#213 – An Indie Hacker's Process to Reach $10K MRR
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What's up, everybody? This is courtlandt andi hackers that com, and you're listening to the indie hackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these andy hackers to discuss the idea that s the opportunities and strategies are taking adventures of so the rest of us can do the same.

Today i'm talking to mulley will change ski. Molly is the founder of a company called the agent nest. It's a sass application that helps with social media marketing.

In particular, he helps real state companies automate their twitter posts, their integram posts and their facebook posts. You sort of popped on on my radar because of this post you made on the hackers, I guess, last month or long before. And I was like growing from one hundred and forty five dollars a month to seven and a half thousand dollars a months.

And revenue since january of last year. And I was kind of like just like the prety file line of your story. And then you just to took questions, what motivated you to make that post?

So my co founder, who happens all to be my boyfriend, actually started posting on there, and he told me, you know you, you should really go for and start telling your story, specially si him a woman. And the south industry, there's not many. So he thought that I would be beneficial for me, tell people what's been going off my business.

And because I had grown so much because we started, like you said, in january twenty twenty from you know march to April, we jump from five hundred M R R to twenty four twenty four forty three um so I just kind of group so fast and I was really happy about I am really happy about IT, but it's also um a very intimidating kind of thing because this is my my first ask business. And you know my co founder has a lot of experience running access. He he had his for about eight years now. So i'm very grateful that you was able to kind of guide me through .

think your business is called the agent list. You had another business that called no real time marketing. And so .

like that name.

he talked about that in your pose. So you didn't like the name.

Yeah, I don't know. I just I didn't I don't know. I was trying to incorporate my name Molly into real stay and then I don't know what happened there.

And then IT happens and you're stuck with IT. Whatever name you choose, it's on all your bris card. Your domain ant name is the name you taught everybody, and it's so hard to change IT. How do you come up with the name for the agent nest?

That's a really good question. I I just did a lot of brainstorming. I did one agent in my name due to seo and everything, and I am a big fan of birds.

I actually have some some bird tatus, and I have always just been fast by them. And a nest to me means it's is a very safe place and is a place of growth. And so I wanted to incorporate this into my name because of my personal connection in feeling there's .

a guy at online and sort of like A A legendary guide to naming called the eagles guide to naming some branding company called egor. And I look at every time I want to name anything. It's always like A A growing process because you sit down just putting out names like least when I try and most of the names I come up with just aren't good and then IT takes like, you know, there are two are doing from, okay, like this name.

But the kind of entire time to the process, I always feel like i'm never gonna a good name. I am. I like fifteen. The name suggestion, that still sounds horrible. But the other guy, they kind of a break IT down to like, they kind like analyze all these different names and they break them down. And I think four categories, so they have like functional descriptive names.

So that would be you, I think, kind of some much what you have because you your company, the agent nest deals and agencies that you have agent in the next, it's very obvious. It's a clear speaking to your customers at sea. They have kind of invented names.

So a lot of times like these names, generators will do this. So just come up like a completely fake word like okayed, you know and like, okay, that sounds cool, but those names like the upside to that is that sounds cool and it's like no negative connotations, but the downside is that there's no positive connotations either. Like when you hear that name, IT might sound cool but doesn't you feeling feelings is not associated or of anything.

So you has been a bunch of money in time trying to be confuse that brand and people's minds. The other type of invented name is like invented names is just kind of sound cool or like feel cool to say like orio or snapp l or google. And there's like the best kind because like they just feel like something the other couple of category is.

I think this is worth going through in case somebody out there is trying to name their business and they want to know like what the options are, experiences names。 These are names that like connect to something real or something like a lot of international press is called the safari, or navigator, or explore, or something like that like kind of imaginative. And then the last type of names is the evocative names.

And so these are like even more one stepper removed from what's going on. And they kind of cause you to like think they kind of talk about like how you want people to feel about your brand rather than like describing exactly what IT is that your company does. So this would be like virgin airlines or like uber, like apple or something you like like it's kind makes you think for second, like what is that about but then you can kind of fuse a lot of like emotion and feeling to the world, or maybe they already have them.

