S5E28 – 7 Sales & Marketing Tips to Increase MRR to $40K With Heigo Paartalu

• (00:36) – Show intro and background history
• (02:34) – Deeper into his career journey
• (04:28) – Understanding his company  business model
• (06:19) – Deeper into his business model
• (13:38) – What is the size and revenue of his company today
• (15:59) – Understanding his marketing and sales strategies
• (22:32) – Commercial break (TYKR mobile app)
• (23:13) – Deeper into his digital marketing strategies
• (27:48) – Some examples of something he tried but did not work
• (31:59) – One of the best decisions he made in his business journey
• (35:54) – Guest hot tips
• (37:15) – One more key takeaway from the guest
• (42:05) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.320] – Show Intro

Introducing payback time, the podcast for entrepreneurs looking to build and scale their startups, gain access to actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable data that can help you avoid mistakes, skyrocket sales, and optimize profits. Your business breakthrough may just be an episode away.

 

[00:00:18.230] – Guest Intro

If you’re looking to start or scale at B two B SaaS, this episode’s for you. My next guest shares his founder, steward, building a SaaS business for the yacht industry. And in this episode, he breaks down seven sales and marketing tips that help them scale to $40,000 monthly recurring revenue. Please welcome Heigo Paartalu.

 

[00:00:36.840] – Sean

Heigo, welcome to the show.

 

[00:00:38.510] – Heigo

Hi, Sean. Very nice to. Nice to see you.

 

[00:00:41.280] – Sean

All right, before we get into your founder journey, could you tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know?

 

[00:00:49.470] – Heigo

I think a couple of things. I’m a big nerd of Legos. I like to take my time on the weekends and build Legos. And I like to not just mentally, but also physically challenge myself. I’ve always been an avid runner. I love running marathons, and I actually signed up for a full Ironman next year, so I’m training for that now.

 

[00:01:15.370] – Sean

A full Ironman. All right, that’s incredible. And we’re talking about swim.

 

[00:01:23.840] – Heigo

I can run this.

 

[00:01:25.050] – Sean

Run a full Ironman. All right. I assume you’ve done partials before, or.

 

[00:01:29.760] – Heigo

I’ve done a half Ironman, so I feel like, you know, it’s just adding another half.

 

[00:01:36.080] – Sean

Oh, Jess.

 

[00:01:36.940] – Heigo

That’s.

 

[00:01:37.250] – Sean

That’s all.

 

[00:01:40.200] – Heigo

I’m sure I’m gonna regret it while I’m. While I’m actually on a course. But based on my experience, the moment you cross the finish line, it’s the greatest high that you can possibly find. And you realize how far you can push your body and how much you can challenge yourself to just take on new ventures.

 

[00:02:01.470] – Sean

Yes. I love it. A major test of mental toughness. I give you a lot of credit. Yes. And then jumping to Legos. Legos is. The hq is in Denmark. Are you from Denmark?

 

[00:02:15.530] – Heigo

No, actually, I’m German. Estonian. Kind of a mutt.

 

[00:02:20.280] – Sean

Yeah, kind of a mutt. All right.

 

[00:02:23.640] – Heigo

I mean, that’s what we all are in us, I believe.

 

[00:02:25.800] – Sean

You know, you’re right. You’re right. Now that’s cool. I appreciate the Lego hobby. That’s awesome. Well, we won’t spend too much time there. Let’s go ahead and dive into your background. If you could take a few minutes here and tell us about your career background.

 

[00:02:41.090] – Heigo

It’s really funny, because when I look back now at that time, nothing really made sense. But like Steve Jobs said, you know, as you keep growing in life, these little pieces start making sense as you progress in life. For me, it all started with tv. I became a tv journalist, a reporter back in Estonia. And then at some point I thought, you know what? I want to become the next Anderson Cooper. And not in Estonia, in Europe. I thought, I’m going to do it in us. So I literally moved to us with dollar 800 in my pocket, landed in Ladenhouse, came out from an airplane. I thought that everybody’s going to be expecting me over there. Unfortunately, unfortunately, nobody was waiting for me. And I started doing these odd gigs. And at some point I found myself in San Francisco. Always been into technology, didn’t have money to pay the rent over there, so I started renting out the bunk bed. I got a bunk bed to rent out the bed above me. And that turned into a business. I opened the. What created the largest corporate housing company in the Bay Area. That was housing tech employees from around the world.

 

[00:03:53.170] – Heigo

Temporary housing that took off. So I got mixed into technology and got into all this. At some point, I decided to move to Florida because, you know, that’s what you do when you, when you make some money. So moved to Florida, got into boating and thought that the whole industry was so broken. So got involved with a big yacht manufacturer, did sales for them, and then thought, you know what? Let’s not just fix one company, let’s fix the whole industry. So here we are now with the yachts.

 

[00:04:28.640] – Sean

Okay. Love the backstory there. Well, let’s dive right into what you’re working on now. What’s the name of the company and when was it founded?

