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EP38: Repurpose.io - SaaS that helps you automate the content creation process & publish everywhere.

Hani Mourra · Repurpose.io · October 9, 2020

SaaS que reutiliza un video o podcast y lo publica en todos los canales.

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In this episode we talk with Hani Mourra, creator of Repurpose.io a software tool that saves you a lot of time creating the promotional content for your social media accounts and publishing the content automatically.

This is huge because you spend at least 1 hour repurposing content manually after you have already done a lot of work scheduling your guest for your podcast, recording an interview and editing the podcast.

If you create a video and audio podcast that's a lot of work already and on top of that you need to create 20 pieces of content to promote your podcast. Hani solved the problem in an elegant way and he shares his story about how he created the business.

He has more than 30,000 users interested in his platform and has never changed the design of his home page or even has a logo. That proves that to be successful you don't need everything to be perfect in your business.

Enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed making it for you.

Video Resources:

https://repurpose.io
https://www.makerpad.co/
Zapier Episode: https://podcast.appsparaemprendedores.com/e/p8mr957n
https://designrr.io/
https://otter.ai

UpWork

Freelanceer.com

Listen to the Podcast: https://podcast.softwarecomoservicio.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa5F0BXdT8t7R0_shN8Y1DA?sub_confirmation=1
Facebook: https://facebook.com/saasespanol
Instagram: https://instagram.com/saasespanol

 

Transcription:


[00:00:05] Jorge Diaz: Hello, Hani. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:33] Hani Mourra: Thanks, Jorge. Awesome to be here.

[00:00:37] Jorge Diaz: Thank you. Well, this podcast is for the Latin American market for the Spanish market, and I e invited you because you have a great solution for content creators. So do you have a favorite quote that inspired you and motivate you?

[00:00:57] Hani Mourra: Um, there's the law. I can't remember the exact words, but there is something along the lines of be a person of value, something along e think that Albert Einstein quote. I have very bad memory, but it's basically ideas to be if somebody of value who offers value and health people, you know, whether it's me and our business, our company, I always feel like that's That's what we believe in helping people assed much as we can through our software through one on one, helping friends. That's always just kind of been the thing for me personally. E like to help

[00:01:31] Jorge Diaz: people. So what gets you out out of bed to create?

[00:01:38] Hani Mourra: Okay, it just like just seeing an idea in your head on, then seeing it, you know, mock up and seeing it come to life and then seeing users getting feedback. That's my like That's what drives me personally, like when I see people getting back to us, giving us feedback of Oh, your tool helps us with this or we save so much time. That's to me more rewarding than the money right than eso. To me, it's just feedback is more important like and plus, with our platform, I feel like there's no limit, which is also exciting. Like we We have so many ideas and we have so many things you can do it just It feels like anything is possible. And I love that feeling. Eso that's what gets me excited.

[00:02:26] Jorge Diaz: And you're a content creator, right? You like to share what you know and help people.

[00:02:34] Hani Mourra: Yeah, I experienced with separation. Yeah, I started blogging before I did any software. I started video blogging on YouTube video, blogged on YouTube and then putting them on my website, probably like around eight or nine years ago, and I just loved I always loved Video is teaching people about video. Even as a kid, I used to always love video editing and taking all the family videos and put them together. It's always fun, and then we sit down. We all watched the video at the end, and again people are like, Oh, wow, this is so nice. That's, you know, the feedback that you get creating something and you get good feedback. Um, yeah, I I love blogging about teaching people about video on. Then it evolved into. I have a computer soft computer engineering background. So I one day I just decided, You know what? Like I love video and I have some software skills, let's create a software for video and that's how it started. It was just, you know, doing it and then thinking about how can I do things in a more automated away? And then I built my first WordPress plug in with the help of somebody, and that's how I got started. Automating a few things slowly, slowly on the way are now with the repurpose platform. It's, you know, evolution takes time, so yeah, I solve my own problems to start. That's really I'm trying to say is that we started by making tools for me as a content creator. How could I automate some of my steps that I do manually?

[00:04:02] Jorge Diaz: Yes. So let's go a little bit deep into what repurpose soul like in a little nugget.

[00:04:12] Hani Mourra: Yeah, so repurpose is a content repurpose ing platform, so it's focused on audio, video or live streaming. And idea is you create the content once and you can turn that into 25 26 27 different pieces of content and published them to different platforms on DSO. That's what that's what our software does. It automates that step into turning into different turn the con to turn the one content into multiple pieces and also automatically publishing them to different platforms as much as we can.

[00:04:49] Jorge Diaz: Yes, for example, just to share like the process off software common servicio podcast. I record this like for YouTube. Then I record the audio for the Spotify ing on the podcast platforms. Then I create a headliner video there. It's a so, for instance, service called headliner dot app, and that piece of software I post in like Instagram in many places and with your tool, it's like, Did you record the audio? And it creates the content automatically with a little configuration by your part or my part right E on, then played. You have templates for the video that comes from your on with you?

[00:05:44] Hani Mourra: Exactly. Yeah, that's one example of for podcasters. We turn the audio into video. You can design your template or pick one of our templates, and then you pick what size you want, vertical or square or horizontal, and then you can. You can even schedule directly from our platform so you can schedule to go on Twitter on Monday. You know, one minute clip on Twitter on Monday, or the full episode on Tuesday on YouTube. You know, five clips on Facebook you can configure. It's almost like a rule. You set up all the rules, and then you can decide where the content goes and when it goes on different

[00:06:23] Jorge Diaz: platforms, I recently automated a little bit with happier on the podcast, because when I publish them in my podcast platform, I upload the title of the podcast. The description. Then it creates a sap that goes into my newsletter software or, you know, software. And it creates, like, a go to the podcast of this week. Friday you're a little bit like sappier You weren't.

[00:07:00] Hani Mourra: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I was inspired. I loves up here I was when we created repurpose. I like the models up here where you can set rules. You say when this happens or when a new episode shows up, do this converted into a video and then send it here. So there's almost three things you get three things you decide where you starting from on what the action is, whether it's convert the video to audio or audio to video or, you know, resize the video, whatever you want to do. And then the third step is send it to this platform, upload to YouTube to Twitter, to Lincoln to, you know, wherever you wanted to go. So, yeah, we're definitely inspired by zap here. I love zap. Here s so we kind of built. It was almost like the zap here, but focused strictly on content. So it's four eyes up here for content creators, especially audio and video.

[00:07:54] Jorge Diaz: That's a good tag line. But from all the competition

[00:07:59] Hani Mourra: Yeah, I can't really puts up here in our tagline, but yeah, we're big fans is up here. Absolutely.

[00:08:05] Jorge Diaz: Yes, but in the in the news, you see, like the over off.

[00:08:10] Hani Mourra: Uh, that's true. You're right. You're right. Maybe we should try that on the NPR market. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:23] Jorge Diaz: And do you consider repurpose that can be categorized in the no code movement? You

[00:08:30] Hani Mourra: know them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we're discussing you and I before the interview. Yeah, I consider it no code because you can do things, go from here to here and do some actions in the middle by setting up rules in a platform without touching any code. You can make videos out of audios. You can resize videos, make them vertical, etcetera. So, yeah, I consider it no code. It's kind of an extension of milk code because you can do things without code. Uh, just a few clicks.

[00:09:05] Jorge Diaz: Yes, that that's interesting. The video that that it's like I don't know like this that we're recording now for YouTube or something. You can put it in formal like instagram stories. Right? Way

[00:09:21] Hani Mourra: you can make it vertical. We could make it square. You choose what you want and what it looks like. Um, and actually we're releasing in a few weeks, maybe a month or so. It's in beta right now, the ability to design your own templates. So when you re size that, you could design brand your own templates and make them look really nice, put your logo on them. And then we also burned the captions as well. So we put a title on the top video and then captions on the bottom.

[00:09:51] Jorge Diaz: That's interesting. I I like the transcription space because that creates a lot off CEO value for your post. If you oppose, you're counting on your blood. But there's there's not a lot of a lot of solutions in Spanish, like Spanish transcription. Maybe interesting, maybe way forced you to put

[00:10:19] Hani Mourra: it. Yeah, so we have a different angle. To be honest, we have we take a different approach for transcriptions because we're not experts in transcription. So we're almost We're like we said earlier were like zap here. Our job is to connect this platform with this platform. All right, so we're not the experts in AI and transcription and stuff. So what we do is we? We take advantage of Facebook's transcription, so Facebook has free transcriptions on your Facebook page. Any video uploaded transcribed for you. It's pretty good. I don't know about Spanish. Don't. I haven't done videos in Spanish, but, um, for the most part, it's good you could fix it on Facebook. And then, while our software does is it will take the captions from Facebook and then burn them into the video for you so we don't actually have an engine for transcriptions. We have. Ah, we have an ability to take captions from Facebook and burn them into your video. And if you don't want, if you don't like Facebook's transcriptions, you have another service or you pay a company to transcribe for you. You can upload that to Facebook on, then problem repurpose. Our platform can repurpose it on Facebook and put it into your video automatically. So we're not into that. You know, I feel like every every SAS has his own specialty, our specialties connecting services and doing some transformations. Um, this whole transcription spaces a lot of companies do. Amazing job. One of my favorites is honor. I don't know if you've played with Otter. I'm not sure how it is in different languages, but in English, it zip. It does a really good job. Is by far my favorite automated one, for sure. Yeah, so yeah. So whatever service yet? Abusing. Even if you pay somebody to transcribe for you, you can upload that captions file to Facebook, and then using our platform, we'll burn it right into the video for you. So that's the That's the approach we took. But in the future, we don't know. Maybe we'll integrate different AP eyes or different services to make to add transcription. But it's hard to try to do everything really well. So we're trying to focus on what we know what we're comfortable with.

[00:12:28] Jorge Diaz: Yeah, another great function like you are like in the space of promoting content creators like podcasters, live streamers or people that share information online. I think it's mainly coaches and market.

[00:12:49] Hani Mourra: Yeah, coaches. I mean most any, any business, really, that that puts content online, but you're right. Mostly people who are putting content are the ones that have coaching business or or they're different. They're like, I guess that they're doing marketing for the product or service by putting content, especially video content.

[00:13:10] Jorge Diaz: Yes, Andi, the reason why I'm saying this is because I saw you integrate with eso four as a service called Designer. This is that you can create e books on, like, Amazon kindle e books, like with transcription, right?

[00:13:31] Hani Mourra: Yeah. So, yeah, we have They reached out to us, the founder reach out to me. And we had we had a good conversation, and we've been integration together, um, so that you can get a video from anywhere. We put it into a folder in Dropbox. They'll transcribe it turned into an e book. So we way make that process seamless between our two platforms. We're always looking. We love to integrate. It is really re purposes is we love to integrate and connect to services together. So if you know, if in the future we might connect transcription services automatically, we might connect other platforms anything that we can connect together to make to save you. One step from you clicking here to click here just to automate that that's that's our focus. Especially when it comes to video and audio.

[00:14:20] Jorge Diaz: Yeah, that's interesting for him for product creators that if you create a video you can have like the workbook or the or I leave Magnet or a post well block post. You can do it with other or other transcription services, but if you want the sign off me book or Amazon Kindle and more that that's settled. Integration. You found it interesting. Yeah,

[00:14:52] Hani Mourra: Designer is a very good tool. It's a very nice tool. Yeah, so, yeah, there's so much you can dio.

[00:14:58] Jorge Diaz: And how did you came up? Came up with the idea to create repurpose.

[00:15:03] Hani Mourra: Come to be honest, it was our users. They told us way started creating automation tools in WordPress. So our first software we have created was take a video from YouTube every time you put a video on YouTube but automatically puts it on your blogged, make a block post automatically embed the video for you the title description on I created that because I was putting videos every week on YouTube and I have to go to my blogger and make a new post and copy the embed code and, uh, even though it sounds like it's five minutes. But if you do this every day or every twice or twice a week, three times a week. It's just very. It's a waste of time. So we made a tool. That was just every time you post on your own channel, it would just boom, block post video. Everything is there way have a WordPress plug ins like $39 anyway, So we have a tool that does that. And then, as I when we released that podcasting with, like, 98 years ago, podcasting is becoming a lot more popular. And then we said, Okay, let's make the same tool for podcasting publishing episode to your podcast feed automatically create a Web WordPress post. And then are we have our own audio player as well. So that's a nice audio player shows up. So that was great. And then a few years a year later, Facebook life was becoming popular. So same thing. Go live on Facebook. Embed the replay video title description. So we were always repurpose ing audio and video to your blogged. And then as our user base grew, they told us, Listen, I love this. I love the automation, so it saves me so much time. But can you take my podcast and convert into a video and put on YouTube. Or can you take my Facebook live when I'm done and then send a copy to YouTube? Our first answer was No. It's not possible to do that in a WordPress. And then as more and more people asked, we said We need to build something. We need to build a solution. And that's how repurpose was born. It's just out of users asking, Can you automate even more and go further, like go beyond workplace?

[00:17:13] Jorge Diaz: Yes. It's interesting on how you got started. Like promoting and the platform you already sold the workers plug ins. Mhm. And how do you start? Started the whole thing, like putting content out. Then you build an audience for How was that? Is the podcast. Stop. Petrosino poured a zero i m v P. Gracias. Por s Coach Army podcast. Oh, I praise Apprendi era camo and therefore Internet toe productive servicio up a crucial Alinea. The hack it to splinters both in Kansuke er terra it prevent the antique rare to negocio demonstrate Rico McClair to city web. Since our programmer para preventer to the negocios facile meant receiver ventas for Internet by leader to the and Negocios simper dirty employees dinero and trying Corso's puntos software camo service Apunta compare Historic Tendulkar Selenia Oy!

[00:18:21] Hani Mourra: So it started with I don't know what we're doing with the plugging. I was more the the technical guy. I knew the problem. I knew how to solve it. We solved it. How do I market it? I just reached out to a friend who was in the space and he helped me market it. Um And then we made we made a business arrangement partnership and he helped me launch it. And that was the best decision I made because he had the right audience. And then we got a lot of exposure on releasing software supporting software. We learned a lot. It was difficult the first time you do it. Second time around, I was entering the podcasting space, and then we decided I decided to be more of the marketing side eso. At that time there was a few podcasting conferences, so I started going in person conferences and joining the Facebook groups and put my name out there and connect with people. So people got to know who. I wasn't promoting anything. I was just connecting with the the face blood podcasters on different Facebook groups met them in real life and real life conferences. So that really helped. Um, But then to answer your question about repurpose because we had enough customers from all the different plug ins over the three or four years way when we launch repurpose was we had we said, Okay, new product. We only We only advertised our existing customers because they they loved our products. They were paying customers, and we only launched to them on and, uh, to make sure that they were interested. And then once we once after that, it became word of mouth, a lot of word of mouth. People would talk about it, people would share etcetera. So But initially, if you have an audience is always good to start with, just marketing to that audience that you know and have a relationship with

[00:20:03] Jorge Diaz: Andi, you gave like, commissions affiliate commissions.

