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Becoming an entrepreneur takes grit.
Deciding to do it solo takes courage.
This is 1,000 Routes, the podcast where we explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Jimmy Daly [00:00:00]:
The solo part is the hardest part. Like, even though I think that's the thing that attracts people to solopreneurship, like, at the end of the day, like, it actually can be quite lonely. And there's a bunch of things that are inherently difficult about doing it alone, too. Like, my wife doesn't even know this, but she's essentially my business partner, you know, because, like, I have to talk to somebody. Like, I'm just working here in the basement. She's close by. Like.
Nick Bennett [00:00:27]:
This is 1000 Routes. Every episode, a Solopreneur shares how they're building, what they're building. We'll hear all about how they've made the bet on themselves, the uncommon route that they're taking to build a business that serves their life, and the reality of building a business of one. I'm your host, Nick Bennett. Before we get started, I'm excited to share a new program that I've been working on called Full Stack Solopreneur in partnership with my friend and legendary entrepreneur Erica Schneider. Now, unlike other programs, Full Stack Solopreneur is a hybrid digital program for independent professionals who are too far along for another course to be really all that helpful, but not far enough to invest in a private coaching or consulting service. In here, you'll gain access to both the full curriculum and monthly group coaching clinics to teach you how to create a legendary niche offer how to build a content engine, and how to sell like a human. You can learn more at fullstacksolo.com that's FullStack.
Nick Bennett [00:01:23]:
S O L O.
Jimmy Daly [00:01:28]:
I'm Jimmy Daly. I'm the co-founder and CEO of a company called Superpath.
Nick Bennett [00:01:32]:
All right, dude, Jimmy, this is. This is going to be a ton of fun. I want to start with kind of how you ended up doing the Super Path thing. So you were at Animals, which is like, an absolutely legendary content marketing agency. So it's pretty well known. I just had Devin Bramhall back for the second time. So we've talked a lot about Animals, and we talked a ton about just the trajectory that being at a place like Animals kind of puts on your career. I'm curious from you, and I'd love to start with just your exit from animals and then in the idea for Super Path and kind of how you decided this was going to be your next move for sure.
Jimmy Daly [00:02:08]:
Actually, Devin's an important part of that story. Devin and I worked really closely together at Animals. She's awesome. And if we rewind the clock to 2019, probably we had built this leadership team at Animals, which was myself and Devin and a few other people. And the business was in a really good place. It was growing. You know, revenue was strong. There was a lot of like, really good things happening within the business.
Jimmy Daly [00:02:29]:
And my now investor, Walter Chen, sat us down, probably fall 2019, and kind of want to talk through some changes, like upcoming changes for 2020, some strategic changes. And one of the things was that Devin would become CEO. Another important change is that I was going to leave the business. And that was something that Walter and I had been talking about for maybe a month or two. And in spring of that year, I had started this Slack Group, which at the time, it's like unbelievable to me that this is what I decided to name it. I called it the Content Marketing Career Growth Slack Group. And that's now Superpatch. Anyways, I had been running this Slack group as kind of a side project, and he and I had had a few conversations about, yeah, I think there's something here.
Jimmy Daly [00:03:16]:
Like, there was not a single community where content marketers hung out to talk about career stuff, professional development, strategy, budgets. Like, where do you go to talk to people about stuff like that? Like at the time it was kind of Twitter, but Twitter was like too public. In a community, it's closed. It's closed wall. Like you can ask more honest questions, give better answers, that kind of thing. Anyways, we had decided that I would go and pursue this business. But we were. This was like, you know, we're looking like eight months down the road.
Jimmy Daly [00:03:44]:
We weren't going to do this right away anyway. So we sit down at this meeting, Devin's going to become CEO, which is awesome, and then I'm going to leave the business. But that's probably September, and we weren't really planning to do this till like May or June. So there was plenty of time to figure out what the transition would look like. And Covid happened, you know, like the world just like totally turned upside down. And there was a moment there where I wasn't really sure if this was still a good idea. We decided to pursue it anyways. It ended up being a great idea because suddenly everybody's remote and we're running this online community that for a lot of people instantly became a replacement for conferences, happy hours, networking events.
Jimmy Daly [00:04:22]:
Like none of that stuff was happening at that time. And we were able actually to build quite a bit of momentum because people still wanted to connect. And Superpath became kind of the default destination for content marketers anyway, to come and do that. In the meantime, between September and May, When I left, I was doing sales and marketing animals. So we brought on a salesperson. I got them all trained up, you know, brought in a marketing person, which was Ryan Law, who, you know, took animals marketing to the next level. He's incredibly smart, he's fantastic person to work with. He was already on the team, but he was doing work for clients.
Jimmy Daly [00:04:54]:
And like, we got him set up to run all our external marketing. So anyway, yeah, there's, there's so much there, but that was kind of the initial origin story. And so Walter was my boss and now my investor in Super Path. And he was the one who was like, I think you should do this and I'm your boss. Like, you know, I thought that was actually really cool that he believed in the idea and believed that I could go and pull it off to the point that he was willing to not exactly kick me out of the company, but sort of give me the opportunity to do it in that way, talk.
Nick Bennett [00:05:21]:
Me through the decision to take on investment. You know, a lot of people in going out on their own, it's not really something I think a lot of people consider or even have the opportunity to access something like that. So, like, talk through the decision to do that. How that conversation came to be.
