Lindsay Padilla: From Course Creator to SAAS CEO
Lindsay Padilla: CEO and Co-Founder, Hello Audio
My guest today is Dr. Lindsay Padilla. Lindsay is an ex-community college professor who accidentally started a business while on the tenure track. Now, as the CEO and co-founder of the Hello Audio software, which takes your content and creates private audio feeds to make learning on the go much easier for your people, Lindsay challenges online industry norms of unfinished courses and unconsumed content with her product.
All of her business ideas were born out of her tenure-track years teaching adults online at a community college, the ridiculous amount of learning she's done in all things education, and the years spent growing her course creation business online.
Episode Highlights
Learn how Lindsay used her knowledge as a successful online course business owner to launch her SAAS product
Hear about some of the challenges she has experienced in launching her new product and her tips on how to avoid her mistakes
Listen in to learn what to do if you're thinking about launching any new product in the marketplace and how having an audience has been the key to her success
Tune in to learn more about Hello Audio and how it can be used to get your content into your students ears.
Mentioned In This Episode
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And my special guest today is Lindsay Padilla. Lindsay as an ex community college professor who accidentally started a business while on the tenure track. Now as the CEO and co-founder of the hello audio software, which takes your content and creates private audio feeds to make learning on the go much easier
Speaker 2 (00:22):
For your people. Lindsay challenges online industry norms of unfinished courses and unconsumed content with the product. All of her business ideas were born out of her tenure track years, teaching adults online at a community college, the ridiculous amount of learning she's done in all things education and the year spent growing her course creation business online. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to dive in with this with you today.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm so excited to be here. We have somewhat of a similar background. I haven't launched us SAAS
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Product, but we were talking about that earlier and that's on my bucket list. I do have a little bit legs up on most people as my son is graduating from Georgia tech soon and he's done a couple of SAAS products, but I was like, I just got to come up with the idea. So that's on my bucket list, but why don't you take a few minutes and tell the audience a little bit more about your journey. I know it has some twists and turns in there and I think they'd be very interested in how you got into you know, launching a SAAS product from the year as a college marketing professor and then being an online course creator.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah. So actually I wasn't a college marketing professor. I taught sociology just to clarify,
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Oh, I did that about my background as a college. There you
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Go. Right? Not a lot of us out here running businesses. So fair fair. Yeah, so I taught sociology at the community college level and to be honest that was my dream job like, and my husband also was a professor of physics. And so that was our goal. That was my goal, almost my whole life. Teaching college, wasn't a goal that came a little bit later, but I knew I wanted to teach. So I don't have that story of like wanting to escape a nine to five. I actually went into being a college professor you know, really excited about it. I was really good at it. I was very good at it. And so, you know, deciding to leave that that totally happened on accident. And I, I always say, like I say, in my bio, I like accidentally started a business.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And so yeah, I mean, I really was like, for me it was the getting extra income through my multi-level multi-level marketing that I did. So that's a very common path for people to kind of start to learn about running a business online. And I remember when I had my first thousand dollar a month and I was like, oh, like, this is how you get out of debt or, you know, buy things that you need is you do new income streams. And that was kind of nothing I'd ever considered before. Especially having the job that I wanted that had great benefits, you know, it was a decent salary, but it wasn't anything to, you know, write home about for sure. So that decision to leave was actually pretty difficult. And it took me realizing that, Hey, why should I sell someone else's products?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
And, you know, only get like a 30% cut probably should be selling my own thing. And it was like listening to Chalene Johnson's build your tribe, I think. And like pat Flynn's podcast. And maybe Porterfield's when I was starting to listen to that and to improve my MLM business. That's when I got this idea about starting an online business. So fast forward, you know, once I made that decision, I thought I was going to be a health coach because my MLM was related to the health industry. And it it dawned on me when Melissa Griffin, the woman who teaches Pinterest and online marketing and stuff, she, I was sitting next to her at an event. She was asking me about helping her students finish her course. She said, if my students finished that Pinterest course, I know how much it would change their life with blogging because she taught blogging too.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And I was like, well, have you tried this? And I said, a couple of things. Cause I taught online that entire time too. So I had you know, seven years under my belt of holding online courses as well. And so I was like, oh, have you tried this? Or what about this? And she looks at me and she's like, why aren't you, you telling everybody this? And I was like, oh, these people don't know how to. Right. Like, so here comes all. I was like, okay, oh, now my life makes sense. Right. Because I did have this identity, I was going through this identity crisis where I was like, well, why did I go to school? Why'd I get a doctorate? Like, why did I do all this? If I'm going to be a health coach, like online. And so it was at that moment that I realized, oh shoot, like I'm onto something here.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And this was like April, 2016. And so that summer, which is great for teachers, we have the summer I just took a bunch of one-on-one clients and I just started getting booked out. And so by that fall I basically went into that fall knowing that that would be my last semester. And so my husband decided to come with me and that was in the fall of 2016. So we just like decided to do it. We sold everything we owned in order to kind of get that seed money for the business. Cause I didn't have like anything in savings. I wasn't like trying to leave, you know? And so yeah, and that like kind of kick-started and so for the last like five years I've been running an online course creation, consulting business. I, I built my own course. And during that process, I mean, the reason why people hire people like me, like someone to help with curriculum is, you know, they're sad that their students aren't finishing.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right? And they're like, well maybe I'm not that good of a teacher. And so I would help with their curriculum and stuff. And, and, but the reality was if the student was never signing in like never watching the videos, it doesn't matter how good of a teacher you are. You can't even get them to watch the video. And that was where the idea for hello audio came from was this idea of podcasting a course. I was like, can't we just put this in audio form. And so I could listen to it while I'm doing other things. And it was one of those ideas where you're like, someone's already done this. Like, this makes perfect sense. And you start digging and it's like, no people are cobbling together. You know, different technologies to make it work. Because obviously if it's like a $2,000 product, you don't want it on Spotify.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
So you have to like be able to protect the content. So we dove into this, like, what are private podcasts? Like, how do you protect them? How protected are they? And with a little bit of research, we realized, oh, you know, podcast hosts who have private podcasts. That's great, but it doesn't serve creators. And you know, putting a course on Libsyn's private podcast is actually really frustrating because if you have 60 videos, if you've ever loaded a podcast before it's episode by episode and they like make you do all these things, cause they think you're hosting a weekly show. Right. But when you have 60 videos that you want to turn into a podcast, you know, with, hello audio, you can do it in 15 minutes. Even if it's video we convert it for you. And so I just started to be like, oh, people like me who want to use podcasts as the delivery system are not being served by the podcast market who target podcasters. And so that was really the impetus to build it ourselves. And yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of the origin story of, of hello audio and how I got into the business world.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I can't wait to dive in to this, all of this for sure. This question is, and I wrote this down, what were you selling in the MLM industry?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Oh yeah. I was a shake ology. So I did beach body, which is also, which is such an interesting path because Chalene Johnson, right. Is this online figure. She teaches Instagram, she teaches marketing. She had like three or four podcasts. And so she was the bridge for me because she kind of was teaching me about online business, but I was doing the MLM. And so she was, you know, she had, what were her like PIO, like she had all these like famous, you know, workout videos. And so she was really the bridge that like led me into the online, online marketing space.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So I have purchased that product and
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I love shakeup. I still love it. I still, I still drink it cause it's so good.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I love that. So, and then you you know, kind of fell into helping others create online course consulting, consulting with them on how to get students to actually finish the course. And I did want to mention here because, you know, as being, I've been a college marketing professor teaching online for over 15 years now I don't do it anymore, but I did it for a long time. Right. When on courses just started and it's been difficult to get students who are getting degrees to get them to finish school, to get them to log into courses and stuff. So I think, you know, for folks out there who are struggling with this from an entrepreneurship and, you know, getting students to complete their courses, it's difficult. And one of the things that I think you kind of found in, in learn and you knew about is getting people to actually log in.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
That's one of the first hurdles. And and just, just so you know, and I, I kinda mentioned this earlier. It's a struggle that I've had in my business and I know, you know, I'm hosting a summit coming up here in September. And one of the feedback that we've gotten from summit attendees in the past is they want, they don't have time to sit at their computer all day long and watch videos during the summit. And they really want the opportunity to learn on the go while they're in the, in the car, commuting taking their kids to school or working out or walking their dog or whatever. And that's when I was like, you know what, I'm on a solution for them. And that's how it kind of how hello, audio and found you guys, because I want to be able to upload all of the summit content.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So the attendees can, you know, have that opportunity. So you know, you kind of delve into this and that's when you decided to launch your SAS product and I'm fascinated by this whole process. So can you walk us through your early days and kind of how you went about launching assess product because you're not the only online course creator that I've interviewed in the past six years who was actually launching a SAS product. So I think this is you know, kind of a natural fit for some of the course creators out there. Can you walk us through those early days and how you actually went through this process?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah. I love talking about this because what I want the audience to feel that's listening is that it's possible to do it. And actually, especially if you're a female women in tech, it's also, you know, it's, we're a minority. And I think the more women that get into tech, the better our tech products are going to be. So that's like my first thing. And so, yeah, so like I kind of mentioned, we, we did the market research, right? We w we like saw what was out there and we asked ourselves if we built this, you know, why would we build it? Who is it serving? How would our features be different than some of the competition? And so we kind of did that market analysis, and I think everyone should do something like that. I think I read a book and I'm trying to remember what it's called.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's written by a woman and it's a marketing book, so you might know it. Oh, it's like something pithy, like a cute phrase. I I'll follow up with you and share it. But there was a section about like go-to-market market strategies. And for us, we knew that there was a market being underserved. And so this was the idea of the creator who doesn't have a podcast, but could use audio as a medium for consumption for their audience. So they already have the content. They actually don't need to create anything. We're just creating an audio version. And then there's the other part, as, you know, destiny with like being in the course creation space and like interviewing people around that. The typical thing for audio right now is an MP3 file under a lesson. And that was also why we knew we had to build it is because that's so frustrating, like an MP3 file under a lesson.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
That means you have to log into every single, you have to click on every single lesson, download it to your phone, download it somewhere. The thing, if you're doing it on your phone, you don't even know where it ends up. It's not even titled the right thing. It's definitely not an order. And so that's not how people listen. They like want to listen in order easily, right? Like a playlist. That's what podcasting has figured out. And so that's why we knew we had to make it like podcasts, your course. So in the early days it was called podcaster course. And I, I want to bring up this other point too. Whenever you have an idea, because you mentioned destiny that you are thinking about starting a SAS product, you have somebody who's a developer, which is huge. That's usually the biggest hurdle. But I'll share how I got over that hurdle personally.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Cause I don't know any developers. But the SAS idea comes from like when you see other people cobbling together, a bunch of different types of technology to accomplish the same thing or like another, you know, way to think about it is if you have like a spreadsheet that does a bunch of things and you're trying to get it to do something that probably can be turned into like a software it can be automated in some way. And so if that's happening in your business or with your clients or something like zoom out and say like, Hey, is this thing that I invented in my business or this process, could this be an automated thing? Would I save people time? Would I make them money? You know, all those things that you know, you, you purchase a SAS product to do. It's like, there's a job to be done.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's like what your goal is as a SAS product. So all that to be said, if you have that idea and you're seeing that, that there is a gap and people are cobbling together things we were building private feeds manually. Okay. So my husband was writing just like some blockers to make sure they didn't show up in the right podcast player, stuff like that. And that's what we did in the early days is we basically were like, okay, is anyone going to buy this? And so this is huge. We pre-sold our product. It was called podcast, your course at the time. And I made a Facebook post and I think there were like 300 some odd comments. And we ended up selling like a hundred lifetimes and raised roughly 30 K. So when we did that, it was like, great. Now I have seed money, right.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
To find a developer, to have someone build this and what was cool about the way hello, audio works or the way I was able to sell that is okay. Basically positioned it, like, Hey, buy a lifetime license. You'll never have to pay a monthly fee. You know, do you trust me that I'm going to build this as is, you know, I was, I was basically tapping into my warm network of people who trusted me in the education space. And so I said, you know, I'm I positioned it like, Hey, wouldn't you want a podcast or a course, or your favorite, you know, online teachers, wouldn't it be awesome if their course was a podcast and people loved that. Right. And so from there we were able to sell those licenses and and then I said, Hey, if you really want us to make your feed manually, we can do it meantime.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And so we probably had 20% of the people take us up on that. Like most people were like, it's cool. I'll wait until you build it. But some people were like, no, I do want my feet going. And so we were able to create it for them. It just wasn't software. So there were some manual labor on the backend and I felt comfortable about that. Being able to sell a lifetime license that I still was able to offer value. In the meantime, while we got it built and yeah, we sold another hundred and 50 licenses. So by the end which was roughly a year of process, we sold 250 lifetime licenses and raised just about a hundred K we struggled a little bit with developers and some other situations that we had with like road co-founders and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And so it did take longer than I was expecting, but when we found the right person our, our current developer bill Bolden was able to build it in like six weeks. And so we were live in November of 2020 and and we've been selling ever since. So we have I think we have like 670 paying customers that pay us monthly and annually. And then we have those 250 lifetime license users. So my takeaway, if you're listening to this and you're in the marketing space, you're at, you're an online course grader. You're a coach, a consultant, something like that. It's totally possible to have an idea and pre-sell it lifetime licenses to raise money, to find a developer, if you're married to one or your child is one that you obviously have a little bit easier of a, of a chance to do it.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
But I want people to realize that, you know, having a developer, they have a very specific skillset and that's, what's actually really cool about being CEO of a SAS company versus, you know a course or consulting company is because that company, that personal brand I built, it was like, it all came through me. I was the person who had to execute. It was my, you know, brain and my ideas and all of that, that had to be put into something. Now it's like, I can't, I can't make the thing. I like can not make the thing happen. And I needed someone else to be able to do that. And so there's a level of separation that was really hard for me to find in my personal brand. So I'm enjoying this. But I'll say at the very beginning, when we sold that first 30 K I wasn't, I told myself I wouldn't be a tech CEO.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
We actually looked at pairing with somebody. I had somebody who was in the podcasting space for a while, say, this is a cool idea. You know, you don't have to re like reinvent the wheel. You're not going to like compete with Libsyn or anything. And I was like, oh, that's a good point. And he's like, I know a bunch of people of these podcast hosting companies, I know a bunch of the CEOs I'll put you in contact and you can get a couple meetings. And essentially what we were doing was going to partner with them and say, here's this audience in this use case, let me help you market it and get it out there. But I don't want to run that company. Yeah. Well, after a few months of talks with a couple folks, we actually almost ended up partnering with glow FM, which was recently acquired by Libsyn.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
And we decided to build it instead. It was, it was, it was moving too slow. And I also realized that to really, truly have the impact and to carry out the vision that I had, it would probably be best if I just did it. And so that wasn't decided until the pandemic basically last year or like right before the pandemic. So I avoided being a tech, you know, a SAS CEO. I didn't think I was capable. And now I'm, I'm talking to you from a tech accelerator where we got accepted into one of the top tech accelerators in the country. It's like a 2% acceptance rate. These are the top, you know, new SAS and products in the world. And we were selected and I was like, oh, we're legit. And as I sit here around other 10 other companies, I realized that actually that as a personal brand, as someone who's, you know, bootstrapped that other company, we actually know a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So that's my other thing, destiny, if you like launch a SAS product or anyone out here who's listening, if you've built a business that, that has done pretty well, like that knowledge comes with you. And I was underestimating how much I knew and learned from running this other company. And because it wasn't tech, I thought there was like this