Omer (00:11.840)
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.
Today's guest is Bridget Harris.
Bridget is the co founder and CEO of YouCan BookMe, a SaaS product that helps you schedule meetings.
The product was launched in 2011 and today serves tens of thousands of users and handles almost half a million bookings each month.
Bridget started her career in the film and television industry.
She then moved into politics where she ended up being an Advisor to the UK Deputy Prime Minister.
And then into 2012, she took on the role of CEO at yout Can Book Me.
The company is based in the UK and has been bootstrapped from day one.
All right, with that, let's get back to the interview and bring on Bridget.
Bridget, welcome to the show.
Bridget Harris (01:15.550)
Hi Emer.
Omer (01:17.230)
Now I gave the audience a brief overview of your product and business, but tell us a little bit more about yourself personally.
Who is Bridget when she's not working?
Bridget Harris (01:27.780)
Well, as you said, I've had a bit of a checkered career.
When I started working in film and television, I hadn't been to university at that point, so I got some great hands on experience working in the media industry.
And then I did a degree in my early 20s and then after that I ended up in politics.
And so I sort of from my 20s and 30s spent a lot of time in politics in the UK.
But my husband Keith is a software developer and whilst I was working in politics, he was busying away writing web applications and worked on a lot of projects with me in politics.
And in a way what we do now with you Can Book Me is a sort of a combination now of our interests in all of those different areas because we get to work with multimedia style web projects, we get to do a lot in terms of technology and web applications, but then also that kind of bigger question about what the world is for, for and, you know, how to make things better.
I don't think it's an accident that we do productivity tools now because we are very motivated by trying to make the world a better place.
I know that sounds a bit trite, but I think it's true in our case and we live a very happy life because we love working together.
We're sort of a classic, hopefully successful husband and wife team.
I heard on one of your earlier podcasts somebody said that finding a co founder was a bit like getting married and I Found myself nodding, thinking, yep, it really is.
I don't know how I could.
How we could do it individually, actually, not being married.
Omer (03:00.640)
Wonderful.
Now we like to kick things off with a success quote to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
Do you have a favorite quote?
Bridget Harris (03:09.280)
I do.
In fact, I hope you don't mind if I've got two, because one's professional, one's personal.
Omer (03:13.680)
Sure.
Bridget Harris (03:14.480)
As I said, my degree was in ancient history and ancient Greek and classical history, and the ancient Greeks had in their temple in Delphi sort of popular proverbs.
One is nothing in excess, and the other one is be yourself.
And I find myself quoting them a lot just to friends and to people, because I think it's.
When you think about it, they seem simple, but nothing in excess really says a lot about what you're trying to get and what you're trying to gain.
And be yourself is a reminder that there's going to be no happiness when you're trying to pretend to be.
Be something you're not.
And then on a professional level, I quoted this to our team recently, Richard Branson.
And who better to be inspired about business quotes?
He said, don't think what the cheapest way.
Don't think what's the cheapest way to do it?
Or what's the fastest way to do it.
Think what's the most amazing way to do it.
And I found that personally very inspiring.
Omer (04:18.040)
You know, there's something about Richard Branson quotes that are kind of always inspiring, but that one I haven't heard before, but I like it.
I'm gonna have to print that out and stick it up somewhere.
Bridget Harris (04:27.450)
Well, I mean, I was trying to find a sentiment to sort of try to explain to the team what we're about with.
You can book me what we're trying to achieve.
And to give them a sense of.
It's a little bit like, what would the company do corporately?
What is the company's character?
And what I'm trying to say is, look, we're not just in it to try to get the cheapest, fastest way to do something.
What would be the point in that?
There's no value in that.
We're trying to create value for people.
And I think to do, like, what's the most amazing way to do something is bound to be creating value for people, I hope.
Omer (05:02.950)
Now, let's give our listeners a better understanding of.
You can book me.
Who are your target customers, and what are the top pain points that you're trying to solve?
Bridget Harris (05:15.510)
Well, the second question is probably the first thing to answer.
Because the pain point everybody has, which is the back and forth hassle of trying to find a time that's convenient to meet somebody or book a resource or manage resources, that is a pain point that we find almost everybody has.
And that leads us to your first question was that, well, who our customers are?
We have sort of three major sectors who use you Can Book Me.
The biggest one are the small business owners who are working whilst their phone is ringing and they realize a long time ago that they can't manage both.