Jimmy Daly [00:05:39]:
This was really important. Like, the only reason Super Path exists at all is because we figured out how to fund it. And there's a few things going on here. One is that, let's see, March, March 2020, Covid hit my wife and I bought a house March 2020 also, and we had a baby on the way. I'm like, not really in a position to start a business, have zero salary, zero revenue. And just like, I was not at a point in my life where I was willing to like, take on the pressure of like, make this thing work. I just was not. I didn't want to do that.
Jimmy Daly [00:06:06]:
I wasn't going to do that. So Walter and I talked through a couple different scenarios and ultimately came up with a simple formula where he would invest a certain amount and get a certain amount of equity back for that investment. And we sort of came up with like a sliding scale of like, how much money do you think you need? And then based on how much money he puts in, he gets a certain amount of equity. And so we sort of slide that scale back and forth to the point where we found it a sort of a comfortable amount. Ultimately we settled on 50, 50 ownership. And then Walter put up the cash. And the idea was he would fund basically one year salary at the same amount that I was getting paid at animals, you know, plus some of our expenses to get things rolling, which were pretty minimal. It was like our domain was 12 bucks, you know, web hosting, 5 bucks a month.
Jimmy Daly [00:06:51]:
Like our expenses at the beginning were just nothing. But we really didn't need much because at the time it was still unproven that there was a business there. And so my goal of first year was, can we get profitable and how little of Walter's money can I spend in this first 12 months? Because in theory, I could spend all of it and not make any money. But my goal was like, let's get ourselves profitable within 12 months so that we don't have to spend all that money. And we did that in May. June 1, 2020 was my first day working on super path full time. In May 2021 was our first profitable month. So we figured it out and I felt that was a really comfortable way for me to go into this, just given sort of where I was at in my life and my own personal goals.
Jimmy Daly [00:07:35]:
But it was also not so onerous. Like I still had so much skin in the game that it was like worth working really hard at too. I haven't really come across any other solopreneurs that have come up with a similar setup. I think it's great. I mean, really, I think it's been. It made it possible. And then related to that too. Like, Walter's incredibly well connected in the content space.
Jimmy Daly [00:07:57]:
He's very experienced and very smart and he's my advisor, you know, like that he's the person that I'm talking with on a regular basis about, like, what's going on, what are we going to do about this situation, like, what's our strategy for that type of thing, you know, so it's like I work on it alone, but I do have a sounding board and an advisor.
Nick Bennett [00:08:12]:
How did you know the content marketers community on Slack, the whatever you called it. Yeah, like, how did you know that that was the thing that was the right move to go into?
Jimmy Daly [00:08:23]:
I didn't really. Although, you know, content marketing was so hot at the time. Like 2019 going into 2020, animals are certainly seeing that. Like, I spend, I spent at that time so much of my time on sales calls. So, like, I see what the budgets are like, I see how much companies are spending on content marketing, you know, and then I also see like, what's happening with salaries in the space. Like, people are getting paid for the first time. People are like really getting paid in the space. And so that's kind of about all I had.
Jimmy Daly [00:08:51]:
Like, I feel like we can carve out something for ourselves here just based on, like, what's going on in this industry. I will say, though, like, one important mistake. This is something I wouldn't do again. Is starting Super Path was sort of a challenge. And the challenge was, can you take this free slack group and turn it into a business? I wouldn't do that again. The thing I would do is try to hone in on, like, what's a problem and how can we solve it, you know, because the challenge of, like, can we turn this into business? Led me down a bunch of paths that were ultimately, you know, not very fruitful. All sort of in service of this figuring out, like, can we do it? Instead of, like, who is our customer, what problem do they have and what are we doing to solve it? Which is like, a much more straightforward way to do it.
Nick Bennett [00:09:34]:
That's like the formula. There's conventional solopreneur wisdom that's like, offer a professional service or build a digital course. Like, there's kind of just these two natural places that most people fall. And you fell into this community first program, but like you said, it was free. And then to monetize that on the backend. What are some things that you did to try to monetize it that didn't really work out?
Jimmy Daly [00:09:57]:
You know what, that's interesting because pretty much everything we've tried has worked to some degree. And actually that's been the hardest part because if it works a little bit or it works like a medium amount, it's really hard to deem it a failure and abandon it. Like, my instinct is, keep going, make it better. And like, that's the thing where I've gone, like, too far down rabbit holes that, like, in retrospect, why did I. It's just like, nah, I shouldn't have done that, actually. And one quick thing on your note about courses and services, I really didn't want to do that. I really didn't want to. That was part of why the investment from Walter was so important, because it allowed me to work on products from day one.
Jimmy Daly [00:10:31]:
The community is a product, right? Like, eventually we started selling a paid membership and we bring in sponsors and things like that. I really did not want to invest my energy in consulting or writing or something like that because it was distraction from building the product. So that was super important. To be super specific, though, like, trying to think of, like, some of the early things we did that ended up being just like, early on, companies would pay us to vet candidates for them that actually kind of worked. And so we tried to roll out a recruiting service. Recruiting is its own discipline. And I'm not a recruiter.
Nick Bennett [00:11:04]:
I was in that space for like six months. It's ridiculous.
Jimmy Daly [00:11:08]:
I made it about two weeks. I was like, this is really hard. Maybe the job board's enough. Totally self service. Like we'll make way less money. But like, I'm not a recruiter. It's not how I want to spend my time. So there were some things like that that we sort of dabbled with early on that ended up being totally not good.
Jimmy Daly [00:11:23]:
And then other things that were like, like I said, sort of like medium, medium good. To me, those are the harder calls to make on. Do you dig deeper or do you back away?
Nick Bennett [00:11:31]:
Well, you're in an interesting position with Superpath because it is filled with super consumers, which is like awesome niche by the way. Right. Like just this is the place for content marketers. Like it doesn't get more specific than that, but it's full of people who are obsessed with content marketing or do content marketing as a profession or treat it in a certain type of way. And so it's filled with super consumers. So all of the things that you do for them, there's going to be like sub segments of the supers who are into the thing. And so it's like that signal that you're getting, you're trying to figure out like, is this noise, like what is what I'm. What is this? So how did you end up deciding that paid membership was going to be the way to go? That.
Jimmy Daly [00:12:15]:
So it's one of three lines of revenue that we have. And we had launched all trying to think. We had launched in the first like six months. We launched several lines of revenue and then actually scaled it back a little bit. The first dollar we made was a job board and the initial job board was notion and it was. We had one, we had one customer, Len Marketing from Podia, shout out to Len. He was the first person to ever pay Super Path. First company to pay Super Path.
Jimmy Daly [00:12:44]:
They posted a job ad and I was just incredibly motivated to find them someone great. So I did it manually. Like I went and found them someone and they hired her and she worked there for like two years. And it was probably the best 300 bucks that podia ever spent. They had a bunch of qualified candidates, they hired someone, they worked there for a couple years. Like it was a great setup. So that was actually the first thing because there was this kind of career focus in the group at the time, that was the first thing we did was create the job board. And then it didn't take long before I realized like, we need a real job board.
Jimmy Daly [00:13:13]:
So now we have like proper job board software, whatever. The paid membership was the second thing we launched. And I knew that was coming because, you know, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about like, should it always be free? Should there be free and paid, should it only be paid? Like whichever route you take takes you down a very, very different road and ultimately landed on let's keep part of it free and then charge for extra stuff, you know, and the free part is kind of like top of funnel. It's a way to try it out. You know, there's still tons of value there and if you're inclined you can pay more or really your company can pay for you. That was the goal to get this extra stuff. And that's still true to this day. It's changed a little bit.
Jimmy Daly [00:13:53]:
Like there's been iterations of what the paid version looks like over the years, but there's always been free and there's always been paid. And I kind of feel like in order for Superpath to be successful, I believe that we have to be the content marketer's advocate. Like we have to really understand who these people are, what they're looking for, what the challenges are that they face in their day to day work, what are their career aspirations? Like we really have to understand this, this person and we do that primarily through the paid membership. Like those are the people that I actually know the best, that I talk to the most. Because like there are forums specifically for this. Like we do monthly calls with folks. It's like you really get to know these people. Everything else about the business basically works because we understand the content marketer better than anybody else does.
Nick Bennett [00:14:34]:
What was the motivation to dig your heels into this? Like it you said took 11 months to get to profitable, to have your first profitable month. What was the motivation to keep going that you knew it was going to work?
Jimmy Daly [00:14:47]:
Like 11 months in just to.
Nick Bennett [00:14:50]:
Well to, to wait it out. 11 months is a long time to try to hit a profitability. Now you had funding which is, which is. Changes the mechanics of it, but that doesn't change the fact that it took a year. And I think a lot of people would bang their head against the wall and maybe give up. I mean there's a bunch of different things that pressure we put on ourselves to make something work. And so I think it takes a lot of motivation to want to Stay the course. So what is it about content marketers that you're so passionate about or so motivated to want to support in this way and just about seeing this thing.
Jimmy Daly [00:15:21]:
Through, you know, that's interesting. I've never thought about it in that, in that exact way. When I started the business and Walter and I sit down to talk about, you know, we had a couple calls ahead of me, like leaving and going to work on this full time. And we talked a lot about like, as the only operator of this business, like, what makes it successful for me, you know, and there was a couple things on that list. One was sustainability. Like, actually Walter had this great quote that I still think about today, which was long term thinking is a competitive advantage. It's like the business has to be sustainable so that you can work on it for a long time so that it can be as successful as you want it to be. You know, this is not like a venture backed rocket ship company.
Jimmy Daly [00:16:00]:
It's a lifestyle business really. Like, I don't necessarily identify with that term, but that's essentially what it is. It's like a business built specifically around me, the only person working on it full time. And so it's successful, the business is successful if I'm happy doing it, you know. And so like, could we squeeze out profitability in seven months instead of 11? Like, yeah, we probably could have if we pushed a little harder. But like, even then I was like, how do I do this in a way so that I can do it for 10 years? Because if I can't do it for 10 years, I'm honestly not sure that it's worth doing. Like, if I want to work in a business for two years, I should probably try to raise a bunch of money and go really fast and try to get an exit really quickly. Whereas, like, that was just like not the setup for this particular business.
Jimmy Daly [00:16:39]:
And I've always been pretty upfront with folks in the community too, that communities are altruistic in a way that other businesses are not. Right? Like the word community. You might not associate with other words like revenue and profit in the way that you would a SaaS company or an agency. But I'm pretty upfront with folks that like Superpath exists because I'm incentivized to keep it existing. Right? Like we have sponsors who support the community so that I can pay myself and continue doing this type of thing. You know what I mean? Like, that all has to continue working. And I've never ever gotten feedback from someone that it's too much. I think Everybody gets how this works.
Jimmy Daly [00:17:17]:
So that's the way I approach it. And to me, the things that make it successful are a few things. I mean, financially, yes, I have to be able to pay myself well, you know what I mean? I can't be looking around at other jobs being like, wow, I only get paid half as much as other people with my same skills and experience. I'm going to pretty quickly lose interest in Superpath if that's happening. You know, I want to be able to provide for the family and da da da da. The other important things are autonomy and flexibility, which are kind of like fundamental things that everybody wants out of their work, I think. But I mean, I have that in spades. Like, I.
Jimmy Daly [00:17:48]:
It's just me, I can do things however I want to do them. I can work whenever I want to work or not work when I don't want to work. And like, to me that's just incredibly important. And once I got like a taste of that, which happened on basically day one of working on this full time and like not having co workers or a boss or anybody to answer to, I was hooked. And like that, to me that, that's a huge part of what keeps me going. So sorry to like come back to your original question. In very long winded way, it's like, yes, it's about helping the content marketer, but like in a selfish way too. It's about helping myself.
Jimmy Daly [00:18:22]:
You know, like I'm trying to carve out this path for myself and the fact that I'm able to make my living by sort of supporting this industry of content marketers is a win win.
Nick Bennett [00:18:32]:
If you're not able to wake up every day and put your feet on the floor and not be completely miserable with what you're doing, like, that's kind of a goal. And why would you build something? Why would you build yourself a prison?
Jimmy Daly [00:18:43]:
Yeah, you know what? I've done it though. I have built myself prisons in the last couple years, a few times that I've had to like work my way back out of. And I feel like that is a potential trap of solopreneurship that is not often talked about because when no one else holds you accountable, your own work habits are very important. And it's very easy to drift into bad work habits. Sometimes bad work habits are things like procrastination. Other times bad work habits are, you know, maybe working on the wrong things, you know, or sort of like, I'm still guilty of this, like, I'll spend a whole day just picking off low Hanging fruit. And I'm miserable at the end of the day because I feel like I got nothing done. But I was busy all day long.
Jimmy Daly [00:19:22]:
Like, that's a still thing that I fight, you know what I mean? Or it's like your attitude towards work changes in an unhealthy way where you sort of beat yourself up on the failures or things like that. And like, without somebody else there to be, like, no, no, no, no, you don't have to do it like that. Or actually, you're doing a really good job. You, like, take it easy on yourself. Like, that is the thing that I truly miss about having coworkers, you know.
Nick Bennett [00:19:43]:
Oh my gosh, a thousand percent. Like having community or having like a group or some sort of small group or even just a dedicated coach, like someone or some. A group of people to help give you just even some encouragement. Like you said, it's like, hey, like, you're doing the right things or to be like you're you. You gotta get out of your own way. No matter what it is. If it's tough love or whatever. I didn't realize how much I needed that when I went out on my own.
Nick Bennett [00:20:10]:
And it took like 6 to 9 ish months before I found that. And I was like, oh, like, it feels so much better. It was a big reason why I wanted to start this show too. Was like, I just gotta meet more people. Like, I want to hear from other people because I can't be the only person who feels this way. Every interview just reinforces that is true, like, over and over and over again.
Jimmy Daly [00:20:30]:
So the solo part is the hardest part. Like, even though I think that's the thing that attracts people to solopreneurship, like, at the end of the day, like, be doing it alone is. It actually can be quite lonely. And there's a bunch of things that are like, inherently difficult about doing it alone too. Like, my wife doesn't even know this, but she's essentially my business partner, you know, because, like, it's like I have to talk to somebody. Like, I'm just working here in the basement. She's close by. Like, she's my.
Jimmy Daly [00:20:56]:
She's essentially my coworker.
Nick Bennett [00:20:57]:
You know, it's my two boys and my wife. My dog are like, yeah, I get it.
Jimmy Daly [00:21:02]:
Yeah, the dog for sure.
Nick Bennett [00:21:03]:
Oh, yeah, he's. He. He contributes the most. I love this. So what role did Walter end up playing? Like, how much involvement did he have? Like, as a, As a co founder and as a sounding board? And I'm asking because there's kind of a mixed bag on co founders and partnerships. Right. Some people I've spoken with that have had partnerships that have kind of ended and ended poorly and had a split ways for those reasons. I've had some people that have had wonderful experiences with partnerships.
Nick Bennett [00:21:34]:
I just kicked off a new program with Erica Schneider, and she's a co founder and a partner in a group coaching program we're running. It's new, but it's been a highly positive experience. You know, I'm really, really excited about it. And so it's kind of a mixed bag with people. I'm curious, like, what's been your experience? How involved is Walter and as an investor versus a co founder? Is there a blurred line there? Like, talk to me about that a little bit. Yeah. Wow.
Jimmy Daly [00:21:57]:
There's so much to unpack there. I mean, his involvement kind of ebbs and flows over time. Like even still today, in the early days, he was pretty involved. Like, even just like the inception of the business. Like, he did all the formation, the incorporation documents, you know, he sort of like dealt with all that. He's a lawyer, right? Like, his brain works in a way that mine doesn't. He just like helped us get all that going. You know, we talked so much at the beginning, like, how we're going to make money, how much are we going to charge for it? What does the service look like? You know, like, is that the best way to spend your time? Like, there was a lot of that early on and then.
