This BG business update is sponsored by beehiiv, the platform we built our newsletter on.

Before I get into the revenue update I want to ground you in our mission:

To make playbooks from Gateway X (Jesse’s venture studio) more widely available, so you can build a bootstrapped giant.

Quick catchup

In my last update, I told you beehiiv allowed us to understand our audience’s needs better, by getting data like this:

I’m big on understanding customer needs before creating.

Data like that showed us that marketing and sales were the top problems our readers had, so we rolled out the B2B Blueprint, a $47 sales playbook, based on Jesse’s sales methods. It generated $17,672 in revenue in the week it was available for sale. But that was just a test to validate the need.

My nervy request

Immediately after customers bought the Blueprint, buyers saw a video of me. It thanked them for buying and asked them to put down a $100 deposit to talk to me about what we should sell next.

My video explained my hunch that working with Jesse directly would grow their sales by building on the Blueprint they just bought.

But I said I wasn’t sure what “working with Jesse directly” would mean. Could it mean a weekly sales call? Being in his Slack so they could ask questions as they came up? Something totally different?

I admitted that I had no idea.

I wanted to talk with buyers about what they needed before creating it. The fully refundable deposit was my way of ensuring that people I talked with were willing to pay if we created what they wanted.

Lots of meetings

Dozens of buyers put down $100 to talk with me.

The first calls were a bit aimless. They didn’t know what they wanted to buy and I didn’t know what to sell.

After interviewing over 2,000 founders on my podcast, the big lesson I learned is to look for pain. So I kept asking depositors about how they sold and searching for problems they had.

I started hearing the same things:

• Lack of consistent leads (some weeks they had 4 leads, some 0)

• Lack of a process (they were good at sales, but they were winging it)

• Lack of a scalable system (they wanted to hire a team)

I went back to Jesse and asked “How do you solve this at your companies?” He told me how he teaches in team meetings and he showed me docs he uses with them. He also asked Gateway X companies to give me access to their Slack channels so I could see how they manage.

When I described to depositors how Jesse taught sales and asked if they wanted that, they said “yes.”

But did they mean it?

Jesse pushed me on pricing

The first time someone said they’d pay, I asked “Would you pay $1,000?” He agreed. I knew I was on the right track, but wanted to be sure he wasn’t just being nice.

So I asked if I could charge him right on the call. Once again, he said “sure.”

I told Jesse about it with pride.

Jesse responded, “Raise the price!”

I wasn’t ready to do that. We hadn’t built anything. I was essentially selling a “coming soon” sign. But I partnered with Jesse because I wanted to be pushed, to level up.

So I doubled the price on my next calls. $2,000. People paid.

I told Jesse. He said, “Raise the price,” again.

My goal wasn’t to sell. A “no” was just as good as a “yes,” if it helped me understand their needs.

With each sale, I kept adding to the requirements of what this new thing were building should include.

• dedicated access to Jesse for sales help

• clear process

• a way to build their company’s sales playbook

• etc

When someone asked for something we could do, I added it.

And I kept raising the price till we landed on $5,000.

“What would it take to get this to $25,000?” Jesse asked.

I didn’t know.

“Ok,” he said. “But let’s think about it.” And he started flooding my email with examples of programs that charged $25,000.

I didn’t get to that price. Yet.

Our final offer

We landed on $5,000 for a 6-week sales accelerator.

The calls helped us understand our ICP: a B2B service business, with at least $15k in monthly revenue, and a founder leading sales.

After dozens of calls, we also nailed the offering. By the end of my calls with people who put down a deposit, I started hearing statements like, “I feel like you created this program just for me.”

And they joined and paid right on the first call.

We did ~ $80,000 in sales before we officially launched.

The actual sale

Once we had the offering, we created a sales page with everything I was telling people on the calls along with a video of Jesse explaining why all mattered and how he teaches sales.

Then we started sending you emails to promote it.

If you felt like we were overdoing it with the emails, I take responsibility for that.

beehiiv’s data showed this newsletter had ~16,000 subscribers at the time and that we lost ~ 1,000 to unsubscribes.

That’s painful.

I also feel like some who didn’t unsubscribe were fatigued by the email. (If you felt that way, hit reply and tell me.)

I was learning. This was our first go. We’ll improve.

In total, we did $259,438 in Accelerator sales.

Combined with our Blueprint sales, our total product sales were $277,111.

We started teaching on Oct 1st and we’re still going deep with Accelerator members now.

What we’re working on next

Our next focus is on growing this newsletter’s readership.

We starting to buy ads on Meta’s platforms and attempting to immediately break even on them by selling the B2B Blueprint I told you about earlier.

After someone subscribes, we’re using beehiiv’s engagement features to encourage them to buy the Blueprint.

So far, the numbers have been so-so. Some weeks we make money on these test ads. Some weeks we lose money.

We’re still experimenting.

beehiiv’s analytics are helping us refine our ads and spending. Their cohort analysis is helping us compare the value of a readers who come via paid channels vs those who discover us organically.

I’ll update you on how it goes.

Build along with me

I’m looking for a few founders who want to build newsletter businesses on beehiiv’s platform, too. I want to exchange growth ideas and help each other out.

If you’re not on beehiiv, use my partner link to try it for free and get a discount on future use.

Once you’re on it, email me [email protected] and let’s build together.

~andrew

PS one of our Accelerator members from the UK was in Austin so I took him out for a drink. Then I let him see how the US version of Tesla’s Full Self Driving works in Austin’s busy streets: