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 an award winning 24.
I hope he's still 24 year old entrepreneur with several seven figure online businesses.
He was recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by the United Nations.
His businesses include WP Beginner, which is the largest free WordPress resource on the planet, and OptinMonster, a popular lead generation SaaS product that you can see on so many web sites around the web, including Conversion Aid.
When he was a teenager, he started playing around with WordPress and eventually he was able to get clients who paid him to build websites for them.
And he thought he'd be able to get paid for building the sites which he enjoyed doing and not having to deal with the support and maintenance of those sites, which he, he didn't enjoy so much.
You know, after all this was WordPress, so people should be able to make the updates themselves.
But now he started getting questions about WordPress.
How do I do this, how do I update that?
And all the WordPress tutorials at the time that he found were written by developers for developers.
So he launched a site, WPBeginner back in 2009 and started writing tutorials for beginners.
And today that site has over 320,000 subscribers in 190 countries and he's not even 30 years old yet.
So my guest is Saeed Balki.
Welcome to the show.
Syed Balkhi (01:57.370)
Thank you for having me, Omar.
Omer (01:59.530)
Okay, so you're in Gainesville, Florida, right?
And so I had no clue where that was.
I moved to the US I guess 10 years ago and I kind of, my geography still bad.
I'm surprised they actually gave me citizenship because you know when they ask you that question about the US and the Constitution and everything, because it's like I'm good with like what's on the west coast and what's on the east coast kind of, and then everything in between is still a bit of a blur.
So I was like Gainesville.
And I looked that up and it was like there was some interesting things I found, like obviously the home of the University of Florida, but also the place where Gatorade was invented, which I thought was pretty cool.
And lots, lots of good things.
But one thing that stood out for me was that apparently you guys were ranked as the fifth meanest city in The US when it came to homeless people.
Did you know that?
Syed Balkhi (02:52.390)
I did not know that.
Omer (02:53.470)
I was like, so anyway, apparently there are a bunch of laws and ordinances over there that make it hard to panhandle or kind of do things like that.
So you're a couple of hours away from Disney World.
Did you go there much when you were growing up?
Syed Balkhi (03:09.430)
I have been to Disney World once.
I grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida.
But either way, Disney World is about two hours away.
So whether you're in Gainesville or Palm Beach.
So, yeah, went there once and I'm probably not going to go there again.
Omer (03:27.440)
Yeah, I grew up in London and we both have similar backgrounds because we were both born in Pakistan and then kind of moved over.
So I moved to Denmark when I was four and then over to London when I was about six or seven.
And it was the same thing.
Right.
I mean, yeah, like, people just expect you like to, like.
Like you regularly go and visit Buckingham palace or something like that, Right.
And it's like.
Syed Balkhi (03:53.690)
Yep.
Omer (03:55.450)
Anyway, so how did you end up in Florida?
Syed Balkhi (03:59.690)
My parents just moved from Karachi straight to Florida because several of my family members were here.
My aunts and uncles and.
And that's where I was raised.
And I was 12 years old, moved to West Palm Beach.
Sweet.
Omer (04:12.970)
Okay, now we.
We kind of like to start.
I like my.
I like to ask my guests for a success quote when we get started.
And it's really just to try and understand, like, get a little bit inside your head and sort of understand what is what drives you.
So I know you have a couple of quotes.
So tell me what.
Tell me about them.
Syed Balkhi (04:35.310)
Well, one, I hate losing.
So one of my favorite quotes is hard to beat a person that never gives up, because I know if I keep trying and trying, I'm eventually going to win.
So that's one of my favorite quotes that I've had since very early days.
And then another one that I picked up over the time was, if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together.
And that's the African proverb.
So that's really hit home with me.
And that's one of our core values for our team.
Omer (05:06.240)
How big is your team?
Syed Balkhi (05:07.760)
We are 16 people full time now.
Omer (05:10.400)
Wow.
So how long.
I mean, you started this business or all these businesses, like, when you.
How old were you?
Like, teenager, right?
Syed Balkhi (05:23.120)
Yeah.
So I first started dabbling in Internet stuff when I was 12 years old that, you know, had my first website selling ads and stuff.
I launched WPNair09.
And OptinMonster is relatively new.
2013.
Omer (05:35.790)
And so how.
How long were you kind of a solopreneur before you started hiring people and building out a team?
Syed Balkhi (05:42.910)
2006-2007-2006-2007 is when I hired, like, you know, my first employee and fired him, then hired another one.
You know, your second employee is usually one of the hardest ones that you hire.
Then you hire the third one, and then when you get to five, you have to have a correction.
Then you grow.
Omer (06:04.590)
What went wrong with the first one?
Syed Balkhi (06:07.390)
You just don't know you're new at hiring.
It just didn't work out.
I expected them to know too many things, and I think part of it was my fault, too, I think, because I wasn't as patient.
I expected them to know a lot, and it's a learning process.
Omer (06:23.800)
Yeah, yeah.
I went through that.
Like, I was working for a company in London and, you know, suddenly kind of got.
Actually, I went on vacation and then I came back and they said, oh, congratulations, you're promoted, Promoted.
And now you're in charge of this team and you have to start hiring all these people.
And I was like.
And I had no experience in doing this stuff, so I kind of went through that as well, where I was, like, hiring people and then realizing they weren't very good and then having to fire them.
And, you know, people used to make fun of me because they used to see me by the elevators, like, giving people, like, the golden handshake on the way out, and they were like, oh, yeah, another one.
And then I kind of realized it's like, it's not the people, it's me.
Right.
It's like, I need to take more time to hire the right people and make sure that they're in the right job.
Because sometimes you can just have a great person, but put them in the wrong job and you're going to have a disaster.
Syed Balkhi (07:15.760)
Right, Exactly.
Exactly.
Omer (07:18.470)
Yeah.
Okay, so we talked.
So I gave sort of the audience an overview of WPBeginner.
And you've been running that site for a long time.
What were some of the things that you did to grow that site?