other stuff I just didn't know. And that wasn't really true. Like when you can, when you can have a company that makes, you know, roughly 500 K the last couple of years and there was no, you know, fundraising, nothing like that. And it was just all made through my knowledge, like, you know, a lot more than most startups. And so I also want to encourage people you know, a SAS product. What's great about it is it's recurring revenue. It's really sticky. There's not a ton of churn. If you do a good job with your product and it creates a great, you know, business model, it's a, it's a great business model. And so I want more women and more people to you know, get into this space and it's kind of easier than ever as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You gave us a lot there. First of all, I just want to mention, I wish I had known you way back when, when you put together that first Facebook post, where you were offering those lifetime, that lifetime membership I would have, I would have completely have bought that, but I didn't see, I didn't know you, so I completely missed out on that, but I do love what you said there. And first of all, I want to congratulate you on being in this tech accelerator, when you were, before we started recording you and I were talking you're in Ponce city market, downtown Atlanta. I know exactly where it, where it is. It's right down the road from where my son is at Georgia tech. And I know the businesses that are there, the male chants, the Pinterest, and everybody else who's in that kind of group with you. Tell us a little bit more about this tech accelerator that you were you know, that you're a part of now and how did that come
Speaker 2 (21:46):
About? Yeah, so the it's called tech stars. So it's, if you might be listening and you may have heard of like, Y Combinator, Y Combinator would be like a S like the Harvard and maybe where, like the Yale, I guess like, obviously like very competitive product. What's it called very competitive accelerator. And essentially it started with Y Combinator. I think that was the first tech accelerator ever. And I want to say that was like 15, 20 years ago. And some of the companies that have come out of there, you will know what I'm talking about. Stripe Airbnb Coinbase, I mean, huge companies. And they built that. I think Reddit came out of there. Actually, they built the tech accelerator because there were kids out there, like coming up with ideas. And it's hard in the first years to grow quickly, as quickly as you need to go.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And they wanted to pass on their knowledge. I think that Paul Graham was the person who created it. I can't remember what Paul Graham did in the tech space, but anyways, they basically created this. It's almost like a bootcamp. That's like the best way to think about it, or like a college semester where you have a, an intense three months where you're learning, you know, getting new curriculum, you're, you know, talking with mentors and people who've been there and they're helping you execute on your startup. And the whole point of a startup is to grow really quickly which is why the fundraising aspect of it. So they teach you fundraising. So it's, it's really great. It looks good to investors as well, because obviously they pick some of the top companies. And so when you go out to raise, you can say you're a Techstars back company or Y Combinator back company.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I specifically chose tech Techstars because of their values. And they Y Combinator accepts, like, I dunno, like a hundred people, a hundred companies per season, and Techstars what they do, their model is more based on cities. So we applied to be in the Atlanta program, and there's only 10 companies here. And so we get really high, intimate, like contact with the mentors in the area and the managing director and stuff like that. So it's really cool. We it's been very busy. I think this is our fourth week. And one of the things we did the last couple of weeks was something called mentor madness. And there were 80 mentors who volunteer to mentor the different companies. We interviewed them for 20 minutes each. So if you want to do the math on that, it basically took eight days to interview 80 people around 20 minutes each, it was the longest, most grueling process.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
You're basically giving your elevator pitch over and over. You're getting asked the same questions and it's just like, it was so tiring, but at the end of the day, like we actually get our, our mentors today. And it's people that can help us specifically with where my company is at and what we're working on and what we're struggling with. And so now, now heading into, right, so this finishes in about two months from now. So it's about like a 13 week process and it ends with something called demo day. And it's probably like if you ever watch Silicon valley or or in the tech scene at all at like tech disrupt, like all that stuff, like you do the pitch publicly and show off the product and then investors come up to you basically after. So that's the goal. So by the end of this, we'll have this huge presentation demo.