What's up, everyone? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you are listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. On this show, I talked 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 makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always,
is so that all of us can learn to build our own online businesses. Today, I'm talking to
Kristy Lawrence, the creator of an online software business called Plan. Kristy, welcome
to the IndieHackers podcast, and thank you so much for joining me.
Good morning.
Good morning.
No problem. It's great to be here.
It's great to be here interviewing you as well. You are full of energy. It's like 8.30
there in Sydney. I am approaching the end of the day in San Francisco.
I'm one of those really annoying, annoying people that wakes up. It's stupid o'clock
to start work, so...
You're going to have to keep me awake. So let's talk about Plan. I actually didn't know
very much about your business at all until I sat down to prepare for this interview.
I won't judge you.
Okay, great. Somehow you've flown completely under my radar, I think probably because I'm
barely on Instagram at all. But after looking at what you've done, I think everything you're
doing and what you've achieved is amazing.
Thank you.
So tell us a little bit about Plan. What is it? Why do people use it? And how was it that
you ended up building this business?
I'm going to go reverse order of those questions. So the reason that I built it was that I was
working in corporate advertising. And I am an illustrator. I love to come home. And I
would illustrate at night. And I started to put my work on Instagram. And I started to
make a little bit of money. And I was like, Oh, there's something in here. And my friends
would ask me, What are you doing? And I started consulting. And I started that kind of started
to take over my life a little bit.
And then I actually got the flu. And the flu virus went into my brain. And it destroyed
my vestibular function. So I lost the use of my balance. And I couldn't see and my entire
mobility was pretty much gone for like a year.
Wow.
So yeah, it was pretty horrible. I fell down a flight of stairs and cracked my kneecaps.
And that was when I was like, Okay, Kristie, you probably gonna have to be at home and
look after yourself now.
Yeah.
But I was always one of those high achievers. So I continued to just kind of be at home and
paint and draw to get me through, you know, being a mobile and the depression that comes
with that. So I put my work on Instagram. And then I was like, Oh, I can subsidize the
income that I'm now losing. And I started making even more money doing that than from
my other job. And again, my friends would say, You know, what are you doing? How are
you doing it? And for me, I felt it was obvious because Instagram, it's a storytelling technique.
It's not about putting your work out into the world and saying, Hey, buy my stuff. It's
just a really beautiful visual way of, of really communicating with other people about
your story. And you take them on this journey where you inspire and you educate and people
just didn't really couldn't grasp it. And so I wanted to be able to teach people that
and the best way to scale my time was to build an app. I sat on the floor and I Y framed
it up and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna make it.
Can you give us a sense? I want to ask you about that entire story and walk through that
in slow motion. But can you give us a sense, just for some context of how successful plan
today in terms of revenue and customers? And yeah, what does it do exactly?
Okay, cool. So what plan is it's an Instagram planning, scheduling and analytics tool. And
it teaches people how to generate leads to make money and build successful businesses
using Instagram. And that's really in a nutshell, it's really beautiful design. That's really
simple, but it's a really like a more intuitive teaching way. So organically, without any
marketing spin, we got over half a million downloads. And I've just started to put some
spins, we're starting to grow really, really fast now. So at like 650,000 downloads in
120 countries, as profitable within, you know, its first year, it was making over a million
annual revenue. And now we're underway building about to launch actually our web app. So that
instead of it being so B2C focused, it now becomes more B2B and enterprise. And we can
move and really, what I'm trying to do is is grow with our users. So as their businesses
grow and they need more team members and any more features that I can offer that to them
on desktop.
So this is a mobile app that you've built that people are paying for. And you reached
a million dollars in revenue in your first year. Correct. And you guys haven't raised
any money at all from investors. I am the cap table looks like Christie 100% ordinary
shares.
This is why I'm shocked that I hadn't heard anything about your business. And then I started
reading about it. And I'm like, Whoa, holy shit, where did this come from?
I've been flying under the radar, a lot of like head down, just work.
So I want to talk to you a minute about yourself. I want to know exactly what kind of person
is capable of starting a tech business from scratch and bootstrapping it to millions of
dollars in revenue in just a few years. What all did you know about entrepreneurship and
tech and code before you started nothing, nothing.
So my I come from an entrepreneurial family. So I mean, I was that girl that stole grapefruit
from the neighbors and sold them and around the block like I was always doing that type
of thing. I was super nerdy. So, you know, I knew how to build WordPress websites and
things but I didn't really have any tech background. I didn't know what on earth I was doing.
And so what I did is I had worked in marketing and digital agencies. So I understood the
concept of wireframing. So I drew out my wireframes and thought, Okay, so how do I actually
get this built? I have no idea. I don't have any friends and I actually don't know anyone
who's built an app before. So, you know, you jump online, you do a bit of reading and I
watched YouTube until my eyes popped out of my head. And the first thing I really learned
was you cannot, you cannot keep your idea a secret. The more people you tell, the more
help that you're going to get. And if it's a good idea, you just have to suck it up that
it's going to get stolen. And it's all about the execution. So that was kind of the first
piece of acceptance for me. And I jumped on Upwork and I threw out these wireframes to
these overseas app developers and said, What do you think and how much would this take
for you to make? And how much would it cost me? Because I didn't know anything. I thought
an app was like $5,000, didn't know anything. And they'd come back and be like, Hey, Christy,
it's missing X, Y, and Z. And I'd be like, Perfect, that's my next iteration. And then
I'd iterate and send it back and then send it out to some new people. And then by the
time I had a product that I could actually get a quote from, I was in a pretty good space.
And I'd been able to, in the meantime, teach myself UI, UX, and create the app myself.
And then I came, because I'm in Sydney, I hustled around a whole bunch of Sydney web
and app agencies and said, Look, I have this great background in marketing. I can how about
if I do your marketing and your clients marketing, you teach me how to build an app, and also
coach me on how to become a CTO. And I hustled a bit. And one person said yes. So that was
how I built my MVP.
Yeah, that's, that's nuts. Because I think most people who don't know how to code, who've
never started a tech business before, don't exactly feel confident about just taking the
plunge and saying, I'm going to get it done. However, I can't I'm going to scrap and I'm
going to talk to people. I'm going to trade people favors for help. How did you get that
confidence? Why did you think this is something that you could do?
