then it's not the holy grail. What you really need to figure out is, is like, what do people need to know?
First, what value needs to be demonstrated to them before they will give you their credit card number and pay you. And so for us, that was a 14 day trial. In retrospect, maybe a seven day trial is sufficient. So we did try requiring credit card. To start the free trial. That was a complete failure. I think that actually might work okay for us now. But at that point we had no reputation. We had no reviews online, no one knew our name. Now we have amazing reviews about our awesome customer support and ease of use and things like that. That like maybe people have heard about us enough that putting their credit card in to start the free trial. And it's so much later that people are used to putting their credit card in online. So things like that, I would try that first, essentially like getting credit card as soon as possible. So it's really whether it's Facebook ads, Google ads, joining Facebook groups, connecting with, with relevant people. I actually think going in person is something I was always afraid of. Um, but probably would've been quite valuable. And then certainly is something that I would do in the future for a new business is essentially, I always thought well maybe New York city businesses, aren't the best fit. And it's really like, we have customers in New York city now. Like it, it's not, it, it was just afraid of going into businesses and selling.
Jonathan Green: Yeah.
Jonathan Zacks: And don't be afraid of that because if you can prove that out, just like in person, even if it's not scalable, um, you can then use that information. Listen to what they say, like that property manager I was talking to in person at an event. And that was super valuable to hear, because now I can put that in the Facebook ad to say, like, I always get pitched on the XYZ industry software to manage my whole thing.
I don't need any of those features. Um, I just need to solve this problem. So, so really face to face and just getting anyone who you don't know, um, to, to pay you, uh, is super valuable. Um, And then you can find areas online, like Facebook groups that are more people who are similar to that.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. I think that's really good. A lot of people are afraid. They kind of go in, in all the different sectors. They're like, oh, I'll start coaching for free so I can get some clients so I can get some reviews and you train yourself. For that you train yourself for that type of customer or the low paying customer who becomes in my experience, it always becomes much the, the highest customer service needing customer. Like there's almost a direct correlation because I once had a client. When I started out, when I was selling SEO, he was sold ma massive tracts of land, basically owned all the hunting land at four states and he goes, son, every time I talk to you, I'm losing. So I'm never gonna talk to you again. I'm just gonna autopay you every month and that's it. So please never call me because it, basically, if I gen the cheapest land he had was a multimillion dollar deal. He pay me a couple thousand dollars a month doesn't care. And I was like, whereas you get the client who it's their last $500 every month. It's so stressful cause they want you to change their lives. And that's when I discovered, like there's a huge spectrum of difference between someone who it's not a big deal or who every month they have to reassess it. So
Jonathan Zacks: yes, a hundred percent.
Jonathan Green: I think that people are afraid of raising their prices or asking for what they really need. And then what's even worse is even have a bunch of clients at a price that you're actually losing money or it feels low so you're not excited to meet with them. So I think that's a really good lesson is to go as quickly as you can to the credit card. Because like you said, once people go, oh, this is free. I'll never pay for the upgrade. I, they think they've gotten the lifetime lock in and then.
Jonathan Zacks: Right.
Jonathan Green: Almost like an albatross on the business. You can't kick them out because you did say, but also right. You need the revenue generating customers. That's very, very interesting. This has all been very, very cool because you know, I've dabbled in software just a little bit throughout my career I've always been more of an information marketer, but I use a lot of software tools in my business and it's always interesting to see that it what's possible. And I know a lot of people listen to the show have like big ideas or their inventors. And so now then can do that thing. The minimum viable product, which is yeah. Find out people will pay for it. That's the first thing you wanna find out because sometimes an idea and a lot of my ideas have been stinkers. I've had my own stinkers and that's why when I create a course, yeah, I do the same thing. I'm like, I sell it and I'm like, I'm teaching it live. That's because it's a bad idea. And I had a really good idea. One person bought it. I go, uhoh we won't . I guess it wasn't a good idea. It really helps to hear that external idea. So this was really, really great.
