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    Buying 3 SaaS in a year while running 100 employee company with JD Graffam

    enNovember 16, 2021
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    About this Episode

    JD Graffam, digital agency owner, tells Geordie what he considers before choosing businesses to buy and the direction he hopes to follow in the future. Listen to the podcast for more insights.  

    Purchasing three SaaS products within a year and running them successfully can be a difficult task. How has JD Graffam navigated challenges and risks to emerge victorious? He tells Geordie about his journey in this podcast.

    What You’ll Learn 

    • The acquisition process of Recharge
    • Why JD does not do outreach
    • What type of business does JD avoid?
    • Importance of delegating 

    In this Episode 

    JD Graffam recently acquired Audience Ops, a content marketing service from the previous owner who wanted to spend his energy and time on a new business venture. JD says he has been working with the Audience Ops team to create new services, optimize and propel it to the next level.

    Before Audience Ops, JD had bought Delegated, a dedicated virtual admins service business. Delegated is ideal for individuals and organizations looking for executive admins, executive assistants, or personal assistants.

    Delegated collaborates with customers to discharge dedicated virtual admins who engage with customers and become a part of the company and business. Listen to the podcast for more details on what Dedicated does.

    JD gives a brief narration of how he started buying software businesses. He mentions that every moment he buys a new business is a learning experience.  Over the years, JD was afraid of purchasing something that did not work out because he was investing crucial funds into the businesses.

    According to JD, a business that has been in operation for three to four years with no customer acquisition cost, revenue churn, or shrink, and still attracts the same number of customers as it loses and gets some traffic can sell itself. By converting such a business into SaaS, you expose it to more people where it will sell itself and things will work out right.

    JD has always yearned to have a great product, and when he came across ARPU, he knew that was his defining moment. ARPU is a Recharge app for Shopify which merchants can use to sell subscriptions.

    JD describes Recharge as a grand app with massive growth. When he learned that ARPU was up for sale, it had not yet met his requirements. As a result, he took time to understand it and figure out whether it was worth investing in and the risk factors. JD says he had to learn everything about ARPU, and you can find the details in the podcast.

    He would later buy the business after a long time of doing due diligence. He talks about the acquisition process and how he continued working with Recharge. When did ARPU and Recharge go separate ways?

    JD talks about what they have been doing to make ARPU a success. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for marketing and acquiring deals as JD mentions in this podcast. He says he has acquired most of his best deals through human connections. JD and his team are looking forward to buying an influential signature business with a massive following.  

    JD says his digital agency has evolved from having eight people to approximately 100 people currently. As a result, he believes focusing on what they have right now is the best thing to do, at least to build more experience, learn how to navigate potential risks, and do an excellent job.

    JD is not planning to buy any new product anytime soon. Instead, he will take it slow to avoid incurring huge losses. For ARPU, he says they are considering acquiring more eCommerce add ons they can utilize to ease communication. For example, ARPU could consider venturing into the gifting or SMS industry.

    While the team believes they have the momentum to build a robust tool from scratch, JD says that purchasing a well-developed product would speed up their operations. On the other hand, buying as poorly built product could slow them down.

    Together with his team, they are looking forward to building a robust product that works well to eliminate the trouble of patching systems together. So passionate is JD at what he does that he analyzes every business portfolio keenly.

    At some point, he was evaluating SaaS businesses that would complete an agency model. As the agency evolves, JD says he analyzes every SaaS platform independently. He mentions how he wanted to venture into eCommerce and email businesses at some point because he saw lots of value and potential in the area.

    Having a great team is crucial in running a company successfully. JD talks about his team passionately and highlights some insights on running an effective team that aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from. 

    Resources

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    Tammy Haldeman, CEO of Your Shield, talks about coming up with the idea, developing it, their pricing plan, and why the application is ideal for adults and teenagers.

    You Shield is a safety application that users install on their phones. Tammy Haldeman, the developer, tells Geordie about it. 

    What You’ll Learn

    • How Tammy came up with the idea
    • Lessons Tammy learned along the way
    • Challenges Tammy and her team faced during the development process

    In This Episode

    Tammy Haldeman believes the You Shield app can protect users from sexual harassment, sex trafficking, kidnapping, bullying, and domestic violence. After activating it, users need to program a secret word they can remember easily, which comes in handy in an emergency.

    If you ever experience an attack, your attackers will never know about the app. All you need to pre-program your secret word on the app is shout your preferred term. The app will notify everybody you have programmed, begin tracking your location, and record audio. Tammy gives out an example in the podcast to better understand how the app works.

    Tammy describes, coming up with the idea as a gift. She narrates how a bullying incident where the victim, a 10-year-old girl, committed suicide affected her. Suddenly the thought of a security application hit her brain. She says aspects of designing and improving her idea kept flooding her mind, and that’s when she decided to actualize it.

    Investing in application development can be a costly practice. However, Tammy mentions that her heart was ready to go over and above to catch attackers or prevent them from violating other people’s rights.

    With zero experience in software, Tammy admits that venturing into the industry was intimidating. She struggled with finding the right people to trust with her idea and reputable professionals she could work with.

    Tammy narrates how she met Geordie, with whom they had an easy conversation. She says Geordie made her comfortable even though she was not conversant with software-related terms. Find out how Tammy and Geordie’s development team collaborated to build the app. 

    Geordie highlights how they struggled with finding the ideal sequence because they needed to configure the iOS operating system. At some point, they encountered particular regulations that barred changes on iOS. How did Tammy navigate that phase?

    She remembers one specific week when accessing her account on App Store was impossible for two weeks. However, despite the challenges, Tammy says everything worked satisfactorily because it allowed their developers to focus on the complexities of the application. That phase gave them sufficient time to prepare the app for launch. 

    Every entrepreneur struggles with the fear of the unknown, and Tammy was not an exception. Sometimes she feared that the app would never go live. However, she was certain she could keep pushing until her dreams actualized.

    Tammy quickly mentions that developing an application is a long, tedious, and time-consuming process. When it comes to app development, a celebration of the last day never comes because you are always thinking about what to improve to enhance the user experience. What’s more, customers keep demanding new features. Still, Tammy describes two moments when her persistence seemed to be bearing fruits. Listen to the podcast to learn about it.

    When Tammy started developing the You Shield idea, she had not emphasized sexual harassment. However, her niece was recently harassed sexually at school, which made her regret for not activating her niece’s Shield activated.

    In today’s world, where insecurity is rising exponentially, every teenager can benefit from using the You Shield app. Do you have privacy concerns regarding this app? Tammy says only app users can playback recordings from their devices.

    Further, they don’t collect the user’s information. Such data is only necessary for activating the app. She also discussed their payment plans in the podcast. If you are interested in the app, do not miss this podcast section. 

    This app is meant for both teenagers and adults as well. Tammy says you can never predict when something happens to you and insists that having the app can rescue you from risky situations. One of the most interesting features of this application is that victims can call out for help without their attackers knowing. 

    If you are an aspiring app developer, Tammy says documenting your dreams about the project is crucial. She says potential app developers should create recordings, draw their plans, and write down their expectations. Collaborating with trustworthy people with whom you can easily communicate is also crucial during the development process. 

    Your Shield app is only available on iOS, but Tammy says they are working on availing it for Android users soon. 

    Resources

     

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