Syed Balkhi (07:39.030)
Well, one, there was an obvious need for the website that just wasn't being filled.
So.
So having that and being so niche, there were tons of sites during that time that were coming out that would teach you how to blog, but.
So that niche was kind of crowded.
But how to use WordPress, essentially, like, how do you blog?
But Everybody's talking about WordPress and I'm talking all about WordPress, like, all about it.
How do you do this in WordPress?
How do you do that in WordPress?
So just sharing that tutorials alone was giving me a head start.
But some of the things that helped me with was search.twitter.com I still use that tool to this day.
I look through the hashtag WordPress or whatever topic you're looking for, lead generation and whatnot, and look for the questions that people are asking.
And now in the search Twitter, there's an advanced field and you can actually say, is this a question or a positive sentiment or a negative sentiment?
You can select all sorts of things and then search and all the links, all the tweets that you'll see, you can interact with those people that gave me a lot of cool article ideas.
And I would write that article, reply to that person, hey, here's a solution to your problem.
And just a word of mouth there was very strong.
Second, the reason why I created the site was I had a lot of clients that I switched over to WordPress and they were asking me the same question over and over again.
But I realized that I wasn't the only person who had that problem.
So I reached out to other contractors and service providers and started talking to them about this site.
And they started sending people to WPBeginner because they didn't want to have to write all this documentation.
Aside from those two things, it was about relationships.
Over the time before I launched WPBeginner, I had built relationships with several influencers in the space who, when I launched, I would approach them and say, hey, would you mind tweeting this out for me?
Or guest blog on their websites that brought traffic.
Got it.
Omer (09:36.010)
The Twitter thing is really interesting.
So give me an example of how you're using the advanced feature to find something.
Syed Balkhi (09:45.130)
So when you search just on search.twitter.com if you type WordPress, you're going to see tons of spam link.
There's affiliate marketers who are just sharing coupon codes and people just promoting.
So what I would do is I would just type the word it contains, WordPress.
The tweet contains the word WordPress.
And then I'll say, if you scroll all the way to the bottom there, say other, select whether it's positive, negative or question, and I'll just select question.
And what this allowed me to do was create the content that I know users are looking for, because users are telling you what they want.
Maybe somebody was like, hey, I have error establishing database connection.
And I noticed that few people have tweeted that over the time over a specific time period.
I'm like, maybe I should write an article about that.
Or, hey, I don't know how to schedule a blog post.
Or I don't know the difference between categories and tags, so I can see different kind of errors, or what's the best slider plugin, or how do you add testimonials?
I'm seeing these questions being asked real time on Twitter and the person who's asking it.
So I go back, create an article, and then come back and reply to this person, hey, here's a link.
Or maybe give them a solution for us and then go back and write that article.
So it was allowing me to write the content that I know people were looking for, rather than just sitting there and saying, oh, maybe I should write about this today, and maybe I should write about that today.
In the beginning, it's really hard to come up with article ideas, and that was really helpful.
Omer (11:12.500)
So were you doing keyword research as well, or was Twitter the way that you generated majority of your ideas?
Syed Balkhi (11:22.690)
Well, you can do keyword research, and I was doing that already.
And that's how I was coming up with a lot of article ideas and writing them.
But what Twitter allowed me to do was prioritize, because chances are the keywords that you're seeing, a lot of the same questions are being asked on Twitter, and these are the ones that I can reply to.
So if I have an article already, I can reply to these people and say, look, here's a tutorial.
And they will see it and like, oh, thank you.
And there's an interaction that's the first touch point between a reader, and then most likely that reader will come back to WPBeginner or follow that account and then start tweeting all of our other stuff and just kind of grow that audience base.
Omer (12:01.110)
So the site's been the launch in 2009, so we're talking about over six years.
Syed Balkhi (12:09.030)
Yeah, it's going to be six years old on July 4th.
Omer (12:11.760)
Well, happy birthday.
Now, how do you keep coming up with ideas?
Like, don't you get to a point where it's just like the same stuff over and over again once you've been writing for so long?
Because I know a lot of people, even.
Even after they've written, like, the first blog post, they're like, oh, I don't know if I have enough ideas to kind of keep this thing going.
But six years is a long time.
Syed Balkhi (12:33.600)
It is a long time.
So when I first started right I thought I was not gonna.
I was gonna run out of ideas.
But now, as the site has grown and so many readers come to the website, they ask questions, and we encourage them about, I would say 90 to 95% of our content that comes now are from user questions.
I couldn't possibly think of, oh, how do you list the top categories versus not the subcategories?
How do you only list the top categories?
Or how do you only list up categories of this top category?
Questions like those that have become articles over time.
Those weren't my questions.
Right.
Or how do you add a checkout form for a nonprofit, like a donation form with multiple fields?
I don't run a nonprofit.
That was a question that a nonprofit user asked.
Now that we have built a huge platform, we have the benefit that users are sending us questions, and we just have to look through and say, okay, this is the one we're going to write about.
And then the other part is, is when plugin authors and different companies come out with new products, they reach out to us.
You know, let's say independent developer came out with a plugin to do X and they'll say, hey, can you write about this?
So we're also getting notifications like that now, which is helpful.
Omer (13:47.220)
And you don't write any of the content now, right?
You have a team of people doing that?
Syed Balkhi (13:51.540)
Yes, I do have a team of people doing it.
I don't write per se.
I do review a lot of the content every day just to make sure everything's going right.
I'm still, I guess, the editor in chief, but, you know, I don't do a lot of editing either.
Omer (14:08.480)
That's benefits of being the boss, right?
All right, so, you know, Maybe back in 2009, there weren't many sites around, but these days there are.
There must be thousands of sites writing WordPress tutorials.
And obviously, I think you guys have built a lot of authority over the years.
And one of the things that I found is, like, whenever I'm searching for, like, a specific issue with WordPress, like WPBeginner, like, inevitably, always is there somewhere in, like, the top three or five results?
And usually has the answer for me.