I am just wildly optimistic. I am like I have a lot of trust in my ability. And I understand
that I am a quick learner. I learned fast, and I can learn and adapt very quickly. So
I was very comfortable in my skill set that whatever I put my mind to, I'm able to do
it. I played elite sports as a child, and I'd always been highly career driven. And
I was always really disciplined in my approach. I felt confident my ability that I was going
to do it wildly optimistic. And I wonder how much your previous entrepreneurship experience
plays into things. You mentioned that before you started plan before you did any of this,
you were an illustrator.
So I had a web comic for a while and taught myself like how to run and manage a website.
And when I was working my day job, I would like seriously, I love learning. So I'd teach
myself SEO, I did night schools, when I come home on anything that I could, I just love
learning. So I knew that one day I was going to have my own business, I knew it. So I went
and did all these online courses, I probably did like 10 Instagram courses, but just because
I wanted to see if everyone else knew what I knew. And then with SEO, I was like, well,
the best way to drive organic traffic for free is SEO. So now we get over a million
page views to our website a month from my knowledge from learning while I was still
working. So it's all kind of pieced together.
That's awesome, because they don't often talk to people who go out of their way to specifically
take courses and sit down and say, I'm going to learn this particular skill, I'm going
to learn that particular skill. Usually it's more organic, they learn it indirectly from
a job they have, or they just throw caution to the wind, get started and learn it as they
go.
So like SEO then came with SEO copywriting. And then there's a whole big pieces. And then
you learn how to optimize and then you learn how to, you know, keep people and reduce bounce
rates. And it all just you just keep learning and you realize Pandora's boxes open, there's
just so much that you didn't know.
How do you balance learning and actually doing things in the early days? Because I know it
can be frustrating to spend a lot of time learning, but your app isn't really getting
anywhere, or spend a lot of time building, but you don't really know what you're doing.
So taking the time to learn how did you balance those two things?
It was really what do I need to know right now, and then everything else and just push
away. So it's really that just for me, it was coming down to discipline because you
can like literally in a startup, you can work all day and not be working on the right thing.
So for me, it's you know, what what do I need to do today? And for me personally, in my
bootstrap business, I would have to get up and say to myself, Christie, what are you going
to do today that's going to make money? And then I would only focus on that. And everything
else just got pushed.
Okay, so let's talk first about your illustrator business on Instagram. You're selling art
on Instagram. How does one do that? How do you get followers? How do you get people to
buy? What was the process like there?
Oh, gosh. Well, it's about being human people, people know that on Instagram, you're communicating
with other humans. And you're telling teaching people. So for me, for example, there's a
bunch of different themes that I understood worked well. So being vulnerable, educating,
being inspirational, and then you know, saying this is available. So the way that that looks
in illustrating and be like, Hey, I'm experimenting with watercolor and this and that. Here's
where I want to make this. And then you tell people about the journey or the tools you
use and make jokes, like I'm a bit of crazy. So people, you know, they find you based on
the image, but they stay for the captions. So you you really have to inject some personality
got a billion people you're competing with, while you're telling the story. And that's
again, why I made plan because it's you can just, it's got a strategy tool where you can
actually create the themes you want to talk about. So you know, what you need to post
next for to create that whole well rounded story. And I think that's why we've won four
product awards in the last year for that particular unique piece.
And what was the story like here? Like, how did you go from being an illustrator with
zero followers on Instagram to getting your first follower to getting your first hundred
followers to getting I don't know, how big did your Instagram account get?
Oh, no, just like a couple of thousand. But I mean, the thing with Instagram is that you
don't need to have 20 to 30,000 followers or more to be able to make money, it was understanding
that the better your engagement rate is, and the more people that that feel you as an influence
in their life or when they're wanting to buy or so I kind of specialize in fashion illustration.
And it's quite like, it's very specific, I have a very specific like line drawing minimalistic
look. And people that were drawn to that were drawn to that I didn't, you know, do an elephant
and then a wine bottle. And then it was always very, it was the same thing. So people knew
what to expect when I was consistently posting, showing behind the scenes and then showing
about how like that, that kind of all merged together to build wires building this account.
And that you just organically grow friends from doing that. And I think the biggest thing
for me to teach people about Instagram is that it's being social on social media is
so important. And if you can change your mindset to I need customers to I need to make friends,
it'll change the whole way that you interact with people.
One thing you mentioned earlier is that you realized that telling stories, connecting
with people and having these themes around being vulnerable and educational is really
important for selling on Instagram. And I bet you a lot of people are trying to sell
on Instagram, trying to go to their followers there. And they don't think this way. How
did you learn this stuff? And what is it about you that allowed you to be so successful here
where others were not?
I think that for me personally, like I'm a very visual person, Instagram, your follow
button, like if someone's going having a look at your Instagram gallery, that follow button
is right at the top of your gallery. So someone comes in, they've got you know, they might
scroll through your feed one or two swipes, and they need to see within those like two
seconds what you're about and what you do. And if you haven't been able to articulate
that and match your bio, they're not going to follow you, therefore not become part of
your lead generation funnel.
Yeah, but you very few people on Instagram are thinking this way.
Exactly. So the way that my mind works is quite analytical, very marketing structured,
very strategy focused, but I'm also highly creative. So I was able to kind of put the
two together very easily. It came very natural to me.
And what was your life like at the time? Were you working? Were you at home without a job?
I mean, was this 100% of what your focus is on? Or were you doing this on the side?
So what I was doing, so when I had kind of the idea when I was still in corporate, and
when I left that to focus on my health, I was consulting for I was doing SEO, blog writing
and consulting and building websites. And I did some illustrations for Red Bull, like
I was just doing anything I could to survive. And then one day, well, the idea for plan
the app was kind of just floating around in my head and it just kept waking me up at night.
And I remember having this epiphany one day I was walking around like buying a wine decanter
in a shop. It was very random. And I was like, Kristy, you've always wanted a product, you've
always wanted to build something that wasn't service orientated. Here's your idea. Go. It's
going to get made. Like this is a good idea. Why can't it be you? And that was the day
I was like, I'm all in, I'm gone. And at the time, yeah, I was at home full time. And then
that's when I started hustling to get somebody I would work for so that they would build
the app. So then I would have to work full time hours and then go home and teach myself
how to build an app and market it and do all my website stuff at night.
So those hours between, you know, 6am and 2am for me became very important.
You've got a ton of options at the beginning of wanting to start any business. I mean,
you've got to build the product, you've got to find customers, you might want to find
a co founder or teammates of some sort, you might want to validate the idea to make sure
it's good. I want to raise funding, there's a million things you can do. How did you decide
what the first steps were going to be for you right after you decided to work on this
app?
Well, the funny thing is, because I had no tech experience, I didn't know that investment
was even a thing.
Really?
I had no idea. So I was just like, Oh, I'm just going to build this app. And in my head,
I'm like, okay, this is like running a business type thing. So I didn't even know that investment
existed. So I naturally asked my friends, Hey, what do you think of this idea? And when
they said, Yeah, it's cool, I would ask, would you buy it? Now in retrofit, I know that I
was doing user testing and product market fit. Now there's a name for it. Great. And
then after I had kind of started to build the product with the tech team, I started
to then move that process to online and build friends. And like I said before, being social
on social media would quickly spread online what I was working on. And then I decided
to niche down into female creative entrepreneurs, because I felt like they were the ones that
would relate to me the best and I could help them the most right now.
So I found out who they related to, which now is obviously influencer marketing. And
I would turn on post notifications of like maybe 100 different influences, mostly in
the US, because I knew that whatever influences in the US did, it would then filter through
other countries. And then whenever these people posted, I would no matter what time of the
day or night, my poor husband, I would be awake messaging them and it wouldn't be like,
Oh, this is great. Bicep emoji. It was a real conversation that would make friends. So the
day that I launched the app and the app store, I had 100 influences talk about my product.
And that first week I made $10,000 and it was enough for me to then fund my next month.
That's crazy. I want to walk through all those steps because every one of those steps, I
think there's something really insightful that you did that a lot of people might not
understand how to do and want to hear more about step number one, you got a tech team
to help you build this product. You didn't have any funding. You didn't have any skills
to actually code the product yourself. How did you go about getting a team to help you
build your mobile app from scratch?
Well, the first step is obviously understanding how an app is built and what language it is,
because you need to understand all the pieces of your business. So tech learning was huge.
I had been working for free at a web and app agency. So these people had been building
it and I've been getting their help. But obviously, because I didn't really know, I then asked
a third party person to start reading the code and just make sure that everything was
okay. And it wasn't someone that I trusted that I paid on the side to just check in.
And that's how I managed that side.
Okay, so I'm trying to get a clear picture of this. You're working for free for this
agency. They've got programmers, you're drawing up wireframes, the programmers are I guess
spending some percentage of their free time to build this for you. And then you're having
other people check over their code to make sure that it's okay. Is that correct? That's
exactly right.
And how long did it take them before they actually had built something that was functional
that you were proud of that worked?
I was never proud of it. The first MVP was horrible. Anyway, every startup found that
if they don't say that they launched too late. So after about 10 months and this third party,
which I'm very pleased that I made that decision, looked at it and said, Christie, they've got
four different people working on it. It's really not working that well, you're actually
going to have to rebuild this.
Wow.
And so I had to go into work and say, hmm, this isn't working. And I had to leave that
position and remove these people from Bitbucket and all the code. And then this was after
it had been launched. So I had paying customers and then walk away and then hustle as hard
as I could for the next month. While I was doing all the customer support, people were
complaining about bugs. And I just had to be like, yeah, we're working on it. And in
the background, like the swan, like trying to float gracefully and underneath the water
is just piddling like crazy, trying to find a dev team to pick it up, rebuild the app
and relaunch it under the guise of an update on the App Store a couple of months later.
And this dev team, I take it you actually paid money because your app is generating
revenue by this point.
Correct.
Okay, so that's stressful.
Oh, oh my God, it was the most stressful thing I've ever done.
Was it, would you say it's worth it to have gone that free route, even though you had
to replace the app eventually? Or do you think if you could have done it over again, you
would have tried it differently?
I don't know. I think there's a, in hindsight, there's a many things I would have done differently.
I probably would have paid for it rather than work for free. Then I would have had more
control over it rather than going, yeah, we'll get to it when we can. And I would have had
real timelines rather than the bits and pieces.
I think it would have been cleaner. And then like a bartering system, I know it can work.
But I mean, if it goes on for 10 months, it can feel a bit, both sides can feel like it's
not working out. So if I did that again, I'd probably do it in a different way.
For me, like bootstrapping, like I said, was the only option. I'm a female solo founder
with no tech experience. I'd never been in a startup before. I had no connections in
the industry. I had an offshore dev team by this point, like investment for me wasn't
really an option. And I had already got that $10,000 in my first week. So I thought, you
know what, if I just put my head down, and I can get my product in front of more people
and really help them and they can find success on Instagram, then I'm going to be okay. And
so I just kept going.
All right, so you got the app built. It's pretty shoddy. You're not that proud of it.
It took 10 months, but you spent $0 and you got it built. You said the second step was
that you moved online and that people heard about what you're doing and word spread. And
this is before we even launched. And so before we decided to pick a niche, how did you get
word to spread about your app? And what exactly did that look like?
So one of the things inside my app, there's a workspace where you can drag and drop images
so that you have a better control over that storytelling technique. And if you were in
the works, you would have told me, do not put your logo in this space because it's just
taking up room. But the more you know about the people, your people, the more money you'll
make. And that's something that I really, really, I say a lot to people. So for example,
I decided to put my logo front and center in the workspace because social media comes
with a bit of anxiety and people get a bit worried and it doesn't look good. What do
you think about this? Have I got the right filter? So what they would do is they would
use the app and then it would take a screenshot and they would send it to their friends or
they'd post it in a Facebook group with say 80,000 people in it. So they were doing the
work for me. And that's how it started to spread. And then because the product was working
and well, I'm now proud of the product, people would talk about it. And as for example, I
was in LA doing a workshop on how to take good photos of brunch when someone came up
to me and told me about my own app. Oh, wow. So I know. Yeah, it was amazing. So now, Christie,
have you tried plan? Yeah, pretty much. Hey, oh, I've heard of this app that you can do
like this drag and drop thing. It's called plan. Have you heard of it? I was like, tell
me more. What's your favorite feature? I knew that it was, it was all organic. This is after
you launched, right? Yeah. What about, what about before you launched? How did you get
that $10,000 in your first week? I really want to understand the process that you used
because a lot of founders are nervous about their launch. And a lot of founders have no
idea how to get the word out about what they built before they actually launch it. And
it seems like you had an entire pre-launch game plan that was going on that involved
influencers and picking a niche.
