Nathalie Lussier - Founder of AccessAlly: Transitioning from Services to SaaS, Growing a Bootstrapped SaaS Business, and Building a Business with Your Spouse

Nathalie Lussier  00:00

I spent a lot more time doing customer research and actually getting on phone calls, or Zoom calls with people, and just figuring out what is it that they actually struggled with. So for the healthy eating side of things, people said that it was cravings that they had issues with, and I thought they just needed more recipes or more generic advice. And when I realized, oh, cravings, yeah, I can relate to that. I made a course all about cravings, and that is what really started selling.

Callan Harrington  00:26

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of That Worked. We have a great episode this week. I'm joined by Nathalie Lussier. Nathalie is the founder of AccessAlly. AccessAlly is a digital course and membership solution for industry leaders. She believes that access to education can help defy stereotypes and make the world a better place while providing a sustainable livelihood for enterprising teachers. Natalie is an award winning entrepreneur who has been making websites since she was twelve years old. She has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Success Magazine, Entrepreneur, VentureBeat and Mashable. And I gotta tell you, I learned so much from this interview, it took me longer to edit the episode, because I kept going back and taking notes. Some of the things that we talked about were building a cohort based course and a digital course, which order to build that in. If you're creating content at all, you're probably familiar with those. It's a really interesting way, whether that's your full time role, if you're trying to do one of these on the side, it was super, super interesting. We talked a bit about transitioning from a service based business, to a SaaS business. And a lot of people that have service based businesses have interest in a SaaS business, and Nathalie talked a lot about how she did that. I thought it was really interesting. We talked about Nathalie building a business with her spouse. And in particular, I know a lot of people are interested in this, she gave great guidelines on what needs to really be there for this to be successful. And the part of the conversation that I really love the most was talking about growing a bootstrapped SaaS business. If you're unfamiliar with the term, bootstrap just means that you're not taking on outside investment. You're growing from your own capital, that you have, the cash or money that you've saved up, as well as the revenue of the business. And the goal is really to get to cashflow positive, or have enough revenue to cover your expenses as fast as possible. And you don't hear about this all that much for SaaS businesses. You hear that quite often for service businesses. So it was great getting her take; the pros, the cons, what to be prepared for. It was a great conversation, and I really learned a lot. So with that, I'm done wasting your time. Let's get into the show. All right, Nathalie, welcome to the show.

Nathalie Lussier  03:33

Thanks so much for having me.

Callan Harrington  03:35

I'm excited to have you here because, well, we're gonna get into it, but I love what you did. You started a service business, and then converted that into a software company. So, that's something I'm personally interested in and excited about. But before there, where I'd love to kick this off is tell us about how you got your husband to quit his job?

Nathalie Lussier  03:55

Yes. So he was working as a management consultant in New York City, crazy hours, you know, commuting and traveling a lot. And my business was at a point where it was basically just myself and an assistant, and we were making a good amount of money in my company. And I was like, come on, quit your job, join me in the business, it'll be great. We can work together. I had all of these things, you know, in my mind of what it could look like. And he was super resistant. He did not want to quit his job. He definitely had this mindset that, you know, he had to be the provider and he was on his own career trajectory. And all it took really was him realizing he could play video games during the day for a while to say "yes, I am going to quit my job." And oddly enough after he quit, he played video games for a while. His job offered him a contract which paid even more than what he was being paid originally. And I was like, what! This is even crazier. So, really listening to your wife is the moral of the story here.

Callan Harrington  04:59

Make sense. Makes total sense. I mean, I get it, if you could say, oh, wait, I can get a few more hours of video games per day, no brainer. It's an absolute no brainer. So I got a couple of questions even from that is, tell us a little bit about the first business that you had started.

Nathalie Lussier  05:18

Yeah, so I started my very, very first online business in the healthy eating space. And that was just a passion of mine, you know, eating well. And everywhere I read blogs said, you know, start a business about your passion. And so I did that, and I call it my training business, because that's where I learned how to do marketing, how to do email building, and website, you know, everything, all the stuff that ended up being a really important part of my business and my growth. And I realized, you know, I was passionate about the topic, but I wasn't certified in, you know, nutrition or any of that stuff. And I knew if I wanted to go down this path, I would probably have to go back to school or do something to really pick up my skills in that area. And talking about, you know, smoothies was probably not going to be enough forever. So, I decided to pivot back into tech where, you know, I had a degree in software engineering, and I said, okay, well, people keep asking who built my website and if they could hire me to do that. And so I pivoted into web design. And then eventually, that turned into more consulting on the marketing side. And that is the real business that took off for me.

Callan Harrington  06:03

Was more of that consulting on the marketing side, and you started out in this healthy eating blog. So, here's one thing I'm curious about; what year was this?

Nathalie Lussier  06:20

So that was 2008. So, I graduated in 2008. And I had a job offer on Wall Street for a tech job. And I turned it down to start that business. Because, you know, I had read a lot of stuff about the four hour workweek and all of these alternative to traditional career paths. And I was like, I'm gonna start a business. And I knew like, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a mortgage, this was kind of the time for me to try it. And so that's what I did. That's when I started at that time. And 2010, 2011 is when I pivoted into the web design side of things. And that's when things really started to take off in my business.

Callan Harrington  07:06

One of the things I'm curious about was- so 2008, and you're essentially we're going this what's now called a content creator, but where does it really- it really wasn't called that at that point. What was it about that that kind of attracted to you? And then as a follow up to that, what principles from doing that help you in your business today?

Nathalie Lussier  07:27

Yeah, so I had always enjoyed writing, you know, I used to write poetry and things like that. So I think the blogging aspect of writing more, I'm an introvert, you know, I knew like sitting at a desk writing and coming up with ideas was something that I would enjoy. And I did have a YouTube channel back in the day, too, you know, with smoothie recipes, and all kinds of things. And yeah, I feel like that was really early days, for sure, in so many ways. So it was just a lot of trial and error. There weren't recommendations for how to be a content creator, and how to make money with that. So a lot of it was trying to figure it out and make it more of a business. So, that's when I ended up pivoting because I realized, like content in this space was not necessarily enough. I had to have online courses. I had to have actual membership type things that I could offer people. And so that's where I learned all of those things. And I realized how I could help other people with that, too. And some of the things that have taught me, you know, those early on days is really about understanding your audience. And I think that that is something we still use a lot in our business today. So just understanding what people are looking for what they're struggling with, and not making assumptions. Because back in the day, I made so many assumptions about what people wanted from me, in terms of content and solutions. And I think that when you're actually talking to people, you get way better answers than just thinking through, like I said, by yourself, in your home, on your computer, you're not going to get those answers that you're looking for.

Callan Harrington  08:48

Yeah. 100%. Where did you even get information about doing a lot of this at that point?

Nathalie Lussier  08:53

Yeah. So, back in the day, it was pretty much just blogs. Yes, there was YouTube and other things. So, there were a couple of things and resources. And I would say there were definitely some pioneers. So, you know, there was Copyblogger, there were a couple of people who were already kind of on the content side teaching that, there was BlogWorld Expo, which I ended up speaking at a few times later on. And there were a couple of those pioneers in this space, but definitely was the Wild West, right? We were all trying to figure out how to monetize, how to make this into a business. And I definitely learned that just blogging and trying to rely on ads was not going to be enough. So, that's when I ended up creating online courses and memberships. And that helped really set the course for where my business is today.

Callan Harrington  09:38

And that's really interesting. So if I'm hearing you, it's learned a lot about blogging. Great, that impacted how you market your business today. But what you found was, I'm really dependent on ads, you've got to get a lot of people, is my guess, in order to be able to sell those ads. And that's hard, because it can be up and down, and you're still at the mercy of some sort of change and whatever that may be. And then you started doing the online courses. Tell us a little bit about that. How does one go about creating a successful online course? Because it sounds great. And it's something I'm exploring, as well. So, I'm actually genuinely curious.

Nathalie Lussier  10:17

Yeah, so I've learned a lot about how to do it the right way, and not the wrong way by, you know, trial and error in those early years. And I think the main thing is to make sure that you have the right topic, that you are actually answering somebody's problem, or solving an issue that they actually have. And also making sure that what you name your course, really, really resonates, because the name actually is probably like 80% of what will get people to say yes. Obviously, the rest of the copy, and your videos, and your content, and all of that is super important, too. But if they don't understand immediately who it's for, and what it's going to help them solve, then it's unlikely that they're going to keep reading enough to say, yes, I want this. So that's from the marketing side of your course. But in terms of actually creating a course, I highly recommend pre selling a course. Because what you're going to find is that when you have people enrolled in your course, then you can actually create the course that's going to help them. Because a lot of times, if you are just making assumptions or going off of what you think they need, you might be completely off the mark. And if you have a group of people and you're teaching live, and facilitating live, you're going to get the types of questions that help you create the next module or the next piece of content, that you might not have if you're pre planning everything ahead of time. So I would say pre selling is the magic sauce of doing an online course really well. And you can do it in a cohort based way. So you say maybe I want ten people in this first round, or whatever number it comes to you. And then from there, you know, you actually teach live. You can have an outline and a curriculum. But by teaching live, you're actually going to get feedback. You're going to find out if you're going in the right direction. People might say yes, yes, this is great, but here's where I really want to spend more time. And that will help you make the better course and then you can always come back, re-record or make it more polished, if you're doing video, for example. But at least you know you're on the right track, and you're not building something that people are not going to want.

