1 Year Building a Software Company (The Brutal Reality)

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This is the brutal reality of actually building an eight-figure software company.
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I'm going to show you all of the lessons, absolutely everything I've learned over the past couple of years in the pursuit of building an eight-figure software business.
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Before I go through any more details, why did I do this?
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I already had built Voix, our consulting business, to multiple seven figures a year.
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And now over the past year, we've moved into software to try scale even further.
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And this isn't gonna be a random AI-generated vibe-cutted app.
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This is an actual company which has a lot of team members and has a lot of risk involved.
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I'm gonna show you straight away the numbers.
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Right now, we're at six figures in annual recurring revenue.
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We are pushing to seven figures in ARR, and the plan is to get to eight figures.
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This video is not going to be all the highlights.
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I'm gonna show you the brutal reality over the past year, all of the lessons that I've learned, all of the mistakes that I've learned, everything that I wish I had at the beginning of the actual journey, and how you can take this into any business you have, not only software, but also into your coaching businesses and into your agencies, which a lot of you guys have.
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So let me tell you about why I knew that this wasn't gonna be easy.
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So my background, whether you believe it or not, was actually in software.
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I did a hybrid of software engineering in scoop called Business Information Systems, and I started my career in tech consulting.
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I was working with large companies and governments on technical projects.
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Then I actually moved into software, specifically working with the fastest growing software company of all time in the UK in finance.
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I quickly had to cut my teeth in product, engineering, UX, UI, basically everything to do with building amazing mobile apps at that time.
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And when I tell you that this is one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my early 20s, I really mean it.
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It was actually more difficult than building my company, Voix, because it software is that difficult.
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I had to go from basically zero understanding to learning all the nuances on how to build great product, test it, launch it, get feedback, otherwise known as people hate you, and then make it better again and again and again.
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So then I knew going into Aura that it wasn't going to be just about getting something up and running like a fancy tool.
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It was about how do you maintain, grow, and scale an actual product with hundreds and thousands of users.
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So why did I build Aura in the first place?
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Well, here was my unfair advantage that I had accumulated over the past couple of years.
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Our consulting business works with hundreds of clients on their sales process and how to actually drive more revenue.
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And the same problem that all of my clients have when it comes to sales was my actual issue.
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In 2024 and in 2025, we were trying to scale our sales and revenue, and we did all of the typical stuff.
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All of the big sales coaches in the industry sell you these trackers, all of these different systems, all of these complex CRMs, all these sales tools that are very fragmented.
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I was utilizing these in my own team, and I literally thought that there was something wrong with me because we couldn't actually drive more revenue.
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We were always stuck in around that 2 million a year mark.
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What meant was everything was very inefficient.
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The lead process was inefficient, and what I realized was it was an underlying system issue.
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I also had hundreds of clients who had the exact same issue.
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So I've always had the love and desire to get into software, but I wanted to find out what was that bleeding neck problem that restricts me from scaling and a lot of my clients from scaling, and that was the problem that we wanted to solve.
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So I did exactly what you should do inside your business is solve the problem for yourself before you do it for anybody else.
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And last but not least, I named the company after my dog, Aura, because one, she's the best dog, and two, it's a sick name.
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So let me get a little bit clearer on what Aura is and most importantly, what Aura isn't.
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So Aura is a sales intelligence platform.
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We have people drive more leads, increase their show up rate, and increase their close rate.
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We are not a CRM, and the real big distinction is a CRM is effectively a dump of data.
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It's where you put information in, and let's be very clear, no one even looks at that data and numbers and leads afterwards.
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What we are is a sales intelligence platform.
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We take all of the lead data that comes in, we book people on the calls, we enrich the data so that we have good lead scoring, we get them to show up on the calendar, we optimize a show up rate, and we help them close them with AI coaching.
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And the most important distinction here is intelligent data you can actually utilize.
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A dump of data means it doesn't really go anywhere.
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And that was the biggest issue that we had faced when we use all the big CRMs.
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It was just storing data.