 

[00:04:36.610] – Heigo

The name of the company is Yacht Weihe. I founded it 2022 with a co founder of mine who is one of the head developers, used to be one of the head developers at Uber, who built the uber freight system. And I called him up on a June, mid June 2022 and then told him that, hey, you know, I’m thinking about doing this. We used to be in San Francisco living together, so know each other for a long time. And he said, are you 100% sure you want to do this? Because building a SaaS company is not easy. I said, I mean, how hard can it be? So we took on the journey, and now we are the fastest growing listing website where dealers and shipyards and brokers around the world can list more outs for sale for the next generation to find them and buy them.

 

[00:05:29.280] – Sean

Got it. So essentially here it’s, is it a SaaS or is it a marketplace where you have buyers and sellers on the platform. It is a SaaS. Okay, well give us the pricing model then.

 

[00:05:41.120] – Heigo

Yeah, so we have, well, it depends on the country and geographical locations, but let’s take United States for example. We have three user groups. We have shipyards who can sign up dealers and also individual brokers. So for individual brokers, they can sign up with Yatwe and list the vessels for sale. And that cost them $99 a month. We also let dealers and brokerage firms to sign up and their pricing is $375 a month. And then we let the shipyards who build these boats to sign up and their price is 199 a month based on the prices.

 

[00:06:21.060] – Sean

There’s little variants there are there like different bells and whistles and features. They get with their plan. Got it. Okay. And within each of the segments or segmented audiences that you have, can you offer them to upcharge? Like there are additional plans or those are starting prices, in other words, and they can upcharge themselves?

 

[00:06:40.710] – Heigo

Sure. Yeah. We try to be very flexible of what this users may want. So they have the 375 base price for the dealers, let’s say, and then they can add on. If they have more brokers in their company, then they can add on each individual broker for $49. We also have an additional services. We call it Yachtway Studios, where we come out, we create the listing content for the dealers and brokers so they don’t have to have their in house photographers or videographers. That’s where my media site comes back in. So we come out, we take the photos, we take the videos, we use the most high end technology you can possibly imagine, as well as 3d tours. So we are actually the only listing platform in the whole world that allows dealers and brokers to include also 3d tours with the yachts. And this is quite normal when you’re looking at high end properties, you’re used to scrolling through the property and looking behind every corner. But that did not exist for the yachting industry before. So yes, there are several services that users can add on to take an even greater advantage of our platform.

 

[00:07:55.870] – Sean

Got it. Now, just to back up a second, there’s a bunch of yacht listing and boat listing sites out there, but obviously you saw an opportunity here. Can you give us a little more context on why you really tackled this industry?

 

[00:08:10.780] – Heigo

Sure. Like I mentioned when I moved to Florida, first thing that people do in Florida, well, the fortunate ones, I’m very fortunate that I was even able to be in a position of that, to look for a motor yacht for sale. So I started looking for a boat for sale. Every single listing and website that I saw, I thought, this is a scam. There is no way that there are vessels that cost millions of dollars, and they are quite literally looking like Craigslist with ads. So I was like, this is nothing. I cannot believe that. But I didn’t want to be a cocky one and say that I know better. But sure enough, I found the listing and bought a boat. And I thought, you know what? There must be maybe a way that the modern technology could enhance the whole industry. But again, I didn’t think I’m knowledgeable enough to really take it to the next stage, which is why the same company that I bought a boat for, I told them that, you know what? I can make you actually guys known around the world at that time, they didn’t have more than two boats sold in the United States.

 

[00:09:16.390] – Heigo

They were like, you know what? If you can do that for us, we can do whatever you want for you. So I said, okay, no problem. I’ll do your marketing. I started off with that to really learn and study about the yachting industry marketing side. And then at some point on the side, I also started publishing YouTube videos of my own boat experience. How I would configure a boat. I would explain every single option. And these videos got so much traction that the customers from around the world started reaching out to the shipyard and asking, can we have Hegel guide us to buy the boat? So they call me, they’re like, would you be interested in being, like, an ambassador for the brand or doing some of the sales? I said, sure. I don’t want to call it as a salesperson, but I’m happy to give an experience to people when they’re looking for boats. And then one thing led to another. I sold over $250 million worth of boats in three years. And while I was doing it, I made extensive amounts of notes and studied from other dealerships and other brokers from around the world to see what are the.

 

[00:10:26.530] – Heigo

What are maybe the shortcomings they have with other platforms and really take notes as much as I can. And then three years later, I was like, you know what? We’re ready. I think I have enough knowledge to really build something that can change the industry.

 

[00:10:42.590] – Sean

Trey, that’s awesome. To take a step back, my personal experience, I live in Wisconsin. We’ve got lakes everywhere, so it’s all fresh water boats, so not nearly as expensive as some of the boats you’re dealing with for the audience here. Yachtway.com dot. I’m there right now as we speak. Right side by side, I see blue water, 28, 50, listed at $250,000. And right next to it is a Warren yacht at 9.6 million. It’s like, okay. That there’s a big difference there.

