What's up, everyone?
This is Cortland from AndyHackers.com, and you're listening to the Andy Hackers podcast.
On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense
of what it's like to be in their shoes.
How did they get to where they are today?
How did they make decisions, both at their companies and in their personal lives, and
what exactly makes their businesses tick?
The goal here, as always, so that the rest of us can go on to build our own successful
companies.
Today, I'm talking to John Doherty, the founder of a company called Credo, which is an online
marketplace that has generated many millions of dollars worth of marketing work for SEO
experts, and other marketers as well.
So John, welcome to the show, and thanks so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me, Cortland.
It is my absolute pleasure to be here.
It's my pleasure to have you.
I actually got the chance to finally meet you in person at MicroConf back in May.
What did you think about the conference?
I thought the conference was awesome.
The content was solid, the speakers were really, really good, but I would say that the thing
that I took away from that the most was just that it's one of the most valuable conferences
I've been to in terms of the quality of people that are there.
Everyone there is smart, interesting, there's no one that's just kind of putting in their
time at a company and looking to grow a little bit.
Everyone is working really hard and creative and trying to build something of value.
So I thought it was absolutely incredible.
Yeah, this was my second year going to MicroConf, and I feel the same way.
They've done an incredible job bringing in the right kinds of people who are serious
about building a business or learning how to build a business or in many cases already
are building a business.
I think meetups and to a lesser degree conferences have a reputation for attracting people who
aren't really that serious, who just want to come to Mingle but don't want to really
go anywhere with it.
So hats off to Mike and Rob and everybody involved for running a conference that really
attracts very high quality people.
And I think also them splitting out with the growth track, which you and I were both at,
which is everyone that's doing, what is it, 150k plus a year or something like that.
And then they also had starter for a couple days after growth finished, where that was
everyone looking to get started.
So I think that split it out nicely that the growth track, we could focus on, you know,
growing a business and people talking about going from, you know, 20k to 80k a month.
You know, it's like the guys from FOMO talked about is super valuable there versus others,
you know, someone that doesn't have any revenue coming in, that's not really going to gel
for them.
So it was it was great.
I loved it.
So let's talk about how you've grown your business.
Can you tell us a little bit about Credo?
What is it exactly?
How does it work?
And why do people pay for it?
So basically, Credo currently is a best way to describe it is a lead generation service
for digital marketing agencies and consultants.
So what we do is help businesses that are looking to hire an agency or a consultant
to do SEO, content marketing, link building, Facebook ads, AdWords, those sorts of things
help them to get connected up with the right agencies, continue those conversations, and
then hopefully ultimately hire someone to help them grow their business.
I started this business five and a half years ago, which is crazy beginning of 2013, because
I saw a need.
And then it kind of ticked along as a side project for a number of years for a couple
years, two and a half years.
And then I started working on it full time end of September of 2015.
And it's been through a bunch of iterations, I've been through three or four different
business models.
And it was a fully automated marketplace.
At one point, I realized that didn't work and went back to a higher touch model.
And I've kind of been through a lot with it.
But it's a good business.
I think it fits a need in the digital marketing industry, and it's afforded me a good lifestyle.
So I have no complaints.
I can't wait to get into all these details about your business model changes and your
realizations and learnings.
But first, are you willing to share any numbers about the size of your company, maybe the
number of employees and how much money you're making?
Sure.
So I tend to run the team pretty lean, my business coach would tell you that I run it
too lean.
So it is myself working on it full time, as well as doing some consulting, some SEO consulting
with some big companies.
And then I have two part time people at this point, one person kind of an admin assistant
and sales development, and then a part time developer as well.
So I run it super lean.
I'm trying to grow it a little bit in that way, though still figuring out a lot of processes
and roles and that sort of thing.
On the revenue side, the business right now does anywhere between about 20 and 25 k a
month, just on the lead generation side and like the directory listing side.
And have you raised any money or is this endeavor entirely bootstrapped?
I have raised no money, it is entirely bootstrapped mostly from I started this company working
on it full time because I got laid off and so had some severance from there.
And then I've also done consulting all along the way.
And that's basically bankrolled everything.
A lot of people have this dream of leaving their job, maybe not necessarily getting laid
off but quitting and then going to start their own company, and then making multiple hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year by themselves or maybe with a small team.
You're actually living the stream.
How does that feel?
You know, it's both a dream and a nightmare sometimes, to be totally honest with you.
I mean, it's great.
I'm the master of my own domain, right?
For better or worse, I get to work from home.
I call my dog my co-founder, right?
He often hangs out at my feet and to a large extent can set my own schedule and all of
that I can make decisions, no one can tell me not to do something specifically.
So the world is kind of my oyster.
All that good stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
But it is a lot of fun and ultimately, at the end of the day, I love working for myself.
I love not having a boss.
But it also has these very real challenges and ups and downs and businesses go through
different stages.
And just because you've grown and it's managing a business that is doing...
So in 2017, my business did about $350K in revenue across the lead generation business
and consulting and managing that size of business.
That was over double from the previous year and it is so much more work.
You manage a business of that size as well.
You have to automate a lot of things.
You have to rely on a lot of people and make the decisions about what to invest in, who
to hire, what services to pay for, for example, by paper bookkeepers and accountants and that
sort of thing.
So that I can actually focus on growing the business.
All of those decisions become a lot harder as you grow.
But at the same time, they're growth problems.
They're good problems to have.
Yeah, those are great problems to have.
So let's talk about how you've actually gotten to where you are.
Because from what I understand, Credo is the first business you've started, which is pretty
unusual for the people that I talked to on the show.
What are some of the more influential life events that led you to this point?
So as you said, Credo is my first business that has ever made any revenue.
It's the first business entity I ever formed.
I've had side projects and such and sold consulting before.
And Credo actually came out of me stopping doing my own consulting back at the end of
2012.
Obviously, I do my own now still.
So what got me to this point is as I was trained as a web developer in college, I went to James
Madison University in Virginia, where I'm from.
And I had an internship as a web developer at a software company in the Northern Virginia
area, summer 2007.
So we're going back a decade now, which makes me feel old.
But I was trained as a friend and web developer and then was basically helping to run a company
from Switzerland for about a year where we were selling English language books, but we
were based in French-speaking Switzerland in a boot shop company, myself and the founder.
And basically, I had to learn how to market things online.
And so SEO just made sense.
And so I basically started learning SEO and was blogging.
We now call content marketing.
And it just kind of came to me.
It just kind of made a lot of sense to me and kind of how my brain is put together.
So yeah, over the course of my career, I helped to run that company though.
I wasn't the founder and I was probably too inexperienced to really be doing it.
And I've worked agency side, worked for a couple different agencies and worked in-house
for a couple of years as well, running SEO marketing and growth on a couple of Zillow's
sub-brands.
So I've built teams, I've grown teams, I've managed people, I started stuff on my own,
done my own consulting, I'm dangerous enough as a web developer, I've built most of the
Credo platform myself with some help from some freelance developers.
But I think one of the biggest things that I've done over the course of my career is
to kind of be a jack of all trades and know a little bit about a lot of things and know
a lot about a couple of things.
Were you always that way?
What were you like as a kid?
Did you think that you wanted to be an entrepreneur, be a jack of all trades?
Or did you fall into this because of your job?
Yeah, I don't know that I really thought about it that deeply, to be totally honest with
you.
I was always kind of a little bit of a lazy student.
I come from a family of educators.
My father worked in higher education for about 30 years.
My mom is an elementary school teacher, and I was homeschooled until high school as well.
So I didn't really apply myself a ton in high school, didn't really have specific things
that I really enjoyed.
Ended up graduating top 10% in my class, probably could have, I know I could have done better
if I had worked harder, I could have gotten a better SAT score if I had studied harder.
But I basically just figured like, hey, I'm doing enough to get by.
And I'm happy.
I've never been that person that I'm like, I want to have a $10 million a year business
or I want to get my MBA from Stanford or something like that.
Not that there's anything wrong with either of those, but I just haven't been that type
of person, super focused in that way, really ever in my lifetime.
So yeah, I like learning, I like reading.
And I've recently tried to dial that back a little bit and practice a little bit more
just-in-time learning and taking care of things when they need to be done as opposed to, oh,
this strikes my fancy now, so I'm going to do it.
And I think part of that as well is just getting a little bit older and having a business that
works and having customers that are relying on me and having to be more strategic in that
way.
It's fascinating to hear you talk about how you weren't really motivated to try very hard
at school and you didn't really give it your all.
Because being a solo founder, being a jack of all trades really requires a substantial
amount of effort.
I mean, there's no real way that you can just phone it in.
You have to try hard in order to get to where you've gotten.
So what I want to know is what changed in your mindset to allow you to start and run
Credo?
Yeah, I mean, I think I had to find something that I was really passionate about.
And that really drove me not that necessarily I'm super passionate about, you know, generating
leads for marketing agencies, but you know, it's something that I can do and that I can
do well.
And I think, you know, passion only gets you so far, but and I've always had a good work
ethic, but it was a matter of finding something that I wanted to really apply that work ethic
to.
If that makes sense.
Like, I didn't really apply.
I didn't love school.
You know, I don't love having a boss, which is part of why I work for myself, right?
So therefore I don't really enjoy having a teacher, you know, or someone keeping me accountable
to things like that.
So yeah, all of those just weren't really how I was put together.
But once I actually commit to something like I on my own personal website, my personal
blog, I blog twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday from the very beginning of 2011 until
almost the end of 2013.
So for about three years, I published two blog posts a week, right?
So I can keep at things and I can commit to things.
But it has to be something that I'm really like committed to doing.
It's totally underrated how much satisfaction you can derive from just being good at things.
I remember being a kid and spending a lot of time on the computers.
And a lot of it was just because the adults around me were encouraging and they would
say things like, Oh, you're really great at computers, keep it up.
And so I just took pride and getting that kind of feedback.
And it's the same with running a business.
If you find something that maybe isn't the most interesting thing in the world, but you're
really good at it, you can take pride in being good at it, then I can keep you motivated
when things get tough.
Totally.
And you know, I think for some of us, just having a problem to solve is a big driver
as well.
You know, I see people launching these, you know, people up on indie hackers or other
places launching these, you know, sass apps for like, you know, scheduling social media
posts, no one start no one's like, Oh, you know what I'm really passionate about letting
people automate their social media.
No one says that, right?
They're like, Hey, this is an interesting problem to solve.
There's a business opportunity here.
And so I'm going to see what it can be, right?
And then also, especially developers are really good at building new apps and, you know, making
things work.
And, you know, you can always move on to something else as well, just because you built one tool
doesn't mean that you can't move on and do other things or expand the vision of that
company.
And then ultimately, you know, shut down the thing that you started with, like, there's
so many different ways to go with the business.
So earlier, I asked you about funding Credo, and you mentioned getting laid off from your
job and using your severance to fund your business.
What's the story there?
Yeah, it's a it's a fairly quick story.
I was working inside of Zillow Group and I was I just moved over to a new brand, I've
been running marketing on one brand and moved over to another brand that they had acquired
and they see some things moved around internally.
And the team that I brought over to that brand with me and myself ended up, we ended up getting
laid off near the end of 2015 end of September 2015.
So I think a lot of people have been through that with, you know, acquisitions and moving
into a new role and it doesn't work out.
Yeah, it's just, you know, it's part of a it's part of business.
It's actually interesting that a lot of people have that I've spoken with a lot of entrepreneurs
and such as well, have also been laid off and actually started working for themselves
because they got laid off.
So I think there's something, you know, to that, just like when I worked for an SEO agency,
we found that a lot of the best SEOs that we hired had been former professional poker
players.
So I think it's the same way with entrepreneurs.
Whenever I see a successful entrepreneur, I'm like, when were you laid off, right?
And most of them have been.
Why after getting laid off, did you decide to go into business for yourself?
Because I think most people in that situation will feel a lot of pressure to go and look
for another full time job.
There was pressure, I didn't have the desire.
So I did interview some, and I had actually been interviewing before I got laid off as
well, just kind of trying to figure out what was there.
