Austin Bouley: 3 Huge Levers That Got My SaaS To $500K ARR In 5 Months

Austin reveals the three powerful strategies that propelled his first SaaS to $500K ARR in just five months.

You’ll hear how Austin used the Dream 100 framework, designed to help companies target the most beneficial large businesses to partner with, to rapidly scale his business. You’ll learn how to transform your product into an irresistible offer customers can’t resist, the secret to using webinars effectively to boost adoption and inject cash into the business, and the impact of leveraging affiliates.

Whether you’re starting, or looking to refresh and accelerate growth, actionable insights and tactics will help you maximize your SaaS’s potential and achieve impressive results quickly.

You’ll learn:

How to grow a SaaS to $500K ARR in 5 months—without investors or a team.
How to craft offers that convert using a proven value formula.
How outcome-driven onboarding dramatically boosts user retention.
Why personalized gifts and surprise touches keep customers from churning.
How to scale with webinars, paid ads, and the Dream 100 partnership strategy.

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Transcript

Austin Bouley

My name is Austin Bouley and so I’ll be walking through, it says the three huge levers, but I was putting together the slides, and I was like, You know what? Let’s just put seven in. So it’s actually the seven huge levers.

So basically, I’ll be diving into what I did in this business. Currently in month five of this new business, it’s the second one. Just some background on it, since I’ll be showing examples from it, is that it’s a software that allows options traders to automate their strategy using like a no code platform. So diving into it over the next hour and some Q&A time, I’ll be going over how I basically get traffic, convert traffic, and how I retain users.

Here’s the revenue graph, just because I don’t mind showing it, because it’s just me.

I have no VC people stopping me. So this was launching to a wait list. This was turning on ads, then I turned off ads, and worked on perfecting the offer, which we’ll discuss in a second, and onboarding and things like that. And then bringing on partners here hit 250,000 in revenue this month. So let’s dive into it.

Crafting a Killer Offer and Sales Page

Step number one is how to craft a killer sale – like offer and sales page. A pre req to this, that I did not include, is that you want to make sure that you nail down your ICP. I originally, as you saw, turned on ads and then I turned them off because I looked at that segment of customers. I was like, Okay, which one is the easiest to serve has the least amount of load on our support and also makes us the most money? So I kind of dialed down on that. Once you have your ICP, then this next step becomes a lot easier.

Basically, when we’re talking about offers and sales pages, I really hate when I see things like this. I know we’re looking at big competitors here. So Webroot is a big security software, and they just say, get your 14 day free trial on their trial page. If you just think of yourself as someone who’s being dropped on this page and you have no idea who the company is, you’re like, what the heck? Why do I want a 14 day free trial? This makes no sense.

Also, if we look at DocuSign. I know we all, or most of us, know what that is. We still don’t want to rely on brand. We want to actually give a solid reason so you can see they’re like, join all these people who are doing well. I don’t know. And so you’re putting your customers, or potential customers on this page, and they don’t know what the heck it’s doing. So we need to make sure we craft an offer that’s actually valuable.

So if we’re looking at how do we create value, we’re looking at the value equation from Alex Hormozi. I think he just does a great job at showing this.

And so in order for us to create value, we need to have a dream outcome. We need to have a perceived likelihood of achievement. And then, we also need to decrease the time delay, how fast they get to that result. Also we need to decrease the amount of effort and sacrifice that goes into that.

Dream Outcome

So if we’re looking at the first one, a dream outcome, what’s the strategy behind that? Well, the strategy is purely just making sure that your trial and the sale that you’re offering connects to the desire. So as you saw, the first two pages that I showed was get your 14 day free trial, but there’s no indication of what the outcome of that is. And so we need to tie whatever we’re doing, demo, trial, sale to the actual desire they want.

So the tactic for that is simply like, hey, like, depending B2C, can kind of do this or B2B, if you kind of make them pay up front, you typically always give a refund. So might as well, in that title, say, hey, achieve X outcome, which you’re pretty sure you can achieve based on your stats. And then say, or your money back, you’re already giving a refund. So it doesn’t matter. Or you can do things like, you know, achieve X outcome the next 30 days for free, or something like that. So you’re tying it to an outcome and to a result that you know your ICP wants.

Perceived Likelihood of Achievement

Next is, we need to make sure that when we are stating the outcome that they can get, we show them that it’s super easy for them to get it, or that the likelihood of them doing it is very high. So that’s what this step is – it’s making sure that they perceive the outcome as almost guaranteed.

The tactics of how we do that on a sales page is by showing reviews and testimonials and a guarantee. But specifically, if you can, you want your testimonials and reviews to specifically end the review, if you can say what the outcome on the headline is. So if you’re saying, hey, I can decrease your sales cycle by 20%. Then you want to make sure that your reviews and testimonials have it saying, oh my gosh, I decreased my sales cycle by 20%. And so it’s basically them reading through this, saying that you’re not just saying the outcome, but they’re saying it. So now, they can believe that. Okay, cool, this is the outcome, and I can achieve it.

