Scott East. He founded his company MSIGHTS in 2004 to help marketers make better decisions with better data and reporting. His experience includes global ads and digital agencies of Fortune 20 telecom and AOL prior to founding MSIGHTS. He understands how to engage marketers as he has 20+ years in this area. His new book, The Cuttlefish Marketer: The Five Essential Traits of a Modern Marketer, focuses on helping marketers transform themselves into modern marketing leaders.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – E-Myth
What CEO do you follow? – Jason Fried
Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn Sales Navigator
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Scott wished he had focus more on “pull goals”, not “push goals”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:54 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
02:38 – Scott wrote a book because it was on his bucket list
- 03:00 – Scott’s publisher is Advantage Media
- 03:46 – The book is now available on Amazon and Apple
- 04:06 – It has sold around a couple of hundreds of copies
- 04:20 – Scott worked on his book for 10 solid months
05:05 – MSIGHTS provides data management and performance reporting services for large marketing departments
05:21 – MSIGHTS’ primary model is a SaaS model and they charge based on the data they integrate
05:38 – “We giveaway licenses for free in our platform”
05:58 – Scott wants as many enterprise companies as possible to use their reporting for decision making
06:18 – MSIGHTS charges based on the volume that they’re integrating onto the system (in bulk)
07:00 – MSIGHTS’ professional service is a recurring service
07:40 – Scott shares why the SaaS model is different from a professional service, even if both services are recurring
08:24 – ACV is $250K per client
08:47 – MSIGHTS has 35 people
09:20 – Scott shares how the data they receive needs to be analyzed
- 10:15 – MSIGHTS integrated the data and added the translation key, but it took the founders more than an hour to decide if they would take it
11:03 – Scott self-funded the company
11:33 – MSIGHTS was officially launched in 2003
12:00 – First year revenue is around $150K
12:10 – 2013 revenue
12:31 – 2016 revenue was $3.21M
13:04 – Churn is less than 5% annually
13:30 – Some of their clients have been with MSIGHTS for five years plus
13:50 – MSIGHTS is still bootstrapped
14:15 – Blended gross margins is a low 85%, platform side is 80% plus and 70% on professional service
15:05 – Last month total revenue is around $264K
15:30 – CAC
15:54 – Payback period is around a month
17:53 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If you want something and it’s within your reach, GO for it!
Having a great product could mean you’re bootstrapped for years, even a decade.
Professional services can be a recurring service.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

835: $3m+ in Revenue, How to make a SaaS and Professional Service Model Work Together

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders