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Founders' Series - Jake & Becca Berg - Dubsado
227 Plays6 years ago
Today’s guest are Jake and Becca Berg, the co-founders of Dubsado, the client management system for entrepreneurs. Dubsado makes any contracts, invoices, questionnaires, bookkeeping and other business workflows easy. I can confidently say that, because we’re now Dubsado users, but we weren’t before this episode.
I signed us up for a trial to prepare for the interview with no intention of continuing to use it. After a test run, I was hooked. One of the reasons that I wanted to interview Jake and Becca was because Dubsado seemed to come out of nowhere. As with most entrepreneurial journeys, Dubsado wasn’t an overnight success. It started small with very little functionality. Through many iterations, carefully listening to their user base and their own intuition, they’ve created an incredibly impactful tool for businesses.
For more information and resources, check out the show notes: https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-jake-becca-berg-dubsado-fs/
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Transcript
Introduction to Brands at Book Show
00:00:05
Speaker
what people were just wanting that didn't exist, which was the whole branding side. That was when we launched it. We just said, hey, create your forms and make them look beautiful when other systems didn't have that.
Meet the Host: Davy Jones
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients.
Featuring Jake and Becca Berg from Dubsado
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:30
Speaker
Today's episode is part of the Founders Series, where we chat with founders and CEOs of companies that have created products and services that help creatives run their businesses. Today's guests are Jake and Becca Berg, the co-founders of Dupsado, the client management system for entrepreneurs.
00:00:47
Speaker
Dubsado makes sending contracts, invoices, questionnaires, bookkeeping, and other business workflows easy. And I can confidently say that because we're now Dubsado users.
Dubsado's Rise and Impact
00:00:56
Speaker
But we weren't before this episode. I signed us up for a trial to prepare for the interview with no intention of continuing to use it.
00:01:03
Speaker
But after a test run, I was hooked. One of the reasons that I wanted to interview Jake and Becca was because Dipsado seemed to come out of nowhere. But, as with most entrepreneurial journeys, Dipsado wasn't an overnight success.
Dubsado's Journey and Community Building
00:01:16
Speaker
It started small with very little functionality, and through many iterations, carefully listening to their user base and their own intuition, they've created an incredibly impactful tool for businesses.
00:01:28
Speaker
In this episode, we discussed their journey in building Dupsado, why they decided not to take outside funding like many of their competitors, and how they created such a loyal and active user base. Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I'd like to hear from you about what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book podcast as we move forward. I'd also like to know what episodes you've enjoyed so far and why.
00:01:52
Speaker
To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davey and Krista Facebook page and send us a message.
Interview with the Co-founders
00:01:57
Speaker
And if you decide to try out Dipsado after listening to this episode, go over to the show notes for a code that you can use to get 20% off your first month. Now on the episode.
00:02:15
Speaker
All right, I'm excited to be here with Jake and Becca Berg of Dipsado. And Dipsado is a content management system, I guess, not content management system, a CRM for creative entrepreneurs. And I wouldn't even say just photographers or just designers, although I know that you guys have a ton of photographers and designers using your system. But it seems like just having been part of the Dipsado Facebook community for a few days now, that all sorts of companies use your system.
From Ideas to Creation: The Story of Dubsado
00:02:42
Speaker
So could you tell us just a second, what is Dipsado all about?
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, so like you said, Dubzado is a client management system and it just keeps track of sending invoices and questionnaires and all your bookings and just keeping the hub of your business in one place so that you don't have to be scattered around in a whole bunch of different systems. You can just keep it all in one place. Yeah, and like you said, we have everything from doulas to lawyers to photographers to coaches. It's crazy and it blows me away how many different types of businesses use Dubzado.
00:03:15
Speaker
And I love love when they chat us or call us. I'm like, Oh, that's so awesome. We have this type of person using the system. So it's exciting. Yeah, that's that's awesome. And I do want to go back and I want to hear all about how you all started the sado. You know how this idea came to be. Becca, I know that you previously were a photographer.
00:03:32
Speaker
And not that you're not a photographer anymore, but that used to be that used to be the business you focus on. And I was laughing with Jake before this, for this interview, I was on a phone call with him. And I was talking about how I went to your website and noticed that, you know, you had plans on being away until mid 2017 working on another project. And so I just assumed that this other project is Stapsado. And it's just it was funny to me because now we're into 2018, almost mid 2018. And this project still has your attention. So something must be going well.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yes, it is. So how did this idea come about? Jake, were you also a photographer before Debsado? Before Debsado, I was I was managing a retreat center just north of Santa Barbara, where I just handled the day to day operations. And, and I did a lot of the business side of things, coordinating the events that came through and, and signing contracts and sending invoices. So I was doing a lot of the things that we do in the system now, except I didn't have a system for it back then.
00:04:29
Speaker
So that's interesting to me because you created this out of from the technical aspect of everything, right? You built the initial product. And I think now you have helped doing that. How did you learn? You weren't doing engineering for this retreat center, were you? No, I wasn't. I was working there full time during the day. And then when I got off work, I'd be studying basically. And then
00:04:53
Speaker
Like Becca would visit me on the weekends and I was just there coding pretty much for my days off. And I think it was pretty annoying for her.
