Andy:              Welcome everyone to another episode of Starting from Nothing – the Foundation podcast. Today we have on the show with us Stu McLaren.Stu is the co-founder of WishList Member, a plugin that lets you turn any WordPress site into a membership site instantly. He launched the plugin in 2008 and has done multiple seven-figures in revenue almost every year since. In this interview we’re going to talk about the steps he took to grow WishList and we’ll also discuss his latest company Rhino Support.Stu’s passionate about helping other entrepreneurs grow their business and I’m just stoked to have you on the show today. Stu, thanks for coming on, man.Stu:                 Awesome. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate it.Andy:              Absolutely. Just a quick shout out to Jayson for introducing us. So I got to give him a big thanks.Stu, let’s talk about … So WishList, I think a lot of people are familiar with on this. If you’re not it’s one of the best plugins on WordPress to build membership sites quickly. In my opinion, pretty cheaply. Like really cost effectively. Where did you get your start in entrepreneurship though? What were you doing before WishList?Stu:                 Man, well, before WishList I was consulting. I was actually an affiliate manager for a lot of top marketers and celebrities and so forth and so I was managing their affiliate program and doing a lot of online consulting. But one of the things I realize about that was just … the scalability is just not there. Even though I was getting paid very well, five figures a month so it’s great pay. But there’s only so much time that you have and you can only dedicate so much of that time to so many people and I quickly realized that there was a flaw in that model and that if I really wanted to create the kind of business that I wanted which was to have more freedom and time with family and so forth then I needed to figure out a different model.So, ultimately what happened before WishList was I was looking for

a way to be able to take that same body of knowledge that I was sharing with these clients and share it with more people, more entrepreneurs. And so I thought the best way to do that would be in the form of a membership site but then that’s when I start to run in to a whole bunch of problems.Andy:              Got it. How did you get in to the affiliate marketing world?Stu:                 If we backtrack further, I was the Operations Manager for a gentleman who put on seminars every single month. That kind of started … The result of that was I got to meet so many great people and there were a lot of people … particularly a few speakers that were speaking every single month at these events.Long story short, when I decide to go out on my own and kind of breakaway from that, one of those speakers contacted me and he said, “Listen, I would love for you to manage my affiliate program,” and I was like, “What the heck is that?” At the time I had no idea what that even meant. He’s like, “Well, listen, you’re great in terms of your communication skills.” He’s like, “You’re great with people and you’ve got a pretty good knowledge about online marketing and that’s basically the core foundation elements of what we need to manage an affiliate program.” So, long story short, I agreed to do it. At the time … this was in 2006 so this was quite a ways back.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Actually 2005, it was 2005. Back then I came aboard and believe … the first thing that we focused on was an online product launch. With that product launch we did over seven figures. I think it was like in less than a month without launch.Andy:              Oh, wow.Stu:                 That’s when the word kind of got out. That was a huge success, that launch and that program, and then more people started to come to me and asked for the same thing. “Hey, are you doing that for other people?” Before I knew it I had like five or six pretty big clients and so we are managing that just product launches

but we’re managing affiliate programs on an ongoing basis. So that was kind of like the start of that whole business and it just happened to be through word of mouth that that one was built.Andy:              It just kind of all happened naturally.Stu:                 Yeah. It was all organic.Andy:              Beautiful. So, you’re doing affiliate management, you ran operations for a person who’s doing seminars and stuff. Sounds like you’re getting your foot really … well, going deep down the rabbit hole when it comes to the information marketing space.Stu:                 Yeah. For me, like, the reality of it was, like, I went through university for business and … And they basically trained us to be corporate drones.Andy:              Dude, I know.Stu:                 Yeah. Exactly, right? They just trained us to be … going to the corporate world and I was in like this … I graduated, I signed on the dotted line with a big company up here in Canada. My parents were happy. They had done it. Their son was on the right path. And it was just like … I just felt this not inside of my stomach. That path was not the right path for me.I remember, like, there were a couple of my roommates. We were all entrepreneurial. We had all talked about starting our business. My one buddy he signed on to start with [Frito-Lay 00:05:33] and he started working his way up in corporate ladder really quickly. Another one of my friends, he was a web designer and he … at the time, had built like the websites for our university aquatic department. He had done all kinds of big sites. He was contemplating whether he should go out on his own.And then I remember like I signed on the dotted line of this company, parents are happy, everything looks good on paper but I was just like, “Man, this is not the path I want to go down.” At the time I kind of knew instinctively like if I was going to take a gamble on myself, now would be the best time. Like I’m just graduating

university – I’m used to like eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches, you know?Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 It’s not going to be that much of a difference if I’m struggling as an entrepreneur. At the time I didn’t have any responsibilities or anything of that nature. That’s kind of when I started it. I started speaking about the topic of creativity because there’s a back story to that but I was really passionate about that, wanted to transfer that message to a lot of other students. That’s what got me down the path of then, you know, speaking a lot more and that’s when I got touched with this speaker who was putting on seminars and one thing led to another.Andy:              Oh wow.Stu:                 That’s the history of how it all began.Andy:              This is so fun. I feel … I feel very similar to you. Went to school, got the good job, parents were happy. I started speaking business when I was like 23 or 24. I started in that realm.Tell me how … The listeners that might be younger, when I first got started there was a lot to overcome when it came to age and feeling like not having credibility, not having experience. How did you start speaking business about creativity when … How old are you at the time?Stu:                 I was 22.Andy:              Twenty-two.Stu:                 Yeah.Andy:              Yeah. How did you get over that? Or how did you get people to take you seriously with it?Stu:                 Well, I think … My biggest piece of advice for anybody regardless of age, like, when you’re starting something, there’s a lot in front of you and it can feel tremendously overwhelming. The biggest piece of advice I will say is just take the next logical step. For me, like, I want to speak about creativity. I knew nothing about, like, the speaking business, getting paid a fee. I

had no idea about like creating information products or anything of that nature.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But the next logical step for me was like if I want to be a speaker and I want to present this material then I’ve got to get speaking it in a school.So, here’s what I did. Right next logical step was I went to two schools. My old high school and I also went to the high school that my sister was going to. She was actually on the student’s council at that time. She’s five years younger than I am. So she was the president of her student’s council so that was easy, that was [inaudible 00:08:22].Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 I went to my old high school and I basically said, “Listen, I’m willing to speak for free and deliver this presentation because I’m just getting started and I want to kind of get my feet wet. Well, they both agreed so that was easy. I’m in the door because I’m speaking for free. Well, then the focus then becomes, okay, just knock it out of the park during those two presentations which …Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 I did a fairly good job considering it was like, you know, I was just getting started. But then I asked one key question. I asked the key question of the … not the … resource teacher. Whoever like was in charge of, like, booking me or whatever.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 And I basically asked them, I said, “Do you know any other schools that could benefit from this message?” Boom! She gave me … in both situations they both gave me two or three names and then I cold call those people and I said, “Hey, listen. Such and such from this school suggested that I reach out to you about,” blah, blah, blah and then that’s when it all began. So the next ones were paid speaking engagements so I didn’t charge much; I think I’ve

charged a hundred bucks for the next ones.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But that’s kind of how it begins.Too often we get so, like, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what we’re trying to do and accomplish that we lose sight of. What’s the next logical step? That was the trick there. That’s kind of what got the ball rolling.Andy:              Man, the first paid speaking engagement a friend and I did and we did it for three hours at some little rinky-dink town in Iowa and we made 500 bucks and I was like, “Oh my God! This is the greatest thing in the world.”Stu:                 This is amazing!Andy:              Totally. I’m getting paid to do … to talk to people. It’s the coolest thing on the world. Yeah.Stu:                 [inaudible 00:10:06] question.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 I think I paid that. Did you then do the hourly math of like what you made an hour? And then you start like doing the crazy math of like … oh my goodness. If I make this much per hour and I started making this much …Andy:              Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just can’t help it, right? I did that and I eventually started going in the speaking stuff or like going down to the college market. Did you do, like, high schools and stuff for awhile or what … what did you do after that?Stu:                 I focused on high schools. That was primarily my niche, high schools. I did a couple colleges and stuff.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But then I kind of ran into the same scenario that we talked about earlier with the consulting.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 At that point I kind of did the math. I realized, okay, schools can only afford so much.Andy:              Yup.

Stu:                 I can only speak so many times a year.Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 You multiply the two together and that’s basically my glass ceiling. That’s as high as I can go.Andy:              That’s based off of working your butt off for a year.Stu:                 Totally. Working like a dog. Doing all these speaking engagement, you’re always on the road.Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 So I kind of did that math and I realized, man, like, I want to get beyond that point. So what are people doing that are speaking but they’re earning a lot more. That question then led me to … oh, they are publishing information products; they’re publishing books and audio programs and all that kind of stuff.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 That’s what started … start me down that path.Andy:              Beautiful. Man, what a funny world. It’s funny how … It’s funny … I love tracing the steps because you can never actually know what the next step is or where it’s coming from but … but it just kind of happens. What happened next … Go ahead.Stu:                 Well, I was going to say, if I trace it all the way back, here’s the crazy thing. So I would definitely, probably still be in the corporate world if it were not for a conference that I went to just before I was to begin this corporate job.So, I went to this creativity conference because I mentioned like I was really passionate about that subject. So, we go to this creativity conference, there’s a speaker that I absolutely just fell in love with. He had all these breakout sessions and I just became obsessed. It was probably a little scary for him. I started going to, like, every one of his sessions.He finally said to me on the fourth session, he’s like … because he knew me by name at that point. He’s like, “Stu, listen. I am flattered that you really want to come and learn with all my workshops,” he’s like, “But this one is going to be a repeat of some of the stuff that

you’ve heard before and I would encourage you to kind of open your mind and go somewhere else.”Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So I was like, “Okay.” I look for another workshop but they were all full. There was one that my buddy went to and it was a journaling workshop. I remember, Andy, like I was like, “Journaling? Journaling sucks. Journaling is for girls.” That was my feeling. I’m like, you know, just graduated college, I’m, like, too macho to realize my own [inaudible 00:13:03].Anyway, I go to this workshop and … because it’s the only one I can get in. In the workshop they said do a big mind dump of everything that’s on your mind. So I mentioned that one of my roommates he was thinking about going out on his own and starting his own web design business. So I remember writing and I’m just, like, writing furiously because it was on my mind. I’m, like, Jeremy just needs to grow some balls and he needs to go out on his own and start his own business.I’m writing, writing, writing about Jeremy and then they said like … then the … part of the exercise was take a step back, reflect on what you wrote as it relates to you. I remember looking down and reading the words that I wrote and I realize, like, I wasn’t writing about Jer. I was also writing about myself.Andy:              Mm-hmm.Stu:                 I stopped in that moment and I knew right there and then that I was not going to go down the corporate path. I remember turning to my buddy Braden and I said, “Dude, I’m quitting [Maple Leaf 00:13:56] before I even start.” And he’s like, “What are you going to do?” I didn’t have an answer. I’m just like, “I don’t know. But I’m not going down that path.”Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, it’s crazy because there was a workshop, a journaling workshop. I didn’t even want to go to but yet that … when I traced it back that was a pivotal moment in my life that

totally took me in a different direction. Just kind of crazy when you start thinking about how it all traces back to those moments in time.Andy:              Yeah. And how all those moments they … Like in hindsight seem so divinely planned.Stu:                 Yeah.Andy:              Just so divinely perfect.Stu:                 It’s wild, man. There’s different moments like that that we all face.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 It’s crazy when you look back and realize the significance of those moments and the total change in direction that your life [inaudible 00:14:41] as a result of them.Andy:              Totally. And it’s like in that moment, in that one instance like everything in your life shifted. That one little decision, you know, it made like a little … Tony Robbins talks about, like, the 2 mm shifts and you keep making a 2 mm shift and then eventually your life is in a completely different space.Stu:                 Yeah. I’m reading a great book right now called the Slight Edge. It’s all about exactly what you talk about. The little daily decisions that we make over time have a compound effect and they compound either positive or negative and it’s the same sort of thing. Just like what you’re saying. 2 mm, one way or the other but over time just has a huge … it creates a huge gap.Andy:              Oh man, it’s so wild. I love hearing this. What happened after you started the speaking business and you’re working on the affiliate stuff? Yeah, what was next for you?Stu:                 Yeah. So I started speaking, realized that I needed to leverage my efforts a lot more so I got information marketing. Well that led me to speaking … the speaking business where I was helping … I was Operations Manager because I really wanted to … I really want to learn what people were doing in the speaking space to really build a business. So that’s why I decided to kind of put my speaking career on hold and just invest a couple of years from

somebody who obviously had a pretty big speaking company.So I became the Operations Manager for this guy and we were putting on seminars every single month and then I got exposed to a lot of great information on a regular basis and made some really valuable relationships. When the time was right, I went out on my own and that’s when one of those relationships said, “Hey, you should really be an affiliate manager,” and I did and so we started building that business.And then fast forward to 2008 and I really … again, I realized that I’ve made the same mistake where my speaking business I could only leverage my time so much in consulting business even though it paid a heck of a lot more.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Still the same situation.So that’s when I decide, okay, I want to leverage this more, I want to create a membership site where I can teach the same material that I’m teaching my consulting clients but I can teach it to a lot more people and therefore have a lot more leverage.So, I was trying to set up a membership site and I wanted to use WordPress. At the time there was very few options available. I remember moaning and groaning to a friend of mine, I was just like, “Man, this sucks.” I’m fairly technical but the only solutions that are available need me to like make all these crazy changes on my server and install this script and that script and I’m, like, I had no idea what the heck to do and I hate having to depend on somebody else.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 He said to me, he’s like, “Well, what would you do differently?” I was like, “Well, I’d make a part of WordPress and I do this and I do that,” blah, blah, blah and I went on. And he’s like, “Well, why don’t you?” I’m like, “Dude, I’m not a programmer. I’m not going to be able to figure that out.” He’s like, “Well, why don’t we team up together? I have a program and it’s working for me. We could partner on it and make it happen.” So I was like, “Okay.” He’s

