From Professor to Private Podcasts with Dr. Lindsay Padilla

Episode 64 – Transcripts + Timestamps

DR. Lindsay Padilla (Hello Audio FM)

From Professor to Private Podcasts

Introduction

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Hello, and welcome back to Boss Your Business. And today, I am really excited. We should have done this in person, shouldn’t we? We are both in

[00:00:08] Lindsay Padilla: We totally could have.

[00:00:09] Yvonne Heimann: Well, you just told the story for me.

[00:00:11] Lindsay Padilla: Wait, cancel.

[00:00:12] Yvonne Heimann: My guys we’ll be right back.

[00:00:14] Lindsay Padilla: Part 2. We’ll do part 2 in person.

[00:00:18] Yvonne Heimann: So for anybody watching and listening, if you don’t know Lindsay Padilla yet, actually, doctor Lindsay Padilla, we’ll come to more of that just in a second. You are an ex-community college professor who accidentally started a business while on the tenure track. Now you are the CEO and cofounder of Hello Audio, a software which takes your content and creates private audio feeds to make learning so much more easier. So just imagine your community, your students, your course members, whoever, just doing their morning work, being in the gym, sweating their asses off, and get to listen to what [00:01:00] you teach them. That’s Hello Audio right there.

[00:01:03] No reading, no blog posting, none of that BS. As my audience knows, I hate writing. It’s just put a microphone in front of me, and I will talk for hours. And all of your business ideas were actually born out of your tenure track years of teaching adults online at a community college. The ridiculous amount of learning you’ve done and all the things education and the years spent growing your course creation business online. So it sounds like not that I know a little bit of your story.

[00:01:40] It’s been this, why the hell is this so difficult? Let’s clean this stuff up.

[00:01:46] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. Always. Right?

[00:01:48] I mean, that’s like education in general and then, and then business too. But, yeah, it’s definitely been a journey, one that was very unexpected. You know, little Lindsay studying for [00:02:00] many, many, many years was not expecting to be running a tech company at this point, but it’s a, it’s an interesting one nonetheless, and I’m having a fun, a fun time doing it. So there you go.

[00:02:11] Yvonne Heimann: And I wanna dive a little bit into, I will wanna dive a little bit into the idea of software as a service of all the things.

[00:02:21] I’m like, I’ve been watching you. Guys behind the scenes in the green room, we just realized, I’m like, your little one is nearly 2 years old now, and I’m like, where the hell did the time go? I know. But we, I will never be able to actually forget you. There is, there is never gonna be a moment where, where I’m not gonna remember Lindsay Padilla.

[00:02:42] We ran into each other. I was literally freshly in San Diego.

[00:02:48] Lindsay Padilla: This is in 2018 or is it 2017? Like, 2019. Okay.

[00:02:53] Oh, so it was 2019.

[00:02:54] Yvonne Heimann: 2019. Okay. And it would yeah, right before the world shut down Yeah.

[00:02:59] And we [00:03:00] were at Pat Flynn. Thank you. Pat Flynn. I was like, why, why did I have Patrick in my head? Pat Flynn’s and it was so cute because you were the first one that out of nowhere was like, Oh my god. You are the ClickUp girl.

[00:03:16] There is, there is there is never gonna be a moment where I can ever forget you. I’m like, that, that was, that was the first time where I was like, people recognize me on the street. Mhmm. Mhmm.

[00:03:28] Yeah. Guys, that’s how I met Lindsay. And at that point, at that point, you were still really, really early in, in the whole business. You were just getting, getting away from the whole teacher thing and everything and, and into your own thing. Right?

[00:03:46] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. I was well, I was a couple years into the course creation stuff. Because I left teaching at the end of 2016, like, officially, and I had started my business earlier that year. But, kind of really ramping up, more of [00:04:00] that course creation business, I think, really happened more in, like, 2018, 2019. So, yeah, still a couple years early, still green.

[00:04:08] Yeah, and I remember, I remember going to this event. He used to have a, a meetup for local kind of entrepreneurs, and sometimes people visiting would come and we had, like, jumped onto the ClickUp bandwagon way earlier than a lot of the other kind of online business.

[00:04:24] Yvonne Heimann: Before it became a thing.

[00:04:26] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, and I loved it. And so because there just wasn’t a lot of content out there yet. And so you were the one person who I was, like, sending my assistant. I was like, okay, this is the girl. Like, she’ll teach you everything you need to know. And just seeing you in person at the event, I was like, oh, this is really fun. So yeah. And I, I launched Hello Audio.

[00:04:45] I remember going to one of the meetup meetings and telling Pat Flynn about it, and he’s like, I’ve been waiting for this. Like, I can’t like, someone had I can’t believe no one’s launched this before. That like, that’s kind of those early days, you need those believers in what you’re doing because you’re not quite [00:05:00] sure like, if it’s gonna work, or if you’re doing something stupid. And at that point, you know, the founders, there’s 3 of us.

[00:05:06] None of us are technical. So none of us could actually build the product. And so we were, you know, investing time and money into building something. So we wanted to make sure people wanted it. And so yeah.

[00:05:17] I mean, I’ve, pat Flynn was a big part of even me thinking that I could do it.

Pushing Through Challenges: Realizing Your Idea

[00:05:22] Yvonne Heimann: And I’m curious because I’m fascinated by the idea of, I have no clue how to do this. No tech. No nothing, but I want this. How did you go about from I don’t I, I don’t even I just know what I want to, to make it happen.

[00:05:43] How did you guys go, go about that?

[00:05:45] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. You know, I think it starts by doing that at one point, leaving my professor gig. Like, jumping into entrepreneurship itself is you did it too. Right?

[00:05:56] Like, at some point, you have to be like, I don’t know if anyone’s gonna [00:06:00] watch my videos on YouTube, right? Like you just do it. And so I think I, I had built up that resilience that you kind of need as an entrepreneur. It wasn’t my first rodeo as, as they might say.

[00:06:11] I mean, definitely first for many other things, but not my first, like, I have an idea, like, here’s how to figure it out, you know, kind of thing. So, I had built up that tough skin and there’s a lot of benefits to kind of maybe winding something down and starting something new is you, it’s like you get to start over and you kind of know more, right? And so even if this business ended, like, what would we do next? You know what I mean?

[00:06:38] And so knowing that, yes, we did not know how to develop anything. I will say this. I will hesitate and say, we didn’t know nothing. My husband was, like, technically savvy.

[00:06:50] He, like, knows a little bit of code to be, like, dangerous, but not enough, like, literally could’ve built that.

[00:06:55] Yvonne Heimann: Enough to get yourself in trouble.

[00:06:57] Lindsay Padilla: Just enough to, like, read versus me, like, I don’t even [00:07:00] understand what’s happening. So He can read it. He can do some things, but, you know, they’re, they’re definitely not build an entire product. That wasn’t even a question.

[00:07:07] And even our other cofounder, Nora, had a background in computer science. That’s what she studied actually in school, you know, 15, 20 years ago, 30 years ago probably now. But that’s not, again, what she was, like, currently up to date on. And so we had people that knew what to look for.

[00:07:24] We’re you know, we weren’t totally going in not knowing anything. But, yeah, we just I remember thinking when we thought of the idea, you know, I think at the time so this is 20 end of 2018, early 2019. I had seen in a, in a Facebook group someone talking about they had a membership, and their husband coded something to protect a podcast from being found in a podcast catcher app. Right? So someone can search Boss Your Business and, and find it.

[00:07:57] Right? anyone can listen. But a private podcast, you [00:08:00] can’t go and search that title. That’s, like, the first layer of security. And so I was like, that’s really interesting.

[00:08:07] And I think Libsyn, once I started hearing the words private podcast, again, still nothing that was, like, super common. Libsyn had what they called, I don’t even know if they called it private podcast, but you couldn’t even sign up for it. You had to be on some enterprise Plan. You had to ask for it. It wasn’t, it wasn’t something they did.

[00:08:25] It wasn’t something public. And this is in 2019. And I said to Derek, you know, it was my own I had bought somebody else’s course, and the, the person kind of actually was pretty nonchalant about the course and as far as, like, experience. Like, it was, it was YouTube videos that were private listed in a WordPress site that you logged into, but it was so annoying to get into it. Like, so annoying.

[00:08:48] And I was like, can I just put this on a podcast feed? And because I had heard that people were doing that, I said, Derek, can you do it? And so he did it. And we’re like, do we teach other course, because that’s what I did. I taught people [00:09:00] courses.

[00:09:00] And I was like, do we give them this, like, script that you’re running right now? And so, again, this is not an app at this point, But we’re I, I, I knew. I was like, this is what audio should be for courses. It should not be mp3 files under a video. And so once he kinda tinkered with it and was like, I can do it.

[00:09:19] Like, no one could search her, her course and find it or whatever. And so we kind of he went into his little bunker. He’s more of a researcher than I am. I’m like, let’s build it now. He’s like, I’m gonna make sure it makes sense.

[00:09:32] So he, like, researched what it would entail and started looking at, you know, who was doing it. And so by the end of it, he’s like, I think it took, gosh. It was like that summer. So now we’re in summer of 2019. He’s like, I think we should build it.

[00:09:45] And he’s like, no other company is gonna make it the way we would want it as creators for courses.

[00:09:50] Yvonne Heimann: Mhmm.

[00:09:51] Lindsay Padilla: So I think we have to. Like, they aren’t gonna do it. And so it was that point. It was October, and I was, like, made a Facebook post, Sold [00:10:00] lifetime licenses, raised about 30,000 dollars on this one Facebook post, and that was the seed money to, like, get the development started.

[00:10:07] And we went on to raise a little bit more. We did some other pushes and stuff. And I think all in all, like, a hundred k that we got raised from our community. You know, they all have amazing access and, and all of that, but we were able to they kinda believed in us and was like, yeah, please build this.

[00:10:24] And so, yeah. That was kind of how we started, which is usually it’s a, it’s a little different than how people typically build tech, and, and developers aren’t cheap. So, yeah. It was, it was quite the journey, but I think, I think, like I said, I’d done this before. I had an audience. Right?

[00:10:42] And so they knew me for course creation, and so I positioned it as, I think, at the time, it was called podcast your course. So, so it was just kinda like, would you guys buy this? Like, should I do this? And it was like, yeah.

[00:10:52] So, yeah. So then I went with it. I didn’t really have a choice at that point.

A Lesson In Business: Knowing Who To Trust

[00:10:58] Yvonne Heimann: Looking, [00:11:00] looking back at it, is there something now knowing what you know now, Is there something you would do differently looking back?

[00:11:09] Lindsay Padilla: Yes. So I get, I get asked.

[00:11:12] Yvonne Heimann: The 2020 ,the 2020 hindsight is greatest.

[00:11:14] Lindsay Padilla: The truth. Yeah. I mean, I get, so I get in our space.

[00:11:19] There’s a lot of women now that are starting to build apps, Like creators and people. And so usually, they find about me. And so, like, I’m in Voxer with some women that are, like, building apps and, you know, telling them what I learned about it. And typically, what I say with, like, a whole bunch of caveats. So, like, the first thing I wanna say is, like, you know, my story and the way we built it, I’m always like, just so you know, like, Derek was able to talk with developers. You know?

[00:11:46] That kind of conversation is really important. Like, the beginning of a product, it’s, it’s, it’s not the same for everybody. You’re gonna all have different issues. So our biggest issue this whole time has been what I’ve kind of alluded to is [00:12:00] not having a technical cofounder.

[00:12:02] So we don’t have, between the 3 of us, somebody who cares so much about the code, right, that they’re willing to do whatever or work all night and, like you know what I mean? And so that’s been, it’s I think every company slash go at it and say tech company or software probably has, like, a weak spot. Like, I don’t like because most companies have the coding. Fine. They don’t know how to sell it.

[00:12:26] Right? Yep. And so here we are selling it, and we don’t know how to code. Right? So I think for us, it’s just not having a technical cofounder has been the most money that we’ve had to spend in the company, has been the, the weakest spot for having some issues, we definitely built it a couple times.

[00:12:44] We’ve had issues with different developers we’ve hired, you know? So it’s, I won’t, I won’t go so far as to say that everybody should have a technical cofounder if you wanna build something, but you should have somebody that you trust and that you [00:13:00] can think I don’t know. Yeah. You trust at some level, and you can figure out how to pay them, because most of them are not gonna do anything for free or for equity, and so that’s what you gotta, like, figure out.

[00:13:11] And I think some of the, there were points where we could have hired the developer that built what Hello Audio is now, again, with, like, 2 or 3 mistakes along the way there. They’re no longer with us, but not in any negative way. We just were like, we don’t really need, we just never got to a stage where we needed somebody full time, And it felt like that’s what we wanted to give this person. So, we let, they’re often built their own, like, kind of cool boutique, development agencies. So I always recommend them as well.

[00:13:41] But, yeah, it’s, it’s kinda like one of those things, like, man, I wish we just had somebody that was on the team, like, in the same capacity that the cofounders are, right? Because those people, no one will ever love your product as much as you do.

[00:13:54] Yvonne Heimann: Exactly. Where it’s like there is so much going on with coding where [00:14:00] and it gets nerdy really quick, really fast.

[00:14:04] Oh, no. That’s fine. I’m kind of at, like, an on Derek’s level as, like, I know enough to get into some trouble. Yeah. But It, it just goes so far.

[00:14:13] Nobody is gonna love what you build as much as one of the cofounders. Nobody is gonna pay as much attention, and there is so much that goes on all at the same time when you are coding and developing something like that. Now I’m curious with ,with this partnership. Now Derek is a cofounder too. Right?

[00:14:35] Lindsay Padilla: Mhmm.

[00:14:35] Yvonne Heimann: So you got husband and wife. Mhmm. You got Nora in there. How with, with the cofounders, how did this come about?

[00:14:44] Because I’m like, that, that there’s usually just two ways with cofounders. It’s black and white. It’s like it, it either way, it works and you find your way on how it works, or it’s, it, it’s a complete [00:15:00] crash and burn and implodes. So when I do see a cofounder partnership that at least from the outside, seems to be working really well. I’m always curious of how did you get here for this to be a partnership.

[00:15:15] And, and how are you making it work? Because there’s different personalities. There’s different communication styles. There’s so much going on all at the same time. And you’ve guys continuously been growing, so something is going right somewhere.

[00:15:29] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. Well, we made mistakes in the beginning, so there’s that. I’ve talked about this publicly other places. So I’m happy to do it here. Yeah, so like early on so I’ll say like our current like situation is good, and I’ll, I’ll get into how we got there. But one part about the early days of our story, as, as you could tell, it’s me and Derek, And I’m also running this other company.

[00:15:52] I had met Nora at an event in San Diego. It was when traffic and conversion was happening.

[00:15:58] Yvonne Heimann: Mhmm.

[00:15:59] Lindsay Padilla: And Jennifer [00:16:00] Kim put together a dinner, and I was one of, like, I don’t know, 30 women there, and she sat me next to Nora. And she said she was very intentional about the seating.

[00:16:08] And it turns out when, you know, as we started talking, she had built all of ClickFunnels certification and course programs, and she left because they weren’t taking it as seriously as she wanted. Meaning, they were like letting people pass in their courses that shouldn’t have been passing, and that was the whole point of a certification. Things like that. And she’s just like education was really important to her. So I was like cool.

[00:16:29] We should be friends. Let’s like, you know, we’ll do something together, right? And so this is in early 28. Was it in 2019?

[00:16:38] Now I’m, like, mess missing it up. But it was in 2019 still. And so that was, like, April or something. So we spent that whole summer kind of masterminding together just like and we started building out a program that, like, had her marketing skills and my course building skills that was gonna be this like launch a course type of program. So we’re building this out and then you know, we Derek and I have this side [00:17:00] idea. And we start telling her about this side idea.

[00:17:03] And she’s like, yeah. That sounds really cool. And then, of course, it comes out, like, yeah. I was, like, one of the first employees at ClickFunnels. We’re like, oh, you like no SaaS products.

[00:17:11] Like, oh, you have a development background. Like, all these things. Right? And so she started giving us advice. Like, you know, we’d say this is happening.