Early Challenges and Learning Moments
00:05:00
Speaker
And I remember her asking like, why are you doing this? Like why, why you're coding for, for no reason. Cause I was just doing test projects and, and I dabbled in, in starting a couple like different websites to manage different aspects of our business at the retreat center.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I also built a couple of websites for Becca to kind of manage. I think it was like a gallery that ultimately wasn't very usable and it sucked. But I did learn a lot just trying to get hands on experience building a variety of different things. So meanwhile, so you're doing this. And meanwhile, Becca, you are you're shooting. So what kind of photography were you doing? I was doing mostly headshots because I also worked at my parents agency. They own a modeling agency.
00:05:44
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And so I did a lot of head shots there. I worked with my parents, so I was doing two different things and trying to start up my own thing, which I thought at the time were my head shots and dabbling into weddings while working at my parents' agency. So I didn't understand what Jake was doing or why he was learning that stuff, and I'm glad he did. And so how did the idea for Dipsado come about? Were you struggling with the organization or management side of things? It depends on who you ask.
00:06:14
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Let's start with you. I've listened to some other interviews that you guys have done, so I think I have an idea of where this is going. At what point did you realize you needed a system? When I started dabbling into weddings, just because I saw how multifaceted they were, how picky sometimes brides can get, and I wanted to make sure that I had a contract down. I'd shot my first wedding without a contract, and I was like, no, I'm not going to do that anymore.
00:06:39
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and a few bad clients with headshots. I'm like, okay, I need to get my contracts in place. But after I had my first contract wedding done, Charlie, our youngest, well, our youngest at the time was our oldest now. Sorry, confusing. But he colored all over my contract. And I was like, gosh, darn it. I need to have this in a system. I'm just kind of a disorganized person in that case. So I'm just I need this somewhere.
00:07:03
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So I was like, Jake, can you make something for me? I think it would be really great if I could have my contracts done online. I looked at a few other systems that were out at the time, but nothing felt like my business and myself. And I was really getting portrayed correctly through their platform. So I couldn't put my brand in front of it all. So I was like, I want Jake to build it for me and it will just be mine. It'll be my system. So.
00:07:28
Speaker
He asked me and looked at me, and I was like, come on, Becca. I asked you to do this, like, if we could do this two years ago. And you said, no, this is stupid. Yeah, that's the story. Yeah. So two years prior, you had gone to Becca and said, I mean, you're doing all this coding anyways. You had said, hey, I want to build a system for you to stay organized. And basically, she was like, no, I don't need this. Yeah, why would I need that? I have paper and I have
Collaborative Dynamics in Dubsado's Development
00:07:51
Speaker
contracts. And she just didn't understand. She's like client management system. That sounds so boring.
00:07:57
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As far as personalities go, I've talked to so many different husband and wife teams. I mean, Kristin and I are husband and wife team. And one thing I always love to get a feel for is who's kind of what role in that team. For Kristin and I, I'm definitely the dreamer. I'm definitely the forward thinker. I'd be the one that says, hey, we should go out and build this. And Kristin's the one that looks at me and is like, number one, I have 1,000 other things going on. And number two, no. We're just not going to do it. It's not going to work or this or that.
00:08:25
Speaker
And eventually she comes around. So how does that how does that dynamic play out between you two? Pretty much exactly like that. It really is. Jake is the one that is always pushing us, pushing me and pushing himself to do things scary and into the unknown. I'm more the type of person that likes to think about it a lot first. I don't necessarily like to do something out of the norm. So when he did come up with, hey, let's start a new business and let's do this, it's like, no, that's that's scary.
00:08:54
Speaker
But until I was like, I actually need this. And then I added like a little niche to it, which made a little bit more sense, like the creative industry rather than I think Jake just wanted to do a client management system for anybody. Yeah. And that didn't make sense to me. So I had to put it in kind of my own hand. And that's kind of how our dynamic plays out. He says something months later. I'm like, well, that's that sounds like a great idea, Jake. Let's do this.
00:09:19
Speaker
That's a really interesting dynamic to me, especially with Jake being the engineer, only because of the developers that we've worked with in the past, they're generally more like Krista in that, you know, they're very much here focused, not necessarily the, you know, the dreamer, they don't necessarily have that dreamer personality. Krista, you know, is the one between us that has more of the development background. So it's really interesting to me, Jake, that you are
00:09:43
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kind of forward thinking, always the one pushing people forward or pushing your company forward
Feedback-Driven Growth
00:09:48
Speaker
and your relationship forward. Because I just find that most developers are very much rooted in the here and now, what's practical and what's not. Yeah, even if when I'm in a moment where I'm trying to look forward and think everything out to a T, there comes an extent to that where we plan it as far as we can imagine it. And as far as we can conceive,
00:10:10
Speaker
But then we also do stay pretty tied into reality right now and we are very focused on the product that we have.
00:10:17
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And I do expect my programmers to just be very focused on what we're doing right now. And then they can leave the dreaming up to me. Sure. And that makes sense. And I definitely want to talk about like, you know, how you guys even go about adding features and, you know, coming up with an MVP, I think for a software product is so different than, you know, for maybe a service based business. But I don't want to get ahead of myself here. So Becca finally comes back to back around to you and says, Hey, we need to do this.
00:10:44
Speaker
So what steps do you take to make this dream a reality? When Jake and I's heads come together, we laugh on how we just we make things happen. When he has the same idea, I have the same idea, we just get down to right down to it. So
00:11:01
Speaker
Immediately, when we both looked at each other, we were like, yes, we both have this idea. We started an Instagram account. We started building the website. We started getting those things in place literally that same day. We had the homepage done by the end of the day. So it moved rather fast there at the beginning and then development started. So the ideas in the wheels started turning at the very, very beginning. And then it just kind of started the development phase of it.
00:11:27
Speaker
So, did you guys just basically say, okay, or Jake, did you just say, I'm going to build something for Becca? Or did you all reach out to anybody else? Or was it really like, hey, I just want to look at your business and build something specifically for you. And I think if I do that, it's going to be helpful for other people. How'd you go about planning? Like, who is this going to be for? And I know, Becca, you mentioned Jake wanted to build just CRM for anybody.
00:11:50
Speaker
you know, but you guys kind of narrowed it into photography? Or did you know right then? Because I know a ton of designers, especially that just rave about dubsado. So I know it works for other people than photographers. And was that intention you from the get go? Yeah, I guess the balance is something that's been for successes. Like Becca says one thing, and I say another thing, and then we kind of just find the middle road. And so, in my mind, I wanted to build something that was really universal.
00:12:19
Speaker
And technically that's really challenging because it's harder to develop something that can fit and work in different ways. Whereas if you just make something that it works this way and it's going to work really well for the wedding industry, then you're kind of trapped in the wedding industry and development wise to go back and then add that flexibility. Now your product's going to change significantly and you don't know for sure if it's going to work.
00:12:42
Speaker
So in the very beginning, we were debating between focusing on a specific community or making it pretty universal. And we just found compromises all on the way for what we thought would provide the most value to the most generic audience. And then I think
00:12:59
Speaker
the creative, the niche side of things was more towards like the marketing of it. Cause we knew that everyone is going to need to send an invoice, sign a contract and, and send questionnaires to kind of gather information around projects that they're working on. So we, we spent a lot of time preparing before we even coded very much. It was really, really hard. We didn't, we were confused. It was, it was like walking around and pitch dark. We had no idea what we were starting, even the first day that I started coding it.
00:13:27
Speaker
We had a vague idea and we were just making steps toward that idea. It wasn't just for me though when he started it. We knew we wanted
Balancing Life and Work in Dubsado's Early Days
00:13:34
Speaker
to create a system for people, but he had me in mind as the ideal client. So he was building it for me, but we did have the intention to
00:13:44
Speaker
launch it to other people when it was done. Did you all gather any feedback in this phase? Or was it really just among you to figuring out and planning what to build? And so what went into kind of that decision like, Hey, we're just going to kind of keep it to ourselves right now and build it and then put it out there. I am a pretty shy person, actually. So I didn't even know or even think to ask other people. I just was active in will act
00:14:13
Speaker
a lot of Facebook group forums and I was in a lot of those things. I was seeing what was not working for other people. So I was doing my own research and kind of taking in what I was seeing wasn't working on other platforms that people wanted, what people were just wanting that didn't exist, which was the whole branding side. That was when we launched it. We just said, Hey, create your forms and make them look beautiful when other systems didn't have that. So we just focused on the things that we could do different. And that was kind of like our market research was those
00:14:42
Speaker
awesome Facebook groups. I think there's something to be said for that too though. I think we really focus on the marketing side of things.
00:14:49
Speaker
As far as like feedback goes, I think something that entrepreneurs hear a lot is, you know, asking people what they think and getting feedback and the importance of feedback. But you know, there's kind of a double edged sword there, I think as well because people are going to give you all sorts of feedback. And then it's up to you to figure out what's relevant and what's not. And I think the interesting thing and I kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier about building software and correct me if I'm wrong,
00:15:14
Speaker
But when you build a feature, it's not just, oh, I can just, you know, build this feature, you might have to lay groundwork for that feature. And if you build a feature, maybe it affects the future features that you add to the product. So it's not just as easy as saying, Oh, you want that? Yeah, let me, you know, let me go build that, you know, it's going to take some significant time, and it's going to have ramifications beyond just having that feature. So how did you guys go about deciding, okay, this is what we definitely need to have to launch. And this would be like maybe a nice to have.
00:15:44
Speaker
It was basically a big piece of paper that said, this is everything that we could probably do by launch date. And then we just started taking a red pen and crossing things out the closer to launch date that we got. And when we did launch it, we look back and we kind of we giggle at it because it was basically just a system to store contacts. We didn't have a way for clients to pay their invoices yet. We had invoices but not an online processor.
00:16:13
Speaker
And we first did beta when we did our first launch. So then we got that feedback. Okay, so they want to do credit card and ACH. Okay, let's do that. So when we did our beta, which was about 100 people in that first beta phase and just making sure that after we launched it, we took our next steps to actually full launch and they were in the right direction. Yeah. So that was that beta phase was huge and key, but it didn't have a lot of features at all. How many people did you beta launch to?
00:16:43
Speaker
It was, we had about 300 on our list and we were only marketing on Instagram. That was the only form of just promoting ourselves and getting ourselves out there. It's just creating a likable brand and showing who Jake and I are on Instagram page. So we did that and we got him to sign up to our newsletter. And then we had about 300 people on that. And then about a hundred actually sign up for the beta and use it, give us feedback.
00:17:10
Speaker
And that was so key. Those people, I still know who they are. They're still with us. I still love them greatly.
00:17:17
Speaker
I think there's such value for our listeners out there. I think so many people get to launch and they're super worried about it and they think everything has to be perfect. But if I heard you correctly, when you first launched, it was basically a place to sell your contacts. You couldn't get paid online. I assume were contracts a part of that? Could you send your contract for electronic signature? Yes, that was.
Post-Launch Feature Prioritization
00:17:42
Speaker
So, you know, I mean, I imagine that if we looked back in time to that application, it would look very different than it does today. But you launched, you got feedback, and then you iterated on that. So from that point on, was it just a matter of you kind of knew right off the bat, like, okay, we need to focus on online payments, let's say, or, like, how'd you know exactly which, which features to focus on from there? Mostly just by how many people were asking for what feature?
00:18:11
Speaker
So it was online payments, uh, customizing the email address that it comes from. So instead of just a vague dubs auto email from sending, sending from their own email address. So we had a few key core things that we know that we wanted to do, but we kind of gauged what our users were asking for. Ultimately, we chose going with getting paid because we want our people to make money through our system. So we went that route first and that was one of our, our biggest, but.
00:18:38
Speaker
The launch was a very, very hard time for us and me because I am a perfectionist and I want to please people and make them happy. And I was afraid since we kept using that red pen and crossing out all these things that we couldn't accomplish because it was just Jake doing these things. I was getting really, really nervous that people aren't going to like this. What are they going to think? We've been hyping this up so much that it was going to be a great platform and it's only going to have a few things. But to my surprise, when we launched, we still had
00:19:08
Speaker
people that liked it, that the things that we focused on that we wanted to do a little bit different than other people are what really attracted them to it. And I just made up for our lack of features on the customer experience side of things and making sure that all of our customers, if they did do a feature request, they were heard.
00:19:27
Speaker
I whispered to Jake, like, hey, this person wants this. How about we launch that in the next few days? So we put a little nugget out there and then that person would be so excited and they go tell their people. So I really just embraced every single one of our people to kind of distract myself from we don't have a lot and just make our people feel heard and loved. And I should probably clarify, you guys weren't doing this full time at this point yet. I mean, this was in addition to the headshots and your photography business and then Jake, you were still working at the retreat center?
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah. So at what point did you step down from the retreat center? Like at what point did you say, okay, I just have too much to do here. And this is showing enough promise where, you know, I think I can step down. I don't remember the timeframe, but I remember the exact moment where I decided to do it. And I was in spin class. Yeah. And it was the hardest thing for me was my relationship to the retreat center is it's very heartfelt. And I love the place so much.
00:20:23
Speaker
And my in-laws, Becca's parents are highly involved there and I was helping them out a lot by taking on that responsibility. And I knew that quitting was going to put a lot of stuff on their plate. But I also knew that it was really important that I had the time in my life to focus on our product that I was the only developer for at the time.
00:20:44
Speaker
And it was, it was hard, hard at that point to balance new features and bugs and all this stuff when I was, I was still like working with clients and all these different things with the retreat center. And luckily we, we had, you know, compensated ourselves through, through Dibsato to allow me to leave the position. And so there I was spending.
00:21:04
Speaker
Sweating and I just decided to text my boss and said I was leaving in spin class while spinning and I think So this happened literally in the class. It wasn't like I'm gonna get up, you know, I'm gonna get off this bike I'm gonna go go home chat with Becca about this, you know, I was spinning and he texted back He was like, okay why and I was like, I'm just working on other things my life. I
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. And then spin was over and I felt amazing. I just felt free. And I think it's always important to really take your time with decisions like that and not be selfish with it. I didn't I didn't do it for myself necessarily. I just it was best for everybody. And I just said a prayer before I did it that everything would work out with the
Staying Independent and Competitive
00:21:46
Speaker
retreat center. And obviously praying that Dabzada was going to be able to sustain us because I just left my full time job. And I did it and I owe it all to spin class.
00:21:57
Speaker
Do you still go to that spin class? I do. I was going to say, I mean, if it was, you should go back. Maybe that's just where all these great ideas are, you know, something about that spin class. But so from the time you guys had this idea to the beta launch about about how many months or years or days was that was five months. So from the point of idea to beta launch was five months. In that five months to we also had our second child. Oh,
00:22:25
Speaker
and you know busy with work and other things and most of those five months were dedicated towards planning. I was wondering why Jake wasn't working on it and programming because I don't understand the programming world. I'm a little bit more keen on it now and understand it a little bit but it was a lot of planning and a lot of planning dates but it wasn't until about what was it three days before?
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah, 80% of the first product was built in 72 hours. 72 straight hours? Yes. Straight. Were you working against the deadline? Did you announce the launch date and that's why you had to get it done in those 72 hours? Yeah, we had announced it two weeks prior to actually launching.
00:23:10
Speaker
three days before we looked at it, we're like, this isn't really doing anything yet. Like there were some guts there. But there you couldn't sign a contract, you couldn't, you couldn't build the form at all and you couldn't send an invoice. So it sounds like pretty much the entire, the entire application. Yeah. Yeah. So I kept, Becca would text me every now and then she tried not to bother me too much, but like 24 hours in, I was like, Becca, we're not going to do, we're not going to receive payments. Like we can't connect the stripe. I can't do it in time.
00:23:41
Speaker
So in those 72 hours, I think 48 hours in, I started getting a little bit crazy. So I'm really glad those 72 hours were like one of the most important parts of Dubs Auto's history. We learned so much from that 72 hours. One, never do this ever again. And deadlines are something that we need to set better. So we learned a lot during that period of we need to be better on ourselves and not treat ourselves this way.
00:24:09
Speaker
And it was a growth period. We still had a lot more, a lot more to learn and we still do, but we learned a lot from that 72 hours. It's important to set a date too at the same time. Sure. Because we were kind of just lollygagging and planning and going forward, but without a set date, maybe it would have taken another month, another two months. And we just needed to go for it and do it instead of just sitting around thinking about it.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I definitely think there's a tension there in, you know, not holding yourself to a standard that's unfair. And at the same time having deadlines and I think so many people I think it's such a great example for so many entrepreneurs about, you know, chasing after an idea but then not being scared to put it out in the world even if it's not perfect now.
00:24:56
Speaker
you know, because if it serves at least a couple people well, which it sounds like it did, and it probably was better than a lot of people's paper and pen system, you know, where their kids are coloring all over their contract. And from there, that's not the end, you know, that's just the beginning. And you guys have certainly iterated from that moment on. So
00:25:16
Speaker
From your beta launch, how long did it take for you to leave your job and make this your full-time priority about? So when that spin class happened, was beta launch over and you guys had kind of launched it to the world by then? It wasn't when we launched it to the world. So we launched it to everybody in February of 2016. And it wasn't until August of 2016 that Jake actually quit his job.
00:25:43
Speaker
So we had full launch and we were still both working heavily. I didn't actually stop working with my parents and doing headshots until, I want to say it's just been a year. Like we just hit our year mark with it. So I didn't, I waited a very long time because I was still making money and I wanted to be sure when I left, we were literally all on our own. So.
00:26:06
Speaker
we held out and made sure that we were stable in Debs Auto, that we can support ourselves, support our team that we were going to hire, because we always had intentions of hiring a team. And we can support ourselves, we can support our kids, all of that. So as you started growing, I mean, customer support with with software, especially, it's not like you as launches, I think that's to the myth around building software, it's like, I built this thing now, I just get subscribers and I kick back, you know, just at the beach or something like that.
00:26:35
Speaker
when in reality, you guys are dealing with bugs, you're making sure things are working correctly, things happen that's that are outside of your control, probably, you know, because you rely on other vendors for your application to work. So if you know, I remember when Amazon had that big outage, half the internet was down, you know, because Amazon is down, but people are probably coming to you being like, Hey, you know, what's going on? So
00:26:56
Speaker
I'm just impressed that you guys were able to manage that and working and not to mention having a having a second kid all during that time period. In addition to that, especially when it comes to developers, although you were doing most of the building or Jake, you were doing most of the building at the time, building applications can be expensive. It's not like
00:27:15
Speaker
It's not like you have no competitors, right? And of your competitors, most of them, it seems, have taken outside funding to the tune of millions of dollars. So they've had VCs come in, venture capitalists come in and inject millions of dollars. At any point during that, was that intimidating? Were you guys even looking at what else was going on or what else was out there? Maybe what kind of situation their company was in? And was that intimidating to you guys as you were building Dubsado?
00:27:45
Speaker
We knew that our competitors did have funding and we saw what it was doing to them. And basically what I saw in the Facebook groups and how some users were unsatisfied with how things were happening or features weren't being launched. And I was like, Jake, I don't want to be that stuck.
00:28:04
Speaker
I want to be able to, if someone needs something, let's get it done. I don't want to report to anybody. I don't want to have to be advised if our company should go in this direction. Our main goal with not being funded is just being able to pivot, being agile in our own business so that we can release the features that we want to our users when they want them.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that makes sense because the first people that those companies are responsible to are their VCs, their investors, right? Not necessarily their customers, whereas you all, your first priority is what your customers want. Did you ever even consider outside funding for Dipsado? No.
00:28:46
Speaker
That's something I'm always like, no, never. But it was a big victory when we got our first email from a VC saying, Hey, like I've heard of you guys, I'd like to talk and you know, see if we can work something out. It was it was validation for sure. And so so if you were to what do you think your main differentiators are between you and some of these competitors?
