Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Murray Newlands' business?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, yesterday morning you heard me talk with Brad Martineau. His brother fired him from Infusionsoft, but he'll do $3.1 million this year from $12,000 per person events. Good morning, Top Tribe. You're going to love my guest today. He joins me from San Francisco.
His name is Murray Newlands, and he is an entrepreneur, investor, business advisor, and speaker. He is founder of Do, an online invoicing company helping over 75,000 businesses based in San Francisco. He's also an advisor to the Draper Nexus Network of Things Fund that invests in IoT, Internet of Things technologies and companies.
He advises entrepreneurs and startups on various subjects from funding to growth and to strategies. He gained his green card, interesting story, by being recognized by the U.S. government as an alien of extraordinary ability. He's also the author of Online Marketing, a user's manual, which was published by John Wiley and Sons. He's also a regular contributor to Forbes and and entrepreneur.
Murray, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, thank you so much for having me on the show.
Was that a goodbye or what?
Yeah, hey, thank you very much. That was a great introduction.
I'm really happy. You've done a bunch. I'm excited to jump into it. Help me understand, what are you focused, Murray, on selling right now?
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Chapter 2: How did Murray Newlands achieve 75,000 registered users?
Okay, so you're first an invoicing company and second a time saver company. Yes, absolutely. Got it. Okay, so I'm on your page right now. Do.com helps you keep track of your time and invoices like a pro. That's what I see. You've got a starter, a plus, an ultimate, and a business plan. Walk us through, how many customers do you guys currently serve?
So we have 75,000 registered users. We're still in startup mode. The way we Because I'm a writer for lots of publications and we're great at telling stories, we've been great at getting the story out there about our system. Because invoicing, let's face it, isn't where you start with your business. Invoicing is where you finish up with your business.
So, for example, we've done things such as to create a guide to being a freelancer. 7,000 words. We tried to add the best content we know there.
And where will that thing get posted? Where will you take that out?
So we posted, obviously, the guide on our own site. And you don't need to fill in any information. You're able to simply read that. But that's being covered on... Since we launched, we've been covered on Entrepreneur, we've been covered on Time, we've been covered on TechCrunch.
Are you the guy at Do that's focused on getting these publications or these articles in these outlets?
You know, a business partner in a publication in the business, John, is more focused on that. I mean, I do some of that, but primarily my focus is on building partnerships for it. So for example, it's great that you've done your invoicing, but then you want to be able to pull that into taxes. So we have an integration with QuickBooks.
We're looking at once you send an invoice as a freelancer, we want to be able to finance that. So if you can't get paid immediately by the client, you should soon be able to press a button and we can do invoice financing. So yes, you pay a commission, but you get your money instantly.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do entrepreneurs face when starting a business?
That's amazing. When is quote-unquote launch?
I think launch will be when... We're still occasionally coming across bugs. Launch will be when we, although, so you said yourself, there are many competitors out there such as FreshBooks in the marketplace. I think we want to have probably more differentiating features before we make that launch. And those, we've got some great surprises on the way.
We're not talking about those yet, but I think when we have those, then we'll start to talk more about our launch date.
So you've been around for three months. I imagine you got at least 10 or 20 people in the first month paying. Of those 20 people that signed up in month one, how many of them are still paying now in month two and month three? Basically what I'm asking is, do you know what your churn is?
We're not releasing those numbers yet. But so far, we're very happy with our churn rate.
Well, if you're very happy with it, what is it? I mean, are you retaining more than 90%, more than 95%? I mean, if it's good, you want to brag about it, right?
More than 90% retention.
Okay, so if you have 100 people in one month, you'll have at least 90 of them stay till month two. Yes. On average. Okay. So, so how do you think about that? I mean, if, if again, the annual, if annually the ARPU is about a hundred bucks per year, right, that comes out to about nine bucks per month.
And if churn, because you said the, you know, retention is 90%, that means churn is 10%, which means the average person stays with you for 10 months and 10 months times a $9 per month price point basically brings out a lifetime value of somewhere around 90 bucks. Right. Are you guys focused right now on driving up lifetime value or driving more growth at that $90 lifetime value price point?
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Chapter 4: How does the invoicing platform differentiate itself from competitors?
Number one, what is your favorite business book?
Uh, tipping point. Um, you might not see it as an immediately a business book, but, those types of book with phenomenal ideas and changing your, your mindset and opening your mind. For me, that's what generates the best business ideas.
Number two, which CEO are you following or studying right now?
Um, With Dreamforce coming up, I've got to say Mark Benioff.
Popular choice. Number three, what's your favorite online tool, like Evernote?
My favorite online tool? I have to say, I do some work for a client called Search Metrics. They have an SEO tool. It's phenomenal for finding out what people are looking for and what you should be writing about as a business.
Interesting. Okay, now, Murray, break it down for me. Are you married, single, have kids?
Married about two months ago. Oh, congrats. That's exciting. Yeah, thank you very much.
No kids, then, I'm guessing. Not yet, no. Okay, not yet. Very good. So I want to know, again, you're in startup mode, self-funded. Yes or no, do you get eight hours of sleep every night?
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