In Episode #528, I interview Nathan Barry, CEO of ConvertKit – an email marketing company for professional bloggers. Listen as Nathan shares how he manages to stay self-funded while, at the same time, increasing the growth and bloggers’ interest in using ConvertKit. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Predictable Success What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Workable Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Pick just one thing you love to do and do it really well Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – I introduce Barry to the show 02:15 – ConvertKit is a SaaS company and has around 10,000 bloggers 02:47 – ConvertKit’s pricing depends on the blogger’s subscribers count 03:04 – Average revenue per user per month 03:24 – 65% of the users are on $48/month plan 03:48 – ConvertKit’s cash flow is doing well 04:15 – Annual plan has a big impact on churn 04:50 – Barry pushes the annual plan on Cyber Monday 05:00 – Average annual plan total 05:30 – ConvertKit had a free 1 month promotion for new users 05:56 – ConvertKit has a 40K email list – half of it is from content marketing, the other half is from webinars 06:30 – ConvertKit has added 25K new people in their list this year from joint webinars alone 06:55 – Barry is using Google Hangout and Chatroll for the webinars 07:20 – ConvertKit is doing 10-20 webinars a month 07:53 – There are 2 people in Barry’s team who are involved in the webinar process 08:28 – The team is trying to get people who use MailChimp or Aweber to switch to ConvertKit 08:38 – It is a 2-step direct sales process 09:54 – Barry shares how he mitigates the show up rate in their webinars 10:54 – Some of the bloggers reach out to ConvertKit and some find them through other bloggers 11:16 – Average expenses a month in affiliate payouts 11:33 – A quarter of ConvertKit’s revenue comes from affiliate programs 12:10 – 2015 total revenue is around $300K 12:20 – 2016 average revenue 12:34 – ConvertKit is self-funded 12:44 – It was an intentional choice 13:03 – Barry shares what he did when they were almost running out of funds 14:15 – ConvertKit’s gross profit and total money in the bank 14:38 – ConvertKit just had a big expense from the annual plan switch 15:15 – Gross monthly customer churn 16:15 – Expansion is ConvertKit’s next focus 17:08 – Current CAC 18:28 – Team size and location 18:50 – Average headcount expenses 19:14 – ConvertKit was launched in 2013 20:18 – There are two advisers who have a share in the company 20:45 – Connect with Nathan through ConvertKit and his website 23:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You can stay self-funded with a fast growing business and by managing your funds properly. Joint webinars and 2-point direct sales are excellent options to increase mailing list. Pick one thing you love to do, focus in, and do it really well.