00:29:08
Speaker
Outside of A, they have to be responsible to VCs and you guys can just be responsible and hear your customers. Yeah, I think our agility is number one. One thing that we've always held at the front, and I've mentioned this a few times, is just the branding. Especially with just a few features that we've launched is
00:29:29
Speaker
your company's branding is on everything. You can run Devsado and not have Devsado's name in any little link, in any form, nothing. And we noticed as we were building Devsado that this was a huge thing that people didn't like. They didn't want to see
00:29:45
Speaker
their clients see what company they're using to send their contracts and invoices, they wanted it to feel like their business. So we noticed our competitors aren't doing that too much. And if one of them is, it's hard to get it configured and set up and everything. Yeah. And when we when we first came on the scene, that was one of the biggest changes that we saw in the market, because a lot of them competition wise were heavily like, this is my this is our brand, it's not yours, yours, here's our logo on the invoice. And
00:30:15
Speaker
I think they may have been using it as a form of marketing for their own service. And then we came in and even though there was still room for improvement where we could remove ourselves from, we were doing a really good job at just making it our customers and their brand alone. And that was one of the first changes that we saw in the market when we showed up on the scene. And we were just talking earlier about how that was one of our big moments where we knew that things were working out for us was when we saw
00:30:44
Speaker
our features being mimicked by other companies that are really well funded. And to see that such small stature company could have an impact where someone in a big successful environment like that said, Hey, look at what these guys are doing, we need to do it better. Yeah. And, and that that's when we knew that
00:31:09
Speaker
we were doing well because we're pushing the market forward. I think it got a little stale and I think it got a little bit
00:31:16
Speaker
set in their ways and then we got the chance to come in and shake things up a little bit and I think that ultimately works out for the best for everyone. It pushed us to do our best when we saw another company copying our style or coming out with a feature that we had and we said, okay, well, we see you and we'll raise you one and we'll come out with something that you won't be able to put out for another six months because we are so agile because I know every line of code and I know that
00:31:46
Speaker
I can do 10 features in a week because I know how all the pieces fit together and I can see a few moves ahead and knowing that these things aren't going to mess us up in the future. So we don't just act and we have a plan and we know that.
Customer Support and Community Loyalty
00:32:01
Speaker
these pieces are going to matter in a few weeks. And because we don't have like this environment where we're reporting to people or because our designers are dissociated with our engineers, everyone is very fluid and we're all kind of on the same page and how we communicate. And so we kind of mimic our early days in Dubs Auto with what we do today. We're like street fighters.
00:32:28
Speaker
We'll always come out fighting. Is that a new marketing tagline? Yes, I like it. We're always fighting. What's incredible about what you're saying is I think, again, a misconception that people have is the more money you have, the more resources you have, the easier things are. But in many ways, more resources just means a greater ability to become more distracted. Whereas when you have fewer resources to start, you have to be very careful, I think,
00:32:55
Speaker
about dedicating time and resources to any one thing. So it causes you maybe to think a little bit more about the decisions that you that you want to make. The other thing that's interesting is while some of these companies are big, and that results in more people, that's not necessarily better. Because you guys can turn around and like you were saying, you can decide in a day, hey, we're gonna this this feature is a priority now. And you don't have to go justify it to
00:33:22
Speaker
any executives, you don't have to justify it to different members on your team to get it done. You can just go and make it happen. So I think that there is real value to just how you started your business and how you lean into those strengths and how you are really responsible to your customers.
00:33:42
Speaker
One thing that I want to mention to you guys and I should say right now is that I received no incentive for doing this interview. I reached out to you guys. I actually tried to track you guys down for a while and I've told this to Jake because one of the most fascinating things about you guys is more and more. It almost seemed like overnight to me, although I'm sure it didn't seem like overnight to you guys, is when people posted online in different industry Facebook groups, hey, what CRM do you guys use or what do you use for contracts and invoices?
00:34:12
Speaker
You know, it used to be you'd see kind of the normal players a lot of these companies that we're talking about that that you know are bigger and receive funding in this that but then more and more I saw a dubsado show up and Then all of a sudden it seemed like that's all I saw, you know, just I know I love dubsado and people going on I don't even know how I ran my business without dubsado and one thing I also noticed was that people would talk about Oh, I switched from this platform to that platform
00:34:37
Speaker
And people would land on Dabsado. So I've tried five other platforms. And then I got to Dabsado. And this is the, you know, this is the one. But I never I haven't to this day, I kid you not, I have not seen anybody say, Oh, I tried Dabsado. It wasn't for me. And I went to, you know, 17 hats or something else. And that was better. It seems like people, you know, really loved it. Like, what do you credit just this, you know, I guess, these intense fans to
00:35:05
Speaker
Is it a feature? Is it a customer support? Is it a combination of things? It's definitely a combination. But I have always said to Jake, it has to be customer support. People just want to feel heard. People want to feel like they belong to something. And especially too, at the very beginning, I knew since we didn't have a lot, I sent out thank you welcome gifts to our users as well.
