Lessons bootstrapping SalesMVP Lab for 6 months

How I've found early customers and what's new

Author

Daniel Hebert
July 12, 2024

Thought I’d switch it up this week and give you all a peek at how I’ve built up SalesMVP Lab this year. Reply with Yay! or Boooo! if you like this “build in public” format.

Table of Contents

How I started SalesMVP Lab

I got to a point in my career where I had a lot of growth with many types of SaaS companies. The last company I was at, I knew it wasn’t a good fit for me within 6 weeks of joining. But there was always something keeping me there.

At first, I was viewed as a high-performing problem solver. So I was constantly asked to restructure different teams in Sales. That has some level of excitement, but it’s also tough work because you need to lay people off and rebuild. So the emotional toll took place.

I constantly felt burnt out. But I also had golden handcuffs - I was making more than I had ever made, with crazy benefits. How do you walk away from all of this and justify it to your family?

So I started SalesMVP Lab as a side hustle. Worked with Andrew Goldis at Currents.dev and Kareem and Ryan at Savio.io. They all got really good results from the methods I taught them, in a short time.

So that gave me confidence that if I left corporate to pursue this, I could do it.

So I resigned at the end of November 2023. Incorporated my biz and took time off in December. Then started operating in January 2024.

Why I chose founder-led sales as my niche

Having worked at startups of various sizes, I always enjoyed working at the really early stages the most. From $0-1M ARR. It’s a tough challenge, but it is very rewarding.

What I found in my career is that there are tons of amazing founders out there with great products. But they don’t know how to do sales, so their startups never really get off the ground.

I saw this as a big issue.

I also noticed that the vast majority of sales trainers, coaches, mentors, etc., are all focused on the $1M+ ARR startups. Many of them have never done the early-stage grind. They know how to optimize existing processes and hire teams, but they don’t know how to craft demos and processes from nothing.

So I felt there wasn’t a great solution out there for founders.

Not to mention most sales trainers and coaches are very expensive. They go for funded startups that can afford to pay them $30k-50k per year. I’ve seen coaches charge $10k-20k per month, for 4 hours of their time. It’s a very lucrative business.

But bootstrappers, early stages, pre-seed founders just can’t afford this. Especially when the coaches don’t really understand the $0-1M run.

So this is the void I identified in the market. And it became my focus.

How did I build the product

SalesMVP Lab’s offer is now courses + community + coaching.

But it took a while to get the product here.

First, how do you explain coaching? What is it that you coach? How do you make it different than anything else?

I realized coaching by itself would be tough to sell. It’s a big commitment, and kinda squishy as an offer. What do you get from coaching?

So what I first did was write down my entire methodology on paper. Everything that I had collected over the years. What worked, what didn’t. The details, the scripts, the templates. The examples. What was relevant in early-stages vs what you can ignore for a while.

This helped me figure out what it really was that I was teaching/coaching.

So I packaged it in an ebook, sent it to founders, got feedback from founders on how to make it more practical, added a pricetag to it, sent it to a few folks for distribution.

Got a bunch of sales from the TinySeed community, which validated there was value there.

Which then brought me to the TinySeed program managers, and through them, introduced to folks at MicroConf.

They loved the topics in the ebook and how it was geared towards founders.

And the concept of a Minimum Viable Sales Process became my product.

So I focused on:

  • Minimum viable sales discovery (FOUNDER framework)

  • Minimum viable positioning

  • Minimum viable sales story

  • Minimum viable demo

  • Minimum viable call structure

  • Minimum viable sales process

How did the product evolve

With the content created, I then realized that the real business I’m building here is all about distribution of content.

I knew my topics inside out. I also had the master playbook developed.

So I moved into monetization mode.

What are the different ways to distribute the content where I can actually make money.

After doing 3 speaking gigs with MicroConf, a piece of feedback I got sparked an idea. Someone said “I wish we could do these sales conferences every month - jam-packed value for the price.”

So that brought me to courses + live webinars + office hours + community.

So I launched the SalesMVP Lab community in May.

Early access members got a lot of value + direct support from me. I also got lots of feedback about how to make the “product” (aka content) better.

With this, I also added group coaching. One thing I realized was that 1:1 coaching works well if you’re above $30-50k MRR. But lots of founders aren’t there yet.

They still need the support, but can’t afford the fees.

So creating small groups of 4-6 founders helped establish a price point for coaching that is feasible for early-stage founders.

It also solved another issue that’s present with founder-led sales: loneliness. It’s tough figuring sales by yourself. Having peers to support the emotional ups and downs of sales is a side benefit that I hadn’t planned for, but is becoming clear that it adds value.

How did I get my first customers

One thing that was clear from the start for me was that I’m not getting in the game of free users. I’m bootstrapping, and the income I make supports my family. So I needed to validate everything with monetization in mind.

So I focused on creating different paid funnels right from the start.

The ebook + workbook sold for USD $36. I could have given it out for free and get more leads. But I didn’t do that. To me, if someone pays a few dollars to access a resource, it’s a clear sign that they have a problem and they’re motivated to do something about it. If they download a free ebook, it doesn’t really say anything.

