Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
Hi, I’m Bridget, co-founder and CEO of YouCanBookMe. YCBM is a free online scheduling tool, a booking page with your calendar, which shows your free times that others can secure to book you. Built for small businesses, the tool saves time and helps clients make money. We are a remote, bootstrapped company with a team living around the world.
Can you please tell us in your own words how did you start?
Before starting YCBM, I worked as a Special Advisor for the UK Government, and in other roles in politics. I took on the role of CEO in 2012 to grow the business. However me and Keith (the other co-founder) were building products together since 2003 – over 20 years ago! YouCanBookMe was our first successful commercial product – born out of another scheduling tool. We learnt along the way what were the key ingredients you needed to serve customers and build a successful business.
So what’s been the story behind your success? (Please include – What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now, who helped, who didn’t; what did you have to do to get there?)
Our ‘aha’ moment was in 2011 when we could see business customers rushing to pay for our scheduling tool – and what a compelling solution it was for them. Summing up in a few words from then on, it would be customers, customers, customers. This is not just because (self-evidently) you need them, but we have a deep commitment to serving customers and promoting their interests. We were completely led by them.
If you don’t listen to customers your business will suffer. But it can be really hard and requires resilience. We had many nights working till the wee hours answering customer tickets and solving problems wondering whether the business was going to survive.
But when you see customers pay you back in terms of their loyalty, appreciation and love of the product you’ve built, you have got the ‘fly wheel’ going of a successful business.
We have had many people help us and advise us over the years but there’s nothing like trial and error and the pain of making expensive mistakes that accelerates the learning curve!
How long has your company been operating, and what have been some of the key milestones in its development so far?
The company was first established in 2010, but we didn’t have any meaningful commercial operations until 2012.
Today, we have bootstrapped YouCanBookMe to US$5.4 million (GBP4.1 million) Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). Over 10 years we have definitely experienced the highs and lows of a business from the ground up across a plethora of areas including product development, cash flow, bank debt, hiring, expansion, feature bloat, pivoting, marketing, customer support, research and development, and selling in an international market.
But 2024 has been a real pivotal moment for us, as the product has been practically rebuilt and our brand now reflects our ambition to attract a new, digitally savvy SMB market.
Can you share any emerging trends or shifts you’re seeing in your industry that others might not be aware of yet?
I think scheduling is definitely going through an innovation phase as everyone realises ‘one-way’ availability is a bit yesterday. At YCBM we’ve invested in 2 way scheduling so the booker can easily book a time when they are free. This is a gamechanger for businesses who want to prioritize making it easy for bookers, avoid double booking, cancellations and no shows. We also have ditched the old ‘calendar views’ which everyone has – businesses want to ‘instagrammafy’ their booking pages with background images, logos and colour!
We know that there are ups and downs in business. What’s been your biggest lesson so far?
People can make or break your business. You must be able to trust your team, particularly when it comes to business decision-making. My top tip is to empower your team with numbers! As a business leader, it’s tempting to keep a tight grip on financial data, but by being transparent and sharing these numbers with your team, you’re not just empowering them, you’re fostering a culture of trust and innovation. While there are risks, the rewards are substantial. A team equipped with knowledge is a team that can anticipate challenges, seize opportunities, and ultimately drive the business forward.
How has that lesson influenced your approach to decision-making, especially when faced with uncertainty?
One of our values is ‘Confidence in Transparency’ which is hard when you have uncertainty and risk, as it tends to encourage secrecy if you are worried about getting it wrong. Make your decisions in the open and you will be more accountable – people will feel more comfortable telling you when they think you are getting it wrong.
What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. A couple of years ago, I could see that the product we had originally built in 2011 had started to take on a life of its own. We had somehow departed from the close customer-feedback loop that would keep it relevant and build a vision beyond 2024.
We had started building solutions to solve our own internal ‘YouCanBookMe problems’, rather than ‘customer problems’. This just becomes another name for busy work, where a whole team is working super hard and dedicated to the task, but actually treading water in business terms.