And my wife and I were based in San Francisco at the time.
But I started interviewing with some companies and some called me back and had good conversations,
had interviews, had a number of in-person interviews, and was offered three different
director of marketing jobs in the next four to six months, something like that.
And I entertained them and it was San Francisco and they were director of marketing jobs.
It was a good salary.
But basically my gut told me don't do it.
Don't take them.
You're not going to be happy.
You might stick around for a year, year and a half.
I didn't really have an interest in playing the startup lottery either.
You never know with companies, especially if you're not the founder, you're not controlling
the ultimate destiny.
And if you're kind of banking on stock being something worth something someday, then it's
kind of a crapshoot.
So I just yeah, I didn't really have the desire to do it and I got laid off on a Monday and
told some people on Tuesday and by the end of that week, I had had a ton of people wanting
to work with me and basically had to stop taking phone calls because I had so many people
wanting me to consult with them.
So I pretty quickly picked up a bunch of consulting work and I didn't have to go back and take
a job.
And so I didn't and wanted to see what my business could be and always figured that
I could go back and get a job.
And I still kind of think about it that way.
It's like, well, if it doesn't work out, I can start another company or I can just consult
or I can go get a job.
So there wasn't a, I have to figure it out in the next month, otherwise not to be able
to pay my bills sort of thing, been fortunate in that way.
So yeah, I just I decided it wasn't for me and I wouldn't be okay with myself if I didn't
give this a go.
Lots of people who were afraid or concerned about the risk involved with starting a company
I think would do well to learn from your example or even my example where I can always fall
back on my programming skills and I know I can get a job as a developer.
So starting a company isn't that scary for me.
And in your situation, you also had sort of a bedrock of skills you could fall back on
and get hired whenever you wanted or find clients.
And so again, starting a company really wasn't that risky or that scary for you.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that's also the value of having a skill that you go deep in, right?
We talked at the beginning about being a jack of all trades and knowing a lot or knowing
a little bit about a lot of things, but also having some things that I know a whole lot
about.
So for example, SEO, right?
And you know, I've been an SEO for almost a decade now, which is a lot of time and you
know, it's constantly changing and you know, I'm not passionate, right, as we were talking
about earlier, I'm not passionate about it like I once was and that's okay, like, but
I'm good at it.
And I can provide a lot of value, you know, to companies doing it.
And sometimes that's, you know, that's all you need.
What are some of the lessons that you've learned from doing your consulting work?
Because I think being a consultant is the perfect bridge between being an employee and
running a more scalable business.
Yeah, it is.
And you know, for a little bit, the first three to four months after I got laid off,
I was basically consulting full time.
And then, you know, evenings and such was trying to carve out some time for, you know,
getting started on Credo and fixing the site as it was at that point, it was a different
brand name and kind of getting it to a point where I could do a launch and then I did that
and then I had to go through a rebranding and yeah, I mean, it's really a lot of managing
your time generate getting consulting clients isn't really a challenge for me because I'm
fairly well known in the SEO world and you know, have a specific niche like type of website
that I work on.
And so basically, if a website that has more than 100,000 pages, that's a pretty good brand
that's dealing with technical SEO issues, you know, it needs a like season consultant
to come in and kind of guide them and work with their team to get things done like I'm
their guy and I know that I can close those projects.
So the Legion part was never hard for me and to this point hasn't been a challenge for
me even now like I still, you know, turn people away that want to work with me directly or
I put them through Credo so it's nice to have that for sure and that's I mean, that's why
I started the business in its first incarnation as well five and a half years ago.
But yeah, it's a it's all about time management. But one thing that I've learned is it's also
really hard.
Once your business gets to a certain point, you know, what your side project, let's say,
you know, like Credo was when I first started working on it, my first not on my own a couple
years ago, it was kind of a side project that was like, Alright, let's see if this can get
going and be a bigger part, you know, of my businesses revenue.
So it's all about managing time and but at some point, the time that you put into consulting
or you know, something like that almost becomes a liability because you have so much to do
with your other business because okay, it's working quite hard is working quite well.
But maybe it's not quite profitable. And so you know, you cut back on consulting a little
bit, and revenue goes up, but then it's not quite up enough that you're profitable. And
so you have to pick up more consulting and the business, you know, slows. So Brian Castle,
a productizing scale talks about this quite a bit as well. And the way he kind of frames
he was a micro comp, the way he frames it has really helped me think about it as well.
So yeah, it's all about all about that time management part there. And I pretty quickly
realized I didn't want to do just consulting, I could have easily done that I could have
easily started, you know, a traditional agency. And that's just not the kind of business I
wanted to build.
You mentioned being pretty well known in the SEO world. A lot of other people here listening
in are trying to build an audience and trying to become well known and whatever area in
which they're an expert. What are some of the mechanics behind how you became well known?
And is that something that you fostered intentionally? Or did it just sort of happen?
I want to say I really fostered intentionally, I basically set out to make friends and I
ended up making friends with a lot of pretty influential people in the SEO world. And you
know, a lot of them are still friends of mine and people that I interact with on almost
a daily basis. And some of them I've done business with and business I would say is
all about relationships, but you know, not also not going into them and being like, I'm
going to meet so and so is that I can become a, you know, a celebrity in the SEO world
or in the you know, jQuery world, like it's not that that's not what it is. It's actually
like, you know, being an interesting and nice person and you know, looking to provide value
where you can. But I would say one of the biggest things that going back to, you know,
I mentioned that I blogged twice a week for almost three years on my personal site. And
I literally just set out to teach everything that I know, or that I was learning. So I
gave away free tools and I wrote about, you know, different trends in the industry and
you know, wrote very specific things about, you know, link building and SEO and what have
you. I mean, this was 2011 to 2013. It was a very different kind of environment than
in the you know, in the digital marketing world, things have changed a lot over the
last five years. But yeah, I wrote a ton, I wrote a ton and you know, I promoted it
and people started linking to me and you know, so my site kind of grew over time. And so
I gained just a big following, you know, my personal site, which the following is not
that big anymore, but gain a big following on Twitter. And you know, that enabled me
to launch and you know, kind of build credo and initial stages, get initial traction.