And so they talk about like evocative names being like the best of the most ideal. But like often you know, other names from other category is going to be him Better anyway. You ve got your business.

You've got a very functional name, the agent nest. It's doing super well. It's grown to and kind of the magical market that most fun is are trying to hit is like ten thousand dollars a month and you are like on your way there. You're like eighty .

percent of the way there. Yeah so I have this written on my Whiteboard. I have I will get to ten k by july and like giant um and of course like some months are really awesome and then some months, you know we kind of stay around the same same M R R.

And those months that don't grow, I get really discouraged. So i'm like i'm not gona meet my goal and something is okay if you stick around the same mr. R, if you're not losing a ton of customers, I think it's okay.

I've had to come to tell myself that because we're not always going to meet our goals all the time. So as far as getting to ten k by by july, maybe that will happen. Maybe that won't. Doesn't it's on a White board. So I can just race life and they put on two or something like that and more good.

So thank you for White boards. What's the cool thing about being around boss to is like, okay, you could just race the goal off the White board and like no one's going to come down and you know like there is no one above you who get mad that you didn't hit that goal like it's just you so if you feel good about IT, then it's totally chill and things are fine. So you're around eight thousand thousand month of revenue. What your like expenses look like. What does your team look like?

Just you and your boyfriend. So yes, so right now, our expenses. So I did go through expenses recently.

Different thing necessary software like butterfly s convert kid. We also use stripe for a payment processing all zero netty fy. And then just kind of integrating all that into ad spend, probably spending around eighteen hundred per months.

I have not hired anybody yet. I have I actually did um include that in my post because I am kind of on the fence about hiring somebody and my my thoughts were i'm going to hire somebody once I get to ten K M R R. And um I don't know that a good idea or not because right now so IT is just me and him, but he's very, very busy.

So he he's one who did all the back end and everything he's in computer programmer. So for me, i'm doing you know i'm doing all the marketing, doing the design, customer service, kind of the whole ship bank. So in order to kind of alleviate some of that stress, I have hire some free answers to help me with graphic design and to help me with marketing.

But as far as a higher, I have not made one. So so right now um it's me and then then he is about fifteen percent of the work. So um only an emergency situations where IT involves coating or according basically.

So are you both are either full time on this or have other things going on?

So this is the only thing that I do right now. So I would I would be four time and I had um an issue with trying to do to me things at once because I always said yes to everything. And a really um important thing I learned through out the process of voting my own company is you don't have to say yes to everything.

So I would get emails from real estate agents asking me, you know, can you build my website or can you create this for me and I would always say yes. And then I get really overwhelmed with how much I needed to do because I was trying to manage the agent ness and I was trying to build websites and I was trying to make sure individual social media looked presentable. And before, you know, more reality marketing before I kind of transformed into the agent est, um I was doing working for individual agents.

So I would post directly onto their social media for them. I would create um events for the open house in their listings. And I took a lot of time.

And one of the biggest issues that I ran into with that business is since IT takes a lot of time, I have to charge more because I feel like my time is valuable. And a lot of times with agents, they weren't able to afford the four hundred and fifty dollars around there. I was charging per month. I kind of got the idea for the agent nest after thinking about that because I you know there are a lot of agents who can afford that, especially once you have just come into the industry, their they are trying to figure out how to market their business. And um so one day, i'm just like I need to create something that everybody can afford, that everybody can have access to at the same time where i'm not doing everything myself.

So let's talk about your first business where you're doing like all this manual want on warm work with these these real things. I know nothing. About real state and I think about like real city agents are worried about why would they come to you IT? Was that just because they had trouble finding clients?

Uh beginning of twenty fifteen is when I started creating the business and let me profess this by saying, um i've always been a business owner. I've always had a business owner mindset. When I was six years old, I would create these boats out of foil and h my sister, I would sit on the side of the road in front our house selling foil boats.