Time Delay

Next is the time delay. This is where software really can thrive over other businesses, because we can decrease the time delay massively. The strategy behind this is making sure that they can get the outcome as soon as possible. So the tactics around this is we’re going to state timelines, if possible, and then also testimonials. So again, I know it kind of plays into some FTC. They don’t really like when you state specific times depending on what industry you’re in, so be careful of that. But if you can have a testimonial that aligns with the times of what you’ve stated and the headline – like achieve X outcome by X time. And again, if you have that X time in the testimonials, that helps as well.

Effort & Sacrifice

So the last one is effort and sacrifice. How much of their work goes into this? We need to make the outcome seem easy to achieve. It’s kind of like perceived likelihood, that’s more of the guarantee. This is more of showing them how easy it is. So the tactics to do this is simply provide templates, provide onboarding, if you can if your ticket price supports it, as well as great support. You can show that through testimonials, show that through support on the page and other things like that.

So here’s an example that I like. This is Hiros. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. They’re ads tracking software, basically to make Facebook ads more accurate. They basically grew in the first five years and were able to sell for about $110 million. This is their sales page.

So you can see here, first off, it starts with TrustPilot. If you’re able to do that and push to that – awesome, show it. It builds trust immediately. And then you can see here that their headline is all about what they want you to do, not demo, not trial, no nothing. And then, goes to demo. But what I love seeing here is it shows all the testimonials. Then, we can see here that I love is it showing performance. It’s showing zero change. Because you may be thinking, Okay, this is awesome. I can do this, but how much am I gonna have to change my infrastructure? And you can see here, no change. It just shows how easy it is. So emphasizing the ease to actually implement this solution.

This is Airtable. Probably familiar with them again, big business.

If we’re looking at Airtable here, you can see how it says, accelerate your most critical operations. And then it pushes to what they want you to do, it shows all the people they work with. And then what I particularly wanted to show here is that right under what they want to do, you’re probably thinking, OK, cool. How long is this going to take to set up? And they provide basically, template. I’m sure this is some AI builder where it create apps instantly. So you’re now thinking, Okay, this is the outcome. How long is it going to take to get? And basically, instantly. I do the same thing on this page. This is B2C, so it’s a bit different. But you can see here the outcome and what it’s tied to. Testimonials go all the way down, then different things like guarantee and whatnot. So that’s how I craft the offer. Again, you’re going to want to structure it and change it based on if it’s B2B or B2C. And then basically, after we do that, and what I really love starting with is the offer. What is the outcome that I want to get my particular ICP?

Designing an Outcome-Driven Onboarding Flow

Once we do that, then we can actually structure a proper onboarding flow. Too many softwares just drop the user and just some generic onboarding flow, because they don’t actually know what that user wants to achieve. That’s a problem, because we as onboarders, want to make sure that they get that result as fast as possible. And when they do that, we can retain them longer. But if you just drop them in a software and you don’t know what their goal is, or you haven’t given them a goal to achieve, then you don’t know what to make them do.

And so they’re staring at this mountain. They’re like, OK, how actually do I climb this? And now when you give them the outcome on the sales page, achieve x, now you know what they want to achieve. So you know how to structure onboarding to get them there. And so what we’re starting off with this is, I’m sure you’ve seen this before, very much of a product led growth type of strategy – which is the bowling alley framework.

Which basically our current state is where the member is. And our goal is to get them to make a strike, which is the outcome that we gave them. Since on the offer page and landing page, we actually gave them the outcome we want them to get. We know clearly how we can get them there. So we know that they’re starting at the bottom, we want to get them to a strike.

So how are we going to do this? Well, we’re going to guide them in the product. We’re going to put up bumpers so that they start going and getting derailed, they get back on track. So in the product, we have our onboarding checklist, we have messages, we have empty states where we can guide them to the right thing. Then also we have outside of the product, a conversational bumper. Which is where we use emails like, hey, notice you just took this step, the next one is this. Or notice you just did this, you might want to try this as well. And so we can do those conversational bumpers to push them back into the product.

And if you’re wondering, OK, this is all too much. What do I actually do? Just count the number of steps. I bet a lot of you, especially in B2B. But some of it may be needed. Try to eliminate as many clicks as you can. This means go to the sign up page and note every time you click all the way until you get to the outcome. You told them they’re going to get and you’ll see hundreds of clicks, probably. And you’re like, Okay, what? What number of these clicks? And I get rid of and massively reduce the number of clicks from the sale to the outcome. So that’s going to speed up that.

So here’s a look. I mean, this is very simple. This is my onboarding.

