Hey – I’m Alex McClafferty and I coach founders of SaaS & productized service companies.
My background: In 2013, I joined WP Curve when the company was doing $478 in monthly revenue.
By 2015, we’d built a remote team around the world and grown revenue to $1MM ARR.
In December 2016, GoDaddy acquired WP Curve.
With the help of a rockstar team at GoDaddy, we successfully integrated the WP Curve team, rebuilt and then relaunched the product as WP Premium Support. Then, we scaled the team, product, and business.
In 2018, I left GoDaddy and today, I help founders achieve better results than I have achieved.
I enjoy working with founders who want to:
- Grow a productized service business like WP Curve
- Scale their SaaS company
- Get their business ready for an acquisition or hand it over to a management team
I help founders realize their potential and I provide a sounding board to help them make decisions. Í’m especially passionate about:
- Building high performing teams, with a special emphasis on remote teams
- Investing and developing team members to grow their skills beyond what they thought possible
- Discovering scalable acquisition channels, with a special emphasis on content marketing
- Challenging, breaking down and then navigating around real or perceived business growth barriers
- Supporting entrepreneurs through the ups and downs of their journey
It’s a privilege to get paid for something I love to do.
Here are a few articles from founders I’ve recently worked with:
Justin Tan, Video Husky: productized service for video editing
Jake Jorgovan, Lead Cookie: productized service for lead generation
Stefan Teulon & Scott Beck, Zunos: SaaS, acquired by Big Tin Can
Here are some kind words from people who know me.
###
“There are few who I trust as much as him.”
“In an industry full of wannabes, charlatans, and fakes, Alex is anything but. I first met Alex when he introduced himself at one of my events.
Since then he’s been a calm, trustworthy, and inspiring mentor to me. In other words, when I needed a solid opinion on my business or otherwise, there are few who I trust as much as him.”
~ Sam Parr | The Hustle
“I was present for the first 2 years of my son’s life.”
“After reading a blog post about how Alex built WP Curve, I sent him an email with a slew of questions. That email changed my life.
Alex helped me see what really mattered, nudging me in the right direction, asking the right questions and helping me envision ‘why’ I was building the business.
It’s interesting to look back on that vision now. It happened almost exactly as Alex said it would:
- We hit our revenue target one week before my 30th birthday – literally within 7 days of my initial goal.
- I took time off to be there for the first two years of my son’s life. That’s something most people learn later after regretting “missing out” on their children’s lives.
- My family and I moved into a new house and are getting ready for the arrival of our next child.
Alex’s insight, experience and willingness to help was instrumental in getting to where we are now.”
~ Jon Tucker | Entrepreneur
“I 4xed my income.”
“Alex has this rare ability to empathize while calling me out on all of my bullshit excuses. He’s always there to keep me honest and challenge me to think bigger.
Since meeting 3 years ago, I’ve used his advice to 4x my income. I would recommend him to any entrepreneur wanting to grow their company.”
~ Andrew Case | Entrepreneur
“In two months with Alex, I accomplished more than in the past 4 years on my own.”
“Alex has been a game changer for my life and business. As a solo founder, it’s a lonely journey. I meet with Alex weekly and he gives me that sounding board to validate my actions, and he keeps me focused on the ideas and things that matter most.
With Alex’s help, I literally took an idea from concept to $20K MRR in 60 days. My personal income hit new heights and continues to grow month over month.
To add to that, I am not stressed because I have been able to build a team of quality people around me and give them autonomy and direction they need to run this business.
For years, I tried to go it alone which led to mediocre businesses that all fizzled out and died. In two months with Alex, I accomplished more than in the past 4 years on my own.”
~ Jake Jorgovan | Entrepreneur
###
I offer two formats of coaching.
One on one coaching (3 slots available)
We’ll jump on a call once a week for 60 minutes to work through issues, challenges, and headaches you’re dealing with. If you’re a document-kinda person, we’ll keep a running Google doc that you can update the day before with the items you’d like to discuss. This helps me understand how things are going for you and join the call with context. Every call is recorded on Zoom, uploaded and transcribed by an AI service called Otter, then shared with you straight after the call.