We were having issue with nobody buying them, so unlike you know what we should do and as we should fill up a cooler with water and then um put the boat on top of the water so we can show people that the boat actually work, we made fifty cents so so that's cool. Um and then after that, during college, I ended up starting ec business and I created products for people. There was another business where IT took a lot of time because I was painting on coffee mugs and creating t shirts and and doing so many different things to where I got really overwhelmed and almost burned out, I think, from doing the same thing over and over and every day.

And then, uh, after that, a so my my mom, going back to your question, my mom is a real state agent. So SHE was needing my help with her social media, and I was like, okay, well, well, let's do this thing. And i've always been.

So I did all my own marketing, all my own design for my ez business. So i'd experience with graphic design and marketing. At that point, I kind of top myself how to do IT.

And so I started posting on her social media. And then people were asking, or hate where you're getting all this great content from. And so he told them, and then they told they are friends.

And then I started having people email me and then, like, ball on off in the life all right time to named this thing. And then I did IT too fast. And I came with, anyway.

when you get more real t marketing.

yeah, yeah, that from, I didn't .

meant that. Like, I was like, more real, like more real, like more realty, but I didn't. Mi.

yeah, I know. And nobody. Why would anybody know that? Yes, you know what I mean. So I started posting for individuals. Creating individuals content for about five years.

Became a little bit too much for me for a couple of reasons, and I got to the point where I couldn't manage that many people and I have a problem with saying no to things. As I kind of mentioned earlier, I have saying, yes, everything. So a new person on email me like, hey, I need help with this.

Yes, i'll do IT and then did up having like clients where I was trying to manage everything all at once and I just got to a point where I couldn't do IT anymore. And then I actually ended up making my first higher for that business to kind of a help me with posting in everything the higher that I made. Uh, lasted three days.

So I that's black. So scared of like hiring somebody now, right? Because I just didn't work out. And yeah.

so so many people have this experience of hiring. We're like if you have a really bad higher IT kind of scarce you for the life, you're just like, oh my god, like this is so expensive and so much time and so much emotional effort and know it's so horrible to have to like this person is said, how does anyone ever higher? I gona trust anybody to do anything like, i'm the one who started all successfully.

Then people often have the opposite experience. If you make a really good higher, where do you feel like anxiety? You like, I don't know this, going to work like, and giving my baby to this person and then they just go like a love and beyond expectations and they are like doing things you don't even think of.

And their amazing, you're like hiring amazing. And whenever you have that experience like OK, I get why people higher, Better. But like your first hired kind of shapes, how you feel about things until your mind d is like eventually .

changed with my first higher, I think I didn't do enough research on the individual person. As far as our experience goes, I really like her. But at the same time, on the first day of work SHE showed up forty five minutes late so that was kind of a red flag the second day um SHE took a two and and a half hour and lunch break ah and did not come back.

Like to very P F. And i'm like, hey, so i'm not very good with confrontation. Let me just put that. Let me just throw IT out there. I need to be a bit, a little bit Better about that all o hey, what's going on? You know, why do you take two and half our lunch break and just, I go, I had some stuff come up, was like, okay, instead of saying something so yes, so I and that something I I need to work on and I am working on. I definitely have become more in my own skin, I suppose, since with growth, you know comes more confidence, I believe, mistakes to like doing .

things doing things wrong and like making the hiring mistakes like we've all done and then realizing like actually your businesses fine and IT will we've live to see another day and things are fine, like kind of helps you build like a little bit of that like the skin toward, like it's okay to experiment. It's okay to try with things. It's OK to make mistakes.

You probably gona keep going well. There definitely some mistakes made in different aspects of IT, but they are all learning experiences. And so IT as far as with the um individuals that I was working with IT, they started asking me for more things and they started emAiling me more and saying they needed this and this and this and this when we had a great to pod and I only doing social media posts and then they're and I would say yes and then I would get so on boarded with all of these things and I was just like, I need to fix this. I need to do something to wear.