That's exactly what was happening. So I mean, this, it was a 10 month, I had 10 months while
this app was being built to focus on a pre-launch. So I was blogging, I was doing, you know, all
the things that don't scale. That's what, so to scale, you're going to do things that
don't scale. And it is so true. So building that community that was hand to hand combat
for months, like 10 months. I was writing email newsletters, like helping people understand
more about Instagram and talking about the algorithm and then that email would get forwarded
on. So a lot of people come to me and they're like, Oh, you know, I've only got 10 people
on my email list. Like why should I, why should I keep going? I'm like, well, I started with
like two. And I still sent out an email as if I was talking to 100. And then it just
grew and people would forward those emails. You don't know where those emails are going.
If you're providing value to people, you can spread anywhere.
So give me an example of like an email that you would send to people in these early days
while the developer team is still building your app on the side.
Quirky comments to make, like for example, how to respond to people on Instagram to get
a high engagement rate, why engagement rate matters over your follower or what's the best
performing color palette for your niche versus your competitors or how to know what's working.
Just really, really detailed, very actionable insights into how the platform works, which
now we've turned into a blog where we post three of those a week.
Yeah, that's super smart because the tips that you're sharing are perfectly aligned
with the audience that would benefit from using a product like plan. And so you're building
this audience, it's actually going to want to become your future customers as opposed
to they may or may not like it. It's exactly what they need.
Yeah, it was always so you have to really understand your person. So I mean, a marketing
background definitely helps with building out customer personas. So I had three customer
personas that I would build, I drew out and had them on the wall. And if I was writing
an Instagram post, I'd be like, hmm. And I look at one of them called Kate and be like,
what would Kate think about this post? And would Kate want to know about this? And that's
how I would write all of my posts on Instagram.
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about these customer personas. Because I imagine a lot
of people have never heard of them and don't know how to use them or why you had Kate and
who else?
I can't remember their names exactly because they changed so much. But say Kate, Sophia,
say for example, so Sophia was a stay at home mom that built one of the side business and
she was selling homemade crafts on Etsy. And her husband could have been away, or he worked
really long hours which gave her the extra time to focus on a business. So we would appeal
to the human side of her. And Kate might have been a social media marketer who worked for
herself and would manage up to five to seven different Instagram accounts for other people.
So really understanding who was going to be using the tool and why that would be helpful
for them and then tailoring content to suit their needs and to teach them was just a huge
focus of every channel.
That's so effective. And it's so smart to do that. Because it's so easy as a founder
to just assume that people will be interested in the things that you write and people will
like the features that you build. But unless you put a lot of deep thought into who your
customers are, what their lives are like, what they care about, what they ignore, etc.
Then chances are that you'll be slightly off the mark. And so that just goes to show how
helpful it was for you also to have a marketing background and to really know this stuff before
you even started.
Yeah, so I think if I could give any advice to those that don't have a marketing background
and looking at doing personas, if you have a think about what you're building and the
problem that you're solving, and then go further and go, Who am I solving this for? And a lot
of people will say, I'm solving it for people like me, which is a fairly fairly common founder
thing. So why can't you then pull apart you as a person and you could create yourself
as the first persona?
One of the things you said you had is that by the time you launched, you had 100 influencers
talk about your product. And week number one, how big was your email list by that time?
No, it was tiny. It was tiny. I think I launched I sent like one email and I had no time after
that because I was so hid down in customer support. I don't think I sent another email
for six months.
Wow. How many people were on your email list by the time that you launched? Do you remember?
Oh, a couple of thousand. It wasn't many. It was mostly word of mouth and then in Facebook.
And then that first week I was really overwhelmed because I've been working so hard and it was
finally out. And then you realize that it's just beginning.
Yeah, you realize that the app that you built actually needs to be rebuilt from the ground
up.
That too. Yeah, so that was really scary. And then it just spread through Facebook groups,
the people I was taught myself ASO. So that's App Store Optimization. So I understood the
concept of creative testing and how to do descriptions. So that I was working on that
behind the scenes. So I was optimizing. Basically, I'm a growth marketer, if you put it down
to it. So I would be doing all of the testing and all of the optimizing of the top of funnel
and then the product funnel. And then now I have a churn funnel as well, to then optimize
every single piece of all the different platforms to make sure they're all being tested. So
I probably run like 15 to 20 tests at any time.
Wow. And you were doing this right from the beginning? Or is this something you started
doing recently?
No, right from the beginning. That's my background. So I specialize in marketing the specialization
I did. It was called Direct Response. So it's about action now and how to drive action now
and then take that message, keep optimizing it, and then use creative to optimize it again.
And you just rinse, repeat. So you'll never... Things are always changing. Like for example,
on my website, we have the download buttons. Some days, one week we have them bright green.
One week we make them orange. One week we have the word free. And then they change sizes.
So it's just continually optimizing to make sure we have the best piece of creative running
at any time.
What's really cool about this whole story so far is that most of the people I talk to
are developers. And that's usually seen as an advantage because it's like you can build
your own app and you don't have to pay for it. But in a way, because you weren't a developer,
you had to get creative. And you kind of outsource that part of your business for free, which
gave you all this free time to do all the marketing work that developers typically tend
to ignore.
I think it's really cool to see that.
They do. They do ignore it.
We don't like marketing.
No. I know it's really funny, but it's just about getting out there and telling your story
and getting it iterate how you talk about it. So when people do their first email funnel.