So building an audience, I still think one of the best ways to do it is to teach everything
that you know.
It's perfect that you've got a blog and your skill set lies and SEO and marketing because
those are two of the best skills that you can use to grow a blog and build your online
presence. You mentioned that a lot of it comes down to teaching everything that you know.
And I think a blog is great for that as well, because it's going to be frequented by people
who don't know what you do and are coming to learn. But how do you flip that around
and reach out to people who know more than you? How do you approach somebody who is famous
or influential, or someone who's extremely knowledgeable and provide value in a way that
they can appreciate?
Yeah, I'd say it's just a matter of engaging with them. Twitter is one of the best things
that's happened to me, you know, as a business, I wouldn't say it's one of the best things
that's happened to the world, but it's been good to me. I would basically just find you
know, just see who's writing interesting things, follow them on Twitter, engage with them,
ask them questions, share it, ask them deeper questions, eventually take it to email. If
you're at a conference, make sure to, you know, say hi to them, and just engage in conversation
there. People can tell if you're, you know, trying to meet them because you know, they're
someone or if you're, you know, if you're genuinely adding value across the board. So
and it's hard in the, you know, in the internet world, like there is so much noise and one
kind of mantra that I try to live by and you know, I don't always succeed in it. But basically
trying to be like a real and a nice person. Some people are like, Oh, I'm just being real
when really there's been an asshole. But instead, you know, actually not calling someone a jerk,
you know, or not like putting, you know, personal zings in, you know, into a tweet to someone
when you disagree with something that they wrote in a blog post. And maybe that's very
like soft, but I think it actually does help you to connect, you know, with people being
a nice, you know, a nice and helpful person to them.
Totally. And I know a lot of people get a lot of email, I get a lot of email. And I
think, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is that people, when they reach out
to others aren't aren't the best at understanding how to provide value and be useful. It's almost
always like, can you help me do my thing? Now, one of my good friends now Julian, he
was actually I had him on the podcast, he was episode number 17 or something. But he's
one of the few people who reached out to me early on when I was working on any hackers.
He was like, Hey, I see that you are starting a podcast. And I see that you've got sponsors.
I've worked a lot with sponsors. Let me just give you some free tips on the best way to
go about getting sponsorships and talk about how they look at things from their perspective.
And it was so useful and valuable to me, because he actually understood what challenges I was
going through and anticipated those, and then gave me all this useful information that I
wouldn't have been able to find otherwise, and made me really want to help him however
I could as well. So going back to what you said, being able to provide value to somebody
is such a great way to build a connection. And it's it's pretty rare, it's surprisingly
rare that people take the effort to do that.
Yeah, totally. And you know, I think another thing there is emailing someone basically
asking them for their advice, right? And not making like a huge ask and expecting a huge,
you know, a huge thing back. But one thing that I like to do is email someone and be
like, Hey, I saw that you were talking about, you know, someone that's pretty influential,
saying, Hey, I saw that you were talking about such and such, I've been thinking about that
for my business, can I ask you a couple questions, right? So then they're basically opting into
it. And they're like, Yeah, sure, send them over. So you send them, you know, two, three
questions that don't, that don't require a super long answer, a long winded answer.
And people are super happy to do that. I'm always amazed at how helpful some of the most
like influential people I know, are just because they're like, Yeah, they're like, I've been
through it, I'm happy to share happy to, you know, help you get to the next level and learn
from my own, you know, learnings, and then that establishes a relationship right there.
And then you can email them in the future, you can ping them interesting, you know, something
you saw, or, you know, there's one CEO of a well known company that a couple years ago,
I helped him out with something. And from time to time, I'll see his name pop up in
the news, I'll just email and be like, Hey, I saw this good work. And you know, he'll
respond like a smiley face or something like that. But doesn't have to be like a super
deep connection. It's not someone you're emailing with on a daily basis. Or, you know, he's
not a mentor of mine. But it's just like, you know, these are good relationships to
have. And they're good, interesting people. So you know, be a be a human in that.
I like what you say about making it easy for people to respond, because anyone worth emailing
is probably somebody who's very busy. And if you can provide the necessary context for
them to understand, and you can keep your emails short, and you can ask questions that
don't require a gigantic time investment on their part, and they're much more likely to
actually get back to you. I think the skill set is also the skill set that you need to
run a company, you need to be able to empathize with your customers and the cost that they're
going to have to pay to use your product. Similarly, if you're going to email somebody,
you need to empathize with their situation and the cost that it's going to take them
to answer and respond to your email.
Absolutely.
Let's talk about how you started Credo. What gave you the initial idea to start working
on this particular product?
Yeah, so the initial idea, gosh, Corlan, this was end of 2012. So it's been history. Yeah,
it's been history now in the internet years. It's basically a teenager now, feels like
it some days. So I was working at an agency in New York City and was doing some consulting
on the side. And basically, I'd gotten a promotion and my boss had left the company. And so I
had taken over some of those responsibilities. And I started doing some consulting while
I was working at the agency because I just I needed a little bit of extra income. And
so I picked it up and was doing that kind of evenings and weekends and got to the point
where I didn't need that work. And so basically decided that I wanted more time in my life
and one more margin in my life. I was living in Brooklyn and was basically 28 years old
living in Brooklyn.
I was single and was spending a couple of weekends a month in my apartment by myself
doing work for clients for money that I didn't need. And so I was like, you know what, I'm
gonna stop doing this, told my clients, they're like, well, who should we work with? I'm like,
Oh, I don't know. And so I had other people come to me want to work with me. Hey, I'm
not taking on consulting. Who's your work with? Oh, I don't know. So I literally built
out a Google sheet of people that I knew in the industry that I trusted and started referring
work to them. And you know, I just email and be like, Hey, I'm getting in all these leads
kind of refer work to you. And they're like, Yeah, great. What do you need? And so I just
like put together their, you know, budget levels, they worked with the you know, size
of their team, the types of services they offered and then would just introduce people
to them. And then I basically realized that lead generation turns out as a big business.
