Rock Paper Coin
Welcome to Invested, where we spotlight trailblazing female founders and their investable ventures. I'm your host Margaret Whitinger. And join me as we dive into data driven stories with watchlist worthy entrepreneurs, revealing the insights and tactics behind their start up success. Whether you're an investor looking for a high growth potential start up, a founder looking for guidance, or you just love a great story, this is the show for you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Invested.
Margaret:I'm your host Margaret Whitinger. And today, I am joined by Elizabeth Shields, cofounder and CEO of Rock Paper Coin, a platform streamlining the payment process for wedding event professionals. This is an $80,000,000,000 industry, y'all. Over the last 4 years, Rock Paper Coin has had a minimum of 75% year over year revenue growth and has raised over 5,000,000 in precede and seed funding rounds. In this episode, Elizabeth shares how Rock Paper Coin has turned setbacks into an advantage, and a confidence to take calculated risk has positioned their start up for exponential growth.
Margaret:So excited for you to meet Elizabeth. Let's jump in. Thank you so much for being here. We are so excited to shine a light on your incredible company. We wanted to do a rapid fire right from the jump so that people can quickly get a sense for just how impressive and remarkable your company is.
Margaret:Let's do it. Let's go. Tell us about Rock Paper Coins. So what is the problem that you're aiming to solve and how are you solving it?
Elizabeth:My cofounder and I, we were operating a very large wedding planning company, and there was just such a big gap of us essentially babysitting the process of booking. It would be, you know, sending all of the documentation to the the potential couples, asking them to review it, asking them to sign it, print it, you know, scan it, send it back. Doing all of that was taking, like, 10 to 14 business days. We just kept saying, like, I wish there was a link that just did it all for us. Like, they showed them the proposal, the contract, the invoice, and they got one link, and they took care of it, and then we got notifications when it was all said and done.
Elizabeth:And we finally just said, like, enough. Let's build it. We are building a software platform that's designed to really streamline and simplify the business side of things for companies that are in the wedding and event planning industry. Having lead and inquiry management, contract management, invoicing online payments, just making it easier for all businesses in the industry to start to handle these the booking process with all of their customers.
Margaret:Let's talk about this industry. I mean, we all know that wedding the wedding industry is a massive industry, but quantify it for us about how big it is and how big of the segment your solution can solve for.
Elizabeth:It's an $80,000,000,000 industry. And within the next 5 years, it's expected to double. And that's just in the United States. We're going after the service category. So you think of people that are providing photography services, videography, catering, planning, which is 83%.
Elizabeth:So our serviceable market ends up being a $66,000,000,000 industry. Now our goal, we're gonna capture 2% of that by 2030. So 160,000,000.
Margaret:Talk to us about your retention rate because your customers seem to love you.
Elizabeth:It's because we knew the solution we needed. So we actually built a product that is solving a real problem. So we have a 93%, retention combined also with an 85 NPS score. We're very confident with our product market fit, and we're it's really an exciting place to be.
Margaret:It seems to be helping on the cost of acquisition side as well because from what I understand, 70% of your cost of acquisition is coming somewhere from partner, affiliates, or word-of-mouth, which is
Elizabeth:Yes.
Margaret:35% of all of your sign ups.
Elizabeth:Yes. Right now, we have a partnership program, which is amazing. So we're partnering with larger names, larger companies, or brands in the industry. They're referring people to us to sign up. We also have an affiliate program so anyone on the platform could become an affiliate and refer the software.
Elizabeth:That acquisition channel cost us $35 a sign up. So it's really incredibly low. When you compare it then against our, you know, software subscription, it's $33 a month. So typically within the 1st 60 days, we're out of the red and into the black, which is great. You combine that with word-of-mouth and referrals, which cost us 0.
Elizabeth:Those three categories make up 70% of our sign ups coming in through the platform. The product is selling itself, and people are excited to share rock paper coin and and have it change other people's lives on how they're managing their business.
Margaret:You're seeing it in the numbers and the revenue growth. Last year you did 800 ks. What are you on track to do today? What is the year over year growth for Rock Paper Coin?
Elizabeth:We're on track to do 1,200,000 this year. We're growing at about 50% year over year. So it's really nice the last couple of years to see you know growth anywhere from a 100 to, like, 50%. So we're excited that we're maintaining really high numbers.
Margaret:You have been able to successfully raise funding. Tell us about the funding and how you've been able to go about getting investment and backing for your business.
Elizabeth:It's because we have such a phenomenal product, and there's such a demand in the industry for it. We have raised today $5,000,000, over the life of the company, and that has allowed us to go into the full development, you know, start a beta group, go into continued iterations on the product to where we're at in a very stable, you know, place right now with kind of all the core features being built out.
Margaret:Thank you for going through the rapid fire. And as as the host now, we get to my favorite part which is we get to talk about these incredible stories that have led you to what are just unbelievably impressive metrics and clearly to like, we talked about already, a product that is beloved by its customers. Let's go back a little bit. You know, I think something that's really fun to understand is starting out, maybe starting out in your career, was the idea of entrepreneurship something that was of interest or curiosity to you?
Elizabeth:No. I wouldn't say that. But now that I'm here and I look back, it's like, well, of course, I was gonna land here. You know, I I was always, like, a little bossy. I always liked a little bit to be in control or to be the leader or, you know, to kind of, like, stand out.
Elizabeth:And I was always involved in, like, school leadership programs. But starting a business, I didn't realize that that takes like a ton of leadership skills. I just always envisioned myself as a leader within a company. And so now looking back and seeing the path that I was on even in, you know, younger years, I'm like, well, of course I landed here. I'm super scrappy.
Elizabeth:I love the hustle. You know, I love getting people excited. I'm very good at sales. I'm learning even though, you know, I tell you I don't like it. I'm very good at it.
Margaret:Sure. That those two things can be true.
Elizabeth:Yeah. So I think it's not surprising to, like, a bunch of my family members or my friends. And, you know, people are always like, well, what would be next after rock, paper, coin? And I'm like, oh, I don't even know. Like, I gotta survive 1 baby first.
Elizabeth:So
Margaret:Alright. So take me back. It's 2018. What transpires that leads you to go from running a successful wedding planning business to saying, we're actually gonna do something about this problem that we talk about constantly.
Elizabeth:The very first kind of, like, light bulb was over drinks with Nora. We were just complaining and complaining about how long it was taking to get payments. We're like, why is this hard? Like, this should not be hard. And we finally just said, okay.
Elizabeth:Let's see if there's software out there. Let's just go and test software. And I was like, great. So we started testing software, and it was all clunky or it was really ugly if it wasn't in the industry. And being wedding planners, that's just like a hard no.
Elizabeth:Like, full stop, we're not using ugly software. It has to look good. It has to represent our brand. And in tandem, I was listening to How I Built This, and I loved that podcast. And Brian from Airbnb was on, and he said something that just totally resonated.
Elizabeth:He's like, listen. If you can create a software platform where you take a penny from every dollar and you can do that overnight while you're sleeping, you can have a very profitable business. But I was like, okay. Wait. We're processing our payments right now on PayPal.
Elizabeth:Why can't we become the processor? Like, why can't we take in and do proposals and contracts and payments? And Nora and I were like, let's just build it for our own company. Like, how hard could this be? You know, like, so not knowing anything.
Elizabeth:And we had some Famous question.
Margaret:Right? How hard could it be?
Elizabeth:I know. So we had some family friends that we talked to that were previous entrepreneurs, and they basically looked at us like, cool. We love this. We we support you. You need to go out and you need to raise $600,000.
Elizabeth:And we were like, what? We were, like, setting aside, like, $50,000 from the business of, like, this will be more than enough. Like, we could even pay for some marketing. You know? That really was the the deciding point of, like, we need to decide if we're gonna completely jump into this new world that we know nothing about.
Elizabeth:And we took some time, and, ultimately, we just came back to, like, if it's not gonna be us, then who's it gonna be? And it was like, let's just build it. So we did a bunch of market research. We did bootstrap a little bit to get to kind of, some designs so we could start showing people. We from there then had designs had enough feedback from our larger network across the US that nobody was really using software.
Elizabeth:So we started we hired a dev shop and started getting kinda some implementation and groundwork laid, and we raised money. We ended up raising $600,000 that let let us go to production.
Margaret:That initial raise of going out and getting 600 k, tell us tell us more about that experience. How did you approach it? How did you get in front of the right people? Like, like, just any and every detail you want to include about that experience.
Elizabeth:At that early stage, no one's investing in the product. Like, sure. They wanna know that it's gonna work, that there's a market for it. Like, great. But, ultimately, they're investing in it.
Elizabeth:They're investing in us, the 2 of us, Nora and I. We had a proven track record that we could turn back and say, look at this profitable business that we're running. It's been around for, at this point, you know, probably 15 years. So we know what we're doing. And we don't know what we're doing with software, but we're gonna figure it out, and we're incredibly scrappy.
Elizabeth:We're a no quit attitude. Like, you know, so they invested in us, and we ended up just tapping into our network. So that included, like, high net worth individuals, you know, family, friends. It also included past clients that were really wealthy and were fed up with how payments were being processed in the industry, and that ultimately led us to to raise that money.
Margaret:It's really incredible. And I think it's such a good call out too of, like, at this stage, when you don't have a product, do you have a concept? Like, what you're selling you're the product at that point, Your vision, and I love the calling back to proven, you know, right, like, to the track record of success, previous company, you know, you had results. So there was there was data there. It wasn't as though this company was new.
Margaret:Right. But there were there were signals and data points that showed this was this was a these were 2 women that were worth investing in.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Right. And they saw that. We saw that. And I think what's interesting also in that look back is the financials we presented were, like, so amateur.
Elizabeth:We had no clue what we were doing. And everybody around the table knew that except for us. But they were like, we'll figure this out together. Like, we're gonna get you in front of the right people. And you want people that believe in you because they are then going to introduce you.
Elizabeth:They want you to succeed. And if they just believe in the product without believing in you, then there's that disconnect. And so it's really important, I think, to have more faith in the founders because you want them to succeed, you know, and the product then will follow on.
Margaret:Okay. So you've got 600 k in the bank. You've got a dev team that's starting to build out an MVP product that you want to be beautiful, but probably can't be for an MVP. So talk to us now about kind of this initial this is we're now in 2019. Right?
Margaret:And we're now launching a product to customers. Talk to us about the product launch.
Elizabeth:It was so, so shaky, and it was so hard. Essentially, one of our investors at this point, we kept on delaying. We're like, oh, it's just not right yet. And they finally said, listen. I'm not giving you another check.
Elizabeth:It was all in tranches. You have to launch today. Put it out in the wild. And that was so scary. The website crashed.
Elizabeth:Like, we were not ready. But it was that force of, like, it was never gonna be ready. Like, we would have never launched it. Probably wouldn't have been launched even today. We're like, oh, it's not perfect.
Elizabeth:But to get it out into the wild, then to get people using it, like, we gleaned so much more information by watching people use it. We we would have them come in. You know, this was pre COVID. So we had people come in and we recorded them using the product, and they were talking through the experience. Like, oh, I'm navigating over here.
Elizabeth:Wait. What's this button do? Why is it called that? You know, we took all of that. We watched these recordings, like, over and over again and then iterated on the product.
Elizabeth:And we got then to a place by November of 2019 where we were like, okay. It's stable ish. Like, we feel like we can unlock this to, like, more of the masses, and that was, like, our exciting kind of, like, launch.
Margaret:Tell me more about how you went about understanding, like, exactly that. Right? Like, the the customer discovery, the customer centric product design. How did you kind of bridge the the knowledge gap there as you were building out this platform?
Elizabeth:The first development meeting that we sat in on, Nora and I just want we were, like, looking so professional. We were both, like, taking notes. We walked outside after the meeting. We turned around. We were like, what the just happened in that meeting?
Elizabeth:Like, we knew no words. We knew nothing that was going on, and we were like, oh my god. We have to go get educated. Like, this is way too much. So we started doing our own research.
Elizabeth:We asked the dev team. We're like, can you dumb this down? Like, we need more watered down meetings, like, so that we can get our feet wet because we were like, I didn't understand a word they said in that meeting. So it took time. It did.