 

[00:11:14.510] – Heigo

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is a funny industry, because you buy the biggest boat, and you’re like, oh, my God, I’m so happy I have the biggest thing. And wherever you go, there’s always somebody with a bigger boat.

 

[00:11:26.470] – Sean

Yes.

 

[00:11:28.180] – Heigo

And if it’s not out yet, somebody’s building a bigger boat than you have right now.

 

[00:11:32.500] – Sean

Totally. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So that’s pretty cool. You found a need within this space to create a SaaS business to list. To list and sell yachts. And I assume with your pricing model, it’s just a straight SaaS model. You don’t take any transaction fees.

 

[00:11:50.030] – Heigo

No.

 

[00:11:51.000] – Sean

Good for you. Wow, that is clean. I’m sure guys selling a woman too. Could be selling a million dollar yacht. That’s probably a question they ask is like, there. Is there any commission? It’s like, nope. We just. We’re the tech stack. Use the tech monthly price, and you’re off and running.

 

[00:12:07.700] – Heigo

And this is oftentimes what has been the question. Also the people in the industry ask us. They know me, that I’ve been involved with one brand. They think that I’m building maybe a big mega brokerage firm here that Yahtoe will become at some point. And this is not something we want to do. I mean, we don’t want to sell boats. We just want to build the best platform and best tools for the professionals in the industry to utilize and enhance their business through our platform.

 

[00:12:36.740] – Sean

So you founded this in 2022. How long did it take to build the MVP?

 

[00:12:42.540] – Heigo

2022? We assembled a team in September 22. We came out with MVP May, May 4. I was very particular to push it out on May 4, may the fourth, be with you. Well, and then we did it. We pushed it out on May 4, and we had the first dealer. He literally flew me out to California, and he was the first person to sign up. Literally, the second we went live, he signed up, and we were super proud of that. Still a member. Very happy to have. And then we went fully public last year, September 2023.

 

[00:13:27.390] – Sean

September, yeah.

 

[00:13:28.690] – Heigo

So it’s been less than a year that we’ve been out, and now some of the biggest names in the industry are already on our platform, and more and more joining them.

 

[00:13:38.550] – Sean

And how many different boats, or I should say yachts are listed on the.

 

[00:13:42.890] – Heigo

Platform now we have over 400 unique listings on our platform.

 

[00:13:48.080] – Sean

Okay, got it.

 

[00:13:49.290] – Heigo

And this is a number today. Whoever is watching it, whoever knows when, of course, this keeps changing. Yeah.

 

[00:13:55.700] – Sean

Could be, you know, a few months from now, it could be 500, 600 or whatever. It’s just, that’s the beauty of a SaaS business. And can you share with us what are your revenues now? Today? You’re really just starting. 2024 is your first full year?

 

[00:14:10.550] – Heigo

Yes. Yeah. So right now we’re doing around, combined with Yachtware Studios and the main product, we’re doing around 40, 50,000 a month. And that number is growing. I want to say around 60% month over month.

 

[00:14:28.950] – Sean

That’s great. And you said studio, what is that? Is that something?

 

[00:14:34.680] – Heigo

That’s now the videos, photos and the 3d tools that we offer as additional services to the members.

 

[00:14:41.730] – Sean

Got it. Okay. So they can pay for a service. Do you have like a team of people then that focuses on that in house?

 

[00:14:47.510] – Heigo

Yeah.

 

[00:14:48.300] – Sean

Awesome. Nice bolt on service. I like to the audience, this is really a cool idea for you. You create a SaaS, but if you can create a bolt on service, it’s not like the, you know, the coup de gras, the thing that’s going to really take your business flight to 100 x. But it’s nice to have it provides value for your customers, makes it stickier and creates some early cash flow in the business. So smart.

 

[00:15:16.220] – Heigo

I also think that one thing is obviously cash flow for the company, but I’m hyper focused on making sure that the company making money. This is like the undermine. Obviously, we’re here all for that. But number two is adding value to the customer and not just to the ones who sell, but the people who browse the listings on our site. Like if you’re looking at a vessel for sale, $5 million boat, and then the photos are horrendous. Literally, if you have toes and fingers of a broker in the image, trust me, I’ve seen it all. Then, you know, that doesn’t inject confidence or it doesn’t force somebody to pick up the phone and, hey, can I buy this boat? You know?

 

[00:15:57.800] – Sean

Right. The little details, like, it drives me crazy when I’ll see like a nice picture of like a boat, yacht or even in a car, and then you get a trash can in the lower left corner. It’s like, what are we doing? The details?

 

[00:16:14.160] – Heigo

Yeah. And we have some customers who literally, some brands who use us exclusively, they don’t allow anybody to take photos of their boats. And they literally put a cleaning person on the boat for the whole day, making sure that every fingerprint, every dust particle gets wiped out before photo is taken.