[00:20:08] Hani Mourra: Yeah, we have affiliate commissions, Um, but also the first, like 25 people. I think it was like we just said it had, like, a one time offer with a looking for 25 people, and we're still building the software if you wanna pay, I forget some money. Then you get a make a lifetime. You get it forever. Like for being a beta customer. You get it forever. So that's what we did. And it went great. I met personally one on one with one on one with these people and, uh, had, you know, one our conversations and I learned a lot because my vision was one thing. The software was very simple back then. Actually was only did one thing is the stick of audio to video and went to YouTube. That's that's all it did. That was the first version of repurpose. No Square, no verdict. It was just like audio to video is just very simple. But we learned a lot from talking to customers. We talked and talked and talked about 25 of them. And then you learn, You know what they want more, what else to focus on etcetera. So it's very important to talk to your customers, especially early on, and whatever business you rent, software or consulting, coaching doesn't matter.

[00:21:22] Jorge Diaz: And what waas the method you got to your developers or developer?

[00:21:30] Hani Mourra: What do you mean? Like how

[00:21:32] Jorge Diaz: how you found them? Via UpWork or Freelanceer.com

[00:21:36] Hani Mourra: I went to different processes. So initially was up work for the WordPress plug ins. And then once I found one person, we built a relationship. And then, you know, he was my main. But he's still there is still my main person, um, to do all the updates, maintenance, new features with repurpose because it was a different platform. Uh, initially I went up work. I should I want the up work. Um, And then we hired a company, and it did something, and I didn't like it like it was just not It wasn't my It wasn't how I envisioned the product to be. So we cancel the deal. We took the code, didn't do anything for three or four months. And then and then I forget somebody referred me to somebody. I forget how I met the developer. And then we met when I gave him the coast. Can you make this work that we wanted? And he made small changes, okay? And then we started building a relationship. But now I think we're up to 33 developers on repurposed now, uh, almost almost full time. So it did start. I think it does start with up work initially. Um, but it's it's about relationship. Just like any business, right? Whether your customer, whether they're on your team, one of you, you want to treat people well, treat your customers well through your team. Well, because it doesn't matter where they are in the world. Doesn't matter if it's the high paying customer or low paying customer. To me, it's like everybody is a human being. Everybody deserves respect. And you know you do is whatever you can of the business is a person to be respectful. And that's how you build good relationships.

[00:23:10] Jorge Diaz: Mhm. Yeah, I saw in Twitter that you reach the milestone off 10,000 customers or something like that.

[00:23:21] Hani Mourra: Yeah, 10,000 users. I mean, they're not paying so with people who want. I think now we're up to, I think, close to 13,000. Um, but yeah, and we don't do active marketing that Z we don't. Besides, we do content, even even content were not as much as we way used to do in the past. And then we do we have an affiliate program. Of course that helps, Um, but it's just a lot of word of mouth that just people talking about it because they enjoy it and we do monthly trainings every month with the past few months have been slow. We skipped a few months, but usually we do a monthly training for our customers. Show them what's new. Show them what's coming. So, yeah, we use our own content

[00:24:04] Jorge Diaz: May maybe because the audience or your customers are like strong, strong people in the market or or content marketers. They promote it. They

[00:24:18] Hani Mourra: a lot. Yeah, a lot of them, like you said, like their coaches, eso they teach their clients. Hey, you wanna automate some of your content? Here is a great tool. So it's not like one toe, one referral. It's one to many referrals, so they refer to all their customers because they're teaching about Facebook bots. So they're teaching about this or that. Whatever they're teaching on, um, they helped their clients by giving them more tools. So hey, here's a great tool. You want to start a podcast, but you don't want to create content. Take all your videos, turn them into audio. So here's a great tools that will do it for you so they share all these tools. And that's how repurpose and a grew Um, And again it's a relationships. We've got a lot of relationship with cultures and that our customers and then we met with them and they said, Oh, we love your tool And then I They invite me to their Facebook group. I do a demo. I teach about the product. So it's about having a good relationship with customers and they help you. They help spread the word about your business.

[00:25:18] Jorge Diaz: Yeah, it's It's a great market to have because they can become athletes or because they like that they promote.

[00:25:29] Hani Mourra: You're right. Some people just promote like they don't even know we haven't affiliate program. They're just promoted because they love it and they feel that a lot of time. So yeah, you're right is, but and a lot of pie. I do a lot of podcast interviews, getting because of the nature of my customers. A lot of them are podcasts, or at least half of podcasters. So a lot of people invite me to their show, you know, we talk about my story and stuff like that, so it Z I'm kind of lucky in a way, that's kind of a viral, not a viral. But there's a component to my business is that I'm in the content space and then content creators need more content. So I get invited to teach or invited to give demos. I get invited to do a podcast interview. So that also helps market the product as well.

[00:26:18] Jorge Diaz: Yes. And do you think you need You need toe movinto the sas, uh, bringing customers as Assad's business like, ah, great landing page or website on then, Like free trails and all these on boarding in the platform. Do you think for you you need to do that or you have another

[00:26:42] Hani Mourra: way off marketing? No, no, that's very, very important That that's actually what we're focusing on the past few months. Eyes way haven't launched anything, but we're focusing internally. Okay, what are our metrics? You know, what are we tracking? Trial to conversion. Um, visitor to try a while. You know what? Our numbers now, how come what areas that we focus on. So we're gonna we're focusing on on boarding on. Then. We're also focusing on I mean, the two major ones tow us are when they come to your site. How many people click to become free trial? How do we make that number more? And number two is How do we make the number off? People who are on free trial have a great experience and convert them, educate them, make sure they're getting all the value out of the software and let them know everything that's possible. And how do we get them to convert to a paying customer? So those are two areas we're focusing on, um, internally, like more training more better on boarding sequence, Better in app, on boarding to so many ideas. Um, but we're having these discussions now. It's funny, because I I wish we started this. I'm a very technical guys. I was always, like, just build something awesome and this just keep building more awesome features. And then, Okay, you know, you know, business is going well. Everything is going well, there's no need Thio think about this stuff. But then you start looking at the numbers. You're like, Wow, really? We're missing a lot of opportunities here. A lot of people coming in, but also a lot of people are not converting or a lot of people are. Maybe they don't see the value and maybe they don't even know what have to feature. So we're thinking a whole different way now, not just pump more features out. Let's focus on giving them a good experience, educating them throughout their trial and also improving our home page. We have a new new design, probably in a month or so we launched a whole new website landing page. It's just a little more current. Just hours is very. It's about 3.5, almost four years old, old when we haven't really changed. You know, we've tweaked it. We haven't made a big change in almost four years, so we're definitely paying attention. You have to do that because after a while, you to realize that you don't you don't need to drive more users. You just need to convert more users and show them the value in your software s so that you get a better percentage converting Thio paid customer and also staying a third area.

