Moving from a custom services business to the holy grail of a subscription-based software product business can take a while.

Most don’t make it.

Too much to invest for too long to get to a recurring software product business that can sustain you.

It’s an exercise in patience and frugality.

Most savvy services entrepreneurs don’t figure out the very different magic trick of creating valuable software products that don’t require any human assistance.

Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius did it to create Mailchimp. They transitioned from a digital marketing agency to an inexpensive email marketing software.

Others have done it too. Like Perry Rosenbloom, who was selling SEO marketing services and creating custom websites back in 2011.

On the Practical Founders Podcast this week, Perry describes his journey from a tiny digital agency to Brighter Vision, the leading website and marketing platform for behavioral health professionals in the U.S.

He started off selling their services to anyone who would buy.

He and his team of 35 employees ended up providing custom, hosted websites for a specific vertical industry.

It didn’t start as a fancy full-featured new software platform either.

It started with hands-on effort to build each website, but with a subscription business model for $59 a month.

It took more than a year for the subscription revenue to sustain them, but they got there and kept growing.

Every year they added more software, templates, and automation to reduce the amount of manual effort required to deliver professional websites quickly.

Eventually, their website platform did most, but not all, of the work. Some efficient design services were still required.

When Perry sold Brighter vision to EverCommerce in 2020 for $17.5 million, they were selling and delivering over 300 new customer websites a month—with the same vertical market focus.

Listen to Perry’s success story of transition and growth on the Practical Founders Podcast.

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