I had five things originally, as I dial down my ICP, I cut it down to three. And honestly, that third or if I should say fourth one, because the first one actually isn’t a step. The fourth one is probably can be removed. But I like them, knowing they can do that, since it’s a financial SaaS, and there’s a lot of money connected there.

But here’s another example.

Again, you can see here just a checklist we all are familiar with onboarding, or at least most of us should be. Again, this is an example of just I pulled online. What I don’t like is it’s very generic, so you can’t tell what the outcome that was promised.

So what I mean here is and it says, integrate your CRM, add brand, add brand elements, and make your first email campaign. Well, I don’t know what the outcome was. It doesn’t look like it’s pointing to one, but let’s say the outcome was make and send your first email in the next 30 minutes. Maybe that could be something. And if it is, then, well, your first thing is going to be design and email. And then after you do that, the next step would be, hey, now you can connect something so that we can actually send that email.

So just kind of thinking about what is your outcome, and how you can get them there the fastest. If you want to tie it to if you’re doing more of a product led growth motion, and you want to tie that free trial to some rewards. You can gamify it like something like that.

Retention Starts With Delivering Value

So after I have the offer and I create the onboarding flow, then I can really go after ads like acquisition. But I also like to talk about retention, because if we fill up the bucket and everyone goes away then it doesn’t really matter. Again, I’m five months in, so these are some of the hacks or strategies that I’ve played with. But again, who knows? It’s five months, so everything can change a lot.

The first step in retention is onboarding, knowing the outcome that they want, and getting them there as fast as possible. If you can do that, that’s the first step.

Show Stats Around the Desired Outcome

Second, here’s something I do, just showing stats around their desired outcome. So a lot of us are like, Okay, well, how do I convince someone to keep this product? Well, it should be delivering a very valuable outcome, and you should be showing them that outcome every single time they log in. And so what I do basically is, on the dashboard they get to see the stats of how much money they’re making, which is what my platform is. Then they also get to get a weekly email of like, Hey, here’s the amount of time you saved, here’s the amount of money you’ve made, and here’s everything we’ve done for you in the process. Which is like, all the work that they no longer have to do. And so it resells itself every time.

Send Personalize Welcome Videos

The next thing I do, depending on what you’re doing. On B2C, so I can do this. If you’re B2B, this may be a play where you can give it to. If there’s a transfer from your sales person to your account manager, have your account manager welcome them. You can send a personalized video. This is through an app called Bonjoro. I don’t know if you know what Bonjoro is, but basically every time someone signs up, I get a ping to my phone. I just record a quick message, hey, congrats on signing up, you’re in the right place. Confirming that they’re in the right place, and they made the right decision for X, Y, Z reason. And that I’m here to help if they ever need, and so that helps as well.

I threw this in last night because I was doing these outside of last night’s drinks. I kind of went to the side and did a couple videos for people, and I actually got this response last night. So people tend to really love these because they don’t see people do it often, especially if you have someone higher up in the company doing it. Maybe not every single one, but it just brings, like, a lot of value. Like, hey, I’m the founder. I just wanted to welcome you, like, you’re valued here, and I want to help you get the outcome. And they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s awesome. So that definitely helps with retention as well.

Send a Gift a Week Before Renewal

And last but not least, I love this little hack is sending a gift a week before renewal. So you can do this on a monthly contract basis, or a yearly contract basis where I send a gift. And now I do this selfishly, because I could send other gifts, but I send something that will promote me. I have a lot of people who wear this hat that I send them a week before they renew, whether it’s monthly or yearly. And then they wear it, and people are like, Oh, what’s that on your hat? I’ve heard numerous conversations of people who use the software because of this hat.

But basically what you’re doing is – this is the concept of retroprosity. So, I’m giving them something that they didn’t think they were going to get – that’s free, that’s high value. And they’re like, Oh my gosh. And so it kind of hurts them to click Cancel that next period, because they’re like, I just got this free gift. So they stay a bit longer and that’s kind of how I hack that.

Here are some examples: I think Instacart does a great job with this. They always show you how many hours you saved, not going to the store, and things like that. Also, on my phone here, I see that Uber did that like, Oh, hey, you saved that. Always showing that core metric, that core value, and restating it so you’re reselling your product to them every single time they log in, that it’s a no brainer for them to keep it.

Here’s the example of where I got from the hat. This person (Andrew Lock) was running a $400/month service company. They noticed a drop off, I think it was about five, six months in. And so what they did is like, you know what? Let’s actually send them brownies at about around month five, like a few weeks before they cancel, on average. They sent it and they got an extra 2.3 additional months. So if you’re doing the math there, they’re basically increasing their LTV per customer by about $1,000 and they’re only spending about $50 on the brownies. So again, just giving them something where you see drop off really just makes them kind of feel bad to cancel and then they stay longer. So that’s kind of some retention things I do.