 

[00:16:34.810] – Sean

Yes. Yeah, I bet I did. You put in that extra effort that pays off in the photos big time.

 

[00:16:41.720] – Heigo

Yeah.

 

[00:16:42.890] – Sean

Are you guys VC backed or did you bootstrap this?

 

[00:16:46.100] – Heigo

Everything’s bootstrapped, but we haven’t raised a single round.

 

[00:16:48.420] – Sean

Wow, good for you guys. And first year, 40K MRR bootstrapped. Well done. Not too many SaaS businesses hit that well.

 

[00:16:57.850] – Heigo

Yeah, we do get a lot of VC’s reaching out to us. I can never say that we’re never going to raise money. I just feel like right now, the speed that I want to grow, I think VC’s would stop us growing because they’re not going to share the same vision that we have and maybe not have even the same knowledge that we have of the industry.

 

[00:17:18.870] – Sean

Jeff, you talk about seeing the forest through the trees. There are people that are very naive in business that will go raise funds and it’s like, no, you got to really think long term and not all VC’s because I’m friends with quite a few, had a few on the show, and they, they can help you, but there are a lot that you’re right. That can hinder, they can slow things down. They want to steer you left and you want to go right, and it’s like, uh uh. You don’t want that friction.

 

[00:17:44.070] – Heigo

Yeah, because, I mean, at the end of the day, obviously, it’s. That’s their business. They want to make money and that’s what they’re there for. I mean, obviously this is what we want to do also. But we’re looking at the long term play over here. So you have to build a product that is valuable and usable for the consumer, not just how much can we suck out of it.

 

[00:18:03.390] – Sean

Let’s transition to sales and marketing. This is one category where a lot of entrepreneurs really need help the most. It’s like, I always get questions like, what is sales and marketing? Sales and marketing, how do you increase leads? So what’s your sales and marketing strategy?

 

[00:18:18.590] – Heigo

Okay, well, this is constantly changing. You know, I’m a creator of habits at home. My wife is always, you know, I say, let’s go eat the same exact place every night. I like to wear the same exact clothes because I don’t want to waste my time. But when it comes to company, I’m constantly challenging the team. What can we do differently? What can we do better? What else is out? Right? Yes, but in terms of marketing, you have to be where the customers are. And you have to listen to what the customers have to say. So, for example, we have a, our customer relations head in a company. His job is literally to call every single of our customer every single week till they say that, hey, you know, you can call me every two weeks. You can call me every three weeks. Listen, what they have to say, if they have anything they want, write it down. Let’s discuss it. How can we build it from consumer side? Let’s spend time and invest money where the consumers are. So we started a new series on YouTube called Yachtway Spotlight. And what that does is we go out and we take a full in depth walkthrough of the vessel with our film crew.

 

[00:19:34.700] – Heigo

And it is a 30 minutes videos where we go through the whole boat, explain every single feature, the comfort features, etcetera. And this is what drives massive amounts of traffic to Yatwe. So again, my tv background comes back full circle to the atwest botnet as well.

 

[00:19:53.200] – Sean

So, yeah, I’m actually, as we speak, I’m on the way to your YouTube channel. I see 3.6 or three over 3600 subscribers. 90 videos. I see some of these videos. Yeah, check these numbers out. 90,000 views.

 

[00:20:15.040] – Heigo

One of them all organic?

 

[00:20:17.120] – Sean

All organic, yeah. Incredible. I think that’s awesome. Do you charge an extra fee for featuring a yacht or is this just a value add to the audience?

 

[00:20:27.440] – Heigo

You know, great question. Initially, I was again, oh, let’s charge money for that because the industry average is about $12,000 for a video to do this video, what we do. But I thought, you know, what? If we start asking money for that, it’s not a transparent review anymore. Now it’s a paid review. And second of all, in the beginning, nobody would have wanted to pay us because, like, who are you guys? You, nobody. And we wanted to be able to get more traffic to our website, which is why we were like, you know what? Let’s offer that for free. We make the best videos and we get this much traffic to our site and increase more leads to our users.

 

[00:21:07.290] – Sean

Nailed it. I see that in my industry when you, you can go solicited or unsolicited stock reviews and we do completely unsolicited. So it’s all objective, no emotions, no ties to the business. Right. I love that you’re doing that with yachts. That’s awesome. That’s a great.

 

[00:21:26.370] – Heigo

And they don’t get to see the video before we post it.

 

[00:21:30.450] – Sean

Good.

 

[00:21:30.790] – Heigo

I’m not obligated to say anything, obviously, I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to make put anybody down, but if there is something that I don’t think that is right on a boat, I will say it. You know, if you don’t like it, then yeah, it’s a consumer who’s going to buy the boat, so why not? It makes you as a product better build an expo to fix that.

 

[00:21:51.000] – Sean

Yes, yes. You pull the curtain out of the way to really reveal the truth of this boat. Your audience has got to love that. All right, so we got two items there. I love the strategy, calling customers every week. There’s the yacht way spotlight. What else are you doing with sales and marketing?

 

[00:22:10.870] – Heigo

Obviously your usual suspects, your advertising, your Google Ads, etcetera. So this is what we do. Also, what we do is obviously vouchers for us boat shows are very important. So we show up at the vouchers, we talk with dealers in person. That’s something that we see a great return in. Yeah.

 

[00:22:32.440] – Sean

Awesome. Let’s take a quick commercial break. All right, the Tykr mobile app for both iOS and Android is now live. It includes all the same features as the web app, including stocks, ETF’s, crypto, a watch list, watch list alerts. So something changes, you automatically get notified, a portfolio tracker and a confidence booster. Powered by OpenAI plus, it includes learning modules inspired by Duolingo, in this case, investing learning modules to help you get up to speed as fast as possible. If you’re interested, you can go to Tykr.com. you’ll see the Apple and Google logos right up top. Or you can go to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and download the app for free. All right, back to the show with the Google Ads. Are you doing more than Google Ads? Are you doing like YouTube ads, Facebook ads as well, or just Google?

 

[00:23:20.180] – Heigo

We’ve tried meta ads, but meta ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, all this we’ve tried, but we haven’t figured really out where that our audience would be on these platforms. So we referred back to Google and it has given us a much greater return.

 

[00:23:37.650] – Sean

Got it. Okay.

 

[00:23:38.870] – Heigo

And the lifecycle of customers, significantly longer in yachting industry than it is for somebody who buys a toothpaste. You know, one deal can take months, one boat can take a year plus to sell.

 

[00:23:53.600] – Sean

I know people advertising, it can be hard to create a profit there. Do you know how much, have you run the calculations? If you’re spending a dollar, how much are you making in return right now on Google Ads?

 

[00:24:07.290] – Heigo

It’s still very hard to say because a lot of it is right now, brand awareness 100%.

 

[00:24:14.850] – Sean

Most companies I talk to, they already have momentum with revenue, so they’ll use Google Ads to build brand awareness, but they’re not. It’s, again, it’s not always a positive ROI directly with the ad platform, but with the compounding effect of brand awareness. That’s where the nice.

 

[00:24:33.870] – Heigo

And you know, on another sub, another thing, what we do is email marketing. I never thought that it still works. Unbelievable how much email marketing works. And what works, especially in this industry, is fomo fear of missing out. We have a list of 10,000 plus dealers in our mailing list around the world. And we send out these weekly emails and we want to make sure that every email looks as good as possible. By the way, every time we go to vouchers we have people who come to us and they’re like, I’m saving Yahtwe emails because they look so good. We put a lot of attention to detail on these emails. That’s what’s getting us a lot of traction. Every week we send out emails, we have new dealers signing up literally within 24 hours. Because it works.

 

[00:25:18.990] – Sean

Seriously. And you’re just emailing your current audience? Correct. You’re not buying other lists?

 

[00:25:24.450] – Heigo

I’m buying other lists and sending to new cold lists. Yeah, we have a whole cold list email strategy.

 

[00:25:30.400] – Sean

Okay, interesting. Yeah, email is hot. I’ve really leaned into that on our end to providing value and the drip sequences. You’re probably doing that as well. That really makes a difference. I’m curious here because the audience will be wanting to know this question too, is what email marketing platform do you use?

 

[00:25:48.680] – Heigo

You know what, we’re using Mailchimp right now, but I’m. But we’re really considering leaving it because they have a lot of bugs over there and it’s not working well with every client. So yeah, we’re looking to bring it all in house. We use AWS. So that’s internally. We do everything from there.

 

[00:26:05.920] – Sean

Yep. Aws. Great hosting platform. We were originally on Mailchimp. We moved to modic and then we actually. You may be interested in this. It’s loops. Loops. So. And they don’t have the same pricing structure. They don’t charge you based on the number of people in your database times the amount of sense. It’s only the amount of people in the database. So it’s a. I mean, we’re talking like ten times less expensive than Mailchimp. It’s incredible.

 

[00:26:33.210] – Heigo

I’ll look into that.

 

[00:26:35.490] – Sean

Loops. So I am so happy I moved to them and it’s like it’s a group of engineers. Not to talk the company out, but they know what they’re doing. Like the user interface, how clean it is, and how few clicks you have to make in order to do something. I’m like, yeah, these guys get it. You would align well with them because your site is very clean, like loops, so might be a good fit.

 

[00:27:00.350] – Heigo

Talking about the clean, I mean, the first year we came out, we won three red Dot design awards. That’s the highest design award you can win in terms of technology and software. So we were super proud and very moved the moment it was announced.

 

[00:27:16.090] – Sean

Yeah, I don’t place a big emphasis on design too much. It does have a factor. But when you add photos to the equation, like what you’re doing, it’s like, I’m on your site now. Just the subtleties of colors complementing the photos, such as your prices are a purple and then your photos are perfectly aligned from thumb to thumb. It’s, yeah, give your team credit. They hit it out of the park.