Jimmy Daly [00:22:25]:
Yeah, then it sort of ebbs and flows over time, depending, like, what the needs of the business are and also like, what else he has going on. Like, you know, he's still an owner at Animals. He co owns another business called Sacro. He's an investor. So he has plenty of other things going on. Like, this is certainly not the only thing in his world. He's been available to me anytime I needed him though, and that's been really important. He and I also worked together very closely for about four years before doing this.
Jimmy Daly [00:22:53]:
And we had developed a pretty good working relationship at that point. You know, like to the point where it's like we could bicker about stuff and like, there's no hard feelings. Like, it's just part of what co founders do. It's more like a marriage than I actually thought. Like, we definitely get on each other's nerves sometimes. I know I get on his nerves sometime and. And we have it out every now and then, and then we recover because it's like we have the same goal here. So he's been incredibly supportive in that way.
Jimmy Daly [00:23:16]:
I would say, like on average, like we have a standing monthly meeting, we call it our board meeting, where I come with all the financial numbers from the previous month. And we talk through that. We talk through like top line revenue, we talk through profit, we talk through expenses, we talk through what's working with the business and what's not working. Kind of like a little agenda that we stick to each month. And that's like that one hour that we've spent each month now for we're four and a half years in. So like we've done this a bunch of times now is incredibly useful to me, you know, because it's very easy to get bogged down in the day to day a bit. And that monthly call is an opportunity to step back, you know, and talk through, kind of like get back to basics. Like, why are we doing this? Should we do that? Like, should we continue doing this thing that is a pain in the butt and stressing me out? Should we fix it or abandon it? Why were our expenses so high this month? Like, let's take a look at that and try, try to figure out, you know, all that type of stuff is super useful, you know, and then just in general, like, we've become friends over the years.
Jimmy Daly [00:24:13]:
Last year we ran the New York City Marathon together. Our families had dinner together afterwards. Like, stuff like that has made that relationship especially meaningful. Not to mention, like I said earlier, Walter's really well connected in this space. Like, he's opened doors for me for sure. You know, and that's been, that's been huge.
Nick Bennett [00:24:29]:
Oh yeah. Having people kind of put on for you in that way gives a massive amount of thrust to the flywheel for sure. I owe a lot to Pete Caputa, the CEO of Datavox, for a similar reason. Like, he, he supported me a lot in the very first weeks of me going out on my own and opened a lot of opportunity, opened a lot of doors. So yeah, that stuff is, that stuff makes a huge difference having somebody there to do that for you. All right, Super Path or this, the group formerly known as the content marketers on Slack becomes Super Path. First of all, real quick, how did you get the name, how did you get to the name Supercat?
Jimmy Daly [00:25:07]:
There was a thing in my, in it probably still exists in animals actually. There was kind of like our internal company mascot was this thing, Super Lucky Cat. The Super Lucky Cat was like a stuffed animal that was in the office in the very early days of the company. And then Super Lucky Cat became like the shared email address that we use for, like, customer support and stuff like that. So, like, we would talk about Super Lucky Cat at Animals all the time. And so the super is kind of an homage to Super Lucky Cat because in many ways, Superpath was born almost as like a sister company to animals, you know what I mean? It was like in the same space, like actually serving, in some cases the same customers, albeit in different ways. And then the path is like career path, you know, supercharge, you know, Super Lucky Cat. Like, you can kind of see, like, it's a little vague, but it kind of comes together.
Jimmy Daly [00:25:57]:
And then the kicker was that the domain was like 12 bucks Superpath Co, which is still what we're running on. But superpath.com was available. So the thinking was like, okay, that's cool, because maybe one day, you know, we can upgrade to the dot com. Like, the.com isn't taken by somebody else. So maybe one day we can grow up to get that.com, which we haven't done yet because it's like $15,000. But one day I still plan on doing that.
Nick Bennett [00:26:23]:
I love it. Okay, so you renamed the Super Path and how are you acquiring some customers? I think the growth mechanism of a business like this, people would assume, like, you gotta post to LinkedIn like, you know, 25 times a day and all these things. Like, how did you acquire some of your first customers? How are you acquiring customers today? Has anything changed?
Jimmy Daly [00:26:43]:
You know, that's funny because Nobody was using LinkedIn. June of 2020, when we started, everybody was on Twitter. And I posted on Twitter June 1st. My first, first day working on Superpath full time. I posted on Twitter like, you know, hey, I've left Animals. I'm pursuing this new business. You know, it's going to be a couple weeks before we launch our website and, you know, kind of make our formal announcement. But if you want to jump on our email list to hear about it, like, here's the link.
Jimmy Daly [00:27:09]:
And like 350 people signed up for the email address or for the email newsletter. I mean, so that was like, I was like, sweet, we are off to the races here. And, you know, I really owe quite a bit of that to Animals because I had like a fairly public role at Animals and that I was doing a lot of the marketing too. And, like, I had built up a little bit of a following on Twitter because of that work. You know, it's so funny that this seems like so ancient just a couple years later. You know, I have like 8,000 Twitter followers. Primarily because of the content I was writing on the animals blogging. And then, you know, a subset of those people became the first newsletter subscribers.