So I'm at a point now where I now mentor on three startups, like programs, accelerator
programs here in Australia. And then I've got a couple of San Francisco startups that
I actually write their copy and their sales for. So they'd come to me and say, here is
my email funnel. And they'd get really upset when someone would respond and say no, thanks
or give feedback. I'm like, no, no, this is brilliant because this tells you you can iterate
and optimize and keep going.
So then when you get down to like maybe the seventh or eighth version of the email series,
one of them has like a 78% open rate and a 60% response rate. And they're like, how did
you do this? And I'm like, well, you did it. I just helped you craft the test.
Which of these two things do you think was more effective? Like if you had to only choose
to do one of them, building a product that really targeted a specific customer and helped
them with their problems, or doing all of the growth marketing techniques and tests
and experiments that you were running?
Well, to be honest, if I hadn't done the marketing, then they would never have found the product
to know it was any good. And then when they came into the product, like I said, I was
embarrassed of it. So I was iterating there as fast as I could. So I would probably say
the marketing is more important than the product at the very beginning.
You know, I don't know what other answer I could have expected from a growth marketer.
So let's talk about the time period after you launched plan. What was the first thing
that you did after your app launched and you saw that you're going to make $10,000 a week?
I opened a bowl of champagne and I sprayed it everywhere.
Oh, that's life changing stuff. That's huge.
Oh, I was just like, I'd spent a year. So, you know, the idea I'd had for five months
and then it took 10 months to build. And then when I launched it, I knew that it needed
to be rebuilt. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to celebrate this milestone. I got
it out.
And now I'm one of the 2 million people with an app in the app store and I just opened
a bowl of champagne and went crazy. And then I just head down because I think I'm one of
those personality types that, you know, you climb the mountain and you always look into
the next one. And sometimes I have to actually really force myself to stop and look backwards.
What was motivating you at this point where you're like, I want to be a millionaire and
I'm not stopping until this app is huge? Or, you know, what was keeping the fire going?
No. The fire for me was I'd always had my own business. Sorry, I'd always wanted my
own business, but I never had an idea. And I finally had it after like 10 years of just
wanting one so bad. I never wanted to go back to an office. I wanted to choose what time
of the day I swim in the ocean. So I'm a big swimmer. And I love being in the ocean and
I'd look out the window on a beautiful day when I was at work and be like, ugh, I wish
I was at the beach. I wanted to choose when I was at the beach.
Right. You want that freedom.
And then if I wanted to open a bottle, yeah, it's mostly freedom and opening a bottle of
wine when I wanted and, you know, going to, I'm taking the team to Bali next week and
we're going to go and work from Bali for a week and you just need a laptop and Wi-Fi.
So it was just that, that lifestyle of freedom. So it was never really about the millions
and millions of dollars. It was about, you know, being successful and having a successful
business, but really enjoying it.
And yet here you are today making millions and millions of dollars. What does the business
model look like? What does it mean when you say you made $10,000 in the first week? Is
this people, you know, making a one-off purchase?
Yeah. So when I first started, the first six months were a one-off purchase because I needed
the cash upfront. Like I said, like bootstrapped, I needed the revenue as quickly as possible.
And if you are going to choose a bootstrap route, you need to know how your business
is going to make revenue straight away. So I think one of the best things that you'll
have to do is understand what your revenue model will be before you launch.
So my first six months was that one-off purchase. And then I moved to a SaaS model, which is
a monthly subscription. And depending on the needs of the person, there's a couple of different
plans. And so I launched a SaaS model where you could then bring in team members to help
you share the load with your Instagram. So as I said before, like as our team or as our
users are growing, then I wanted to give them the options that we would grow with them.
And so from launching a SaaS to 12 months later, we had a million ARR.
I want to hear about that transition from, hey, you just pay once and the app is yours
to hey, you got to keep paying us every month. Did that go over well with users? And how
much were they paying before and how much are they paying after?
Well, when I first launched, it was like $10. And then it was like, hey, instead of loving
me once, you have to love me every month. And I grandfathered in, I grandfathered in
everyone that had already done the one-off purchase, because they were really important.
And I think, especially when people are trying to raise or in Silicon Valley, from the experience
they have with working with startups there, they're really engrossed in how much money
they can make immediately to get money traction quite quickly. But for me, I saw more value
in them, in those people being early adapters. So I just grandfathered all the people in
that had bought the app as a one-off purchase, and sent them all a message and said, thank
you, please help me share the word. Your grandfathered in forever. Please send me your feedback like
a very personal message to all of them. And then when I relaunched as the SaaS, the people
finding my website, they didn't know it was a one-off purchase before. They had no idea.
They didn't have to now.
So it didn't really know. So I mean, I'd done some urgency messaging through my email list.
And so I got as many people to pay upfront as possible before I switched. But it was
pretty hard to go from making that much money a month to then getting $1,000 a month because
now everyone was only paying $3 and then Apple take their cut. So it took a while to build
up again. And then it just took off, which was amazing. And just like 25% growth every
single month hasn't stopped yet.
That's absolutely huge. Let's talk about your team. You mentioned you've got a team now,
you're going to Bali. At what point did you make your first hire?
So it was me and a dev team for probably a year and a half. And I started to suffer from
burnout pretty badly. And there was one time that, I mean, and this is the part of being
a non-technical founder, you don't really understand some of the complexities. You just
think that a developer does all the developing things. And when I worked myself into an ambulance,
it was time to get hired. So I put out virtual assistant calls. And obviously, I didn't have
great amounts of cash. So what I would do is I would hire someone to build out the blog
posts and just write the skeleton frames. So it basically gave me back some of my time.
So most of them were virtual assistants for blog writing, for admin assistant. And that
was really it to start with. I didn't really have any hires for like two years.
It seems like we just skipped over a whole story there. You burnt yourself into an ambulance.
So the app was doing really well. I just moved it to SaaS product. And it was starting to
really build. And I think I had like maybe 10,000 people a day in the app by this point.
