Transcript:

When I first built PodToMatic, my goal was simple: automate the tasks my virtual assistants were doing and cut down on hiring costs. I kept improving it to make it more effective and boost my earnings from print-on-demand on Amazon.

I also decided to offer this system to other print-on-demand sellers, helping them succeed with my automation tool.

I didn’t plan it this way, but I ended up creating a new source of revenue by selling PodToMatic. Initially, I just wanted to cover the costs of running the system, like web servers and databases. Any extra profit was just a bonus.

Anyway, I found that many of our users are very happy with PodToMatic and continue building their print-on-demand businesses by investing in our tools year after year. Super happy customers often stay quiet. When they make a sale, they celebrate privately with me through email. But when there's a glitch in the system, people post it in the group, so sometimes it feels like a bug-reporting group, which can be a bit frustrating. If you have any tips on managing a Facebook group, let me know!

I never really looked at the numbers of how much PodToMatic and our other software services made. I just checked to ensure we were still profitable so we could cover server and database costs. But one day, my partner asked, "How much have we actually made by selling the tools?"

Can you guess the number? I’ll count to ten... feel free to leave your guesses in the comment box. Ready? One, two, three...

Well, I checked the stats on my payment gateway a few days ago and got a big surprise. We just passed the $1M milestone! Wow, we’ve come this far without even noticing. You can also see that we’ve paid a lot to our affiliate partners too. Don had a huge influence when we launched our software. Thanks again, Don! If you want to earn recurring commissions by recommending PodToMaTic to your friends, just let me know!

In this extra session, I'm going to share the lessons we learned on our road to $1M.

I'll show you what a SaaS business is and how you can get started quickly.

Do you guys want to learn from my $1M journey?

If yes, please let me know by replying "$1M" in the comments. I'll check later to see if you’re interested in building a software business.

Alright, let's begin with the concept of a SaaS business!

What is a SaaS Business?

SaaS stands for "Software As A Service."

In simple terms, it's software you create to help a group of people. Imagine an app or tool that does something useful for others. That's SaaS—it's like offering a service through a piece of software.

Take PODtomatic, for example. It tackles a bunch of everyday hassles. You know, finding new niches and quotes, creating tons of designs, and then putting those designs on different products. After that, you’ve got to write product titles, descriptions, bullet points, and search terms for all those products and upload them to Amazon—every single day!

A lot of people do this manually, and it can be super boring and time-consuming. That’s why we built PodToMaTic. It’s a tool designed to make this process way easier and faster for those who need it.

Honestly, we started with PodToMaTic for ourselves, but it’s turned into something amazing. Not only does it help us, but it also helps others while bringing in some extra income. So, why not share the love and make it available for our friends too?

So, what’s great about SaaS? Let me break it down for you:

First, it’s pretty low-cost compared to traditional businesses. You don’t need a huge budget to get started.

Second, it has high margins. With the right strategy, you can make a lot of profit.

Third, it’s super easy to deliver. If you set it up right, you don’t have to worry about shipping or fulfilling orders. Everything happens automatically and quietly!

The one thing you really need to get started is...

YOUR IDEA!

Just a heads-up—don't follow the exact path we took with PodToMatic when you're starting out. We went all out with a ton of features and complexity from the get-go. Honestly, PodToMatic is pretty big and complicated. If we could go back, we'd probably start with something simpler. So, take it easy and keep it straightforward when you're beginning!

The first thing I'd recommend is to start with a Micro SaaS. So, what’s a Micro SaaS?

Well, it’s a type of SaaS that's designed to solve just one specific problem. It’s like a small, focused tool that tackles a particular issue rather than trying to do everything at once.

Let me stress this: FOCUS ON ONE SPECIFIC PROBLEM!

You only need to solve ONE problem to get started.

When we first built PodToMatic, we made the mistake of trying to add too many features all at once. This made our project slow and drained a lot of our time, resources, and energy. We spent so much time worrying about problems that might never even happen!

In the end, we had to cut back on features to make things work. And guess what? We found that people are willing to buy if you solve just one big problem effectively.

Sure, solving more problems can make your product even more appealing, but it’s best to start small. Launch with a simple solution, get feedback from your users, and then improve your SaaS based on their needs.

