I Made A Major Pivot And Grew My Marketing Company 3X [Update]
This is a follow up story for JVI Mobile Marketing (Now JourneyBuilder.io). If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 4 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hey there! My name is Jay Vics and this is my 2nd update to my original Starter Story interview.
I am the founder of a digital marketing agency called JVI Mobile Marketing, which in 2024 is being “semi-retired” (in name only). We are doing this in order to promote our new flagship SaaS called JourneyBuilder.
We decided to go all-in on this new SaaS model because we needed a way to manage clients inside one platform. One of the struggles we have faced in the past has been that we always did so much custom work, that delegating, training, and creating systems seemed impossible!
Now, we know that when we acquire a new client for our agency, we can implement everything within one piece of software, the client owns the account on a subscription model, and our team just knows how to do what we can do within the confines of our software.
JourneyBuilder is a powerful, all-in-one marketing automation that includes a robust CRM platform designed to revolutionize the way businesses engage with their customers.
Some of the things that JourneyBuilder can do is manage all of a business’ contacts, host/build/manage/update websites and landing pages, automate thousands of tasks within the customer journey, robust email,SMS, and voice marketing communications, and so much more. It has made fulfillment and customer management a total breeze!
We are also heavily invested into AI for productivity, launching our new DDF Framework for scaling content creation and effectively “cloning” ourselves.
This change has led to a massive increase in revenue while creating two new Full-Time positions in our company.
Our monthly revenue prior to making JourneyBuilder the flagship product was about 15K MRR. Since the change, we have consistently run between 30-47K MRR. so 2-3x our previous numbers! (Did I mention we are actively growing that number as well?)
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
Since our last conversation, we have more than doubled our ARR, mostly through recurring SaaS subscriptions. We have worked with over 100 clients in just 18 months with our JourneyBuilder SaaS product.
We brought on our first Full-Time employee last year and followed that up with an “Integrator” hire as well to manage operations and delegation.
We have gone “all-in” on AI, using it to improve the way we acquire new customers, run our content-based networking podcast, and made several other changes.
We have moved away from the “Fractional CMO” model, and more toward the teaching and “Done with you” model. We are finding our best leads, referrals, and sales coming from leading educational webinars, interviewing prospects about their business, and finding partnerships that are highly lucrative.
This has led to a 105% increase in sales from 2022 to 2023:
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
So many things have changed, and it has presented some serious challenges. I would say the biggest challenges have been shifting from running a generalist digital marketing agency to running a SaaS with fulfillment (“SWaS”) model.
Some of the biggest challenges have included scaling my team accordingly to handle the growth when we acquired a multi-location franchise client and now needed to implement over 50 locations from 0 within 2 months.
Managing a growing team, maintaining efficient processes, and ensuring smooth collaboration across different functions (e.g., development, marketing, sales, support) has been quite difficult.
Recently, we’ve seen a rise in ad platforms removing business pages for a slew of reasons which has hindered our ability to run ads for several clients. Seems to be a big issue in the Franchise space. We are overcoming this going back to grassroots marketing, along with finding joint venture deals and referral opportunities for our clients.
Slow down on chasing Shiny Objects. Find something and try it more than once.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
I don’t love change. Like, at all! However, I have had to learn how to embrace agility and change in the SaaS market. New features are constantly coming out, customer needs change, external factors come up… Being able to pivot has become essential.
I have taken everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years and invested the knowledge and skill sets back into my business using Content Based Networking, AI, and tremendous White-Labeled partnerships to set us on a course for major success.
This has led to us doubling our revenue last year in our 12th year of business!
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We are all in on the power of AI. How it can make us, and our clients, extremely productive. We have developed a framework called the Digital Duplication Framework (DDF), which allows us to take any piece of human or AI generated content, turn it into a video script, create the video with my AI avatar saying it, and splintering that video into 2-24 pieces of social media video content.
When we couple this with our JourneyBuilder software, our clients are able to attract more eyeballs to their business, capture them as leads, nurture them to and through a sale, close more deals, and have a follow-up and referral machine!
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
The best thing I read in the last year was a book called Content Based Networking by James Carbary. It entirely validated using our Meet The Experts “anti-podcast” model to deliver tremendous value to prospects prior to any other business relationship taking place.
It has been an amazing way to grow my professional network while delivering a year’s worth of video content to small business owners in just a 30-minute video interview.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Slow down on chasing Shiny Objects. Find something and try it more than once.
Don’t give up!
Where can we go to learn more?
- Be a guest on Meet The Experts to spotlight your local B2C Service business
- Check out our All-In-One Marketing Automation and CRM Platform
- Book time to meet with Jay to discuss your AI and Marketing Automation needs:
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
