Omer (00:10.000)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Michael Kansky, the founder of Live Help Now, a customer support platform that provides small businesses with help Desk, Live Chat, and more.
In 1997, Michael immigrated to the US from Ukraine as a refugee.
To help himself get a job, he signed up for a computer programming course.
As a final project, he built a dating website, and over time, people started using the site.
At one point, he got to around a thousand users.
When a user asked Michael for an easier way to communicate with other users, Michael built a basic chat feature, which he also started using to support end users.
In 2005, he realized there was a growing opportunity with Live Chat.
So he took what he'd learned and launched a new product.
But it was a complete hobby.
Michael had no business plan or customers.
He just loved building the product and seeing people use it.
Eventually, four years later, in 2009, he started charging for his Live Chat product, and about a third of his customers switched to a paid plan, which generated around 10k in MRR.
Today, Michael has bootstrapped his business to over $3 million a year.
But it took him 12 years to get there.
And for the last four years, revenue has been flat.
We often hear stories of entrepreneurs who launch a product, spend no money on marketing, and hit their first million dollars almost overnight.
But that's not the experience for the majority of SaaS founders.
Michael's story is about the reality and the long, hard slog that most founders have to go through to find success.
In this interview, we talk about the realities of building a SaaS business, the big lessons Michael's learned along the way, and what he's doing to start growing his business again.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Kansky (02:30.070)
Thank you.
Thank you, Omer.
It's an honor to be here.
I'm a big fan.
Omer (02:34.340)
Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?
Michael Kansky (02:38.260)
I do.
It's not very inspiring.
It's pretty basic.
My quote is.
It is what it is.
So I use it almost every day.
Omer (02:46.420)
Why?
Why is that important to you?
Michael Kansky (02:49.939)
Because, you know, sometimes I find myself, or used to find myself getting hung up on things that are just not outside of my control.
I can't control everything.
There are situations I cannot control.
There are people I cannot Change.
So I tend to drop it right there by saying it is what it is.
Life's too short, just move on.
Love it makes me happier.
Omer (03:15.890)
So tell us about LiveHelp now for people who don't know about the product, just tell us, what does the product do, who is it for, and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?
Michael Kansky (03:26.690)
So LifeHelpNow is an omnichannel customer support platform enabling call centers of all size to connect with customers on any channel they prefer.
We cover every single channel here at Life up now, whether it's chat, email, text, voiceover, ap, self help knowledge base, AI powered chatbots, social media integrations, you name it, we got it.
So whatever customers, the desire to contact the brand on whatever channel, whether it's chat or text or social media, this will all come into one easy to use platform for operators to respond to the target audience.
For us are senior leaders in customer service organization, centric organizations that value the power of enabling customer service agents to be the best they can be in their jobs.
So the ones that are looking for a software that would enable agents to be the best they can be by giving them tools to be the best they can be.
And that's what we do.
Omer (04:42.490)
Awesome.
So the company was founded in 2005 and tell us in terms of like how many customers do you have and where are you in terms of revenue?
Michael Kansky (04:53.690)
So currently we are 2,500 customers and revenue is over $3 million yr.
Omer (05:01.050)
Awesome.
So let's go back and I want to kind of uncover the story and how all of this started, but I think that we should probably go back to around 97 when you first arrived in the US so just help people sort of set the scene because that, that was kind of an interesting time and I think there was a few things that really sort of set the scene for you starting to build this business then.
Michael Kansky (05:34.140)
Yeah, so.
So in 1997 I immigrated from, from Ukraine as a refugee.
And before I immigrated I kind of got a gene of loving the computer, the personal computer.
And I think it came from my mom, who was just a brilliant mathematician, working with really large IBM machines, with punch cards, and then later with personal computers.
So I just loved computers.
So when I arrived to the United States in 97, I immediately enrolled myself into accelerated computer course, computer programming course, seven months accelerated course.
And at the end of which the teacher said, said to us, you guys are ready, go find yourself a job.
But before you do, why don't you create some, you know, practice application, practice website, Just for the hobby, just to practice your skills before you apply for a job.
And so I picked, well, let me just create a dating website.
So I created dating website and used doorman of some kind of directories or some other means to grow it to a thousand users.
And those a thousand users started asking me for other features.
One of them was, you know, we would like to communicate with each other.
Why don't you put in some kind of chat tool into the platform?
Which I did.
And then the next thing I thought, well, if they like to talk to each other, it would be great if they could also talk to me to website operator to see what kind of things are maybe broken or maybe things that they would recommend for us to improve upon.
So I repurposed the same chat tool for them to be able to chat with me.
And the next thing, obviously the thought was if I like it, if I find it useful to talk to my website users, I'm sure there are other website operators would find it useful as well.
Omer (07:31.130)
So when you sort of went through that program and you started to learn to code, what language were you working with?
Michael Kansky (07:36.410)
It was Visual Basic, asp.net in IIS powered languages.
Omer (07:44.170)
And then so the dating website you built, that was like a net.
Michael Kansky (07:48.410)
Yes, got it.
Omer (07:50.570)
That's not bad.
Getting 1000 users for a website you just kind of built.
Michael Kansky (07:57.460)
Yeah, everything was easy in 98 though.
Yeah, 98, 99.
Marketing was really easy.
Omer (08:03.660)
Yeah, there weren't that many websites around.
So you've got this site built and at one point it took several years before this turned into from a dating site to a chat application, right?
Michael Kansky (08:22.830)
Correct.
Essentially in 2005 is when I decided that, let me, let me take the code that I built for this application for the chat application for website users, talk to website operators.
Let me take it out of there and morph it into another product, which is what I did in 2005.
Omer (08:44.670)
And then for between 2005 and 2009, you weren't making any money from this app.
It was basically a free product and kind of like a side project for you, Right.
Michael Kansky (08:58.760)
It was a complete hobby.
There was no business plan, no revenue model, no capital.
It was only me in my basement working at night to build it and my understanding wife that understood that if I want to do it, let me do it.
So the company, the website that I essentially eventually published this product under was called Zaza Chat.
Z A Z A Chat.
The name came from one of the first words that my first son used.
He kind of kept repeating the word zaza So I just went with a zaza, zaza chat.com and that was the first live chat product.
Omer (09:37.980)
That's awesome.
So what kept you going for those four years?
What was the driver to.
To come home and kind of lock yourself away in the basement and work on this product?
You weren't making money.
It wasn't like you were sort of, you know, setting out and saying, okay, I'm gonna turn this into a business in the next year or something.
So what was the motivation in those four years?
Michael Kansky (10:05.280)
It's just such a great question, but very unexpected one.
I was never asked this before.
It was obviously not money because it wasn't making any.
It was, I guess it was the fascination and self fulfillment and just instant gratification of building a feature that is immediately consumed by a user on the other end.
And you get feedback almost immediately.
So you build in this product for then maybe in 2005, maybe it was 10 companies or 15 companies using it, and you're building this feature upon feature upon feature, specifically upon those users requesting this particular functionality.
And then you get feedback almost immediately.
Oh, that's cool.
This is exactly what we wanted.
Awesome.
Great job, Michael.
So I think that's, you know, self fulfillment is probably was the motivator there.
Purpose.
Yeah, sorry.
Omer (11:16.180)
Right.
Yeah.
I think a lot of developers are like that, that, you know, it's about.
You want to, you want to build something that, that creates value, that helps people.
And it's this fulfillment from just creating something and being able to write code that you can see a problem and I can create a solution that solves it.
The next part of that is if you have people actually using the product, even if they're not paying for it, that on its own keep.
Keeps you moving forward.
And obviously, you know, it'd be great if we all got paid for that work, but for a lot of people, I think.
Yeah, exactly.
That's not, that's not where it starts.
Michael Kansky (11:53.760)
Not for me.
It wasn't for me for sure.
Yeah, but you, you completely nailed it.
I think that's exactly what it was.
Omer (12:00.560)
So in 2009, this is four years later, of, of kind of working on this as a hobby, you decided to start charging for the product.
Michael Kansky (12:09.970)
Well, I was, I was sort of forced to charge because in 2009, it cost me personally about $40,000 a year to run it with all these server costs and bandwidth and you name it.
So at that point I had a kind of decision to make.
Either I will sell the idea to someone who will make it a Business which I had absolutely no experience in how to make it a business, the company zero or I will at least try before I sell it to someone else to turn it into a freemium model.
And that's what I did.
I turned it into a freemium model.
I remember as it happened, like it happened yesterday, I flipped the switch and Zaza Chat became a free product with limited functionality and paid product was unlimited functionality.
And I flipped the switch around 8:00pm at 9:00 clock, about a third of at that point it was about 800 websites using the product.