 

[00:27:43.750] – Heigo

Anna, if you’re watching, you’re doing a great job.

 

[00:27:48.730] – Sean

All right. On the subject of sales and marketing, has there been anything you tried that did not work?

 

[00:27:55.240] – Heigo

You know, yeah, we tried the meta. So here’s what we did. We created the listings as ads on Instagram and used Instagram forms for people to fill in the information and then we would forward that lead to the leader. The problem we got was people randomly fill out the lead forms. I don’t even think they’re reading what they’re filling out. We have a question over there. When are you planning to buy a boat? People respond, when I win the lottery, you know, it’s like, why do you even take the time to fill out something that you have absolutely zero interest in? So this was, we spent a lot of money on that and we realized that this is a waste of time.

 

[00:28:40.060] – Sean

Yes. It sounds like, you know, the platform was bringing in the wrong leads.

 

[00:28:45.530] – Heigo

Yes.

 

[00:28:46.200] – Sean

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I’ve heard that with other people, too, is you can do like a shotgun approach with Instagram and Facebook or meta and you’re getting a very small percentage of qualified leads. It’s just throwing money out the door.

 

[00:29:02.540] – Heigo

And that’s what I like to consider. I rather take a lower your lower user number, but higher quality of leads. And at the end of the day, that’s what our users prefer as well. Nobody’s looking to be the Instagram famous of getting most amount of views for their vessels. They want to sell those boats.

 

[00:29:20.090] – Sean

Yes, yes. Right. On any other strategies you tried that did not work.

 

[00:29:27.710] – Heigo

We constantly making mistakes. I mean, we are constantly making design changes to our website. Like in the beginning, we thought we’re just going to build a site with basic filters like every other site has, and it just doesn’t work because we are so modern. We’re trying to attract the next generation of borders and then realizing that we’re not doing something better than others are doing if we’re just repackaging the filter system. So what we did was now when you go to yachtway.com, you can search vessels based on experiences. So if you’re looking for boats for performance or socializing or adventure, you can mix and match those tags. And that now makes whichever tags you choose to. We show you the boats that best match your interest. And now people can discover brands that they didn’t know before, they can find boats that are close to them and really discover what they might like. And that was something that, again, we made a mistake and we adopted and we changed it. And now we see a huge increase in traffic and engagement after we did that.

 

[00:30:38.000] – Sean

Yes, that is smart marketing on your platform. I got to speak to that. This is good tip for the listeners out there. We can be so far in the weeds of our own business. We know the classifications and categories of how things are called, but you got to think of it from the end consumer. So, yeah, I’m looking at the homepage here. It literally says, up top, find yachts for. And then it’s got these nice big buttons that say socializing or cruising or adventure performance fishing, sports. So it’s speaking to the customer because they may not know a type of boat brand that specializes in some of those. But if you just get to what people are looking for. Yeah, I’m looking for a good fishing boat that sits in saltwater. Bam. I can get to it in a second.

 

[00:31:22.790] – Heigo

Exactly.

 

[00:31:23.540] – Sean

That’s slick. That’s slick.

 

[00:31:26.270] – Heigo

It’s smart to do that. Now we are realizing. But the whole shift happened during the COVID time. Covid brought so many new people into boating that didn’t use to vote at all. I mean, the only thing that they ever steered was a paddleboard. And now suddenly they jump on a 40ft boat plus. But they don’t know what they want. They just know that I want to have a boat that I can take my family on and socialize on. Just show me the best options.

 

[00:31:53.340] – Sean

That’s like smarter search, more friendly, more user friendly. You’re checking all the boxes there for sure. Before we, or before I do a roll up. Can you share with us what was one of the best decisions you ever made with the business? To create one of the biggest wins could be anything. It could be sales, marketing, maybe a partnership you made, maybe a strategic alliance. Curious to know.

 

[00:32:16.250] – Heigo

Yeah, it’s a great question because when we came out, the first thing people said, because there are other listing platforms and they were like, you know, this is great. We love what you’re doing. It’s great because it’s much better price, it’s much more modern. But we don’t want to spend time to create listings on eight different platforms. You know, it’s just too time consuming. I don’t know what the ROI is going to be of us spending all this time and money on your platform. And I kept getting this response over and over again, over. Even though listing creation on Yahoo, it takes literally four minutes while it takes 45 minutes on the competitor websites. It’s so simple. But even if you tell how much time they can save, they don’t want to do it. It’s an extra thing they still have to do. So I said, how about this? Let’s build a way that we can create listings on behalf of those dealers. So have them just send the build sheets for the boat and send us a link to photos. And if they don’t have photos, we just come out. And the moment we did, that whole hell broke loose.

 

[00:33:19.190] – Heigo

Everybody started sending, okay, can you, can you make these listings for us? I was like, yeah, let’s do it.

 

[00:33:25.520] – Sean

That’s awesome.