like, “Your handy in Photoshop,” I’m like a bit of a Photoshop hack I would say.Andy:              Mm-hmm.Stu:                 I went in to Photoshop, did some mockups and a month later we had a beta version of what now is WishList Member. A month after that we sold it to a small group of friends. Here’s the key. I didn’t give it away to them. I want to see if they would actually buy it – and they did. A month after that, October 22nd 2008, we started selling it to the general public. The rest is kind of history. It all kind of took off from there.Andy:              Okay. Let’s dive in to this. This is incredible. I didn’t know you weren’t a programmer.Stu:                 No. Not at all. I’m the farthest thing from a programmer.Andy:              So you had two partners in it?Stu:                 Now we have two partners. My friend that was I talking to, his name is Tracy. He was my original partner. And the programmer, the lead programmer, Mike, we ended up making him a partner in the business as well.Andy:              Got it.Stu:                 Yup.Andy:              So you had the experience of wanting to build the membership site, not wanting to use a member because it’s a giant pain and super complex, and one that had built in to a WishList. So you knew exactly what you wanted, you partnered with two people. What was each one of your roles in the business?Stu:                 Truthfully in the beginning those weren’t clearly defined. It was kind of raw up our sleeves; we’re going to do whatever we can.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, I stayed in my area of strength. So in the beginning certainly had the vision for what I wanted the product to look like.

Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 Worked with Mike on the mockups and making sure that that kind of all happened. And I would say that initial experience has really evolved where … I’ve really become dialed into the whole concept of user interfaces and user design and user experience and all that kind of stuff. But that initially was just kind of a flute. That was just trying to get my vision of what I want into some kind of concept.My areas of strength is certainly marketing so that’s why I dialed myself into that in terms of marketing the product and staying focus there. Tracy’s role was really just running the company and it’s still very much is. He is a very much behind the scenes guy so he handles all of our, like, setting up all of our funnels, our marketing funnels, handling all the payment processing, affiliate payouts and all that kind of stuff; payroll … just running the business.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 And then Mike is our lead developer. Now we have 18 people on our team. He leads all of our programs. Yeah.Andy:              Eighteen people.Stu:                 Yeah, 18 full time people.Andy:              Holy cow!Stu:                 Yeah.Andy:              That’s amazing. Because when I think of … when I think of … it’s a plugin for WordPress, I don’t think of a company with 18 people behind it.Stu:                 Yeah. You think of a guy in a basement. I get it.Andy:              Totally.Stu:                 Yeah.Andy:              That’s amazing.Stu:                 Part of the reason … There’s a lot of lessons learned from this. One, we need people to be able to support it. The challenge with building anything off of WordPress is that there are so many variables that we don’t control which sucks.

Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 So we don’t control what kind of server people are using. We don’t control what theme they are using. We don’t control any other plugins that they may have or any custom tweaks that they’d been making. So, what happens is when a support request comes in there’s like all kinds of variables that we’ve got to dig through to ultimately find out what the issue is. That just takes time. You just need manpower to be able to do that and that’s part of the reason why we’ve certainly needed to have as many people as we do.Andy:              Tell me about who you sold it to. Who is your first customer?Stu:                 I was really targeting people like myself. Whenever I create a product … I don’t know if this is good or bad but I always start with me. It’s a bit of a selfish. My kind of train of thought is … at the end of the day if nobody buys this but it serves my purpose and my needs then all is not wasted. You know?Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Initially, like, I was designing it for me. I wanted it to easy to be … I wanted something that was easy to use, I wanted something that had the features and functionality that I wanted to be able to incorporate into a membership site. So, it’s basically for anybody that had an area of knowledge that they wanted to share with more people and they wanted to charge people access for it. But then, like, I quickly realized that there were a lot of people that wanted to build an online community that did necessarily want to charge others for it. That was totally fine.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But they still wanted some type of a protected area.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, our market kind of really grew and now it’s to the point where, you know, we have over … I think last I checked a couple of days ago is over 51,000 online communities and sites that

are powered by WishList and they are anything from like tiny niche little hobby sites to, like, we have Inc. Magazine uses our software for one of their memberships. We have, like, New York Times bestselling authors like Michael Hyatt using it for his. And so there’s all these gamut of different people that are using it for different purposes but primarily it’s for people that want to deliver courses, people that want to have a protected member’s area or a private community.Andy:              So, when you … you built it for you, you guys started using it and then who did you go to? You said you went to your friends for your first person, for the first customers, right?Stu:                 Yeah. I was part of the mastermind, still am, and it had … I wouldn’t say a bigger mastermind but it was like around 20 people.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 I just kind of pitched it there I said, “Hey guys, I’ve got this new project and it’s a membership plugin for WordPress,” and they were all kind of in that space as well. I said, “If you’re interested we’re going to be selling it for this and I’m willing to sell it to you for this price if you’d like it.” Well, almost everybody in the membership bought it.Andy:              What price was it?Stu:                 I think we sold it to them for $47. We were going to sell a single site license for 97 and a multi site for 297. We said we’d sell them a multi site for 47 bucks. So they were kind of like all over it. Almost every single person in the mastermind bought it. So that was a good sign.Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 And then we just started organically getting the word out and what happened was … Very quickly word spread because there wasn’t really anything else like this at the time.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 The other thing that helped us spread was every time

