BSSA #79 - December effect, hiring, and creating constraint 🚀

Hey! 👋

How are you? I’m personally doing well. Even though we’re entering the worst time of the year for our Shopify Apps.

As always, December has a higher churn and fewer installs, so we usually lose some MRR. 📉

But that’s ok as soon as you’re mentally prepared. If you’re in my situation, don’t worry!

Something else, I just posted a very funny video: 24 hours in my life.

With no bullshit! Give it a like and a comment for the algorithm! ❤️

You can watch it here 👇

Here is what we’ll see today:

• December effect on the installs

• How we’re hiring a technical support expert

• Creating constraint to gain control as you scale

• Focus on what matters

December effect on the installs

I quickly mentioned it at the beginning of this email but we’re getting fewer installs.

It’s simple, last week we did our worst week since August. And this week might be even worse.

But why?

We see seasonality over the year and for my apps, December has always been the worst month.

We have a bundle apps and people use it to create offers. When we’re close to Black Friday, people starts to install WideBundle in order to create the offers for this day. But once it’s over, people usually don’t need it anymore.

At the same time, December is always a slower month where people won’t make big changes to their store. They’ll usually wait for January and the new year.

December set up is already made and they just wait.

Considering all of that, we see fewer installs and a bigger churn.

How we’re hiring a technical support expert

One of our developer is leaving at the end of year so we’re currently hiring someone.

Instead of hiring a complete developer, we’re focussing on hiring only a technical support developer.

→ We can focus on javascript and Shopify skills and not a full stack developer

→ Handling technical bugs is our biggest problem today

And after reading the book “Buy Back Your Time” I think it makes sense to find a killer in the task that takes most of my time: handling bugs.

Most of the bugs were handled by my developers. But they are not expert in technical bugs or javascript. They can do everything. So a few bugs would come back to me and take my time.

Here is how we’re currently doing it:

1. I created a job post where I explained who we are, who we’re looking for, skills needed, experience, and also the hiring process

2. In the job post I asked people for a 3-min video. That way I can filter people who are really interested.

3. After that I get them on a call to learn more about them and their skills.

4. For the people who pass the call I will then give them a paid technical task.

This technical task is always made based on the job they will have to do. For this one it’s structured that way:

Task 1: I created a bug on a test store linked to our app and they have to resolve it and tell me how they did it

Task 2: They have to troubleshoot a slow store

Task 3: They have to create a custom javascript section on a Shopify Store using codes we use at WideBundle

These tasks allow me to see if the person would be a good fit. It clearly shows the people who don’t have the skills.

And for that task, one person actually crushed the test! It was really impressive because that person fixed the issue exactly as we would do it at WideBundle.

And without any of our technical documentation.

After the test, we get the person for a 1-month test including the onboarding:

Week 1: Getting to know our product, our code and our company

Week 2: Watching someone else doing the job

Week 3: Doing the job while someone is looking

Week 4: Being autonomous

The process is not done yet but it’s positive.

Creating constraint to gain control as you scale

When you start your business, you’re usually doing everything and as soon as possible.

→ You jump on calls with every user whenever it’s needed

→ You say yes to everything

→ You reply to messages at any time

Well, you’re in the discovery mood! And that’s how you should do it.

But as you scale, you have to change this.

→ You have too many users to jump on calls

→ You don’t have enough time to say yes to everything

→ It’s impossible to reply to messages at any time

And I’ve had this conversation with my customer support expert last time. He’s been with me since the beginning and he’s still doing things he shouldn’t be doing.

→ I sometimes catch him replying to people at midnight. While it was possible a few years ago because we had 1-2 messages at this time every week, we’re getting 5+ messages now every day at this time.

And even if he feels like he has to reply to everyone otherwise they will be mad, we just can’t do it anymore. Except if we hire more people.

→ He presses technical team when they don’t fix a bug right now because he told the user he was going to fix it now. But with way more technical bugs every day, we can’t tell users anymore that we’re going to “fix it asap”.

And that’s why we had this serious conversations where I told him we couldn’t continue like that or he will break mentally.

Listen: The things that helped you succeed in the beginning are the things that prevent you from succeeding today.

And there is something simple you can apply to get back control and it sounds counterintuitive: create constraints.

When you create constraints, you actually get back control.

Instead of fixing bugs whenever they happen, pick 3 time slots in the day where bugs will be handled.

Instead of answering messages at any time, stop support after a specific time.

You create processes so you can hire people who will follow this.

It’s not because you did something in the beginning that worked that you should still do it!

Focus on what matters

I was talking with Nico on growth strategies and he suggested a few way to grow faster on WideBundle.

A good part of his strategy was to improve the App listing to improve the installation rate.

But I quickly stopped him.

“What is our installation rate?” I asked.

“32%” he replied.

So I followed: “Do you think it’s a bad installation rate?”

“No, it’s a good one”.

“Then why do you want to work on it?”

We could be working on it. But we have so many other numbers that are bad that need improvement.

And going from 32% to let’s say a 37% would require so much effort and time with so low impact.

Meanwhile, if you were working on a bad number, you could improve it more easily and it would have way more impact!

Choose your fight. Don’t go where you’re more comfortable. Go where your numbers suck!

That’s it for today’s email!

I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to share my newsletter with someone else: https://news.matdesousa.com/

And let me know what you want me to discuss in the next email!

See you next week,

Mat