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It didn't actually tell us anything.
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And this is what developed from our core product and how we actually expanded from there.
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And really, when it comes down to users, there's really a couple of different buckets.
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We have our education businesses, our coaches, and our agencies, and we really put them into three different categories.
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We have people that are making less than a million a year.
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These people just come in, they use Aura, simple setup.
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We have people that are making between 1 million and 5 million a year.
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These guys need a little bit more integrations, and we've people making more than 5 million a year, and these are a little bit more of a complex setup.
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But the difference here is Aura works the whole way down from your just get started coach all the way up to scaling sales teams, adding in 10, 15, or even 20 reps with having the exact same capabilities.
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All right, so now for the actual reality, I'm gonna go through exactly what it was like building this from the very beginning and what that actually felt, right?
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So from the very beginning, we're obviously investing money into a product that I believe that is actually going to be successful.
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At the beginning, you only have your ideas and your actual thoughts.
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What I did was when I actually had the idea, I started to promote it through Instagram.
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I started to promote it to actually a lot of my clients as the solution to their problems.
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I did not even have a product.
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Okay, this is pre-minimal viable product MVP.
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I just had an idea and I would pre-sell people and I would get them sold on the idea of the actual solution, which gave me the confidence that my idea was actually a in demand in the market.
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So then it allowed us to go from idea, concept to actually going into building when we knew that we actually will have users on the other end.
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This is the fatal, fatal mistake that many people do not do.
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They do not do the due diligence, they get a random idea and they think this is what people actually need.
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But how I knew it's what people need is because I actually pre-sold up to around 20 spots at that point.
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And of course, they're just wishes and prayers, but it's the best solution you can have in the actual beginning.
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Because then we got super scrappy and started creating a few wireframes, started creating a few prototypes, and started actually getting a bit of actual experience with it.
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And the best part of this is because I had my client list from Voix, that was honestly my testing ground.
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And think about it logically.
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The people that like, know, and trust you will give you a little bit more love and a little bit more appreciation and be a little bit easy on you, to be honest, when things kind of suck in the beginning.
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And that's exactly what happens.
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This is the difference when you're actually building an AI tool for yourself and actually building a software company for multiple people is the fact that humans will inherently break things.
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So if someone is coming in and they're using your software, they're not going to use it the way that you actually use it yourself.
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Therefore, bugs happen, mistakes happen, things go down, delays happen.
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Because, in full honesty, no one has actually thought about those different use cases, they're different scenarios.
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So, this is how you do have issues with software, especially in the beginning.
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But we had amazing users and clients from day one, people that were actually product led.
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So our entire philosophy was voice of the customer.
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What this meant was we would take the feedback from customers and use that feedback to build more software because we have our core product, which is our scheduler, our CRM, our show-up rate, our AI coaching, and then we have additional stuff like lead intelligence, dashboarding, all this kind of stuff.
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And the reason why this becomes very valuable is because we can use customer data and customer feedback to build better product.
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However, when we went public towards the end of 2025, this became like business on hard mode because external users, specifically people who don't know you, they do not have the same love for you.
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And this is where churn goes up, but even before churn goes up, you actually have people who don't even use your product.
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This is wild.
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Okay.
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So in the very beginning, the biggest issue that we had was activations.
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And to keep things simple, it's people that come in, they sign up for a free trial, but they don't use the product afterwards.
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And one of the reasons being is because they don't have the right process, the right onboarding, the right love.
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And even though we were bringing on users, we didn't have the capabilities of client success managers and so on to be able to do this.
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And then one night, it was Monday at around nine o'clock at night.
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I had a one-to-one call with Imam Gadzi.
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Was on the call with him, and I said to him, Man, we're getting signups.
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People like the idea of Aura, they know what the problem is, but we're not getting people activated, which means they're not using the product.
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And I don't know what to do.
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Our activation rate is around 20%.
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So two out of 10 people actually use the product when they first come in.
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And he looked at me as if I was totally stupid and he said, So the problem is people don't get set up correctly.
