Hey Jahan! Best of luck with this. I’ve been running Zeroic for the last 1.5 years now and have been building on Bubble for close to 4.5 years. Though every day is still a learning experience, here’s something to help:
Hire the right mix of people early on - when I was looking to grow, alone wasn’t the right choice for me since I couldn’t have done everything. I hired my initial founding team from Twitter after seeing their work. Worked on a few projects with one person at a time, once that trust was established, it was a lot easier to work together.
Don’t stress a lot about profits. Just pay your people well - I’ve seen lots of agencies not doing this and it reflects on their quality of work and commitment.
Be choosy about clients - you probably know this with your experience, but this is something I learnt after starting Zeroic cause this time it’s not just you, but your team that you need to look out for.
Pitch to everyone and anyone - not that you’re building on Bubble or without code, but that you’re building affordable software (it’s worked for me). Sharing stuff on social media and building products in public is definitely a game-changer and that can slowly become your lead gen platform.
Again, this is my limited experience, but happy to chat in the future if you need any help. All the best
Thank you so much for your input. I’ve gotten so many replies from the community I’m taking note of everything. I also believe in taking care of your employees.
I myself was at the receiving end of a bad deal recently I know how betrayed a developer can feel if they’re not respected.
I see how almost everyone recommended build in public and social media presence. I was never the kind of guy to post stuff regularly. I guess I have to start now
Your landing page looks very good. If you’d like some feedback:
Your hero subtitle is too long. Nobody can read all of that!
You need to remove the Made with Framer badge and get it on your own domain.
Why not embed your calendar booking on the site? Reduce the number of clicks it takes to engage with you.
Typo in ‘Certified by Bubble’ badge at top
I’m no expert in it and am learning myself, but to meet new clients:
Give them the razor, sell them the blades. Make the cost and risk barrier to entry obscenely low, so you get an opportunity to show them your knowledge and skill. NQU’s $1 audits are an example of this and work well - whether clients choose to work with us or not, they’re happy with the results, and the worst outcome is good review. It’s okay to do cheap/free work as long as it gives you value in some other way.
+1 on this, you’re probably just yourself for now so it’s irrelevant but if you are able to grow, you’ll only find benefit by paying more for a good developer. Don’t pay peanuts for a junior dev that you have to spend hours cleaning up after. Why would you expect the best if you take a $20k fee from a US enterprise and pay a developer in the third world $1.5k to develop it? I won’t name names but it happens all over.
Benefits driven language is key in the sales process. Why would the customer care that Bubble is easy to develop on? It means they can get more done, for less money, and less headaches. The same thing goes for your agency benefits. My agency consistently gets clients commenting on how it’s dead simple for them as they don’t need to micromanage, they just tell us, we read between the lines, and it gets done with no bullshit in between. Instead of saying ‘we have good communication’, it’s ‘you have more time to focus on your product and meet new clients’.
Do good work. There’s no easier way to get new clients than have your clients be mentioning you at conferences or to colleagues. This is NQU’s largest source of new work. Let your clients champion you - because that’s free, and shows you’ve done an exceptionally good job.