And my developers had accidentally hard coded the IP address into the app. So when Amazon
servers went down in March last year, and then they reset themselves, the IP address
no longer matched. So here I had these 10,000 people every day open the app, and they just
got a black screen. And it was horrific. So here they are, all these people that I'd been
training, you need to use this app every day. It's going to help you grow Instagram, suddenly
not available. So we got it fixed as quickly as possible. It cost me $5,000 to then find
an Amazon specialist to redo my architecture. And then I had to push it through the Apple
store and their review process. So this is a week of a black screen of death. Really,
really hard lesson to learn about being a non-technical founder and needing help. And
what had happened is all these people were now like, we can't use the app. So the reputational
damage where people, because it's a social product, would jump on social media and be
like, Oh, I hate this app. It just broke. And I really bagged it out. That was heartbreaking.
And then I got 7,000 emails within a couple of days saying, What's wrong? It's all broken.
And like I said, it was just me. It was just me at the time. And I was actually away for
a wedding. So it just complete overwhelm. And I was like, Oh my God, everything I've
just worked for is down the drain. Do I quit? This is horrible. How do I come back from
this? And then I started having these horrendous panic attacks. And someone thought I was having
a heart attack called an ambulance.
You literally worked yourself into an ambulance. But that's a tough situation to deal with.
I mean, I talked to people who get bent out of shape because they get too bad comments
online. They don't have an entire business down for a week with thousands of emails.
How do you how do you psychologically bounce back from that?
It took me a while, I'll be honest. So I went I was staying with my little sister and she
took me to a Justin Bieber concert. Okay, so take you take you out of the day to day.
And my husband would come home from work and he I couldn't physically I couldn't handle
opening the support inbox. So he and the VA's would jump in and they would, they sorted
out my entire inbox. So when I'm I was mentally ready to come back, which took like two weeks.
Everything was clean, I didn't have to deal with most of that. So I was very, very lucky
that I had a supportive partner.
You know, there are, I think, two schools of thought that I see around working a lot
on your business. And most people, you know, sort of traditionally believe you have to
work all day every day in order to succeed because the startup is just that hard. And
then there's, I think an increasing number of people who say the opposite that working
hard is not only unnecessary, but that it's counterproductive. What do you think about
this based on your experiences with plan? Did you have to work as hard as you were?
Yes, I did. It's just no, I didn't really have another option at the time. And I didn't
I wanted to pour everything I had into it because I knew how many startups fail. There's
such as the high 90s, this is how many fail. And even after launch, like you're never really
in the clear. So I felt, I felt to me like, I'm going to give this everything I've got
to make it as successful as possible. And then I probably got a bit obsessive and a
bit manic. But had I not have done that, then I wouldn't be where I am now where I'm able
to create that balance and that lifestyle now. So now I go roller skating, I swim all
the time, I illustrate again. So those first two and a half, three years of, you know,
really getting it out. I don't think I would have changed it. No.
And what's what's different now, because I know a lot of founders who are two or three
years in their business, and they're very successful. And they're still working 80 hours
a week.
Yeah, I mean, I'd say I still do 80. But I'm not doing I'm not doing 16 hours, seven days
a week. Yeah. So let's talk about I was literally working that much.
Yeah, that's an insane workload. I think one of the things that's interesting that you've
talked about is how much plan was growing in the early days. And I assume still is you're
getting 1000s of downloads a week here. Why weren't people downloading?
Yes, we're acquiring just over 15,000 a week at the moment.
Wow. Yeah, that's nuts. That's just an insane amount of growth. Why do people like plan
so much? Why aren't people using your competitors?
Yeah, I mean, there was there's some of the traditional Instagram marketing tools that
really clunky. They don't I didn't feel and the reason that I built this because I had
a look at them when I went yuck, these are these are horrible. I hope they're not listening.
They're just clunky and old and they weren't intuitive. And I just felt none of them understood
the platform. And I think as soon as you open plan, and you get the sense of what it's about
and what we're trying to becomes very clear, the differentiator like this. For example,
I saw so many people posting pictures of cocktails late at night in a bar on the Instagram feed.
And I just slapped my forehead and be like, What are you doing? Those photos never work.
And I just wanted to be able to find a way to teach someone this type of photo does not
work, please start posting it. So I created this feature inside plan where it tells you
your best performing color palettes. So it tells you you're based on your engagement
rate, your lights or your comments that you're getting on these photos combined. Over the
last 12 pictures, what were the best color palettes that you used and like I guarantee
99% of the time that color palette will not be dark brown or orange. So it shows people
either these use the bright lighter colors or maybe the muted colors. And then you can
then search your competitors and see what colors they're using. And then we try and
teach people so inside that you get a message and says try not to search for your competitors,
find people that share your target audience and your peers. So then your your mind is
open to possibility. And with those such advanced analytics, you can just optimize and grow
so much faster. Yeah, that's, it's cool to hear because I think a lot of people are afraid
to enter a market where they're already competitors, they say, I've got an idea, they look out
into the world to see someone's already doing that and they say, Oh, it's too late for me.
I've got to go work on something else. What gave you the confidence and the launch plan
and how do you think about the competition nowadays? Is it still just about the competitor
sucking or do you feel like people are copying what you're doing? You need to defend. Yeah,
they did copy me now like some of them even sign up with their work email address to my
email list and I'm like, No, really? And then when I came out, like I know I'm on their radar,
but I just, there's still like 1 billion people on Instagram, the market's so big and none
of them were doing it properly. And I still don't feel that they've iterated correctly.
So it just gives me more motivation to keep going. What about funding? You mentioned that
when you first started, you didn't know anything about the tech industry, you didn't know anything
about capitalist and so you felt you have to be trapped. At this point, you've got competitors
trying to copy you, you've got 15,000 people joining a week, I'm sure there's a million
things in your to do list, you're still working 80 hours a week. Have you considered raising
money or are you going to keep bootstrapping? Well, I have I have considered it. So I've
got people now. So I, I wanted to learn what pitching was like. And as a founder, it was
something like I said, I love learning. So I put myself through night school for a, there's
an organization in Australia called Alivaco. And it's for female tech businesses with
mentors that teach you how to pitch and really understand what that process is about. And
I was in the top three of my cohort and then got to pitch to a couple of like the EYs of
the world. And that gave me some really great feedback. And that was kind of my open my
eyes into what venture capitalists would look like. So I started to meet with a few and
I did pitching in real life. And I got a few offers. But the more I thought about it and
how fast plan was grown, I was like, Do I really need this? Do I really need this? And
then I kind of put it on the back burner again, I just kept building. I moved to San Francisco
for like between last year, I was living over there for six months, and then came back. And
the growth was still happening. So I'm at a point now where angels are reaching out
and offering money. And I'm working out whether or not that's my next move. Because to be
honest, it's the apps profitable. And now it's funding a web app launch. So once that's
up, I'm just like, Well, do I need it? It's just, it depends on what you want as a founder.