Number one, I can handle an infinite amount of customers and I also need to um be able to put a little bit less of my time into talking and posting to people's social media. So I had to figure out how can I alleviate all of this stress and how can I fix this? And I did a lot of, had a lot of brain storming sessions.

I like to meditate. So, you know, that helped a little bit too. And I kind of transformed into the agent nest from here time about that process.

because I think you could have gone in so many different directions. You could have been like, you know, i'm going to get Better at saying, no, i'm all in a city social media post that's how things going to be are you going to been like, you know what? I'm just gonna mbr ACE the scatter shot approach.

Just start doing any and everything with my agency. Are you going to been like, you know, i'm getting out of the real state business for good. This is too stressful.

I'm tired of IT. I don't like that. Let me do something new. Like how did you decide i'm going to build a sass application that serves maybe we have even described what the agent starts, what is the agent and nest exactly? And how does IT how does IT help real .

agency nest is a platform where people can sign up for a membership um at thirty two dollars a month or fifty nine dollars a month depending on a plane they go with when they sign up. They have access to uh social media posts that they can edit with through canvas and they come with captures and hash tags. We also do have postcard fires, listing videos, s listings, presentations, open house promos.

So basically anything that an agent needs, digital or print, they can get IT in one place. So with a thirty two dollar a month plan, they get access to all that fifty nine dollars a month. We actually White labelled with the company.

So we were able to um give the agents and option to schedule directly to their social media, which was a huge thing for us. We implemented that um I think, around may of twenty, twenty and that we did see a lot of growth from that. And we still are seeing growth from that.

Going into something new is always scary. And I did anna quit. I'm not gonna lie because I just felt I don't know. I, I wanted to quit and I wanted to give up for a few reasons.

One being, I kept on looking at other people, and I kept on seeing their success, and I kept telling myself, I will never be like that. I'm never going to be that successful person. How can I compete with that? How can I do that? So I I didn't want to quit.

And I am a writer, and I love to write, and I have written plays and i'm published, have been published in magazines, and i've held publish books in everything. So I kind of wanted to focus on that. But at the same time, I really like marketing.

I really like content creation. I do like working with real estate agents, and I had to figure out what my passion was. I had just turned about to turn thirty years old going through not a midlife Price is obviously, but kind of like an existent one.

Like what am I doing with my life kind of thing. And i'm sure maybe some people can identify with that. And I I was just like, you know, I I like what i'm doing.

I just need to tweet and after walking through what to do to fix these problems of time and how many people like IT handle I I thought about IT, and I talk to my code founder about IT, and I said, hey, I have this idea. Is IT possible. Can you help me? So we actually started with, uh, a no code solution to our platform. And I created the website myself, and he worked on the back end of the website. Now we use recording sea sharp and using view customer development.

Yeah, I ve just talking to a body who wants to start an APP. And like, how do I raise money? And I got to talk to investors to set, like, what you need to raise money for us. I need software engineers and designers.

That said, like, no, you just like to start with something super simple because I know I talk to so many founders were not technical or you get started with something you know using no using like an email list. And they eventually stepped by step. Now, as they make more money or find more success, build IT up into something bigger and Better. But you don't have to start with the custom coded web APP from day one, like there's really no reason you have .

to start there because that's where absolutely and IT IT does cost money. And you know if you don't have the money to start IT, I think that's a deterrent for a lot of people. So like, you know, I need all this money to do this and you and you don't because for me, i'll tell you I was not doing well.

I was broke like I didn't have money even after handling like nineteen clients, I still didn't have the money because I was I had a lot of bills, you know, you know, like this. And so that was another thing where I had talked to Michael founder about, like, hate, how can we do this for the least amount of money possible? So whenever I started, I only invested about five hundred dollars into starting the company.

And how I grew IT to be from from january. I just say that April from, like, a hundred, so january I had like, four sign ups. And i'm so hard on myself and my doing this how and my my boyfriend like you got four sign up like that's awesome and people don't get their first sign for like two years and like, no, I need to be Better. Well.

let me ask you is like what what is driving you to need to be Better? You're talking about looking these other people who are so successful and thinking like you're going to be successful. What what is your goal? Know what you want to accomplish.

I've always just kind of been, uh, perfections where I have to be good at everything and that is also a big problem because I have not done a lot of things in my life that I wanted to do because I was afraid of failure and I ve wanted to write a book. I'm afraid it's not going to be good like, no, i'm George orwell. I'm not earnest hemingway nobody.

He's gonna read my book. You know i'm comparing myself to these amazing people and it's it's OK to compare yourself, but it's not OK to stop doing what you want to do because of that. I I just had a lot of a lot of issues with that and just pop up sale sometimes because we're having other companies that are uh, similar to mine, like our competitors and everything.

And there was one day when I was looking at one of my competitors and I noticed that he had just got ten to one thousand customers. And IT was talking about our social media. And I was just like, I am not doing this anymore.

I'm never going to do a thousand customer. And I can't believe this. And I ve learned to not be so hard on myself. And to celebrate my successes, I need to make sure that I do celebrate even the small ones, because that's how you keep going, that you keep moving forward.

Yeah, i'm wired kind of the same way as you when you talk about being a perfectionist, when you talk about being self critical and like wanting to do more and do a Better and it's like it's a double edge sort because obviously, like there are limits to how self critical you should be and you could just beat yourself up. You need to a state where you're actually doing really well.

And like you know, you found your first for customers in the first month. It's Better than a lot of in the action you start off, but then you're not happy because you're just thinking about how much Better things that can be. But I think the advantage of being a perfectionist is that a lot of people, especially when they crafting a product or like some sort of art or some sort book or anything, just aren't realistic with themselves in terms of evaluating what they're doing and whether they're doing a good job.

What I think sometimes prevents them from fixing obvious mistakes and and all the perfection I know like that's never the case. We're like very good at saying that you this could be Better. Here's what needs be improved at seta. And I think that realism, if you can channel IT and hold IT and to like, you know, a limited service area, if you can be a perfectionist, just one very specific APP are one very specific piece of writing or one very specific thing that you're working on. Then you can really make that, take that thing and make IT much Better than I think the average person can.

That is a really good way to put IT because if you're trying to be perfectionist in every single aspect of your life, for every single aspect of your business, it's not onna happen. So if you if you just focus on the one thing, I mean and this there's actually a book called the one thing where it's saying, like you need to focus on one thing at a time. If you're doing too many things, then you're not gonna good.

You can't be good at everything. So there was a time when I I was trying to be good at everything. But like you said there, there's a point where you're like, okay, I need to focus on this and then will get to the other thing next.

And it's hard to do when you start your company because like every blog post listen to every blog post read every podcast you listen to every book I read like they have like a million different tips chicks to do this, to do that. What about S A? What about ads? When you sure in facebook? What about instagram? And it's like super easy to think, oh my god, and like not doing enough.

But like the real answer is probably in the early days is like you should not be doing like a one two things like tops, like two things might be too many. And if you doing any more than that, even though he feels like that what you should be doing because everybody says should during its probably not the right way to go. And when I look at like you're early growth for the agent nest, you start the sass company in january of last year.

You may look like a hundred and forty five boxer first month and next month more than doubles. You're link, you know, about four hundred dollars than five hundred dollars. And then in April, suddenly you to twenty five hundred dollars a month like you basically quintile in your revenue.

I'm going to guess that, that probably wasn't from doing like fifteen different things. I'm going to guess that bike, something worked really well. I don't know I could be wrong, but like what changed from january?

Interesting because starting a business and was definitely scary um due to the obvious you know everything that was going on in the world. And so in in march when the pandemic hit, I was like this business is gona fail. I'm not going to be able to do this.