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It's going to be done locally in Atlanta and a bunch of local investors and, and, you know, tech folks in the area we'll come and we'll be able to present kind of, you know, what hello audio is now after, after all this work we did this summer. So it's pretty cool. It's also intimidating and it's a lot but it's been exciting because our two developers are here. My other third co-founder my, my husband's a co-founder and then Nora setup is our third co-founder. So we're all gonna be together next week and just like heads down working on it. And it's just really cool to just be in this environment of like, build, build, build, like test iterate and and, and being around a bunch of other, you know, companies who are kind of doing something similar or taking this big risk has also been really cool.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So in about two, two months, you're going to have your demo day, so maybe we're maybe around like mid October. So I wish I wish you the best on that. That sounds absolutely exciting. And one of the things that I love about SAS products, which you mentioned was the recurring revenue aspect of it. But what are the things that you kinda, you touched upon when you were going through everything and, but we didn't delve into it yet. You mentioned that it all hasn't been rosy, you had some bumps along the way, maybe with your developer, or I think you even mentioned some type of person you were working with your co-founder that you mentioned. Can you talk about some of the bumps you've had and have you overcame them? Yes,
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I will. Because this could be a whole episode. But I'll try it, boil it down. So the first major issue we came across, so yeah, let me see if I can keep this. We actually had one of those initial lifetime license purchases approach us in February. So like I said, I was not going to be a tech CEO. We were going to partner with someone. I was in talks with them and in February she approached us and said I want to build this with you. I can help you. I built apps for the app store and I've managed dev teams. So she never actually built like a web software, but it doesn't matter. She had managed dev teams and like, and Derek and I had never done that. Nora had done it also, but she was not able to commit that time. And so when she approached us and said, we should just build it together, and this is why I'm like, thankful that this all happened is it made me, you know, decide to build the product.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
And so was it February of 2020
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Or 20 20, 20, 20 20. And so and yeah, we, I was like, okay. Yeah. So we had some early conversations and we went out and found a developer together. So now it was me, Derek, Nora, and this other person and fast forward to end of may and where I'm about to launch, we are launching like within a week or something, and I'm not going to get into like the interactions, but essentially she was like, essentially, she, there was an interaction in slack. And then we were actually going to split the equity have our equity meeting. And we were two weeks away from launch. And she emailed us the, or no, I'm sorry. After the interaction in slack she, well, now we look back, she created a Facebook page for her own company. And that two days after that, she deleted all the files in between, like in slack and click up and all these different places of our dev stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And she was managing the developer, like we agreed to, and we figured that out and we're like, oh, she's going to do something. She's either going to hold everything hostage so she can make sure she gets an equity percentage, or we don't know what else she could be doing. And so we knew we didn't want to work with someone who would do that. And so we just had to wait and see what she was up to. And so the day before the equity meeting, she basically wrote an email and said, I'm not going to move forward with this product, this project you know, nothing against you guys. You're all amazing people. But just so you know, I own everything. I own the features, I'm copywriting at all. I own the idea which is not copyrightable I own everything. And that moment was like the scariest thing I've ever experienced in business.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
And I've experienced a lot of scary things like we all do, but I was like, I was like panicking. And the lawyer was like, well, she can't do that because you guys built it together. That's how joint copyright works. Like, she's, she just can't claim it's hers. Like, clearly you all built this together. Not only, you know, let's all talk about how it was our idea. She bought our product, it was all Derek's, wireframes like it, you know, her involvement was just a percentage of it. And ever since then, so this happened in end of may, of last year. We basically had to start over, so we had to rebuild, find a new developer. And our lawyer was like, yeah, so she can't do that. So just write an email back saying like, Hey, that's kind of a change of plans, but all right.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
But, you know, good luck, go ahead and go be great. We're also going to keep going, cause this is, you know, our idea to kind of thing. Like it was like, you know, it wasn't saying you can't do that. It was more like we both have rights to it. Right. we both created it together. So we had to put our heads down and build, and she basically launched the product a week or two later. And luckily she doesn't have the following I have or the relationships or the trust that I've built with my customers. And so most people had no idea. And she's been sending a cease and desist and really crazy stuff ever since. So for the last year I've been kind of fighting it and I stayed quiet the entire time because my lawyer was like, well, you could make a public post about it, but guess what?