Elizabeth:It took a lot of our own research and our own, like, education through reading books and watching, you know, shows, like and, you know, it's silly to say, but, like, Silicon Valley. I was like, this is what I was living, and I was like, that actually was, like, so helpful to be like, oh my gosh. Okay. I can, like, have entertainment on while I'm doing designs, but I'm still, like, learning and I'm absorbing what these words mean and how they're being used. It was a lot of that and just a lot of time.
Elizabeth:Like, time spent being in these meetings and having full trust in this engineering team. They were trustworthy, honest, you know, hardworking people. They also believed in the product that we were building. So that was really nice, but it was scary. Like, we truly had very little checks and balance because we could not ourselves check the work that they were doing.
Margaret:Tell me about how you went about finding this group because for them to believe in you, for them to be, you know, reliable and do a great job, like, I would imagine there was some prework that went into the decision to hire some.
Elizabeth:A 100%. And I really appreciate you pushing me on this because I don't wanna give this, like, false impression that we just, like, picked this company and that, oh my gosh, they happen to be good people. Because, no, you have to do so much research, so many interviews. We met with them for months before actually hiring them. 1 of our good friends from the industry was building a software program for his photography business, and he was working with this dev team.
Elizabeth:So we knew firsthand that he was having a good experience with them. Now the team that we got assigned to wasn't necessarily the same team, but the company had a standard that they were upholding all of their employees to. And we were thankfully paired with a really good team and this company that we had experienced, a little experience in seeing what they were building for another another company.
Margaret:Well, I appreciate you elaborating on that because, yeah, there was a lot of work that went into that. And then, you know, because they were working with somebody in a similar industry, you know, they had a sense already for your space, and then you had kind of almost a a referral that could vouch for them.
Elizabeth:That is really interesting because a lot of it could be looked at as luck or a lot of it could also be looked at your appetite for risk. And I think that Nora and I both have an incredibly large amount of appetite for risk. We are willing to go to lengths where we are putting everything on the line, and that allows us to then have a very clear picture to then make decisions based off of.
Margaret:Yeah. I like to call it crossing the bridge of calculated risk. Right? It's like and I've noticed this, women in particular are very adept at this, which is, we we don't necessarily love to take risks all the time, but when we do, we have gathered the information we have, we recognize we've hit that point where you have to make a leap. You can't have all the answers, you can't have all the information, and you have to make a decision.
Margaret:And I what I hear you saying in this interview already that I haven't called out yet, but I love is there's also a healthy degree of confidence and knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, right, you were able to raise 600 k on your your confidence, right, your belief in what you're doing. And so I think there's also it's a great combination of, like, you're willing to bet on yourself.
Elizabeth:Yeah.
Margaret:And when you do take risks, like, they're they're still calculated risks. You're not, you know, flipping. And I you know, this has been a data point proven for women in leadership that they take less risks. They're not risk averse. They just take fewer risks because they're more calculated in the risk that they took.
Elizabeth:A 100%.
Margaret:Okay. So we've got the MVP out, got customers playing around in it. Yeah. And then within a year Yeah. We have a global pandemic that shuts down any sort of events that are happening for humans.
Margaret:So talk to me now about you're a year into having your product out in the wild and you have a
Elizabeth:global pandemic. It was wild. Like, wild beyond wild. And every industry was, like, taken out at the knees, but we had just launched November. A shutdown started happening in March.
Elizabeth:So we were starting to see all this amazing, you know, success and sign up and buzz, and then it was like nothing. And it was double scary because at that point, we had w two employees, but the dev team, the dev shop that we hired said, you know what? We're not gonna weather this. We're gonna close our doors. You're welcome to hire these engineers and bring them over to your staff.
Elizabeth:And we're like, well, we can't lose them. Like, you know, for the product, we have to keep them. So that means during COVID, we also had to hire 2 new full time people onto our payroll. So we in the month of April like, I think I kind of blocked it out, honestly. It was so dark.
Elizabeth:I don't even really know what I did and how I, like, woke up every morning, but I did. And we decided we would pivot. Nora and I kind of teed ourselves up as these wedding industry speakers educators. And we went out during COVID, and we spoke to every single company that would have us, every single certification program. We just wanted to talk about technology, and we were backdoor selling rock, paper, coin.