Because for me personally, like that freedom, like had I had got investment and said, I'm
going to take my team to Bali, I doubt that that would have been a good idea.
Yeah. So I think another offer that you've gotten besides just fundraising is an offer
to acquire plan. And you turned it down. What's the story there? I did. And so when I was
living in San Francisco, I had a company approached me for an acquisition. And we had a chat over
a few months. And I just felt like I hadn't, I hadn't finished. Like I think it might sound
crazy, because a lot of people say you need to sell when it's the right time, meaning
just before it hits that curve. But I felt like I really I put so much work in and I'd
sacrificed so much and I'd been so unwell. And here was everything just coming and coming
to fruition that if I gave it up, I'd be always thinking what if and the web app was you know,
half built at the time. And I just felt like I wasn't ready. And obviously it wasn't enough
money for me to give up all of those dreams. How much money was it? Can you share?
No, I can't. But it was, you know, it was a couple of mil and more than that. But yeah,
I just, I don't know, it just wasn't wasn't right.
How do you what goes into making a decision like that? I mean, I assume it's more than
just gut feeling. It's it's did you spend a lot of time thinking about it? It was like
an instant rejection.
I spent months, months and months in talking like talking through with friends, advisors,
family, just talking through what it would look like. And I'm trying to visualize what
was my life would look like had I had been acquired and what my life would look like
in this other person's company and in their culture instead of the culture I'd built in
my team. And was that an environment for me that would work well? It was obviously the
money like being a founder like a having a founder with a sale under your belt would
be a great achievement. But at what price to me wanting to see out my vision? So I just
decided to hold we still keep in touch. It's not as I was a straight no, but just not right
now.
Right. So I think one of the coolest parts of your story is that this is really you doing
all of this as a first time tech founder. Do you ever feel like that's a disadvantage?
And if so, how do you compensate for coming into this with no real experience at all?
Well I compensate by being wildly optimistic. I think one of the benefits to it is that
I don't have preconceived ideas. I don't have knows I'm just like this is what I want to
do and I'm going to do it and I don't have I don't have any experience to go on that
like this this type of company did that and it didn't work or like I just don't have any
of those roadblocks in my mind. So I'm able to just keep pushing.
Do you ever feel like there are things that you know, you may be learned later than other
more experienced founders learn and that's a disadvantage or things that you don't know
that you feel a little imposter syndrome over?
I'm definitely like when I'm asked to speak about being a tech founder, I'm like, Oh,
there's so many people that know more about the tech. But then I'm like, you know what,
I've learned so much and I've got to where I am that I am able to have the confidence
that I do know what I'm talking about. And when I talk to other people like when I was
in Silicon Valley and working and living out of there, the people that I'd meet, I would
be able to actually hold proper conversations and give them ideas and hold my own and I
was like, you know, I do know what I'm talking about. So it gave me being around peers gave
me because I was at home in my yoga pants for a lot of the time gave me the confidence
that I really did know what I was talking about and I had learned that much.
Yeah, it's crazy when you're working by yourself. You don't really it's hard to benchmark yourself
against other people and it's always it always seems like they know more because you're looking
at the internet where of course, everyone's got the answers to everything.
Yeah. Well, then you actually talk to people in person. You're like, God, it's not so bad.
I'm not, you know, I'm right there with it.
Well, sometimes, yeah, sometimes the scary thing can be that a business can only grow
as fast as the founder can. And so I did feel like had I if I did this again, there's so
much I would have done so much faster. And I wouldn't have to research how much something
like intercom might cost or I wouldn't need to go, okay, in the analytics deck, what on
earth is that? And what what goes in there? Like, I just would know what products to use
now. So it's those types of things. Yes, I did have a disadvantage, but I got to learn
from complete scratch. And now I get to mentor other people. So I don't know.
What are some of those things? Because I'm sure a lot of founders listening in would
love to know what they're missing out on right now that, you know, future them would look
back on and say do this differently. Hmm. Well, first of all, the non technical thing
you really need to have people that can help you with the different pieces. So who does
what like what's the difference between a back end and a front end developer and why
you choose Vue JS over react. So that's getting pretty nerdy, but it's understanding why your
product works how it does and getting the right people to make it. So for example, my
website, because we have so many visitors, it kept crashing. And I didn't have enough
storage space. I couldn't work out what on earth is going wrong. And now I have a complete
DevOps team that live in Canada that have to check in on my website all the time to
make sure it's not down. And Google's not upset that it's going down and deranking my
search listing. So that's one thing I would have done differently is understand that more
about what the developers do faster. And then a website, you don't just grow traffic and
it just works. There's like an entire maintenance piece there, being consistent and being just
can keep putting your feet in front of each other. Because when you look back, you realize
just how far you've gone. What are some of the things that you've tried in the course
of building and growing plan that haven't worked like you thought they would? Or is
everything just been smooth sailing? No, it's definitely not been smooth sailing. There's
always if I think there's if there's not seven buyers burning your business, then you're
not close enough. There was there was one thing I tried to do to make more cash because
I needed more money to get better stuff. So what I was doing was yes, I had VA's but they
were just writing the skeleton and then I'd have to go in and write the entire blog post.
So I couldn't afford a copywriter. So I was like, okay, I need to find a way to make more
money faster to build my team. So I created a side service with a retoucher in Russia
where people would send me like 30 images for their Instagram and he would professionally
retouch it and send it back. And then someone would have an entire month's worth of content.
And it sounds like a great idea. But the market that I had, I didn't want to pay for it. And
it became very manual and I had to do so much customer support back and forth because when
someone says I want blue tones, it's so subjective. So that in itself is a product in itself.
So trying to do two products at once didn't work. And that's when I was like, okay, no,
Chrissy, you actually really need to focus. And I just abandoned that still sitting somewhere
on my website hidden. And just focus. And that was kind of what taught me just, even
if it's going to be a bit slow, just keep going this way.
What about the flip side of things? What are some things that you've tried to do to help
you grow a plan that have ended up working really well?
Yeah, so after I had taught myself the SEO and our website was starting to build, I also
learned in that process that people were searching about Instagram very regularly. It was a very
hot topic. And my audience, most of them have blogs. And I knew that about them because
of doing the personas and everyone needs traffic to their website.
So I went out with an email that said, hey guys, I know how you can get traffic. Here's
a trendy topic. Here's the title. Here's the meta tags for your images. And here's some
rich imagery that you can use. Go. And by them telling their audience how they built
their Instagram feed and the filters they use, created 1500 backlinks for me in the
first six months, which pushed me to number one in search for Google.
It's remarkable to me how consistent this is with your story that you sort of bootstrapped
every process by figuring out how you could help people accomplish their goals as much
as you possibly could. It was very selfless. It was what other people need. How do I help
them get what they're trying to get?
Yeah, so it's always intrinsically about helping and making other people be successful. And
that's what's been driving the whole product.
What do you think is your favorite part of running Plan as a founder?
Because I'm an inventor and I'm an artist, I get to have a product that I've personally
designed in the hands of that many people. And it's helping, we should be at a million
by the end of the year. And I get to help that many people build their own freedom like
I have. And then I also get to hire creative people to have freedom in their own life.
So for example, the people that I hire, I say work from home some days, or if you work
to your own rhythm and you work like me at five in the morning, then go home at night
and have the days off or if you were to work in the weekend, take Friday. So I'm able to
give that freedom to other people like me that I wish that I had.
Yeah, I bet that feels good.
Yeah, it's really nice.
I'm curious about your plans for the future plan. I mean, you've got hundreds of thousands
of customers going on a million, you're generating tons of revenue, where do you go from here?
And how do you get there?
So I'm launching my web app very, very soon. And I think with a product that's in tech
that's also latched onto social media, your product roadmap can't really be any longer
than six months because it changes so quickly. And I have my ideas of where plans going.
I could love to build in some AI. I'm working with a data scientist at the moment about
how we can work on particular scatters to get people more of the help they need. And
eventually, I'd like it to not be just Instagram and have it more of a strategic coach for
marketers so that you don't need a graphic designer, or a social media manager. My product
should take over all of that. So ideally, I'd love to go run in that direction. But
time will tell.
Yeah, that's a lot. And it's funny because you said you can't really plan more than six
months ahead in advance. That makes it really challenging because you probably have a hundred
different ideas for things you want to work on. How do you prioritize? How do you know
which one's the right one? Which one should wait?
And for me, it's a little bit easy. It's like, what do my people need? What are they telling
us that they need? Listening to their feedback and understanding where in our product they're
having the most trouble with, or what their challenges are on Instagram. So one of the
questions I'll ask is what is your purpose on Instagram? And what is your biggest roadblock
to getting there? And then I spent a lot of time coming up with creative ways to solve
that problem. Because when they ask for something, it's usually not what they actually mean.
I think that's great. A lot of founders don't understand that your customers aren't expert
product designers. They're not going to do the research. They're not going to figure
out what the features should be. It's up to you to put in that work and to find out exactly
what their goals are and what their obstacles are.
Yeah. And then how can... And then usually I'll go back to them with like four options
and be like, would any of these solve it? And that's when I work out how to keep going
forward.
What's your advice, Kristy, for other first time founders out there or for people who
are maybe just thinking about starting a business? What can they learn from your story and your
experiences?
Do it. I think that I would recommend just getting out there and telling everyone what
you want to do. Because the more you talk about what you're working on and the problems
you solve, the more people that you draw in to your life that can help you and will be
your cheerleaders. So when you do launch everyone that you know that love and cherish, you will
talk about it on your behalf. So the biggest thing for me is that you don't know who's
going to come into your life because the magic happens when you leave your house or when
you talk about it. So for me personally, I'd be working from my yoga pants in my spare
room, but it wasn't until that I went to night school and started going to meet up. So I
met, for example, one of my first mentors who lived in Silicon Valley and she invited
me to live with her for free for three months. And that's how I got my foot in the door to
then go and experience Silicon Valley. So you never know what's possible. Had I thought
that my life would be this, while I was two years ago sitting typing away at my corporate
desk job, I couldn't even imagine what my life would be like now. So my biggest thing
is just go.
I still can't get over the fact that it's only been two years. I mean, that's such a
blazingly fast amount of time. You mentioned earlier that you also are a mentor yourself
and that you mentor other startup founders. What kinds of advice do you find yourself
repeating often and what do you think people need to hear?
Repeating very, very often is, will the people pay for your solution? So understanding if
the problem that you're solving people will pay for is literally like I just repeated
that three times then, but it's literally the first thing that comes to mind. Having
your revenue model sorted out, knowing that it is flawed and it can be changed, but people
a lot of the time just think, and in Silicon Valley, again, it's unicorn or basket as many
users as possible. But I think for here in Australia, we are more pushed towards starting
to make revenue quicker. So there's a lot of that. And then for me personally, because
I'm so visual, there's no excuse for something to look bad and not function well.
Okay, so to summarize everything, number one, get out there and do it. Don't be afraid to
tell people what you're working on and share your ideas. Make sure you're solving a problem
that's valuable enough for people to pay for. And make sure you actually have a business
model. So when people want to pay you, they can.
Yes.
That's all great advice. Thank you so much, Christy, for coming on the show and sharing
your story. Can you tell listeners where they can go to learn more about plan and also what's
going on in your personal life?
Definitely. So we post three blog posts a week that will really help you grow your Instagram
with really tangible tips. And that's at plannedat.com. And then on Instagram, we're also at plannedat
where we do heaps of mini tutorials and lots of great coaching over there. And me personally
on Instagram is Christy Lady Lawrence.
All right, Christy. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
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As always, thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.