[00:29:04] Jorge Diaz: We look at a great website at the beginning. Well, yeah, or a great design or or a great log or your need to validate and solve the problem

[00:29:20] Hani Mourra: exactly. You know, that's something you need more data anymore. Users on here. Then you can get data, then you can improve. But in the beginning, don't get Oh, I need to hire and pay $10,000 for a new website. No, let's just put it out there, get the message and just get people visiting it and lets you know validates right. You can't validate without data. You need thio. No, don't, Don't. Don't people make that mistake All this desire logo Uh, I don't like this logo has changed this. I don't like the home page. Let's change. It's like, put it out, get people to use your software and then or, you know, come to your site and see how they convert. Start tracking people on, then decide if you need to change it or not.

[00:30:05] Jorge Diaz: Yes, it's very ah. Lot of people want perfection on they. They over analyze, they get paralyzed and they don't know

[00:30:14] Hani Mourra: e mean. We're going through a website redesign now. Everything had to tow the copy, the wording, But we've have almost four years of experience. We have a lot of testimonials. We know what people are saying we know what words they like, what they don't like. We have a lot of customer support tickets. So we have data to make better decisions on what and the home page should look like or what the focus should be. What words do we use? What do they like the most? One software, etcetera. But you need data. But I had a lot of people can make jokes about me. Oh, you're so your home page doesn't look very good or it looks outdated. E said. Yeah, I know it's on our plan, but, you know, it's still converts people, and it's, you know, we still got the data, but that's why we're focusing on it now. But yeah, you're right. Don't don't let it. Don't stop your project. Don't stop him launching because your website is not perfect or or as beautiful as you want it to be.

[00:31:12] Jorge Diaz: Yeah, maybe the the new redesign will attract better the people from, for example, product content. Or, like more tech savvy that want to see, like, a startup website.

[00:31:26] Hani Mourra: Yeah, like a modern startup. Yeah, but really it z, it's definitely I know it's gonna help for sure, like it's not even about the redesign that the look will be more fresh and more modern, of course, but also like, What are we focusing on? What's the journey? You when you land on the 1st 1st part of the page doesn't make sense. What our software, that is it clear? Eso were also changing a lot of the wording. How we how we describe our product in our new page. But we don't know this until you have a few years of data or, you know, we have almost four years. I think we waited too long. But, hey, it's better to do it now than than never do it all. But definitely don't do it too early. You don't You don't have enough decisions, uh, data to make decisions about what to change or what to say

[00:32:16] Jorge Diaz: exactly. So what are the most important important passions outside outside of your work?

[00:32:25] Hani Mourra: That's a great question. I mean, for me, your family is always first. We have two daughters and my wife and I, and now we have a new dog as well. So family is always first, um, hobbies. It's weird. It's funny, you ask because I was talking to my wife like six months ago, and I was like E kept telling her I don't have any hobbies like my work is my hobby and it's not very healthy. Whenever it is free time, I always think about what else can we do or what else can we build in the future? I just write down ideas, but it's not healthy. Eso I'm to be honest, I don't I'm still searching for a hobby. I did E. Did I love basketball. I used to play basketball a lot when I was younger. Then last year, my daughter, she short interest in basketball. She was 10 years old, so we put her in a basketball league and I became the coach I've never coached before, so I coached her team and I was I loved it. I was like, That was so fun. Something completely different from my business. Still helping people like seeing my daughter and all her friends like develop their skills and I love basketball. So it was a perfect to me that was a perfect opportunity to do something completely different, but still really, really enjoy it. But yeah, I don't I don't besides that I mean, we're trying to sign her up again a soon as basketball leagues are open again, we'll sign her up again, and then I definitely want to be the coach, but yeah, I'm still looking for that hobby. He like, e don't I don't enjoy reading books too much. Um, actually, lately I've been watching a lot documentaries. That's my way of disconnecting. I watched documentaries about weird things like homes or underwater. I was always been fascinated with underwater, like scuba diving and just a whole new world underwater. So yeah, it Zaveri important to, like, do something completely not related to your work. Like, completely take your brain off of work. So, yes, I'm still kind

[00:34:28] Jorge Diaz: of thing. Okay. And where can we follow you, too? To ask questions or get in touch with you? She

[00:34:39] Hani Mourra: Yeah. E want social media? Facebook Twitter, mostly Facebook. Um, but if you go toe any or a calm, it has a link to my Facebook. My twitter, instagram, all that stuff. So yeah, on my website and check it out. You can also learn about different products. We have a swell, but yeah, everything I would say Facebook is for where I hang out the most

[00:35:04] Jorge Diaz: great. Andi, this thing is the most important question. And the last one, Uh, what are your last words to entrepreneurs that want to start assess company for the Latin American market and for whatever market?

[00:35:23] Hani Mourra: Um, start small, start small. Better to start small than to have a big idea and then never executed. That's the worst thing you could do. Start with a small idea, build it valid data and then expand on it and make it bigger and bigger.

[00:35:40] Jorge Diaz: Yeah. Like like you that you started with from audio to YouTube, right? Or to you?

[00:35:47] Hani Mourra: Yeah, it was just 1 ft and became, too. Now, I think we have, like, 30 different things you can do in our platform, but yeah, start small, validate, get feedback, talk to customers, see what's next and then evolve as you go. Because you see a lot of stories about startups, and they have all these features and products. But everybody starts small. Everybody starts with a small idea. And then they evolved. And And if you don't have a big team, definitely start

[00:36:18] Jorge Diaz: small and even in the beginning, give lifetime prices.

[00:36:24] Hani Mourra: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I didn't tell my users. I told them Hey, she signed up. Now you get six. I said I told him six months free. You pay one price, you get six months. And then I decided, Hey, because they were my loyal customers From the beginning, I get a lifetime. You don't have to do a lifetime. You could do lifetime. You can experiment. But the idea is, if you have an audience, definitely start small and then sell to them or offer them the solution. Okay? E built this tool e mean, before we build anything, you need to find out what they want, right? So if you have an audience, talk to them before you build anything and then once you know I'm gonna build a solution and then build something small, then show it to them. Say, Hey, I'm doing a webinar. Let me show you what we build so far. So that's right. You know, keep in contact, especially with customers who are already paying you, or an audience that already trust you. And they follow U s. So those are your best people to to get feedback from, not your parents not your friends is people who will follow you online is people who, um or have paid have paid for your products and services in the past.

[00:37:29] Jorge Diaz: And what are your prices? Where they can go toe toe, see your software are tested or whatever?

[00:37:37] Hani Mourra: Yeah, we have a free trial. It's repurposed on Ohio and the prices I started $12 of no $15 a month. We have think three plans $15 mhm 20. Then we have an agent Agent e think $100 a month. But for most people, if you're just doing podcasting is $15 a month. And if you're doing audio and video content and $25 a month

[00:38:05] Jorge Diaz: okay, those are good prices.

[00:38:10] Hani Mourra: Yeah, You know, we only increase their prices once since we launch, which is another whole story we could talk into. I've always Most people are afraid thio increase their prices, including myself on uh, but if you're not sure of pricing, my my advice is start a little bit lower, attract the customers and then increase your prices as you go along as you add more features. But my opinion don't Anybody who's signed up with the old price. You should leave them at the old price because they're like your loyal customers that were there from the beginning. You lock them in in those price, and then new customers will get a slightly higher price. So the pricing is a very difficult subject. But if you're not sure, always my advice is always go on the lower side. And then it's easier to increase than than the decrease. Because somebody finds out there. They signed up now, and they're paying less than somebody who signed up last year. They're gonna be upset. But if you know, if you're not sure, start lower than go high as you add more features or as you offer more value.

[00:39:12] Jorge Diaz: Yes. Thank you, Hani, for being in the software camo servicio podcast and see you in the next one.

[00:39:21] Hani Mourra: All right. Thanks for having me, Jorge. Bye bye.

[00:39:23] Jorge Diaz: Bye.

Transcript

Jorge

Podcast MVP. Internet to product service app Hello, Hany. Welcome to the show.

Hani

Thanks, Jorge. Awesome to be here.

Jorge

Thank you. Well, this podcast, It's for the Latin American market for the Spanish market, and I in I invited you because you have a a great solution for content creators. Do you have a favorite quote that inspired you and motivates you?

Hani

There's a lot. I I can't remember the exact words, but there is something along the lines of, be a person of value. Something along I think the Albert Einstein quote. I have a very bad memory, but it's a basically, the idea is to be somebody of value, who offers value and helps people. And, You know, whether it's me, my business, our company, I always feel like that's that's what we believe in, helping people as much as we can through our software, through 1 on 1, Helping friends. That's always just kind of been the thing for me personally. It's just I like to help people.

Jorge

Yes. So what gets you out out of bed to create?

Hani

Just like Just seeing an idea in your head and then seeing it, you know, mock up and then seeing it come to life and then seeing Users getting feedback, that's my like, that's what drives me personally. Like, when I see people getting back to us, giving us feedback of, oh, your tool helps us With this, where we save so much time, that's to me more rewarding than the money. Right? Then so to me, it's just feedback is more Important. Like and plus with our platform, I feel like there's no limit. This is also exciting. Like, we we have So many ideas, and we have so many things you can do. It just you know, it feels like anything is possible. I I love that feeling.

So that's what gets me excited.

Jorge

And and you're a content creator. Right? You you like to share what you know and And help people. Yeah. I've experience with content creation.

Hani

Yeah. I started vlog before I did any software. I started video blogging On YouTube, like, you're doing video blogs on YouTube and then putting them on my website probably, like, around 8 or 9 years ago. And I just loved I always loved video. I was teaching people about video. Even as a kid, I used to always love video editing and taking all the family Videos and put them together. It was always fun. And then we sit down, we all watched the video at the end.

And again, people are like, oh, wow. This is so nice. That's, you know, the feedback that you get recreating something and you get good feedback. Yeah. I I love blogging. I love teaching people about video. And then It evolved into I have a computer soft computer engineering background. So I one day, I just decided, you know what? Like, I love video, and I I have some software skills.

Let's create a software for for video. And that's how it started. It was just, you know, doing it and then Thinking about how can I do things in a more automated way, and then I built my 1st WordPress plug in with the help of somebody? And, that's how I got started. Just Automating a few things slowly slowly. And then we, we are now with with the repurposed platform. It's, You know, evolution takes time. So, yeah, I solved my own problem to start. That's really what I'm trying to say is that we started by Making tools for me as a content creator.

How can I automate some of my steps that I do manually?

Jorge

Yes. So let's go a a little bit deep into what repurposed solve, like, in a little nugget.

Hani

Yeah. So Repurpose is a content repurposing platform. So it's focused on audio, video, or live streaming. And the idea is you create the content once, and you can turn that into 25, 26, 27 different pieces of content And publish them to different platforms. And so that's what that's what our software does. It automates that step into turning into different To turn the con turn the 1 content into multiple pieces and also automatically publishing them to different platforms as much as we can. Yes.

Jorge

For example, just to share, like, the process of software podcast, I record this, like, for YouTube, Then I record the audio for the Spotify and all the podcast platforms. Then I create a headliner video. There it's a software and a service called headliner.app, And that piece of software I post in, like, Instagram and many places. And with your tool, it's like To record the audio, and it creates the content automatically with a little configuration by your part or my part. Right? Mhmm.

Hani

Like a

Jorge

a template. You have templates for the video that comes from your audio.

Hani

Exactly. Yeah. Which that's one example of for podcasters, we turn the audio into video. You can design your template or pick 1 of our templates, and then And you pick what size you want vertical or square or horizontal. And, and then you can you can even schedule directly from our platform. So you can schedule to go on Twitter on Monday, you know, 1 minute clip on Twitter on Monday or the full episode on Tuesday on YouTube. Five clips on Facebook. You can configure it's almost like a rule.

You set up all the rules and then you can decide where the content goes and when it goes On different platforms.

Jorge

Yes. I recently, automated a little bit with Zapier, the Mhmm. Podcast because When I publish them, in my podcast platform, I upload the title of the podcast, the description, Then it creates a app that goes into my newsletter software or email software, and it creates like a Go to the podcast of this week in in Friday.

Hani

Oh, nice.

Jorge

A little bit like Zapier. You you were telling Yeah. Yeah.

Hani

I mean, I I was inspired. I love Zapier. I was in when we create a repurpose, I like the model of Zapier where you can set rules. You see, when this happens or when a new episode shows up, do this. Convert it into a video and then send it Here. So there's almost 3 things you got 3 things you decide. Where are you starting from and what the action is, whether it's, Convert the video to audio or audio to video or, you know, resize the video, whatever you wanna do. And then the 3rd step Is send it to this platform.

Upload to YouTube, upload to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to, you know, wherever you wanted to go. So, yeah, we're definitely hired by Zapier. I love Zapier. So we kinda built it as almost like the Zapier, but focused strictly on content. So it's for it's up here for content creators, especially audio and video.

Jorge

That's a good tag tagline, but you promote the competition.

Hani

Yeah. Exactly. Can't really put Zapier in our tagline. But, yeah, we're big fans of Zapier. Absolutely.

Jorge

Yes. But in the in the news, you see, like, The Uber of Oh, yeah. Or whatever.

Hani

That's true. You're right. You're right. So maybe we should try that.

Jorge

Only in PR

Hani

market. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Jorge

And do you consider repurpose That can be categorized in the no code movement. You know that? Yeah. No code movement. Yeah.

Hani

I mean, we're discussing you and I before the interview. Yeah. I can tell code because you can Do things go from here to here and and do some actions in the middle, by setting up rules in a platform without touching any code. You can make videos out of audios. You can resize videos, make them vertical, etcetera. So, yeah, you I consider it no code. It's, kind of an of no code because you can do things without code. Just a few clicks.

Jorge

Yes. That that's interesting. The video that that is like, I don't know, like this that we are recording now for YouTube or something, you can put it In, format like Instagram story. Right?

Hani

Mhmm. We can make it vertical. We can make it square. You choose, what you want and what what it looks like. And actually, we're releasing in a few weeks, Maybe in a month or so. It's in beta right now. The ability to design your own templates. So when you resize that, you could design brand your own templates And, make them look really nice, put your logo on them.