And I remember I've been using the site for years, and I was like, oh, like, I'd see your name and I'd be like, oh, that's cool.
I should thank him one day for helping me solve all these problems, you know?
But has that changed a lot with all of, you know, these kind of Me too sites sort of popping up and everybody trying to just create Me too content all over the place.
Syed Balkhi (15:09.410)
There's a lot of Me too content that I see, you know, a lot of times some of those people are like, hey, can we guest blog on your site?
And I'm like, no, you're not really adding any value.
It hasn't really impacted our traffic because our traffic has, you know, grown over time now.
You never know what the traffic would have been without all those sites there.
But all I see in our charts is growth.
So that hasn't really impacted us.
Even if you look at the size of most of those Me Too sites, it hasn't been significantly huge.
We are multiple fold, not two times bigger, three times bigger.
We are a lot bigger than majority of the sites out there.
Now there are some larger publications that have created almost like subsections of their main site.
For example Envato and Touch, they have done a very, very good job.
But again those are not me too type of content.
They have taken a niche like saying WordPress developers and they're only writing developer specific content.
And I know in the beginning they actually created a sub site but then they ended up rolling it back in so it's no longer a sub site of its own.
So Touch, that's a good resource for developers and that's a market that we don't target.
So I don't even know how it would have impacted us otherwise.
Omer (16:30.380)
Yeah.
And how do you make most of your money?
Syed Balkhi (16:33.300)
Is it all advertising on WPBeginner?
Some of our money comes from affiliate.
A good chunk of it comes from our products.
So OptinMonster, we get a lot of referrals from WPBeginner.
But also I have other plugins.
One of them is called Soliloquy, which is a WordPress slider plugin.
One of the fastest one actually in the market.
So we're selling that through WPBeginner.
Another one is a gallery solution called Envira Gallery, which is also a paid plugin that we sell through WPBeginner.
Basically we're promoting our own products that generate enough revenue.
So WPBeginner essentially is like our own media platform.
Omer (17:11.860)
Soliloquy.
Syed Balkhi (17:13.060)
Soliloquy, yeah.
Omer (17:15.140)
Try saying that fast five times.
Right.
What does that word mean?
Does it mean something?
Syed Balkhi (17:22.400)
Yeah, it means elegant.
I bought this software, it was named that with OptinMonster.
I started it with a partner, Thomas, and when we were starting it like about, I think six or eight months in, we decided to roll his other products into the main company.
So Soliloquy was one of his first products and it's one of the very well known WordPress slider plugin in the market.
Omer (17:46.480)
Okay, so I know you don't disclose revenue numbers, but we talked about you had several seven figure businesses and so WPBeginner I assume is one of those, right?
Syed Balkhi (17:55.760)
Yeah.
Omer (17:56.320)
Okay, so you've got this business, it's doing well.
Where did the idea for OptinMonster come from?
I mean it's not like there's a shortage of sort of lead generation plugins out there.
Why did you guys get into that business?
Syed Balkhi (18:15.930)
So I created this for my personal use.
So I have WPBeginner.
I also have List 25.
It's a very, very popular entertainment site with over a million and a half YouTube subscribers and quarter billion YouTube views, like really, really high traffic sites.
And I have several other niche sites in different niches for affiliate business entirely.
And if you're in that business, you know the email list are huge.
So before OptinMonster I was using two other products.
So I used one and didn't like that one, kind of outgrew it and use the second one and was always running into problems, whether it was bugs, whether it was features that I needed.
So I ended up building a custom solution which is, you know, that fitted all the needs that I had.
And then over time people were like, well how do you do this?
None of the other solutions in the market are doing it.
So actually we were among the first folks that came out with an exit intent pop up for WordPress that wasn't a functionality that you would have seen otherwise.
Some of the higher level targeting, the preview, the designer that was in our plugin was one of the first ones.
Every other one was kind of following the WordPress conventions.
And we were like first folks that say let's adapt a customizer view, which is what Most of the SaaS products are doing.
And we were doing that within a WordPress plugin.
And then last month we launched the SaaS version of OptinMonster.
So that kind of helped us transition, but that's how the idea of OptinMonster came because I needed it and I didn't see a solution in the market that was able to handle it.
There were like, I think one of the one that was a self service one actually which was charging several thousand bucks a month for you to do what I wanted to do.
Omer (20:00.640)
Several thousand bucks a month to do what OptinMonster does.
Syed Balkhi (20:03.600)
Wow, that's correct.
Now if you notice there's actually quite a few of those out there now.
Those are managed solutions.
Their higher level plans now are 1,000.
But the one that I was talking about, their base level plan was I think at that $3,000 a month.
And now there's several other that are like 200 bucks a month and upwards.
Whereas OptinMonster is 200 bucks a year because it's a do it yourself versus the other ones are kind of, they would help you set it up.
Omer (20:32.860)
Yeah.
I've been using OptinMonster for a while and I really like it.
I think it's a combination of its simplicity.
But when you need to do, I don't know, it's like when you look in this, the configuration, it doesn't look like there's that much you can do with it.
But whenever I feel like I need to do something, it just, there seems to be a way to do it.
Right.
Like I'll give you an example.
I wanted to be able, like when people come to my site and they opt in using one of the opt inmonster forms, I wanted to be able to redirect them to a form where I could ask them some questions.
And I was like, okay, it would be really great if I could also kind of associate an email address with who that person was instead of having to get them to type it in again.
And you know, yeah, great.
I look at OptinMonster and it's like, yeah, there's an option there just to pass that over in the query string and it does exactly what I want.
Yeah, I love that.
I think sometimes there's a tendency to add so many features, but I kind of feel like you guys have really boiled it down to, I don't know, a small set that really matter.
Syed Balkhi (21:47.220)
So it's interesting that you say that.
Right.
So OptinMonster, now that we're SaaS, we can kind of see the way people are using our software.
And from what I've noticed the majority of people are not even using OptinMonster to like it's 100% potential.
They're using it maybe at like 15% potential.
For all the features that it can do.
You can do some really advanced level segmentation.
You can say, well, when somebody clicks on a link from my newsletter, don't ever show them anything related to a pop up or any kind of opt in forms.
You can go above and beyond.
You can say, okay, only show this one on, on a keyword.
When this keyword is mentioned on the page, not on this category or Something you can have a lot of fun and with the query parameters that you were talking about, you can actually pass a name and email and then automatically generate an image.
You can do some really cool stuff with the feature set that we give and the API that we have.
It's extendable, but it's still presentable.
Omer (22:52.880)
Yeah, yeah, I think maybe that's what it is.
That the, the, the way that you've, you've built the, the UI isn't overwhelming, right?
It's like, yeah, so cool.
So, so Opt In Monster is another one of your seven figure businesses?
Syed Balkhi (23:08.720)
Yeah, it's, it's a pretty solid one and obviously list 25 is, is a huge one as well.
Omer (23:15.360)
But you didn't start, you didn't start building OptinMonster with, with sort of a view to building a business.
Right.
You said that you were using it to solve your own problem.
Syed Balkhi (23:24.750)
Yeah.
So OptinMonster relaunched the company in 2013.
I had the code in 2012 that I was already using it.
Right.
So I had a very bare version of the concept of the features that I wanted.
There wasn't a pretty UI behind it.
It was all through a config file in a PHP that I was like, okay, this is what should happen and this is what would happen, you know, when you edit this code.
And I was using it on my own sites.
Then people started asking, hey, what solution are you using?
What solution do you recommend?
And I couldn't honestly recommend a solution, any other solutions in the market because I knew about all the bugs that they had, all the issues they had because I had extensively used them over the past two, three years.
And I'm like, okay, I need to come out with a solution of my own.
So we made some mistakes in the early days of OptinMonster, before the launch actually, but after we launched it was just rocket growth.
Omer (24:26.450)
What were some of the mistakes you made?
Syed Balkhi (24:29.090)
One of the mistakes, as I said, in the early days we didn't have the ui, so we spent far too much time on building the ui.
We're like, okay, we're going to launch it as a SaaS from day one.
And, and actually had no experience launching a SaaS.
So we overlooked quite a few things.
We had no user input in building this so called perfect product.
So I guess I was chasing perfection.
I didn't want to be the other products that I had ignored.
I was like, okay, I need to build completely really, really good.
Only to find out that when we were ready to launch and we invited some users like about Seven or eight months in one.
It wouldn't scale, the product wouldn't scale itself.
Our infrastructure and people were like, okay, this is kind of hard, this doesn't make sense.
And we're like, ok, this is crap, we need to scrap it either completely get rid of this project and just keep using it for us and tell other people these are the solutions, these are the problems with it.
Or have a 30 day if we can rebuild an MVP solution and just launch it as a WordPress plugin.
So when we launched OptinMonster, we didn't launch it as a SaaS, we launched it as a WordPress plugin which was kind of written in 30 days.
If you looked at the initial version code, it wasn't very well documented, it wasn't extensible, there was literally no hooks and filters for you because we built it for the users.
I know some of our developers friend would be upset, but that's not the audience we want.
And we launched it after several months, continually improving, improving, improving, launching version two, which was a lot better, translatable, et cetera.
Omer (26:04.280)
So wait, so you started out with a SaaS version which you were using yourself and then the product that you actually launched was like built in 30 days.
Syed Balkhi (26:12.440)
So no, no, the version that I was launching was just a script.
When we started planning it all out, we were like, well, we shouldn't just launch it as a WordPress plugin.
We had two options.
Launch it as a WordPress plugin and launch it as SaaS.
We decided to go launching it as SaaS in the beginning and we failed miserably because one, we didn't know how to scale a SaaS business at that point in terms of technology wise.
But two, the way we had designed everything, we're like, okay, I think this is brilliant because again, we're doing UI for a solution that didn't have a UI before and I'm trying to add all these complex features in it, et cetera.
When the time came to launch it, it just wouldn't scale on a site with crazy amount of traffic because we weren't doing analytics right, we weren't doing several other things in a proper way.
So we're like, okay, this is going to be, this is going to take major rewriting.
So we scrapped that solution and launched at the WordPress plugin.
So essentially, okay, yeah.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Omer (27:13.620)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, when we were talking earlier, before we started recording, you'd said, you know, I didn't really have any major challenges getting traction with OptinMonster.
And you know, when people tell me that sometimes I'm like, okay, you just don't want to talk about the challenges that you had, but you had a good explanation.
And I think that most, again, I think the other part of this was, which made a lot of sense for me was most people, when they start out with a product like this, like this, they don't have scaling issues, right.
Because they can't drive enough traffic and usage that quickly anyway.
But you, you had this big kind of fire hose of like WP Beginner, which you'd be kind of building an audience for years that you could point to, to this.
Syed Balkhi (28:02.740)
Right?
Omer (28:02.900)
And I think that was the reason why you were able to get traction so quickly.
Syed Balkhi (28:07.180)
Yes, exactly.
So, you know, one of my challenges would never.
Traction was never a challenge because I had been, you know, good at driving traffic, you know, with WPBeginner, even pre WPBeginner for, you know, clients in my affiliate site.
So getting traffic was not an issue, especially with WPBeginner and the connections that I had with different friends over the years that I've made with significantly large audiences.
So that wasn't an issue.
The day we launched, we had an insane amount of sales.
And then since then, it's just like recommendations, word of mouth and then getting it pressed.
So traction.
I have that figured out, I think.
Omer (28:45.370)
So what did you struggle with?
Syed Balkhi (28:49.290)
One of the struggles was the one I told you about.
That was a big, big mistake that we made a challenge that we.
Our team was very small with OptinMonster.
So even though the core company team was big in terms of content wise, our Software team for OptinMonster was relatively small.
And when we launched with an MVP, as I told you, we were getting a lot of feature requests, which as a software developer you probably know that you get tons of those every day.
For us it was like, which ones do we build first?
Should it be built as a feature?
Should it be.
Should we just add it as an API for others to extend?
Like, for example, I told you in there, how do you make sure the pop up never shows for anybody who clicks on a newsletter, right?
Maybe they subscribed to your newsletter before you added OptinMonster.
Should we add that as a feature or should we add as an API functionality, Things like that, how much priority should we give it?
Which integration should we add first?
Things like that.
We had a big challenge with accommodating those requests.
Just balancing, balancing all of them and prioritizing.
That was kind of a challenge.
Omer (29:52.760)
So what did you do?
How did you prioritize those requests?
Syed Balkhi (29:56.200)
So in terms of integrations, the prioritization essentially depended on how willingly is the email marketing service provider willing to promote us.
So we're like, okay, I know Aweber is going to promote us.
Okay, will you write a blog post about us?
Okay, will you tweet?
Can we do a webinar with your audience?
Things like that.
And that's how we literally prioritized.
And also, am I talking with an influencer and maybe a larger company?
And let's say they were using infusionsoft.
We didn't have infusionsoft integration when we launched.
So I was like, okay, should we add Infusionsoft or should we add GetResponse first?
Okay, no, let's add Infusionsoft.
Same thing.
A company that we didn't integrate with in the early days was ontraport.
Despite the demand, we simply didn't integrate with them because their team wasn't helping or collaborative enough for us.
Right now we're collaborating with them in building that native integration.
But in the early days we didn't.
Omer (30:56.960)
We've got another guest on the show.
Syed Balkhi (30:58.720)
Yes, we do have another guest on the show.
My dog probably saw somebody walking by our house.
Omer (31:06.880)
All right, sweet.
All right.
Syed Balkhi (31:11.000)
So
Omer (31:13.400)
I'm trying to kind of figure out, like, you know, what you did.
Kind of reminds me a lot of Matt Mickiewicz, a very good friend of mine.
Yeah, is that a coincidence or not?
Right.
Because, I mean, for folks who don't know, he's the founder of 99designs hired site.
Syed Balkhi (31:35.760)
Site Point Flippa.
Omer (31:38.240)
Yeah, the list.
List goes on.
And it's kind of very similar kind of thing in terms of building out, you know, one business and an audience and then sort of looking at an opportunity there and then sort of fulfilling a need that isn't being met, but not trying to go into a completely new market.
And then really, you know, he was kind of very rigorous about, okay, either this thing has to meet a certain criteria for us to kind of keep going with it, or we're going to kind of quit and shut it down.
And so I wondered that with you as well, because, I mean, did I get it right?
You're still 24.
Syed Balkhi (32:15.860)
Yes, I'm still 24.
Yeah.
Omer (32:17.620)
Right.
So three, three seven figure businesses by the age of 24.
But were there other businesses that you tried that that didn't work out, that just failed?
Syed Balkhi (32:29.790)
Yeah, absolutely.
I tried to launch a fitness website that was going out of my comfort zone.
You know, I was like, okay, well, I've.
I've.
I've done it at least 25.
You know, I've done it with several other affiliate sites that also, you know, make decent amount of money in small sub niches.
I was like, I want to go in fitness.
Which was like a, you know, beast of a market that I had not.
I didn't know anything about.
Right.
I don't know.
I'm not the most fittest person on the planet.
Right.
Omer (32:54.550)
Well, that would help.
Syed Balkhi (32:55.310)
Right?
Exactly.
So I launched it, and then I think about like six, seven months in, the person I partnered with just failed.
He was like, okay, I don't want to do this anymore.
And like, crap.
So that was a failure.
You know, it's funny you mentioned about Matt.
I met Matt for the first time in person.
I was like, 20.
Maybe I was 19.
Actually, I was 19 when I first met him, but I had been chatting with him for quite some time.
And there's a lot of good exchanges that Matt and I have had over the past and chatted about how our businesses have evolved.
So it's definitely interesting.
There's a lot of similarities.
I'm pretty sure Matt would say the same thing.
But we didn't go planning into, okay, we're going to build this today.
You know how most folks go in when you're starting a business?
They're like, okay, we're going to build this.
A lot of things that we built came out of the platform that we had built previously.
For him, it was Site Point.
For me, it was WPBeginner.
And that's where, you know, you kind of, you know the market better than most people because you are in the market, you are helping the people, and you see where the voids are and then you try to fill it.
For him, you know, Marketplace was something that he saw people needed and then decided to launch Flippa.
Omer (34:14.620)
Yeah, yeah.
I think there's definitely a lesson in, you know, obviously there's value in building an audience and then finding opportunities kind of from that, but also, you know, solving.
Solving your own problem or something, doing something that you deeply understand has a huge difference.
Syed Balkhi (34:34.070)
Right.
Omer (34:34.390)
I mean, I launched a SaaS product myself last month, which is called Presto Pod.
Actually, I was thinking of, I should start getting Presto Pot to sponsor these podcasts.
Syed Balkhi (34:47.080)
Right.
Omer (34:47.240)
That would be pretty cool.
I can pay myself to sponsors or not.
Syed Balkhi (34:51.080)
You can just say, that's your sponsor, right?
Omer (34:53.400)
Yeah, yeah.
And it kind of came from, you know, when I started doing this podcast, there was like, so many, like, annoying, mundane kind of things that you have to do after you finish recording, right.
You end up with an MP3 file.
You've got to add ID3 tags.
So it show up, shows up in itunes, you've got to upload it to the right hosting places.
You've got to make sure the metadata shows up there.
You've got to create WordPress show notes pages and things like that.
And so I kind of started looking around to see if I could find something that would help me automate it.
Like, you know, like, just get rid of the monotonous work so I could focus on the more interesting thing, like thinking about interviews or chatting with the guests.
And I couldn't find anything.
So I started like just building bits.
And again, it was like I didn't kind of start out saying, oh, I'm going to build a business or I'm going to launch a SaaS product.
It was like, no, I'm just going to like run some scripts on my computer to help me automate this stuff.
And then over, over sort of the weeks and months, it kind of got more and more kind of sophisticated.
And then when I heard about other people having similar problems, I was like, okay, you know, maybe there is an opportunity here.
And so that's been really good.
We kind of launched it last month, had had some, you know, great feedback in the podcasting community.
Got some early customers already using it.
But I don't think if I didn't have a podcast, I wouldn't have even have understood what those issues were.
Syed Balkhi (36:26.450)
Right.
Omer (36:26.930)
I could have maybe kind of superficially looked at it and said, oh, let's create something that helps them do XYZ better.
But unless you really have that deep understanding, I think you're always going to struggle.
Syed Balkhi (36:37.190)
Absolutely.
You know, there's so many different plugins that I have launched in the past.
Some of them are completely free WordPress plugins.
Like a floating social bar.
Right.
I hated that all the social plugins slow down your website so much.
So I created one that lazy loads and kind of like, you know, loads of fake social icons and stuff at first.
And then you bring your mouse over, it shows the actual things that delays the loading completely even after the page is loaded.
So tricking the bots and all that.
And I just launched that for free.
I'm sure if I really wanted to, I can actually add paid extensions and go to extension route.
So you kind of come up with these different little things that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
Plugin that I created was insert headers and footers.
It's a very, very simple plugin.
It allows you to insert code in your head part of your WordPress site or at the footer part right above the body aspect of your WordPress site.
And it has been downloaded like 179,000 times.
And something really simple, I'm sure I could put ads in it.
I haven't done it, but there's always products that just come out of your need when you're so involved into the market and you're using a software.
Omer (37:50.910)
I think a lot of people might listen to this and think, okay, say it saw this opportunity with WordPress built WP beginner and then, and then kind of things have been much easier for him because he's, he's had this, you know, a seven figure business to kind of fund the other things that he wants to go and do.
He's already got this huge audience that he can kind of tap into.
Would you, I'm just kind of wondering like if, if you were kind of going into, would you ever go into kind of a new market which didn't leverage your existing audience or kind of do you feel like you've tried that once and kind of you're not going
Syed Balkhi (38:39.140)
to do that again?
Well, I did try that twice.
One time it worked for my favorite.
One time it didn't with list 25.
If you go on it, that's not a technology audience.
It's a BuzzFeed style website.
Right.
We launched it in 2011, actually end of 2011.
So it's relatively old and we're in the top 1% of YouTube and that one was a huge success for us.
But I would say, all right, you
Omer (39:05.900)
didn't promote that on WP Beginner though, right?
Syed Balkhi (39:08.820)
No, I wrote in one article on how we set it up, but the rest of the traction came from other places.
So I have a good idea on promoting in spaces is just a lot easier.
If I do it where I have a platform, it doesn't mean it's a piece of cake.
It doesn't mean that any product that I touch is automatically going to do well.
You have to see is there a market for it?
Is there this?
And even if I start a fitness site or I just promote it on my personal Twitter account and say, hey, I launched a site, it can go a long way in helping the other site get some initial traction.
Omer (39:45.880)
Tell me about list 25.
Okay, we're talking about a different market.
What did you do there to get traction?
Syed Balkhi (39:55.410)
The first thing that I did was a Facebook contest.
I ran a Facebook giveaway in end of November.
It was I'll give you 25$25Amazon gift cards to 25 people over the course of next 25 days.
You had to like the page to see how you could enter.
You had to share the contest to qualify to enter, and then you had to give me your name and email to actually enter.
You can imagine how wild that thing went.
I spent maybe like $700 or so to get the initial 30,000 or so likes on my Facebook page.
And then I found several different promoters, folks that were influencers and got them to promote list 25 on their StumbleUpon accounts and Reddit and other Twitter profiles and Facebook pages and then just got traction that way.
Omer (40:48.730)
How did you promote, did you run the Facebook contest as sort of an ad to promote it?
Syed Balkhi (40:53.170)
Initially, yeah.
So I did do some ads, but not huge.
What I did was I was still in college during that time, so I just reached out to a bunch of my college friends and said, hey, would you mind resharing this and inviting all of your friends to kind of do that?
I took them all out for like a lunch at a Mexican restaurant that we all liked.
It was really grassroot if you think about it.
And it took off.
First all the kids were sharing it and then their moms were sharing it and then their grandma and dads and uncles.
All of them are trying to win a $25 gift card because it was right around Christmas time as well.
So it got decent traction.
And then from that point onward we just kind of hit.
And then we had Cheeseburger Network picking up several of our videos and featuring it in their plethora of websites that they have.
Several other entertainment style sites started featuring our stuff and it took off.
Omer (41:57.450)
And you're just curating content on here?
Syed Balkhi (41:59.930)
No, we are actually creating content.
So that's the big difference between us and a lot of the other websites that simply are like a cheeseburger style site where they're just curating.
Right.
Somebody else just uploading here 25 things about the Revolutionary war you might not know.
Somebody actually sit there and do the research and add the stuff.
So we're doing research, finding the facts and then sharing it.
25 unbelievable facts about the Mayans that might surprise you.
So our goal is to share the little tidbits that you would have never known, but now you know.
Omer (42:36.260)
And were you writing this content yourself when you started?
Syed Balkhi (42:39.380)
No, I have only written one article on the site.
I'm sure there's Several others that says that I wrote them, but most of them were ghostwritten.
Omer (42:47.540)
Why did you start this one?
Syed Balkhi (42:50.260)
Why did I start this one?
It was with one of my best friends.
Basically he was looking for a job and I was like, this would be a cool thing.
And I always love reading these kind of sites.
And it was an experiment.
Let's see, what can we do with it in three months.
It did really, really well in terms of the stumbleupon traffic that was coming to it.
Some of our earlier articles had million and a half views from StumbleUpon alone.
Just one article would have 30,000 plus likes.
It was a massive traffic experiment to see what you can do with Facebook's algorithm or what you could do with stumblepaw's algorithm.
And like that.
It was a cool one project.
Omer (43:33.290)
So I'm looking at it now and it's got 277,000 or nearly 278,000 likes.
Syed Balkhi (43:41.770)
Yep.
Yeah, go ahead.
Omer (43:44.050)
Did you do anything else or was kind of.
Once you'd done the StumbleUpon and the Facebook contest, that kind of got you the initial kind of momentum.
Syed Balkhi (43:53.850)
So that got us the initial momentum and we decided I wanted to.
The goal was I wanted to launch in multiple platforms, so I wanted to grow in multiple communities, not just a blog.
So I had Facebook and I'm like, well, I hadn't done anything significant on YouTube, so why not launch a YouTube channel about, you know, of this thing?
So we kind of created slideshow style videos of our.
Of our articles.
So now you might see a lot of these coming out.
But at that time there weren't anybody doing this list.
25 YouTube channel is a glorified podcast.
Essentially somebody reading the article and having an image slideshow.
But at that point it was so solid that that started growing, right?
It was exponential growth.
So it wasn't like, oh, one month, we just hit big.
It was consistently producing one video a week and pushing it on Tumblr.
We also had a Tumblr property that eventually died out because we started ignoring it because it wasn't bringing us as much return as our other sites, like the site itself on the YouTube channel.
But in early days, we would actually promote little tidbit style content that Cheeseburger Network would have on our Tumblr site.
And that allowed us to build out content partnerships and cross promotional opportunities because we couldn't always do a top 25 about publication X, but we could reshare their smaller tidbits on our Tumblr site.
So we're trying to grow Facebook YouTube and Tumblr at the same time and YouTube was the one that really, really took off.
So Facebook had an initial burst but then it slug, it became sluggish.
But our YouTube, you know, consistently start, you know, growing and growing.
And I would say I'll give credit to the YouTube organic search at that point.
And I was also like, you know, looking at all the different popular YouTube channels that what they were doing and just kind of implementing the same techniques.
And now we have 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube and closing in on 300 million views.
Wow.
Yeah.
Omer (45:53.780)
This is your third seven figure business, right?
Syed Balkhi (45:57.140)
Yes.
And then I have several real estate that I was able to build because of the online success.
Omer (46:07.220)
You have a magic touch.
You want to start a business together.
Syed Balkhi (46:11.700)
I don't know about that because I have had several failures.
Steady Strength was just one of them within WPBeginner.
The reason how WPBeginner is a seven figure business is because it drives so much traffic.
So the site itself doesn't make some figures.
The business that it drives to the other products that I have does.
And I have other niche sites that I don't talk about because they're in such low competition spaces that it's not worth talking about them because it will just invite competition in the affiliate space.
Omer (46:43.330)
Yeah.
So tell me about how you spend your day.
I mean you've got a lot going on a lot of these businesses.
What does a typical day look like for you?
How do you structure that day?
Syed Balkhi (46:53.970)
So I wake up very early, but my days are actually structured in terms of like a week.
So I plan out weeks, not days per se.
So I have a day for Property X or I have a day for Project X and day for Project yeah, the day for Project C kind of thing throughout the week.
And then two days are kind of like miscellaneous days where I'm working on multiple smaller projects.
Like two days are often monster because I'm heavily focused on that.
Growing that right now versus WP Beginner is more or less on other people in my team are managing it.
Same thing with list 25 more.
I don't spend very much time on list 25.
I have the whole team that's managing that particular side of the business.
So I wake up very early around 4, 4:30.
I work usually till 11, 12 noon time.
That's where I'm like, you know, I find I'm the Most productive from 4:30 till like 11 o' clock ish in the day where I'm absolutely the most productive.
I'm Honed in, I'm just crushing it.
And then after that, I would have meetings with my team members if need be.
Whenever needed.
I have like, you know, two days of the week where I schedule like, you know, calls such as the podcasting one, like this one and several other, you know, just kind of reconnecting with people.
You know, if you're probably wondering, well, you get done around like 11 or 12.
That's when I'm like done with the core, core work.
The rest of the time I would spend, you know, reading articles, you know, just trying to get ahead of doing various little miscellaneous things, but taking a nap sometimes, not all the time.
I do go to sleep very early.
My wife comes home around 5 o'.
Clock, 5, 5, 15.
Then I just spend most of the time with her.
So I don't really work after that.
It's a recent change.
It didn't used to be that way.
But I've been making constant strides on getting a better balance.
So I'm not working crazy late or when she's home.
I'm making constant effort and trying not to work after X time period.
Omer (49:02.050)
So you mentioned Optinmonster.
If you were launching a new business, do you think your hours would change or now that you've kind of got this routine, you'd be able to work within that?
I guess what I'm trying to get to is there's always this sort of.
I guess as an entrepreneur you're always thinking you're not spending enough time working on your business.
Syed Balkhi (49:27.490)
So, yeah, when, when you're, whenever a launch is coming up.
When we did the SaaS launch for OptinMonster, the schedule went to toilet.
Okay, it was, it was work consistently for the last two, last two weeks.
Especially like, you know, where I was, where I was getting very, very little sleep just because, you know, I was honed in.
I'm like, okay, I need to get this done, I need to do this.
But after, once we launched it, I took two weeks off.
I was like, okay, I'm going to go away to kind of clear my head.
I've gotten better about it.
Anytime there's a major launch coming up or something coming up, then these schedules do shift.
But you have to realize that you don't want to be burnt out.
I've been burnt out a few times in the past.
It's not a fun feeling.
So you just get better and you learn from your mistakes, how much you can push yourself and where you should stop.
Omer (50:24.510)
And then do you work from home or do you go into the office or where do you do most of your work?
Syed Balkhi (50:30.590)
I work from home.
Majority of our team is remote.
We have an office in North Carolina just because we have several people there, and then they work out of the office, but they're not required to spend some.
Sometimes they come in, sometimes they don't.
I work from home.
Omer (50:45.560)
And how do you.
How do you prioritize?
Because again, you know, if you're working on one business, maybe it's a little easier, but, you know, even within that business, you've got to kind of think about a whole bunch of things you've got to do and prioritize, but you've got.
You've got multiple businesses to think about.
Syed Balkhi (51:04.680)
Yeah.
Remember, remember when I, when I talked about in the beginning the quote, if you want to go fast, go alone, you want to go far, go together.
So I have very, very good people on my team that handle a lot of different responsibilities, and I have delegated.
Again, this was not easy for me to do because when you start as a solopreneur, you're doing everything, and then you have to learn how to let go.
And it's been a learning process for me, but I've gotten, I would like to think gotten very good at delegation.
So, for example, a project like List25, I do not have to spend a lot of time.
And because I have the right team in place, same thing for a project like Soliloquy and Envira or theme lab or WPBeginner, I have a good team in place.
So when I'm prioritizing, there's a layer below, not below me, there's a layer of management there that's coming up with ideas, discussion points, decisions that I need to make.
And then I look at it like, okay, this is what needs to be made.
This is what.
This is what we should do, et cetera.
So in terms of that, there are times when a certain project may be neglected because of another project taking precedent.
But you have to decide on which project you're going to get the maximum return at that moment.
Omer (52:24.890)
All right, I just realized the time.
We have been talking for quite a while, and I'm enjoying this conversation.
I think I could keep going for another couple of hours, but I got to be respectful of your time as well.
So we should start wrapping up.
So let's get onto the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven questions and just give me your answers as quickly as you can.
Syed Balkhi (52:48.150)
Sure.
Omer (52:49.030)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Syed Balkhi (52:51.990)
Your last impression is just as important as your first one.
Omer (52:55.510)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Syed Balkhi (53:00.310)
Two books, actually.
One is Hard Things about Hard Things.
It's by Ben Horowitz.
Great book.
That gives you two insights.
It's not like, oh, here's a business lesson one, Business lesson two, Business lesson three.
It rather walks you through the stories of Netscape and LabCloud, et cetera, and the ups and downs of it.
So it's very interesting kind of seeing how Ben made several of his decisions.
And the second book is David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.
Gives you a unique insight on how you can use your disadvantages as an advantage when you're an underdog.
You have a lot of disadvantages, but it's just a perspective of thinking.
If you change it, then you can start leveraging those as an advantage and then you can start seeing how the advantages of the bigger companies are actually their disadvantages.
Really good book.
Omer (53:48.810)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Syed Balkhi (53:55.070)
From you know, I've talked with so many different people and in entrepreneurship space, people who are successful businesses myself including, I think persistence is huge.
They have, you know, people are.
As an entrepreneur you face a lot of challenges, but you put in crazy amount of work and you get to where you are today.
And that goes back to my quote, you know, it's hard to be the person that never gives up.
Omer (54:18.110)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Syed Balkhi (54:21.820)
Tool Time doctor Helps me keep track of time.
What I spend it on, what I'm doing, how much time I spend on a specific task.
Habit.
Just waking up early and writing things down.
You'd be surprised.
Start waking up early and going to bed early, you'd be much more productive.
Omer (54:39.340)
I got to say, I started doing that a few months ago, waking up around 4:35.
I always tell myself I'm a night owl and I can't do the morning thing.
And now I don't think I can go back.
I think I just find you have such a much better day.
You feel better, but I'm still finding it hard to go to sleep early at night.
So anyway, I'll have to get some tips from you at some point.
What's a new business idea that if you had time to pursue, you'd go after?
What's the kind of thing that you think about but you just don't have time to do?
Syed Balkhi (55:15.360)
I'd like to target the E commerce market in general because it's so fast growing.
I think we kind of do it with OptinMonster, but I would love to do it in more ways, whether that's through professional services, whether that's through software, more software, whether it's through training or education, it's a market that I would like to go in if I had more time.
Omer (55:36.240)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Syed Balkhi (55:41.110)
I think the biggest surprise I hear from people who meet me in person is that I'm a lot taller than what they thought.
I guess maybe when they look at my pictures online they don't see I'm very tall.
So I am, I'm 6 foot 5 inches, so I'm very tall.
And you know, the second question is like, do you play basketball?
Yeah, I do play basketball and I'm not that good at it.
Omer (56:03.590)
Did you ever play cricket?
Syed Balkhi (56:05.030)
Yeah, I was very good at cricket.
Omer (56:10.410)
All right.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Syed Balkhi (56:14.970)
That's a pretty tough question when you ask me because my work is my passion.
But I think that second thing that I enjoy a lot is spending time with my family.
Whether it doesn't matter what we're doing, whether it's river rafting, playing football, we going to the beach, swimming, whatever, as long as I'm spending it with my brother, my sisters, my wife, my cousin.
I like the time when we're together because it really helps me relax.
And I know when I'm around family, I don't think about work, you know, all kind of like stress free.
So I really enjoy that.
Omer (56:44.380)
Sweet.
Say this has been a pleasure.
I really enjoyed chatting with you.
How do you think the unscripted kind of conversation went?
How did we do?
Syed Balkhi (56:53.500)
I think it went well.
You know, this was more fun than you know, just talking about like question A, question B, cat thing.
Yeah.
So the several seven figures business point.
And I know you're pressing on that and I was like, yeah, but WPBeginner is a seven figure business by proxy.
So because of the amount of traffic it drives and send to other people, if you just go and create a WordPress resource site, you're not going to make seven figures, you know what I'm saying?
Omer (57:25.030)
So basically you've got a huge audience there and then you're, you're kind of driving that audience into different businesses to generate revenue.
Syed Balkhi (57:33.360)
That's correct.
So for example, an Optinmonster or Soliloquy or Envira Gallery, which is a new operation, a theme lab.
The other seven figure business would be list 25 because just the sheer number of traffic that's there.
And then I have several commercial real estate, like gas station properties where I've just triple net leases.
Those are pretty lucrative.
Omer (57:56.730)
Ah, gosh, man.
It's like I. I just don't know how you find the time for all this stuff.
It's.
Syed Balkhi (58:01.770)
I'm motivated.
Yeah, I can see.