Callan Harrington  12:11

So, if I'm hearing you, then it's don't build the course until you pre sell it. Make sure it's something that people actually are willing to pay for. Because my guess is you would just put a ton of time into that and then have no sales whatsoever. Is that right? Am I on the right page there?

Nathalie Lussier  12:26

Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen people go through this. And I've done this the very first course that I launched. Exactly. That's what happened, you know, I opened the doors, and I got zero signups. And it was a lot of things. It was the name of the course. People didn't think it applied to them. It wasn't what they actually wanted for the course. And then I knew that the content was still going to be good. So what I did is I spent a lot more time doing customer research and actually getting on phone calls, or Zoom calls, with people and just figuring out what is it that they actually struggled with? So for the healthy eating side of things, people said that it was cravings that they had issues with, and I thought they just needed more recipes, or more generic advice. And when I realized, oh, cravings, yeah, I can relate to that. I made a course all about cravings. And that is what really started selling. So just being able to get more specific. And a lot of it was similar strategies. Once you start eating healthy, the cravings go away. But you can't just say that, right? You have to kind of connect with where people are right now. They're feeling the cravings are the hardest part. When you're able to connect to what people actually want and need help with, you're able to create a much better course. And then yeah, like when I relaunched, I basically had thirty people sign up for that course, and versus zero. So all of these pieces had to come together. And I had to do the legwork of talking to them and making sure that I understood what they needed.

Callan Harrington  13:46

I can empathize with the cravings part. I can eat healthy for like three days in a row. But if you put Sour Patch Kids or Canes Chicken in front of me, just forget it. I am off the wagon immediately.

Nathalie Lussier  13:58

Yes.

Callan Harrington  13:58

I've got a follow up question on that. With the pre sell, do you have to have a pre established audience for that? Meaning, all right, so if I'm coming off the street, and I have no social media following, no email list, no blog that's out there, can I go one by one going to people and trying to sell this course? Or is it much better to build an audience, build a following, and then shoot out an email, or make a post about it, or something like that? What does that look like?

Nathalie Lussier  14:32

I mean, it's definitely better if you have an audience, because you can actually survey them and do all the customer research that is going to help you design the course for them. But you can definitely start without an audience. If you have access to people who you think are your ideal people to talk to. And you can sell it one on one. I've definitely had people pre sell one on one saying, hey, I'm doing a course, you know, a couple months from now, this is the topic, this is what I'm thinking, is this something you'd be interested in? And I've had people do it as a freebie, so just to get feedback and make sure it's something that people want. I still recommend charging at least a little something, because people, they might be really nice and want to say yes, but if they don't really care enough to put down some money for it, then they might not show up, they might not give you any feedback. So it's not really the best use of your time or their time. But the cool thing is, when you're doing a pre sale, you can actually generate a lot of buzz too, because that can be part of your marketing, right? So you can have a couple of people registered. And then when you know that you're starting up the course, you maybe give yourself a few weeks to really post on social media, and build that interest list on your email list, so that people are ready to sign up when you open up enrollments. So, I do recommend doing it that way. So, even if they don't sign up the first round, at least you have people to market to the next time you reopen and rerun the course.

Callan Harrington  15:48

So, you mentioned a couple things too. Sorry, I know I'm going in on this one deep, but it's- I have a ton of questions on here, because this is definitely something I'm personally interested in. You mentioned this a little bit. But is it cohort based in you know, I'm taking thirty people on, and this is going to be a live course? Or is it better to- I've got a forty, hundred, thousand dollar digital course, come and get it, essentially, whenever it is that's convenient for you. What do you recommend for, let's say that first course? Someone that's like, I want to do this, I'm committed to doing this, what is kind of the ideal way to start it?

Nathalie Lussier  16:24

Yeah, so this is the age old question of evergreen versus a launch or cohort based style. And I think that evergreen is better later on, once you have something that's established, once you have tons of testimonials, once you have people just coming to your website, you have traffic warmed up and just ready to sign up and buy. There are benefits to having an evergreen program that people can buy any time. Because if they just find you, and you're solving the exact problem that they need, they are not going to wait for the next time that you run a cohort based course. So you want to have that available. But the first time you're creating your course is not the right time to make it available forever. You want that cohort based, that energy behind it, teaching it live, having people connect to each other and communicate as a community too, because that also tends to be a really big benefit to online courses. Because people who are in a similar space are trying to achieve similar things or solve similar problems, they're going to cheer each other on, they're going to maybe help each other along. And that's an extra bonus of an online course. It's not just the course content itself. So, I feel like doing it cohort based is better. And also, there's some real scarcity there, right? So you're not doing fake marketing, like discount for one day only. And then you come back the next day, and there's discount for another day, right? So, you have a real start date and end date for the program. And so that gets people who might be on the fence to say, yes, I'm going to do this, I'm going to try this. And everyone's busy, everyone has an excuse not to sign up, so if you have something that's actually happening starting live, then people are more likely to actually do it.

Callan Harrington  17:56

So, I guess I'll use myself as a guinea pig example on here. If you were to coach me, and I said, so I've got a fairly engaged LinkedIn following, I have the podcast, the newsletter, and I have the consulting business. In general, one of the things that I was thinking about is creating a cohort based on:  here's your foundational sales team. Here's what it looks like, here's the systems that you should be using, and everything else. Should I be going back, as I'm talking about this out loud after what you said, I'm assuming I should be going back? Do I go to- I guess the question would be is, is that a LinkedIn post that I put out there to say would this be interesting? Is it a question in a newsletter? Do I ask potentially the people in my pipeline that did not close, to say, almost, if I offered this, would this be something that you're interested in? What would you recommend in that scenario?

Nathalie Lussier  18:50

I want to say all of the above. But yes, I think it's really important to build an interest list, like a separate part of your email list where people kind of have raised their hand and said, this is a topic or a type of course that I would be interested in signing up for. And especially if you have potentially corporate or more business, B2B-type audience, it's really nice to start building that, because you can also send them tips and other things to kind of warm them up before you open enrollment for your course. So, it's really nice to start building that interest list. And like I said, sometimes people might not be ready to buy right away. But if you're on that sub list, you can actually follow up, and the next time you open a cohort version, then they're more likely to say yes. And some people tend to be like, I need to watch a little bit on the sidelines before they're really ready to dive in. And other people are super early birds, ready to go from day one. So yeah, I would do that a separate list, post on LinkedIn, talk about it on the, you know, the podcast. Maybe get people who said no to other other services or other offerings to maybe see if it's something that would benefit them, for sure.

Callan Harrington  19:55

I love that. That makes so much sense. So, you grew this consulting company? When was it that you made the change to start building software?

Nathalie Lussier  20:05

Yeah, so we, you know, I had this online course business, I was doing consulting, and I launched something called the 30 Day List Building Challenge. And it was a quick video a day for thirty days, and the email platform would send the emails, and then our members area would have the video. And the plugin that we were using at the time was just really not built for this. It was glitchy, and so every time we had a thousand people go and check out the video for the day, our site would crash, and our web host would shut us down, and I had to call them, and it was such a pain that I was like, you know what, let's just write our own, like, I don't need to use the plugin on WordPress that we were using. So, my husband and I just like coded this up in a weekend and it was very bare bones. It just did the one thing. And we were like, oh, wow, okay, well, we built our own. What else could we do in our members area to make this more interesting? So we added progress tracking checklists. And we started adding a little bit more to the members area, to make it just more user friendly, and just fun to go through the challenge. And people started asking us, you know, what plugin are you using, what platform are you using to run your course and your challenge? And that's when the light bulb went off, where I was like, oh, yes, actually, this could be its own product. And this could be a thing that we actually sell. And it could be a whole business, pretty much. And before we launched that, because we knew that this is what became AccessAlly, we knew that we had to kind of test the waters and see if we were able to support software, because maybe support would be insane, and we wouldn't be able to handle it. So, we built another small plugin called PopupAlly, and it was just a very simple pop up tool for WordPress. And we launched that first. It was a smaller thing we figured easier to support and market. So we did that. That was about 2013, 2014. And we released it, it did really well, surpassed our expectations, support was handleable between just my husband and I and another assistant. And we said okay, yeah, let's go all in on the software side, I think that we can actually do this. And it was in 2016 is when I had my first baby, so we knew going in that me being a consultant, and being on calls all the time, and doing a lot of courses, and live events and things, wasn't going to be sustainable once we had kids. So, we knew if we focused in on the software, really built that up, that I could sort of transition out of more of the public facing, and just focus more on building the software.

Callan Harrington  22:26

So, if I'm hearing you correctly, you built the consulting company up, you built a community from this consulting company, and in the software and tools that you were using, you started to get really high traffic, in particular with these videos, and every time they went to the video it crashed. So, you guys had this really big problem where it's people want our content, people are engaged in our community. But now our tools are failing us, and we can't deliver them the value that we've promised them. Is that- am I hearing that correctly?

Nathalie Lussier  22:28

Exactly. And I had paid courses alongside with this free challenge. And people who had paid for courses couldn't log in because the website was down. So it was a huge- that was more tech support than what we deal with today in terms of actually how we run our software business. So yeah.

Callan Harrington  23:16

From the beginning, was the plan always, at some point to build a tech company, to build a software platform?