And so they use you Can Book Me and indeed any sort of booking process, booking software to take appointments online so that that whole thing gets managed automagically whilst they themselves are doing their work and they're sort of photographers or gardeners or therapists or consultants or anybody who's charging money for their time.
We have another very, very big sector using you Can Book me, which is the education and university sector.
And they were very early adopters in the US to use you can book me because you can book me works by putting appointments straigh into Google Calendar.
And because so many schools and universities are using Google apps for education, they were very well placed to immediately plug in you Can Book me as a solution into the calendars they are already using.
So they use you Can Book me for parent teacher conferences and student professor, you know, study hours and that kind of thing.
And indeed, actually schools use you can book me just to manage laptop carts.
You know, they've got 30 laptops and people have to book a laptop.
It's as simple as that.
And then the last section is actually we're really proud of this, is that a huge number of tech companies and startups, particularly in the west coast and east coast and us, use you Can Book me to manage their onboarding processes for their own customers, sales, marketing calls.
And it stands to reason that when you are yourself a tech company and you have a tech product, you're going to look for tech tools to make life easier for you.
Omer (07:23.080)
Now you Can Book Me is not the only scheduling software out there.
What do you think you guys do differently or better that attracts the customers that you have today?
Bridget Harris (07:39.320)
I think that's a really good question because as you said, scheduling has been around since the millennia.
So there's no claim on our part that we've invented scheduling.
But what we did do is, and I think this is partly to do with the history of how we developed the tool.
What really is unique about you Can Book me is the experience for the people booking.
So our starting point was the end clients experience, that is the booker, not the person who set the account up, but their end client.
And what we hear back from our users is that their clients love you.
Book Me because it's essentially a one or two click process because you get this sort of very unique grid of times sort of displayed in a, in a sort of a day by day view and you can just see the grid immediately.
So the eye can immediately see whether somebody's available on a Tuesday afternoon or is free only on Saturday mornings, pick the time that they want and go through the process of booking.
And I think that's different to a lot of tools that were set up where they, what they were essentially doing was putting traditional offline salon style booking software and putting it into the cloud.
And the perspective there is the receptionist or the admin assistant who is managing that software.
And that's all about setting up big calendar resource management tools and lots of drop downs and lots of clicks and so on.
And then the booker never actually had to engage with that process because you talk to the human being who'd book you in.
So when that software went online, it actually ended up with quite a complicated end UI user interface experience for our, for clients.
And that's something that we, we just didn't have.
We've got a very clean and easy experience.
And so people, you know, as I said, they come to us because they, they know that they, that their own clients want that experience to make it as simple and as easy as possible.
Omer (09:38.560)
Let's talk about the early days.
Where did the idea for you Can Book me come from?
Bridget Harris (09:46.180)
So it came from another tool that we also run called when is Good.
And this is again, this is the relationship to the grid.
So we launched in 2007, 2008, an aggregate scheduling software tool called whenisgood.net and what that does is a slightly different thing to you Can Book Me.
It finds time for a group of people to meet.
And this was our second web app that me and Keith had developed together and worked on.
And that's where you see a grid of times and you paint over the times when you're free.
And that's why we developed you Can Book Me because people were using their when is good grids to try to display their personal availability for booking.
So when we built you Can Book Me, it was on the back of what we could already see was being used and was a sort of a successful strategy for people.
So we, we already had sort of an existing client base and demand for a booking service when we were running when is Good.
Omer (10:50.790)
Okay, got it.
Okay, so you have this idea for this new business.
What did you do?
Bridget Harris (11:01.750)
Well, I mean, what we did is we learned from our experience.
We knew what we wanted to do because this wasn't the first thing that we'd worked on together.
Said me and Keith had already done loads of projects working together on political software, but we wanted to do something that was going to be commercially successful.
And our first tool was actually Tickboxer.
It was a survey building tool.
And with Tickboxer we didn't have any users and we didn't make any money.
And we soon abandoned it as a project because there was plenty of other much better tools out there.
Then we built when is Good and When is Good, had lots of people use it, still has thousands of people using it, but nobody gave us any money.
And so then we developed you can Book me and you can Book me, had both people using it and people giving us money.
So when we launched you can Book me, we immediately knew because of our previous experience that it was something that was going to give us revenue.
And by that point, and I think you're going to ask about this, like, we were bootstrapped.
So we, we couldn't afford to carry on with lots and lots of projects that weren't making us any money.
We needed to see dollars and dimes.
And that's what came in almost immediately from businesses who were desperate for a booking solution.
So their pain in terms of managing their time was so great that they would really, they worked with very early prototypes in 2011, 2012, and we could see immediately its potential.
And so from then on, and I'm sorry for any users out there that uses when is good and loves it and knows that it hasn't had a feature improve for three years, basically what happened was all production stopped on everything else that we did and we concentrated solely on you can Book Me.
And it was in a sort of a prototype beta for a year.
And then, as you said, we could see where it was going in terms of revenue and washing its own face.
So I gave up the job I had been doing to sustain our family domestic financial life in order to run the company full time, to take it to the level where it is now.
Omer (13:03.540)
Okay, so I'm just curious.
So like I said, so you have the idea, what happened?
Did Keith build the product himself?
Bridget Harris (13:11.780)
Yes.
Yes, he did.
And it was something where we did a very, very intuitive iterative process where we built this minimal viable product based on when is good.
So we just built the thing that we could see people wanted from when is good, which is they wanted a grid of times that people could see at a glance, when you were free, click a button, secure that slot.
So that's what he built.
And then we would have, in fact actually we would have, he worked with loads of, you know, really hard nosed business women who are doing nail tech.
You know, her nail technician in, in Basingstoke in Britain and a wig and sort of hairpiece hairdresser specialist in Florida.
And he'd have all of these women who are just, who are therapists and beauty consultants saying to him, keith, it needs to be like this.
Keith, it's got to be like that.
You know, I need it drop, you know that my client is going to have to choose it like this, I need it like that.
So he basically.
And he, there was a guy, a massage therapist in Canada who he worked with a lot.
So a lot of the features, and you can book me, were literally crafted by the users themselves that were telling Keith what they wanted.
And at the time we didn't know that.
This is actually a very familiar process to a lot of people now who know the Lean Startup methodology.
We didn't know it, but we just followed it by virtue that we didn't really have any other sort of source of knowledge to reach out for.
We were just building a web app that we wanted people to use.
So it would stand to reason that when people would come and say it needs this feature or can you do this?
Keith would scratch his head a bit and sit there and write the code and, you know, and it kind of took off from there.
And I think people will say that this is still true today, that we are very, very customer focused.
We are very proud of our reputation for how responsive we are to people who email us and who talk to us now.
And it's extremely satisfying that when people email us now and say, hey, I like your tool, I like the look of it, but for me it really has to do this.
And we go, yeah, we've got that feature.
And it might have been something that was suggested to Keith three years ago, but he put it in and now it's a very fully featured tool as a result.
Omer (15:25.530)
Okay, and where did you recruit these users from?
Were they the people who were already using?
Bridget Harris (15:32.330)
When it's good.
Omer (15:33.090)
When it's good.
Okay.
Now the Lean Startup methodology is all great, right?
But I think a common mistake that I see a lot of startups making is that they get people to provide feedback, but that feedback doesn't necessarily turn out to be a good thing.
So, for example, you know, you can have people who will tell you that, yeah, I would use your product if it had these five things, and you go and build those five things, and then they'll tell you, well, yeah, but it's not really right for me.
Or, you know, you know, they can give you a lot of feedback, but they don't get their credit cards out.
The other I think, potential challenge is when you start to gather a lot of this feedback.
You can come up with a really varying list of requirements where, you know, two different people are thinking about two very different businesses and coming up with a bunch of very specific needs that might help them.
But when you think about those features across a broad user base, you may find in the long run that only, you know, 1% of your users are using that feature.
And so was it really worth investing the time to do that?
And so I'm curious, in terms of, it was great for you guys to get this feedback, but what were some of the challenges with that process?
Bridget Harris (17:08.470)
Well, I mean, I think you have just.
You've just laid them out there.
I think that's absolutely spot on.
And we definitely suffered from some of that at various points times.
One of the things that we did once we realized feedback was rolling in was we built a. Funnily enough, we called it Feedback Frenzy.
We built a feedback tool so that people could vote on feature requests, so that we could try to sort of measure in terms of the number of, you know, votes higher up the scale, something was going to do.
I mean, there were some things that got lots of votes that we were never going to do because they'd be technically very challenging and a bit off topic for us.
But most of the time, when Keith was sort of sitting there going, right, what's my to do list?
Okay, I'll look at the.
Look at Feedback Frenzy and see what the top five feature requests are.
I think that the other point to say is what you said is that.
And I think this is.
This is one of the things that we did fall into the trap of early on, when people are tantalizing you, you know, tantalizingly sort of holding money, saying, I'll give you.
I'll pay you if you do this.
That is a mistake.
Don't do that.
But do talk to paying customers.
So the people we listen to are the people who are already paying us who are saying, you know, I love this tool.
I want to use it, but I also, it needs to, it needs to work like this for you.
And if you think, well, this is a paying user, they're already giving us the dollars.
And if they're going to pay us and they're going to give us the dollars and this is something that they've said and somebody else said it too and it's voted up the page, then other people like them who are also going to give us dollars are probably going to need this feature.
And I think that that has sort of stand the test of now.
The people who are using us now are very similar to those who are two or three years ago we were listening to very carefully and it's the same character, but we have had to learn the hard way, you know, well, sometimes people who gave us money and we bent over backwards to try to do the feature that they wanted and then at the end of the day we realized, no, we just, you know, I found myself when I took over in 2012, there was sort of a backlog of things that we had promised people or that we, you know, we were trying to do in terms of terms of the product roadmap.
And I found myself having to write emails to people to say, you know, I remember there was a really high end hairdressing salon in New York and we just, you know, they'd already paid us $700, they really wanted the feature.
And I said, I'm really sorry, we just can't do it.
We're going to give you your money back.
It's not possible.
And that is very hard when you realize you reached a line with customers and your priorities for your product or service is not going to satisfy them.
But equally, you find sometimes with those conversations they will come back and they'll go, okay, fair play.
I want to carry on using your service even if it isn't going to do all of the most perfect things.
So I think sometimes, you know, you learn by experience, you get better.
I think over the years we have got better at it and we now know who are the high quality people who have continued to give us amazing feedback.
So there's a golf instructor in California, there's a driving instructor in Australia.
And these guys have been with us for two or three years.
They've paid us thousands of dollars over the years and we really value their feedback.
They know what they're talking about, they've invested their own time in our tool.
And so it's like having your own private focus group.
So I wouldn't discount it completely, but I do think you're right that There are time wasters out there and you just have to be better at spotting them.
Omer (20:35.610)
So other than tapping into the customers or users that you already had with when is good, what other kind of marketing activities were you doing to, to acquire new customers?
I mean, one of the biggest challenges of any bootstrap business is not having the money or enough money to, to spend on marketing and customer acquisition.
So what were some of the other things that you guys tried?
Bridget Harris (21:04.170)
Well, so I can't, I can't really claim any credit for this because this is.
We, we grew up virally and organically because of the nature of the business that we're in.
So scheduling is intrinsically viral.
People are introducing us to their, to a network of people because they're scheduling themselves with it.
So the thing that we did with you can Book Me is that for everybody who, because it's a freemium tool on the page, when you book somebody, there's an orange button that says get your free account.
You know, powered for free by youy can book Me.
There's a sort of a viral.
Viral marketing button on that page.
And that's the only thing we did to help grow awareness of the tool and essentially the nature of the problem that we're solving did the rest of the work.
So it stands to reason.
So for example, in Canada, in Edmonton, Edmonton Public school board uses yous Can Book Me.
Over the lifetime of them using us, they've processed 40,000 bookings and we give the tool away for free to public schools in the US and Canada.
And so those 40,000 bookings are full of people.
Small businesses who have the same problem were introduced to the tour that way.
And now we have a paintball center in Edmonton using us.
There's a dog grooming shop that users, you know, so small businesses in Edmonton that are the lifeblood of our revenue streams, they were introduced to us through people using you Can Book me for Free.
So I'm not sure, you know, the lesson there is partly that those viral loops really do work referrals and trust in the product because somebody else has used it.
Those are, those are the things that I think have worked the best for us will have been the only things we've done.
Omer (22:49.400)
And did you kind of have that, that sort of the virality in mind when you were trying to acquire customers?
For example, you mentioned, you know, some, some larger businesses using your product and scheduling a large volume of meetings.
Was that in your mind or was that something that you sort of discovered in hindsight that if we have these larger Customers using our product or we go after them, they're gonna.
They're gonna have a bigger volume of meetings to schedule and that's gonna help us reach more people through the product through this viral loop.
Or was that something you discovered along the way?
Bridget Harris (23:33.330)
No, it was definitely deliberate.
So the first thing was that one of my favorite web tools, other than you can book me Obviously, is Weebly Weebly.com.
it's a free website builder.