Building Community to Boost Support and Loyalty

Step number four is leveraging community. So at my first SaaS, it was community sales-led. I didn’t want to do that, because if you build it around one person, it’s very hard to sell. So this community is built around itself. We all know that community can do a lot of great things, such as the most support, and most importantly, it’s the loyalty to the brand, and they’re basically just doing everything. So we have brand loyalty, but we also have decreased support load. Because I have great power members and users who are teaching and educating other members inside the program, so I don’t have to do as much support, which is awesome.

It also increased product feedback loops. By that, I mean, I post what I’m working on, what’s coming, what has been released. And they share, okay, I like this. I didn’t like this. And so I can hear quickly from my members what’s going good, what’s going wrong. Here’s how I push to my community on the first two onboarding emails they get.

You can just see here, join the discord code community as part of the steps. And then again, my first key metric is to get them to create an auto trader. If I can get them to do that, then they’re good. And so basically, I give them three ways to do that, and one way is by copying the community. And so that’s a great way, because I’ve seen right here, it says, Yeah, post in the chat this message, and I’ve seen so many of those messages in the chat, and then conversation starts. It’s great.

Here’s another example. Again, a bigger example. We see here Zapier and then also Ramp is doing this as well. Again, forums is the same type of idea of communities.

Running Webinars to Educate and Convert

Number five is the use of webinars to generate leads and sales. So webinars is what I run ads to. We’ll talk about the webinar first, and then we’ll get into the ads part of it.

Webinars are quite simple. If you never run one before, it’s basically go on Zoom. Create a webinar, it’s the registration page, it’s the zoom, and that’s the sales page. If you’re B2B, they’re not selling directly, that’s fine. It’ll probably be a link to your calendar to schedule time with a salesperson or something like that. But that’s typically the flow in the process here.

So how do we structure the registration page? Again, if you’re using Zoom, that’s fine. If you’re using your own, this is how we’re going to structure the headline. The headline, we’re going back to the same value creation formula – is what is the core outcome that they want? And how can we show them that it’s almost guaranteed to get? And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to wrap around their outcome with a case study.

Again, this is just something I found online. But basically we’re saying how to achieve X outcome, and then we’re going to wrap that around a story of someone who’s actually done it in our product. So how to achieve X outcome, if you are XYZ. And so we’re basically calling out our ICP, and then we’re saying, without all the pains that your core customer has. So again, we need to understand what our core customer is, and once we do that we can craft something that pushes to the product.

So for me, it’s how I automated my entire options trading strategy in less than 10 minutes using this secret, little known tool. So if you’re doing something else, it could be let’s just go back to the decreasing sales cycle. How XYZ company decreased their sales cycle in a matter of 90 days by using this tool without XYZ. And so that would be how you hook in the audience.

After that, you kind of need to structure the presentation. When you structure the presentation, this is an example. It’s called the perfect webinar framework.

This is going to be more for courses or products below $5,000. The person who made this is called Russell Brunson, the CEO of Click Funnels, and he grew to $66 million in his first two years purely doing webinars for the software company. So it definitely can be done. And this is how he structures it.

This is how I like to do it for SaaS, though. I like to do an intro where I’m hooking in and making the ICP know that they’re in the right place, like I’m calling them out. Then I like to teach them the manual process of what’s going on, like what they’re doing now. And then, I’m going to emphasize three of the biggest pains that come with doing that manual process.

So I’m like, OK, cool, you’re here for this. Here is the manual process. And now you might think this is really cool, but a lot of people still don’t do it because of this problem, this problem, and this problem. But actually, what I’m about to show you here in a second, we’ll get rid of this problem by doing this. We’ll get rid of this problem by doing this. And get rid of this problem by doing this. It’s called, insert product name and then you do a demo. And then you can either push to the salesperson or push to a sales page. And so that’s kind of the structure that I follow with a webinar.

You can see here intros calling out the audience, kind of showing it’s possible, results, host, whatever. And then I get into the teaching. This is the manual process of doing it all, having some fun with it. And then is where I get into, okay, this is awesome. Why doesn’t everybody do this? And then I go, okay, because there’s this problem, there’s this problem, and there’s this problem. Basically, I’m agitating the pain. I’m saying, OK, these are the problems, and this is why it sucks. And then I go, well, actually, you no longer have to do that, because now we solve that problem this way. We solve that problem this way. We solve that problem this way. And when we do that, then it transfers, OK, well, how is this possible? Well, is the software called this? And here’s what it looks like. And that’s kind of the process.

So companies like Click Funnels, that I mentioned, have done this. Click Funnels grew to sit to 66 million in the first two years. That’s awesome. We also have Flow Chat. They take DMs from across all platforms, put them into one place, so that’s your sales and out and and outreach team can manage them.