And then we also burn the captions as well. So we we put a title on the top, video, and then captions on the

Jorge

That's interesting. I I like, the transcription space Because that creates a lot of SEO, value for your post if you post your your content on your blog. But there's there's not a lot of a lot of solutions in Spanish, like Spanish transcription. Maybe.

Hani

Interesting.

Jorge

Maybe we we forced you to to leave.

Hani

Yeah. So So we have a different angle. To be honest, we have we take a different approach for transcriptions, because we're not experts in transcription. So we're almost we're like like we said earlier, we're like Zapier. Our job is to connect this platform with this platform. Right? So we're not the experts in AI and transcription And stuff. So what we do is we, we take advantage of Facebook's transcription. So Facebook has free transcriptions On your Facebook page, any video you upload, it'll transcribe for you.

It's pretty good. I don't know about Spanish. I don't I haven't done videos in Spanish, but, For the most part, it's good. You can fix it on Facebook. And then what our software does is it it will take the captions from from Facebook And then burn them into the video for you. So we don't actually have an engine for transcriptions. We have, we have an ability to take captions from Facebook And burn them into your video. And if you don't want if you don't like Facebook's transcription, you have another service or you pay a company to transcribe for you, you can upload that to Facebook And then from repurpose, our platform can repurpose it from Facebook and put it into your video automatically.

So we're not into that. Now I feel like every every SaaS has its own specialty. And our specialty is connecting services and doing some transformations. This whole transcription space, a lot of companies do amazing job. One of my favorites is Otter. I don't know if you've played with Otter. Yes. I'm not sure how it is in different languages, but in English, it's it's fair.

It does a really good job. It's by far my favorite automated one for sure.

Jorge

They only do

Hani

English. Yeah. So yeah. So whatever service you end up using, even if you pay somebody to transcribe for you, you can upload that, captions filed to Facebook and then using our platform, we'll burn it right into the video for you. So that's the that's the approach we took. But in the future, we don't know. Maybe we'll integrate different APIs or different services to make to add transcription, but, it's hard to try to do everything really well, so we try to focus on what we know

Jorge

and what we're comfortable with. Yeah. Another great, function like you are like in the space of promoting Content creators like podcasters, live streamers, or people that share information online. I think it's mainly coaches and marketer. Right? Content creator.

Hani

Yeah. Coaches. I mean, most any any business really that that That puts content online, but you're right. Mostly people who are putting content are the ones that have coaching business or or they're they're like, I guess that they're doing marketing for their product or service by putting content out, especially video content.

Jorge

Yes. And And the reason why I'm saying this is because I saw you integrate with a a software as a service called designer. Mhmm. That Yeah. You can create ebooks and like Amazon, Kindle ebooks, Like with transcription. Right?

Hani

Yeah. So, yeah, we had they reached out to us. The founder reached out to me. We had we had a good conversation And we've done integration together, so that you can get a video from anywhere. We put it into a folder in Dropbox. They'll transcribe it, Turn into an ebook. So we we make that process seamless, between our 2 platforms. And we're always looking.

We love to integrate and it really repurposes. It's We love to integrate and connect 2 services together. So if, you know, if in the future, we might connect transcription services automatically, we might connect, other platforms, anything that we can connect together to make to save you 1 step from you clicking here to click here, just to automate that step. Man, that's that's our focus, especially when it comes to video and audio.

Jorge

Yeah. That's interesting for info product creators that if you create a video, you can have, like, the the workbook or the or a lead magnet Or a blog post. Well, blog post, you can do it with other or other transcription services, but If you want the sign of a Mebook or an Amazon Kindle and and more, that that's a good integration. I found that Interesting. Yeah. Designer is a

Hani

very good tool. It's a very nice tool. Yeah. So, yeah, there's so much you can do.

Jorge

And how did you came up, came up with the idea to create repurpose?

Hani

To be honest, it was our users, and they told us. We we started creating, automation tools in WordPress. So our 1st software we ever created was Take a video from YouTube. Every time you put a video on YouTube, it automatically puts it on your blog. You'll make a blog post automatically, embed the video for you, the title Description. And I created that because I was putting videos every week on YouTube, and I have to go to my blog and make a new post and copy the embed code and, Even though it sounds like it's 5 minutes, but if you do this every day or every twice or twice a week, 3 times a week, it's just very It's a waste of time. So we made a tool that would just every time you post on your own channel, it would just boom, blog post, video, everything is there.

Jorge

I do that I do that every week.

Hani

Yeah. It's annoying. I know. Yes. So we have a WordPress plug in. It's like $39. Anyway, so we have a tool that does that. And then as I when we released that, podcasting with That was like 9 year 8 years ago.

Podcasting was becoming a lot more popular. And then we said, okay. Let's make the same tool for podcasting. Publish an episode to your podcast feed, automatically create a web, a WordPress post, and then our we have our own audio player As well. So that a nice audio player shows up. So that was great. And then few year a year later, Facebook live was becoming popular. So same thing.

Go live on Facebook, embed the replay video title description. So we were always repurposing audio and video to your blog. And then as our user base grew, they told us, listen, I love this. I love the automation. It's so saves me so much time, but can you take my podcast and Convert into a video and put on YouTube, or can you take my Facebook live when I'm done and then send a copy to YouTube? And our first answer was no. It's not possible to do that in in WordPress. And then as more and more people asked, we said, we need to build something. We need to build a solution, and that's how Repurpose was born.

It's just out of users asking, can you automate even more And go further, like, go beyond, workplace.

Jorge

Yes. It's interesting. And how do you got started, like, promoting, the platform? You you already sold the WordPress plugins?

Hani

Mhmm. And

Jorge

Yeah. How do you start started the whole thing, like, putting content out, then you built an audience, or How was that? Podcast

Hani

So it started with, I didn't know what we were doing with the plug in. I I was more the The technical guy. I knew the problem. I knew how to solve it. We solved it. How do I market it? I had a I just reached out to a friend Who was in the space, and he helped me market it. And then we made and then we made a business arrangement, a partnership, and he He helped me launch it, and that was the best decision I made because he had the right audience. And then we got a lot of exposure on On releasing software, supporting software.

We learned a lot. It was difficult the 1st time you do it. 2nd time around, I I was entering the podcasting space, and then we decided I decided to be more of the marketing side. So I'll at that time, there was a podcasting conferences, so I started going in person conferences and joining the Facebook groups and put my name out there and connect with people so people got to know who I am. I wasn't promoting anything. I was just connecting with the the Facebook the podcasters on different Facebook groups. Met them in real life at real life conferences, so that really helped. But, then to answer your question about repurpose, because we had enough customers from all the different plug ins over the 3 or 4 years.

Mhmm. We when we launched Repurpose, we said we had we said, okay. New product. And we only we only, advertise to our existing customers because they They loved our products. They were paying customers, and we only launched to them and, to make sure that they were interested. And then once we went once after that, it became word-of-mouth, a lot of word-of-mouth. People would talk about it. People would share, Etcetera.

So but initially, if you have an audience, it's always good to start with just marketing to that audience that you know and have a relationship with.

Jorge

And you gave, like, commissions, affiliate commissions.