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And I said, yes.
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And he said, but why don't you just do it for it?
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And in my ego brain, I'm like, no, it's software, it has to be super scalable.
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And he said, no, there's billion-dollar companies who do custom setups.
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So if you physically just do it for people, they will use it and that will solve that problem.
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And our activation rate went from 20% to 70% in those earlier months.
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So the users you're bringing in, seven out of 10 people would start using the product.
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Just because of one conversate conversation I had with Imon where he said, just do it for them.
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Literally, just do it for them.
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So we literally rolled up our sleeves, stopped being princesses, and said, Fuck it.
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Let's just set up everyone manually, business on hard mode.
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And that was basically how we got through the earlier months.
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Because I would be sitting there going through like someone's like most basic shit.
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And bear in mind at this point, I had built a business to multiple seven figures, profit multiple seven figures over the past couple of years.
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And there I am setting up the most basic Google Calendar shit because you have to be in the weeds.
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There is no way around it.
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There's no princess syndrome.
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That is the most important part is being in the actual weeds with your actual users, which I'm going to come back to.
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So I want to focus on what we got right in the beginning and some of the big lessons that we had.
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Without a doubt, the most important thing that we got right was the engineering team.
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So because my background was in software, I knew how hard this was going to be.
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So my first hire in this process was my tutor when I was in university, who had spent the past 10 years in engineering, who's an absolute G, who we'd always kept in contact with from the very beginning.
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When I started my podcast like seven years ago, we'd always stayed in contact.
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And how we actually came to be was he heard on a podcast me talk about it, talk about wanting to get into software, and he messaged me saying, Hey man, if you ever need help, just let me know.
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And then we were always trying to make shit work, just see what was going to happen.
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And then one night I rang him at literally midnight from Bali, being like, Hey, I have this idea.
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And he was like, I have no fucking idea what that means, but let's just do it anyway.
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And then we started working on it.
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But the most important part here was not just I had a good engineer, we had the foresight of what was to come because we had got the product down, but then we had to just scale our actual engineering team.
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And to tell you about how scary it is to hire engineers when you don't know engineering at a very deep level, it's literally like trying to find your lifelong partner with your eyes closed, with your ears closed, walking around the town trying to find a woman.
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Like it's literally impossible to understand what you're looking at.
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Like you literally don't know what you're looking at because I don't know what's happening underneath.
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So as we were hiring engineers, I had to put my trust, again, delegation trust into somebody else's ability to do this.
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Now, thanks to my who then become CTO, the benefit of this was he will had a background in America software, American companies, and said to me, Hey man, did you know that majority of people hire from Brazil?
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And I didn't even know the first thing about Brazil and engineering.
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We developed an engineering team from Brazil as a result.
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And how I know that it was a massive success is we haven't had one person leave from that team since day one.
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Team is solid, team works really well, and that was the biggest thing that we got right from day one was engineering.
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And it's funny because most people have so many issues when it comes to a core product, but it's something that I haven't had to think about as a CEO.
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And arguably, because I'm a sales first CEO, that's the best position to be in, so that I'm not in the back end too much.
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Now I'm still in the back end looking at things, but not in the back end too much, which allows me to focus on the most important part after core product, which is sales and getting people that come into your world.
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The second thing we got right is we use Aura to grow Aura, we dog food our own product, and that allows us to be able to give great product to great teams because we are a sales team in Voix and in Aura.
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So what we do is we use Aura, the company, to grow our own business, which allows us to be able to help other people grow their business.
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And what this means is from day one, we moved our scheduler, our CRM, all our type form shit, all the Cannonly stuff.
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We moved all of that to Aura on day one, despite my sales team invoked saying, Oh no, I want to stay with what's comfortable.
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Firstly, it's my business, so we can do what we want.
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And we moved everything over when it was super buggy and there was a bunch of issues because that is the best way to test your own product, is by using your own product.
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And if you look at like any of the big companies, this is how they actually go and do it.