Nathalie Lussier  23:23

That's such a good question. So, I went into software engineering, and I knew tech was, you know, the thing I loved. And I took that detour after university to the health space. And I was like, you know, like, I'm- kind of threw out the baby with the bathwater, right? Because I don't want to work on Wall Street in tech. And I just turned my back on that. But definitely, even when I was doing the healthy eating, I was building software for like a menu planner with like drag and drop menu planning and things. So, there was definitely a part of me that wanted to use my software side more. So, when I had the opportunity where people were telling me what they wanted, and listening to the audience saying, hey, we want to use that too. That's when I was like, yes, okay, it felt like a full circle of all of our expertise coming together with the marketing side, with the course side, and also with the software side.

Callan Harrington  24:11

Very cool. And if I'm hearing it, it's almost, we weren't trying to build a software company. But we could not get to where we wanted to go without doing this. So you had this pain, and the thought process was: if we have this pain, I know there's other people that also have this same exact pain. Did you pretest that? Did you pre sell that with that as well? And how did you go about doing that?

Nathalie Lussier  24:33

Yeah, so for AccessAlly, we had four paying beta clients basically. So, we just had four people who are a little bit tech savvy, because the first version was not super polished and didn't have tons of usability of testing on the user end. That was actually like set up and the back end of it. So yeah, we had four people who signed up to be beta testers, and then we ended up selling it after you know, getting their feedback, improving it and selling it as, you know, a regular full price Software as a Service essentially. And interestingly enough, one of those four beta people, now works for AccessAlly. So, she joined our team full time as our Head of Education. And yeah, a lot of those early people are still in our world. And they're like using the software, either recommending it, or maybe they build websites for clients and things too.

Callan Harrington  25:19

What was the biggest hurdle or challenge, I should say, transitioning from a services based business to a software based business?

Nathalie Lussier  25:30

I would say the biggest hurdle was shifting how we think about things. So, we were definitely a lot in the launch model and the like, big promotion side of things where we would do a lot of ramp up towards a big campaign or promo, and then close it down. Kind of what we were talking about, like more cohort based, right. And for software, it's a completely different buying cycle. So, people might be looking for something, and maybe they're doing a lot of research with other tools, so they need a little bit more time to decide. They're not just going to impulse buy software, because you know, there's a specific date or something, like a bonus webinar or something like that. So, just thinking about our marketing in a completely different way, where we have to be more clear about what the software does, what it doesn't do, how it compares to our competitors, which, again, with online courses, people are not necessarily going to compare what you have with other courses on the topic. They're probably just going to buy because they like you, and they think you can help them with something, versus software where it's like, oh, well, there's these, you know, five or ten different other options. I should really do my research before I buy. So, that was also definitely a challenge to kind of adapt to a slightly different way of marketing and explaining what we can do for people.

Callan Harrington  26:42

What did you do specifically to get over that?

Nathalie Lussier  26:44

I think a lot of it was thinking through how we're different and also who we're for. So I mean, that's sort of basic marketing, essentially. But just the way that we can do that and have that available for people all the time. So we do have discovery calls so people can get on the phone with us and just get a demo, have their questions answered. So that's not something that we did when we had courses necessarily. What we did consulting, yes, people could get on a call with me. But again, it was so specific and tailored, versus this is a software solution that has to work for multiple people. So it's not necessarily going to change for each client. But being able to meet the client, where they're at, and what they're trying to accomplish is something that we try to do too. And then the other piece, I would say in terms of the challenge is investing a lot more on the development side. So with consulting, or a course, you know, I was generally the one delivering, but switching into delivery, that software means you have to invest in your development team, you have to invest in support as well. And also just testing and making sure everything is really stable, because you never want anything to happen for your clients when they're in a launch or they're doing something for their business. So that's also been a big shift and something that I am really happy that I had suffer experience for, because that's not something that necessarily comes easy. And you have to have the experience to know, this could cause issues for clients, so let's like hold back our release and improve, fix issues and that kind of thing.

Callan Harrington  28:09

Well, and actually as a follow up question to that is, more of just kind of a thought exercise in general, twenty five year old Nathalie, you pick up as a mentee, and she's going to make this transition from a services business to a software business. How would you coach her to do that?

Nathalie Lussier  28:28

Yeah, I would say, let's see, what would I start with? I would say switching into more of an investment mindset on the team side is a huge one because I was used to- or you know that younger Nathalie's maybe used to hiring you know, a virtual assistant here and there. But really focusing on hiring people full time that are going to grow with the company and be an investment to the company, if you will, is probably what's helped us grow the most. And so I would say that's a really big mindset shift. You know, same goes for, you know, support people, developers, we have a project manager, we have that head of education that I talked about, and marketing side too, but I still do a lot of the marketing ourselves. So I feel like that switch on the people side, I think would be a biggest one.