But Flow Chat, if you want to look at another example, and Paddle. Paddle does this more as a branding than a sales method. They do this basically on a weekly basis. And what they’re doing is each webinar is showcasing something that they’ve learned from the product and from their cost and from their customers. So it’s more about keeping the audience aware of what their brand is, instead of directly selling. And so if you’re going more of a B2B play, that’s something you can do as well.

So the goal of a webinar is the revenue per registrant. That’s the only concern about the webinar, if you’re selling or if you’re getting someone to a sales team member. Whether it’s like sales page or an actual sales member or team member, but it’s the revenue per registrant. You measure this by simply taking, over this time period of everyone who went through the webinar, whether they directly went to a sales page or not, how many of those did we sell? How much money did we make from them? Divide that amount by your number of registrants, and then you get the revenue per registrant. So you need to know this number in order to scale this with ads profitably.

Scaling with Ads that Actually Work

That brings us into step six, which is how to use ads to scale your webinar. Like I mentioned, you need to be aware of what your revenue per registrant is. Then from the ads component, we need to know what is our cost to acquire a registrant. As long as we can acquire somebody, or AKA get somebody to register via ads for less than the amount of money we’re making on the ads or on the webinar, then we are good. And we’re basically getting free leads for our sales team. Now you may be like, hey, what does this mean? Free leads for our sales team.

Basically, what I’m saying here is that the money that we’re making on the webinar is the upfront cost to cover acquisition. So although we’re only making like, let’s say $60 per registrant. You’re like, that’s not much money. That money is covering what we spent on ads, we still have all the people that go here next, who registered. So all these people are interested in that topic. And again, I collect emails, names and phone numbers. When I run this, I get thousands of people sign up for a webinar every week. And when I do that, then I’m having basically 1000 leads. So although I only get maybe, like 10 or 20 of them to buy, that still covers my cost of ads. And now, I have 1000 leads that I can follow up with. That’s how I can basically lower CAC a lot.

So you’re like, OK, Austin, what do these metrics look like? Here’s some real numbers. Here are some Facebook ads I just pulled from the first time I ran them again, about $3-11 to get someone to register for an ad. And then you can see here that my revenue per register is around $60 so obviously very profitable ads.

Here are the ad styles that are working well for me right now. Again, it’s actually quite funny. It’s using a fake person and saying that they enjoy this. It’s obviously fake. But using something like this, Grandma actually uses this software and loved it or something like that. It’s silly and stupid. It’s funny, but it works.

This one right here is a new style ad. Okay, when we’re talking about this, don’t use a real image of a person because then you’re kind of lying. But use a fake person. Here, news style. Again, go after what your ICP like, what are they using? And so you can see here, for my members or my customers, I need them to connect to their broker. So I looked at, okay, what are my best members? What broker are they connecting into my platform? And that’s TastyTrade. And so basically, have a news article here of TastyTrade exposed, and this does really well.

Then this one does really well. I was not expecting this to do well. When you do ads, your whole job is to test so many different things, so many different formats and styles and strategies. But this one actually works surprisingly well, which is me just showing the webinar registration page, taking out my camera and just pointing and reading it with my finger. It sounds silly, but this gets like $2 per registrant, which is insane, especially if you’re selling a high ticket. You can make a lot of money from those ads.

Quick Webinar & Ads Math

Let’s say you have $10,000 in ad spend that you’re doing, you can get $10 per registrant. That means you’re going to get about 1000 registrants. Let’s say you convert at 2% which probably average for $1,000. Most people doing a lot more. So, I’m just using simple numbers for you to get it here. That would be around $20,000 in sales. That means net, what we’re doing is a $10,000 profit. So we put 10,000 into ads, we get a very small, small profit, but we get 1000 leads. So that’s awesome. Now we have leads that we can follow up with that we basically acquired for free.

The Dream 100 Strategy to Unlock Partnerships

Step number seven is how to use the dream 100 to 2x your business.

So the dream 100 is something that was coined by Chet Holmes. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he wrote the book The Ultimate Sales Machine. Basically what he did was, he was brought in to run a newspaper company for Charlie Munger. It was wild because newspapers obviously are going down. It isn’t doing well, but he’s brought in to try to turn it around. Basically, he’s given a list of all these advertisers that spend money to put their ads in newspapers. What he did is he looked at them, he was like, okay, these top 10 advertisers that spend the most money aren’t doing it with us, so how can I get their attention and get them to move over to us?

So what he did was he sent them lumpy mail, and I’ll explain what that is more in a second. But basically he’s like, okay, all these people are high on the totem pole execs. So if I send them an email, it’s going to go through their assistant, and probably won’t reach them. If I do ads, they probably won’t see it like whatever. He’s like, how do I reach these people?