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And it's the best litmus test because to this day, we use Aura we use Aura's sales team and the Voix sales team as the hunting ground, the playground, basically the sandbox effectively.
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And what we do is when we launch new partnerships, we turn everything on for Voix and Aura.
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When we launch new features, we turn everything on for Voix and Aura.
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And then we have a bunch of sales reps who are just hacking at the product 24-7 because they're trying to use it for their own day-to-day work.
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And there's no better way to test your product than by having someone use the product, and they use it in the way that they need to use it, right?
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They'll use it to find their leads, they'll use it to do XYZ.
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And why that's really helpful is because they're using it in a non-native way to them.
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Whereas if I know the product so well, I'm gonna use it in the perfect path, and the perfect path ends up being super like it's not realistic, it doesn't emulate real behavior.
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So if you want to sell something, you have to do it.
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So this is why you don't want to be the fat personal trainer, the divorced relationship coach, or the broke financial advisor.
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Like you have to do what you say you do.
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And thankfully, across both of my companies, I can honestly say with 100% certainty that I do exactly what we sell.
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We have a sales team, we use Aura to grow the sales team.
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That's what we teach, that's what we do, it's what we do now in software.
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And it's the best way to actually get exponential growth and also trust in the brand, which is most important because that's what people are doing in the very beginning of small companies.
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And that's some of the feedback that we get is that hey, like we're going with you, even though you're a small company.
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And I'll come back to this point later because they want the trust and reputation of someone that's a bit more established, which is honestly like fair.
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Like it's like cool, man, like fair.
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You want to go with a XYZ company because they've been around for seven years?
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Fair.
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However, there's ways around that, which I'll come back to.
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Now for the scares, and probably while you're actually watching in this video.
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So here's everything that went wrong, and here's everything that we did as a result of everyone wrong.
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So the hardest area is always going to be acquisition.
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Acquisition is broken down into front-end sales, as well as marketing.
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So let's take a look on the sales front.
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We led with a partnership first model.
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What that means is we would partner with coaching programs, education businesses, agencies, sales agencies to resell our software to their clients, they would use it and so on so forth.
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Now, that is a great model, but it is a very slow burn because not only are you trying to sell to that business owner, but you're also trying to get the their users or clients to utilize the software.
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Great strategy, but very difficult to build out in the beginning when you need to bring in revenue, right?
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So this is like when you're sub six figures in ARR, it's quite tough to do that, right?
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Because you're because of spending.
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And just back to the actual cost, even when it comes to engineering, we've always been in the red on engineering, and now we're probably 75% of covering engineering costs with MR.
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And we also pull up into a lot of annuals, which I'm going to come to.
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So when it comes to on the acquisition side, we basically started with partnerships, and then from there, then we actually pivoted into having an outbound sales team.
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The whole idea with outbound sales teams is you hire a bunch of sales development reps and you get them to do outbound.
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Okay.
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But the issue with our industry, the online education industry, is that a lot of reps are kind of short-term focused because they're so used to getting leads coming in inbound or even outbound that they have like, let's say, like an activated dialer 10,000 leads.
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So they're not as accustomed to building out lead lists and so on.
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Now that's problematic for someone who's like a 21-year-old sales rep who can be really, really good, bear in mind.
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It's not that it can't be really good, it's just the fact that the nature and the conditions that they traditionally work on are not actually happening.
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So as a result, you have reps that you're trying to get high volume on and they're struggling for a bunch of different actual reasons.
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That's like the first major constraint.
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What that means is you have to keep continuously hiring reps to find your best reps.
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So I can truthfully say that we have an amazing engineering team and we have an amazing sales team.
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The way I know this is like it's the culture, right?
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The culture is really strong.
00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:46.319
You know, we teach sales, so it's a it's a very important value to me as well.
00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:49.200
The team learn, we got great reps, they're learning.
00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:54.799
Yes, we need to let go of reps, yes, we need to hire reps, and that's just like the nature of the game, right?
00:17:54.880 --> 00:17:59.119
So I know that this is going to be a thing that we need to bring more people in, let people go.
00:17:59.279 --> 00:18:00.079
It is what it is.
00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:03.440
One area that was really hard underneath acquisition was marketing.
00:18:03.599 --> 00:18:06.880
So we started with an organic content strategy, which I think everyone should do.
00:18:07.039 --> 00:18:10.319
We had our aura Instagram account, and then the aura Instagram account got taken down.
00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:13.119
And during that process, we had actually started doing paid.
00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:22.640
So when we launched in actual January, we launched through a webinar style, which I still think was a good idea, probably just a little bit early for webinars, but it worked really well in the beginning.
00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:24.640
And then the aura Instagram account got taken down.
00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:33.759
And when the aura Instagram account got taken down, we were 100% reliant on paid for marketing, which was fine because we had ad agencies and we had people working on the accounts.
00:18:33.920 --> 00:18:39.759
And my honest, honest feedback is that you have to keep things in in-house.
00:18:39.839 --> 00:18:49.839
And the reason being is because not because ad agencies are bad or not because external people are bad, they're not in the fucking detail because it's not their business.
00:18:50.079 --> 00:18:51.599
This is my company.
00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:55.599
The people that I hire, I trust with my life.
00:18:55.839 --> 00:18:58.480
They come in and they're they're I call it blood.
00:18:58.559 --> 00:19:00.319
They understand like what's happening.
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:06.559
It's like it's basically like family in terms of they understand the subtle nuances that you'll never be able to understand.
00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:11.119
So what happened was we started using a paid acquisition strategy and it wasn't clicking.
00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:19.759
And the reason why it wasn't clicking is because the messaging was slightly off, it wasn't replicating what we were seeing in person or with users because they're just not in the detail.
00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:22.000
And is that like whose fault is that?
00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:28.079
I I don't think it's anyone's actual fault, but I do think that it is a feature, not a bug of external people.
00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:28.559
Okay.
00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:33.039
So specifically on the ads, I decided to run my own ads.
00:19:33.119 --> 00:19:40.000
So myself and my CMO, who previously had no paid experience of running ads, we said, let's put our heads together and let's do this.
00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:45.920
I sat in a room in Amsterdam for one week straight learning media media buying.
00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:53.839
I literally was there like on clawed, like looking up like how to run ads, and then I would go back and run ads, and I would be like, What is a headline?
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.640
And I would learn this, and so would my CMO.
00:19:56.799 --> 00:19:58.720
Because I learned this, guess what happened?
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:04.880
Cost per lead started going down, cost per call started going down, cost per registration started going down, lead flow started going up.
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:17.519
The actual outcomes we wanted started to actually happen because when you're so close to the detail, especially in the beginning, back to the beginning when we started onboarding users, when you're in the detail with it, you understand all the subtleties, like the weird nuances.
00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:24.720
And then you're waking up in the morning and I'm doing like my focus hour in the morning, and I'm waking up and thinking, okay, great, what other weird angle can we take?
00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:26.880
We have this new feature coming up, like what can we do?
00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:30.559
And you can only do that if you are in the detail of your own business.
00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:33.279
If you're not in the detail, how the fuck are you gonna be able to do that?
00:20:33.359 --> 00:20:39.920
And yes, as you scale and whatever, you can bring in other people, but arguably, arguably, you want to hold on to these areas together.
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:46.799
One of my friends, Brooke Hitting, they make six million a month and he runs his own ads.
00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:48.240
Like what, like you know what I mean?
00:20:48.319 --> 00:20:51.680
Like, it's not it doesn't have to be like, oh, you gotta delegate absolutely everything.
00:20:51.839 --> 00:20:54.079
Delegate some things, but not some things that are core, okay?
00:20:54.240 --> 00:21:00.319
The other part of this is external people will always want to come into your world when it's actually software, right?
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:05.119
They want to come in as a consultant, whatever, and people always want pieces of the pie.
00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:16.079
The amount of people that have messaged me that said, hey, they'll exchange this service, that service, and in exchange, all I want is just two percent equity, three percent equity.