And so I got in a lead that was perfect for a buddy that runs an agency in Utah that they
just started up about eight, six, eight, 10 months before something like that. And I basically
emailed him was like, Hey, man, I just got in this lead that, you know, I think is a
great fit for you. Would you be willing to pay 50 bucks for it? And he's like, Yeah,
what's your PayPal? So three minutes later, I have 50 bucks my personal PayPal account,
I sent him to the intro and I went and bought a domain name and threw it up on some shared
hosting that I had. So you know, it's been boosted bootstrapped and in the black since
day one. But yeah, I was literally built out of a need where I wanted more time in my life.
And basically just had to solve the problem of I have people coming to me wanting me to
do work for them and I'm not doing work for them. So I didn't just want to say no, I wanted
to provide value there. Why did you feel so strongly about providing value there? Because
I think most people in your situation would have just told these people no, or they would
have said, Okay, here's a few recommendations. But you took the time to build up this entire
spreadsheet. What made you feel so strongly about helping? You know, that's a great question.
And I honestly don't know that I have a great answer for it. I've just I've always, I think
been a helpful person. And, you know, saw that these businesses had a very real need
and they needed someone good. A couple of the people that came to me had been burned
by bad SEO agencies. If you know anything about the SEO world, it's, you know, they're
they're obviously the more visible people. And you know, there's the Rand Fishkins and
you know, and those people that are in the Rand is not as in the SEO world as it used
to be. But there are a lot of people that are quite well known. There's also this super
seedy underbelly of the industry, right, which you get in some industries, but others you
don't. And so I was tired of people hiring, you know, a bad agency overseas, or even domestically
that at best didn't grow their traffic and their business kind of stayed steady, and
at worst hurt their traffic and you know, they actually ended up wasting money and also,
you know, their business got smaller and all of that. So yeah, I kind of wanted to solve
that problem.
I think it's fascinating as well to be in an industry where trust and quality are big
issues, it counts so much more to be a genuinely helpful, trustworthy person, it vastly increases
the number of people who want to work with you and increases sort of the service area
of your luck as well. Because when you have these people who you help, they want to help
you. And that's, in a lot of ways, the essence of luck people coming out of nowhere to sort
of help you out.
Yep, exactly, exactly. And yeah, if you're in an industry that, you know, isn't super
trusted being someone that that can be, then that's a that's definitely a way to set yourself
apart. And I wish it, I wish it wasn't, you know, I wish there weren't like people that
were doing bad work for clients. But you know, we deal with the reality that we're given.
So I hear a lot about consulting businesses, turning into product businesses, you mentioned
Rand Fishkin, he's one of the canonical examples of him creating Moz out of his consulting
business. And I think it's happens in part because people spend so much time as consultants
interacting with their clients and customers and companies, they end up unearthing these
valuable problems that are worth solving. But obviously, things don't work out this way
for everybody. And some people end up never stumbling onto a good idea. So what do you
think are some of the levers that people can pull on to unearth good ideas in the course
of doing their normal job or their consulting work?
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great, great question. You know, and the advice that's
often given is to solve your own problem. So that starts with identifying the problems
that you have, you know, and figuring out scalable ways to solve those. So let me let
me talk about that a little bit more in detail. Basically, what what I do, and what I like
to tell people to do is look at the things that you're doing constantly. One of the things
that you're, you know, doing manually that you shouldn't that you don't have to do manually,
right. And maybe this is, I think about it this way, because you know, I have a web development
background. And, you know, you probably think about this way where you're like, wait, why
are you why am I doing this thing? You know, manually here, I can, you know, store all
this information in this one place and click this one button, and all this information
gets combined, it gets emailed up to someone, right. And I don't have to copy paste and
put it into my email system into my into a, you know, a compose window within my email
and send it out, like, I can automate that stuff. Basically, what I do is what I've done
is look for areas where I can kind of streamline solutions to problems that I have, you know,
and making it more scalable that way. And then, you know, also seeing is it a problem
that somebody else has, you know, so for me, it was, when I started accrudo, it was I have
all these leads coming to me, and you know, I need somewhere to send them. And I also
know that agencies are always looking to get, you know, not just more, but also better and
better qualified leads. And so you know, there was a there was a need there, and it's something
that people are willing to pay for. So you know, I've come across so many, you know,
this is what most SaaS businesses are, right, it's something that people have been doing
themselves, they've been doing manually. And now there's this tool, there's, you know,
this company that they can subscribe to, or whatever, that's going to help them do something
better, you know, it's going to solve a problem that they have there. So I think that's one
way that that a lot of consultants and a lot of consulting companies can go into products,
whether that's info products, or SaaS products, or what have you. But there is I will tell
I will say that there is a very, very real difference between running a consulting company
and running a product company. It is night and day, there are things like, you know,
customer support, and you know, development and sprint planning, and you know, whatever
it is, all the things that go into building a product, you don't do those in a you know,
in a consultancy, you know, we're working directly with clients, it's a very different
sort of touch. And you kind of have to figure out which one you're better at and which one
you enjoy more as well. Because some people really enjoy the you know, going deep with
clients and going on site with them and you know, that sort of life. Other people enjoy
the you know, more scalable and you know, having a lot of customers, all them paying
you a few dollars as opposed to having a few customers, everyone paying you a lot of money.
So they're very, very different approaches.
I like what you said about solving your own problem and in combination, making sure that
other people have that problem as well, which was definitely the case for you because you
had people asking for these referrals. And you also had to manage the spreadsheet yourself.
And it was also the case for ND hackers. I mean, I started ND hackers because I wanted
to find examples of people starting these profitable businesses. And I was sort of scouring
the internet trying to do it. And I realized other people are scouring the internet too,
I could see them leaving comments and see them talking about it online. So it was sort
of a problem that I had, and a problem that other people had. So I think that's great
advice and other people should follow it as well.
Let's talk about you getting Credo off the ground. Because another thing people struggle
with is taking those first few steps. And it's very easy to overshoot and bite off way
more than you can chew at which point, you never really get version one of your product
out the door. But with Credo, you had the spreadsheet, you know, you sort of started
off with like the minimum viable product. And you sort of charged your friend over PayPal,
without building much infrastructure at all. Where did you go from there when you ever
worried about biting off more than you can chew and building some big complex product?