He’s like, Well, I bet if I send them a direct mail of a package, it will go straight to them, because the assistant will be like, Oh, I guess he ordered something. Let me give it to him. So it goes straight to that person and he did that. He sent them gifts every single two weeks and called after every time. He sent something to them. And in a matter of five months, he closed his first deal, which was a 15 page ad, and he ended up scaling that newspaper. He doubled the the revenue of the newspaper company, for three years and a row.

So it’s funny, because Charlie was like, Chet, I’ve never seen this before, but it seems like you’ve double sales for three years. Are we doing any anything illegal? And he goes, No. He’s like, okay, then keep going.

So what is a partner? How do we find a dream 100 person? That partner could be an influencer. He does prime and that company has now sky rocketed because they attach their business to a huge influencer who already has the people. A partner could also be an integration partner. This is something we do a lot in SaaS. We can integrate with softwares, APIs, things like that. Then also, anybody who has your audience, whether that’s speaking another business, whatever it is you’re trying to find, okay, this is what my ICP looks like. This is who they are. Who is everyone that has a list of these people already, and how can I get access to that list?

So the dream 100 formula is this. I mentioned it, but it’s really what Chet Holmes did. It’s making a list of the 100 dream people that you could work with like, hey, these 100 people have a ton of my customers. If I get just one of them, then I can bring in maybe 100, 200, 500 new customers at one time, if I just land this one person. So you’re creating that list, then you’re sending them lumpy mail every two weeks and you’re following up with either an email or a call. Then after that, you’re going to basically pitch your product.

Step #1: Make The List

How do we make the list? Well, YouTube is great. Again, I know B2B may not be the same space, but there still are a lot of people in the business space, so I’m sure you could find people. And what’s awesome about YouTube is that that content lasts forever. So now you’re generating back links. It’s also searchable. So if someone starts looking up your brand online, they’re not just going to see what you’re saying about you, they’re going to see what others are saying about you, which increases trust.

You can also look at podcasts. Look at the top podcast list for podcasters who have your audience and reach out to them. You can do this with blogs. I know this sounds weird. Blogs kind of seem outdated, or at least, maybe that’s just me, because I’m young. But I have reached out to a lot of blogs and done a lot of deals with them. So that’s awesome.

Businesses are great. Businesses have our people because they’ve already congregated them. They did the hard work. And now what we need to understand is that we need to look at like the service industry when we’re understanding our software, because we’re software as a service. But a lot of us don’t look at brick and mortar service businesses. If you ever go into a local business, you tend to see some table or like something on the wall where it lists every other business in the area. And then they’re able to share traffic back and forth. That’s basically what we want to do in the SaaS space – finding a business where we’re not direct competitors, but we can overlap and send traffic, back and forth.

You can also do Facebook groups. This one’s a bit harder to nail down, because you have to become a power user in that to win over the admins. And then get them to promote. So that does take a bit more time, but still can be great. And then again, you also have your own customers. What do I mean by this? I have emailed and messaged my customers before like, hey, what YouTuber do you love learning from? Or what podcast do you listen to? Or just stuff like that, what course have you taken? And so now I can be like, okay, my ideal person, they all tend to watch this guy. And now that I know that I can go after them with either a partnership or if they’re a YouTuber, I can put ads on their YouTube channel, so that works too.

So now that we compiled the list, you can do it however you want. I’m probably not the most efficient person. I just have green or the people who are confirmed partners; orange, who are super close; yellow, who are interested in; red, who said no. That’s just how I did it. After I do that and have the list, then I need to get their attention. The best way to do this, again, if you’re talking about executives. And again, I do this because I send this to businesses who I know will have a huge impact on my business.

For instance, I sent a lumpy mail style to the business that just promoted me, that got me to 250,000 in sales this month. And so this was the process I used. But for YouTubers, I use an email outreach system because it’s not worth my time. Since they won’t send as much. Again, I’m talking like 5000 subscriber YouTube channels, so nothing massive. So if you have someone who can move the needle, then definitely do the lumpy mail.

We were talking in breakouts yesterday, and someone made a software to co working spaces. And they’re currently using a lot of fragmented software. And he’s like, Yeah, but mine brings them all together. And so someone came up with the idea of having a messy string of a ball that’s tied up, or rubber bands or something and send that to them. And be like, do you feel like your business is like this? You’re trying to piece everything together, but it’s just a ball of mess. Check out this.

So basically, if they get this package, they’re like, Oh, what’s this? And then we’ll open it, they’ll laugh, and they’ll at least laugh. And hopefully remember your name, because you did something different.

Outside of that, also giving them attention – shouting them out. If you’re going after an influencer, and influencer loves attention. That’s what they do. If you can give them attention first, before you ever reach out to them, then you’re doing them a value, and they’ll see that. They’ll definitely be more likely to either answer your email, answer your call, or something like that.