00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:16.720
That's what I want.
00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:19.680
3% equity, and I'll help you with XYZ.
00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:22.079
My rule is simple no external people.
00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:25.119
The biggest lesson no external people.
00:21:25.519 --> 00:21:28.240
If you have to go a little bit slower, go a little bit slower.
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:32.319
If you have to shoe glass and figure out media buying, just fucking learn it.
00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:33.839
Buy a course on ads.
00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:39.359
But you don't need external people who are not in the detail with software.
00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:41.839
And let me explain why, because I really try to think about this.
00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:46.880
Unlike agency and coaching, coaching kind of come in and you like put your finger on something and it's kind of solved.
00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:49.759
But software has so many different nuances.
00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:51.359
It's like business on hard mode.
00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:57.759
There's effectively like orders of consequences, so you can't just say, Hey, Darren, just change our product, it doesn't work like that.
00:21:57.839 --> 00:21:59.759
So you need someone that's in the weave because like everything.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:04.000
Want to change with marketing, everything you want to change with, let's say the product takes time.
00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:08.079
Like it takes time because it isn't a course online.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:11.519
Like that's literally the logic why it takes much longer.
00:22:11.680 --> 00:22:17.920
And that is the biggest lesson that 100% I've learned about bringing in external people and something you should definitely learn from.
00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:21.039
The next lesson is events is the edge.
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:26.319
100% I found immediately that events were our edge.
00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:28.720
So our first event for Aura was in Australia.
00:22:28.799 --> 00:22:30.960
I was working with one of our clients, Morgan Nelson.
00:22:31.039 --> 00:22:39.119
I came and spoke at his event, and we had a bunch of people sign up because when you're basically presenting software, software is a system, right?
00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:41.519
It's not like coaching where it's like, oh, do I like him?
00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:42.160
Do I hate him?
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:43.200
Is his hair shit?
00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:47.119
Like, like there's way too much opinion when it comes to coaching.
00:22:47.279 --> 00:22:51.119
But when it's software, it's like I have this system, it solves this problem.
00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:53.279
You can use it if you like.
00:22:53.680 --> 00:23:02.000
And being in person with people and seeing that transformation and speaking to them about some subtleties, it was very easy to have a rinse and repeat model.
00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:07.599
So then I went from that and then I spoke at William Brown's mastermind, and we also had aura there, and it was the same process.
00:23:07.759 --> 00:23:11.200
We had a big influx of people who were very interested in aura.
00:23:11.279 --> 00:23:12.720
It created a lot of awareness.
00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:17.359
And back to how you grow something is awareness, reach, and conversion.
00:23:17.519 --> 00:23:19.680
So we had the awareness piece taken care of.
00:23:19.759 --> 00:23:26.400
We had the reach piece because we were connected with people that were connected, and then we had the conversion component because we actually know how to help people.
00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:28.319
So then I looked at this as an actual model.
00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:28.640
Okay.
00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:30.559
And I thought, okay, can I go to events?
00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:32.240
What are the big events that we can hit?
00:23:32.319 --> 00:23:34.240
And then what happened was we started to do a tour.
00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:36.400
I started working with James Gallagher from A-Players.
00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:39.119
We started to sponsor A Players for all of 2026.
00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:44.559
And that was a huge, huge value add because we basically have this point whereby we have congruency.
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:49.599
James runs an entrepreneur network, we run a software company that helps entrepreneurs make money.
00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:51.519
So it's like congruency, it's alignment.
00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:57.440
So what you need to do is you need to find joined ventures and join partners that has congruency to your actual business.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:24:02.160
And this is where last year or early this year I came out with a video around the info mafia.
00:24:02.240 --> 00:24:04.960
So I wanted to build the info mafia because I'm not trying to compete with people.
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:11.599
I don't need to compete with people, I want to work with people because wars are costly, whereas alliances help you solve problems.
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:15.920
So that's what I thought about is like, how can I look at alliances versus looking at competition?
