Episode 651 | From Side Hustle to Full-time & Profitable (with Mike Taber)

11 snips

Mar 7, 2023

In this engaging discussion, Mike Taber, co-host of the first 448 episodes, shares the evolution of his app, Bluetick, which has now become a profitable venture supporting him full-time. He reveals the pivotal decision to pivot toward agency clients and the lessons learned from marketing challenges. Mike also dives into scaling strategies, such as enhancing email outreach through advanced automation and achieving vital business milestones, including significant monthly recurring revenue. His journey highlights the intersection of entrepreneurship, automation, and personal growth.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Pivot to Agencies

Mike Taber pivoted BlueTick to focus on agencies after years of struggling to find the right market.
This led to higher-value customers, lower support costs, and increased profitability.

INSIGHT

Warm and Cold Email

BlueTick initially focused on warm email outreach but now supports cold email as well, particularly for agencies.
This expanded functionality allows BlueTick to cater to a broader market and address various use cases.

ANECDOTE

Profitability and Growth

BlueTick went from losing thousands of dollars monthly to being profitable and supporting Mike full-time.
Mike is now considering hiring engineers to implement additional features and further scale the business.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In episode 651, Rob Walling catches up with fan favorite Mike Taber, who co-hosted the first 448 episodes of Startups For the Rest of Us. The last time he was on the podcast, Bluetick was still a side hustle. Now, 15 months later, he shares that the app is now profitable, supporting him full-time, and gives an update on some key parts of his entrepreneurial journey.

Episode Sponsor:

Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups

The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.

They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.

When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.

And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups

Topics we cover:

1:34 - An update on Bluetick
6:26 - Is Bluetick a profitable business?
8:59 - Why Mike decided to pivot his company to supporting agencies
13:34 - Setting up Bluetick to scale from 1x to 500x volume
15:33 - Is Mike doing much marketing these days?
19:12 - Mike’s celebration moment in the past 15 months
20:40 - When Mike realized he had product-market fit
23:54 - How Mike thinks about implementing new features
24:55 - Mike’s low point in the past 15 months
26:27 - What changed that allowed Mike’s business to grow so dramatically over the past year?
32:50 - Is Mike planning to update his marketing to position the product to agencies?

Links from the Show:

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher