DevReady Podcast · Aerion Technologies

Stop Selling Time: David Werdiger’s Recurring Revenue Blueprint | Ep 257 | DevReady Podcast

·45 min·3 clips
A billing system lease deal becomes the move from selling time to recurring revenue.
1. DevReady Podcast focuses on David Werdegar and his shift from business owner to advisor on recurring revenue and family governance. 2. Andrew introduces David as an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and advisor to small and medium-sized businesses, with experience in wealth transition and SaaS. 3. The episode asks what a business is for and whether it should sell time, build IP, or create recurring revenue. 4. David says he grew up in textile manufacturing and later worked casually in his father's family business while studying at university. 5. He describes the family business as "all encompassing," with work, travel, and responsibility dominating his father's life. 6. David leaves stockbroking and quant analysis because he does not see his future in "a job" or in a corporation. 7. He starts as a self-employed software developer and then realizes that selling his own time is not the business model he wants. 8. The telecommunications billing opportunity in the mid-1990s appears when deregulation creates many startup telcos that need complex billing. 9. A prospect asks to "lease it" and pay a percentage of turnover, which becomes the first recurring-revenue turning point. 10. David says the telco sector wanted to spend on sales and marketing, not a large upfront billing-system fee. 11. He says the leasing deal becomes the key move from project work into IP that can be sold multiple times. 12. Another advisor tells him not to hire a business development manager but to become the business development person himself. 13. David says the owner sold the product better than a script-reading salesperson because the owner could make decisions in real time. 14. He also says sales and development create creative tension, especially when the product is complex and the dev team pushes back. 15. David broadens the conversation into nonprofit boards, governance, strategy, and intergenerational wealth transition. 16. He names Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The E-Myth as books that shaped his thinking about owning a business rather than owning a job. 17. A crisis comes when a general manager relationship breaks down, a business has a very bad year, and one partnership fails. 18. David contrasts his father's advice to "sack that general manager" with another advisor's advice to create an advisory board and step back properly. 19. The interview style is conversational and practical, with Andrew testing ideas through examples about customers, strategy, and family dynamics. 20. People interested in business ownership, recurring revenue, governance, and family enterprise will get the most from it; people wanting technical software detail alone may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical talk about stepping out of the bottleneck and building the structure around growth.

David Werdegar's thread here is simple and useful: stop being the person who carries every task and start building the structure that lets other people do the work.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If your business still needs you to make every call, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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