Jimmy Daly [00:27:46]:
And then a subset of those people became the first paying customers as well, you know, and since then we acquire customers differently depending on the line of business. You know, like the job board for example, is totally self serve. Like if you Google content marketing job board, you will find our job board. And that's how some people find it and end up posting jobs. Community is the free part of the community fuels the paid part of the community. Like that's where most folks are coming from. And like, obviously there's like some word of mouth and you know, we've been mentioned in a couple like roundup style articles like best, you know, best communities for marketers and things like that. I actually couldn't believe how many people have come in through those types of articles.
Jimmy Daly [00:28:26]:
Sort of proved to me that like people are actively searching this out, you know, which I think is really cool. Interestingly, we get a lot of people from other communities. That's sort of a funny thing. In the world of communities, a lot of them tend to come and go. One reason that Superpath hasn't come and gone is because we've taken the community part of this super seriously. And a lot of other communities, they have that initial spark and then they die off. And then people are like, where do I go next? And then they get referred to us, which has been cool. We also run a marketplace and then we run a sponsor program.
Jimmy Daly [00:28:53]:
Those are very B2B type sales. And that's like all the B2B things you would expect. It's like we do some content, we do some outreach, we work the partnership angle, stuff like that.
Nick Bennett [00:29:04]:
So how many free members do you have right now?
Jimmy Daly [00:29:06]:
23,000, something like that. I mean there's quite a few. Like those are sign ups. That doesn't mean that they're active in the community. In the community, there's about 2600 monthly active users. Active meaning like they are posting or reading messages at least one time during the month. So not 2600 who are like actively in there. And then the other folks are like, you know, they still get the newsletter, they still get the announcements we send out, but they're not like actively involved in the community.
Nick Bennett [00:29:32]:
Hey, I mean having 26,000 people opt in over the course of this, this amount of time is still fantastic. And 2600 active, I mean I'm sure that number there's probably like a. The super consumer of super path. So people who like, are active and then some people who end up re engaging. I think it's a fantastic model. I mean, to get 2,600 people engaged in anything is insane sometimes.
Jimmy Daly [00:29:57]:
Honestly, I'm amazed. The thing that I think is so amazing about communities is that they're sort of self perpetuating. It's like if you give people a place to come, they will come. And if you kind of encourage them to engage, they will engage. Like the thing I was doing before was kind of me on the loudspeaker saying, like, here's what I think about content strategy. And you know, this is so different. It's like trying to create a fertile ground where people want to come talk to each other. Like they're not there to listen to what I have to say.
Jimmy Daly [00:30:24]:
Like, they're there to connect with the other people that are there, which is super important. Another cool stat I will throw your way. We just passed our one millionth message sent about two weeks ago. So since inception, there's been a mil over a million messages now sent on the supercast Slack community. Which, like, is insane to me to think about, like, how many conversations have happened on that platform over the years.
Nick Bennett [00:30:47]:
That's insane. I mean, it's hard to wrap your head around, around that considering how many people are active.
Jimmy Daly [00:30:54]:
Yeah, totally.
Nick Bennett [00:30:55]:
How many people have to send how many messages in order to get there?
Jimmy Daly [00:31:00]:
It's a lot. You know, one thing that's happened in Superpath that I didn't expect and it was a little bit of a tangent. I'll be brief. You know, so many things happen in the community that I'm actually not aware of. Like, this is something I hear every now and then. It'd be like a couple content marketers want to stay in touch. They make a group DM in super path and that's how they stay in touch with each other. I can't even see that.
Jimmy Daly [00:31:16]:
I have no idea that's happening. There's a couple informal groups that have popped up like that though, that I've kind of learned about over time. And I think it's fantastic or other people will because basically every content marketer is there. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but like, more or less, everybody's there. It's a really cool way to stay in touch with people over dm, you know, so if you have peers and friends in the space, like, rather than spin up a different Slack channel so you can stay in touch with three people, you just like, we're already in Superpath. Anyways, like, let's just chat there. So it sort of become like there's a formal way, which is like there's channels and there's AMAs and there's kind of structured discussion and then there's the informal way, which is just like people staying in touch with each other. Like, honestly, I have no idea when that happens.
Jimmy Daly [00:31:58]:
It's like, I only find out later if someone tells me, you know, like, there may be other cool things happening that like, I actually have no idea.
Nick Bennett [00:32:05]:
Yeah, it's hard to wrap your head around how many, like, relationships have been built and how many people have gotten to know each other and have kind of doing those things inside of. Inside of the Slack group. So you charge 500 bucks a year and I think I want to talk about pricing just for a bit here because I think everyone's got opinions on how much stuff, how much to charge for things and what's too much, what's not enough. And annually, monthly, there's a whole bunch of different things. So I'm curious, how did you land on 500 bucks for the year? And just like talk me through a little, just a little bit of how you view pricing and why that's the sweet spot for you right now.
Jimmy Daly [00:32:44]:
Yeah, for sure. We've run through a couple different pricing models on the paid community over the years, and there's been pros and cons to each. So like summer 2020, we rolled out. The first version of Superpath Pro was 50 bucks a month. I felt like that was the right price point and says, like, I wanted people to pay enough that they cared. Like, you don't charge enough. Like people aren't invested. And I think that in the context of professional development, 50 bucks a month or 500 bucks a year is not that much money.
