Thought I'd give a progress thread to any newcomers who may want some encouragement, (or even for those experienced who have feedback for me). The Unscripted framework DOES, in fact, work - if you follow it. And it's incredible. I am in the middle of it, haven't "made it" - however do reap many amazing benefits of being "unscripted ". I am not the greatsest writer, so I apologize, but here's the story so far of my company Engynn.
What is being unscripted like, currently?
I built a series of b2b saas products, expect about $100k profit this upcoming year. I don't trade my time for money and receive about $4.5-5k/month (going to 8K in Jan) by maintaining services that takes 3 or 4 days work/month, leaving my time committed to growing the business. I am 26, won't qualify for a mortgage this year with the salary I pull, drive an older (2009) jeep. However, I am happy. I draw a small salary, investing the rest of profits back into the business and savings. Obviously not living lavish at the moment. I will be reinvesting into customer acquisition next year aggressively and expect massive growth based on fine tuning my customer acquisition costs and reducing churn rate by automating on-boarding.
Four things I learned:
1) Be honest with yourself about the need and if it exists.
2) Don't underestimate the power of passivity/automation, it gives you the freedom to grow the business. (I hate the passive buzz word, but I'm going to use it anyway).
3) Don't try to do too many things at once, start simple. Which is ironic because this is what is giving me the biggest headache.
4) DON'T underestimate that concept that opportunity is everywhere, because it truly is if you listen to it.
-----------------------------
Some dryer details for anyone interested on how I progressed and the business:
I spent all of 2016 building an HR software. But it had no value, never would have sold. I just wanted to build a SAAS with no regard for needs. I quit my job in Feb 2017 with 6 months savings, before having any customers (forum told me NOT to), which could have been a disaster. However, I utilised my reputation in the franchise marketing industry.
A company I worked with in the past mentioned they were looking for an intranet/employee portal to ENGAGE their franchises with latest news, access to important documents, etc. Everything they looked at was intimidating, and wouldn't fit the franchise model with hundreds of retail locations connected to one larger parent company. I've experience this pain in my career as well. My 'aha' moment was this: what was great about my HR service was the simplicity for users and the ability to customize setup to your exact corporate setup/structure. So I thought, why don't I just use the existing framework of the HR service and make it a basic news/documents intranet portal catering to those with similar problems I faced as a franchise person? I pitched the idea to this company before even building it, and signed my first contract for $500/month.
The KEY: I found out there was a market for this type of service. And also a need for making engagement-related tech simple, and less intimidating to businesses. Engynn currently has 3 big retail customers, and 2 more coming onto it in the new year. This is the service I plan to grow.
SUBPRODUCTS AND EXTRA INCOME
I know you have to remain faithful to your business, but I've jumped on every passive income opportunity that made even slight sense. What's great about Engynn is, once a franchises' 400 or so locations and employees sign up for the portal, I can build a variety of up sells. We call these "Portal Plugins". Similar to the way you start a wordpress site and have basic functionality, but you can buy or subscribe to "plugins" to customize in very specific ways. Imagine what you can build when every location and user in a company is connected.
Just one example, we won a contract to look after one of our franchise customer's digital signage services (little screens in stores that play promotions). We already had every business location in their Engynn portal - our digital signage plugin allows them to connect signage players to those locations. The location then receives content from the parent company, but can also use their engynn portal login access their signage units and add store-specific promotions. The system is like magic to them, they pay $35/location each month - which is on the lower end and already have it in 60/200 franchise locations. We have two more franchises that saw the system and loved it, should be another $3,000 in contracts coming onto this.
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What is being unscripted like, currently?
I built a series of b2b saas products, expect about $100k profit this upcoming year. I don't trade my time for money and receive about $4.5-5k/month (going to 8K in Jan) by maintaining services that takes 3 or 4 days work/month, leaving my time committed to growing the business. I am 26, won't qualify for a mortgage this year with the salary I pull, drive an older (2009) jeep. However, I am happy. I draw a small salary, investing the rest of profits back into the business and savings. Obviously not living lavish at the moment. I will be reinvesting into customer acquisition next year aggressively and expect massive growth based on fine tuning my customer acquisition costs and reducing churn rate by automating on-boarding.
Four things I learned:
1) Be honest with yourself about the need and if it exists.
2) Don't underestimate the power of passivity/automation, it gives you the freedom to grow the business. (I hate the passive buzz word, but I'm going to use it anyway).
3) Don't try to do too many things at once, start simple. Which is ironic because this is what is giving me the biggest headache.
4) DON'T underestimate that concept that opportunity is everywhere, because it truly is if you listen to it.
-----------------------------
Some dryer details for anyone interested on how I progressed and the business:
I spent all of 2016 building an HR software. But it had no value, never would have sold. I just wanted to build a SAAS with no regard for needs. I quit my job in Feb 2017 with 6 months savings, before having any customers (forum told me NOT to), which could have been a disaster. However, I utilised my reputation in the franchise marketing industry.
A company I worked with in the past mentioned they were looking for an intranet/employee portal to ENGAGE their franchises with latest news, access to important documents, etc. Everything they looked at was intimidating, and wouldn't fit the franchise model with hundreds of retail locations connected to one larger parent company. I've experience this pain in my career as well. My 'aha' moment was this: what was great about my HR service was the simplicity for users and the ability to customize setup to your exact corporate setup/structure. So I thought, why don't I just use the existing framework of the HR service and make it a basic news/documents intranet portal catering to those with similar problems I faced as a franchise person? I pitched the idea to this company before even building it, and signed my first contract for $500/month.
The KEY: I found out there was a market for this type of service. And also a need for making engagement-related tech simple, and less intimidating to businesses. Engynn currently has 3 big retail customers, and 2 more coming onto it in the new year. This is the service I plan to grow.
SUBPRODUCTS AND EXTRA INCOME
I know you have to remain faithful to your business, but I've jumped on every passive income opportunity that made even slight sense. What's great about Engynn is, once a franchises' 400 or so locations and employees sign up for the portal, I can build a variety of up sells. We call these "Portal Plugins". Similar to the way you start a wordpress site and have basic functionality, but you can buy or subscribe to "plugins" to customize in very specific ways. Imagine what you can build when every location and user in a company is connected.
Just one example, we won a contract to look after one of our franchise customer's digital signage services (little screens in stores that play promotions). We already had every business location in their Engynn portal - our digital signage plugin allows them to connect signage players to those locations. The location then receives content from the parent company, but can also use their engynn portal login access their signage units and add store-specific promotions. The system is like magic to them, they pay $35/location each month - which is on the lower end and already have it in 60/200 franchise locations. We have two more franchises that saw the system and loved it, should be another $3,000 in contracts coming onto this.
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