Third of them were happy to pay the paid subscription.
At which point you can consider it in one hour success because in one hour I knew I no longer have to consult, I no longer have to work for someone else.
I had enough income to make it a primary source of income.
Omer (13:29.360)
What did that convert to in terms of MRR at the time?
What we were able to hit?
Michael Kansky (13:33.760)
Yeah, about 120, 120Mrr per month.
Omer (13:38.480)
Awesome.
Michael Kansky (13:39.040)
That's what it turned into.
Yep.
And again, sorry, per year?
Yrr.
I'm sorry.
Omer (13:44.080)
Okay.
Michael Kansky (13:44.600)
About 10,000.
10,000amonth.
Omer (13:47.120)
And this was, I mean this wasn't like overnight success.
This was four years of working on the product before you got to this point.
Michael Kansky (13:58.230)
But no complaints.
It's still fun.
Omer (14:04.070)
How did you figure out what to charge at the time?
Michael Kansky (14:07.430)
Yeah, and I know you, you like to ask about mistakes.
That was probably one of the mistakes that I've made is the pricing the product.
Because when I price the product, I approached it from my perspective.
So I was a consultant, programmer, consultant for the companies making, I don't know, 120, 130,000 a year or so.
So I thought what would I pay for a product like this?
What would not hurt my wallet?
So that's how I approached pricing this solution.
And I ended up priced in too low because of that.
So instead my recommendation for companies out there that are at that stage when they would like to think about pricing is first of all, it's better to price high than low because you can always go down and it's very hard to go up.
So what I should have done is I should have asked those 200 users, 200 websites or 800 at that point, that use the product.
How do you value this product?
What would you pay for it?
What value does it produce to you?
What do you gain out of it?
Which features do you use?
Which features you don't use?
That's what I should have started and not just rushed into, hey, let's just price it with 20 bucks per month.
I think it's good enough.
Omer (15:25.410)
Yeah.
So 20 bucks, mentally for you was the ceiling.
And so you were like, well, if I charge 25, I feel uncomfortable with that.
I wouldn't pay that.
So I'm going to stick with a number that I'm comfortable with.
Michael Kansky (15:41.030)
It was a mistake.
Yeah.
Omer (15:42.870)
Okay, so that means you've got how many customers?
It was a few hundred customers by that time that were 200.
Michael Kansky (15:48.016)
200 customers?
Yep.
2009.
Okay.
Omer (15:51.030)
And then how did you find more customers and how did you grow the business?
Because, you know, when we were talking about this before we started recording, you were just saying, look, you know, I didn't have a strategy.
I'm not sure I have much to teach here.
And when we started to unpack it, it was like, well, I think there's a lot of people who are in the situation that you were in then they can build a great product.
They're driven by it, they'd love to generate some revenue from it, but they don't really know much about marketing and they're not really sure where they should find those customers.
And I think it was just really interesting because you just tried a bunch of stuff, right?
Michael Kansky (16:30.190)
Tried everything under.
Under the sun.
Yeah, everything imaginable and unimaginable.
So the first 100, 200 clients came from a listing Zaza Chat as a free live chat software on a website called tech bargains.com so to give you an idea who, for whoever doesn't know what tech bargains are, Tagbargons.com is the aggregate for any kind of promotions out there on Best Buys, Amazon.com, walmart.com, whatever products are on sale.
Majority at that time were in computer space like PCs from Dell, software packages installable.
So that's what Tech Bargains were.
And I basically sent them an email and said, tech Bargains, I have this zazachat.com that is a free live chat software.
Why don't you list it for your users?
It's completely free.
And they did.
And they kept Zaza Chat on the first page for a day, which produced about 200, 250 clients that probably wouldn't be surprised if they still with us.
So that's kind of one of the tactics.
There was no strategy.
I want to be clear now at this point of my career, I understand the value of strategy to be strategic on your marketing stack, strategic on your sales outside, strategic in the product development and all the other facets of the Business then I was purely tactician.
So here's the website where people go that, that could potentially be my customers.
Let me put the website there or link there.
So that was kind of a tactic.
Omer (18:12.800)
When you told me about techbargains.com and we sort of looked it up earlier, I was like, are you sure this is a site?
I mean the latest deal was like Lysol disinfectant spray.
And I was like.
But now I just kind of refresh the page and there's a bunch of things like phones and laptops and stuff like that.