somebody would create a site at the bottom it would say powered by WishList Member.Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 That was just like our … back in the day Hotmail link, you know, and just naturally, organically spread. The first month I think we made … I think was just $5,000 and then the second month was like nine and then it started to really jump up. Then we went to, like, 21,000 and then it just started progressively going up. The first year we did make a million, the second year we definitely did. We’ve done so ever since.Andy:              Why is it priced where it is? Why not do … It’s software and you’re constantly developing and [iterating 00:25:18] on it. Why not have some sort of recurring revenue component to it?Stu:                 Hindsight’s 20/20. (Laughs)Andy:              (Laughs)Stu:                 Again, it kind of goes back to my own personal preference. I was getting … there were other options or solutions that were available that we’re charging very high fees on a monthly basis. I just knew, like, instinctively for me, like, if I was starting a membership I don’t know if it’s going to be a success or not. I wanted something low cost that would allow me to kind of test the waters and test the concepts and ideas.For me like … I priced it around again what I would want to buy as a buyer. I don’t know if that’s … There’s good and bads about that. Initially it was really good because, like, the adoption of that really kind of took off because it was a clear differentiator in a marketplace.Andy:              Completely.Stu:                 The other thing though … Looking back on it that we should have implemented earlier was some type of recurring fee. There is a recurring fee if you want updates for WishList.Andy:              Yes.Stu:                 So that’s a $47 a year fee. So it’s kind of minimal

when you think about it.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But initially we didn’t have that. We realize, like, with the ongoing development that was needed and the ongoing support that was needed our profit per customer was going down, every single support [crest 00:26:42] that would come in, every new iteration that we had make. That’s why ultimately we did change our policy and start charging a yearly support fee.If you were to ask me now like how I would develop now, every new company that I looked to develop or every new piece of software I like to develop is a monthly recurring basis. When we eventually developed Rhino that is a monthly recurring fee. Because of the very thing that you just kind of touched ongoing support cause and development cause and so forth.Andy:              Yeah. Especially as you scale.Stu:                 Absolutely.Andy:              Factor that into scaling it’s all of a sudden like scaling can actually break your company. The more costumers you get the more … the worse off financially you are which is …Stu:                 Totally.Andy:              So backwards.Stu:                 Yeah. That was the biggest challenge. You got to remember. In 2008 like even charging for anything related to WordPress, at the time, it was kind of like unknown.Andy:              Yeah. You don’t do that.Stu:                 Even themes. I remember like Brian Gardner with his revolution theme, that was like the first time anybody had charged for a theme and that was right around the time that we were looking to launch WishList. It was one of those times when nobody was really charging for anything for WordPress.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 We hadn’t learned our lesson yet.Andy:              Yup.

Stu:                 Not learned my lesson.Andy:              (Laughs) So you got your first handful of customers, you put the link at the bottom, everything scaled pretty organic like in terms of marketing and stuff. Sounds like a lot of organic growth and having a person …Stu:                 Yeah. A lot of organic growth. We were just … One of my areas of specialty is certainly email marketing. We’re really good at crafting great offers and then periodically throughout the year we would have huge influxes of sales based around these offers and that was all driven through email.Andy:              Oh yeah. I bought a copy in 2009 for a membership site I launched.Stu:                 Oh nice. Nice.Andy:              Yeah. Totally I remember. I think I’m still on your list.Stu:                 One of the early adopters. I love it.Andy:              Oh yeah. It was first, second quarter in 2009 we launched it.Stu:                 Yes. You were probably one of the very early ones because, like, we launched it October 2008 so … yeah.Andy:              It was a no brainer when you start looking around. Like in terms of where it was priced. And for somebody just getting started it was perfect for me.Stu:                 Yeah. If you were to ask me like would I still price at the same time looking back, I would probably say yes but there would be a lot of things that I would do differently that we’re now just starting to get to. There’s a lot of things now in the business that we’re really looking to jump on but I would have jumped on those things a lot earlier.Andy:              Like what?Stu:                 If I had done that it would have been a lot bigger.Andy:              Like what?Stu:                 Well, like one of the things that we quickly realized

was that people wanted all kinds of very specific functionality built into WishList Member. The good news was we were very mindful of not adding all of these little functions to the core because that would just bug everything down.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, we would always ask ourselves what’s the … is this feature going to be used by the vast majority of our customers? And if the answer was no we wouldn’t include it. We would build it as a separate add-on or plugin.Andy:              Yup.Stu:                 That would integrate with WishList Member.Andy:              Oh cool.Stu:                 So we’ve got like all these little plugins that we’ve built over the years that do very specific things to integrate with WishList Member. So, one of the things that I would have done way, way earlier was really focus on building a marketplace not only for the ones these add-ons and extra plugins that we build ourselves by really making it feasible for other developers to do the same thing.Andy:              Oh, brilliant.Stu:                 And so we’re moving in that direction. We’re very close to that now. I think that what would have happened was we would have seen a lot more adoption from other developers which would have taken it to a whole another level. We’re hopeful that it will when we get there but that’s definitely one thing I would have done a lot earlier.Andy:              That’s so genius. I [inaudible 00:30:58] one of the guys. Do you know Brian Franklin?Stu:                 No, I don’t.Andy:              He’s like a rapid scale expert. We joined his mastermind last year and he talked about the difference between bimodal and multimodal businesses where it’s like … Bimodal it’s like you and a customer you’re exchanging value back and forth but

multimodal is like the app store which is where you have customers and developers and the phone companies and there’s like … and then you create basically the playground or the sandbox for everybody to play in.Stu:                 Yeah. You think about it like … everybody talks about all the apps on the iPhone but the reality is like you can’t get the benefit of the apps unless you got the actual phone.Andy:              Exactly.Stu:                 So, Apple wins all the time.Andy:              No matter what.Stu:                 You look at the Envato marketplaces, you know, like design, river and theme forest, all of those. That’s a great example. Again, there they’ve given creatives, developers, all these creative people an opportunity to create something and sell it in a marketplace where they don’t necessarily have to worry about the selling aspect which is not their area of strength.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 They can just focus on creating great plugins, design files, all that kind of stuff.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Envato focuses on the marketing of it. I think that’s definitely a smart route to go and that’s where we’re heading.Andy:              Beautiful. So tell me about Rhino. What is it?Stu:                 Rhino Support is a customer help desk. The reality of that is that it started because of another frustration.We mentioned that … we have 18 people in our company. Every time that we were adding somebody new to our company we would ultimately have to add them to our help desk and at the time we were using Zendesk. The problem with Zendesk is that they charge $50 per month per agent. Every new person that we were adding to the help desk I was essentially forking over another 50 bucks a month, another 600 bucks a year.Andy:              Yup.

Stu:                 I’m just like, man, this sucks. As a business owner I’m conflicted. I want to add more people but I don’t want to spend another 50 bucks a month. And so it was just a frustration.My wife and I have our own charity where we go to Africa every year and we build schools and we take our top donors over there. While we were over there one of the guys, Scott Brandley, he owns a company and I was venting my frustration about this whole help desk dilemma. He’s like, “Dude, we have the same issue.” He’s like, “We actually built our own help desk.” I was like, “Really? Tell me about it.” He’s like, “Well, it’s called Rhino Support,” and he was telling me about it and it sounded amazing. Everything that he was saying was exactly what we wanted.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, he’s like, “Well, when we get home,” he’s like, “I’ll send you access. You can check it out.” We get home, he sends me access and it’s exactly what he said it was except it look like hell. So, it was awful. Like it just look terrible.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Functionality wise it have all the functionality there but from like a user interface …Andy:              And design.Stu:                 … from branding, like, it was awful.He’s one of our top donors for our charity. I felt apprehensive about telling him how I really felt because I didn’t want to offend him or anything. He said to me, “So, what do you think?” I said, “Well, Scott, if I’m just being straight up honest,” I said, “Do you want the brutal honesty?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Dude, I think it’s a great solution but it looks terrible.” I’m like, “If you’re going to start selling this to the mass market,” I said … and I’ve got a lot of experience selling software at that point to the mass market because we’re dealing with tens of thousands of customers at that point I’m like, “This just ain’t going to cut it.” He’s like, “Well, what would you do differently?” I started telling him, giving him some ideas and

everything.And then finally, ultimately what we ended up deciding on was to partner together. So, his company partnered with our company and we did a complete overhaul of the user interface, the branding, the marketing and all that kind of stuff. It is a real kickass product and we’re really proud of it.And so we’re kind of going after a different market. So, a lot of our competitors they charge just like Zendesk on a per agent, per month basis but we’re going after a marketplace of small business owners where their business is doing anywhere between 50,000 to 2 million dollars a year.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 So, in that range. Because in that range a business owner is going to feel that extra cost as you’re adding more and more people.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 The way that we’re positioned ourselves differently is its one flat fee for unlimited agents. Ours is 50 bucks a month for unlimited agents. And then we also have an upsell, it’s a hundred bucks a month for unlimited agents and you can have up to five different companies in the same help desk. So, if you had different product lines and things of that nature you can have totally different help desk all within one.Andy:              Cool. It sounds awesome.Stu:                 Yeah. So that’s kind of how it started. Again, it goes back to … If I look at all the software that I’ve ever developed that’s been out of a frustration or a need that I had.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 WishList was a frustration with membership solutions that were available; Rhino was a frustration with help desk solutions that were available. And I just think that that’s a healthy place to start because, like, you can, again, begin designing it around your own needs and desires and then ultimately if you expand your

