Weird Growth

In this episode, we caught up with Aaron McDonald, Founder and Director at Pragma Lawyers, who grew a law firm from scratch to over 30 employees in just 6 years. How did he do it? Simple. Provide a better service in an old inefficient profession. Something that people seeking legal advice were crying out for.  We also touched on Aaron's new online arbitration service, Judicate.

Learn more about the two companies here: Pragma and Judicate

Company

Dispute resolution lawyers (Pragma)

Problem

Resolving disputes quickly and cost effectively to allow clients to move on with their lives

Customers

Organisations and individuals

One big piece of advice

Back your instincts and work extremely hard. If you think you’ve got a good idea, it’s worth getting a mentor who has been there done that to guide you through the process

Bullets

(2:56) – The Anti-Law Firm

(4:26) – Purpose before profit: Solving an important problem and backing yourself in

The most successful entrepreneurs are those who set out to solve a real problem they’re extremely passionate about, not to just start a business

In Aaron’s case, he felt strongly about the need to provide dispute clients with more value than they were currently receiving. He took a leap of faith going out on his own with no initial customers lined up, but the problem was important enough to him and he had enough self-belief, that he was able to stay the course over the tough beginning months

(6:02) – How Pragma adjusted their business model from the traditional ‘6-minute’ increment law model to a model that provides more value

(6:49) – How Pragma grew their customer base: Word of mouth (WOM) referrals are one of the most powerful assets for growing a business. Building trust with your customers/clients is the key enabler and driver of WOM referrals

(9:07) – How Pragma leveraged Press Relations (PR) and Radio to grow their customer base

Journalists need regular content and so offering to comment on a news story or write a guest article is a great way to get free PR

Building trust and staying visible through regular content (in Pragma’s case radio and PR) is critical to being front of mind when customers/clients decide they need your solution (expert advice in Pragma’s case)

(11:31) – How Pragma have built brand awareness and trust: The importance of providing value before asking for anything from customers (See: Gary Vaynerchuck speaks about this concept in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

Pragma also provided sponsorship to community sporting teams, e-books (lead generation), and focused on re-marketing to build brand awareness

(15:30) – Aaron’s contribution to the community and the importance of pro-bono legal advice

(17:02) – What Aaron wishes he did differently in his career: It’s better to be hard on the problem and not the person, than hard on the person and not the problem

(18:44) – Judicate – changing the dispute process to online, fast, and fair dispute resolution

Show & Tell

The 5-minute journal – 3 things to be grateful for and 3 daily priorities

In this episode, we caught up with David Beros, Head of Product at DigitalX, a blockchain technology consultancy and development company based in Perth. We discussed the current blockchain scene, where it is heading and how DigitalX uses this technology to improve business process.

Company

Blockchain technology consultancy and development company

Problem

Education and capacity building for blockchain technology (what is the technology, where is it valuable, and how it works) and then using design thinking techniques to uncover areas within business that are amenable to blockchain technology

Customers

Innovation leads and Chief Financial Officers of ASX-listed corporates

One big piece of advice

Jumping in with both feet to a start-up is a necessity if you’re going to make it work. Having ‘skin in the game’ or something to lose (such as money you’ve personally invested in building something) gives you the grit and determination that’s needed to make your start-up a success.

Bullets

(1:50) – Speculative bubbles (Tulip Mania) are human nature

(6:58) – DigitalX’s approach to blockchain consultancy and design thinking

(9:21) – DigitalX’s focus areas: Consulting, development, and funds management (bringing investment exposure in digital assets to institutional investors)

(10:15) – A short history of Bitcoin and its use case as a digital form of gold

(12:25) – How DigitalX approaches the challenge of helping traditionally conservative corporations adopt breakthrough technology: The focus is on enhancing existing processes and core competencies (e.g., cost removal) rather than radical transformation. Secondly, DigitalX helps customers understand how blockchain technology might affect their business in 5-10 years’ time

(14:20) – Applications of blockchain in resources-focused companies: Using a distributed ledger to achieve cooperation with jointly owned ventures

(16:05) – How DigitalX builds relationships with customers: Sales in B2B are relationship driven and have long-lead times (as opposed to consumer-focused businesses where you can leverage digital marketing). Ways DigitalX approach this are: Partnering with EY, running workshops to demonstrate product capabilities, positioning as thought leaders through industry conferences, and posting regular blog content

(19:00) – The importance of providing value to potential customers to build trust before making a sale

(20:25) – DigitalX’s future: Taking proof of concepts to market

(21:10) – Kaleido: Enterprise Blockchain for Modern Business Networks

(22:18) – The future of blockchain and importance of Six Sigma in developing emerging technologies

(24:57) – David’s experience building SellMyShares

Show & Tell

Zapier – Connect your apps and automate workflows

YouTube – there’s nothing that you can’t learn on YouTube

Ammo Marketing caught up with Trackmysubs & EXTAG founder Gabe Alves. In this podcast, Gabe discussed how he built two customer-centric startups and how to navigate the often silent killer "feature creep".