If you’re trying to win over a business, the best way to win over a business is to send them business first. So you can do that by either signing up for their affiliate program, or you can do that by simply just sending them business. And being like, Hey, tell them that I referred you. After you do that with a few people, reach out to them. And they’re like, Oh, you’re the guy that’s been referring us. Oh, cool, yeah, what’s up? And so then they’ll start talking.

Email is the way that I reach out to smaller partners who I know will help but won’t do anything massive. So, I’m not going to take the time to send them packages. But here’s an example email. Again, how I make mine personal. My headline is always this: the person’s name X; my name or the company name; a real personalized intro; and then what I do here is an image to stand out. I’m sure AI does a lot of wonderful things now, and there might be one that does this. But I’m not too sure. Basically what I do is, I show them an image of what my product would look like if we partnered together. So it’s basically their logo, their names of their strategies and all that here. So that when they see that, they’re like, oh, wow, that’s really cool. Not only that, it’s cool – but someone put the time to do it. And so that’s how my emails stand out. And they at least respond for a demo.

So then once we have locked in that partner, that affiliate, whatever you want to call them, then we need to launch the partnership. My two favorite ways of doing that is obviously a webinar. If you’ve done the webinar process already and you perfected that pitch, you can do it to their audience, or you can also do or/and, you can do both, an interview style. I love interview styles. That’s more of a podcast or a YouTube, because spreading back links and getting SEO traffic organically from not your own sites.

Here’s an example from the company that did it for me.

I had them do a webinar, and I basically showed them how to do it and tweak to their own slides and stuff like that, and they killed it. We also have Surfer SEO, they’re huge now. And they’ve only grown using partnerships and integrations. For instance, partnering with Jasper so you can use integrations as your partnership. And then Flow Desk that does affiliates. So, you can see here people that they encourage to promote on YouTube. So now they can see that as soon as you look up Flow Desk.

Bringing It All Together: The SaaS Growth Engine

So how does this all work together? Everything works together by first having traffic that comes from ads and the dream 100, for me. The partners and ads and then that flows into making them become customers, which is my killer offer. As well as a webinar. Then from there, it’s retaining. Which is delivering the value quickly and then sending gifts to make them feel guilty to stay. And just like that, you’ve learned how I get traffic, convert traffic and retain users. So that’s the whole steps and processes. That’s all I have for you.

Q&A

Mark Littlewood

Hello. Feel like I’ve just been pummeled. I’m so looking forward to that on half speed as well. Fabulous, fabulous. Right, let’s kick off with some questions.

Audience Member

Thank you. That was awesome. So I know that we try to make it a point as SaaS founders to reduce friction in the sign up flow. So I’m wondering at what point you’re getting their address, their physical address, so you can later send them gifts. And then secondly, I’m curious what kind of brownies you’re actually sending.

Austin Bouley

I’ve actually never sent brownies. I want to as soon as I figure out, like, what my fall off point is. That was from somebody else’s example. But finding addresses, how I do it is most of the times they list it in their terms of service, they have to put that kind of legally there. So you get their address, and then what you do is you send it, and then you because you don’t know if it’s 100% right or not, and you basically take a picture of you sending it in the mail, and then you send it to them and be like, hey, just sent you this. Hope you get it. And you know, they’ll see the title of there, and they’ll probably correct you if it’s wrong, or be like, oh, cool, thanks. And so that’s how you can, like, you still get the value, whether they get it or not, because they see that you sent something.

Audience Member

Okay. But as far as your customers, when they sign up, because you’re sitting there my hat before.

Austin Bouley

Oh, that one. Sorry, yeah, yeah. So I yeah, I don’t collect the address up front for the customers, because obviously that’s too much friction. What I do is my assistant reaches out to them to two weeks in, sends them an email says, Hey, Austin, would actually love to send you this really cool free gift. I can’t tell you what it is, but I do need your address. Let me ship it to you. They’re like, Oh, and then that builds up like, Oh, he’s gonna send me something. What is that? I don’t know. And so they then they just stay because they want to know. And then they get it. And that’s Yeah. So tell you I get the address. Yeah.

Mark Littlewood

Oh, there we go.

Audience Member

Austin. How did you decide to kind of go the selling to consumer traders, rather than, like, prop shops or hedge funds or something like that. What was the trade offs that went into that? And how did you come to kind of the decision you did?

Austin Bouley

Yeah, I’ve only ever sold B2C. So my first software was in the consumer space. So I just love how quickly and easily it is to sell. That’s definitely something in the future that I will look at. But from the consumer perspective, there is a competitor in this space and so they sold directly to customers. And so I was able to see what all their pain points were and solve it. So I knew I had an audience I could go after versus I’ve never talked to someone in the Prop firm space. So I don’t even know if this would solve a problem for them. I just knew that this is an audience that I can solve a problem for.

Audience Member

Well, what were the pain points that the incumbent had that you were like, hey, we’ll overcome this.

Austin Bouley

So there’s only one other really, options, automation software for traders. And basically there’s, there’s a lot of different strategies you can trade, but some are more risky than others, and so in order to reduce the risk, this company only allows you to trade like two different strategies. And it’s also for coders. So limited strategy set and super complex to use, like you have to write all these if then statements. And so mine allows every strategy, which means I pay a lot in insurance, but it also means that I can provide people like, Oh my gosh. I’ve been wanting to trade this strategy and automate it, but I can’t. And then also like, Oh, I’ve been wanting to do this, but I don’t know how to write code. So now I can just click some buttons be like, I want to enter on Monday at this time. Okay, good. So, super simple.

Mark Littlewood

Okay, Jessica.

Audience Member

We’ll see after this session. Austin, great presentation. Do you have any other tools to kind of improve and iterate on the product? Right? I know reciprocity is is a big deal to retention, but is there anything that says, hey, they’re leaving because of this. Instead of keeping them for two months because of the brownies, can I keep them permanently? If I reduce the clicks, or if, you know, I do something to improve or add features that will retain them?

Austin Bouley

Yeah, so marketing and sales is all about making a promise and keeping a promise. So as long as you make a promise and keep it and make it and keep it and make it, they’re going to stay. As soon as you’re off, then they leave.

And so as long as on the sales page, the outcome that you’re saying they can get, you actually deliver. That’s the first step. That’s the first massive thing. And then outside of that, it’s just a lot of small tweaks. And so with that, I also, what I didn’t show is like a cancelation flow. So as soon as they press Cancel, they get prompted to be like, Oh, maybe you just need more. And so I prompt the higher plan, which ironically, some people take, which is good. And then after that, it goes, Oh, do you want to pause your subscription? Like, maybe something’s going on. Maybe you just want to pause again. I have consumers, so they’re fickle, so they like pausing. And then after that, I go, Okay, what’s the reason you’re canceling? And then after that, he goes, Okay, explain more in 30 words, which might be annoying to some people, but I need it. And then, and then they cancel. So I definitely collect all that cancelation but definitely allow myself room for upsell and down sell in the cancelation flow. So I people who downgrade and upgrade instead of canceling that way.

Audience Member

And are you taking that 30-word kind of comment that they’re making and doing? Kind of a consensus of this is something that you could build into the app or improve it somehow?

Austin Bouley

Yeah, for sure. It’s just me and the executive assistant, and we’re kind of having scaling software issues. So I’m working on software right now product, but, yeah, no, I definitely, I try to go back to that list at least once a month, but I haven’t in a bit. I will though.

Mark Littlewood

Thank you. We’ve got one, Robin.

Audience Member

Hi, how did you land on the pricing of between $97 to $497 a month? And where are your customers kind of leaning towards the top end or lower end?

Austin Bouley

So, yeah. So my plans are $97 to $497, so it’s $97 $197, to $497. I was like, I understood that the competitor in the space was very cheap. And so what I wanted to do is, in order to blow them out of the water, I need more funds. They’re not able to run ads. They have to do content marketing. So I was like, Okay, I’m going to come in as the premium person and be premium and be easier to use. And so I knew I had to price higher. And so when I first pitched the software to the wait list, it was a $297 a month plan, which a lot of people signed up for, but I did get friction, so I dropped it to $197 and haven’t had a problem since. I haven’t played with pricing that much. But when on the sales page, I don’t show the entire suite of plants. I only show that one plan for the one night, for the $197 so that there’s no confusion about, okay, what exactly do I need? Like, what features do I? Do I fit in? I’m just like, here’s the outcome, here’s the plan, sign up. And so they only go on the $197. And then once they start you using it, then they realize some that need to upgrade. And then those who cancel be like, Oh, this is too expensive. And they go, oh, there’s a $97 plan? And then they downgrade. So I push there, and then can’t, and then cancelation or upgrade will push them either way. But that’s all I know for now. I don’t have much data since I haven’t played with pricing much.

Mark Littlewood

Any more questions? Going once, going twice. Gone. Austin, amazing.

Austin Bouley

Thank you, sir.

Mark Littlewood

Thank you.

Austin Bouley

CEO Founder, Options Auto Trader

Austin is an entrepreneur and software developer with a proven track record of creating and scaling successful solo founder SaaS businesses.

His first software company, which he created to learn how to build a company, grew to 1,000 users and did $100K in sales within the first week of launching. It eventually grew to 10,000 daily active users, and became the go-to software in its niche. He’s just launched his second software company, where he aims to disrupt the options trading industry. He has achieved $500K in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) within five months of launch as a solo founder.

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