So how did you even find this site?
Michael Kansky (18:34.630)
Because I was a shopper myself, so that's where I would look for coupons and promotions for PCs that I need to buy or TVs I need to buy.
So I knew the site and I knew it was popular.
So that was basically going on a limb there and you know, shooting to see what sticks, you know, and then it gets stuck.
So they did work.
But again those are small gains.
But the beginning stages when you just need customers, like no matter how they, what the source of the customer is, you just need to get customers.
I think it's good to do whatever it is in your, in your disposal to, to get customers, including tagbargains that come.
Omer (19:18.330)
Did you have to like significantly like discount the product or you just sold it for 20 bucks a month like you were doing on the, on your own website.
Michael Kansky (19:27.690)
I just sold it for 20, did not have to discount.
You talk about Zaza Chat, correct?
At the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was, it was three for four years and then didn't have to discount.
Just, just I think it was $20 per month for all the features that the product was offering.
And that was the pricing model.
Omer (19:47.120)
You also used a bunch of review directories to find customers.
So tell me about what your experience was there and which type of sites you used.
Michael Kansky (19:57.200)
Yeah.
So in 2011 I decided that Zaza Chat was just not strong enough brand, just name wise.
So I granted in 2011 to a company what it is now is live out now.
And I basically run two companies.
Live up now was kind of a new entity and other chat was still coexisting with this new life of now entity even though they were sharing the code base.
So I had to grow life up now somehow.
So I went to my roots of being a good, good enough tactician and I found a company which I think was one of the first, if not the first review powered directory site.
What there are many now like G2 and Capterra and Software Advice and others.
So top 10 reviews was the directory then in the late 2000s that I offered to review Live up now and they agreed and they reviewed Life Up Now.
They tested the software up and down and they listed Life Up now as number one help desk solution on the market.
Then it was 2011 that basically started Lifehop now essentially an hour later after that listing went live, we gained about a thousand clients within three months of that listing going live.
Omer (21:26.090)
Paying customers?
Michael Kansky (21:27.140)
Yes, paying customers.
And that we talked about it before interview that social proof that was so important then and ever more so important now.
With when the companies or purchasing managers are shopping for a particular software package, they will be sure to visit those directory sites where you have those reviews for software packages such as G2, software advice and Capters.
It's just, in my opinion there are just too many of them now.
And I hope for any some kind of consolidation happen or maybe business model will change in some of them.
Because right now in order for you to compete, you will have to pay essentially individually to all of those websites separately to be listed anywhere closer to the top and be found.
Omer (22:22.300)
Yeah, because there's review sites like Capterra, G2 and you know, the others, they can be a great place to find leads, customers and so on.
But it becomes a problem over time because they start to, number one, they start to compete with you because they're trying to get the same traffic from whether it's SEO or ppc.
And so they're bidding for the same keywords and they're trying to drive people who are looking for Help Desk software to their site instead of your site.
And then the other challenge you have is that over time you get more and more products listed there and it becomes harder for people to find your product in that listing.
And then they're charging you to have higher placement in there because they're showing the paid listings first.
So you almost get to the point where it's like, can I even acquire a customer profitably here?
Probably not.
Michael Kansky (23:34.910)
Yeah.
And that's why I'm just a big fan of you as a person.
I couldn't say it better.
You nailed.
You nailed it perfectly.
How do you compete when you just one of hundreds on the page?
It becomes very hard because you're, it's.
It's no longer about you having a listing, it's now something else.
Because once someone clicks within G2 on your profile and gets redirected to your website, you almost have to be so different, vastly different to any anybody else listed on the same page.
So you, you attract enough attention for them to at least to consider you and give, give you a try.
And it becomes very hard because we are, you know, as you know, in help desk space.
There are hundreds of companies and we all can say we do this and we do that just like them.
It's, it becomes a kind of a me too world.
Me too, me too.
Me too.
So you end up looking for that differentiator, all elusive differentiator almost instantly and sometimes you never find one.
Omer (24:47.150)
Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum to be in.
What else did you do apart from review directories to find customers?
Michael Kansky (24:57.070)
Yeah, so.
And that's why I said that's very little to teach the whole life of now growth, the entire growth came from organic tactical methods.
We had no sales team, we had no customer success team ever.
We had very little.
If the marketing department had just started a year ago, was two people hired.
So there was no marketing department.
So.
And that's kind of a cool story with 3 million yr achieved with absolutely no marketing, no sales and purely tactics.
So the other things that we did is SEO.
So obviously searching optimization was a key for a long time until recently.
And the tactic there was finding long tails that are worth putting a pillar page functionality around.
So I don't know if you know what pillar pages are.
It's a really good tactic.
There's a lot of content around it online.
But basically if you'd like to promote green shoes, if you're selling green shoes, then you would create this, what we call pillar page that will have everything about green shoes.
It will be focused on green shoes.
And then you would put six or the more the merrier, but maybe six to 12 blog posts around it promoting that page.
So the green shoes becomes the top page.
It's a very effective tactic even today, very reasonably, in a reasonable amount of time, within three months, you can promote a more or less competitive term to be on top of Google by using this functionality.
Omer (26:35.350)
Yeah, because I think what a lot of people do with SEO is they'll sort of figure out, okay, I need to target a particular keyword like help desk software.
And then they'll try to create some kind of content targeting that.
And then the pillar page, as you just said, sort of takes it up a level where you can basically say, I want to have one page which is kind of like my landing page for help desk software, and then all the other content that I create.
If I've got 100 blog posts which cover all kinds of things Whether it's Help Desk software or some maybe long tail type keywords, I'm going to have internal links all pointing back to this one page which tells Google when it comes to Help Desk software, this is the one page that's most important.
Michael Kansky (27:24.600)
Exactly, exactly.
Omer (27:26.040)
It's interesting because I think that still works to some degree because it's not really a hack.
I mean it's basically you're kind of making it easier for someone to discover all the content that you have about a particular topic.
And it seems to be something that Google likes as well.
Michael Kansky (27:48.770)
Exactly.
Omer (27:50.290)
And so how well did that work and for how long did that work?
Michael Kansky (27:57.890)
So it worked really, really well.
Again, organic growth from 2009 to 2017.
In 2017 it was like a switch and the company growth just stopped.
So from 2017 to 2021 today if you look at our yrr, it's just gonna, it's just gonna be amazing.
Year after year it's, we are within 10,000 on yrr plus minus.
So it's just the company is completely stagnant at this point.
We have very little churn.
We always had very, very little churn.
So that's what kind of saving us right now from shrinking.
But we are stagnant and stagnation is because, you know, tactics work only for so much, you know, for so long.
When you start up, I probably, you know and I started other companies from life up now, from the days of life up now, other companies where I also use this type of tactics and they perfectly, in my opinion they perfectly fine for startup when you just want to get customers.
But at some point in the company life cycle you have to think strategy and I kind of missed that boat.
So right now, only now within six months, I focus on strategy.
We brought in a very talented CEO, Jason o' Neill who is just incredible.
So he's just completely taking all the to do's that I have to do on daily basis and just does them.
So now I have free time and growth and vision.
So CEO is taken care of.
We never had customer success.
We hired now customer success team was extremely talented, talented lady from Barcelona that will lead our customer success.
We hired two inbound and two outbound salespeople this month and we restructured the entire team to have very clear organizational chart with very clear accountability objectives.
So those pieces did not exist from 2009 to today.
So it's 12 years of company just growing with no strategy.
There's no marketing plan, there's no sales plan, there's no revenue model and reaching 3 million yr, which is, it's a good story.
But the lesson here is you can do those tactics at the beginning to get customers and get traction, but once you do, keep your eyes on the ball and strategize.
Omer (30:33.000)
So 2017 you were doing about 3 million ARR, and 2021 you're doing about the same.
Michael Kansky (30:44.050)
Exactly.
Omer (30:45.250)
So you said, you know, tactics can only take you so far and you know, you have to try other stuff.
And obviously now you're putting, you're building a team and an infrastructure around you and kind of positioning yourself to now grow the business and you know, get it to the next milestone, whether it's 5 or 10 million.
And it'll be interesting for us to follow up and see how that goes.
But looking back, I want to try and unpack.
Why do you think that happened?
Aside from, I mean even the tactics, like, you know, surely there were tactics in the last four years that you could have kept trying that would have maybe not grown the business massively, but maybe, you know, by a couple of percent every month.
So what, what happened?
I want to try and understand what are the lessons here from like why it was flat and also why nothing has worked in the last four years.
Michael Kansky (31:49.650)
Yeah, I think I have a good understanding of what it is.
I probably will gain more insight as I as we implement this new strategies.