thinking a little bit about what others might need, it gives you a great foundation if you will to have built them.Andy:              I love that. I love when people say that. Because I was like the entire person of naming it that way.Stu:                 (Laughs)Andy:              This is awesome. It’s cool because you’re solving big problems. I feel like people getting … hesitant to solve big problems at times because of lack of experience or lack of familiarity with the market.Stu:                 Yeah. I think that that’s kind of like what we’re talking about. If you start in a place of wanting to solve a problem just for yourself, there’s a darn good chance that others are experiencing the same problem.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 And so if you just start there just focusing on that problem itself, you’re in the right mind space. I kind of feel like … encountered a lot of entrepreneurs who focus on trying to build something to make a whole bunch of money so the money is the focus, not solving the problem.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 And it’s kind of asked backwards.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 If you flip it around and focus on the problem first, the money will come after.Andy:              Yeah. Yeah. You’re exactly right because money is the function of how much value you provide to people, right?Stu:                 Bingo. Yup.Andy:              And I loved what you said … You want to riff on this a little bit? About don’t be afraid to make money. You mentioned that in the pre-interview.Stu:                 Yeah. I live in a rinky-dink town. I live in the middle of nowhere. I’m about an hour and a half south of Toronto. I think the population of our town … I think it might be over 4500 people

now, like, if we’re lucky. My biggest pain point is that … the fastest internet connection I can get is 10 megabyte download. Just kills me, right? That’s where I live.So, here I am in this little town and I’m starting to make really good money. WishList is doing really, really well. Rhino starts taking off. I started to feel guilty about the money I was making because, like … Where I’m living I’m making more a month than most people make in a year. And there’s this guilt that’s just like it was eating at me, it was sabotaging my growth.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 The more I thought about it the more guilty I’d felt, the more guilty I felt the more I start to sabotage my own success.Well, thankfully I have an amazing wife and she had the vision of starting our own charity. She travels a lot and so she’d been to a lot of third world countries but she usually goes like off the beaten path and she goes in the little villages that nobody visits and gets to know the people in these villages and so forth. And being a teacher by trade she’s realize there’s a lot of kids in these villages that just are not being educated.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 And so one year she came back and … I’ll never forget it, it was like mid-December. This is an important timeline. Mid-December 2006 and she says to me, “I really want to raise some money for some people in the third world country.” I was like, “Okay.” She’s like, “And then when we raise the money I really want to go there and I want to buy them stuff that they need.” I was like, “Okay. Cool. When do you want to do this?” She’s like, “Well, I want to do it over the Christmas holidays.” I’m like, “Wait a minute. [Babe 00:39:44], that’s in like two weeks.”Andy:              (Laughs)Stu:                 She’s like, “Yup.” She’s like, “I’ll organize the trip. You’re the business guy, you raise the money and we’ll go.” I was like, “Great.”

Long story short, I did an online fundraiser. I got a bunch of colleagues together and we managed to raise $17,000. That was our first fundraiser. We took that money and our first trip was to El Salvador and we went way up in the mountains of El Salvador. They didn’t speak a word of English, we didn’t speak a word of Spanish; there was a ton of acting going on. Long story short we were able to do some amazing things.I came back on that trip, we were on the plane and I … I remember looking at my wife and I’ve said, “Okay, I get it. Let’s formalize this. Let’s make it happen.”Fast forward now we focused our efforts now in Kenya over in Africa and we’ve been building schools ever since. One of the greatest things that that experience has really opened my eyes and my heart to is that as entrepreneurs we just have this tremendous gift to be able to make something out of nothing.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 There are many people in this world that have that gift. I just look at it now when I’m over in Africa and I realized the magnitude of that because in Africa for example $2 will feed a child every single day for an entire month. Two bucks. A hundred dollars will pay the full time salary of a good teacher who then educates, like, all the kids that are in their class. I just start to realize like, man, the value of being able to make money gives you so much power to be able to have impact in the areas that you want to have impact.Through that experience I start to realize, you know what, the more money I make the more impact I can have. As soon as I realized that it just … it just changed my perspective on business. I’ve never been more hungry to make as much money as I possibly can not because of what it will do for me. Yeah, it’s great that it enhances my lifestyle for sure and helps provide for my family.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But more so it puts you in a position to be able to

impact others in a way that you never would have if you didn’t have that money. So making money is a very good thing. It just gives you so much opportunity to really have impact in your life, your family’s life and your community’s life however you choose. But you can’t do that if you don’t make money and so it just changed my whole perspective on it. Making money is a great thing because it’s not selfish; you are in a position where you can put it to good use in other areas.Andy:              Dude, was it that first trip that shifted all of that for you?Stu:                 Yeah. The first trip definitely did. I realize … like we sent 59 girls to school. I’ll never forget. We were there … I get all tingly and chills about it. We were there and this … a head nun, that’s what it was. She was a nun. I was trying to think of the word. I was going to say Mother Teresa but she’s not Mother Teresa. It was a nun. She came to us when we first got there and she was just …We went to talk to her and find out how the kids in the school and the orphanage were doing and stuff and she was in tears. She was just saying like, you know, that over half of the girls are not going to be able to go to school because they don’t have the money and all these kind of stuff. At then at the end of the trip when we presented to her the check … I mean it was just one of those moments like … She was just so grateful and just lit up and was just tears. She was crying, we were crying, it was just amazing thing.And then you go to our schools in Africa now and we go back every year and we take our top donors over there to spend time in the community and meet the kids and the teachers and the families and then we show them the best of what Africa has to offer. Every time we go back and we see a new school that’s been built, it’s just amazing because, like, that school now provides education for hundreds and hundreds of kids this year and will do so every year after and we’ve seen how it just … a school completely transforms

the whole community. Like the whole community just rallies behind the school and it just … it brings everybody up.It’s an amazing, amazing thing and I just translate that all back to working on the business, creating something out on nothing; creating value as you so eloquently put it. Creating value, people paying for that value and then being in position to distribute that however you want. It’s an amazing opportunity that we have as entrepreneurs.Andy:              Wow. I’m getting chills listening to you. Like that’s incredible.Stu:                 I’ve got … I should go grab them. I highly recommend people go watch … there’s a YouTube video called The Secret Billionaire. This is really where … I got inspired big time by watching this video and ultimately reading the book. It’s called The Billionaire Who Wasn’t. I’m looking at it because it’s just up on my bookshelf up there.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 But it’s about the story of a guy who started the Duty Free Shops. This guy made billions and billions of dollars and ultimately he … similar to … and kind of what I was experiencing, he started feeling really guilty about it. And he was making ridiculous sums of money. He’s one of the wealthiest people in the world. So he just started giving it away but he would give it away like silently. He wasn’t telling anybody about it. He was building these universities and all this kind of stuff.It’s only in the last few years that he’s kind of opened up about it because he wants to inspire others to do the same. And his goal is to give away all of his money by the time he dies. He’s giving away like over a million dollars a day to different causes and things.Andy:              Wow.Stu:                 And I just think to myself like I was so inspired watching the video The Secret Billionaire on YouTube. I was just so inspired by that and then I read stories about Paul Newman who was

the actor who started like Newman Zone salad dressing.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 He too. All the profits from that go to a cause that he’s passionate about. Over 300 million now has been donated to children school camps. I just think, like, that’s what business is all about. Being able to provide for yourself and your family but then being able to have impact in other areas as well.Andy:              Dude, this has been an incredible interview. I’m so glad that you’re talking about this because I think it’s … It doesn’t necessarily happen like right when you’re starting business. It happens after you get to a certain point. I think what happens is … After you get to a point where your lifestyle and stuff is covered there’s like this sense of … Not like meaninglessness but there’s … I don’t know. I think for so long in my life I was motivated by … like having my backup against the wall and like having to do it because I have to. And then you get past that and then the motivation has to come from, like, more pure place I think. I feel like I’m in the middle of that transition now.Stu:                 Yeah. It’s definitely. Like when you’re beginning … you’re just trying to make meets end, you know?Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Another big point for me is when we had our daughter … oh my goodness. That transformed my whole perspective on business too because now I was just like, crap. I can eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches but I don’t want my … my wife having to get by on that.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 It does make you hustle because you’re hustling for another reason. And then … you’re right. And then you get to a point where … okay, you’ve provided for your family, everything is cool and kosher, then you got to find another source to really drive you. For me this is definitely been one of them. You ask like … we talked about the business model of charging on a monthly basis,

that’s one of the reasons why I’m motivated to build software companies that charge in a recurring basis.Andy:              Yeah.Stu:                 Because that gives us opportunity to then, you know, contribute on a recurring basis. It’s just a totally different mind shift. It’s less about, like, building something just to make a whole bunch of money and it’s more about, like, how can we build something sustainable that can contribute to something else in a sustainable way. And that’s what really makes business exciting.Andy:              Dude … Stu, if people want to get in touch with you or they want to learn more about the stuff you’re up to, how can they do that?Stu:                 My personal website is at stu.me. So, S-T-U dot me and you’ll see links from there for WishList and Rhino. And then our charity is at worldteacheraid.org. Worldteacheraid.org. And if any entrepreneurs that are listening that would like to build a class and join us on that trip, it’s an amazing experience. It’s a great mastermind. We’re in Kenya masterminding with other business owners for ten days and it’s just an awesome opportunity to kind of put all of what we talked about in action.Andy:              Oh, super, super cool. I’m going to check that out. I’ll put all of that in the show notes for people listening. Stu, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been amazing.Stu:                 Thanks buddy. Appreciate it.Andy:              Yeah, absolutely. See ya.Closing:          Thank you for joining us. We’ve taken this interview and created a custom action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for free. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.