And I loved Weebly from as soon as they launched.
And they have exactly the same model where you get a free Weebly website, but you have to.
You carry the free Weebly banner.
So when we launched, you can book me.
You know, our sort of business strategy was do what Weebly do because it's a great model.
So that was.
It was.
It was very deliberate in the sense we knew that was going to help us grow.
And then our early adopters, our early educational adopters, when we realized that schools had this major problem of parent teacher conferences and how to manage it, we decided to give away the features that they needed to set those up for free in return for continuing to carry them button.
So the not for profit package on youn can book me if you have it, you still have to carry the marketing button.
And it was absolutely deliberate because it was a great way of exposing that, our marketing button to hundreds of people.
I mean, interestingly, you know, we have these massive companies use.
You can book me.
But if it's an internal tool or you know, if they've embedded it quite often, you can actually use.
You can book me product and you can effectively white label it so people don't need to know that you're using.
You can book me.
So if you pay us, then you get to use a tool which is largely unbranded.
So that doesn't actually help us very much or that gives us.
That might return one or two people a month maybe in referrals.
But the schools and the people are our huge base of people who use you can book me for free.
They are our marketing channel because they are carrying our advertising.
Omer (25:19.310)
Looking back at those early days, what do you think was one of the biggest mistakes that you made?
Bridget Harris (25:26.510)
Well, I think I've already talked about it a little bit.
I think we definitely got distracted by side projects, you know, thinking that, you know, going off on some tangent, thinking that we could produce a feature for somebody just because they'd given us some money.
And I think that because we were scrapping around a lot, you know, you're hustling a lot for what you're trying to achieve within the means.
And so for the first couple of years when is good and you can book me didn't make any money.
So it was very hard to justify me and Keith giving up full time jobs in order to sort of develop them.
So we did get distracted.
We built web applications we should never have built.
We got flattered into various things when people we got.
TechCrunch's Mike Butcher approached us and said, oh, I really want to do something on.
It was called DanceCard.
It was a project to do with conference app scheduling and it was a really good idea and it was an interesting experience.
It was a massive of distraction but we sort of thought, oh, you know, look Mike Butcher.
And we, we've got to, you know, we have to, we can't say no.
And actually, you know, looking back, we should have focused much more in a much more laser like way much earlier.
As I said before, as soon as we realized that you can book me was going to make us money and that this was going to carry us to the point that we are now, we could have brought that forward by at least a year if we hadn't just messed about on side projects.
I've got other mistakes as well, if you want to hear them.
Omer (26:52.410)
Yeah, let's hear another one.
Bridget Harris (26:54.890)
Another one was we spent.
We wasted money on consultants, which is a very sensitive topic because the whole community does rely on a big network of people who are willing to sell services.
And I think that we.
When you can't hire people, you.
And it depends on actually it also really matters who your co founders are.
So some fabulous startups have a really good designer as a co founder.
So, you know, they tend to be the ones that will make a beautiful front end and make everything look gorgeous.
Me and Keith are lots of things, but we are not designers.
So we had a big absence at the very beginning of decent graphic design or logos or any kind of branding to speak of.
It was essentially, you know, Keith's version of web design is white HTML, you know, aerial font.
So we struggled and I think we spent too much money on sort of people trying to sell as a drill.
And I think you can waste a huge amount of money.
It's something that I am much more careful about now with the consultants that we do employ.
I take references, I speak to previous clients, I do competitive bids for the work that I'm asking people to do and I'm very brutal with the consultants that I do employ when they're not, when I'm not happy with their work.
Because I think at the beginning I was sort of so grateful, you know, if we'd borrowed a bit of money and we could spend four or five thousand pounds, it was massive amount of money for us.
And people tell you that they're going to give you this service for £700, so I'm saying sterling.
But you know what I'm talking about, you know, $1,000 a day.
You get so bowled over by how expensive they are, you think that they're going to do great work.
And I think it's actually.
It wasted a lot of money and time, time, probably more than money, on us thinking that consultants were going to bring in a solution for us.
And I think that the other one, which again, I sort of look back on and think is probably a result of being bootstrapped.
We didn't have enough outside people coming and talking to us to say this is happening.
So we have an internal sort of catchphrase in our team, which is, this is happening because our growth is, you know, really, we grow sort of 100% every six months in terms of the volume of the tool.
It's very hard to believe it.