[00:17:19] What should we do? And she just started, like, always, you know, there to be like, oh, yeah. This happened. When we, when we were doing this at ClickFunnels, this. And so in that time when we launched, and then that fall, I had met with some people.

[00:17:32] I was, I was, like, trying to find a developer, seeing like, seeing how this was gonna go. And one person put us in this direction of, well, why do you have to build something yourself? Why not just, like, find a podcast hosting company that wants to build this with you and just, like, we don’t know what it could look like, but maybe I would come on as, like, a, a high level employee at some, in some way and just, like, they trust me to build this thing for creators because I knew what they needed. And so we [00:18:00] went down that path, and, we were talking with, oh my gosh. They sold to Libsyn.

[00:18:06] What? Glow FM, which is like a membership subscription. And, you know, we got pretty far with them, so this goes into the early 2020. And, you know, she is, she’s a, she had raised capital, though. So she’s venture backed, and she had to deal with her board.

[00:18:22] Like, she’s not allowed to just, like, decide to change the direction. Yeah. So it took some time, and we had to convince them, right? We had to, like, say, hey, blah blah blah.

[00:18:31] So it took some time. So now here we are in February, early February 2020. We had sold those licenses in October. So now we’re coming up on month 5. And one of the things we did when we presold our licenses was we saw, we said, look, we can get your private podcast up.

[00:18:46] There’s no Email logging in of you know, there’s no special, we did generate unique links for email addresses, I think, actually, but we were manually doing it all. There was no App that someone could log in to. So they would send us our files in [00:19:00] a Google Drive. We’d send them back the links for their students, basically, in so many ways. So,

[00:19:05] Yvonne Heimann: So you were already delivering, but just not delivering. Where, where you had the dream.

[00:19:10] Lindsay Padilla: Which made me more comfortable about taking people’s money, and we knew that we could do that when we launched. So that was helpful. And so one of our lifetime license buyers messages me and said, when’s this happening? And I was like, well, you know, we might actually partner with this other company, and so we’re, you know, who knows?

[00:19:26] But, like, we’re hosting it for you. We’ll set it all up. And she’s like, I don’t like that, and by the way, I’ve built phone apps, apps before on the App Store. I know what I’m doing. Do you wanna partner?

[00:19:38] And, like, looking back, I wish I did a little more research on the person. The person was in the ClickFunnels community. Looking back, I don’t know how true her accolades are with her background. I can’t get confirmation on some of the claims that she makes, [00:20:00] but we decided to do it. And Nora was the person who was like, no, no, something feels off.

[00:20:06] I was like, well, we don’t really have a choice. Either she’s gonna help us build this, or we go with Glow FM, what should we do? And it was kinda like we did feel like we were in a rock, between a rock and a hard place where it was like but it also answered our question if we don’t have someone who knows what they’re doing with development. So here was this person who was coming through.

[00:20:26] And at this time too, I was still running my old business, and Derek was helping me with that too. So it’s not like we had all this time to, like, figure out how to build a product. And so we went with it. And I also was like, Nora needs to be a partner as well. Like, the 4 of us need to do this together.

[00:20:42] And so we decided to go into partnership in February. And, you know, it just made sense that Nora was involved. But I think that was, like, the beginning of this not making sense for this other person. And so, that was the beginning of it. But we found a developer that she trusted.

[00:20:59] She basically [00:21:00] managed that developer, but Derek told everybody what to do. Like, this is the vision. This is where we’re going. This is what we’re building. So he was kind of like head of product, I would get I would say, and she was more like, I don’t know.

[00:21:13] She was managing the developer. But when we started to talk about what our roles were gonna be when the product is built, That’s when the rub started to happen. It was like she wanted to do marketing, but, like, it made sense that Nora was marketing, and so it was weird. And Long story short, she basically is like, I don’t I, you know, I basically, we’re about to launch in mid May, and the product is ready. We haven’t touched it.

[00:21:39] We haven’t actually even seen it. And we’re supposed to launch by the end of May, And we get an email. She starts not coming to one of our meetings, and we get an email saying she now owns the rights to everything, and she, she, she owns the IP and all the things. And so, that was horrific. It [00:22:00] was, like, the worst thing that’s happened to me in business, and maybe, hopefully, will forever.

[00:22:05] But

[00:22:05] Yvonne Heimann: So pretty much she took all of the ideas.

[00:22:07] Lindsay Padilla: She took everything we did. Yep. And at that point, you know, we have a lawyer. We so here’s the crazy part is we didn’t actually split up equity or sign anything yet.

[00:22:17] We were, we were, like, being advised to work together for a while before you decide to give equity, and thank god we did that. Because if on day 1, we’re just, like, all splitting it and not even having worked with her would have been like a whole other story. But because we actually still didn’t do that, which is, as I put myself in sure her shoes, probably was the reason part of the reason why she, like, felt like she built this herself, and they’re not honoring and recognizing it, but, like, didn’t even have the guts to show up to the literal equity meeting we were supposed to have on the day we got her email. And so the, the, like, backstory is, like, 1 week before that day, she went in and deleted all the files [00:23:00] in ClickUp, but, and Derek realized that she did that because she wrote something weird, like, isn’t it you know how, like, ClickUp has, like, who can see the board or something? Something weird happened and he was like, I think she, she came in and said something happened to the files, like, all, like, nonchalant.

[00:23:19] And he goes in and looks, and she’s like, she put it in the trash. He unarchived everything. So, like, not only did she not actually dump the trash, She did that for Google Drive and everything, so we, like, saved everything. We knew this, this happened on a Friday, and she told us on Wednesday, but we knew that she was doing something shady. And then if you go back, her Facebook business page was already created.

[00:23:41] The name was already created. This is all before she told us that she wasn’t ready to work with us and all the things. So I had a lawyer because we were having, we were signing incorporation documents, and we told him what was happening, and he’s like, well, first of all, she doesn’t own anything. Like, you guys jointly created this. So her email is just not [00:24:00] factual.

[00:24:00] So he’s like, At least respond back and say that, like, hey, like, we co own this with you. But he said you have a choice. You can fight her for it, which you have a case a hundred percent to fight her for it. Or you can look at this and say, it’s a PR game, and you just need to beat her.

[00:24:17] And that’s what we chose to do. So we said, good luck. Have fun with that. It’s not your fucking product, and we’re gonna just build it. So Again, this is like this is why that technical cofounder piece was so important is because, yeah, we essentially had to build over in early June as well.

[00:24:36] Yvonne Heimann: So you’re, you’re lucky enough to not have had a full contractual obligation at that point because

[00:24:42] Lindsay Padilla: that was NDA that, that was it. That would have changed everything.

[00:24:46] Yvonne Heimann: And, like, having a contractual partnership at that moment would have been dissolving that and doing all the things, and holy cannoli.

[00:24:54] Lindsay Padilla: I know.

[00:24:55] Yvonne Heimann: Now with her wrapping it up so [00:25:00] nicely and, yes, guys, ClickUp has a trash bin that you can recreate stuff and pull stuff out from.

[00:25:06] So does who does Google Drive, by the way? Yes. Were you able to, to pull things out to get coding, to get pieces, or did you have to start completely from Zero.

[00:25:20] Lindsay Padilla: We decided to start completely over. It was what we were able to get out, nothing related to the code and what was built, but more like the mock ups and everything we I did.

[00:25:29] So, so all that, like, energy behind the product and what the what it was supposed to look like.

[00:25:34] Yvonne Heimann: So you got at least the, the UX to the user interface. And the idea is you don’t have to recreate and try to pull out of your head what you were envisioning. You have at least that.

[00:25:44] Lindsay Padilla: Yep.

[00:25:45] Crazy. Right? So your to your point that, that, you know, it is really important that especially when you’re going into business with somebody that you vet them, and trust your guts on that. And, [00:26:00] you know, I’m still grateful to that experience because this person pushed us to build it ourselves. We were going down another path.

[00:26:09] And so as much as it sucked and still sucks because PS the product is still out there, which is like still bananas to me. But It sucks, but I’m really excited.

[00:26:19] Yvonne Heimann: Who would wanna go with a different product if they can go with Hello Audio? Let’s be honest.

[00:26:23] Lindsay Padilla: I mean, check the numbers and ask people what thing that they recommend.

[00:26:27] But yeah. I mean, to be fair, it’s like, I look at it and I’m like, yeah. She pushed me to do something that I wasn’t planning on doing. And we and further reflection after that summer, we had issues with another developer, not in that way, but did not deliver what we were expecting. And we looked back and we’re like, oh, she was doing what she want needed to do.

[00:26:50] Like, she was head of product, and Derek really needed to learn how to be head of product. And it’s like, we did build a team that made sense skill wise. It’s just [00:27:00] for whatever happened to her in her past, like, she felt like she was being wronged in some capacity that this is what she was needing to do her reaction. And and, yeah, I just look at it, and I’m just like, thank God, because that made us make it. And it was scary to make it in that darkness.

[00:27:16] I mean, the that pressure of that summer before we launched so we launched in November 2020. Luckily found the developer that built Hello Audio in early September. And, yeah, basically, it was built in about 2 months. And, you know, again, this is the third time we built it at this point. So we had, we knew what we needed to do.

[00:27:36] But, yeah, they built it from scratch, and we were able to, you know, launch in 2020. But It was almost like every day, I was just so nervous that she was gonna take my customers or blow up, right? Like, in that capacity and Clubhouse was blowing up at that time, and I was on there and she was on there.

[00:27:54] And I just remember thinking, like, we don’t have a product to sell, But here’s this person out there [00:28:00] talking about the things that I came up with. You know what I mean? And it was it, it was kinda one of those things where you’re just like, You just knew you had to put your head down and keep going. Like, you there was no stopping. There was no giving up watching her do it, but I was still scared.

[00:28:15] Like, every single day scared that I would wake up to some Facebook post that, you know, this guru uses her pro whatever. Right? Like, that just that fear. And

[00:28:27] Yvonne Heimann: because we know, we know marketing. It’s like if, if you can get

[00:28:31] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

[00:28:31] Yvonne Heimann: And we’ve, we’ve seen, we’ve seen it often enough. It’s like people align themselves with, with certain products, and then years later, it’s like, oh, yeah. I just did it for whatever.

[00:28:42] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

[00:28:43] But I

[00:28:43] Yvonne Heimann: We know the marketing behind it. It’s like

[00:28:46] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

[00:28:46] Yvonne Heimann: If they get the right person in

[00:28:49] Lindsay Padilla: Things can happen. And I think that’s how a lot of us operate too. And I look at it, and it’s like she needed us. Right?

[00:28:55] Like, she actually needed us. It was this part. It, it’s funny because in some of our first [00:29:00] Facebook messages, she goes, I could just build this myself, but I wouldn’t because it’s you know, you have the audience for it. And here we are, literally, in Facebook.

[00:29:09] There’s a message that says that. And so she did it anyways. Right? And you know. Thank you for what I’m able to create as a result.

[00:29:19] Yvonne Heimann: Fortunately, we are in 2024.

[00:29:22] Things are going fine now. It’s yeah. I’m like, I don’t even.

[00:29:32] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. Getting into partnership is not something to take lightly.

[00:29:35] I, I want people to learn that from it. And Nora, Derek, and I are, so the 3 partners, and I trust her because we spent a lot of time together prior to that. So as part of that story, recognize that, but, you know, Nora had been there for a long time, and here comes this person seemingly out of nowhere. And we were like, okay. Let’s do it.

[00:29:55] And, yeah, live to tell the tale.

[00:29:58] Yvonne Heimann: And it’s like [00:30:00] knowing you’ve already had that, that recognition, that knowledge where, where you might have felt like this is missing, where you’re still saying nowadays where it’s like it would be nice to have a developer. She fit right into that hole. It’s like, Yeah. She, she was aligning with, with what was missing.

[00:30:19] So it is, It, it is what it is.

[00:30:23] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

Navigating Challenges In Saas Entrepreneurship

[00:30:24] Yvonne Heimann: Looking at it now, because I know there is a lot of conversation happening out there with building SaaS, building something, quote

[00:30:34] Lindsay Padilla: Mhmm.

[00:30:35] Yvonne Heimann: Passive income. For the, for everybody listening, I am, I am rotating that right now because I don’t know if there’s anything ever actually passive. How is it running a SaaS.

[00:30:48] It’s like there’s technology. You are dealing with people that want features that might not align with you. How, how is it running a SaaS right now?

[00:30:58] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. So [00:31:00] I, I wanna line this up with saying, comparatively to me running my creator business, which, like, felt like everything came through me. Right?

[00:31:09] I have to make the videos. Like, I’m the teacher. I’m the seller. That those early days of running a business as a creator, as an online business owner it’s you know, everything comes through you.

[00:31:21] And that was a lot. And you know, my husband and I both list yeah. Yeah. Right? Like, everyone watching is, like, it’s a lot.

[00:31:27] It is. And some people really excel at it and, and get to certain levels, and that’s, and that’s awesome, and it’s totally possible for everyone. I think for me, I was starting to, I hit a ceiling of feeling like I wasn’t enjoying it as much, that I was doing more managing. I wasn’t doing as much teaching and, like, creation, which totally is a solvable problem. But comparatively, as I look at that style and type of business and then now, like, a SaaS [00:32:00] business, it is really nice to have, like, recurring revenue.

[00:32:03] Right? Like, so because it’s a monthly subscription, we know how many people subscribe. How many new people we get every month, how many people we lose every month. And you know, we’ve been growing month over month, and that’s a, a very positive thing. And so, it, it to me felt like I was able to use my skill set in a way that I enjoyed. Like, the things I loved about my creator business, that’s what I brought, I guess, to Hello Audio.

[00:32:31] And then the things, Like delivery, I guess. Like, having been somebody who had 1 on 1 services and that kind of thing. It’s like the product is the delivery, right? So I don’t really, I can’t touch it.

[00:32:44] Like, literally don’t know how to. And so that’s got you know? It’s good and bad. And I think part of my story that’s important to people watching that might have service businesses or something like that is, like, that is really scary to hire out something that, like, you actually [00:33:00] aren’t even delivering. And so as you hear in my story, you have to trust people during that process, and it can be hard and, like, you can mess up.

[00:33:09] And so, I think that’s always helped me based on my own strengths. So I think there it’s totally possible to run a creator business based on your own strengths and hire out the things you need to do. For whatever reason, this forced me to. I couldn’t, I can’t even meddle in the product. Right?

[00:33:26] Like, because I, I don’t know how. But, like, as a service provider, you could, like, meddle and be like, you know, hire somebody to supposedly help you execute, but you could, like, go in there and supposedly you’re the expert. And so telling them they’re not doing it right or something. I can’t do that with, with the product. So that’s kind of interesting.

[00:33:42] It’s, it really created that clear divide for me. But to your point, it’s not passive in the slightest. And I know there’s, there’s all this talk of, like, being a SaaSpreneur with things like high level, go high level, and people are realizing, like, how hard it is to run a tech company, stay up with [00:34:00] the tech, you know, kill the bugs that need to be killed, build the features that need to be built without killing other parts of the product, how hard that is. And then when you have users that are like, why is this not fixed? And with something like GoHighLevel where there’s a third party involved, you’re like, oh, well, I can’t force them to do it.

[00:34:16] Well, at Hello Audio, maybe we’re not that exact setup. Like, we’re not white labeling anything for sure. But we have that same problem where it’s like, we can’t fix it because this is happening right now, but you don’t know that, and it’s hard to right? And it’s like, yes.

[00:34:30] We would love to do that integration, but do you know how much it costs to do an integration? Like, you don’t just, like, click a button and say integrate with, you know, ConvertKit or whatever. Right? It it’s like dev money that costs that. So we have to weigh what gets built, what doesn’t, and deal with the customers that are having issues.

[00:34:47] Stay on top of all the things that are broken and all of that. So it’s definitely not passive in the slightest, but it’s, what is positive is that recurring revenue, and I think that is something to think about as [00:35:00] somebody who’s a service provider, like, what ways you can in, incorporate that into your business because it does help, I think with that month over month kind of feeling like you’re growing for sure.