Elizabeth:We we were having processes at bridal bliss, the wedding planning company. So we were experts. This wasn't smoke and mirrors. We had real things that we could share that new people coming into this industry, maybe they're under, you know, somewhere between 2 7 years old, could really learn from us, and we leaned heavy on that. We saw sign ups skyrocket through COVID.
Elizabeth:You know, 600% we're talking about, like, just insane, but zero revenue. And I kept being like, oh my god. Like, what are we gonna do? Like, there's no revenue coming in. And we went to our investor.
Elizabeth:We said, listen. We are having an insane amount of success. Their sign ups are there. The activity is there. No one's processing invoices.
Elizabeth:Like, I truly need you to believe that when the lights turn back on, like, this is going to happen. And we were able to raise money during COVID March of now 2021 with the metrics that we were having during COVID, but no revenue. And I said, listen. The this industry is gonna turn back on this summer. We're not gonna lose 2 summers.
Elizabeth:So it may not be at a 100%, but there's gonna be something there. So we closed, a pre seed round in March of 21, and when the lights turned back on, the revenue was, like, there. It was there all along. It was just backlogged. So we had a lot of revenue then processing through the platform.
Elizabeth:But that also then meant we went from, like, 0 to, like, you know, doing half a $1,000,000 1 month. And there were so many kinks to figure out at that point. So it was really exciting, but it was also so scary for us as the company making sure, you know, this is at scale now we're testing in production. So that was a fun journey to experience.
Margaret:Right. Like, things were a little out of step here because of the pandemic. And what was great is, like, you know, the wedding industry is a somewhat recession proof industry. Like, to your point, the lights come back on. Like, people are continuing to fall in love and want to have a celebration to recognize their union.
Elizabeth:I think the one thing that COVID helped us and gave us some tailwinds is that during COVID when everything was shut down, people were like, oh, I can't meet somebody in person to sign a contract, or I can't meet them at the venue to take their payment. So there were these, like, tailwinds around needing digital solutions that we were able to capitalize on. We ourselves saw that and so by propping ourselves up as these technology experts and wanting to educate the industry and really helping companies digitize their process, that really did serve us well. And that pivot was super quick. It was very risky.
Elizabeth:You know, we weren't being paid for our time and energy, and so we had we just had a ton of, you know, faith that this was going to work out. Like, we were so confident in the product.
Margaret:The pandemic, it it didn't like, it exposed what was beneath the surface. It really amplified what already existed. And so, you know, if the foundations were shaky, the cracks showed and and things crumbled. And in your case, right, there was this incredible foundation and 15 years of really deep expertise that it shined, and there you were visionaries. You were you were kind of early adopters of where the industry would likely go, and then because of the pandemic, it kind of forced people to to move there faster.
Margaret:So what a great call out and really exciting and really kind of being able to turn something that could have been really dark and the end of, of something before it really began and really allowing it to be, to your point, an accelerant, a tailwind for your business.
Elizabeth:It was a wild ride. There were so many ups and downs. And, you know, looking back, it's like, you know, you think the downs are like the end and you think the ups are you know, you're gonna stay on the up the whole time. I think looking back, what's helped and and how to process it going forward is that it was so volatile during that time that we had to find a neutral ground. And even though there's still a high volume of volatility without the pandemic, we were trained to find that stable ground during such a volatile season.
Elizabeth:So now we have that experience where we can be seen as very stable leaders within the company now.
Margaret:Tell us more about, you know, how you how you find the neutral ground. How did you kind how how did you develop that skill to really be a very stable, consistent, and kind of ride through highs and lows, but you are very even?
Elizabeth:It just took a bunch of practice for us. Nora and I are incredibly thankful that we have each other. Because when she's up, I'm down. When I'm not down, she's up. You know, maybe sometimes we're both feeling down or both feeling up.
Elizabeth:But to have somebody to collaborate and and remind you, you know, if you're feeling doom and gloom that it's not all doom and gloom, like, that is worth its weight in gold. And I and as I've spoken to other female entrepreneurs that are getting started, one of my biggest pieces of advice is find a cofounder. This company would not be around if either one of us just tried to build this on our own. Like, I can say that with a 100% certainty. And that stabilization of having somebody that's in the trenches with you is so important.