To Learn More on Trackmysubs: https://www.trackmysubs.com/

For EXTAG head here: https://www.extag.com.au/ 

Company

Trackmysubs / Extag

Problem

Trackmysubs: Tracking recurring payments (subscriptions) to online services is cumbersome and regularly results in overpaying for services you don’t want or need

Extag: Digitising previously manual identification processes for engineers in the field

Customers

Trackmysubs: Small businesses and freelancers (design, software, etc.)

Extag: Mining & Oil & Gas Corporations

Two big pieces of advice

Don’t believe the hype. Set your expectations realistically. Most start-ups are a business like any other and don’t go on to become the next Canva. Most businesses will fail in the first 18 months and if you can get to 5 years, you’re going to be one of the rare ones. If you treat your business like any normal business, then you won’t be disappointed when that doesn’t happen and you’ll plan for the longer-term, rather than short-term. Start your business with a long-term plan in mind to make it sustainable.

One thing leads to another thing. You never know what’s going to open the next door, but the one certainty is that if you don’t open the door, you’ll never find out what’s behind it. You build momentum by getting started and not being afraid to go through tough learning curves

Bullets

(5:20) – Thinking outside the box to build your product: hiring a university student

(7:00) – Reaching your first customers through understanding your unique selling proposition, target audience and where you can find them

(9:29) – Determine who needs your product the most and focus your messaging on these customers. Trying to be everything to everyone is an ineffective strategy for acquiring customers, particularly in the early stages of a start-up

(11:52) – How to prioritise features within your product. Early days the focus is on functionality over design, i.e., creating the required functionality to solve your customer’s problem, but not allowing feature creep to occur (features that are ‘nice to haves’ not ‘must haves’)

(17:40) – One big learning for founders of direct-to-consumer businesses: Don’t believe the hype and stay grounded in your expectations

(19:12) – The importance of understanding where the ‘aha’ moments are for your customers. Reducing friction and providing value for them as early as possible

(23:00) – How Trackmysubs retains users

(25:15) – Word of mouth and referral mechanisms

(26:15) – The benefit of having a paid product: if you don’t charge for your product, customer expectations can be lowered which in turn makes them less sticky

(30:15) – Using an end-user first approach to sell business-to-business

(32:35) – Relationship farming: B2B sales requires expanding your network of potential customers and building trust over time

Show & Tell

Family comes first: building a culture that allows founders and employees to put their family first is critical to long-term success and employee wellbeing

Ammo Marketing caught up with Cordially App founders Ryan & Rob. Cordially is changing rental inspections for the better. In this podcast, we focused on a common occurrence for startups; how to sell a product that doesn't exist yet.

Learn more about Cordially here: https://www.cordially.app/

Company

Remote rental inspection

Problem

Low level of transparency in the rental industry between owner and property manager and tenant

Customers

Property managers (primary), tenants and owners

Bullets

(8:00) – There is hope for non-technical founders: Airtable and Typeform are two no-code options that can be used to build an early MVP, and there are many others. Makerpad is a fantastic platform for no-and-low-code tutorials

(12:10) - Building an early prototype/MVP is critical to validating your assumptions and gaining insight into whether customers will use/buy your product

(13:50) - Pirate metrics allow you to map out a customer journey and determine the channels/strategies that can scale your business effectively

(18:10) - A core part of B2B SaaS sales is building trust and relationships with potential customers. This makes in person / real world events (e.g., Industry conference) an extremely valuable acquisition method compared to traditional digital channels.

This is particularly the case in the beginning of a start-up’s life. Paul Graham wrote a famous essay called Do Things That Don’t Scale where he illustrates famous examples of companies such as Airbnb hustling to their first customers through unscalable tactics like door-to-door sales.

(21:50) - Google Ads can provide insight into whether customers are proactively searching for solutions to the problem you’re attempting to solve, and hence can be used to help validate your business or MVP

(22:17) - A core principle of the activation step is providing value before you ask the customer to buy your product. Gary Vaynerchuck speaks about this concept in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.

Some ways to do this can include:

1) Providing a free trial of the product

2) Providing a valuable free guide to the customer

3) Providing a free demonstration of the customer

(26:29) - The retention phase of the customer journey is focused on guiding the customer towards becoming a paying customer once you’ve received permission to communicate with them (via free trial, email form submission, demo, etc.)

Remarketing and content marketing (email marketing) are effective tools for this stage

(31:02) - Revenue is concerned with how people start paying you and the tactics you can use to make this as simple as possible

(33:02) – Referral feeds the top of your funnel (acquisition) and turns your existing customers into your champions

(37:00) – Common mock-up tools: Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch

Show & Tell

Marketingexamples.com

Shift: The Best Way to Manage All of Your Email and App Accounts