How I bootstrapped Mylance to $30k in revenue — Part 2

We left off in Part 1 that I had launched this “freelance course” with a few customers agreeing to pay and take the course, but the engagement with those customers was incredibly low. If you haven’t read it yet, start there. They were taking a long time between the modules I’d created, and nobody was finishing it. Nobody.

I had a problem with my customers, and when that happens, there’s no better way to handle it than asking your customers for feedback. What’s going on? What are the main reasons you aren’t moving through the course? Asking these questions in a non-attacking way is crucial. I wasn’t upset at them, I genuinely wanted to know the answer.

To summarize their feedback, they needed accountability. They needed some kind of pressure to finish it. In retrospect, this is so obvious. Most of us struggle to finish things we don’t have to. We wait until the last minute. We leave it until right before the deadline, and then we cram to get it done. If I don’t find a way hold them accountable and push them through, they’ll never finish.

So, I have two options: keep the course asynchronous, and give customers deadlines to finish each module. Something like 3 days for Module 1, 2 days for Module 2, etc. OR I could run the course simultaneously across a number of people, give them deadlines for the assignments, make it time gated, and introduce social pressure into it. If my peers are going through this with me and they’re completing the assignments, I’m probably more likely to complete them as well.

In early May, I decide the next people I sign up for the course will be in the June Cohort, and they’ll all go through it together. Now, I need weekly programming! More on that in a second.

Something else I get asked a lot is about the pricing for the course. To determine the pricing, I did some research and some customer interviews. I settled on $299 up front plus 7.5% of their first 6 months of consulting revenue. This way, the barrier to start the course was low, and Mylance only “wins” when they win. And, I put a higher number next to the $299 so that the $299 would feel like a deal. I put that a customer could pay for the course all upfront for $1249. At the time, I didn’t even consider that someone would pay that.

I was talking to a potential course customer outlining my story, what the course covers, why it’s valuable, etc. when he said, well I don’t really want to share my revenue with you — if I do it, I’ll probably just pay it all upfront. I tried not to seem surprised. “Okay that’s no problem” I said. But internally, I was shocked. He ended up agreeing to take the course, and paid $1249 in full. Instantly, my business had doubled in revenue. Then, my next customer decided to pay upfront as well. This was also great news, because the revenue share model was going to be tough to collect on, and with people paying upfront, I no longer had to worry about that. I quickly learned two things:

1. There’s a strong willingness to invest in yourself, especially given the world we’re in today
2. I wasn’t just offering a course. I was offering a new way of life. You could consult, support your life, and give yourself the flexibility to pursue a passion, spend time with your family, or start a company (as I did)

As I was selling people on the June course, I also got feedback that a “course” should be <$500 and more like Teachable or Udemy experience. We were offering much more than that, thus we branded it as a “bootcamp.” Same product, different name, better connotation. That’s branding for you!

So, I closed 6 customers (3 came through my posts on Linkedin, 2 from On Deck, and 1 from the ex-Uber community) and we kicked off the cohort in early June. The other thing I did was get some more coaches to help me. I found an executive coach. I found an expert in project scoping. I found a personal branding expert. I found a resume professional for proposals. I had our CPA. I was no longer was the expert in everything — I had real experts for the various topics we’d run through in the bootcamp.

For the June cohort, I made sure to collect feedback after every week to get a clear pulse on what was going on. I was nervous, but early on it seemed to be going fairly well. We got good feedback for Week 1 (8/10 on average), but it started to trail off in Weeks 2 and 3. We ended with an average feedback score at 6.1 / 10. Far from where I wanted to be. It was a hard reality to accept, but I need to accept it quickly, and learn what didn’t go as well as it could’ve.

At the end of the June cohort, we interviewed all 6 people and found some clear themes. Overall, they were happy, with some being happier than others, but it didn’t live up to the $1249 cost, and there were some clear items that could make it that much better → they wanted more live sessions, more simulations, more templates, more social accountability, and more interactions within their group. While one customer gave us a 10, another customer was particularly less than pleased, and I spoke with him at length to make sure I understood clearly, captured all of his feedback, and made it right with him.

Now I had another problem. Not only was I feeling pretty blue from collecting all this constructive feedback, but I had 4 days before the July bootcamp. AND, I now had 9 customers signed up, almost all of them paying $1249 (I got rid of the revenue share aspect to avoid the hassle of collecting on it).

So what does a good founder do after getting some tough feedback? I hustled hard. I aggregated the feedback. I wrote up action items. I changed the entire plan for the next bootcamp, and wrote up what I needed to do each day to execute on it.

We kicked off the July cohort right after the July 4th weekend, and now we had something to prove. And honestly, I was feeling pretty good. I was proud at how dedicated we were to collecting, synthesizing, and acting on the feedback. After Week 1 of the July bootcamp, we were sitting at a 9.3/10 feedback score. I was thrilled. But, Week 1 in June had been the easiest. Weeks 2 and 3 were the big tests.

Week 2 scores came in at an average of 9.0/10 with comments like “All of week 2 has been fantastic and incredibly helpful. The pitching practice was especially helpful because it was very specific feedback on what I can be doing differently” and “It’s been so great. It has given me the tangible tools and confidence to go into the freelance life, whereas before I had no idea where to even start.”

One more week to go! Week 3 ended up with scores averaging 9.5/10! We did it. We took a product scoring a 6/10, dove into the feedback, implemented change, and developed a product that had a +100 NPS: of the 9 people in June, we received two 9s, and seven 10s. When we called customers after, they were thrilled with the experience, saying things like:

“It’s definitely worth the price and then some. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat”

“I’d pay over $2000 for that experience. I learned so much and got so much out of it. Thank you for doing this!”

“You can’t put a price on it, $1250 is totally worth it, you make up for it in 5 hours of your time with your first client.”

Something else started to happen as we closed out July: some of our June customers started closing clients for big dollar amounts, and posting about it in our Slack channel.

It was all coming together. We had built a product that people not only loved, but it was working. THIS is why I started Mylance. I wanted people to live the life that I had been living and loving. And now it was working.

One last comment to make: as more customers complete the bootcamp and grow their freelance businesses, they’re signing up for our freelance bookkeeping offering!

Our next focus for the business, besides running great bootcamps (and continuing to make them even better) is to build a scalable platform. We know $1249 for the bootcamp is a lot of money, and while it’s worth the value if you can afford it, we understand some cannot.

Thus, we’re developing a lower cost platform that includes all the content, resources, and information from our bootcamp (a $1,249 value) in a self-service, step-by-step guide on how to launch and scale your freelance business. This includes:

• The step-by-step guide to launching your freelance business
• Set up your business compliantly and optimized for taxes with the help of our CPAs
• Hone your niche
• Access to experts (CPAs, lawyers, executive coaches) to get your questions answered
• Weekly sessions with experts to enhance your skills
• Tangible instructions and templates for where and how to find clients
• Set your rate
• Brand yourself externally
• Pitch, negotiate, and close clients
• Access to a 100% vetted community of talented, successful freelancers

We’ll be launching this product soon, and I can’t wait to see the feedback. One thing I’m sure will ring true: we won’t get a 9.5/10 when we first launch. We’re going to take the feedback, work hard to iterate on it, and eventually get to that point. One thing I feel confident in: as long as we keep listening to our customers, I’m confident we’ll get there!

Have feedback or ideas for us? Shoot me a note at bradley@mylance.co!