00:24:16.079 --> 00:24:28.640
Now, of course, there's pros and cons to everything, but nonetheless, we had multiple other partnerships as well running through this vessel, and it allows us to get straight exposure, which brings me to my last point, is actually about being in the weeds with people.
00:24:28.799 --> 00:24:33.440
Your unfair advantage is doing the unscalable 100%, like 100%.
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.880
Like if you're a princess and you think, well, you know, I've already grown a business to multiple seven figures, I already know how to do things.
00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:43.920
I shouldn't do this to somebody else.
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:45.920
It's a but it's below my pay rate.
00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:47.680
You will not be successful.
00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:49.200
Your ego is the better of it.
00:24:49.359 --> 00:24:54.880
If you believe that you can't do something because of something that you did in the past, you will not be successful.
00:24:55.279 --> 00:25:01.200
And how I know this is because I see this with clients, with people, with prospects.
00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:08.319
When the ego gets the better of the individual, they are not operating with true intention.
00:25:09.119 --> 00:25:17.839
So for me, I go to these events, I sit with people, I'm in the weeds of people, I go to my own clients, I sit with my own clients, I map out what the best solution is for them.
00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:20.799
I'm not on every sales call, but I'm responsible for all the sales.
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:25.519
Having that ability and being there with people allows you to become a category one.
00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:33.680
Because we have won deals with Aura where a guy will say to me, I was looking at your biggest competitor and they're the safe bet and they're the easy bet.
00:25:33.759 --> 00:25:35.599
But I want to go with you because you're here.
00:25:35.759 --> 00:25:36.960
Will it always be perfect?
00:25:37.279 --> 00:25:37.599
No.
00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:39.759
Have I ever promised that I will be?
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:40.160
Never.
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:41.680
But what do I do promise?
00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:49.039
I do promise that myself and our entire team are gonna roll up her fucking sleeves 24-7 and be in the detail.
00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:51.359
And yes, I might have to stay up later.
00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:54.960
Yes, you gotta take a few more calls, especially when I was in Asia.
00:25:55.119 --> 00:25:58.160
When I was in Asia, I was taking calls at 5 a.m., 6 a.m.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:25:58.960
7 a.m.
00:25:59.200 --> 00:25:59.680
8 p.m.
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:00.480
9 p.m.
00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:01.279
10 p.m.
00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:04.880
But I did it because it's the unskalable, and that's what gives you the edge.
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:10.480
So if you strip everything back, software and business is simple product, marketing, sales.
00:26:10.559 --> 00:26:10.880
That's it.
00:26:11.039 --> 00:26:13.920
Every single business can be broken into those three core sections.
00:26:14.079 --> 00:26:26.000
When it comes to aura, on the engineering side, we built products, we had to redefine the product several times, we have to iterate, we have to be agile, we have to be able to bounce from different strategies because that's what's important.
00:26:26.160 --> 00:26:32.400
We rebuilt stuff, we rebuilt our note taker, we rebuilt our scheduler, we rebuilt the CRM like 14 different times.
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:35.759
We've now been rebuilding our onboarding process for the past two months.
00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:43.039
We're about to redo our AI coaching and our analytics because shit gets outdated, shit isn't perfect, and that is okay.
00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:47.599
And this is the big lesson for people is like your product has to evolve.
00:26:47.759 --> 00:26:49.119
Shit will go wrong.
00:26:49.359 --> 00:26:50.000
Fix it.
00:26:50.079 --> 00:26:51.119
Don't be a princess.
00:26:51.279 --> 00:26:52.799
On marketing, exact same thing.
00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:54.640
Instagram, gone, finito.
00:26:54.799 --> 00:26:56.160
Paid side wasn't working.
00:26:56.240 --> 00:26:57.680
I had to go figure it out.
00:26:57.920 --> 00:26:59.920
Now it's working, probably not gonna work tomorrow.
00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:00.880
Gotta go do something.
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:03.920
On the sales side, partnerships wasn't the right angle, too early.