I've definitely bitten off more than I can chew. So let's not get confused about that.
There's definitely a lot that goes into it. And you know, anyone that knows me will tell
you that that knows me well, I'll tell you that I put in a lot of hours, you know, I
don't have to work the 900 hour weeks now that I did at the beginning. But you know,
they were definitely those weeks at the beginning. So the way the the narrative kind of goes
is so yeah, I got laid off into September of 2015. And they said, Okay, I'm gonna pick
up some consulting to cover my bills. And I basically started working on the site. So
as you said, I had the the Excel spreadsheet and basically had a website up that was like,
are you looking to hire an SEO agency? Get in touch with us. And you know, we'll help
you find one, you know, but there are no public profiles or anything like that. And so basically,
the first thing I did was clean up the site, you know, kind of dusted off my code chops
and got it, you know, got it back to at least something I wasn't embarrassed to share. And
then I figured out how to do public profiles on the site and and then did a launch on on
product on actually in November of that year of 2015. And, you know, got an initial spike
in traffic and, you know, had some people coming in looking to hire and but basically
at that point, my business model was I listed agencies and consultants on the site for
free. I vetted them out by, you know, speaking with them on the phone and, you know, asking
them for a couple other clients, I could go look at SEMrush and tools like that to kind
of make sure the numbers are going in the right direction. And then I list them, you
know, didn't really have a monetization model that way. And then once they when they signed
contracts, then I got paid a commission for a few months on that. So, you know, it wasn't
a super, it's not a scalable business model. It's not one that I would recommend that anyone
invest in long term, unless you're the one actually selling the work, in which case you
can, you know, take a cut and you also have more control over actually closing projects.
But it got me started. And then from there, you know, I invested down in content marketing
and started generating more leads and then took a couple months off of consulting to
build out the first version of the Credo product, which was basically a marketplace where someone
could come in and list their list their project. And then eventually we built in an email system
that would send the lead out send the project out to consultants and agencies that were
paying to be listed on the platform after they were vetted out once again. So no one's
listed unless they've been vetted out by me seen a couple of their clients. Most of them
spoke with them on the phone even to this day. That's how it is. But you know, I moved
to this like pure subscription model simply because I was like, you know, the the lure
of recurring revenue, right, which we all love in the in the indie hackers world. And
it worked. And I basically went from so in September of 2015, I did about $80 $80 in
revenue with the lead business in December of that year, I did about 5000. It had gone
down to about 3500 by that next April when I launched the you know, the membership site.
And I hit six figures in annual revenue. So $8300 ish dollars a month that September.
So five months later. And then as I said, right now, we're around 20 to 25k.
You mentioned working 80 90 100 hour weeks in those early days. Why were you working
so much? What was top of mind? And what took so long? And if you could go back in time,
is there anything you could do to work less? Do you think it was necessary for you to get
what you were trying to do off the ground?
I think it was necessary. I don't know that I could have done it in another way. Like
there's so many different things to figure out. You know, I think I probably could have
done some more research and kind of, you know, spoken with some more people that tried to
do this sort of business in the past and you know, learn from them and kind of set myself
up for success better. So if I could go back, I would I would do that again, or I would
do that because I didn't do a lot of it at the beginning. But you know, as I said, I
was doing a lot of consulting and I was trying to get this business going. So it was kind
of necessary for me. And yeah, I you know, if I could go back, the things I would change
would be talking to a lot more mentors doing a lot more research on the industry and on
the business models that I, you know, should have had from the start, you know, but sometimes
you really do, you really do have to dig in and it teaches you a lot. You know, you're
doing a lot of a lot of things manually. I'm still a big fan of Paul Graham's do things
that don't scale. But you can also only do things that don't scale to an extent, right
to doing these don't scale gets you to a start. And then you realize where the problems are.
And then you have to think creatively and build the solutions to those. So yeah, that's
kind of how it went. Would I do anything differently? I mean, in retrospect, you know, it's hindsight
is 2020, right? Like, yeah, there's, you know, there's a bunch of things I would have done
differently, probably would have a co founder, you know, would have started building a team
earlier, but you know, I don't regret any of it.
I think there's this interesting dichotomy between learning from your own experiences
and learning from other people. You mentioned that you would go back and talk to more mentors
and talk to people who sort of done what you were trying to do before you did it so you
could learn from their mistakes. How have you shifted that balance as Credo has grown?
I do have a business coach that I've been working with for about a year and a half I
you know, I pay him monthly and we do a few calls a month and he's helped me out a lot
with revenue model optimization and you know, product launches and and that sort of thing.
So you know, that's something I would have, you know, prioritized earlier, though I didn't
necessarily have the revenue to hire a coach at that point. So so it was kind of so that
point it was mentors and there's definitely a difference between coaches and mentors.
Coach is someone that you pay. And you know, a mentor is someone that they're you know,
a bunch of steps ahead of you in their career, they're willing to give you a little bit of
their time and share some knowledge with you. So I also have those and those have been intros,
you know, through friends and once again, you know, just engaging with them online.
And you know, so I'm always super grateful when they give me you know, some of their
time and some of their direction and you know, those have been some of the more influential
things. But then it's also good to have someone you know, they're like kind of in it with
you, you know, a coach, you know, those those people that have co founders, you know, I
think that's that's really nice as well. You know, just someone else to be going through
it with you and you know, four hands is better than two. So yeah, that's definitely definitely
definitely changed as the business has grown. I've been a lot better at reaching out, you
know, to people and asking for help.
Walk me through this process of finding mentors and finding a business coach because I think
a lot of entrepreneurs neglect to do either one of these things. How did you actually
go about finding a business coach? And what are some of the decisions that you've made
that are better as a result of you having these other people helping you out?
Yeah, that's a really, really, really good question. And unfortunately, I'm not sure
I have an awesome answer. I think for a lot of people, it becomes a stroke of luck. It's
a stroke of luck. And luck is hard to replicate. But so I found so the mentors I've I have
were mostly introductions through friends. So I was kind of struggling with with growing
my business. And you know, as I said, like revenue was like 5k four months after launch.
And then three months after that, it was, you know, down hadn't grown at all and was
actually down about 30%. And so I was just talking to a buddy, he's like, Oh, you should
talk to my friend, Chris. And you know, I can do an email intro if he's willing. And,
you know, I bet he'd be willing to hop on a call. And we did and Chris was like within
about five minutes, Chris was like, wait, so you're doing this and your business model
is this that's completely wrong. This is how you should do it. And that's why I launched
the membership site and the subscription business model. So you know, it was basically through
talking to friends, talking to people, you know, that I trusted. And then you know, they
were willing to help me out. So that's kind of how I got connected up with my mentors,
just through connections like that. And then with business coach, so you know, I'm running
a bootstrapped business and came across to this company called the foundation, which
basically helps people, you know, start starting scale profitable businesses. And so one of
the co founders of that Andy dress, who is still my coach, he did a call it the bootstrapped
software summit, where basically it was three days, and it was like eight interviews a day.
And the first one was like people doing like zero to 100k a year, people doing 100k to
a million a year, and then people that were doing you know, seven figures a year in revenue.
And you know, so basically had it broken up like that, I discovered it one day and was
like, well, this is all I'm doing today. And just like watched all those interviews. And
it was, you know, Andy was interviewing people like Nathan Barry of ConvertKit and Dan Martel,
you know, who found a clarity and a bunch of other sites and, you know, some of them
were foundation students, and a lot of them weren't. And so I just learned a ton, he provided
a ton of value there. And so I followed Andy, went to his blog and found some of the stuff
you've been writing and subscribe to his email list. And you know, he has a smart email follow
up that I've implemented that it's like, hey, Andy here, you know, curious why you subscribed,
you know, hit reply and let me know just straight up plain text. And so I responded was like,
this is who I am. And you know, this is what I'm doing. And this is why I subscribed because
I came across you on the bootstrap web summit. And he responds, he's like, hey, I'm starting
to do some consulting and really good at helping people go from like 100k a year to 700k a year
in revenue. Would you be interested in chatting? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So you know, I
was open to it and basically didn't know where to go with my business. And you know, he's
helped me get to the next level. So you know, I basically found the person that is good
at doing exactly what I was trying to do. That was also, you know, two, three steps ahead
of me in their career in their like entrepreneurship journey. And then yeah, just connected with
them, subscribe to their email list and just start interacting with them. And it led to
him being my coach for the last 18 months.
Obviously, you have a lot of knowledge as a marketer and an SEO expert. And that's played
into how you've grown your company. What are some of the bigger milestones and some of
the inflection points and how Credo's revenue was grown and how you've improved your business?
You mentioned one being talking to your first mentor who sort of suggested that you switch
business models. Are there any more like that?
Well, there are a couple. First one was when I first launched the membership site and you
know, it's still a membership on the site to be listed and you know, to receive work
from me. Once again, after they're vetted out, I initially had like a self-serve model
where and I had three different pricing models and basically people could sign up and you
know, whenever you launch something, you get a couple early adopters and then it kind of
like troughs and dies out of it and it had done that and I was getting people applying
that weren't necessarily a good fit. And so I was like, huh, I should add some friction
into here and make them apply and then I'll hop on the phone with them and then if they're
approved then I can send them how it works and you know, send them a link to sign up.
And I did that and basically the number of people applying like jumped immediately.
I actually got to have conversations with people and could figure out if someone was
going to be a good fit. And then I also had their information and that relationship that
could follow up with them if they didn't sign up and make sure everything was going well.
And that was actually weirdly an inflection point. I added friction to the process of
signing up and paying me and it worked really well. So, you know, your mileage may vary
with that tactic or with that strategy. And then the other one was, I basically realized
that jobs were not closing jobs being submitted to the, you know, the marketplace functionality
weren't really working wasn't really working those jobs weren't closing with agencies
and so I decided to go back to the high touch model of basically talking to people that
are looking to hire someone and going deeper with them and what are your needs and what's
important to you in an agency or a consultant and that sort of thing.
And so that's also been another like inflection point, you know, and so and with that I raised
my prices as well. And so I have fewer customers that I'm sending leads to actively sending
projects to actively, but they're all much happier and my business is more profitable
and it doesn't take, you know, a ton of time. I don't have 100 people, you know, paying
me expecting, you know, X number of, you know, leads are there, you know, X amount of budget
like in new leads per month, you know, it's much fewer and I'm able to provide them a
better service.
Yeah, in both of those cases, you weren't afraid to add friction, you weren't obsessed
with scalability and so you injected yourself into this process. And in a way it made you
a bottleneck for sure, but also because you're charging a high enough price point, it didn't
really matter and you could still run a profitable operation. I think a lot of us, especially
developers and product people, we become obsessed with scalability and we end up adding feature
after feature and lowering the price to something crazy like $5 a month in hopes that we'll
make it up in numbers. And that leads to all sorts of customers for nightmares and scalability
headaches. Often it's better just to charge more and then you don't have to worry so much
about scalability and you could actually provide better service to customers by being part
of the experience yourself.
Yeah, totally. It definitely does help. I'm definitely still a bottleneck. I think all
founders are but you know, when you actually create that margin in your business, then
it enables you to do great things like hire people that are better at things than you
are. So yeah, I think that's a great point. No one ever built a million dollar company
or a multi-million dollar company by charging people $5 a month. Even the ones that might
have that cheap starting tier, like Buffer, I think theirs is like, I don't know, $10
a month, something like that. And they may have raised that, but they have enterprise
levels that I'm sure they charge a lot more. There's definitely more friction there, but
it's also because I'm adding a lot more value and people are willing to pay for that, right?
And so because of that, I don't experience the churn that like, you know, a low price
task business that's just like kind of a utility and not something that's necessary for them
to grow their business.
So I mentioned that developers have this weakness of focusing too much on the product, too much
on the code. Do you think that coming from a marketing background, you have an analogous
weakness or bias that you need to counteract as a founder?