Jimmy Daly [00:33:11]:
Like, if you're going to invest in your career, that's like a relatively small investment. I think also your company should pay for this. You know what I mean? Like, this should come from like a learning and development budget or you should be able to write it off like it should not. It's not a consumer purchase, really. It's a. It's a business purchase. And we really try to frame it that way that you are going to get more than 500 bucks or 50 bucks a month back out of this. The problem we found with the 50 month one is that if in the first month they aren't engaged, they churn and there's only so much we can do to get them engaged.
Jimmy Daly [00:33:41]:
Our recent move to annual is Primarily about we want people to make a commitment. You know, it's like our commitment is we are going to try to create a great experience from you. And the thing that we ask of you is that you engage with it. Because if you engage with it, I am positive you will get an ROI on that 500 bucks. I mean, I think we can make a case that it should be a thousand or fifteen hundred or even potentially more, because I really believe that you're going to get more than that back out of it. But you got to. You do have to give to get. Like, that's the way community works.
Jimmy Daly [00:34:14]:
It's not I create content and you pay for access to it. It's, you know, we create this place where you can learn from others, but you have to participate in it. So that's kind of like the thinking behind it. And I still feel that, like, 500 is actually kind of low for what it is that we're offering. We actually, even for a little while, had a slightly different paid tier, which was 20 bucks a month. And the offering was slightly different. And actually the reason we abandoned it was because it got to be too confusing. It was like, to have two paid tiers.
Jimmy Daly [00:34:44]:
It became, like, a little bit unclear to our potential customers which one they should get and what the differences were. So in the fall, we relaunched Super Path Pro. We consolidated our paid tiers, and now the 500 per year is the only option. And I expect it will stay that way going forward. Like, maybe we raise prices at some point. I don't know. That's not something we're actively talking about, but it's certainly possible down the road. But I think it has to be simple.
Jimmy Daly [00:35:09]:
And we got away from that. We kind of created this complex system that ultimately just confused people. So 500 per year for one offering is like a really concise, easy way for us to present it to people.
Nick Bennett [00:35:22]:
I have a similar mindset. It was something that Erica and I went back and forth on a lot as we priced out our program, Full Stack Solopreneur. And one of the things, we got a lot of pressure from buyers to be like, where's the monthly plan? Where's the monthly plan? Yeah, where's the 100 bucks a month? And we're like, thousand a year for the similar thing. It was like, I want the commitment, like, I want you to be at a certain miles in progress or in. In your process. And I think the $500 kind of kicks out some of the tire kickers kind of thing. It intentionally creates enough distance between the free thing?
Jimmy Daly [00:36:01]:
Yes, for sure. One thing we're trying to figure out, and maybe you guys have figured this out, is I want to offer people a way to test it, but with some commitment. Because we do get that every now and then it's like, can I do a free trial? And our answers has so far been no.
Nick Bennett [00:36:15]:
We had this exact conversation. I don't know, two days ago. We decided, because I was like, do we just do free trial? Like, do we just do it? Let's just see what happens. Like, let's try it. Seven days. We decided no, but we offer just a 30 day unconditional guarantee. Well, I guess it's not unconditional. There are certain conditions in which we will give you your money back.
Nick Bennett [00:36:35]:
And it's just like there has to be some. Oh. Like you have to show up to the group coaching. You have to like take the course.
Jimmy Daly [00:36:39]:
You have to kind of do something.
Nick Bennett [00:36:41]:
You have to fill up the workbook. Like, you have to be there and try this stuff. And if you truly don't believe it's for you, then that's. I have no problem. I will, no questions asked if you just show me that you tried. I will. No questions ask, give yourself back.
Jimmy Daly [00:36:54]:
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. We're toying with something for next year that I think will at least Test, which is $1 for the first month and then you're automatically charged 30 days later for the full subscription. So we do monthly one on one calls and we do monthly group calls. And I believe that if I get people to one call that they'll be like, oh, this is awesome. Yes, of course I should do this. But I can't get them on that call if there's not some commitment.
Nick Bennett [00:37:19]:
I don't know the volume at which you're operating. But for us right now, this is reasonable, which is we're doing like what we're calling quick start jam sessions. So it's like you sign up, you join the group, you get 30 minutes with both Erica and me.
Jimmy Daly [00:37:31]:
Oh, cool. And that's real cool.
Nick Bennett [00:37:33]:
It's like, it's a quick hit. Like, we encourage you, like book the calls as soon as you possibly can. Because the FaceTime one, it just humanizes the experience more, makes you want to contribute more and share more stuff. But also we can get you to where up to speed as fast as possible. It could be an opportunity for you. I don't know what volume you're working with, but I mean, it could get out of hand.
Jimmy Daly [00:37:56]:
That'd Be great. That'd be great.
Nick Bennett [00:37:57]:
I guess it would be great. Yeah, it would be great. If it gets out of hand.
Jimmy Daly [00:38:00]:
At the moment, we do a monthly onboarding call. So like once a month there's a call for any new members who want to come, like, meet me and Eric, you know, get a run through the business, that kind of thing.
