A starving market trumps everything else in business. If you have a starving market, you can sell them. Your product doesn’t have to be good to sell to a starving market. Case in point, if you’re the guy with a taco stand outside of the bar and the bar just closed down, it’s three o’clock in the morning and there’s nothing else open and you have a bunch of people who are drunk and ready for some food. They can be the crappiest tacos in the world. You’re still going to sell out because you have a starving market, literally. Number one, focus on helping the people in your market and niche down and narrow down on who exactly it is that you serve and what their core problem is that you’re solving for them.
As part of our series about ‘5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Profitable Subscription Business’ I had the pleasure to interview Travis Chappell at the 2022 SubSummit hosted by SUBTA. The SubSummit connects industry leaders, innovators, and partners who are driving the rapid evolution of how consumers discover, buy, and experience new products.
Travis Chappell is the host of the Build Your Network podcast and founder of Guestio, a platform that connects creators with guests to feature on their podcasts, Youtube channels, and more. In addition to running a Top 25 Business podcast, Travis also offers podcast coaching and consulting services to help others make the most of the platform.
Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
So I grew up in a pretty strictly religious kind of community / bubble. I tell people kind of as a way to wrap their mind around it is that I graduated kindergarten and college on the same campus and went there everyday. You know, basically from 3 to 21. I thought I was going to be in full-time ministry when I was graduating. Basically I realized I didn’t want to go down that path but I also got married before I graduated and bought a house. So at the time I did the only thing I knew how to do which was door to door sales. So I did about five, six years of door to door and you know, did pretty well with it, but I didn’t want to continue doing that into my thirties.
So I just started into personal development for the first time, self education to try to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life at 23, 24 years old and that was when I found podcasting. The software essentially is a product of us working with a bunch of clients and customers and educating them on podcasting and figuring out that their problems were getting booked on other podcasts, as well as getting good guests booked on their podcast. So that led to starting the software company to help connect those two groups of people together more effectively.
What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?
I was just trying to use some other platforms that existed that were meant to get you in touch with people, but none of them were for the purpose of interviews. They were not super effective for booking podcast interviews. For me it was just kind of like solving my own problem. I knew that if it existed I would probably spend time and money using it, but it didn’t exist. So I figured why not build it.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
There’s been so many of those times, but with the software specifically it was just that I had started it because I thought that it would be useful for podcasters or content creators to book their next dream guest but when we launched it, the market wasn’t ready for the solution and so it was another back against the wall moment. I needed to figure this out or I just raised capital for an idea that’s not going to be effective We eventually found out that people were actually more interested in the opposite side of the marketplace, which was how do I go get myself booked on shows so that I can promote my business or my book or my offer.
How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
It’s just a matter of enough time. Can you afford yourself enough time to figure it out? Because if you’re willing to put in the work and you’re willing to put yourself through the stress and take the time to implement new tests and figure things out then it’s literally just a matter of time. How much time? That’s a good question. You know, it could be years, it could be months, it could be weeks. It all really depends on how you’re going about building, whatever it is that you’re building, but the only way to make it successful, the only way to increase the odds of making it successful is just to keep trying at it and have more attempts. You have to have more at bats than the person next to you is willing to have before they give up and move on to the next thing. So it’s really all about grit and resilience to me.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
It wasn’t very funny at the time, but I was brand new to building software. I never built software before. I’m not a coder, I’m just a sales guy essentially and so probably one of the biggest mistakes that in retrospect is funny now is that we spent way too much money building out the first version of the product. There was one feature set that I really wanted to have in the MVP and spent tens of thousands of dollars getting it developed and built out and then we launched the platform and the biggest piece of feedback from users within the first 30 days was how much they didn’t want that feature. So we literally went in and shut it off. It hasn’t been turned on since then. So that was a big lesson to learn.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I think the biggest differentiator is that we pay creators. So there’s other sites out there that’ll match you with guests for your show or connect you to podcasts to get on, but we’re the only ones that focus on paying the people whose time is in demand, whether that’s on the show side or the guest side. We’ve paid out over $350,000 to creators so far this year. People who are taking guests for their show and getting paid for their show spots, and then people who are being a guest on other shows and are getting paid for their time to be a guest. You know, the combination of both of those things. This year, our biggest differentiator is that we want to put money back in the pockets of the people who are out there building the audiences.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in the subscription commerce economy to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Focus on retention. You know, everybody’s focused on acquisition which is a great area to focus on because if you can acquire profitably, it’s much easier to scale obviously. But the difference between a subscription that’s scalable and that’s not scalable is the retention rate on the back end. So focus on testing, data, iterations and feedback and not just acquisitions.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
That’s a very long list. It’s difficult to stay just one. I’ll name this guy just because he helped me navigate the beginning stages of raising capital and some things which I needed a lot of help with. His name is Sharran Srivatsaa. He’s a friend of mine that’s in the venture world and came was CEO of a real estate firm and sold it for like $3.5 billion or something like that. He’s an MBA and worked for Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. He’s just a really smart guy, great advice giver and has been super helpful when I was structuring the company. He’s helped me set up the structure for my first cap raises.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your company currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?