Hani

Yeah. We have affiliate commissions, But also the first, like, 25 people, I think it was. Like, we just said it had, like, a one time offer. We say, we're looking for 25 people, And we're still building the software. If you wanna pay, I forgot, some money, then you get it make a lifetime. You get it forever. Like, For being a beta customer. You get it forever.

So and that's what we did, and, it went great. I've met Personally, 1 on 1 with 1 on 1 with these people and, had, you know, 1 hour conversations. And I learned a lot. Right. Because my vision was one thing. The software was very simple back then, actually. It was only did one thing. It just took up audio to video I went to YouTube.

That's that's all it did. That was the 1st version of repurpose. No square. No vertical. It was just like Audio to video is just very simple. But we learned a lot from talking to customers. We talked and talked and talked and there were 25 of them. And, then you learn, you know, what they want more, what else to focus on, etcetera.

So it's very important to talk to your customers, Especially early on in whatever business you rent, software or consulting, coaching, doesn't matter.

Jorge

And and what was, the method you got To your developers or developer.

Hani

What do you mean? Sorry. Like, how how I have

Jorge

Or Yeah. Upwork Or freelancer.com.

Hani

I went through different processes. So initially, it was Upwork for the WordPress plugins. And then once I found 1 person, We built a relationship, and then, you know, he was my main he's still there. He's still my main person, to do all the updates, maintenance, new features. With Repurpose because it was a different platform. Initially, I went to Upwork. Actually, no. I went to Upwork.

And And then we hired a company and they did something, and I didn't like it. Like, it was just not it wasn't my it wasn't how I envisioned the product to be. So we canceled the deal. We I took the code and didn't do anything for 3 or 4 months. And then and then I forget. Somebody referred me to somebody. I forgot how I met The developer. And then we met, and I just gave him the code.

I said, can you make this work the way we wanted? And then he made small changes. Okay. And then we started building a relationship, and now I think we're up to 3 3 developers on repurpose now. Almost almost full time. So it did start I think it did start with Upwork initially. But it's it's about relationships. Just like any business. Whether they're your customer, whether they're on your team, you wanna view you wanna treat people well.

Right? Treat your customers well. Treat your team well because Doesn't matter where they are in the world. Doesn't matter if it's a high paying customer or low paying customer. To me, it's Like, everybody is a human being. Everybody deserve respect. And, you know, you do as whatever you can as a business, as a person to to be respectful. And that's how you build good relationships.

Jorge

Mhmm. Yeah. I saw in in Twitter that you reached them The milestone of 10,000 customers or something like that.

Hani

Yeah. With the 10,000 users. Users. I I mean, they're not all paying. So with people who want I think now we're up to, I think, close to 13,000. But, yeah. And we don't do active marketing. Let's say, we don't beside, we do content.

Even even content, we're not as much as we, we used to do in the past. And then we do we have an affiliate program, of course, that helps, but it's just a lot of word-of-mouth. There's just people talking about it because They enjoy it, and, we do monthly trainings every month. The past few months have been slow. We skipped Kept a few months, but, usually, we do a monthly training for our customers, show them what's new, show them what's coming. So, yeah, we use our own content. Yeah.

Jorge

May maybe because The audience or your customers are, like, strong strong people in the market or or content marketers, they They promote it. They sneezed a lot.

Hani

Yeah. A lot of them like you said, like, they're coaches. Right? So they Teach their clients, hey. You wanna automate some of your content? Here's a great tool. So it's not like 1 to 1 referral. It's 1 to many referrals. So they refer to all their customers They're teaching about, Facebook bots. So they're teaching about this or that.

Whatever they're teaching on, they help their clients By giving them more tools. So, hey. Here's a great tool. You wanna start a podcast, but you don't wanna create content? Take all your videos, turn them into audio. So Here's a great tool that will do it for you. So they share all these tools, and that's how we repurpose in a group. And again, it's our relationships. We've got a lot of relationship with coaches There are customers, and then we met with them.

And they said, oh, we love your tool. And then I they invite me to their Facebook group. I do a demo. I teach about the product. So it's about having good relationship with customers, and they help you. They help spread, the word about your business.

Jorge

Yeah. It's it's a great market to have because they can become athletes or just Because they like the tool. They they promote you. Thank you to Yeah.

Hani

You're right. Some people just promote. Like, they don't even know we have an affiliate program. So they're just promoted because they they love it, and they feel it's there's a lot of time. So yeah. You're right. It's, but and and a lot of I do a lot of podcast interviews. I get in because of the nature of my customers, a lot of them are podcasters.

At least half are podcasters. So a lot of people invite me to their show, and and I'm you know, we talk about my story and stuff like that. So it's, I'm kinda lucky in a way that it looks kind of a viral not a viral, but as a component to my business is that I'm in the content space and then Content creators need more content, so I get invited to teach or invited to give demos or I get invited to do podcast interviews. So that also helps, Market the product as well.

Jorge

Yes. And do you think you you need you need to move into the SaaS, Bringing customers as a business like a great landing page or website and then, Like free trials and all these onboarding in the platform. Do you think for you you need to do that, or you have another

Hani

way of marketing? No. No. That's very, very important. No. That's actually what we're focusing on in the past few months. It's We haven't launched anything, but we're we're focusing internally. Okay. What are what are our metrics? You know, what are we tracking trial to conversion? Visited trial.

You know, what are our numbers now? How can what areas should we focus on? So we're gonna we're focusing on onboarding. And And then we're also focusing on I mean, the 2 major ones to us are when they come to your site, how many people click to become a free trial? How do we make that number more? And number 2 is how do we make the number of people who are on free trial have a great experience And convert them. Educate them. Make sure they're getting all the value out of the software, and let them know everything that's possible. And then how do we get them to convert to a paying customer? So those are 2 areas we're focusing on, internally. Like more training Yeah. More better onboarding sequence, Better in app onboarding. There's so many ideas.

So but we're having these discussions now. It's funny because I I wish we started this. I'm a very technical guy, so I was always like, I just build something awesome and let's just keep building more awesome features. And then, you know, I know business is going well. Everything is going well. There's no need to Think about this stuff, but then start looking at the numbers. You're like, wow. Really? We're missing a lot of opportunities here.

A lot of people are coming in, but also a lot of people are Not converting or a lot of people are maybe they don't see the value or maybe they don't even know about half the features. So we're we're thinking a whole different way now of Not just pump more features out. Let's focus on giving them a good experience, educating them throughout their trial, and, and also, Yeah. Improving our homepage. We have our new new design probably in a month or so. We'll launch a whole new website, landing page. It's Just a little more current. This ours is very it's about three and a half, almost 4 years old old now, and we haven't really Change there.

Yeah. We've tweaked it. We haven't made a big change in almost 4 years. So we're we're definitely paying attention. You have to do that because After a while, you need to realize that you don't you don't need to drive more users. You just need to convert more users and show them the value in your software, so that you get a better percentage converting to a paid customer and also staying longer too. That's the 3rd area we gotta look at.

Jorge

That tells you that you don't need, like, a great website at the beginning. Well Yeah. It's true. Or a great design or Or a great logo or you you you just need to validate and solve the problem. Right?

Hani

Exactly. You need, That's something you need more data. You need more users on here, then you can get data, then you can improve. But in the beginning, don't get, Oh, I need to hire and pay $10,000 for a new website. No. Let's just put it out there, get the message, and just get people visiting it and let's, you know, Validates. Right? You can't validate without data. You need you need to, you know, don't don't don't people make that mistake.