00:27:04.160 --> 00:27:06.880
Sales team not as not cooking as much as we want.
00:27:07.039 --> 00:27:08.640
Swap around, try something different.
00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:11.039
Now we're building a new outbound sales team in a different way.
00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:12.240
We're changing the strategy.
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:12.880
Who cares?
00:27:13.039 --> 00:27:13.599
Do shit.
00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:18.880
If you're just so stuck in the same way that it's like it has to be this way, it has to be that process, you get wrecked.
00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:20.960
Like wrecked, wrecked, wrecked.
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:22.640
That's like it's not going to work.
00:27:22.799 --> 00:27:27.599
So from going from six figures to seven figures, ARR right now, what we're looking at is doubling down on what's working.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:37.119
The paid is working, the sales team is working, the conversion is working, the onboarding process is dialed, the conversion rate on the trials is still roughly the same, but we're trying to push more activations in the front end.
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:37.839
So we're getting there.
00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:41.599
And it's about fixing those small areas and always looking to get better.
00:27:41.759 --> 00:27:51.279
And here's the big lesson, and the final piece for you is that you have to build a company to sell, and you have to build it with the full intentions to sell it.
00:27:51.359 --> 00:27:54.000
And you have to look at it as a distribution network.
00:27:54.160 --> 00:27:56.880
Think about a shipping company, a company that's that's leaving China.
00:27:57.039 --> 00:27:58.400
They're distribution partners.
00:27:58.559 --> 00:28:02.160
They have distribution partners to Africa, to Europe, to America, to Australia.
00:28:02.319 --> 00:28:03.200
That's what software is.
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:05.680
It's how do you distribute your actual software?
00:28:05.839 --> 00:28:07.920
And that's why we've leaned so much into partnerships.
00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:16.400
We've been very lucky to build a partnership with Ablefy, one of the biggest companies in Europe for online coaches, agency owners, course creation, payment processors, everything.
00:28:16.480 --> 00:28:19.039
We have map multiple more partnerships just being launched.
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:25.119
An integration with closed, integration with other companies like Go High Level, HubSpot, we're integrated with Slack.
00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:26.319
We're basically a hub.
00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:27.759
Aura is a centerpiece.
00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:30.799
We're the centerpiece on a table, and we connect.
00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:38.559
And that's what increases the valuation because it's all well and good to do it for one user, it's all well and good to do it for one country, but you want to be everywhere.
00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:41.759
You want your tentacles to be spread everywhere and you want to be desirable.
00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:44.319
Why is the woman in the red dress desirable?
00:28:44.559 --> 00:28:45.599
It's because she has options.
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:51.039
And the more options that you have, the higher the desire, the higher the demand, the more scarce the resource.
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:56.880
So if you look at demand, you want to be in demand by users, by distribution partners, and that's what drives the value.
00:28:57.039 --> 00:28:58.000
The true, true value.
00:28:58.160 --> 00:28:59.200
Does it happen overnight?
00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:00.640
Absolutely fucking not.
00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:03.200
Is it the path for the next couple of years?
00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:03.920
100%.
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:09.200
And over the past year, I've really learned that it's simple to start with AI right now.
00:29:09.279 --> 00:29:10.480
It used to be very difficult.
00:29:10.559 --> 00:29:13.680
You need a bunch of engineers, you know, it costs a ton, all that kind of stuff.
00:29:13.839 --> 00:29:14.880
It's quite simple to start.
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:19.279
It's very tough to maintain, it's exceptionally tough to grow, and the whole game is to try to scale up.
00:29:19.359 --> 00:29:29.440
And if you can get those things in place, bring down your churn, increase the brand equity, increase the distribution partners, that's how you achieve your tenure goal in just three years.
00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:32.640
Now, this is a very different video than what I usually post on my channel.
00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:37.279
If you do like this video, I'd love to learn from you what else you want to see to do with Aura.
00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:46.319
I'm happy to produce more videos just like this to help you see behind the scenes of what it's truly like in the pursuit of building an eight figure software company.