 

[00:33:28.660] – Heigo

Yeah, that was a huge help.

 

[00:33:30.910] – Sean

Yes. You have a team that can do the heavy lifting. It’s the non glamorous part of the journey of putting the listing together. It’s like, hey, just pay us the monthly fee, whatever package, and we’ll take the heavy lifting off your plate. That’s it.

 

[00:33:45.310] – Heigo

And it really helped us because not only we were able to now create and really curate the whole listing, we were able to also, we’re still doing that. We’re able to make sure that we put the photos in the right order based on how much people engage with photos, what kind of boats, what kind of pictures they like to see on the listing. First, we analyze a lot of that through various analytics tools to see where people stop, which photos they zoom into, which photos they spend longer time on, and we shift those to the front so we know that we catch their attention from the beginning. And the other thing that we did was we brought in a creative writer really fast because I always believe if you, if you write in a very cool way you can attract the consumer. So what we did was we told the dealers who signed up with us, not only can you list the boats on our platform, but we offer complimentary copywriting services. So now we write the copy for you. You don’t need to do anything. You just sit back, relax and wait for the leads to roll in.

 

[00:34:51.280] – Heigo

So that helped a lot as well.

 

[00:34:53.210] – Sean

Smart. Smart. Yeah. That goes back to having a service element to your SaaS business, doing some of the heavy lifting for your customers. Yeah, not everybody goes that far. That’s the. That’s what can really separate you from others. Because a lot of people, as you know, they’re going to create a SaaS, put it out to put the customer. They’re not going to do any the heavy lifting. They’re going to be like, you can either. You can do the listing or don’t add it at all. We’re going to move on to somebody else and it’s like, you’re not creating a sticky customer experience that way.

 

[00:35:23.750] – Heigo

Correct. I and yacht way studios was the same thing. I mean, that didn’t exist from the beginning that we added a few months in because we realized we need to grow our social presence and we don’t have content for that. So how do we get content? So we started doing yacht studios and initially we worked our butts off. We came out and we just need the content just to get content. And over time, we started charging more and more and more. Yes.

 

[00:35:53.760] – Sean

Smart. What I’d like to do next is a roll up. And then I’m going to ask you one more key question and then we’ll get into the rapid fire round. But I tallied here, I’ve got seven hot sales and marketing tips to help grow your SaaS. So number one would be, I love this one. Call your customers every week, especially when it’s this. My SaaS is more of a b, two c, low touch. Kind of like Netflix. You probably won’t be able to do that. But yours, I’d say, is more b two b, mid tier. Then you can do that. There’s not like a million customers. In this case, you have 400, but you’re calling them every week, creating that personal touch that is. That’s awesome. Number two, love the Yahweh spotlight on YouTube. 30 minutes long videos, give or take, but some of them over 90,000 views. I think a lot of listeners could do something like that. Number three, Google Ads for brand awareness. Number four, this is straight up common sense boat shows. Or if somebody else has a different business in a different industry. Trade shows. Go to trade shows. All right, number five, email marketing.

 

[00:37:02.570] – Sean

Creating fomo in the emails. That’s super helpful. Then number six, create the listing for the customer. Number seven, write copy for the customer.

 

[00:37:15.080] – Heigo

Love it.

 

[00:37:16.150] – Sean

All right, before we get to the rapid fire round, what is one more key takeaway you can give our audience? It could be about starting a business, maybe growing their own business. What advice do you have?

 

[00:37:26.460] – Heigo

Get the best people you can. I mean, this is, I think, one of the most important things. Don’t think that you’re the swiss army knife. You know, swiss army knives are only swiss army knives. If you think you’re jack of all trades, you’re a master, Mandy. But try to hire the masters of that one thing, and once you get one really, really good person, they would start attracting other good people. And I am so, so proud of our team. I think every CEO is going to say that because that’s just something that you work towards. But we don’t hire resumes. We don’t hire locations. We hire the people. And we hire the people who really have passion behind what, what they want to do and giving them the ability to express themselves. Because, I mean, especially when you’re building a software company or anything creative, you have so many big, good brains under one roof, so you have to give them a creative freedom. I always like to say you’re not raising stock animals. You’re giving a platform for creatives to express themselves, and it’s important to do that.

 

[00:38:33.080] – Sean

Sounds like a fun place to work. That’s awesome. All right, let’s get into the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who I go really is. If you can, try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. You ready? Sure. All right, what is your favorite podcast?

 

[00:38:50.410] – Heigo

Acquired.

 

[00:38:51.430] – Sean

Sorry, acquired.

 

[00:38:54.770] – Heigo

You know, I really like to listen to this, you know, 3 hours sometimes, podcasts, because they’re just, they go so in depth with everything. It’s amazing.

 

[00:39:03.350] – Sean

That is one of the podcasts, one of the business podcasts. I’d say it’s in my top five. That’s a good one.

 

[00:39:07.980] – Heigo

Yeah.

