What Happened to UGURUS? Straight from the Founder Brent Weaver | Ep #803

What Happened to UGURUS? Straight from the Founder Brent Weaver | Ep #803 Speaker 1: What's up, agency owners? Today is a special one. This is joined by Brent Weaver, the founder of UGURUS, and we go way back. Now, Brent walks us through how he went from slinging websites in high school to building a seven-figure coaching company for digital agencies. And we're talking scrappy launches, clunky first products, and how $99 courses became a real business. If you've ever built something on the fly or wondered if you're doing this whole agency thing the right way, this episode's going to hit home. Oh, and spoiler alert, this is part one of a two-part deep dive, because what happened after Brent sold UGURUS is a whole different story, and we'll dive into that as well. Hey, Brent, welcome to the show. Speaker 2: Great to be here. Thanks, Jason. Speaker 1: You're retired now. Speaker 2: Yeah, for now, right? That's, you know. Speaker 1: There you go. Speaker 2: Lack of work, not working, sabbatical, retiring. I don't know. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Whatever, however you want to define it, not working. Speaker 1: We'll get into who you are and what you used to do in a second. You know, in the pre-show, I was kind of teasing Brent a little bit, like on Instagram, you all should follow him on Instagram. He's old enough on a BMX bike and a skateboard. And I love it because I used to do all that. And I was teasing him. I was like, you done with the ramp yet that he's building in his house? He's like, no, I've been too busy. I'm like, you're the only person that can sell your company and still be busy. I don't understand that. So before we get into it, tell us who you are, what you used to do. Speaker 2: Yeah. So my name is Brent Weaver. I founded a couple of companies in the digital agency space. Most recently, UGURUS was a We're a coaching and training company for digital agencies around leads, sales, all that good stuff. And we started that business in 2012 after selling my first web agency. And we actually did just do an end of life of that business end of March 2025. So in between about four or three years ago, we did sell that business to Cloudways. I stayed on. To help kind of run and grow it, Cloudways got bought by Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean, after a couple of years, decided that they did not want to be in the professional services business, and that entailed winding down UGURUS. We can obviously talk more about that and what happened and how that transpired, but that's it in a nutshell. Speaker 1: I didn't know you started in 2012. That's awesome. That was a long, long run because we started in 2014. Yeah. Speaker 2: At the agency business, we were building on a tool called Business Catalyst. And in 2009, we launched a blog called BCGURUS for Business Catalyst Gurus. And it was like a side project of the agency and it turned into a membership site. And we started doing business content for sales and marketing and all that kind of stuff of how to grow a business catalyst agency. We kind of had a thought that... I mean, that was growing very quickly. So we kind of thought about this bigger vision of what that training company could be. We spun it off as its own company. We sold the agency. Adobe ended up end-of-lifing business catalyst in like... I think it finally shut down in 2017. But we saw the writing on the wall. And so we launched what eventually became UGURUS basically was the Any web agency could buy our sales and marketing training. And so that first course launched in 2013 on the UGURUS.com website, but the actual business and BCGURUS existed well before that. Speaker 1: How'd you come up with the name? Speaker 2: It was literally like Business Cattle's Gurus, right? We needed a place to blog. And so it was like the BCGURUS, right? And then the time YouTube was kind of We're gaining some traction. We didn't want it to be like WPGURUS or whatever. We just didn't want to be affiliated with some type of technology. We'd kind of been down that road with Business Catalyst and Adobe. So we just came up with a generic, just took that same BCGURUS name and we had a lot of branding around this whole like guru and you can be a guru idea. And so we looked it up and actually when we were starting the company, We looked up the domain and the domain name UGURUS.com happened to be coming up for auction or was actually in auction. The auction was going to end like the next day. And so we were like, Oh my gosh, this is like serendipity. So we like, you know, all of a sudden we like bid on this domain and ended up winning the auction. Speaker 1: And what'd you get the domain name for? Speaker 2: It actually wasn't that much. I mean, it was, it was like, you know, I think it had expired. And so whatever the registrar, it was like a hundred dollars or $200. It wasn't standard registration fee, but you know, the auction didn't get like, you know, it didn't get bid up like crazy, which was helpful. Speaker 1: Well, there wasn't many of us back then. Speaker 2: I didn't even exist in 2012. I mean, I remember we did like a, we did a live stream the first time I met you. We did a live stream in 2014 to promote our bootcamp. It was the second time we were running our 10K bootcamp program. And I think you and Brennan and I know Troy Dean and Brennan Dunn and a couple other people helped us promote. I came on the live stream or something. We, you and I did a call after that. And that's kind of where I remember like meeting you. And yeah, I mean, it's gosh, man, 2014 to 2025. That's 11 years, right? I mean, that's crazy. Speaker 1: It's not because we started in the middle of 14. Just doing a podcast, you know, by accident, like every business I've ever done has always been by accident. Speaker 2: So just doing a podcast for agencies and then that. Speaker 1: It wasn't even, look, Brent, it wasn't even a podcast. It was a Google Hangout. So one of my friends that ran an agency in Atlanta just sold his next agency. It was called Engage. And I was like, well, let's get on a Google Hangout. Let's just talk and I'll hit record. You know, maybe I'll put it on YouTube. So I did that. I did that a couple times and then a buddy of mine was like, you should start a podcast. I'm like, that's the dumbest thing ever. And he's like, no, you can take all these episodes and create a podcast. I had to look up what a podcast was too. And so I took like, I think I had like 10 Google Hangouts that were recorded. Just took them, put them on iTunes and then it just took off from there. It was crazy. Speaker 2: Like, execute on something, and sometimes you have the plan before you do it, and sometimes you, like, just do something, and then... Speaker 1: I never have the plan. Speaker 2: You learn, like, you get that feedback, right? And you're like, okay, well, this is something, maybe we can do more of this, right? That kind of experimentation. Speaker 1: I'm always building the plane in the plane. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: But that's the thing, right? I think a lot of people, they think it has to be perfect in order to launch it. And that's a thing that I think you've done, I've done. It's just build it and see what happens. What's the worst that's going to happen? We're going to learn from it. It's going to fail miserably. We'll learn. Speaker 2: We launched our bootcamp. I feel like I can speak very openly about all of the things that we did that maybe I would do differently now, but maybe I would have been hesitant to say while we were still running UGURUS. I mean, when we launched bootcamp, so our first major We had one successful program called the Web Design Sales Kit. It was a self-paced course. It was a couple hundred bucks. And we launched that and it sold really, really well. But when you're selling something for like $200... And we did some daily deal sites, kind of AppSumo type stuff. And that was really successful. It helped us just drive a ton of customers into our database. We had to split revenue with them or whatever, but it was really cool. The problem with a $200 course is you sell 100 units or 200 units, 300 units, and you do that once. And then those course buyers, you have to have something next for them to buy. Otherwise, you don't really have a revenue model or you have to just keep going out and finding new customers. And it does take a lot of $200 customers to... I think at the time, we had a five-person team. And so it was like, To feed five mouths every month, right? And so then we launched Bootcamp. I was reading Ash Maria's Running Lean, which I still highly recommend that book for anybody that's building a product or building a SaaS for sure. I mean, there's some thinking around that has evolved. But still a great, great read. And so we built this pitch for, hey, we can help you sell your first $10,000 project. We called it 10K Bootcamp, fittingly. And we spent a few weeks mapping it out, mostly doing the marketing for it, like building up, doing a launch. We were following at a time like Jeff Walker's PLF. And we did this launch for it. We had a video sales letter, and it was like a $2,000 product, right? So we had to sell a lot less of them to be successful. And we had this kind of benchmark of if we have at least 20 people do it, we'll deliver it. If less than 20 people do it, we'll just abandon, we'll refund and kind of go our separate ways. And to get at least 20, we ended up, I think, closer to 30 for the first cohort. But we literally had to put all of our effort into the marketing and sales and clawing for every single enrollment that we didn't have time to actually build the thing. We kind of knew generally what we're going to do. But so we enrolled 30 people on this thing. And we had a week from when the cart closed to when our first session was. And I was like, My business partner kept being like, when are we going to build the thing? And I'm like, well, that's what that week is for. But until we get enough people on this thing, we're just going to keep calling, keep emailing, keep trying to find partnerships and stuff. And so then we got the number and then we turned around and it was like every week, we built the next week for bootcamp. And the first one was pretty rough, but I was the one that was doing the core delivery. So I could stay up late. I could go above and beyond for customers. If somebody was even an inkling of unhappiness, I was on... It wasn't Zoom or Google Meet at the time. It was Adobe Connect. That's what we were using for all of our web calls and stuff, which literally we had a server in the back of the office and it was running these Connect rooms. But I'd get on with a customer and I'd be like, I'm going to look at your proposal personally. I'll show up to your pitch calls for you. I just knew that if anybody was unhappy with the rough edges, that we could smooth that over by just going above and beyond with service. I highly recommend to build a plane while you fly. Speaker 1: Well, so the first version of the agency playbook, it was built that way. I was like, I want to build something. And where it's a recurring model over 12 months. And I was like, I'll charge $99 for it. I remember launching it, I think in 2015 during some day, like it was like a St. Patty's. It was St. Patty's. And I remember I was like, I'll release a module. I called it a module back then, rather than a system. I'll release one a month. So I was like, I just need to stay one month ahead. Speaker 2: Oh, that's plenty of time. Speaker 1: Yeah. And the agency playbook was originally 12 systems. But when I got to like eight, I was like, man, these last four months, I'm going to have to make up shit. Speaker 2: 12 months, I mean, that's a long time. Speaker 1: Yeah. I always wanted to market how I wanted to be marketed too. If I bought a course, I didn't want to have to wait a month for the system too. I want it all now because I'm going to go through it really quick. I'm going to take the things I like, don't like, and so then we kind of scrapped that version and then we came up with Agency Playbook 2.0, which was like this eight-system framework and had that for years and years. I remember the first version when you were telling me that story, I was like, yeah, that's exactly how we built the playbook. Speaker 2: I mean, I think one of the things that's really attractive about an agency business and to some extent like any service business is that you can You can make the offer and you can collect the funds and then you can deliver, right? And some people do that in the SaaS world, will take pre-purchases and things like that or have a group of early adopters that are willing to use a product that basically is one notch above worthless. But I think with the service business, you can make a bold promise. And have a rough idea of how you're going to deliver that and you can get that cash flow coming in quickly. And I think it can help people, you know, start a business, you know, from nothing, right, versus having to build an app or something where you have to hire developers or, you know, pay for some expensive AI tool or whatever. And you've got six months of, you know, six months of product development runway, like the idea of a runway in a burn, I think it's a lot less necessary with a service business and certainly for a A course or a coaching business, unless you don't have a list or don't have any reach, and then those things have to be solved. So fortunately, when we started UGURUS, we had a little bit of a list from BCGURUS. And while we were running BCGURUS, we started publishing content, we started giving away my website proposal template, and we did build up a list of about 10,000 emails. And so that did help immensely. So when we launched Bootcamp, it wasn't like... Me posting to my 19 year old social media friends or whatever. Um, we did have like a little bit of a group of interested, uh, buyers, which was, which was good. Speaker 1: That reminds me too. The first thing we ever sold was our proposal template. We sold this for years and years. I'm embarrassed to admit the name I came up with, and I still have the folder. It's called the Awesome Proposal Template. That's what I called it. That's what we sold, right? And it was like, that was the name of it. I was like, oh my God. Speaker 2: Dude, ours was literally the $22,850 website proposal. I mean, that was our free giveaway, right? The $22,850. And it was so precise. But the literal contract value from when I went from my web agency, I just went into my proposal folder, the thousand proposals in there. I grabbed the client proposal and I still remember which client it was. And I was like, oh, this was a good deal. I had a lot going on in it. We were doing a lot of different upgrades, cross-sell, resell. There was recurring, there was a project, there was multiple locations. And I just stripped out all the client details and started giving that away. The amount of time I spent creating that lead magnet was like 6 minutes. It was like, delete all client information, highlight areas that they can customize, and it was like, create a new shareable Google Doc version of it. And then I handed it off to my team. Before UGURUS shut down, I have no idea how many times that was downloaded. Hundreds of thousands of times, which is interesting, right? Speaker 1: Hey, agency owners, if you're sticking with one platform for every project, you're probably stuck in a growth bottleneck. More clients means more hires, which adds noise and cuts into profits. To break the loop, you need a more flexible tool that doesn't stretch your resources. Now, Wix Studio is a smart addition to your agency's toolkit. Intuitive by design, your team can quickly master the platform and focus on the work that matters the most. Now, with robust native business solutions, Like booking, e-com, and events, you can take on any project at any scale without adding cost to third-party plugins. Plus, Wix Studio is a low-maintenance platform, meaning you can redirect client budget toward real growth initiatives. Think more value for your clients, steady income stream, and stronger relationships. Scale your agency at wixstudio.com. Everybody wants to see like, you know, what we did is we sold it for $99. And I just said, do you want to see the proposal that we use to close LegalZoom and Hitachi and AT&T? Right. And it's just a hundred bucks. Yeah. Right. Speaker 2: I might even pay a hundred bucks for that now, Jason. Speaker 1: You're retired. You can't. Speaker 2: I might need some clients soon. Right. Like there we go. Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. We really don't sell it anymore just because I'm like, guys, you don't need a proposal. Right? To win the deal like we used to, if you think about, right, like of all the things that would go into it. Why did you sell the first time? Why did you sell UGURUS? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fair question. So, I mean, I think at the time, I mean, this was like post shortly after COVID, right? So, we sold December 2021. About a year before that, I had one of our sponsors and kind of Brand Partners was Cloudways and we started to collaborate a lot. I was hosting webinars with them. I became very close from a business mentorship position with their CMO, a guy named Santi Acosta. And we'd meet every few months and talk about collaborations. And I started doing some brand evangelist work for them. And I think a lot of the Coaching space with COVID, you know, not to like, whatever we like rode the hat wave out, right? The ups and the downs and sideways, but it kind of like, it went from this, like, we had this business that had this like in-person events and they were big and exciting. And they'd kind of like inject this like really great creativity into our business and, and all that kind of stuff kind of got put on hold. I just bought out my business partner. And so I went from this like, very like. I'm excited to kind of like, I'm looking for something like challenging and adventurous to do, right? I mean, it was like this, like I wasn't getting maybe what I wanted from the business in certain ways. And I think the more I talked to Santi and saw what they were doing with Cloudways and this amazing community or this amazing platform they had with 13-14,000 agencies, we started to dream about what it could look like with actually turning that into an agency growth community and taking the best parts of UGURUS and injecting that into this very large agency platform that people were using around Cloudways. And it became this joint vision. And I was like, well, I don't know. How do we do this in a JV sort of way? And that conversation evolved into the CEO of Cloudways, Akif, was like, well, when we first reached out to you to sponsor you, we always thought in the back of our mind that we might acquire you at some point. And so after a year of us collaborating, they broached that subject. And I was like, Whoa, okay, that's an interesting idea. Let's explore that. And so over the next six months, we explored what that vision might look like. And ultimately, I was on board for that. And I think for me, I really wanted to work After buying out my business partner, I was a solo founder CEO. I found that benefit of being around other growth-minded entrepreneurs, joining something that's bigger than myself and bigger than what UGURUS was. And so that was really the key motivation. It was like, this looks like a