The minimum engagement length is 12 weeks. Typically, client engagements for one on one coaching last anywhere from 16-20 weeks. Then you do your thing for another 12 weeks or so, and we often regroup after that.
I also travel to clients to do full day deep-dive sessions. This is the equivalent of having eight back to back calls in a single day and is awesome fun. These are paid separately to a monthly engagement.
Payment: I am happy to be remunerated in cash or cash and equity. I also offer a 100% money back guarantee if you’re not happy with the value you’re receiving from our calls.
Group coaching (next cohort commences mid-April):
This is a new format I am experimenting with for folks who may not have the budget for one on one coaching. Each week, a small cohort of founders will jump on a ninety-minute call. We’ll rotate between the following formats:
- Founder hot seat for the first half of the call, then a group Q&A for the second half of the call
- Case study questions and sharing solutions for common problems, e.g: subscription churn, what can I do about it and what should I be aiming for? What’s worked and what hasn’t?
- Rapid-fire Q&A at me for the session – I’ll also pull in expertise from group members, too
These group calls are not focused on accountability, motivation or business updates. Participants are interviewed by me and NDAs will be in place to respect the privacy of what is discussed on the calls. To avoid conflicts of interest, there will be no competitive businesses grouped together in the same call cohort.
###
The list of questions below aren’t frequently asked, but if I was thinking of hiring a coach, I’d be wondering about them.
Why do you limit the number of clients to such a small number? Coaching conversations are surprisingly tiring because you need to be actively listening to the client for the whole call. This takes a lot of attention, focus, and energy. This means I max out at about three hours of talk-time a day. I run out of steam past that. I am also traveling, so I need some flexibility with my time.
Why aren’t you building another productized service or a new SaaS company? I worked on WP Curve for five years, so I’m a bit burned out on running a big team and the stress that comes along with it. I also feel like it’s time to share what I’ve learned and it’s been rewarding to watch founders I’ve worked with knock it out of the park. I am also trying to follow my heart, rather than my head.
Do you have an online course? Not right now – there are some limitations to packaging conversations into an online course. The first is that every founder and business is different, so it’s hard to be too prescriptive. Second, while I know that a course model can be lucrative, I prefer chatting with founders versus recording voiceovers on slideshows. Finally, the founders I work with are strapped for time, so carving out a few hours a week to learn passively from videos can be difficult.
Why should I choose you instead of another coach? There are a few reasons you might like to work with me, but I’m not for everyone:
- I’ve built a bootstrapped company from nothing to something, then drove a five-month acquisition process, solo. I’ve scraped through all sorts of ups and downs along the way and you’ll get to avoid a lot of the mistakes I made.
- I’m not going to bullshit you. I don’t have all the answers and there’s lots of stuff I suck at. I do not want you to become dependent on me or our conversations. My goal is that you become wildly successful with your business, and then refer your friends to me.
- Even though I bought ‘productize.co’ in 2018, I’ve been coaching founders for years. I’m so happy to see a couple of founders who I met for coffee or dinner chase their dreams and hit the big time in San Francisco.
- When you hit the inevitable hard times, I’ll be right there next to you to dust you off and help get you back on your feet.
- I love working with founders. I’ve consulted to and worked for big companies in the past, but it’s very hard to turn an oil tanker. A dinghy on the other hand…
What does productize (product-eyes) actually mean? ‘To develop a service or concept into a product.’ Here’s some trivia: in Lester Wunderman’s book, Being Direct (1996), he wrote about the concept of a prodice. It’s not a very attractive word, but his idea was that in the future, customers would prefer to buy what things do, instead of what they are. Wunderman argued that consumers would choose the service of transportation instead of a car (hello, Uber), cooked meals instead of a microwave (Sprig) and clean clothes instead of laundry supplies (Wash.io). I believe that as technology and competition accelerate, customers will expect outcomes without the overhead of needing to deal with a clunky product.
How do you give back? Productize.co is a proud member of the Pledge 1% community:
This means that 10% of annual profit is earmarked for donation to the Salvation Army. I also try to donate time as a volunteer to the Salvation Army and other causes when time permits.
###
If you’re interested in working together, email me at alex @ productize dot co and we can find some time to chat.