Are you with me so far?

Alright, so how do we tackle ONE problem?

We've crystalized 3 steps for you.

The first step is to "Find the pain".

The point is that, for the pain, it should not be a pain from users.

It's our pain first!

So many SaaS entrepreneurs failed onto this because marketing books always teach us to create a persona which is a user we would like to serve.

Find out what pains they got, then just solve it with your SaaS.

Which lead me to the explanation why it doesn't work even it looks good when we learn.

One, you will never truly know what pain they have. If you got one, you sure it is?

Even with user interview, most of the time, user will tell their pain wrong unless you are very good at NLP skill which you can deep digging into their real pain.

So, why not begin with the one you understand the best. It's you.

My suggestion is straight right away, note this, begin with OUR PAIN!

For PodToMatic, we started with my own pain points: finding niches and quotes, creating designs, and uploading products to Amazon every day. I hired virtual assistants to help, but it was still costly. So, I built a Micro SaaS to solve these issues.

Once we proved it worked for us, we knew it could help others too.

So, now that we understand our pain, what’s the next step?

The second step is to Find a way to solve our pain points.

For the past decade, we’ve been tackling these issues by hiring programmers to code solutions for us.

Let me give you an example. Suppose we're trying to solve the problem of coming up with new quotes.

In the past, if we wanted to do this, we would hire a programmer to code a SaaS solution with these steps:

First, they’d go to websites like Amazon or Etsy and find 50 of the best-selling quotes in a particular niche. Then, they’d modify those quotes to fit our specific niches. For example, if we found a quote like "Keep calm, I'm a lawyer" is popular, the system would automatically replace "lawyer" with other professions like Engineer, Nurse, Teacher, and so on. Finally, all these modified quotes would be saved into a database.

This might sound simple, but it’s a huge job for a programmer. You'd need tens of thousands of lines of code just to handle this!

If we want our SaaS to be smart, we need to go beyond just swapping words. We should focus on understanding the patterns and psychology behind successful quotes.

But, doing that would mean adding tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of lines of code!

We call it a BLACKBOX, where all the processes to solve the pain are stored.

Now, more lines of code mean a bigger BLACKBOX. That’s bad news because a bigger BLACKBOX equals more money we have to spend. This can discourage people from getting into the SaaS business.

Want to know the secret sauce to overcome this?

Let me tell you about creating a BIG BLACKBOX that’s CHEAP TO PAY FOR.

It's AI.

AI is not a crucial role when we talk about coding, it does help a lot but still require a lot of work by programmer to mix them up as a SaaS.

The TRUE BREAKTHROUGH we got from AI is the BLACKBOX!

If you remember what we've mentioned about the processes we need programmer to code to solve the pain of thinking new QUOTE for us.

We don’t need programmers to work on the black box for writing quotes anymore because we can command AI to do that for us.

Then, we just hire a programmer to create a web interface that connects to our BLACKBOX. This way, we can sell our solution to other people, and they can access our black box.

This is a game changer for Micro SaaS entrepreneurs! We can now build our own Micro SaaS with a much smaller budget at the beginning.

With the right combination of tools and technologies, we can even build a pain solver prototype without hiring any programmer!

Yes, you heard that right. You can have a real, usable prototype on the web to test if your idea is sellable or not, all without needing to hire a programmer.

I won't get into all the details here, but trust me, it's MUCH easier now compared to the old days. (And by old days, I mean just a few years ago, not ten years ago!)

I hope you’re starting to see how easy it can be to kick off your own Micro SaaS journey.

Now, let’s dive into the final step!

I’m going to walk you through how to sell your solution, based on the steps we’ve covered.

It’s way better to show you real examples than just talking theory. So, let’s take a look at our actual sales funnels!

Let me introduce you to the Jesse PodMan v1. It's a text-generative AI tool that I spent a few hours crafting.

Initially, it had just one function: helping people create better product descriptions and bullet points for their Amazon listings. You’d enter the niche, quote, product type, and details, and the tool would generate optimized descriptions and bullet points for you to use.

As more people started using it daily, they asked for additional features. So, I added functions for finding niches, writing general quotes, and creating To-My quotes for jewelry message cards.

I even included some tutorials about print-on-demand to help users learn more and share their knowledge with friends.

Curious to see how it works?

[Demo]

Alright, let me show you how it works.

Let’s say you want to create a new description and bullet points for a lawyer coffee mug.

First, you enter "Lawyer" as the niche.

Next, type in the quote: "Tears of Opposing Counsel"—you can just copy this from the product title.

Then, enter the product type and details. In this case, it’s a coffee mug: white color, 11oz capacity, made of ceramic, and it’s microwave and dishwasher safe.

After that, just click "Start."

The AI will generate a product description and bullet points with all the right keywords for you. Then you can easily copy and paste this into your product listing.

Let me show you another cool feature I built: the To-My Quote Writer. A lot of people asked for this after I released Jesse PodMan. They wanted a way to create messages for jewelry cards.

So, let’s say you want a funny message for Mother’s Day from a son to his mom. You’d enter "mom," "son," "Mother’s Day," and "funny" into the tool.

Then, the AI will generate a funny message in the To-My style that you can use on the jewelry card. 

Isn’t this pretty cool? I had AI create all these functions in just a few hours, without needing to hire a programmer.

Many people use this tool every day, so I added a link to my blog in the footer of every page. This way, people can learn more about print-on-demand from my blog, and I can later introduce them to PodToMatic.

So, when ChatGPT announced its new Vision feature, which can actually see pictures, I jumped at the chance to upgrade Jesse PodMan.

In Jesse PodMan v1, we had to enter product info manually, which could be time-consuming. I know this because I used it every day, and sometimes, I’d get a bit lazy about entering all those details, especially the quotes.

With the new Vision feature, I developed Jesse PodMan v2, which lets people just copy and paste everything, including the product image URL. No more typing out long quotes—just copy, paste, and click "Execute."

I wanted to simplify things even more by just entering the product URL from Amazon, but unfortunately, Amazon blocks our tool from scraping their pages. So for now, it’s still a manual copy-and-paste job.

I’m on a quest to find a way to make it even easier, like directly using the product URL to get the new product title, description, and bullet points.

I guess my laziness knows no bounds!

I spent about an hour building this new tool, and I didn’t write a single line of code. I just asked AI to handle it for me.

This time, I’m not releasing it to the public like before. People need to enter their email to use it, and I’ll nurture them with print-on-demand tips before introducing them to PodToMatic.

Let me share another story from a local friend of mine. He’s been doing really well in the Amazon KDP world, where he’s built his own KDP empire. For those who might not know, KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, where we sell eBooks, planners, coloring books, puzzle books, and more.

Now, he’s looking to dive into the SaaS world. So, he started by finding his first pain point. He realized that producing puzzle books was a tough process for him.

A few years ago, he wanted to hire a programmer to build a BLACKBOX that could generate new Sudoku puzzles. But the programmer quoted him thousands of dollars to make it!

At the time, he didn’t want to spend that much money, especially since he hadn’t tested if there was a real demand for it. So, he passed on the offer and put his SaaS project on hold.

Last year, he saw how well we were doing with our SaaS business and came to us for some advice.

In just a few hours, he used AI to build a prototype of the Sudoku generator. And within a day, he had it up and running on his website.

That means he ended up with a real working prototype that he could use to test the market first. If it showed good demand, he’d then invest in building a more polished SaaS!

Now, you might be wondering if he needed to know how to program to make this Sudoku generator. The answer is no—he knew a bit about programming but had no clue how to write a program for generating Sudoku papers.

I’m not a fan of just talking about things, so let me show you live how to create a Sudoku generator using AI, without needing any programming or coding skills.

[Demo]

Alright, I’ve got everything set up on my computer. I’ll run this code here first. This page is for displaying the Sudoku app.

Here’s the prompt I prepared.

I just copy and paste the prompt into ChatGPT. 

While waiting for ChatGPT to generate the code, let me show you the prompt again:

I tell ChatGPT to Write PHP code to generate Sudoku boards with solutions for printing.

The web UI should allow me to enter how many Sudoku boards I want to generate and choose the difficulty (easy, medium, hard) from a dropdown list. Please handle the logic for generating each board. It doesn't need to be complicated.