Nobody is gonna sign up. People are trying to save money. So I did actually decide to give my product away for free to everybody, to all agents for thirty days.

And I said, I made an add about IT and I said, you know, I know the everybody is going through hard time, so here's my website. Sign up for free at yours. And after I did that, I had a lot of people actually sign up for paid afterwards.

And I I did not expect that to happen. I did. I really did IT. Another thing that was really beneficial for me was I have had a lot of former clients. We've probably had about a hundred, a lot of them come and go, you know.

So I did email each and everyone of my clients just said, hey, how's to go on? You know, I have to talk to in a while, told them about my new business. And this was all in march too.

I was just really determined. So I mailed all these people. I said, do you know people, other real eate agents? We have a feral program, so if you want, refer somebody over to this and wont give you this amount of money.

And so I failed them and I also I emailed in the past I was invited to teach classes at killer Williams uh real less agency and so I have taught a lot of class that is around the dallas metroplex to kill oyama agents um about how to market their business, how to create a facebook page, how to uh use the internet. I'm not joking. So there were a lot of different glass asses.

Some some people did not even know how to use the that that's okay. You have to be really patient for things like that. So after teaching those classes, I had an email as of those people and I sent out a mass email to them.

So after doing that and after running the ad that was really well perceived, I don't I only spent about four hundred is on the ad. Uh, my click per costs was I think, two cents. So after that happened is when we started seeing a lot of the growth through .

a lot of the work that you basically spend years doing in the real world with your marketing agency, with like the classes that you taught, like you built up this huge network. And that came in handy later on, which I think speaks to why IT makes sense to when you're sort of searching through the world and is trying to figure out what to do and you wanted to quit.

The decision to stick with that needs to stick with what you felt comfortable with. And like the connections that you've built in, in the real state agency seems like a pay dividends because I think I like start real state marketing business like I know nobody and there's a year of people, I absolutely nobody in the email. So I could not be OK you're interested in this like I will get cricket.

You know, like I said, I did IT for five years. So I did have a lot of contacts and i'm very lucky that I did. And I also very lucky that I wrote down the contacts.

I actually, I actually didn't implement them and any kind of system like male tramp anything. I just had this no pad full of emails. So I had to go through and type all out and do all that.

I also went to a few real estate conventions and got some emails from there as well. My advice for conventions, I won't go on a rent, but I will tell you, before you decide to pay for a booth at a convention, do research on that convention. Because there was one that I went to that would probably had about fifty people show up. So I need to do research on the things that i'm investing my time and money into that important. That's just another thinking out onto the listen mistakes this okay.

tell me about this. Add that you an that you spent what four dollars on and you're getting like clicks for two cents or something crazy. Where did you run?

This was like a facebook through facebook. Difficult because back then um I was able to target realistic agents and job titles, reelers and everything. So at that time I did target realist agents. Target broke ages, uh, I targeted people in the states and also canada.

And on the ad I had a graphic on there, let's at thirty days, three in big letters and then in the text box I said, everything you need for your realistic business, we're giving IT away for thirty days free for a limited time to help you during this difficult time. And people just click started, clicking on IT and signing up. And I was happy.

I was really happy. And the thing about facebook ads is IT. Facebook ads have made my life a lot more difficult. Now I will say because there are a lot of restrictions that they put up about probably nine months ago where you are not allowed to target job titles if you are in the real estate industry.

And so any time I tried to run a facebook ad and don't check off housing on there um then I get flag in the ad, ad gets rejected. So i've had a lot of chAllenges with recreating an ad that's able to target that many people. And I think that's one of the things i'm still working out like i'm able to target zillow ed out com pro and router dot on pro and multiple listing service, but I can't target specific job titles.

And um that that has been a chAllenge. So after that, I decided to move on the interest and run petras ads. You i've been working with penrice for a really long time. I didn't run a lot of patras ads.