Elizabeth:But I also think that a healthy person runs a healthy company. And during COVID, Nora and I, we almost broke. Like, we were just burning, you know, at both ends. Like, we were just trying to stay up until midnight, 1 AM, and get all the jobs done, and then we were up at, you know, 5 and 6 AM trying to then do family, like, family prep and, you know, with kids home, and it was just it was too much. And we ended up saying, like, this is this is too much.
Elizabeth:And we really had to turn and focus on a more healthy balance for us, and that looked like for me personally, ensuring I was working out every morning. Like, that for me is a huge outlet. Like, eating right, being on vitamins, like, going to acupuncture, having a therapist. You know? What I found is I was, in a therapy session.
Elizabeth:I was, like, only talking about work. It was all work. And somebody approached us and was like, do you have an executive coach? And I was like, no. And I was like, what is that?
Elizabeth:I got an executive coach. It's a therapist for work. And I was like, oh my god. These things are amazing. I was like, where has this been all my life?
Elizabeth:So the executive coach was just also worth her weight in goal because she was so amazing at reminding me to take care of myself. And I felt the healthier I became and not a burnt out founder, I watched the company grow like crazy. And I felt like I was letting go of some reins and some controls, but it just allowed the team and the company to flourish.
Margaret:I love that. A healthy person runs a healthy company. Yes. Mhmm. 1,000 percent.
Margaret:Yeah. I agree. And you're a shining example of that. You were talking about, you know, the world has opened back up. Events are starting to happen.
Margaret:Money is processing now through your system and you have, you know, half a1000000 that's processing through your system in a single month. Talk to us about building well, the company has now scaled, but very much still kind of being in those early days of developing and releasing new features.
Elizabeth:I envisioned building a company being, like, so organized and you build something, you test something, you release it. And the reality is you're paving the road as you're driving on it. Like and sometimes you overdrive and sometimes you overpave and you fix it and you figure it out. But still to this day, I'm like, you know what? Let's just get this out in the wild and let's see how let's see how it goes because we can only do so much iteration on this.
Elizabeth:And I actually think back to risk. Like, that's a calculated, you know, risk that we're taking. But every time we're learning from it, and sometimes we fall and sometimes we don't, and we're running, and it's amazing. So that was an interesting standpoint because it was a huge shift of we're building software to we're a payments company. And we always set out to build a software company, and we thought the payments were just gonna run through and we were gonna take that penny, you know, on every dollar overnight, and that was that.
Elizabeth:But what we realized is that when the lights turned back on, we were a payments company, and that was a huge learning curve for us because that meant that there is fraud. There are people that are trying to hack into your site. There's, you know, all these data and security, you know, things that you need to be aware of, and we were not. So we decided we're we started processing at such a high volume. We're like, you know, we should probably, like, get some more people to have eyes and do some, like, penetration testing on the site.
Elizabeth:And we came into contact with an amazing contractor that really ran our security program for the next 2 years and got us into a place where we now feel like we are a well oiled payments company. And we have done so much work on the fraud and dispute and, you know, the security side of things that I would have never put into the job description of what we were initially setting out to build.
Margaret:Yeah. You had started with a vision of what your company was, and it was telling you it was becoming something different.
Elizabeth:Yep. Yeah. And we leaned into that. We created more payment features than we did, like, planning tools because we realized that that was such a big gap for our customers. They wanted more.
Margaret:You talked about one of the exciting metrics for your business has been, you know, there's a free option, and then there's and they can turn into active active users in which they pay a subscription fee. So and that number that number has grown significantly from 23% to 45% conversion rate in the last year. I would love maybe just talking about as you, you know, kind of decide, you know, where you're gonna focus to enhance the business and, you know, kind of walking through, like, those the that process that you went through because even that is a pretty remarkable conversion rate moving it from 23 to 45%.
Elizabeth:2 things really happened. The market shifted. So we had just closed our series seed funding, and we were so excited. We, you know, we raised 2,300,000. So we were a bit oversubscribed, and it was awesome.
Elizabeth:We were like, oh my god. We have so much money. This is amazing. And everyone's like, great. Okay.
Elizabeth:So you can take a couple months, and then you need to start getting ready for your series a because that was gonna take, you know, 12 ish months or so. So we hired some people. We were kind of, like, starting to form the traditional, you know, company, and we were really, you know, focusing on, like, getting key hires in place, and the market shifted. So we raised in July, and kind of the market shifted again in, like, March ish or so of 23. And then we realized we're like, we can't we're not gonna raise in this environment.
Elizabeth:You know, everyone's pulling money back to the sidelines, and the deal flows really just dried up. So what we had in the bank then at that time was a year. We had a 1 year, and we were expecting then to have more money coming in as we were growing and on track to kind of do our series a. And it was at that time, I was like, oh, like, this is not going to go how we envisioned this to go. So we scaled back our team.
Elizabeth:At a time like this, we needed people that were doers. Customer service, sales, engineering. Like, we didn't we couldn't have that middle anymore. So we scaled back, and that really shed light then on how important it was going to be for us to convert every customer because we no longer could focus on shoving top of funnel. We couldn't go out.
Elizabeth:We could not go to, like, hundreds of trade shows and just, like, shove the funnel and then take our 23%. Like, no. What we needed to do is, like, we have a 100 coming in. How do we go from 23 to 30? How do we go from 30 to 40?
Elizabeth:And what, you know, levers were we pulling on to make that adjustment? So in this kind of, like, light of these, like, hardships and not being able to raise and scaling back the team, this was an area that cost us $0 to work on. And so it was things that were, you know, bettering our email drip campaigns, doing AB testing, doing co marketing and partnerships with brands that were you know, we'll send to our lead list your information, you send them our information and kind of doing trades with companies. So all of that and really defining our ICP. Who is our ideal client?
Elizabeth:We are not doing mass marketing anymore. We need this well defined. Then focusing on the onboarding process. We overhauled our onboarding. We started offering a white glove onboarding service to companies that were over a certain size, which is like a dedicated account manager transferring you from an old software to ours.
Elizabeth:And then having one of us, Nora and I both started out doing welcome calls to every new sign up, and we've been doing it now for a year. Nora is doing all of them now. She's much better at the welcome calls than I am. We we play to our strengths. So and having the those touch points and letting people know, like, the founders are very involved, and we care so deeply about this industry.
Elizabeth:We are going to take great care of you. I think that combined with just having still a customer service department really made it so that people love the experience of onboarding, and then they stay.
Margaret:There's been this recurring theme throughout the journey of rock, paper, coin, which is this idea that anytime you faced a setback, you've turned it into an opportunity. You've probably had to take time to, like, lick the wounds and, you know, feel the emotions, but then you'd make it something that it accelerates your business. And this is just another incredible example of taking a step back, like looking at the situation in front of you, acknowledging the reality, and then deciding how you want to adjust accordingly. And I just I can see why your company has been so successful. I can see why investors are so excited to pour into your business, and I am so excited for what the future is gonna hold for you and for Nora.
Margaret:As you think back on where you're at now and what you've learned along the way, and it could it could be inclusive too of your experience building your wedding planning business, and what would you share if there was something, one thing that either advice given or advice or something you've learned along the way that you would want to share with somebody that's on the journey or considering the journey of entrepreneurship?
Elizabeth:You should hire experts in areas you know nothing about. So for me, that looked like legal, accounting, you know, engineering, you know, all of those things. If you are hiring somebody at a job that you can do and you have the skill set, but you think that they're gonna do a better job, that's a bad hire. Because it is really easy to think and put money thinking somebody else is gonna do this amazing thing when you actually have all the tools to do it. And it's that self doubt that we spent a lot of money hiring contractors that we didn't need to.
Elizabeth:You know, hiring contractors to set up various aspects of the business. And Nora and I, we look back and we're like, okay. That was that was great, but we could have done this. Like and we just needed to believe in ourselves a little more. And I think we should have given it a go.
Elizabeth:We should have tried it. And then if it didn't work, you can hire somebody to do it. But more belief in what you can actually have the ability to do and produce because we have been blown away at what we're capable of.
Margaret:Oh, that was so good. Well, I just it's been such a treat sitting down with you. I am so excited to watch the trajectory. You know, you're actively in fundraising for that Series A and so, you know, we we want this to be another platform to just really shine a light on the remarkable work you're doing, the incredible solutions you're providing to an industry and to vendors and excited to see what the future holds for you.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Same. And thank you so much. It's been so fun to chat with you today.