[00:35:10] Yvonne Heimann: It’s not, it’s not as much the up and down that you have as

[00:35:13] Lindsay Padilla: Totally.

[00:35:14] Yvonne Heimann: Service provider. And it’s funny you mentioned GoHighLevel. We behind the scenes, digging into Go high level right now because it, it potentially aligns with our 5 year goal. So it’s, it’s gonna be interesting looking back at this episode

[00:35:27] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

[00:35:27] Yvonne Heimann: In a little bit and see where we’re at with that.

Business Decisions: Refocusing On The Vision And The Goals

[00:35:30] One last thing I would love to chat about is in this alignment of running a SaaS right now and having so many different opinions from the user base and so many different requests. How do you stay on task?

[00:35:48] Do you have, do you have internal value set? Do you have a specific target market set or whatever that helps you make the decision of, cool. I [00:36:00] like this feature, but it’s actually gonna be on a back burner because it doesn’t align with us. How, how do you make those decisions?

[00:36:09] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah, definitely values and, like, our original vision, we come back to that. The, the idea that we would love courses to have Podcast versions that just be the norm. Right? That that’s expected, whether it’s hosted on Hello Audio or not. We just really think that people’s product should offer the option of audio just because the mp3 doesn’t cut it.

[00:36:30] Right? So as we look at that, if we’re thinking about learning and content consumption, You know what, yeah, what could help that? That definitely drives our vision, our values, accessibility, ease of use, you know, that kind of thing. And so we do do that. I’ll say this too.

[00:36:47] At the very beginning, we, we didn’t really talk about this part of the story, but I was in a an accelerator called Techstars. So we actually do have a we had a little bit of funding in the early days of our product. [00:37:00] And by having funding, we were able to each pay our own salaries for the 3 co founders, which was a pretty big deal. Wasn’t anything fancy to write home about as far as, like, salaries. Let’s say that.

[00:37:10] Yvonne Heimann: Being able to at least buy groceries and, and, and

[00:37:13] Lindsay Padilla: Correct.

[00:37:13] Yvonne Heimann: Being able to live.

[00:37:15] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah. And to kind of put aside the other things. Like, I basically stopped running my other business.

[00:37:20] Nora stopped consulting. So we, you know, really wanted to go all in on this. And it, it was actually in the end of 2022. So it’s been over a year now. But end of 2022, we’re like, we need to get to profitability, because we were kind of still running on, we are still kind of burning cash as tech companies do.

[00:37:41] And so because of that, we had to make the decision, like, our product, we actually got it to a place so that is, It holds the promise that we set. Like, your content, you put it in our product. We will make a private podcast feed. Right? And it will go to your listeners.

[00:37:56] Right? Because I think it is really easy for a SaaS product [00:38:00] to just start building features and keep doing it because you’re like, well, this is what you do when you have a product. You just keep building stuff. And the reality is, is, like, sometimes you could build things that people aren’t using or you know what I mean? Like, you think it’s gonna be great.

[00:38:14] So the flip is true too. Like, yeah, users could tell us what they want, but we could also think that people want one thing. So not that that necessarily happened. I think it probably happens in every company even if you, you stay close to your users. Because for us, like, we are the users too be but because of the way it was built.

[00:38:32] But I you know, in that in the end of 2022 when we’re, like, we need to get to profitability, we just kind of pulled back on development at all, and to the point where it was like bug fixes. And so we didn’t release a whole bunch of features, and we really doubled down on client acquisition or customer acquisition and just, like, stop spending as much as we were spending on development. And so I think it’s it mirrors a typical company. Right? You’re just kind of trying to make decisions on cash [00:39:00] flow, what your goals are, taking into account that, like, I think this is another thing as business owners.

[00:39:08] Like, we always wanna keep going to the next milestone. Like, there’s no real, like goalposts where you’re like, I’ve achieved it. Right? And so I think at some level you’re just like, wait, like, we don’t have to keep building. Like, like, let’s take a step back and really think, like, what do we actually want?

[00:39:27] Right? And I think that conversation was really important. And now, as we look today, you know, we’re able to make decisions, were able to get raises, like, that kind of thing, and that’s really cool. And, and we’re not dependent on raising capital from outside investors, which was also happening, PS, was in 2022. I actually went out to raise it early 2022, but that was kind of when the tech world kind of was like, oh.

[00:39:55] There’s been this huge course correct. And so, we, I [00:40:00] think, dodged a bullet there. As much as at the time, I was like, oh, shoot. Like, I’m not raising. It’s not working.

[00:40:06] But we were like instead, we’re like, what skill sets do we have as our founders, what does our team have? And we went back to basics. It’s like, we need to market more. Like, we need to get more users. And so that’s when we, you know, of of course, let development go down.

[00:40:20] So now, actually, as I tell as I share that, what did I say at the beginning? Right? Like, having a technical cofounder, it’s like, you know, we would have basically scaled someone’s job down to like nothing almost. And so that allowed us to be like, that we can turn down, like let’s use the, the things that we know how to do. So, it’s not always just, like, values and that kind of thing, but it is, like, keeping the lights on and, and growth and, like, What does growth look like for your company?

[00:40:47] And maybe you don’t have to do it like all the other tech companies or all the other service providers. Right? Like, do what makes sense for you. Yeah. That’s kind of, I guess, what I would say about that.

[00:40:58] Yvonne Heimann: And it’s like, [00:41:00] the when you get VC Capital or even Angel Capital in, you are now suddenly having another voice in the company that potentially doesn’t align with your vision and where you wanna take it. Now suddenly, things are just not as you might have wanted them to be. Yeah. And that’s, that’s a whole other thing. Now

[00:41:23] Lindsay Padilla: That’s a whole other conversation.

[00:41:25] Yvonne Heimann: Right. If you’re building a company to pretty much just sell it, go for it. Raise the money, build it up, go sell it. But if it’s a passion project, chances are you are better off just doing the quote Kickstarter approach using your community, use what you have. And I would say you guys definitely have done the right thing for Hello Audio because I’m like, you are all over the place.

[00:41:49] And, guys, if you wanna stab me in the back. The only reason why I’m not using Hello Audio is because my podcast is public first.

[00:41:57] Lindsay Padilla: There you go. Yes.

[00:41:58] Yvonne Heimann: With course first and [00:42:00] everything.

[00:42:00] It’s like, it, it comes down to, again, what’s your goal? What’s, what’s the start of it? Like but even with us deciding going with a public podcast somewhere else. I have never lost sight of you guys and always been paying attention, which is why you were here now. And it’s like, education on audio?

[00:42:19] Yeah. It’s like, is there even anything else out there?

[00:42:23] Lindsay Padilla: Yeah.

[00:42:23] Yvonne Heimann: So I would say the, the approach of focusing on user acquisition and the marketing piece. Hell yeah.

[00:42:30] You you’ve nailed it. And it’s like, what, what else is there? Isn’t there something else? Yeah. You know?

[00:42:37] Lindsay Padilla: I think yeah. I, I remember the conversations we had as a team at that time. It was just, like, I actually felt like I was getting really far away from what I was really good at where it’s like, I’m having these investor meetings. I’m doing these financial projections, which is, like, important. But at the same time, I was like, what is Lindsay good at?

[00:42:54] Right? And it was just kind of one of those things of, like, we can do this. Like, we don’t need anyone else. Right? We [00:43:00] don’t need these the money from folks in LA, or wherever.

[00:43:03] Right? And it was a pretty big wake up call. And it was also right about before I was about to give birth that raise that round. And so

[00:43:10] Yvonne Heimann: Just to add a little something to the whole mix.

[00:43:13] Lindsay Padilla: Recommend that.

[00:43:14] Let me tell you. But, yeah, by the end of, like, maternity leave, we’re like, I came out of maternity leave, like, ready to go with, like, here’s what we’re gonna do for Hello Audio. Here’s what we’re gonna make it happen. And, and we did it. We and so that was really cool.

[00:43:27] I think from as a team perspective, like, making those kind of big decisions with the 3 of us and people you trust. Right? Those founders, the, the co founders that you trust, the partnerships that you trust, it, it, it allows you to put a feather in your cap. So not only did we get screwed over in the beginning, now we’re like, okay, like, let’s, you know, keep adding feathers as you, as you build your business because I think, like, so many things happen to us. So many, milestones are hit that aren’t just monetary.

[00:43:54] You know what I mean? Like and I think I know. Yeah. I’m so bad at celebrating that kind [00:44:00] of stuff myself, and it, I love doing stuff like this because it’s like, oh, yeah. We did that.

[00:44:04] Yvonne Heimann: Oh, yeah. I did that. Why? That happened. Oh, by the way.

[00:44:09] I love my team just started something. Actually, my right hand, Kitty, started something, and I’m loving it. Every time we are on a call, She’s like, what are you grateful for? And it, it gets, it has started this because I do the same thing where it’s like, Oh, yeah. Right.

[00:44:27] I moved from another country in the US. I finally got a message. And

[00:44:30] Lindsay Padilla: Or I wrote a book.

[00:44:32] Yvonne Heimann: By the way, that happened. Completely forgot about it.

[00:44:35] Mhmm. So it’s nice that, that one of my team members has gotten to the point of, so what are you grateful for? Let’s celebrate something.

[00:44:43] Lindsay Padilla: Mhmm. Mhmm.

[00:44:45] Yvonne Heimann: Because it’s like when we’re in it, it just it just is.

[00:44:48] Lindsay Padilla: It’s the next goalpost. Like, it’s not even yeah. Yep.

[00:44:52] Yvonne Heimann: So for all of you guys out there, course creators, educators, hack, even, even [00:45:00] audio newsletter.

[00:45:00] Everything that you don’t want publicly out there, but you are like me talking is easier than writing out. Go check out Hello Audio. Seriously, guys, It’s been fun watching you grow it. It is an amazing tool. So go check it out.

[00:45:19] Go to get Lola, go take it for a test drive without the tongue twister that I just sent your way. You guys also have a podcast. Right?

[00:45:29] Lindsay Padilla: We do. We just launched in October a public podcast on private podcasting.

[00:45:33] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah. So guys, you’re gonna find all of the links In the description, we’ll have it all ready for you. Lindsay, thanks so much for joining me. We gonna have to make this happen in person itself. Yeah.

[00:45:47] Yes. Way too long considering you’re down the street.

[00:45:51] Lindsay Padilla: Right? We’ve both been, It has been way too long.

[00:45:55] Yvonne Heimann: Thanks everybody for joining.

[00:45:56] I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Timestamps

00:00 | Introduction

05:22 | Pushing Through Challenges: Realizing Your Idea

10:58 | A Lesson In Business: Knowing Who To Trust

30:24 | Navigating Challenges In Saas Entrepreneurship

35:30 | Business Decisions: Refocusing On The Vision And The Goals