There’s a little bit over 4,000 now. The biggest thing for me has been focusing on relationships and then our marketing efforts. A lot of people focus on products, which is great. Your product has to be good and like I said, you want a good product for good retention but I also think that people undervalue a good marketing campaign. Look at some of the most successful, especially subscriptions specifically that are out there, like Dollar Shave Club. They have been one of the first ones to really ignite the entire subscription box industry. So if you just get your message out enough to your ideal market and they see it enough, then ultimately long term you’re going to win. So the game at that point just becomes about the retention because your retention will tell you how much you can spend to acquire a customer upfront to begin with and then you can focus on lowering those costs through really good marketing campaigns and ad creatives.
What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users?
So we have a subscription, as well as booking fees inside of the marketplace. We have a marketplace, basically, a bunch of guests and shows you pay a hundred bucks a month and be able to pitch all of those people and when you pitch, you have the opportunity to get those bookings happening for free but that’s also a paid marketplace side of it as well. So you can pitch somebody for free or you can book them directly for their booking fee and we take 20% of all bookings that happen inside of the marketplace. We also have an agency on the backend that does everything the software does, but it’s done for you instead of do-it -yourself.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful subscription business?
A starving market trumps everything else in business. If you have a starving market, you can sell them. Your product doesn’t have to be good to sell to a starving market. Case in point, if you’re the guy with a taco stand outside of the bar and the bar just closed down, it’s three o’clock in the morning and there’s nothing else open and you have a bunch of people who are drunk and ready for some food. They can be the crappiest tacos in the world. You’re still going to sell out because you have a starving market, literally. Number one, focus on helping the people in your market and niche down and narrow down on who exactly it is that you serve and what their core problem is that you’re solving for them.
Number two, find the painkiller for that market, not just a supplement for that market. The most successful businesses are ones that solve pain, not businesses that provide pleasure. So find the painkiller for your market. Don’t just be the nice to have, be the need to have.
Number three is does your offer solve that problem, that pain in a unique and differentiating way that delivers the highest value possible to your customer base. Those three things are paramount to success. Probably 80% of the success for your company is your market and your offer and how it solves your market’s problem. If all of that is really dialed in, everything else is going to be way easier.
Number four I would say would be marketing. I think a lot of people are just really weak in this area and they expect a lot from other people and leave the control of the growth of their subscription in the hands of other people like influencers or their creator crowd or their affiliate partners. I understand that for a lot of people that are bootstrapping that’s a good way to do it because you scale based on sales coming in, but you’re not spending money hoping people are going to buy. You want to take control back of your own traffic sources and your own marketing to where you can tell how to get more customers by pulling this lever or pulling that lever.
Lastly, I would say is the retention piece. Focusing on creating that product in a way that continues to solve the problem for the person over a period of time so you can continue to earn trust and have a higher retention rate for your community.
How can our readers follow your company online?
You go to Guestio app on all social media or follow me at Travis Chappell and sign up at guestio.com.
This was very inspiring, Travis. Thank you.