I I decided to just post some of my contents on there for free and said, you know, sign up for this email to receive ten free social media posts with captions and hash tracks. And through the pinch as ad is started getting a lot more attraction too. So then um in may so were able to may, we went from twenty four hundred and thirty five hundred just from running the pinch ads. So i've been kind of sticking with penta, and I have about hundred thousand uh, pentre views on my profile each month. So yeah, I really enjoy using that platform as well.

I want to talk about like your sort of what I continued growth because would you say that pentre dads have been sort of the crucial our ads s in general, I like the crucial lenchen en in your growth strategy. He and because in April last year, you had twenty five hundred times a month with the sort of like free promotion and like these ads today you're like three times that .

what's contributed to that grief? So definitely ads. I usually stick to facebook ads and pentre ads and also instagram as well has been a really big outlet for helping my business. And I know you're really big on twitter. I'm trying i'm working on twitter.

But as far as instagram goes, you know, I have almost thirteen thousand followers on instagram, and in order to target my specific audience, I go through instagram, type in the hashtag reilly, and then just start liking and commenting on all posts with the hashtag reilly on IT. And that has also helped me tremendously. But IT also takes a lot of time as well because I am trying to do i'm trying to market my business as well as create content like I already.

But what help with that growth is, number one, yes, ads, insurance, entrance and facebook are the main ones I go for. Number two, we did add a new plan, was scheduled posting, and I looked at all my competitors. And we are the only company in the industry right now that offer schedule posting.

And since we are White labelled with another company, we are able to give people analytics and we have R, S, S. Beds in there. And that's been really helpful to them.

So just adding on that other plan really helped with the growth too, also just increasing my ad budget. So I started my mr. R started going up.

So I started to increase how much I was spending per month, now spinning around a thousand dollars per month on ads. And that's okay. You know, a part of me just want to spend all of the ones like like I needed to just throw IT all in there.

There's an entire months worth of M R R for N N ad to see what happens because IT, it's okay to spend your mark, your money on marketing because that is the number one way you are going to get customers is through marketing. And I think that should be, in my opinion, that should be the biggest budget for any company that's trying to grow. And even if you you feel like I don't make any money this month IT, it'll be OK because you're getting more or or as far as me, I was getting more signup.

So now i'm averaging around sixty sign ups per month just starting this year. Last year got a bit slow and I got stuck. And I feel like a lot of people get stuck at a certain amount.

So I got stuck at five thousand M R, R for a while. And even I was even running the ads. I was even I was doing everything that I was doing before.

And I just was like, man, why am I stuck in this one spot also? Like, I have to do something to figure out how to get me out of this little right. I mean, so I decided to reevaluate my marketing strategy.

I decided to reevaluate my ads. I created new ads. I also started running ads on google for the first time. I had never done that before with this business. So I decided to go the google ads road.

Um also worked on the S C O for my website, which was kind of a faltering a little bit and that's how I kind of got out of that five thousand, right? Was I just kind of switched around the strategy that I used for marketing. So it's like IT worked before is not working now. So let's let's change IT and fix IT somebody advantages .

you have in the situation. I think by being a marketer because most of people want to have on the show, they are like software ees becoming to every problem with their soft into your head on this, not getting enough customers and not getting enough sign ups like IT must be a problem with my product, right?

If only I been the next six months building this feature, I tweet these colors, I love this button over here, than something Better will happen and all magically start growing. And because your cofounder is a sofa in er and he's a sort of plug in away working on that you are free to think with only your marketing had on. And like that's something that a lot of people who haven't like actually gone to started doing, like are totally afraid to do.

They probably the vast majority of ni hackers have never even tried spending a single dollar advertising, which is probably one of the easiest ways to get users because you just show them a thing and they like that this they cook IT and it's like it's pretty straight forward. So again, in your particular situation, you are only trying different marketing approaches. You're only trying like different add channels and set right.