Absolutely. Crudo is definitely a marketing first company, which is good. Because then
you get you in one way and that you generate the audience and you're like, okay, like what
needs am I solving? What needs am I not solving? And then you can kind of move to that. But
I will deprioritize product development and that sort of thing. I deprioritize design
and all of that and that's probably hurt my company.
But like all founders, it's your baby and you have a hard time trusting people and hiring
good people. And I think that's something that founders all kind of deal with.
And definitely something that I've dealt with as well, though hopefully gotten a bit better
at it in the last year or so.
Prioritization is tough. And you talked about this when you talked about starting your consulting
business about how much better you needed to get at prioritizing in order to be able
to run your business efficiently. I think a lot of people only hear terms like time
management, they think about how they maximize the amount of time they spend working and
minimize the amount of time they don't spend working, the amount of time they spend distracted.
But in reality, they should be thinking about how to be more efficient with the times they
do spend working because there's at any given time an infinite number of things you can
choose to do. And most of them aren't that helpful. And even among the things you can
do for your business that are helpful, some of them are like 10 or 100 or 1000 times more
helpful than other things. And so it's not just about, you know, working more, more important
than that, it's just working on the right things. How do you decide what the right things
are to work on for a credo?
Things that I'd like to work on, I wish I could spend all day writing, you know, in
marketing, but there's, you know, a lot of operations stuff that has to happen that you
know, I've had different people in those roles and, you know, trying to kind of backfill
some of them so I can focus on the things that I'm, you know, better at and you know,
doing better customer development or persona development and kind of figuring out what
are the true needs of the people coming to the site, right? Who is our audience actually
and what are they actually looking for? So, you know, as you said, it's very easy to get
bogged down. One thing I've learned from I believe it was the four hour workweek or
maybe something else that Tim Ferriss wrote was I have a three times a day reminder on
my calendar that it says, are you being productive or just busy? You know, are you actually doing
things that are gonna move the business forward or are you just like doing things that, you
know, you can do? And you know, now there's anything wrong, you have to do those things,
right? And if your business isn't gonna like go anywhere without doing them, like you have
to do it. But like it reminds me to think like, okay, where do I want this business
to go? And then are the things that I'm working on the highest leverage things? If not, and
I'm not able to stop doing the things. And we can't just like overall as a business stop
doing the things I'm currently working on. How do I hire someone else to do that so that
I can focus on the productive things I can focus on the things that are going to move
the business forward. So it's a constant sense check there.
Yeah, I think about things similarly with ND hackers, I've got sort of all these tasks
for maintaining the status quo and keeping the business running, you know, just staying
afloat. And then I've got these impactful tasks, which rather than just moving me along
the same trajectory, have the potential to shift me on to an entirely better trajectory.
What are the impactful tasks that you are considering for Credo? And what's gonna have
to change to shift you from, you know, making several hundred thousand dollars a year to
making a million dollars or more per year?
Yeah, I need to hire a good team. I need to hire people that are, you know, really good
at sales and sales development, and that sort of thing so that I can focus on audience development
and, you know, the things that I'm really good at. So that's, that's the number one
thing that's keeping me from being able to grow at this point. So that's something I'm
actively working on, working on becoming a better manager and defining the roles that,
you know, I'll need to have. So, you know, I think it's that. And then I think it's also,
you know, as I've alluded to, you know, meeting the needs of the customers. So, or the audience,
so you know, whether that's, well, by the time this comes out, this will be launched,
I'm launching a full time digital marketing jobs board, because people are always like,
Hey, can you help me find a full time SEO consultant or sorry, a full time SEO manager?
I'm like, I'm not a recruiter, right? So but people want to be able to, you know, advertise
to an audience like the, you know, 20,000 plus marketers, I've come into my site every
month. So, you know, I'll provide that. And there are other things like that. There's
education stuff and that sort of thing that so kind of expanding revenue channels as well.
We are approaching the end of our time here. So much more, I want to ask you, but why don't
I close out by asking what your advice is for other people who might not have taken
the plunge yet, but who want to be a founder in the same way that you are, how can they
learn how to hire and manage people? How can they learn how to prioritize well? And where
are all the hats that come with being a founder?
Yeah, so I kind of alluded to this earlier with, you know, with mentors and such, like
find the person that has done this before and read everything they've put out, right?
If they put out YouTube videos, watch those YouTube videos, if they write blog posts,
read those blog posts, and just learn as much as you can, and then reach out to them with
specific questions. That's how you get better at it. And then you kind of have to go out
and implement it. There's no substitute for hard work, unfortunately. So yeah, it's all
about actually going out and shipping, you know, as Peter levels like to say, like to
say, like, what are the five things that are gonna move your business together, move your
business forward the best? Shipping, shipping, shipping, shipping and shipping, right? You
have to keep on shipping, you have to keep on learning, and getting new things out there
and kind of getting that feedback.
Well, thanks so much, Jon, for joining me on the show. Can you tell listeners where
they can go to learn more about you and the things you're working on at Credo, and also
what's going on in your personal life, if you share that stuff?
Yeah, for sure. So my website is getcredo.com, G-E-T-C-R-E-D-O.com. And the best place to
get in touch with me personally is on Twitter, twitter.com, slash DohertyJF, D-O-H-E-R-T-Y-J-F.
And my personal website, which I blog about once a month right now, more entrepreneurship
related topics is JonFDoherty.com.
All right, thanks so much for coming on the show, Jon.
Thanks, Kortland.
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guys leave over there, and it really helps other people to discover the show, so your
support is very much appreciated.
In addition, if you are running your own internet business, or if that's something you hope
to do someday, you should join me and a whole bunch of other founders on the ndhackers.com
website. It's a great place to get feedback on pretty much any problem or question that
you might have while running your business.
If you listen to the show, you know that I am a huge proponent of getting help from other
founders rather than trying to build your business all by yourself. So you'll see me
on the forum for sure, as well as more than a handful of some of the guests that I found
on the podcast.
If you're looking for inspiration, we've also got a huge directory full of hundreds
of products built by other indie hackers, every one of which includes revenue numbers
and some of the behind the scenes strategies for how they grew their products from nothing.
As always, thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.