Nick Bennett [00:38:11]:
We've considered this, that. But we wanted more like private. We want the idea of like a private consulting session basically with the two of us. Now, obviously, yours isn't necessarily geared towards coaching. I think you have another. You have other opportunities there. But just getting some direct time with you and they join because there's a problem. And so you get to use the community as a lever to help solve their problem really, really quickly and get them immersed in the information or in the community in that kind of way.
Nick Bennett [00:38:40]:
Please. For us, we've seen, we've seen a lot of positive signals that that approach has been working. And then we've only been at this for a few weeks. Right. We have 25 paying members right now. So it's not like our quantitative evidence is very low at this point compared to how far you, you are in your, in this process.
Jimmy Daly [00:38:58]:
Yeah, I love that though, because, like, you have to understand why these people signed up. What do they want? How can you help them? Like, I'm actually amazed. Like, we did a little survey over the summer and found out that actually what we were offering through Superpath Pro wasn't even what people wanted. I was like, oh, okay, wow. Why are we forcing this down their throats? You know, like, why don't we actually change the offering based on people? Because we had gotten away, I think, from that, you know, like, I did calls with the first probably like 50 paying members and then got away from it. And then it's like you reconnect and you're like, oh, shit, we've been offering the wrong thing.
Nick Bennett [00:39:31]:
You're 100% right. And in the qualitative customer insights are. It is invaluable. Absolutely. The things you pick up on these calls. So, yeah, it's, it's been, it's been super interesting. So look, let's, let's. In here.
Nick Bennett [00:39:44]:
I know we're, we're short on time, so let's, let's kind of end here. What is the future of Super Path look like?
Jimmy Daly [00:39:52]:
Yeah, there's a couple things I'm thinking about for 2025. So I don't know when this goes out, but this is like mid December 2024, and in October, we Relaunched Super Path Pro. I've hired someone to run Super Path Pro also, which is. That's like a whole nother story, but that's just incredibly important. And the new and improved version of Superpath Pro is my primary focus going into 2025. So we're collecting lots of feedback on the new offering. We will be iterating on that quickly. And then the one thing that people are asking for that we really haven't delivered on yet and I want to, in early 2025, is in person meetups.
Jimmy Daly [00:40:30]:
Everybody wants in person meetups. And so we're going to start to facilitate those for people. And I actually, if I can figure it out with young kids and my family and all that, I want to go on a tour of, you know, see if we can batch together some meetups in a couple cities and so that I can like go and participate in these things myself. Like, these are people that have become my friends. You know, I want to. I want to be able to go and. And meet him in person too. So that's a big thing that is on my radar for next year.
Nick Bennett [00:40:58]:
That is. That is like regional meetups or something like that.
Jimmy Daly [00:41:02]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:41:03]:
Your kids and family. Your family will just have to come with you.
Jimmy Daly [00:41:07]:
I. I guess so.
Nick Bennett [00:41:08]:
There's no way. There's no way out of it. There's no way out of it considering. Considering she's your wife and your kids are your business partners. I mean, it's only fair.
Jimmy Daly [00:41:16]:
I guess they have to. I will just write it off.
Nick Bennett [00:41:18]:
Just. See, There you go. Now we're talking. Oh, man, Jimmy, this has been. This has been a ton of fun, dude. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with me because I think there's. There's a lot of people out there that think there's. There's very few ways to go about building a business of one.
Nick Bennett [00:41:34]:
Right. Like we talked about, like consulting or digital products type of thing. And I think it's nice to hear from people like you who are doing something that's. That is not that and to prove that it's possible. And so thank you for sharing your story with me, man. It means a lot and this was awesome.
Jimmy Daly [00:41:54]:
Yeah, no, thanks for having me on. Honestly, it's fun to kind of have an introspective moment to think about it and I appreciate it.
Nick Bennett [00:42:01]:
Right on, man. Well, Jimmy, I'm sure we will talk soon, dude.
Jimmy Daly [00:42:04]:
I hope so. Take care, Nick.
Nick Bennett [00:42:10]:
Hey, Nick. Again, and thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 Routes newsletter where I process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you build a new and different future for your own business. You can sign up at 1000routes.com or check the link in the show notes. If you were about to board a rocket ship to Mars tomorrow, what would you eat for your last meal on Earth tonight?
Jimmy Daly [00:42:45]:
This is dumb, but there's a bagel shop down the street and they make this absolute bomb French toast. It's like, simple, but I think I would take. I think that's what I want. It's just so damn good. And it's such an indulgence. I don't do it very often, but if I was going to Mars, that's.
Nick Bennett [00:43:01]:
I think you're the first person to go, like, breakfast food.
Jimmy Daly [00:43:05]:
Yeah, yeah. French. You can get French toast for like 8 bucks. It's not like, it's like a. Like a big expense. Not like that fancy, but, man, good French toast is just the best.
Nick Bennett [00:43:13]:
I mean, it's hard to come by. I don't usually go out and get some French toast anywhere I go. But is it like a loaded French toast? Is it loaded stuff on it?
Jimmy Daly [00:43:22]:
Yeah, yeah. Like, the bread is like 2 inches thick. It's covered in whipped butter, obviously, tons of syrup and powdered sugar. It is fantastic.
Nick Bennett [00:43:31]:
All right, all right, I'm in. I'm in on this French toast.
Jimmy Daly [00:43:34]:
You feel bloated, though.
Nick Bennett [00:43:36]:
I feel bloated. Just your description. Next time I'm in Colorado, I am going to get me some French toast.