Aug 11, 2020
Jetpack Workflow is a company that helps accounting firm owners track down all the recurring debts and due dates to avoid losses. Dave Cristello, The CEO and founder of Jetpack Workflow realized that many accounting firms have numerous customers. However, they lacked an efficient checklist management system. The ideal Jetpack Workflow customer is any accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, and tax firm in different parts of the world.
What You Will Learn
- How Dave launched Jetpack Workflow
- How Dave identified the pain points that accounting firms face
- Why did Dave start interviewing the accounting departments of various companies?
- How Jetpack Workflow bagged its first customer
- How Dave invested in website development
- How Dave navigated the industry with zero software experience
- Why accounting firms should upgrade from using spreadsheets
- Which platforms did Dave go searching for a technical co-founder?
- Why entrepreneurs should know how to pitch their ideas
- Find out why Dave opted to raise money
- The impact of well-written words on your website
- How businesses can benefit from summarizing podcasts into a blog post or even a book
In this Episode
Many accounting firms have a proper project management system. However, if they cannot keep track of deadlines, customer data, and due dates the system becomes irrelevant. Jetpack workflow helps accounting firms standardize their operations.
Dave gives Geordie a comprehensive breakdown of the pain points that Jetpack Workflow strives to solve. Jetpack strives to eliminate pain points that accounting firms face to ensure they can beat deadlines.
While Dave did not have a job before starting Jetpack, he had a strong feeling that he wanted to build something. Dave went ahead and approached different companies. He says that he began interviewing the accounting departments of these firms through trial and error. Dave wanted to establish the most time consuming, tedious, and painful problem the departments were facing daily or even weekly.
From the responses he received, Dave was able to get reflection points. Listen in as he narrates the challenges he faced when developing a website. He also tells Geordie about the expenses they incurred. During the development process, Dave was working as a marketer and channeling all his earnings to the developers. The first year Jetpack managed 600 MRR, but Dave says their product was horrible.
What kept them going is the fact that the earliest adopters appreciated the product because it solved their pain points. When Jetpack workflow was at 5,000 MRR, Dave was experiencing a crazy relationship with his developer. He also felt that his product was terrible, even though some people were still using and appreciating it.
Many competitors were beginning to get into the market as well. To scale his company and stay ahead of competitors, Jetpack’s early investors advised Dave to bring onboard a technical co-founder. Listen in to find out how challenging finding a co-founder was. At some point, Dave’s advisors told him to hire somebody to drive the company, failure to which it would tumble down.
Dave narrates to Geordie how he managed to raise money to hire a professional in 2016 who is still with the company to date. During one of the meet-ups with other entrepreneurs, Dave noticed that nearly everybody was talking about the importance of Facebook ads. He decided to invest some money in Facebook ads just to see the outcome.
Listen as Dave narrates his journey with Facebook ads and how he pumped in more money on the project. In his opinion, Dave says companies that identify a reliable channel have a high chance of accelerating growth. However, he is quick to mention that there are downsides that come with accelerated growth.
Between Jetpack’s 5,000 to 30,000 MRR, Dave’s product was doing well. They were deleting some features and doing everything they could to clean their website. The company was enjoying some visibility, Dave managed to post content consistently, and they even launched a podcast. The team was also writing blog posts, sharing content, doing webinars, and running ads to market the company.
Geordie sought to find out what worked for Dave out of all the strategies he was using. However, he (Dave) was unable to pinpoint a single strategy that worked comprehensively. Instead, he says the company posted results from using a combination of all the strategies. Dave highlights the fact that he and his team were generating lots of content in a bid to develop a database. He is happy that this strategy worked to attract organic traffic to the website. His breaking point was when he discovered Facebook ads. Listen as Dave speaks about his breaking point at depth. Dave’s mantra is, “believe in yourself, and you will be able to achieve anything you want.”