Please, introduce yourself and your business.
Hi, I'm Bryan McAnulty. I'm the founder of Heights Platform. We're an AI-powered online course creation and community building software. We give creators and solopreneurs everything they need to create and sell courses, communities, and digital products to their audience. We're also the first and only platform that provides creators with their own AI assistant and AI coach.
How did you start your business?
I started my business originally in 2009 out of high school and it began as a graphic and web design company working with clients around the world.
That graphic and web design eventually evolved more into web applications and then eventually into a desire to number one, find a way to create better leverage of my time to grow and number two, to build my own products so that I could create something truly the way that I wanted without having to answer to clients.
I tried many things selling downloadable templates, creating software tools, and even physical products in ecommerce stores.
Ultimately though, my passion was around improving how people learn and I saw experienced marketers creating these online courses and programs that after you purchase it and actually get inside the course, it was basically a couple videos behind the paywall.
I knew there could be a better way, and seeing social media platforms purposely designed to keep you glued to the screen so that way they can show you more ads, I thought, "Why can't we apply some of those same principles to help people learn?"
So, combining my years of experience building web applications and the problems I know I went through in trying to sell other types of products and start businesses online, plus my desire to improve how we learn, led to the creation of Heights Platform.
Some of the things that made us different early on were having gamification in our software, making it really easy for a creator to build a lesson in their course and allow their students to receive points and badges when they complete those lessons.
It was also an early focus on the importance of community and project-based learning. So learning from actually doing it rather than through a multiple choice quiz. Instead of having our customers go and make a Facebook group to allow their students to interact, we built an entire community feature inside our platform.
All of this allowed creators to build their own private courses and community area under their own brand. And without us charging them any transaction fees on payments they receive.
How much revenue was your best year? (include margin if possible)
We don't share revenue numbers publicly, but we can share that we have thousands of customers in more than 100 countries and that our customers earn millions of dollars per year with the businesses they've built powered by our software.
When did you notice traction when building your business? The “Oh S**t!” moment, what did that feel like?
There was definitely a moment where it became clear to me that Heights Platform would become my full time focus. It took a couple years to get to that moment though, because it started out working on this project on the side along the other products in my business. And once I launched it, I actually didn't really tell anybody about it for the first entire year.
I did that on purpose though because this product really was a massive product and while it's super important to collect early feedback from customers, I knew that there were certain things that it would just have to do because an all-in-one platform like this, it's gotta have the ability for someone to create the course, for students to go through the course, the logins, accounts, it's gotta have the ability to sell the course in connection to payment processors, creating web pages, emails, and so instead of making a big launch, I wrote blog posts and slowly promoted it over time until I was more confident that the base features were all really there for me to be able to get attention in the market.
It was in January 2020 that we first made our big marketing push. And it was successful beyond what I would have imagined, passing all of my other products in revenue in that first month.
What was your childhood like? Were you slinging candy on the playground?
I've always been a creative person my whole childhood. The reason I got into design was I was always messing around with early graphic design programs on computers.
And I remember the story that since I was eight years old, my dad had these design programs on the computer because he worked in sales doing direct mail publications and advertising design. And he would be out working with somebody who was designing an ad and give me a call and say, "Hey Bryan, how do I get the color palette window to come back if it was closed?"
And I tell him the answer and the person there with him says, "Wow, you have phone support from that design software?" And he would say, "No, that's my eight-year-old son."
From there, I went on to get really involved in music in high school, and I had a band that played local shows around my town.
But I think what also gave me a bit of an earlier start was having a concern for what I was going to do. Because going to college didn't make sense to me if I wasn't clear on what I wanted to do and what I was gonna learn, especially with it being so expensive.
And so I think more than many people, I thought really hard about what I enjoyed doing and wanted to make sure that I could build a career doing that.
What has been your best marketing marketing channel?
We are a bootstrapped business, so I've never raised venture capital despite being offered it many times.
I prefer to do things my way. On my own terms. And so, in order to grow, we have to be careful with where we allocate our resources. For us, our best growth channels are all organic, but they aren't social media. They are things like blogging and partnerships, as well as a podcast I host called The Creator's Adventure.
How many attempts at building something did you make before you found what you’re working on now? Did you always have an entrepreneurial drive?
I had some moderate successes and a number of failures over the years. And Heights Platform, as I mentioned, only came after trying other software businesses, selling digital products, service business, and ecommerce store.
I think Heights Platform either wouldn't exist or wouldn't be what it is today if I didn't do those other things first.
Because Heights Platform really was the accumulation of all of that past experience that allowed me to be able to build it in the first place.
I did always have an entrepreneurial drive and I really am passionate about creating and building and I really couldn't see myself working for someone else. I guess that's why even once I had a design service I eventually wanted to move away from the client work.
What is your biggest overhead expense?
My biggest expense currently is my team. We're a small, fully remote team spread around the world.
And once a year, I will fly everyone out to a new place for us to all meet and hang out for a week. We are still under 10 people. And I'm happy with the size of a smaller team so that I can get to know everyone better and work more closely with them.
What’s the most important skill you’ve learned?
I'd have to say the most important skill for me being in a software business was how to program.
I was originally a designer and I still see myself as more of a designer than a programmer, but after years, eventually teaching myself how to do the programming as well really changes things because instead of having to explain something and wait for somebody else to build it, I can build it myself directly.
What do you spend the majority of your time doing, in a given week? (I think a lot of people hear entrepreneurs “work,” but may not understand what that means on a day-to-day basis.
I spend most of my time working on improving our product. So a lot of design and programming.
I have very few meetings with my team or anyone else every week. And most of my calls are either me being on someone's podcast or somebody coming on my podcast.
I try to avoid email. It's something that I used to pride myself on responding quickly back to every single email I got. But I realized that became unsustainable and brought me away from the work I wanted to do. The emails that I do check are actually our support tickets.
And though I'm the founder of our company and that we have AI support answering many customer questions for us, I spend a lot of time going through support and making sure that I understand and can help with the issues my customers have.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when first starting your business?
There are no secrets in building a business. And the answer to most problems is just to be better and continue improving.
The world of entrepreneurship can be misleading. Many people think it’s always easy and always glamorous. What’s a big problem you’ve faced as a business owner and what were the emotions behind it?
There are many problems that will come up. And there's definitely a lot of stress that comes with being an entrepreneur.
Something I think is more important advice than sharing any specific problem is one of the most impactful things I read from Tim Ferriss was about the art of letting bad things happen and how you need to realize that you will need to become comfortable with more going wrong in order to have the possibility of more going right.
What is your best advice for someone who feels completely stuck?
I'm in a unique position having gotten to see thousands of entrepreneurs who are my own customers build their businesses and see what's working and what's not.
The biggest reason that I see entrepreneurs fail is they get stuck in create mode and they never actually put their product out there.
And what I mean by that is they make excuses to go and build one more thing or make something a little bit better before they really put it out there and show it to people. And they might even say, "Well, it is out there.
I launched it." But then they never really make the effort of telling someone. That's something that I've been guilty of myself because I love creating, but you've got to tell people about what you're doing if you want to get customers.
You can connect with Bryan, here:
Our software - https://www.heightsplatform.com
Community of almost 10k creators free to join and built using Heights Platform - https://www.creatorclimb.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BryanMcAnulty
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-creators-adventure-course-creation/id1608100988