00:35:32
Speaker
So it just, you want to make people know that they are appreciated and you get them falling in love with your brand, the people behind the brand and everything about it. And they start to feel involved in it. So.
00:35:44
Speaker
They're part of the system. All our users who are here, they're part of Dubs Auto. They helped create Dubs Auto with any feature requests that they have made. So it's just about making people feel like they are a part of something. And it's helping their business too. How did you guys go about, I'll say one of my favorite pieces of software is Slack. You guys know Slack? So Kristin and I, we have a three person team, so it's not big. And Kristin and I use Slack
00:36:11
Speaker
to communicate with one another. And what I love about Slack is that big companies use it, right? And find a lot of value in it. But even a two person team like Kristin and I find a ton of value in using Slack. And I feel like I'm getting a lot out of it. It doesn't feel feature heavy like Evernote. I don't know if you guys ever use Evernote. If you currently use Evernote, I'm sorry for saying this. But to me, I used to use Evernote, but I always felt like I was only using 5% of it.
00:36:37
Speaker
And because I only felt like I was using 5% of it, I eventually got rid of it, just because I felt like I was, you know, I wasn't taking advantage of all it had to offer. So I went out and found another solution. So we've recently tried out Dipsado, not necessarily with any intention of switching, but it looks like we are we're going to start using Dipsado.
00:36:55
Speaker
And that's one thing that struck me right off the bat was I just wanted to get in there and try it out in advance of this interview, just so I could be more educated with the platform. But one thing that stuck out to me right away was even if I were just to use it for contracts and invoices, it was super easy to get it set up. One situation where I just had to send a contract real quick, there was no invoice associated, it was paid via our accounting software already. And I could do that. I didn't have to fumble around with
00:37:21
Speaker
setting an invoice to zero just to be able to send a contract. So how do you guys manage that? With all the feature requests you get, and I know you get a lot, and you have this great community on Facebook, which on one hand, I'm sure it's great to have that community. On the other hand, I'm sure sometimes you're like, we really can't. For all the reasons I mentioned earlier, we can't focus on it right now. How did you guys manage that?
Design Philosophy and Usability
00:37:43
Speaker
Focusing on making it useful for a lot of people, but then it also being feature rich, but not to the point where it felt like
00:37:50
Speaker
just this monster of a product. I think a big thing was we have our master list of things that we know that we want to accomplish to make sure that we're at a steady place in the market, make sure that we're doing well there.
00:38:05
Speaker
And two, if those features that people ask either build up to one of our, our goals that we have or are like a building blocks to it, we're going to go ahead and get it done because it leads to the next thing. So we just kind of take into account with what people say to what do we have and how could we maybe tweak it in there? There are some people whose feature requests are so, so, so specific and might not necessarily work with our.
00:38:31
Speaker
goal with dubs auto, but the way you can use dubs auto is so
00:38:37
Speaker
flexible that if you want to do something that Dubzado necessarily isn't meant for, you can have a workaround for it. There are many, many ways that you can do just one thing at Dubzado. You can send a contract with a proposal. You can send a contract by itself. You can add a contract to a client portal. There are just so many ways to do one little thing that it can pretty much work with any type of way you're trying to do it. So if we can't do something for someone, we sure try our best to make sure that
00:39:04
Speaker
they can do what they want to do in another way that we can do something. So we just have our master list of what we can do and try to use people's features and build that to master list up. And I think a big part of building our core product we
00:39:18
Speaker
We made some design decisions early on that everything was going to be one click away. That used to be one of our big, like rallying points when we're talking with someone or selling, selling the software is like, you can find any piece of information in, in one, one, two, two or less clicks, like click onto the job. You can see the contract, you can see the invoice, everything's going to be there. So eliminating the extra thought process of how do I get to something? How do I add something focusing on, on being,
00:39:47
Speaker
simple in that there's only one place where you can add a contract to a job and there's only one place where you can send an invoice is an example of eliminating a possible confusion point. So when we build things we sort of
00:40:04
Speaker
we might end up in a situation where we develop something that might be a little confusing. And so then we really self analyze and decide, okay, that isn't really working. So let's let's pull it let's like pull it apart again. And let's go back and let's kind of refine things a little bit. So when we do add things, we're keeping simplicity in mind. And then we also have the retrospective
00:40:27
Speaker
To look back and say, okay, this isn't working. Let's fix it. Let's improve it and let's go the other direction and simplify what we already have. So we're simplifying both directions. When we make new features, we're simplifying something for our user and we're not just putting something in there like a Band-Aid or just sticking it somewhere it doesn't belong. Everything is very intentional.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah, I felt even as I was setting up Dibsato, I really didn't have to use any of the help articles. I'm also kind of the person that's just going to go in there. I mean, and there's tons of them available if you need them. And I do I think that speaks to how intuitive it was to set up. The other thing I did, which I generally don't recommend to people is I just sent our first contract and invoice using it without even looking without sending a test without looking at how it would look on the other side. But I was so awesome, you know, but at the end of it, you know, like it looked like an email that I would send
00:41:17
Speaker
from my business Gmail, you know, it looked like it came from, you know, it didn't have, you know, like, and I know you guys, you were big on this, and you had mentioned this earlier in the interview, didn't have Dipsado at the very bottom, you know, there was no, the links weren't like, you know, your, your brand, if I put in a button, I know that's an option, but I didn't, but it would be the brands, the brand colors that I set in the settings. So that's awesome. We found it super easy to use. I'm so glad you had that experience with it.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's been great. And like I said, we, you know, I did. And just to reiterate to our listeners, like, didn't know you guys prior to this, this interview, you're just a company that I admire from afar. And I just find myself, I think, attracted to this kind of company, you know, husband and wife team, you guys, you know, do it in yourself, you're kind of, you know, you're in the foxhole with your with your clients.