Callan Harrington  29:20

It's so interesting that you say that because, so I spent my whole life in tech on the SaaS and software side, for the most part, the majority of my career has been spent on there. When I came over to the services side, I had never worked with a VA before. So I didn't even think it was possible. I'm trying to get interns, and everyone was like, why are you not just using a VA for this? And then I used a VA for the first time, and I was like wow, I didn't know this whole world even existed. This is amazing! Did you find that to be an advantage in how you can work with contractors going into this?

Nathalie Lussier  29:50

Yeah, I mean, definitely that's how we bootstrapped right so we're not VC funded or anything. So we definitely bootstrapped through being able to hire contractors when we needed them, and smaller hours until we were able to afford more, and ramp up and then hire full time people. And yeah, I think there's a lot of advantage. And we still do sometimes hire a copywriter or hire someone for like a super specific technical thing. And so that gives us a little bit more of that nimbleness and flexibility that we can actually try different things and it doesn't break the bank, right. So we're able to experiment a little bit more and get the support that we need. And sometimes it's even more specialized, right. So if you're hiring someone that's for long term role, like they might need to on ramp a lot, but if somebody comes in and they have an expertise already on this topic, then that can also fast track things, too.

Callan Harrington  30:38

So you were able to use contractors and VAs and things like that in order to maintain costs that are at a reasonable level to make being a bootstrapped SaaS company doable. Why bootstrapped? Why not raise capital?

Nathalie Lussier  30:56

I think really, at the time, it wasn't even on my mind, you know, it was just more like, well, this is just the organic way things are evolving, and our, you know, services and courses and stuff, we're making so much money that we didn't need to get extra funding. And you know, I've learned a lot more over the years about everything, as things have evolved, and I've been in this space a little bit longer. And I think there's also something interesting about WordPress, specifically, because I've had people approach to purchase the company and all of that, too. And sometimes WordPress scares them off, because it's an open source marketplace and open source software. And so there's some hesitations, I think around that too. So in a way, I feel like, it's probably better that we're bootstrapped, and that we're just doing things our way, and figuring it out as we go. Because I feel like we've come at things in a very circular way, if that makes sense. And when I talk to a lot of other WordPress based businesses, you know, they tend to be either charging one off, or maybe it's an annual fee, but they're really charging a lot less, versus us where we came in at the premium side. And I think that is just from like, our own experience of being in business before. So I feel like if we would have come in with VC money, I'm not sure how it would have worked necessarily, if we would have had to charge more, or I don't know. It's like an interesting question.

Callan Harrington  32:15

What are the advantages to being bootstrapped?

Nathalie Lussier  32:18

I think some of the advantages really are we get to do what we want to do, which I know seems a little bit silly. But we recently moved to a four day work week with our company. And that means we actually shut down support on Fridays for the whole team, like everybody's off at the same time. I don't know necessarily that a VC backed company would let you do that, or, you know, what people would say to that, so it's sort of an experiment to see like, how can we take care of our people and ourselves so that this is sustainable long term. The focus with being bootstrapped is not necessarily on the biggest fastest growth so that we can get to an exit. To us it's more about having a sustainable lifestyle. So we moved to a farm in 2020. And so we have a little bit more work life balance, were able to, you know, keep the business in a good healthy place. But also, we don't have crazy targets that we're always trying to reach, and double, and do all these things. Like we just feel good with the work we're doing. We're helping our customers with their goals. And then our team also has a really good life too. So I think those are like my, in my perspective, what bootstrapping really benefits from.

Callan Harrington  33:21

If you're advising somebody right now, and they're thinking about, let's say they've got an initial product that's up, and they could raise capital, or they could continue to bootstrapped. And they've got services revenue that can keep them afloat for a little bit. What do they need to know? And I would say, I don't know if this is necessarily the cons, but what are the things that they need to know going into that, in running a bootstrap company? What are those things that you don't want to be surprised by this, this is a challenge?

Nathalie Lussier  33:50

One of the things that's allowed us to be bootstrapped for this long is that we're very risk averse with with our money. So I feel like we have a really good cushion in the bank, you know, where we're ready, if ever something were to change, there's a slowdown, or market conditions change or whatnot, we can keep going for a really long time. And I think that's something you have to be prepared to do if you're bootstrapped, because you don't have, you know, any backups, you don't have any other ways to like raise money, all of a sudden, when you really need it, which most of the time, people don't want to give you money, if you really need it, they want to give you money before you need it. So I think that would be something to think about, is how can you be very frugal, essentially, right, when you're building your business so that you have this cushion in place, and you know, what your runway looks like. And then also being able to project your revenue so we can predict month to month and year to year, how much we're going to make based on how many customers we have. And that's the benefit of, you know, SaaS and recurring revenue. So just being able to look at those numbers, be very conscious, and also very realistic with them, so that you're not over hiring or over investing, if you will, if that makes sense.

Callan Harrington  34:56

It makes complete sense. And what I'm hearing you say is you have to have capital. It's going to be really, really, really challenging. If you don't have probably more money in the bank that a typical company would need, is that correct?