fun And challenging partnership. And so, you know, went through with the acquisition. I had no intentions of leaving the business unit when we got acquired. We were going to take kind of the best parts of UGURUS and bring that stuff into the Cloudways Partner Program for the agencies. And we accomplished a lot of that stuff. I mean, I think one of the big curveballs was nine months after the acquisition, really 10 months, the acquisition closed in December. I kind of not checked out, but I did kind of take a little bit of time off in December because it was just a very... Speaker 1: Which you should, right? Like we all need a break. Speaker 2: Yeah. And so then like September 1, 2022, and I knew something was happening. I was kind of a part of some of the back office stuff for the Digital Ocean Acquisition, but September 1 officially Cloudways got acquired by DigitalOcean. And so, that was a big curveball for me in terms of what that meant for the UGURUS business unit. We were enough revenue for Cloudways that we were a part of the conversation for leadership and direction. But then, DigitalOcean is an 800-plus million ARR company, this little coaching community, literally a drop in the bucket, a drop in the ocean, so to speak. No pun intended. But I think it became much different. It was like, all right, well, it doesn't really fit the overall thesis of DigitalOcean, their infrastructure. Heavy engineering culture, product culture. Speaker 1: It's a not very kind of personality fit. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it was just like, you know, they're thinking about hardcore like AI. How do we provide GPUs to our customers? I mean, if I go to a happy hour, an event, I mean, I'm a nerdy like web person. I can kind of hang with some of the conversations, but like when they go into their actual work product, it's like, Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about at this point. I mean, heavy duty, like operating system level engineering type stuff. And so I think just over time, it became clear that We were like this really fun side thing that Akib and Cloudways did. And it wasn't as big of a part of the growth story for DigitalOcean. So they looked at it and said, okay, well, we're going to get rid of... Once AI became part of the picture, it was like anything that's a distraction to that core mission, we're going to get rid of. And I don't think I necessarily disagreed with that move. Obviously, I had an obligation to the overall business. But also, I advocated for our team. I advocated for the business unit. And ultimately, that decision, you know, it was out of my hands, right? I mean, it's like you sell something to somebody and it's now theirs, you know, even though I'm there and I'm helping out, right? I mean, ultimately, it was their decision. And if I was in their position, I probably would have made the same decision. Speaker 1: The first time when you're about to sell, you know, I remember when we sold The first agency, maybe up until maybe five hours, four hours before the signing, there are questions in your head of like, do I do this? Do I walk away? Do I have to do it? Like, all these things of emotions and, and I lost myself for A long time. I always tell people, never sell unless you know exactly what you're going to do tomorrow. Did you go through that at all? Or were you like, yeah, take it? Speaker 2: Well, I think there was... I mean, I didn't know what I was going to do, at least in that case, because there was this vision. We spent six months creating this plan. The day that the acquisition closed, I think it was like Around my 40th birthday, I went up with my family, went to this dude ranch for a few days. We closed on a Wednesday and that weekend, we were out on a dude ranch. I wasn't paying attention to work at all. But come Monday, I was at least back at it in terms of having conversations, you know, with the team and stuff like that. Because obviously, you know, once we announced it internally, you know, they were privy to what was happening. You know, there was some logistic stuff with having to, you know, fire people on this day and rehire them immediately after, right? There's just some, there's some things that happen whenever you sell a business that, you know, you can't like, it's very hard to keep it a secret, right? Speaker 1: Alright, so Brent sells the company, celebrates on a dude ranch and thinks he's finally going to take a breath. But when Monday hits, things start to shift fast. So in part two, Brent shares what happens next. In the unexpected twist, the corporate culture clashes and how he ends up joining forces with E2M. You don't want to miss it. Hit subscribe so you catch it for the second it drops. And if the episode brought you some clarity or some good laughs, send it to another agency owner who needs to hear it. Until next time, keep it scrappy and have a Swenk day.