Fame hit £100k MRR in Sept. (100% bootstrapped and remote) Here are 5 things I learnt: 1️⃣ Teflon for tasks 👉 Paying invoices 👉 Sourcing candidates 👉 Running the sales process Are all things that I’ve done since day one. But not anymore. Andrew Wilkinson once said on a podcast interview that his secret to success was that he’s lazy, he’s like teflon for tasks, they slip off him. My end-of-year goal is to be completely removed from day-to-day operations. Doing so, frees you up to focus on higher leverage tasks: process innovation and talent development. 2️⃣ Managee’s become managers Employee churn is a silent killer. You lose morale, client relationships and process knowledge with each lost employee. As you grow, you can't do all the management. In other words: your managee’s, need to become managers. And you need to train them. Here’s what I’ve found to be the managerial secret: understand what the employees want, and then give it to them. E.g. if a new team member wants to be flexible with their family commitment, allow this (along as their work is getting done) In short make the deal so good, they can’t leave. 3️⃣ Capture vs create demand Yes I hear you demand gen clones: creating demand is a thing. Capturing demand can get you to £1m ARR, but £10m? Maybe not. It’s time to start creating demand. How? Create and distribute content that educates ideal customers about the problems that your product/services solves. Simple… but making the content good enough so that your ideal customers actually want to consume it? Not easy. 4️⃣ Non-essential costs We still don’t pay for Slack, Trello or Freshdesk. Why? Because doing so would mean that in some way, that cost would need to be passed on to our wonderful clients. And passing on the cost to a client, to pay for something that we don’t think directly increases their happiness, doesn’t sit right with us. After all, our primary value is: Client Client Client. Choices like this enable us to increase the “consumer surplus” or the “brand” value of our service: the difference between what a client pays, and what they get. This “goodwill” seems to find its way back to us in the form of inbound demand that we cannot attribute. 5️⃣ Don’t fuck up the momentum Peter Thiel famous told the Airbnb founders to not fuck up the culture. But what I think he really meant was: don’t fuck up the momentum. Past product market fit, a business starts the transition from the jet ski to a cruise ship. Ops, finance and hiring become more important. You, as a founder need to ensure the business keeps going in the same direction, and you need to make this crystal clear to your team and your clients. You also need to keep growing at all costs, which may mean reducing profitability in the short term. Changing direction, or a slow down in growth, confuses and demoralises. Which could lead to the dreaded employee churn. Hope that helps 🤓
Solid growth 🔥 I think a lot of people will look at this and only see an upward curve to £100k MRR. What they probably don't acknowledge is the hard 20 month graft from £0 to ~£30k. Huge kudos. What was the lever that propelled you from £30k to £100k in 14 months?
Massive congrats on the milestone! Just read about it via the email blast, and also loved the 2 bonus points — is it OK if I share them here for others? (or perhaps they should just join the mailing list :))
Fantastic visual representation of momentum here Tom Hunt - an amazing journey and I'm curious to see where the graph goes in the next 12 months! What's your 5 vision? 🤔
This absolutely helps, thanks
Been so cool watching you guys grow since we first came onboard :) been an amazing service 🔥
p.s. when will the book come out 👀
Pure gold... and congrats on the milestone :)
Killing it 👏 we knew you would. Congrats Tommy
Great work & insight. Hitesh Mistry read this thread.
Helping business owners to systemize and scale what works · CEO and co-founder @ AirManual · De-stress Your Business podcast
1yLoved all of this, and two additional points from the email blast I got this morning (which Tom has kindly given me permission to share here): --- **Process creators versus process implementors** Fame, just like any business, is a collection of processes. Processes need to be created, and processes need to be implemented. Typically, process creators are more expensive to employ than process implementors. E.g. creating an outbound sales process for a Series A stage B2B SaaS business is a HARD task, and will need to be created by someone who has experience, and is expensive. However, if you or someone in your team creates the process, you can hire someone cheaper (but still good) to implement this process. For example, I’ve run 2-300 inbound sales calls whilst creating the inbound sales process for Fame, so is now fully tested/documented so I can now hire a process implementor to execute. For each role you hire for, know the difference, and assess your candidates appropriately.