And like if that turns out like that, the actual thing that caused you to play to like you're going to succeed because you're trying the thing that other people don't even attempt to try or might be scared to try. So I like the division of labor routine union cofounder and like the fact that like you're willing to spend money to make money. I'm curious.

Now, pretty close to ten thousand dollars month of goal. What are you gonna do to get there? What do you think is all you need to overcome to get to?

My ten thousand M. R. Actually revised my ad yesterday.

I am keeping on my free trial. I do want to eventually dropped a free trial. I'm going to continue to around uh, facebook ads.

I actually ut my budget for my facebook ads to thirty dollars per day. And i'm focusing on that one ad because right now, it's doing very well. And I also would really like to market more on my instagram, twitter and facebook.

And by market more, I mean, by posting every single day, going through each hashtag and commenting and liking on people's pages, because whenever I did that, whatever I interacted with my target audience on a daily basis, I would get multiple sign ups. And then I started getting too busy to do that. But that's something that I can do from my couch and or in my bed.

You know it's something that you don't have to be sitting at a desk to do and it's easy. And IT doesn't cause you know IT doesn't I don't want to think a lot about IT. I have to do just go through real term hat ila.

They say I made a sale and I comment, congratulation. This is amazing. The hard and then you get a follower and you potentially get a client or a member.

So I need to focus more on just talking to my target audience and being more available. And I think that if I keep doing that, then I will get to my ten thousand, mr. r.

Once I get to my ten thousand, mr. r. That is when I will hire somebody to do all that work .

for me and to make any other post on hackers.

What you ve got there? Yes, oh my god. Of course I, yes, I have come across a few communities that I have not felt as welcome in whenever I posted on there, everybody was just so nice and so welcoming and wonderful and so supportive. And I had people message me or send an email or contact me through instagram, asking me questions on how I got to wear you. I just feel so honored.

You made a really good post. I think it's like the form he is is prety straight ford to be transparent. You actually tell your story like a story form. You don't hide the bad stuff. You don't only show the good stuff.

And you did all that in your post suits and then hard for people reading that you're going to the same journey that you are not to want to connect to you and not to want to impositive with you and not to want to like reach out to you. So IT is really cool to see that. And you've done the exact same thing in this podcast.

Hopefully people reach out to you as well. I ask everybody who comes on the show, uh, kind of the same question at the end, which is what your advice for other people who are just getting started, a lot of people are trying to do what you're on the verge of doing, getting to the next ten thousand dollars on the revenue mark. What are your feedback with them if they're frustrated, just getting started.

So frustration is something that's going to happen and your feelings are valid. I just wanted tell you that my advice would be, don't let other successful companies in the same field to become a deterrent to your success. Because a lot of times I would look at companies that were similar to mind, I would see how well they were doing.

And I would say, you know what, i'm not gonna get there. I can't do this. And I think IT is so important to tell yourself, I can, I can do this, and I will do this and just focus on, focus on your business, focus on what you care about. And if you do become discourage, don't stay in that discouragement, use that discouragement as fuel to grow and to get Better.

Alright, love IT. Don't let other companies become a discouragement to your success. And honestly, IT makes perfect sense because so many of the founder i've talked to you are starting companies that are solving similar problems to companies that are much bigger and more establish than this.

This is coming out from a different angle, the different create solution or different customers. And they weren't deterred by the fact that someone had already done IT in a different way before them. And so like the fact that you're doing the same thing, you know, like you have the very first person to ever help real agents with this social media marketing and yet you're still crushing IT and do you in a great job.

So thank you so much. I really yeah thank .

you for come on the show. Can you let listeners know where they going to arn more about you and what you have to?

Well, you can. Uh my website so it's just the agent next com and then all of my social media handles are the agent est um so instagram the agents. What are the agents? Uh that's another marketing tip for you.

Make sure that all of your, all of you are social media handles have the same exact name. That's really hopeful. Yes, so that's how you can contact me or, uh, Molly at the age m not be afraid to reach out. I thank you so much. Corden appreciated.