And I think again, when you're earning buttons every month, two or three years ago, we were sort of $500 a month.
It's very hard to believe it really is happening.
And so we didn't get moving quick enough.
We didn't take the plunge quick.
Quick enough.
And go, actually, let's go for this.
I wish we had done that a lot sooner.
Omer (29:25.110)
I mean, it doesn't sound like there was that much of a delay that you said that the product launched in 2011 and it was 2012 that you used.
You took on the role of CEO late September 2012.
Bridget Harris (29:39.830)
So I suppose that's how I'm thinking.
Yeah.
But we had a lot of ground to catch up because that was.
Because.
Because that was when I was, as co founders, we were at the point where we could live off a fractional amount of money that the tool was producing.
I suppose what I'm saying is a year previously, we could have taken the plunge in terms of borrowing more money or somehow bootstrapping our own financial life somehow to do it earlier, because everything that we achieved in 2013 was just playing catch up.
So I now feel, I only feel really, it's the last 12 months we've been seriously motoring along in terms of our business.
Omer (30:25.210)
Okay, so you started to get some, I guess, meaningful traction in 2012.
So you, you came on board as CEO and yeah, tell me, tell me about what happened in 2013.
Why, why did you feel like you were playing catch up?
Because it sounds like, like you didn't have to do much sort of deliberate marketing other than, you know, the, the virality within the product that was, that was driving, you know, growth for you and things just seem to be growing.
You're listening to your customers, you're building what they want.
So why did you feel like 2013 was still catch up?
Was it because you just had a backlog of things that you just hadn't got a chance to do?
Bridget Harris (31:14.910)
Well, some of it was just simply cosmetic.
So it's just really like the front end of our website really needed updating.
You know, we did need, we, you know, I spent a lot of my first year finding people who were gonna, who helped us redesign the website and scrub it up.
Me and Keith were doing a lot of busking so we were just, you know, doing it all ourselves, buying istock photographs and you know, you just, you just think oh that'll do.
And in a way it's does work, you know, if people, you're proving the point if people continue to sign up and use your product even if you've got sort of rubbish graphic design.
But on the other hand, in order to be a credible product, just to start from the point that people are going to trust you with their business because you know, people trust you can book me to take bookings for them, that is their livelihood.
So you have to look credible and there's only so much leeway people are going to give you.
So it was the catch up year was about getting professional graphic designers and front end developers, also about extracting the things that Keith had been doing all by himself and splitting out that role.
And again that will sound very familiar to people listening when you realize that you wear 15 hats and the job of growing is to take various hats off and go, oh, I'm not going to do that anymore, somebody else is going to do it.
So Keith was doing this great job of listening to customers but of course it was stopping him from developing.
So after a while I started talking to all of the customers and then Kate started talking to all the customers and now we have three full time people who talk to our customers and that's not an inconsiderable job to do.
Simply setting up the infrastructure that's going to work so that emails don't get lost.
Everybody knows what's happening.
We get all of the sort of efficiency into the system system so that now we're Growing and we're hiring more product support people and we have a system that they, you know, they can just drop into.
And so it's.
It's about scaling.
You know, we can scale that because we're not in kind of chaos where we've got one inbox and nobody knows, you know, whether somebody's replied to that email or not.
So that it was that kind of work that I was doing, it was kind of housekeeping work of setting up systems.
Not least all of the financial HR logistical stuff, which, as I said, you know, any advice I would have about somebody doing this is that, like, get the best system you can as early as possible.
So another software tool that we use, which I just really wished we'd started, even when you're only earning a dollar a month, it seems ridiculous getting some kind of fancy accountancy software to manage that $1.
But actually, well, and we didn't.
But in 2013, we realized that our turnover and our costs were getting to the point where our management accounts, you really start to look at things, things like profit and loss.
And I never had cared about my balance sheet or profit and loss when it's just four buttons on a table.
But once you start to realize that, you know, all of this is really important, you need a proper system.
And so we introduced Xero.com, which again, is fabulous.
And there's other products out there that people use for accountancy.
We introduced Xero.
We then realized, no, we need to.
We actually need to go back to Xero.
So we backdated all of our accounts from 2008 or something whenever we set up our bank account, and we put it all into Xero.
So we then had five years worth of management accounts in a system that could give us, you know, at a click a button, reporting.
It was amazing.
It was transformational.