So I distributed the ebook through a few TinySeed founders and got paid leads.

I spoke at 3 MicroConf sessions with a special offer on the ebook, which got me paid leads.

Made about USD $2,500 from the ebook in the first 2 months of business. Wasn’t going to be my money maker, but I got 120+ leads from it that were highly motivated to learn sales as a founder.

Once I got the leads, I had to figure out a way to offer more value. So I started this free newsletter. I realize that when I share my frameworks, knowledge, and experience, a lot of founders are curious about what else is hidden in my brain.

So the newsletter became a way to continuously feed this knowledge.

From there, I looked at the most engaged newsletter subscribers - the ones who open every email, click on the links, go to my website multiple times, etc. I started prospecting them, and closed my first 5 group coaching clients in 2 weeks from the start of MicroConf sessions/newsletter.

Then I launched the course + community offer, and got 20 early access members. Was able to upgrade a few to group coaching.

This made me think as long as I can get folks into the newsletter or to purchase the ebook, then it gives me a good funnel to convert into community + coaching clients.

So I evolved my packages to support this.

New packages focused on long-term support

One thing I know having been coached, and having coached a number of founders and sales reps, is that the longer you do it, the better you get at sales.

Sales isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it function. It’s a combination of multiple processes and skills coming together. To get 10% better at sales, you need to get 10% better at 20+ different core skills, simultaneously. You learn stuff, you forget stuff, you get stuck, emotional headtrash kicks in, etc.

So I needed a way to support founders from the very start, all the way throughout finding PMF and scaling your first sales team.

So the way I got to this was actually by designing my own lifestyle first. I figured out how much money my family needs to live the life we want - which isn’t extravagant at all. We’re humble people living in the middle of nowhere Nova Scotia Canada. Our expenses are low. We’re not materialistic. We just want a good, simple life.

With that in mind, I reverse engineered my business expenses, taxes, etc., to how much top line revenue I’d need to make.

And then worked out how many hours of coaching I want to do every week.

And that brought me to my magic number of how much I need to charge to support my lifestyle.

And it also made me realize that I could cut down most of my existing packages by 30-60%.

So I re-launched everything. Updated my home page to clearly articulate what you’re getting (courses + community + coaching). And updated my packages page to explain the different packages, who they’re best for, and what’s included in different tiers.

Then I designed the tiers to grow as the founders grow. Here’s where I landed:

  • DIY Learning: Access to courses, webinars, office hours, resources, and community channels. 7-day free trial + USD $17/mth (cost of lunch)

  • Group Coaching: Access to everything in DIY learning + two 90-minute coaching sessions per month + access to me via email and DMs. USD $347/mth

  • 1:1 founder-led coaching: Access to everything in DIY learning + weekly 60-minute coaching calls + access to mee via emails/DMs + I will review and coach sales calls. USD $1,247/mth

  • Scale coaching: Access to everything in DIY learning + weekly 60-minute coaching calls with your sales reps/team + 2 founder-only calls + review and coach sales calls. USD $3,347/mth

The idea behind this set-up is to offer as much support, for as long as possible, without causing too much burn. That’s where the magic of coaching really happens - when you do it for a long time.

Lessons learned:

Here are a few things that stood out doing trial and error for the last 6-7 months:

  • Get out there and sell, right away. I beat myself up in April that I wasn’t closing enough coaching clients. Then I realized I wasn’t really reaching out to folks for coaching. So I changed that and started closing deals right away.

  • Figure out your niche. I hear all the time from founders that the content I create resonates with them. That’s because I’ve hyper-focused on a specific context, deeply understand the pains, validated those pains, then constantly create relevant content for them.

  • Figure out your channels. I’m experimenting with LinkedIn, SEO, cold email, and BOPA (borrow other people’s audience). BOPA is by far the one that gets me real prospects that convert into some sort of paid customer (ebook, community, or coaching). The rest are very long plays, and take time, consistency, and experimentation.

  • Build a targeted email list. My newsletter doesn’t have a lot of subscribers. But every single one could be a prospect. I don’t create content for anything but founder-led sales. Anywhere. So someone who subscribes is 100% interested in the topic. I could open this up to sales in general, but I’d get all sorts of folks that would never have an opportunity to convert. Balance quantity and quality here.

  • Mess around with pricing and packaging. The more I spoke with folks, the more I ran sales cycles, the more I did research, the closer I got to nailing the packages. I’m not there yet, but I’m starting to get closer to finding product-market fit with founder-led sales.

  • Sales takes an emotional toll. It’s easy to prioritize project work, or procrastinate on sales, when you’re feeling down. I’ve had to constantly fish myself out of a negative mindset. Almost on a monthly basis. But every time I did, my MRR went up. Every time I dwelled in negative thoughts, I would avoid moving my business forward. I’ve done sales and marketing now for 12+ years, and it still gets to me. It’s not easy.

Let me know what you think of the newsletter! Always want to cover topics that you care about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for more hands-on help implementing your first sales process, reach out for coaching packages.

P.S. I have a few spots left for upcoming group coaching (starting in July). Also building the next waitlist. Reply if you’re interested.