When I click the "Generate" button, the Sudoku boards with their solutions should be displayed for printing.

Please make the web UI nice and user-friendly. Write all the code in one PHP file (index.php).

You can see that I mostly speak in plain language with ChatGPT, with a few technical terms like PHP and index.php.

Let me explain those terms briefly while we wait for ChatGPT to do its thing. PHP is a programming language that’s easy to run on most web hosting services.

Index.php is basically the main page of your website. We create a file, insert the PHP code from ChatGPT, save it as index.php, and upload it to the web hosting. Then our website will go live.

Alright, now the code is ready. I’ll just copy it and paste it into the index.php file I prepared.

Then, let’s refresh the page to see the result.

Wow, you can see that we have the Sudoku Generator here with a nice interface.

Let me try generating one Sudoku board.

Well, it looks pretty good. There's one Sudoku board with the solution. But I think there should be some margin between the Sudoku board and the border.

Anyway, let’s try generating more boards and changing the difficulty level first to see if there are any issues. 

Well, they look pretty good. I think we just need ChatGPT to adjust the margin between the Sudoku board and the border.

Let me tell ChatGPT to do that.

I tell ChatGPT “Can you please add the padding between the sudoku board and the border?”

Then, wait for it to rewrite the code. As you can see, it's pretty easy to ask ChatGPT to make adjustments. You don’t need to have much programming skill for this.

If you even don’t know how to run the code, you can ask ChatGPT how to do that as well. It will give you the instructions you can follow easily.

Alright, we have the new code now. Let’s replace the old code in the index.php file and check if it adds the margin to the Sudoku boards.

Nice. You can see that there is a small margin between the sudoku board and the border line now.

Now we can send this page to our friends or subscribers to see if it can solve their pain on creating the Sudoku board for creating the Puzzle book on Amazon KDP or not. If you find that it can solve the pain, then we can let the programmer polish this micro SaaS and start selling.

I just uploaded this index.php file to my website. You can check it out at this URL:

How’s it going? I just showed you how to build a Micro SaaS to generate Sudoku boards in less than 5 minutes. Pretty cool, right?

It’s not that difficult. Do you agree?

Before, we needed to hire a programmer, and it would take several days to get a Sudoku board generator done. Now, you can save tons of costs and time to build your own Micro SaaS.

AI makes things a lot easier, and you can use this advantage to start your own Micro SaaS business.

Alright, there might be some housekeeping stuff where you’ll need to hire a programmer. To get your SaaS ready to sell, you need to integrate a membership area to protect access. Only paid users can get in.

You'll also need to set up a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal. And don’t forget to automate the process of giving users their login information once they’ve paid, so everything runs smoothly.

But hey, these steps are super easy once you’ve tackled the hardest part—building the BLACKBOX!

Now, I think you’ve got the best process crystallized for beginners looking to jump into the Micro SaaS opportunity.

Let me tell you that it's a MUST to ride on this opportunity. You got AI. Don't just prompting it for fun. That's the lowest value we can create on the AI trend.

If you want to leverage the true power of AI to earn more. Prompting is just a worst one. One of the best leveraging tool in the AI generation is to build your SaaS just like what we did on PODtomatic.

We proven it for you with our $1M road!

Alright, we’re almost at the end of our presentation.

I’ve got tons more to share, but time’s running out.

So, here’s a little gift for you:

I’m putting together a free mini-course to show you how to build your own AI app in just one week.

If you’re excited about diving into this and starting your SaaS journey, sign up at this URL. The first email drops on August 15th.

In this mini-course, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about building your own AI app. You’ll learn about the struggles we faced so you can avoid the same pitfalls or at least know how to tackle them. We’ll also share what to avoid—like the thousands of dollars we wasted on bad processes—so you don’t make the same mistakes. And of course, we’ll provide detailed step-by-step guides to get you on the right track.

That’s all for now. I hope you’ve learned a lot about using AI to boost your print-on-demand business and discovered the exciting world of Micro SaaS.

This is a big opportunity you don’t want to miss.

I hope this has been an eye-opener for you.

Wishing you success and enjoy the rest of your time in Paris!

Thank you!