The kind of ability to scale and manage the growth that was happening in 2013 simply by virtue of the fact that all our invoices, our vat, you know, our sales tax type return were all happening automatically because of Xero.
Xero is like hiring a financial director for our company because it just did all of the heavy lifting.
So we were integrating all of the tools that we now take for granted in 2015.
We were integrating them in 2013 and just basically setting up the shop.
And I suppose, okay, maybe I'm being unfair on myself, but I think that in 2011, when we were doing when is good, you know, when we were figuring all of that out, I wish that I had just been more professional earlier and set it all up as, even if it was like a mini baby business, even if it feels ridiculous actually, if you're ambitious and you think it's going to scale and you think it's going to work, there is no harm in getting all your systems in place at a small scale so that you can then just watch them grow without any further effort.
Omer (35:37.740)
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
Now, I want to talk about the current, current business and kind of where you are today.
But before we do that, there was something that you said that I think is a really important point about trying to perfect the design and the look of the product.
And you know, I, I think a lot of us get caught up in that and, and you know, I'm, I'm just as guilty as anyone and having come from, with my background, I think, you know, so I've worked in environments where we obsess over pixels, right.
And have meetings about that pixel.
And so having, I remember the first time I looked at you can book me, I guess, you know, a couple of years ago, and I saw the booking calendar, which at the time just looked like, you know, sort of a, sort of a raw HTML table, which I assume was kind of Keith's design.
Right.
You know, but the point was, you know, it may not look like the most sexiest kind of user experience, but it was still working and you were still solving a problem for people and they were still able to sort of use the tool to help them in their daily lives.
And as a result, the product was growing.
Whereas I think a lot of other people may have said, well, maybe we shouldn't even release the product until it looks much better.
Bridget Harris (37:01.920)
Better.
Omer (37:02.160)
Right.
And I think that's a really important lesson.
Bridget Harris (37:04.960)
Do you know what?
I think you could write entire books, sort of shelves of books on this topic.
Because I think you're absolutely right.
I would love it if you can.
I mean, I, I, I find it painful when I see formatting that isn't right or anything else, but your people have an extremely high tolerance for stuff that you and I would wince at.
They wouldn't even notice because as you say, the solution that you're offering is so important to them.
I also think that in web design worlds you can get so wrapped up because you know so much about it, but your average web user doesn't know as much about it.
We have benefited, I think, in probably the things to look for more is functionality.
So what we're trying to focus on more now is ui.
So people do notice if the save button isn't where they think it should be or the drop down isn't where they think it should be.
And that's what bothers them and that's what makes them angry when the tool actually causes them stress.
So a lot of work we've done recently has been trying to improve our UI and trying to make the user journey easier for people to set stuff up.
But I absolutely agree with you.
And you know, as I said in 2012, there was just me and Keith.
We didn't have a third.
We should have had a third co founder who cared all about this stuff and wanted to do it and wanted to, you know, develop that side of it.
We didn't.
So our response was, and you can Google, you can book me and find him.
Rocket Boy is an istock photograph.
We got into such a kind of sort of hair tearing out moment where you thought, we just can't do it, we can't design this.
Keith put the whole thing into Bootstrap, which is a great Twitter platform.
You know, it's a platform built by Twitter for websites.
We put, you can put me into Bootstrap.
And then we bought this massive great big image of a boy with a rocket strapped to him and we just stuck on our front page and said, you can book me.
And, you know, and that Rocket Boy lasted about nine months before we got some professional designers in to do a proper front page.
And I have to say, I looked at our growth rates throughout the whole period and, you know, Rocketboy didn't, didn't improve our growth rate, didn't damage it either.
Then we spent 20 grand on, you know, fabulous web designers coming in with really fancy top end stuff and our growth rates with exactly the same, you know, throughout 2014.
So there you are.
If your product is really good and you're reaching out to the right people, then they will use you.
But ultimately, as I said, I've been more interested in web design simply from a credibility and a reputation point of view.
That's what I've cared about, but I'm not obsessive about it.
Omer (39:33.370)
Yeah, very good listener.
All right, let's talk about the business today.
What sort of revenue are you doing?
Bridget Harris (39:40.490)
Well, as I said, we've been growing really fast.
So our revenue's grown like from buttons two or three years ago, like 130% every year for the last three years.
So although there's no point me really saying what our money monthly revenue is, I'm expecting to get to a million dollars ARR.
By the end of this year.
That's what we're modeled to do.
So we're doing really well.
And more importantly for me is that we were profitable.
So our costs are less than our monthly intake.
But I have to say, I watch our monthly revenue like a hawk because I always take pride that when the payroll goes out, the money's in the account.
The payroll goes out and I've squared.
They've added up.
And that's what really, really matters at the end of the day, which is that you don't run out of cash.
Omer (40:24.720)
Yeah.
I mean, congratulations.
I think getting to a million dollars in annual recurring revenue is a huge milestone for any business, and especially for a bootstrap one.
So that's very impressive.
Bridget Harris (40:36.320)
Thank you.
Well, as I said, we're like, a couple of months short just yet, so we have.
I'll accept your congratulations.
I'll email you when we do, Omar, so I can get your congratulations there.
Omer (40:47.170)
Okay, that's a deal.
All right, Bridget, it's now time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as possible.
Are you ready?
Bridget Harris (40:57.490)
Yep.
Omer (40:58.450)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Bridget Harris (41:03.410)
Talk less, listen more.
I'm not sure I really follow it, but I certainly.
It was.
It was important.
Somebody said to me I talk too much, and I think they're right.
Omer (41:13.170)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Bridget Harris (41:16.370)
Well, I already talked about it.
Lean Startup.
I actually think I read it.
It was a bit like a revelation.
I thought, fabulous.
But I also would recommend Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, which I read because of somebody else's recommendation to read it.
And I actually think it's an amazing story and very inspiring.
Omer (41:35.250)
Wonderful.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Bridget Harris (41:41.850)
Optimism.
I think you've just got to believe you can do it.
You can't do this job.
You can't take risks without being optimistic.
Omer (41:50.650)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit other than you can book me?
Bridget Harris (41:56.250)
Well, I think you know it's true.
I love you can book me.
I use it all the time as an executive to manage my own bookings.
I genuinely do love you can book me.
I do like using when is good as well, when I have to schedule a meeting with a group of people.
But actually, my other one is was Weebly.
Just when.
Because I solve so many problems by just rolling out a new website, and Weebly is a fabulous tool.
Oh, and Mailchimp, mailchimp weebly and you can book me are my favorite tools.
Omer (42:19.300)
Now, if you had to start over tomorrow, what type of business would you go and build?
You know, in other words, what are some of those crazy ideas that you still have lingering in your head that you wish you had the time to pursue?
Bridget Harris (42:31.700)
Oh, gosh.
So I was thinking hard about this because it's very hard to.
Because me and Keith have spent 15 years figuring out products like you can book me is the end of a long line of stuff that we've actually done.
So my first on my list would be to try to finish off the ones that we started and never got anywhere with.
But they were really good ideas, like the price per square foot web app where you're trying to buy houses and you want to figure out the real value of the house, that kind of thing.
But actually, the thing that I would really like to, which we have done a version of is I think the world needs a liberal database to manage personal data.
So I think we need a proper look at how people have to share their personal information with authorities, local authorities and governments to do with providing services.
So it's a bit of a political thing, but I actually think that we as a, as a population, as a civilization can take charge of the way we manage information about ourselves and we shouldn't wait for governments to do it for us.
Omer (43:32.410)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Bridget Harris (43:35.700)
Know that in my, my life as a working in film and television, that I used to be a live, a vision mixer for live television.
I used to vision mix live tv.
Omer (43:45.700)
Oh my goodness.
You've done everything.
Bridget Harris (43:48.420)
That's probably why I've ended up being an entrepreneur because there's no, no other careers for me.
Omer (43:54.740)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Bridget Harris (43:58.500)
Well, it's got to be my kids because obviously when I'm not doing.
You can book me.
I'm desperately trying to, to, you know, spend time with my children, bringing them up.
Omer (44:07.680)
Great answers.
Bridget, I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights with our audience.
And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better personally as well.
Now, if folks want to find out more about you can book me, they can go to youcanbook Me.
And if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Bridget Harris (44:26.880)
Oh, they can email me.
Bridgetcanbook me me.
I'm on Twitter, Bridget, today.
Just email the team.
If you want to get in touch, I'd love to talk to people who've heard this interview and they've got questions.
Omer (44:38.450)
Wonderful, Bridget.
Thanks again.
I wish you continued success.
And I will definitely be looking forward to that email when you officially hit a million dollars.
Bridget Harris (44:47.330)
I promise I will.
I'll email you.
Thank you, Omer.
Omer (44:49.890)
Take care.
Bye.