Oh, let's design a logo. I don't like this logo. Let's change this. I don't like the home page. Let's change it. It's like Yes. Put it out. Get people to use your software and then or, you know, come to your site and see how they convert.

Start tracking people, and then decide if you need to change it or not.

Jorge

Yes. It's very a lot of people want perfection, and they they overanalyze. They get paralyzed, and then

Hani

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going through our website redesign now, everything head to toe, the copy, the wording. But we've had almost 4 years of experience. We have a lot of testimonials. We know what people are saying. We know what words they like, what they don't like. We have a lot of customer support tickets.

So we have data to make better decisions on what the home page should look like or What the focus should be, what words do we use, what do they like the most about software, etcetera. But you need data. But I've had a lot of people come Make jokes about me. Oh, your saw your homepage doesn't look very good or looks outdated. Yes. I said, yeah. I know. It's on our plan, but, you know, it still converts people.

And it's, you know, we still got the data, but that's why we're focusing on it now. But, yeah, you're right. Don't don't let it don't stop Your project don't don't stop from launching because your website is not perfect or or as beautiful as you want it to be.

Jorge

Yeah. Maybe the the new redesign will attract, better the people from, for example, product hunt Or, like, more more tech savvy that want to see, like, a startup, website?

Hani

Yeah. Like a modern startup. Yeah. But really, it's It's definitely I know it's gonna help for sure. Like, it's not it's not even about the redesign. That the look will be more fresh and more modern, of course, but also, like, What are we focusing on? Like, what's the journey? You when you land on the 1st 1st part of the page, does that make sense what our software does? Is it clear? So we're also changing a lot of the wording on how we how we describe our product in our new page. But we don't know this until you have a few years of data or, you know, We have almost 4 years. I think we waited too long, but, hey, it's better to do it now than Then never do it at all.

But definitely don't do it too early. It's you don't you don't have enough decisions or data to make decisions about What to change or what to say. Exactly.

Jorge

So what are the most important, Important passions outside outside of your work.

Hani

That's a great question. I mean, for me, a family is always first. We have 2 daughters, my wife and I, and now we have a a new dog as well. So family is always first. Hobbies? It's weird. It's funny you asked because I was talking to my wife, like, 6 months ago, and I was like, you know, I don't I keep telling her I don't have any hobbies. Like, My work is my hobby, and it's not very healthy. Like, whenever it is it's free time.

I always think about, oh, what else can we do or what else can we build in the future? I just, you know, write down ideas, But it's not healthy. So I'm I'm to be honest, I'm I don't I'm still searching for a hobby. I did I did, I love basketball. I used to play basketball a lot when I was younger. Then last year, my daughter, she, she showed interest in basketball. She was 10 years old. So So we put her in a basketball league and I became the coach. I've never coached before.

So I coached her team and that was I loved it. I was like, that was so fun. Something completely different from my business. Still helping people and like seeing, my daughter and and all her friends, like, develop their skills. And and And I love basketball. So it was a perfect to me, that was a perfect opportunity to do something completely different, but still really, really enjoy it. But, Yeah. I don't I don't besides that, I mean, we're trying to sign her up again as soon as basketball leagues are open again.

We'll sign her up again, and I I definitely wanna be the coach. But, yeah, I'm still looking for that hobby. Like, I don't I don't enjoy reading books too much. Actually, lately, I've been watching a lot of documentaries. That's my way of Disconnecting. I watched documentaries about weird things like homes or underwater. I always I was been fascinated with underwater, like scuba diving and just a whole new world underwater. So yeah.

It's It's it's very important to, like, do something completely not related to your work. Like, completely take your brain off of work. So Yes. That's I'm still trying to think.

Jorge

And where can we follow you to To ask you questions or get in touch with you.

Hani

Yeah. I'm on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Mostly Facebook. But if you go to haniemora.com, it has a link to my Facebook, my Twitter, Instagram, All that stuff. So yeah. You can go to my website and check it out. You can also learn about different products we have as well. But yeah. I always say I always say Facebook is Or where I hang out the most.

Great.

Jorge

And this, this is the most important question and the last one. What are your last words to entrepreneurs that want to start as a company for the Latin American market and For whatever market.

Hani

Start small. Start small. Better to start small than to have a big idea and then never execute it. That's the worst thing you can do. Start with a small idea, build it, Validate it and then expand on it and make it bigger and bigger.

Jorge

Yeah. Like like you that you started with From audio to YouTube. Alright? Or to video.

Hani

Yeah. Yeah. It was just 1 And became 2. Now I think we have, like, 30 different things you can do in our platform. But, yeah, start small, validate, Get feedback. Talk to customers. See what's next, and then evolve as you go because, You see a lot of stories about startups and they have all these features and products, but everybody starts small. Everybody starts with A small idea and then they they evolved.

And and if you don't have a big team, definitely start small.

Jorge

And even in the beginning, give lifetime

Hani

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I didn't tell my users that. I told them, hey, if you sign up now, you get 6 I said, I told them 6 months free. You get you pay 1 price, you get 6 months. And then I decided, hey, because they were my loyal customers in the beginning, I gave a lifetime. You don't have to do a lifetime. You could do lifetime. You can experiment.

But the idea is if you have an audience, definitely start small and then sell to them or offer them the solution. Okay. I've built this tool. I mean, before you build anything, you need to find out what they want. Right? So if you have an audience, talk to them before you build anything. And then once you know, okay, I'm gonna build a solution and then build something small and then show it to them. Say, hey. I'm doing a webinar.

Let me show you what we built so far. So that's right. You know? To keep in contact, especially with customers who are already paying you or an audience that already trusts you and they follow you. So Those are your best people to to get feedback from. Not your parents. Not your friends. It's people who will follow you online. It's people who, or have paid I've paid for your products or services in the past.

Jorge

And what are your prices, where where they can go to To see your software or test it or whatever?

Hani

Yeah. We have our free trial. It's repurposed on io. And, the prices start at $12 a no. $15 a month. We have, I think, 3 plans. $15 and twenty. Then we have an agent agent for I think $100 a month.

But for most people, if you're just doing podcasting, it's it's $15 a month. And if you're doing, audio and video content is $25 a month. Okay.

Jorge

Those are good prices. Yeah.

Hani

It's we know. We've only increased our prices once since we launched, which is another whole story we could talk into. I've always most people are afraid to Increase their prices including myself. And, but if you're not sure of pricing, my my advice is start a little bit lower, Attract the customers and then increase your prices as you go along, as you add more features. But my opinion, don't anybody who's Signed up with the old price. You should leave them at the old price. Yeah. Because they're like you're loyal customers that were there from the beginning.

You lock them in in those price, And then new customers will get a slightly higher price. So the pricing is a very difficult subject, but if you're not sure, always My advice is always go on the lower side and then it's easier to increase and then to than to decrease because somebody finds out they're they signed up now and they're paying less than somebody who signed up Last year, they're gonna be upset. But if, you know, if you're not sure, start lower than go high as you add more features or as you offer more value.

Jorge

Yes. Thank you, Hany, for being in the software podcast, and see you in the next one.

Hani

Alright. Thanks for having me, Jorge. Bye bye. Bye.

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