But I think because of how flat the organization always was with me at the top, the visionary, the doer, the order taker and order placer and then everybody else under me, that flat organizational chart, it's not even a chart, it's just I don't know what to call it.
It just locked me up so much in just daily tasks of if, if you have a question, if you don't know how to proceed, ask Michael.
If you don't know what to do here, ask Michael.
If you don't know which feature to develop and how to do it, ask Michael.
And that kind of limited or removed, deemed completely inaccessible my ability of be the visionary, be the grower of the business.
And I think that's what stopped the growth.
And if I was to follow the advice, which I know you're going to ask me later, what was the best advice?
I think that was the best advice is hard.
General manager.
Why are you managing all these people?
Why are you managing your marketing department, your development department, you everything, your customer success, your developer, your CEO, your CEO and CMO and every everything else, why you do it?
Why are you torturing yourself?
Get a general manager, good general manager and who can free you up of all those daily tasks so you can focus on business and growing business.
I think that was the best advice they only now followed.
And the reason I didn't follow it before is because that horrible habit of if you want to do something right, if you want to get something done right, do it yourself.
And I think that's what prevented me from letting go and actually finding person like what I found now to let go and tell him to deal with this for me.
And I don't know if you have time for a joke, but it's a really good joke.
You can cut it out later.
Omer (34:04.350)
Tell me.
Michael Kansky (34:05.550)
It's about a hiker that hikes and falls down the cliff and manages to hold on to a vine.
So he, he, he hangs on that vine, barely, and he cries out, is there anyone there?
Please help me.
Is there anyone there?
And there's a voice in the sky.
Yes, I'm here.
You can let go.
Who is this?
Who is this?
This is God.
You can let go.
And the hiker thinks and says, is there anyone else there?
So that's me, you know, the one guy, kind of entrepreneur, holding on all the minds in the business, preventing it, suffocating it.
Omer (34:48.900)
So deep down you knew what you needed to do, but actually doing it
Michael Kansky (34:53.140)
wasn't easy, was challenging.
Yes.
And I'm sure there are other people like me.
And again, I'm not the one to teach.
I'm just letting go now after 12 years.
So you should have led, you know, But I.
Kudos to people who knew that this is important earlier because you probably are running now much larger businesses than I do.
Yeah.
Omer (35:18.990)
I think one path was to hire a general manager, which is kind of what you went down.
The other one would have been to kind of evolve into a different role and you playing the role of the CEO.
Michael Kansky (35:33.410)
Correct.
Omer (35:33.970)
But I think it's important.
A lot of the times we sort of assume, okay, I'm the founder, I'm going to build this business and then I'm going to be the CEO.
And it's important to have self awareness about, not only about your skills and your strengths and all of that stuff, but also what are the things that energize you?
What are the things that are easier for you to do than other people?
And maybe the CEO role isn't right because there's other stuff that you could be doing and you could be doing better, but you have to let go.
And I think just knowing yourself to know what's right for you and not just following the path that you see, everybody else sort of seemingly do is kind of a really important part of this completely.
Michael Kansky (36:31.990)
Couldn't agree more.
Couldn't agree more.
Omer (36:34.550)
Now, the other thing I want to ask you, and I want to understand if this was also a factor to you kind of hitting a plateau with growth, was that sort of happened around 2017.
Two years before that, in 2015, you started a second company.
Michael Kansky (36:55.590)
Right.
Omer (36:56.550)
So that's called Help Squad.
That's not a SaaS business.
I don't think we need to potentially like, go into a bunch of detail there.
But how much do you think starting that second business compounded the problems that you started to see from 2017?
Michael Kansky (37:12.470)
I think it had a tremendous effect on this.
And you know, Jason, our new CEO, him and I talked about it on many occasions.
I think that was catalyst for closing the growth trajectory in 2017 because there wasn't just one company.
So the reason now, thinking back, the reason I started this, not only HubSquad, but other four companies besides Life up now, is because I thought, well, Life up now is kind of not growing that much anymore.
Let me start another company and that will induce the growth.
So, okay, and then I'm going to start another one to grow even more.
So instead of focusing on what was working, which was Life up now, which, which is the heart and, and the money maker, instead of focusing on that, putting all my energy to that business to grow it, I decided to start a new company.
And that's.
That would be the.
The catalyst for growth, which in the hindsight, out of four companies that I started, Hubsquad is very successful.
So maybe it wasn't such a bad decision.
You know, it's yet.
Yet to see, but I think you're absolutely right.
Me, now I have six, I'm a CEO in six different companies at once, while being actively involved operationally in at least three of them.
So how it's like having three kids and I do have three boys, which I love, and I know it's hard without my wife wouldn't be able to manage them.
So now you managing three kids, of course the growth will be affected, which it did.
Omer (38:58.490)
Yeah.
And I guess when you started help squad in 2015, live help now was still growing.
So it wasn't like slower.
Yeah, yeah, but, but yeah.
I mean, had it slowed down enough like, okay, here's a thing I want to kind of figure out is in 2015, did you start Help Squad because you just entrepreneurial kind of, you know, shiny object chase it.
I got this new idea.
I'm going to go and build this thing?
Or was it because you saw already the slowdown in growth in, in Live Help now and you didn't believe that there was much more, that maybe this was it, this is where it was going to go.
And maybe, you know, I should go and focus on something else because we see that all the time.
It's like, you know, you, you kind of build a pro, somebody builds a product, they get it out there and they get a little bit of traction, but it stops at like 10k mrr and then they're like, okay, that's about it.
So maybe I'll go and build another product now and maybe I'll do this.
And that might be the right thing.
But in many cases, if you just focus on that one thing and again, go back to what you said about the pricing at the beginning, if you didn't mentally put the ceiling in your own head of where this business can be, maybe the opportunity is much bigger.
So which of those was it for you in terms of what drove you to start Help Squad around that time?
Michael Kansky (40:26.470)
It was a compound effect of all those factors because Lifehopao is not growing as fast as it did in 2012, 15 or 11, and Lifehopnow is now not one of five companies out there, but one of 50 companies out there basically providing the same software.
Also, me being the entrepreneurial at heart, listening to customers, which I really love doing, telling me, hey, I would love your software.
We don't have enough people to cope with the chat volume or ticket volume or SMS volume.
Can you recommend a company that we can outsource to or offload some of our service requests to?
So me being entrepreneurial and shiny object chaser, let's just start another company called HubSquad.
I already have a domain for it.
Let's do it.
But it was, and that's, you know, like you said, you mentioned all of those factors that attributed to this birth of this new company and other companies that burst over time based on customer requests and shiny object chasing and saturation of the global market that that previous company is in, such as Life of ma.
Omer (41:48.980)
Now, we're gonna have to wrap up in a couple of minutes, but before we do that, I want to ask you if anybody was listening to this and they're thinking, oh, you know, Michael started out and he's charging $20 a month and he's going to websites like techbargains.com to find customers.
Like, he must be targeting like, you know, small businesses.
But the majority of your revenue comes from Enterprise customers today, right?
Michael Kansky (42:18.270)
Very large customers.
Yeah.
Omer (42:21.230)
So where did that come from?
Like was that through the review directories that you were attracting these types of customers?
Michael Kansky (42:27.790)
Yeah.
So majority of customers that we secured enterprise level came from this Top 10 Reviews listing in 2011, which is still active to this day.
And we still definitely enjoy an influx of enterprise level customers.
Because like any other customer, whether it's enterprise or small business, the first thing the customer will do when they searching for help desk solution or any other software, they'll probably go on Google and type best you know, X software for dentist or best X software for SAS or whatever it may be, or just best X software.
So.
And that search currently will end up in a very saturated, convoluted, confusing world of G2S captains and software devices.
Before in 2011 through 1716, they would end up on this one site called Top 10 Reviews, which is now business.
So which I think in hindsight was very bad decision on their part to rebrand to business.
Com.
But it's another story.
But yeah, so that that's where enterprise level came from.
And then another factor is in the call center world, agents or people who work for specific call center constantly move.
There's a lot of movement.
So they go from one call center working for one company to another call center working for completely another company.
And they would bring the advice of hey guys, you're using this not so good software to service your requests.
In the previous consent we used life up now which is so much better.
So that was also which is you can classify as a word of mouth that moves us from one enterprise to another enterprise alone.
Omer (44:20.700)
But even though you started finding enterprise customers, your approach to pricing also came back to bite you with those customers.
Michael Kansky (44:28.380)
Right.
Didn't change.
Yeah, my approach to pricing really bit us.
Yes, this is something we're working on now.
And like I said before in the interview, this is a big mistake.
Pricing is a big mistake.