Speaker 2 (31:24):
She's the one who has the product. So you're going to draw attention and like send people to her product. And I was like, perfect. So we're not going to do that. And so we just had to ignore her basically. And that was so hard because it's like, you want to just tell people you know, she wrote a fake about page that said she came up with it all by herself. Like, I mean, I mean, just like the most gut wrenching things where you're just watching a thing that you made, someone's pretending it was all them and she's still active. She still is selling her product. She pretends she has patent pending things and it's just, it's all, I, I finally made a public post about it on the anniversary a year on May 27th. I made my own Facebook post and Chronicle the whole journey because I felt like it was, it was less about revenge at that point and more about letting people know what happened to me and to us and what we went through this last year.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And I think if I had made a post, when it first happened, it would have been very revengeful. And just like, I hate this person. And, and the reality is, is like, I'm very grateful. Like it, not only did we like push through it, and that was really hard, scary, but, you know, she made me believe that I could do this. And I don't think I would have otherwise. So she played her part and that's really important to like recognize. And so it's also the quintessential, like marketing thing where someone who doesn't have an audience but has a product, and then we have the audience, but no product. And we actually built the right team, like if she had trusted us and didn't panic it was actually the right team to like get it to market. But you know, and the other thing I like to think about with her too, is like, something probably happened to her in her career where she thought she wasn't getting, you know, recognized or something.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And so she panicked and was like, this is mine. I'm going to do it. And so, you know, hurt people, hurt people. Like, that's the only way I like, and it's hard for me to think about like what made her decide that like, I don't, there's so much like that I has not had a lot of closure. So I, you know, we have a mantra now, if the team like heads down, build, like don't pay attention to that kind of stuff, because it can really throw you for a loop build what the product you want to build. And that's kind of been our mantra since, so yeah, the, the, and then we had another developer that didn't work that summer. So and it felt scary. Cause I felt like every month she was out there trying to find customers was like, oh my God, what if she blows up?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Or some major partner comes on board or something like that. Like, that's what I was so worried about. And I couldn't build it any faster. And then we had somebody build it and it wasn't good. And we basically had to fire them. And then we luckily found bill and bill was able to build it in like six weeks. And so, you know, it's just, we, she was out since June, June, and we went live in November. So that was how long I had to like, wait to see, you know what I mean? Like it was just so much unknown and it felt like a race, but the reality was is there wasn't really a race because it's always been our product and our passion and our vision, not hers. And so, you know we just kind of had to dig our heels in on that and hope that that was true.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
So Lindsay, my heart breaks for you and everything that you went through, but I will say that this does highlight, and this is a good lesson for all of us out there. This does highlight the importance of having an audience because the audience in an engaged audience and you know exactly what they need, you can build what they're looking for. And that is such a learning. I think for me, as I listened to your story we're not going to bring attention to her, so I'm not going to ask you or anything like that, but that is one thing that kinda jumped out to me as you were going through that. Is there anything you have done differently knowing what you know today?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah. There were some red flags in the process of working together and, but we didn't, it felt like we didn't have a choice and that is never true. Like you always have a choice. And so I looked back there was definitely some red flags. The other thing I would say is like get stuff in writing. So, you know, me and my husband like, okay, you're, you're going into business with your partner. Something could happen, but like that's very different. And then Nora, I had known for a very long time and like had done test products together, unlike we've been meeting weekly for a really long time. So I actually really trusted her. And then here comes this person that I actually didn't know very well and, you know, on paper and in interactions, it was like, oh, this is a good compliment. We need this, we need her skillset.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
And so it felt good, but we didn't really like sure. We signed really lame like NDAs, right? Like NDAs that don't very much stand up in court or anything like that. So, but we didn't like write down like, Hey, if this partnership ends or something happens, like, what do we do with the code or blah, blah, blah. If we had written that she would've had to hand over the code to us because it would have been in writing that we both can go out and create it then, or like, or Nora to like even this person that I trust really well, like let's say Nora wanted to leave. She could either leave because she doesn't want to be a part of the product or, you know, what happens to the thing that the entity, that piece, the, the, the content, the thing that we create together, the asset, what happens to that?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And it could be that everyone still has rights. It could be, no one has rights, you know, so we didn't write that down. So that was like the biggest issue. And that would be my recommendation to anyone going into a partnership is get in writing. Like if it goes south, because not that it will, but you just want that protection there and listened to your gut. And, you know, if, if something feels a little off or you're not quite sure don't feel like you have to do anything because you have choices. Like, absolutely. And if we, we had a conversation with her about an incident that came up and it's just like, dang, we were about to go into business with this person. And so maybe it's not, you know, like, like when your gut says that, like you should trust it.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And I think that's some great advice is getting everything in writing and I'm sure lawyer, your lawyer has definitely helped you with that. Going forward. So let me ask you this. What do you see as next steps for hello, audio? I know you're, you know, in the middle of this tech incubator, this tech accelerator that you're, you're working in, you're going to be there for the next two months. What do you see as next steps after that? It's
Speaker 2 (38:27):
A great question. That's they were actually like nailing down that vision for demo day. We do want do a seed round early next year as well. And you know, so we do want to build an iOS app that is going to initially focus on the creation part. So you can record something for your feed really quickly and then send it to hello, audio like instantly. So that'll be really cool. And we're actually releasing a bunch of new features really soon, and we're kind of creating the world's first listener relationship management system. So when you think of like a CRM, a customer relationship management system, something like MailChimp or like active campaign, we're doing that with listeners and we're doing some really cool things where you can segment the people who sign up for your feeds and you can tag them and you can have automations happen on the backend, like sign them up for a different feed or send them a bonus episode.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
We also have dynamic content, which we just released. So like, we're kind of moving into this idea of, you know yeah. Like knowing who's listening to your, your podcasts and being able to manage them and have other conversations with them. And I think the vision which we could be walking into is more of a two way communication system as well. But we have to grow into that. We're definitely not there yet. And I think the other piece too, is we're going to explore what it looks like to get into college classrooms as well. Not like going to Stanford and saying, Hey, you know, here's an app and like have all the things here, but more actually doing a bottoms up approach and, and talking to other professors and seeing if they want to use it in their classroom. So we'll be doing kind of some testing towards the end of the year around that too, to see if there, there is an audience or a play there as well, just because that's so near and dear to my heart. And I know that space really well, and I could absolutely see my lectures, you know, in the ears of my students, like before studying for a final, like walking across campus, commuting to campus it it's just so much more accessible than signing into, you know, Blackboard or something like that. So yeah, so that's kind of like where, what we're envisioning.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I love all of that. And I love the niche that you may be kind of pursuing, you know, bottoms up with the college professors. Cause I could definitely see a need for that. So my closing question here is you know, I mentioned to you earlier that you're not the first online course creator or somebody who's been an online business kind of doing what we've been doing and doing a lot of what our listeners are doing today who have kind of moved into the SAS product. I talked to one a few months ago and she, I'm not gonna mention her or give away what she's doing, but it is, she has something that's fantastic on the horizon. So you're not the first person I've talked to that is kind of gone into this, but what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs out there who may have been in the course creation space or they've launched a membership or some type of online course, and they want to kind of move into this, this tech SAS product. What, what advice would you give to
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Them? Yeah. definitely do your market research, think about the positioning in the market, cause that matters because that's how you're going to basically show people like what you align with. I heard early on in, in that space, like the, you know, how to, how you talk about what you do is choose your enemies wisely as well. And what that means is if we're, if our enemies, our podcast, hosting companies, other podcast, hosting companies that basically attaches us and that comes with a whole bunch of other assumptions about podcasts. And so we're still even playing with that as well. So just, just thinking about what you bring to the market, when you create your product, a big mistake that happens in this space is building something first because you have a technical person who's really good at that, but not having the validation that anyone would want it.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
So we see over and over again, even, even in the startup space, people get, you know, tens of millions of dollars like handed to them with an idea, and then it turns out no one actually wants it. Right. And they don't sell it and they go under it. That's very, very common. So if you have this marketing background, you know, really well that pre-selling something validates it. And so then you don't put in that energy and effort prior to getting the buy-in. And so I did that and I didn't realize it was rare in the spot in the SAS space. So I would, you know, have yourself, if you are thinking and you do have an idea, you know, float it on a Facebook post, float it on, you know, IgG, you know, stories or something like that and see what people are saying. And that's huge because then you don't dump all this money and time into something that isn't actually
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Thank you for all that device. And Lindsey, can you let everybody know where they can find hello audio and where they can connect with you?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah. So at hello audio you can go to hell audio.fm and we are hello, audio FM on all the major social media sites. So like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And if you want to find me personally, I'm, I'm pretty much on Instagram is kind of where I hang out, not so much in the feed, but more in stories and DMS. So I'm at Dr. Lindsay Pedea right there.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
And I want to let the audience know if you want to check out how hello audio works from a user perspective, I will be using hello, audio to liver, our summit information or summit presentations. And that has taken place in our scalar business summit in September. So definitely check that out. I do have a wait list for the summit because the page is not up yet, but if you want to get on the wait list, go ahead and do that. We will be taking registrations for the summits about two weeks before the summit starts, which is September 13th. And Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
I can't wait to see. Yeah, same. I can't wait to see how your summit turns out. That's like one of my favorite use cases for audio, cause it's just so much content and it just makes it so much more accessible. So I'm excited to watch you from afar and see that, that success.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
And thank you. Thanks for being here today. Of course. Thank you.