Sim, sim.

There you go.

Yeah, thanks for that intro.

Appreciate that.

So yeah, like many other people, I found myself in this job that just absolutely wasn't me.

So power to the people that find success in corporate America, but man, it just really wasn't my path.

And it was around 2008, so kind of the economic recession was going on, and I was happy to have a job.

How do you go about getting the first couple of clients? Because that's a validation that your business model works, right? That there is an appetite for that in the market.

And then I guess how big of a concept does somebody need to have in order to actually build software around it? Like one of the issues that health clubs have is retention, right? And so if I were to ideate a retention SaaS for health club or personal trainers and owners and operators, how would I go about thinking about that and building that into something under your model?

Yeah, I mean, gosh, it always starts with something really simple.

And it seems like all of the most successful businesses, big and small, they're just really a simple thing.

To give you and your audience a little bit about my background, I started working at a dental software company.

It was never really built for a corporate guy, right? And so I was working at this company, wasn't really me, big, big corporate situation, and started hearing about SEO, search engine optimization.

That led me to starting a little SEO agency, selling web marketing services to dental offices.

And as I was out doing this, I realized, These dental practices just need a really simple way to capture a positive review from their patients.

And maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the successes that the Mini Horse clients have had from working with you.

How'd you wind up becoming an entrepreneur?

So first job out of college, hated it.

Um, wasn't, wasn't built to be a corporate guy.

Uh, started looking around for different opportunities.

Uh, heard about, you know, search engine optimization, SEO, back when that was a new thing, and decided just to roll my sleeves up.

Uh, started a little SEO agency and, uh, decided to target dental offices and ran out, knocked a bunch of doors, um, signed up a bunch of offices, and, uh, you know, thought, "Man, this is great.

I love doing my own thing, but really these guys just need an easy way to, to get a review from a patient." And so I pivoted from a little SEO agency to one of the first reputation software companies, and just focused on helping businesses over the next eight or nine years, uh, getting positive reviews on Google.

So you know, next thing I wanna ask you, Stuart, is how would, how would you get a software business to its first thousand... $10,000 a month in recurring revenue?

But I just wanted to hear, like explain a couple of the concepts or business models that you had.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'll just give you a, a brief background on me, so you know, it'll explain kind of where, you know, where I came from, what I'm doing.

Worked at a dental software company, first job out of college.

Corporate thing.

Hated it.

Yeah.

So would you just kind of educate us, break that down a little bit?

Sure, sure.

So yeah, I'll give you a brief background and that might kind of connect some of the dots.

So like many of the folks listening today, I've started in corporate.

My first little job out of college, I was in the cubicle.

I was doing the corporate guy thing and didn't really enjoy it much.

And Kind of was looking around for other opportunities, discovered search engine optimization, you know, back 2010 when that was a newer thing and thought like, hey, just to escape this corporate job, I wonder if I could start my own little agency helping dental practices with their web marketing.

Founder dependence, product scalability, and certainly AI pressures that face every business today, right? Those are three big pillars that I say, or speed bumps, maybe is another way of saying it, that if we're looking at the micro SaaS industry or model, we have to reckon with, right? How do you over, and I'm not saying the challenges are limited to only those three, but those three are problems, right? How do you overcome that, Stuart?

Let's start with how did you get started? to where you are having started and sold a whole bunch of SaaS companies and then what are you doing now?

Yeah, so I'll give you my quick background.

So let's see, graduated college, went to work for a big company called Dentrix.

It's like the leading dental software company and it was that super corporate experience.

So I found myself like, you know, in the office early in the morning, in the cubicle, you know, just kind of doom and gloom vibe.

And I always, you know, was entrepreneurial.

And so I kind of quickly realized like, ooh, this is not for me.

So when you say, what do you mean by partnership opportunities?

And what really makes a small SaaS business attractive to buyers if someone is interested to sell as well?

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I'll just give you a brief background.

Basically, first job out of college, I went to work for a dental software company.

And I don't know if you've ever seen the movie.

Do you remember that old movie, Office Space, by chance? You ever catch that one, Akil? Off his face now.

It's a comedy.

so let's say you've decided to buy a software company decided on the vertical you know where you want to focus and you decide to move forward I'm going to be a first time founder ready to make that transition what do you tell this founder and how do you take this early stage SaaS from zero we have a product now ready to sell it so let's say it's first 500k in ARR which you mentioned you've done as well and you've sold to including what does your creative sales strategy look like what does that partnership model look like to really accelerate the growth Yeah, yeah,

Walk me through how you got into entrepreneurship.

Sure, sure.

So yeah, first job out of college.

I was always entrepreneurial-minded.

But first job out of college, worked for one of the biggest dental software companies.

And found myself in one of those situations where I've got the job, I'm in the cubicle, I'm arriving at the office early in the morning, and I'm like, this is not really for me.

And so started looking around for other opportunities.

And then I'd love to know the kind of core elements of your playbook for acquiring those first sort of initial customers.