Nathalie Lussier  35:09

That's pretty much how I see it. And I think, you know, I haven't been inside of a lot of other people's businesses and how they run things. But to me, that's really important. You know, with any product you- it takes longer than you think, to get product market fit, and to get a good base of customers where it's really sustainable, and growing, and all of that. So bootstrapping is no different. And I feel like Software as a Service is probably harder than an actual service, because you're not charging usually as high of a fee. So you need a lot of customers to really add up to those monthly revenues that you need to keep the team going and all of that. So that's how I would look at it too.

Callan Harrington  35:44

Do you have a number in mind? How many months of expenses? How many months of cash in the bank?

Nathalie Lussier  35:50

Yeah, so I think six months is probably pretty good. And I mean, it depends on the business too, and how stable it's been and all of that. If you're still ramping up, it might be a little bit even more than that, but also depends how big the team is, and there's so many, so many things. But yeah, I would say six months is probably a good amount. I know, some people are like, no, two months is enough. I've definitely seen that. And it just depends like if it's super stable, then yes, you can probably get away with two months. But to me, like I said, we're very risk averse. And we really care about our team. And we would never want to just have to let people go because we couldn't afford it. So that's how we do things.

Callan Harrington  36:25

Just to kind of switch gears a little bit here. I think that's such good advice in really starting any business, because you just so hard to predict, and especially in the early stages. A question I'm curious about is: you've successfully ran a business with your husband now for a long time. What advice do you have for people that are thinking about this? Or are in this? And I guess, as well, what are the challenges of that?

Nathalie Lussier  36:47

Yes. So yeah, being in business with your partner is definitely challenging but also has so many great benefits. So I would say what has helped us the most is having very clearly defined roles in the company. And in the beginning, we overlapped a little bit too much where we were sort of both making decisions about everything together, which is not necessarily bad. But once we delineated, like, okay, you can make the more strategic marketing decisions, you can make more of the tech decisions. And that for us was really helpful. And then even just with hiring and stuff. Before, we both used to do all the hiring, all the interviews, everything together, and we realized no, like, you need to have your separate thing, I will do my separate thing. And that has really made a huge difference in not stepping on each other's toes, not having too many arguments. And a lot of times, you know, we trust each other, right, like, we know that we're going to make the right decision. So we don't need to double up on time for the work that needs to be done or the decisions that need to be made. So those would be very clear roles. The other thing I will say is what we call the why or the because rule. Because if you're telling someone to do something- So I might say, you know, hey, can you send this email or fix this thing, to my husband, it feels like I'm ordering him around, which is not very good. And the same for him, he might be like, hey, like, I need you to review this thing or whatnot. And if you say because, and then you explain the reason, it gives the context, and it takes away the pushiness of it, essentially. And it's just like, oh, this is gonna help me do XYZ better, or this is for this vendor or for this whatnot right? So that really helps us not get into any arguments. And then the other thing we did like maybe a year and a half ago, and has really helped our marriage a lot, is that we hired a product manager. And what she does is she is the advocate for our customers, and making sure that we're working on the right features. And so before I was the advocate for our customers, and my husband was the advocate for the software. And so we would sometimes clash about this is not going to be good long term, because we have to maintain this or it might cause other issues. And I'd be like, but people are really asking for it. So now I have someone else who's the person advocating for customers. And I get to just weigh in if it's needed, but I don't need to weigh into every single feature and every single way that we're going to implement things.

Callan Harrington  39:03

Yeah, that makes total sense. I mean, I liked that, the why - because. It's probably good advice in general for any employee, but I can see how it'd be amplified with a spouse, that is for sure. A question that I have as well is, do you have guide rails not at work, meaning is there like, I guess boundaries would be the word, but at this point, like we're not talking about work. Because, as an entrepreneur, it's nearly impossible to fully shut it off. I don't know that you can. But I'm curious if you've got kind of guide rails or rules around that?

Nathalie Lussier  39:37

Yeah. So when we first started working together, we would talk about business all the time, and we had no guardrails, no boundaries. And then we started putting boundaries around weekends, and definitely more evenings. So definitely now, when our kids come home from school, we don't talk about work as much. Every now and then I'll be like, hey, sorry, can I just talk about business for a minute? And then we just go through that, and then shut that down after we're done, and move on to more normal conversations. But in the beginning, we definitely overdid the business talk. And we were both so excited about it. And you know, we didn't have kids. And that was our main thing that we did. But I feel so much better now that we have more of a no weekend talk about work. And if we do, we just say, hey, do you mind if I talk about work for a minute? And after that, we can just move on, and not have it keep lingering, if that makes sense. And that that really helps for sure.

Callan Harrington  40:27

So, you brought up another point. And I would love to touch on here a little bit. So work life balance, as you mentioned, is very important to you, and you've created these clear guide rails on when to shut it off. And because I think a lot of people- I think there's a number of people that want to work with their partner but don't know how to do that. And I think that's excellent advice. So you both purchased a- walk us through it, you purchased a farm and permaculture, correct? Okay, two things. What is permaculture? And what I'm super curious about the farm in particular is what have you learned from that? What have you learned from maintaining, growing a farm? How has that impacted your business?

Nathalie Lussier  41:09

Yes. So okay, permaculture is sort of a design principle that is about permanent agriculture. That's the idea behind it, where instead of you know, annual plants where you're constantly, you know, tilling and planting new things all the time, the idea is to establish systems that are more long term. Like maybe it's agroforestry, which is like planting trees along with other crops, or having animals in pasture between trees and things like that. So you can have more of that long term integrated vibe, if you will. It's sort of the whole regenerative way of growing more food and things like that. So there's a lot more to permaculture, but it's about designing all the pieces so they work together. And it's more of a good system that regenerates itself, as opposed to depleting itself year after year. The reason we decided to move to a farm, it's a seventeen acre farm, we have dairy sheep, we have chickens and ducks. Yeah, we have, you know, big greenhouse, we grow all kinds of veggies. And part of that was, you know, we wanted to be able to grow more food for our kids, and also spend less time on the screen and on the computer. So we knew that being outside, planting trees, or doing all these things, you know, it would keep us more balanced. And we've learned so much from that. So first of all, we're not farmers, where we didn't come from that background, we've been learning from books and YouTube videos, and just you know, talking to local people who have farms, and just soaking up as much as we can. And there's definitely been a lot of trial and error. So we got dairy sheep. And in the first year that we moved here, I had never milked an animal before, so really figuring out how to do that. We milked by hand for the first year. And then we got a milking machine after that. And yeah, I think some of the learnings are really about not, I would say one of the biggest learnings, is really around giving it the time that it needs and not rushing it. And I think that's something we can definitely take back into our business. So we've had times where we planted you know, when we first move, we're like, oh, we're gonna plant some trees, it'll be great. You know, you got to plant them early, because it takes a long time for them to bear fruit. And we planted them kind of in the wrong spot. A lot of them died. And so we rushed that too much, right? And so going back into our business, what are we doing that we're rushing, that we need to take our time on and make really awesome before we release it, or you know, make that the thing? So those are some of the definitely learnings where we're excited. And maybe we don't quite know what we're doing. So they're, you know, taking our time to do our research and plan before we do things, I think is really important.

Callan Harrington  43:41

That's so cool. I think that's such good advice, too. On, there are so many things where you rush. I did it the other day. I put up a landing page. And because I wanted to get it up, and look it, and I just looked at it, and I was like, this sucks. Like, this is not good. So I took it down and redid it. But there are some times you're just such in a hurry to just want to get it up there, get it out there. And I do believe in MVP, build a minimum viable product and then iterate. I do that in almost everything I do. But sometimes you got to look at it and say this sucks. So I think that's excellent. Last question I have for you Nathalie is, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be, and what advice would you give them?

Nathalie Lussier  44:28

Yeah, I would probably go, you know, to my twelve, thirteen-year-old, geeky self and say that you will figure things out as you try them. Because I think that, you know, back then I thought I had to have all the answers, and have everything figured out, and know exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and know what my career was going to be, and all of these things, and I feel like I knew tech was part of it. But I would say I would never would have gotten to where I am today if I didn't just try something and start on the path and just take the next step as it showed up, because it's not like I could have planned this, right? It's not like this was even a career option back in the day to become a creator or a consultant. That wasn't on my radar. And then starting a software company, yes, that was sort of on the radar, but I couldn't have started it from scratch out of school. So I think that's really what I would tell my younger self.

Callan Harrington  45:24

Out of just pure coincidence, I'm reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which is a great book. And this quote I read today, it just hit me so hard. And it was essentially, when you're looking at writing, you got to think about it like a painter, and a painter starts in a corner of the canvas, puts something up there, doesn't like it, whites it out, does it again, does it again. So each time they know what it isn't, until the time that they paint it, and they know exactly what it is. And I think the advice that you just mentioned is you've got to get out there and do it. And then you'll figure out, you'll be able to at least figure out what it isn't. So you could figure out what it is. And your career path had that pure evolution to it. And I think people are gonna get a ton out of it. So, Nathalie, thanks for coming on the show today. This has been excellent.

Nathalie Lussier  46:11

Yeah.Thanks for having me, Callan, this is awesome.

Callan Harrington  46:13

Absolutely.  I hope you enjoyed Nathalie and I's conversation. Like I said, In the beginning, I learned so much from this episode, and just found myself taking tons of notes. If you want to connect with Nathalie, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you can find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.