Jonathan Zacks: You know, the, the idea of a free level. It's not that you shouldn't have a free level. Definitely. It's freemium having a free level that then you have another level that people pay for is a marketing strategy, not a pricing strategy. So when you're, if you have a free level, you can do that. If you're confident that you can get people who are free users. A percentage of them up to paid when you're starting out. It's very difficult to know if you'll ever be able to do that. And so, uh, you know, whatever product you wanna build is you mentioned you wanna make something that you're excited to help people. And so if you have a free product, um, as long as you're excited to make those people happy, those free users, and you have a way of getting some of them to your paid product by all means that's just much harder. It's inevitably a longer process to find out if those people will pay. So when you're starting, it's often not the best method, especially if you're bootstrapped, you don't have venture funding, things like that. You want to get to the point where people are paying you as soon as possible. You can always switch to freemium later, um, and, and experiment with things. But, uh, if you start with freemium, you can all often get stuck in the like, well, maybe people will upgrade soon. Maybe if I add this feature, maybe if I add do this, whereas if you start out with a free trial or making people pay right away, um, you learn very quickly whether people will pay for that or not.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. In my experience with consulting and services, it's very hard to say to a client, Hey, we've raised our prices. It's so much easier to get a new client.
Jonathan Zacks: Interesting interesting,
Jonathan Green: because it's really hard to say to someone, you know, I started out so like SEO, my first client, $200 a month, second, $500 a month. And then eventually I had clients paying $2,000 a month. There's no way I could go to that first client and go it's 2000 now a hundred.
Jonathan Zacks: Exactly.
Jonathan Green: Cause they, once you tell someone you're at a level, they that's how they think of you.
Jonathan Zacks: You might be able to get them to 750.
Jonathan Green: Definite, but still there there's still their,
Jonathan Zacks: but then is it worth it to you? Yes, exactly. Exactly. A hundred percent. Yeah. I think of that as more of a ramp up period in your, in, in a business, because at some point, unless you're able to consistently keep that going up often what I see and what I had a consulting business, uh, for years, what I saw was like, I would raise my prices over the years, but then I'd get to a point where for like many years I'd have similar, maybe a little bit of a raise, but the raise in the first few years, the increase was dramatic that yes, there were those initial clients. So absolutely.
Jonathan Green: Yeah, you're trying. Cause you're trying to figure it out, but it is interesting cause you start really low and then, but then you're stuck and it's like, oh I got to let these clients go cause they'll never be like, oh it's 10 times more now what? Like, cause you can't your boss. Like you can never go to your boss and say, um, I need a raise. How much? I need you to 10 X.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Green: And a hundred it's so different. This has been really, really great. I really appreciate. So your website is goreminders.com, where people can see what you're doing.
Jonathan Zacks: Yeah.
Jonathan Green: Who's your ideal client? Like who's the person you help the most isn't medical or what type of businesses should definitely check this out?
Jonathan Zacks: Sure. Yeah. So we have a bunch of sectors and it's basically medical, anything in the medical spaces. One of them. Other professional services, such as lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, and then there's our beauty sector, which can include anything from tattoo artists to eyelash extensions, hair salons, uh, nail salons, things like that and then there's really our other one, which are some of the most interesting business, like a, a parachute packing business for skydivers who needs get their parachute, professionally packed and dumpster rental companies and things like that. So it's really a wide array of industries all focused around, uh, anyone who's appointment based. Uh, again, even like, like Autoglass, Autoglass sometimes has people coming to their location. Sometimes they're going to the person's car or flat glass for homes. They're going to locations construction. So it's really just like. When you need two people to meet online or in person at a location at a specific time and you have trouble, uh, getting that, uh, to happen. That's the problem that we're solving.
Jonathan Green: That's awesome. Thank you so much for spending time with us is really informative to me. I know the audience that's gonna love it. And again, guys, it'll be in the show notes. It'll be below the video for watching the video version. It's goreminders.com. Thank you so much, Jonathan. I really appreciate it.
Jonathan Zacks: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
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