Processing Recurring Payments Effortlessly And Raising Prices Guilt-Free with Dodd Caldwell of MoonClerk

Dodd Caldwell is the Co-founder and CEO of MoonClerk, a web-based software company that helps businesses accept one-time and recurring payments online without any coding.

Dodd is also the President of Rice Bowls, a creative nonprofit that partners with grassroots orphanages in eight countries to feed hungry children. Before that, Dodd founded an e-commerce company that he sold, and he led international chain sales efforts for his family’s manufacturing business

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Dodd Caldwell talks about why he started MoonClerk
• Why use MoonClerk over other services?
• Dodd talks about why MoonClerk is bootstrapped
• How to raise prices without feeling bad
• Dodd’s tips for communicating price increases the right way
• What Dodd has learned from colleagues and mentors
• Tech stack at MoonClerk

In this episode…

Every business owner wants to get paid quickly. They find it even better when such payments are recurring and forgo the stress of writing code or managing a developer team. Unfortunately, many small businesses still struggle with payment processing, and it’s hurting their business.

Today’s guest on the show, Dodd Caldwell, runs a payment platform that helps solve the recurring payment headache with a dash of personalized support and low fees. Bootstrapped and having had to raise prices twice, their progress has not been nearly as pretty and seamless as their platform. So if you are a small business that is struggling to raise prices and wants to solve recurring payment problems, you don’t want to miss this interview.

This episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz features Dodd Caldwell, Co-founder and CEO of MoonClerk. They talk about how — and why — Dodd started MoonClerk for small businesses. And as you listen along, you’ll find out why MoonClerk is better for you than Stripe, why they’re bootstrapped, and how they’ve survived after raising prices by over 60%.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• MoonClerk
• Dodd Caldwell on LinkedIn 
• Ryan Wood on LinkedIn

Special Mentions:

• MicroConf

Related Episode(s): 

• “SoftwareByRob: Lessons Learned as a Serial Entrepreneur -with Rob Walling [Big Lessons]”
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier”
• “The Impact of Automation and Email Marketing with Tom Kulzer Founder of AWeber”
• “[Private Equity Series] Acquiring Bootstrapped SaaS Companies with Kevin McArdle of SureSwift Capital”

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz 0:19

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com I talk with inspiration entrepreneurs leaders. I’m here with Dodd Caldwell of MoonClerk and before I formally introduce you Dodd I always like to point out other episodes people should check out and people should check out and we’ll get a little bit into this. Rob Walling episodes with Rob Walling he hosts the conference Micro comm which I know dad has spoken at, which is for bootstrapped sass companies. Check it out, he’s he started, get drip and just an amazing entrepreneur and person check it out. Founder of Zapier, Wade Foster, check that one out, check out the founder of AWeber. Also, you know, they’ve been doing email marketing, I think, since I don’t know, like 98 or something that and Kevin McArdle, who gives bootstrap businesses, SaaS founders, their dream exit, I was talking before we hit record, I was like, there is an episode, you know, Dodd, I think he should purchase you and Dodd you’re like, well, we’re not for sale. I’m like, no worries, you know, but Kevin, if you’re listening, just keep an eye on Dodd. But you know, maybe maybe 10 years from now when he’s ready, you guys could strike a deal. That on many more on InspiredInsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25 at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. And we do that by helping you run your podcasts, you know, for me Dodd I found no better way to give to my relationships over the past decade, to have on my podcast, a profile down the companies and the people I love and admire. And I love MoonClerk we use MoonClerk actually, and I’m like why haven’t I had on.on the podcast yet? I love what they’re doing. And let’s tell more people about it. So if you’ve thought of podcasting, if your business I believe every business should I’ve been saying this for over a decade. If you’ve thought about it, do it. If you have questions, you go to Rise25.com. Email us happy to answer any questions that you have. And today’s guest Dodd Caldwell is a Co-founder of MoonClerk. Like I said, MoonClerk is a web based software company that helps businesses accept one time and recurring payments online without any coding. So if you’re out there thinking and we’ll go a little bit deeper on this, what’s like one of the most important things, if not the lifeblood of any business, which is money. And how do you get paid? How do you accept payments easily? How do you make it easy for people to pay you? Right? I mean, I love when people make it easy for me to pay them as a customer. And I love actually when they put me on recurring payments, I don’t have to worry about it, and it just comes out. And so your your clients, you know, if you’re even if you use Stripe, there’s a more elegant, better solution that gives you more control. And I suggest everyone I told you this before that I suggest everyone use MoonClerk for their business, especially if we know we’re an agency if you’re an agency out there, I know you have consulting companies, coaches are so many use cases for it. He also runs Rice Bowls, which is a creative nonprofit that partners with grassroots orphanages in eight countries to feed hungry children, and previously founded an e-commerce company which he sold and lead an international chain sales efforts for his family’s manufacturing business. So, Dodd, thanks for joining me.

Dodd Caldwell 3:42

Thanks for having me. Thanks for being a great customer as well.

Jeremy Weisz 3:45

Yeah, you know, so why did you start MoonClerk?

Dodd Caldwell 3:49

Well, it started on a failed a pre another failed startup. So actually, my I was working. I know the nonprofit world fairly well, with a volunteer President of, of Rice Bowls, as you mentioned. And I was actually this is kind of pre Squarespace days and you know, easy CMS and things like that. And I was trying to start and I did start a company that helped nonprofits create kind of like instant a low maintenance websites. And this was, again, are kind of early days of, you know, website builders and all that. And actually my business partner Ryan Wood in MoonClerk, who is our CTO, he was actually contracting with me and kind of ended up kind of leading the development work on that, um, that business failed, um, and but kind of one of the bright spots of that failure was that the one One thing that kind of works that people like these nonprofits liked was we had integrated in recurring donations. Um, and then the business I think the max I ever made was enough to maybe go to Chipotle a once a month take the take the team to Chipotle a once a month with that and so it didn’t last very long. It’s kind of hard to sustain that when you’re when you’re bootstrapped. Um, but that kind of gave you know, kind of gave the idea of Okay, wait a second what if you know if nonprofits are kind of struggling with this and again, this is a while back nine years ago, you know, if they’re struggling with how to accept recurring donations, my guess is there are other small businesses who would like to accept recurring payments who are maybe having trouble automating that. And actually at the time we were built on top of Stripe and at the time I think Stripe was like 10 people 12 people person startup while like you know it was like that unless you were like really deep into the payment space you had not heard of them or anything like that and I mean early days I think you know, they’re probably now a worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars um, you know, kind of most recent valuations and but the IPO and everything but I mean the founders were doing our customer support, you know, back then the call the call center brothers, um, but you know, in at the time there really you had to be a developer to be able to implement recurring payments and use pretty still use pretty expensive software and still go get like a payment gateway at your bank go down, get, you know, merchant account and all that or you had to use PayPal, and PayPal system was not really built for businesses to accept recurring payments. It was, you know, a peer to peer type that was originally built for peer to peer payments. So

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