Like I said, it's easy to go down, it's easy to offer coupons or promotions or whatever, going up is very hard.
So.
And that's what we tried to figure out.
How do we raise our pricing?
Because you know, if you buy all of the features of our solution, including chatbot and self help knowledge base and tickets and email and chat and SMS, all you'll pay for license $45 per month, which is probably 20% of our closest competitor price without sacrificing any features.
Yet when enterprises look at our competitor that's priced at $200 per license versus $45 per license.
They might think that there's something suspicious.
It's just way too low.
We probably don't want life up now.
We want this other solution because it's so much more expensive.
Omer (45:29.180)
Yeah, it's more expensive.
It must be.
Must be better.
Michael Kansky (45:31.260)
It must be better.
Omer (45:32.300)
Yeah.
Michael Kansky (45:34.940)
So those are the teaching.
Well, that's probably the most I can teach.
Your audience is the class don't play.
Omer (45:42.420)
Okay, well, you.
You and I are going to stay in touch and I'm going to kind of find out what you guys start doing and get this growth curve moving again and maybe we'll get you back at some point to share what you've done there.
Michael Kansky (45:56.200)
Yeah, I think.
Omar, I know you're extremely brilliant guy.
Us putting CEO in place, organizational chart in place, accountability chart in place, Sales team bound, outbound, customer success team and restructuring.
I think those are the pieces that would probably be worth to revisit in about 18 months to see if those were the right pieces in place put in place today.
Omer (46:23.520)
Totally.
Okay, great.
So let's wrap up and move on to the lightning round.
So you know the drill.
You're a listener to the show.
Michael Kansky (46:30.640)
Yes.
Omer (46:30.960)
I'm going to ask you seven questions.
Just answer them as quickly as you can.
Michael Kansky (46:34.160)
Sure.
Omer (46:35.200)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Michael Kansky (46:38.570)
Hiring a general manager CEO.
Omer (46:41.610)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Michael Kansky (46:44.250)
So this book has a bad word, so you're gonna have to blip it probably.
But.
But the book is Subtle Art of Not giving a fuck by Mark Manson.
And the way the reason I love it is because it teaches you how to embrace failures and it provides notions that suffering has value and problems make us happy.
Omer (47:04.180)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Michael Kansky (47:08.980)
I think there are two necessary in my opinion.
Curiosity is one.
And you have to have a romantic partner that inspires you and understands you.
Omer (47:18.980)
That's a great answer.
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Michael Kansky (47:24.100)
I like to listen to classical music, piano, violin, cello.
Just to help you focus.
Omer (47:31.800)
What's.
Maybe I shouldn't ask you this question because you already do this anyway, but what's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?
Michael Kansky (47:39.400)
It's crazy.
I have this unfinished project called Charify Me.
It's a service that transforms stock traders performances into an easy to read charts.
So it's like stock trader becomes a chart.
So I'm determined to finish this one day.
Omer (47:57.970)
Well, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know.
Michael Kansky (48:02.210)
I love playing this video game called Overwatch on Xbox.
Play about one hour a day.
Just helps me unwind.
I think it's just an incredible game.
And another thing is I have a dog, kakapoo called Emma.
I just absolutely love her.
I love the breed.
Omer (48:19.730)
Awesome.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Michael Kansky (48:24.360)
I love peace and isolation.
I have a cabin in small cabin in the mountains in a very secluded and beautiful spot surrounded by mountains, by lake.
So this is my passion, my sanctuary.
Love it.
Omer (48:37.960)
Michael, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you for joining me and teaching us a bunch of stuff.
And I think you kind of didn't think you had anything to teach.
I think there was a lot of useful stuff that you covered here.
Michael Kansky (48:49.080)
Awesome.
Omer (48:50.370)
If people want to find out more about live help now, they can go to livehelpnow.net and.com and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Michael Kansky (49:02.130)
My email is fine.
It's my initials, mkivehelpnow.com.
Omer (49:06.370)
awesome.
Michael, thank you so much.
And I wish you and the team all the best of success.
And, yeah, we should stay in touch and see how the the plan goes and how you get this kind of growth engine firing up again.
And also I can keep track of all your other crazy projects that you're probably going to be working on.
Michael Kansky (49:28.980)
I'm a big fan.
Omar, I think you're great.
Thank you.
Omer (49:31.540)
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
All the best.
Cheers.
Michael Kansky (49:34.660)
Thank you.
Cheers.
