Student InterviewDoubled MRR

There we go. All right, everyone. This is Harry Whelchel. I've got Jason B., Founder of Consistent Cart here. Jason and I have been working together for the last four months. And in that time, what did we do? We we've increased the MRR by about 38% over that time.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we'd been working together on basically like marketing strategy, marketing automation, putting in process those types of things to get a more structure and growth in the business. Is that about right?

Yeah, yeah.

Cool, cool. Well, Jason, tell me a little bit about yourself and kind of like what it was like working on Consistent Cart before we started working together.

Yeah, so I started Consistent Cart about a year and a half ago, and it was just a solo idea that I was just working on in my free time. And at that time, the business, you know, was just starting from scratch and I was able to grow it and start seeing some results. And until eventually I was able to leave my full-time job and work on Consistent Cart full-time. Before we started working together, I would say it was pretty chaotic to say the least, we were growing, which was great, but I think we had, we, I didn't know where to go next and I couldn't figure out how to get past, we sort of hit this barrier and we couldn't grow any more than that. And so I couldn't figure out how to get past that. And then that's when we met.

So like what, tell me more about what it was like, like kinda working together over the last four months, you know, what are some of the things we did and how would you describe just kind of like what we did in the approach and the experience?

Yeah, so I think, you know, one of the first things we did was just dive in and take a look at where the business is currently, and try to get a feel for where is sort of the bottlenecks were, I think we discovered pretty early on that, you know, I was the bottleneck in a lot of the processes, and I wasn't delegating enough responsibility to the team. And so that was, you know, I kind of knew that in the back of my head, but I never like actually formalized it, but when we actually put it down and started discussing it and actually going through like my day, it was pretty clear that like something needed to change. And then aside from that, we were able to dive into our customers and really figure out who was using the product, get to know our customers a lot more. I think that was one of the big things. For me was I had built this company with very little contact with customers, because I'm a software developer and a software engineer that's my background. So I just kept building and building, and there wasn't much customer communication. And so I think that's one area that you really pushed me towards is talk to the customers and understand their mindset, their problems, and how Consistent Cart can help address them. So that was big too.

Yeah, can you speak to the like that little anecdote of one of the first conversations you had with a customer and how they identified like a reporting issue?

Yeah, yeah. So this is a good story. So we, I had talked to, you know, a couple of customers and, you know, we have live chat and we have support channels where customers reach out to us. But during one of our initial calls that we did with our customer, the customer mentioned something that sort of, it got me a little curious. He said, you guys have, you know, your software is working. You've recovered, you know, lots of carts I can see it, but I'm not seeing that you're actually attributing it to Consistent Cart. And then he shared his screen and he's like, see, I don't see any attribution. And then he's like, isn't that how you guys like charge, isn't that how you determine what your monthly charges for the software. And I remember thinking about that, like, Hey, how did this, how has this like under the radar for so long? And then I think you and I, the next day dove into it, and we realized that it was about 20% of all attribution's we just were not capturing because we didn't have, you know, it was a coding issue, but.

It's was kinda cool to see how, like, just, even though it seems like, sorry it doesn't scale that well, but like making some space in your process for like one-on-one conversations with customers can really surface interesting issues, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I think what's the irony of it is, it's not like that's not something customers would like go out of their way to tell you. So like, they won't write into Support and be like, Hey, charge me more. So I think that was nice. When I was able to talk to the customer, sort of build that rapport, then he mentioned it to me, which was nice, yeah.

Nice.

Nice, nice. So what do you think the impact of the additional traction that we were able to achieve in the last four months has been on your business?

Well, I think it's, two-fold, I mean, one is definitely in terms of revenue, you know, you can just, you can see it in the numbers. And I think the second thing, the second big thing for me is what I was talking about earlier, which is we didn't have the processes in place to really grow the company. And so I feel like that's sort of an area that we started to work on and we were continuing to work on and we're identifying those bottlenecks. We're finding, we're implementing processes so that more of the team can take ownership over various parts of the business, versus me sort of leading on everything and then becoming the bottleneck, which was what was happening.

That makes sense. That makes sense. So,

Yeah. Well, what's the difference between, well kinda working with me and some of the other people out there.

Well, I'd say, you know, one-on-one, I think that you've got, you understand how SAS works, first of all. You have a lot of experience in, you know, in SAS. So while you're great at marketing, I think you have you're specifically well versed in SAS. So I think that's important. Because it's, you know, marketing for E-commerce is different than marketing a SAS product. So that's one thing. And then I'd say the other thing is that you have, you're able to switch contexts really quickly. So like I've seen you, you know, you and I will like pair program on something or we'll like, you know, code on something. And then you're, you'll very quickly be able to switch over into marketing, and we'll be able to work on that together. So you understand sort of all facets of a SAS business, which I think is really cool because I've worked with marketers who they don't get how the development process works, how product is built. And so that's tough to you know, work with so.

Cool, thank you. So like, if you could go back in time, would you do it all over again and work with me again?

Oh yeah. I worked with you earlier then I started.

Nice, nice. And so, yeah. Would you highly recommend other people work with me if they have the chance?

Yeah, I definitely think so. I, you know, I think if, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking to get a SAS business off the ground, you know, Harry's your guy, like definitely. I think you can't really go wrong. You'll learn a lot. He'll push you, and he'll keep you in check and make sure that you're doing the right things that you need to do to grow your business.

That's awesome, man. So cool, so what are the next steps for Consistent Cart like? What are you excited about, you know, going for the next quarter, the next two quarters that we're gonna be working on together?

Yeah, so there's a lot. You know, I think we're just now you know, we're just now getting to that place where we can see really solid growth over the next year. I think what I'm most excited about personally is getting, you know, the team to sort of take ownership and putting these processes in place that really help our company feel like it's, you know, poised for growth. And you know, I think we've set up some KPIs that we're tracking. We, you and I went over our mission and our values. And so I'm just excited to continue to grow Consistent Cart and hopefully help our customers more and help increase their sales too, so.

Awesome. Well, cool. Well, thanks so much, Jason. Appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Harry.

All right.

All right thanks.