Maximizing Dubsado for Business Success
00:42:06
Speaker
And so you really understand their struggles in building a business. And then also you have that added advantage of Becca having been a photographer and trying to build this photography business, being in this freelance world, understand, I think, and empathize with people also going through that. And so I love companies like that. Show It, I think, is another one that I can't say enough good things about.
00:42:27
Speaker
So you guys, so transitioning real quick, and this is how we'll kind of wrap up, you guys have had the opportunity to, you have thousands of users now, which is incredible. So it just seems like you guys continually are growing at this just as fast as fast pace. And again, just posting those Facebook groups, you know, it definitely seems that way.
00:42:46
Speaker
But I gotta imagine that you get to see some interesting things just in how people use the program. So among, you know, your high performers who use a Debsado, those people that just seem to be really crushing it in their businesses, how do those users use your platform to grow their businesses? Like, what are the things that have stood out to you? And it's like, oh, wow, they're doing that. And that's had, you know, this result.
00:43:10
Speaker
The people, the high performers and the people that just really dive in and use dubs auto, that's exactly what they do. They just, they dive right in, they get their stuff in. And if they have a question, it's like, Hey, I'm trying to do this. What, what can I do to make this happen? It's more of a, that attitude. Let's make this happen. And you're here to help me. So let's, let's, let's do it. And I've learned a lot from those people in how they use the system.
00:43:35
Speaker
someone came to us, I was doing a webinar and she posted in the chat, she's like, I made an extra $12,000 this month that I didn't expect to make just because Dubzado's proposals made it so easy to have my clients just choose little add-ons and then it just added up the price. And I was like, that is awesome. So now since that power user gave me that little snippet of information, I'm now passing that along to everyone else in my webinars and everything just
00:44:03
Speaker
I learned things from them and how they're using it, but they're definitely go getters and come up with amazing ideas on how to use Stubs Auto on their own too.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. I mean, that's incredible. Just in I mean, again, it speaks to if you make things simple for people, and they're not overwhelmed with decisions, good things generally happen. We have an album sales template, we tried to we use kiss for our albums, and we used to send them a PDF, it was mostly text on their options. And there's a billion options. As soon as we simplified that made it more visual, added it to our website, and just said, Hey, you know, go down that there's just it's just simple choices. All of a sudden, we found that more people were ordering albums.
00:44:38
Speaker
You know, and it wasn't that they're more interested in it now, they just now the decision is easy. So they're not choosing from 1000 different colors, you know, we've kind of narrowed it down like, Hey, here are the ones that people are most most happy with. So that's great. Anything else? And just in general, when when people are not negative, they're, they're positive, and they're focused on how can we do it, instead of saying, Oh, it's not possible.
00:45:03
Speaker
why can't i do this it's it's it's being more creative it's being it's having a general sense of positivity about the way you carry yourself i mean even that i've seen a lot of people make a lot of money but.
00:45:15
Speaker
It's the people that are positive, that are satisfied with their life, and they're having fun with what they do. And I think that's the true point is just being able to enjoy what you're doing.
Staying Connected with Dubsado
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining me today. You know, we've had a great experience with TipSato. I hope that a lot of people check you out. And where can people follow along if they're, you know, they're listening to this and like, hey, this sounds like I need this in my business because I'm disorganized or my current platform is not doing it for me. Where should people go?
00:45:43
Speaker
Sure, you can go to our website dubzotto.com, D-U-B-S-A-D-O.com or our Instagram is mydubzotto, which we just have a lot of fun on. Yeah, my favorite place is going to be YouTube though. Okay. I send everybody to YouTube, our channel is just Dubzotto and you can follow along with the office shenanigans and kind of see the trouble that we get into around the office. I know the vlog this week is going to be really good. I'm really excited for it.
00:46:09
Speaker
Okay. Awesome. So you guys have a podcast as well. Yes. Right. Yeah. The creative leap. Yeah. You can find the link to that on our website. It's the creative leap.dubsauto.com. I listened to my first episode a couple of days ago. I think it was the one with Gavin Wade from Classbot and I thought it was great. I thought, you know, whoever hosts that does a great job. Ask great questions. Really well done. You love Alex. Yeah. So, so head on over there and check him out. So thank you all for joining me. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.
00:46:40
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to devianchrista.com.
00:47:02
Speaker
you