 

[00:39:08.910] – Sean

Acquired. All right, next question. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

 

[00:39:14.210] – Heigo

Shogun. Shogun Tokugawa. Create a samurai on the whole japanese history. I think it’s how far this guy was able to think ahead and how he planned every single move. It’s the most read book in japanese business world by any Japanese because, no kidding, anybody who gets into business in Japan, they read Shogun and they read all the samurai books to understand how to run business. It’s unbelievable.

 

[00:39:43.740] – Sean

The Hulu series was phenomenal, which you, I assume you watched. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll have to pick up the book. I agree. The strategy, the thinking way ahead is profound.

 

[00:39:57.540] – Heigo

My wife is japanese, so they knock every single stone. There’s a saying that you knock every single stone before you step on them. So.

 

[00:40:04.800] – Sean

Wow. All right, we got the movie question here. What is your favorite movie?

 

[00:40:11.200] – Heigo

This tends to change a lot, but recently, in the recent years. Oppenheimer.

 

[00:40:16.400] – Sean

Yeah.

 

[00:40:18.680] – Heigo

Amazing.

 

[00:40:19.500] – Sean

Next question. What is the worst advice you ever received?

 

[00:40:24.640] – Heigo

Worst advice? You shouldn’t do it. There’s others who do it and a backstory. Anybody who gives me these negative feedbacks, it feeds me the most in life. I’m like, I don’t want to hear your positive feedback because I feel that you’re just trying to be fake. But give me anything negative, and I will prove you wrong faster than you.

 

[00:40:48.070] – Sean

Can imagine you will on the fire, my friend. Good call. All right, flip that equation. What’s the best advice you ever received?

 

[00:40:58.510] – Heigo

Keep going, never give up. And that was from my grandfather. He always pushed me to keep on doing what you’re doing and put out the absolute best you can.

 

[00:41:08.100] – Sean

Yeah. Great advice. And the last question here is the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

 

[00:41:19.020] – Heigo

I’m really happy with what I’ve done. I would just go back and keep repeating myself that. Keep doing what you’re doing and stay humble.

 

[00:41:29.960] – Sean

Yes. What a reassuring moment that would be if, like, your future self came and visited, said, hey, I go, you’re on the right track. Keep doing what you’re doing and stay humble. How like, reassuring would that be? Like, all right, well, I guess I’m making the right steps so far.

 

[00:41:47.540] – Heigo

Yeah. You know, I don’t remember who said it, but there was somebody really famous saying that if you give up now, it’s super easy to give up, but you’re now throwing away everything that you’ve already done in the past. Why give up? Just keep on going.

 

[00:42:03.750] – Sean

Keep on going. Yeah. All right. And where can audience reach you?

 

[00:42:08.600] – Heigo

Yahtv.com.

 

[00:42:10.170] – Sean

Easy.

 

[00:42:10.980] – Heigo

Yeah.

 

[00:42:12.210] – Sean

LinkedIn. Any other links out there?

 

[00:42:14.550] – Heigo

Yeah, my LinkedIn is Hego Parzado. That’s where I am. And I like to post up. I’ve discovered LinkedIn actually, recently, so.

 

[00:42:23.620] – Sean

Okay.

 

[00:42:24.480] – Heigo

I find it actually quite useful.

 

[00:42:26.100] – Sean

So, yeah, you’re up to speed with your yacht. Sites, but the whole professional networking. Sounds like you’re a newbie. Welcome to LinkedIn.

 

[00:42:37.020] – Heigo

I’m too busy. But you know, I’m aggressive on LinkedIn because whenever I see somebody really good, I reach out to them. Matter of fact, we just hired one of them, one of our new director of sales, and we hired her from the biggest competitive company in the world, which is yacht world. And I reached out to her through LinkedIn, and I said, I said, let’s have coffee and let me show you how you should, what you should do for your future, or how we can make your future interesting. It was so blunt. And she responded to me. She’s like, okay. And we got together, we met few times, and she said, yeah, let’s do it.

 

[00:43:23.520] – Sean

She’s in. Yeah, that’s. There’s another key takeaway. Call that number eight, if we wanted, how to build the right team and how to send them LinkedIn messages that attract your attention. Because you and I both agree, we probably get pinged like, you know, ten times a day with the blanket sales messages.

 

[00:43:43.080] – Heigo

Keep it short, keep it short.

 

[00:43:45.660] – Sean

Yes.

 

[00:43:46.060] – Heigo

The one liners are the best ones. Yeah.

 

[00:43:49.420] – Sean

Yes. Grab your attention. That’s awesome. Well, Heigl, this was a ton of fun. I really enjoyed going through your founder stories. Thank you so much for sharing this.

 

[00:43:58.720] – Heigo

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.

 

[00:44:01.250] – Sean

All right, we’ll talk to you soon. We’ll see you. Hey, I’d like to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review? The more reviews we get, the higher this podcast will rank. Alright, stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see ya.