Episode 651 | From Side Hustle to Full-time & Profitable (with Mike Taber)

In episode 651, Rob Walling catches up with fan favorite Mike Taber, who co-hosted the first 448 episodes of Startups For the Rest of Us. The last time he was on the podcast, Bluetick was still a side hustle. Now, 15 months later, he shares that the app is now profitable, supporting him full-time, and gives an update on some key parts of his entrepreneurial journey. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America. They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running. When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week. And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups Topics we cover:  1:34 - An update on Bluetick 6:26 - Is Bluetick a profitable business? 8:59 - Why Mike decided to pivot his company to supporting agencies 13:34 - Setting up Bluetick to scale from 1x to 500x volume 15:33 - Is Mike doing much marketing these days? 19:12 - Mike’s celebration moment in the past 15 months 20:40 - When Mike realized he had product-market fit 23:54 - How Mike thinks about implementing new features 24:55 - Mike’s low point in the past 15 months 26:27 - What changed that allowed Mike’s business to grow so dramatically over the past year? 32:50 - Is Mike planning to update his marketing to position the product to agencies? Links from the Show: Mike Taber (@SingleFounder) I Twitter Bluetick.io MicroConf US If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you. Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher