This email is a continuation of the previous one. You can read it by clicking here

Hey! How are you?

Welcome to the 22nd email!

It's Q4. The best period for e-commerce. We have Christmas, Black Friday, and even Cyber Monday.

People know they buy a lot during these months.

And Shopify merchants know it, so this is when they work at 100%.

And they need us! They need our Shopify apps or E-commerce tools to help them sell even more.

We started to see an increase in the number of installs since the beginning of the month.

So this is the moment where you have to move fast:

• Fix bugs

• Increase the prices

• Add features

• Give excellent support

It's a stressful period but also the period where you learn the most and make more money.

If you have new features, ship them now because people need them! And they will be looking for more value!

My first Q4 with WideBundle...

It was in October 2020, and WideBundle was 4-5 months old.

I was still alone on the project and we had grown so fast. At that time I was already making something like $4k to $5k MRR.

But the features and technical side didn't grow that fast. The app had many bugs and features were not optimized.

And entering Q4 just killed me...

I remember the feeling, I was on support all day, replying to users with problems.

When I'd finished with one... Another would contact me.

I couldn't even improve the app! So I couldn't reduce the number of tickets.

I was trapped!

And with Q4 and the number of installs I had to do something.

I contacted my friend Maxime Blondel and told him:

"Help me, I never hired someone, but today I can't handle anymore, I have to move fast"

And glad he helped me on this one. Sharing with me his insights and connecting me with people he knew.

I made calls with other founders who went through this pain and also contacted people experts in hiring.

1) Documentation

The 1st thing I had to do was to create killer documentation. To hire someone autonomous you have to provide enough documentation so he can understand the work.

That's what I did:

• Frequently Asked Questions

• App tutorials

• Support processes

And it was better, now I could hire a customer support agent, show him the documentation and with a bit of help in the beginning, he could manage support.

2) Network

Then one of my concerns was to find someone I'd trust. So I contacted entrepreneurs' friends who worked with Shopify and asked them if they knew someone they could recommend to me.

And Anthony, a merchant I knew, recommended me Ogi. Ogi had already worked with Shopify and customer support. He never did App Support but he told me he was a fast learner.

We made some calls with Ogi and knew he was a good fit (Thanks Maxime for the knowledge).

Then in 1 week we did his onboarding:

• 2-hour call to show him everything about the app, the tools and the processes

• 2-hour call to show him how I manage and reply to people

• 2-hour call where he did the work himself while I was giving advice

And then slowly he started to work by himself. I was still there when he didn't know something.

And communication was key. I told him he could send me a message on Slack whenever he wanted.

3) Success

I was starting to breathe again. Fixing bugs and improving the app. Which also reduced the tickets we received every day.

And we ended 2020 with a $10,000 MRR. In 6 months!

4) Learning

It's in tough times that you learn the most. That sentence was true.

It was stressful and painful. But when you have no choice but to find a solution, the human brain finds amazing opportunities.

That's it for this week,

See you next week,

Mat 😁