Watch out for this as I think it’s a common mistake which can start with the best of intentions, but slowly you will be bringing on so much internal drag into your product / company that you can’t innovate or react to customer demand any more.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for companies in your sector right now?
We are really seeing a demand for personalized and responsive apps for business owners who want to own and control how they interact with their clients.
We have gone from a sector where there were very few tools like YCBM, to a market that is really over supplied with scheduling tools of one sort or another.
That means you really need to listen to demand and build a solution which is going to stand out for a particular ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). We call our ICPs our BFFs because we have got to know them, and are prioritising the things they want.
Most businesses need tools, app or services to run. What three tools make your business run better? (Please include details about some of the key things your business needs in order to run smoothly. How did you find out about them? do you have a dedicated team to run them? What were you doing before using them? How would you cope if you no longer had them? What other tools, services are you interested in exploring?)
As a software company we are not just reliant, but we are built on technology solutions for everything we do! But the key ‘internal business tools’ we rely on are Slack, Google, Jira, Bluedot (all our meetings are recorded) – which are how we can work efficiently remotely. My advice is you have to be intentional about tools – so you need ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ about how to use channels / @ mentions / documentation / naming strategies and so on.
If you intend to scale and grow – if you allow the team to work with multiple solutions / logins / personal passwords, you soon run into a mess and confusion and nobody can go on holiday without someone calling them up asking where something is.
How do you see technology changing your industry in the next 3-5 years?
AI has got to be the number 1 business opportunity and technical disruption to every business, and we are all facing our ‘Kodak / HMV’ moment if we don’t understand how to embrace it. AI is not a panacea – it’s not necessarily cheap or easy, but it’s got a transformative power we haven’t seen since we started to use email and mobile phones. Its effect on knowledge and communication is going to be just as significant and no, I am not using AI to write this!
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
After bootstrapping the business, turning profitable was a critical milestone. Still to this day, we have never raised investment capital, so this really was a turning point.
Beyond this achievement, how do you measure success in your business beyond traditional metrics?
My team is critical to YCBM’s success, so creating a culture where the team loves the work they do is essential. When I can tell the team are happy, and feel confident to have an open dialogue about any issues, I know I am getting something right.
I’m proud to say we have an average tenure of 3-4 years at YCBM (and some have stayed for over 10 years!) which is unusual in a start up and shows how much we’ve invested in our culture and company.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
Everything needs replacing and renewing. You think you have it all sorted, then it all falls apart again – everything within your company needs continuous maintenance.
Based on what you’ve learned, what are some common pitfalls you’ve observed other companies in your space fall into?
I’ve always said that your job as a founder is to make more good decisions than bad, and so end up on a net positive trajectory – you’re never going to get everything right, so your job is to not fail.
I see some founders fail because they ran out of cash, hired the wrong people, invested in the wrong product, launched too many initiatives. It’s not about any single one of those, as we could all do it, it’s about understanding when you’ve made a mistake and your ability to back out of it and recover.
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
When we started our business, our goal was simple: survive. Now as much as ever I care about the product – for it to keep going, with its ability to empower small businesses. I also have goals for my employees, who I hope to grow as YCBM grows – this is the goal I want to achieve. I see myself in their shoes when I was their age, and I want them to grow professionally too.
As you work towards these goals, what potential disruptors do you see on the horizon for your industry?
The answer is the same as before – AI is going to trump every other technology or influence on our industry!
To finish our questions…”We believe that sharing advice to other entrepreneurs and founders can help inspire others.” If there was one piece of advice you would say to another founder or someone thinking about starting, what would it be and why?
Don’t sacrifice everything if bootstrapping your business – I personally wouldn’t sacrifice family time, your home, or take out loans you couldn’t personally pay back. It is a marathon based on lots of sprints, so build these sprints up gradually, rather than biting off more than you can chew at that point. You are bumbling along the floor for a long time before you start earning money – so watch yourself with your boundaries and learn the power of no.
