Entrepreneur and world traveler Chris Guillebeau shows how to start your own business for $100 or less.

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I’m really starting to believe that there truly has never been a better time to start your own business.

Here’s why:
- The bad economy actually helps … you no longer have a blanket of security with your job
- There is a career revolution going on … more people working freelance, more freedom in the workplace, the ability to work remotely
- Tons of support for startups … meetup groups, funding, kickstarter, skillshare, etc
- Everything you need to get started online is either free or cheap … web hosting, email, blogging platforms, photo and video editing programs, etc.

So why haven’t you started your own business?
Or at least a side passion project?
Are you still skeptical?
Maybe you think that’s for OTHER people?

Great question.

You might be able to find the answer in a new book called the $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau.

In researching the book, he interviewed 1,500 people that fell under the following qualifications for their business, of which about 50 made the final cut for the book.

- Cost $100 or less to start
- Generating at least $50,000 in revenue per year (which happens to be about the average HHI in the US)
- Willing to provide full disclosure of that income
- The business couldn’t require highly specialized skills
- Less than 5 employees
- Drawn from case studies worldwide

Why I love the IDEA (as well as the content) of this book.

First off, I love the concept of this as a book idea. Is there a widely-held belief that it is difficult to start an online business? BAM. Do some research, find a whole bunch of people that HAVE done it, interview them, and then present the case studies along with other valuable information about how they’ve done it.

There, I just gave you your next book idea. Are you passionate about cupcakes? Does everyone you know feel that it’s a passing phase and think you can’t have a successful cupcake business? Go interview the top 50 cupcakes stores in the US and dispel those myths and reveal the key to success.

Same thing for taking good photos, losing weight, learning to speak a foreign language, overcoming asthma, or creating an app for the iPad. Find a bunch of people that have done what you want to do, and figure out how they did it.

Here’s what we’re going to do today. I got to meet Chris in person but he was incredibly busy in the middle of his book tour, so he was nice enough to do an interview over email. I have a few topics around the book I’d like to discuss first. You can see the outline below, or play the podcast to get the full content. Then, we’ll get to his questions.

Thoughts around Chris’ marketing style and books

1. The phenomenon of getting on someone’s radar
a. How did I become aware of Chris?
b. What is the World Domination Summit, and who is speaking there?
c. What is The Art of Nonconformity?
d. My meeting with Chris at SXSW
e. How I became aware of the $100 Startup

2. The power of connecting with an individual
a. What Chris did at the book signing that surprised me
b. How a busy author responds to email
c. The importance of taking time to answer reader questions

3. What all that means
a. Taking a long view of marketing your business
b. Every interaction counts; people remember the small things
c. Build out many touch points
d. Build a strong network

4. The Art of Non-Conformity
a. Set your own rules, live the life you want, and change the world
b. Is there a better alternative to grad school?
– Option 1: $32,000, 40 hour thesis, 3 readers, slight expert recognition, “Good job” from 3 people, diploma
– Option 2: $9/month for hosting, 40 hour manifesto, 100,000 readers, broad expert, thousands of comments, speaking/boo
c. Chris’ amazing goal for World Travel

5. The $100 Startup – take aways
a. The Mattress story
b. Should you really “teach a man to fish?”
c. The “frequent flyer mile guy” story

Jim Interviews Chris Guillebeau about the $100 Startup

Jim Hopkinson: Describe yourself in 3 words

Chris Guillebeau: Persistent, flexible, caffeinated.

JH: “I want to travel more” is at the top of almost everyone’s bucket list, yet the average American spends more time in the bathroom than on vacation. You’re nearly complete with your goal of visiting every country in the world. What’s something the average person can do to break their paralysis and get started?

CG: Just go somewhere. Seriously. It’s easy to let aspirations get out of control to the point of paralysis. Most everyone can conjure up a fantasy vacation, like hiking Kilamanjaro or ten days in the Seychelles, and so they delay travel until the day they’ll take that trip (for which they’re really not planning, anyway).

Meanwhile, taking a quick trip to Canada or Mexico is much more likely to get the ball rolling for prioritizing travel than planning a once-in-a-lifetime getaway that you might never end up taking.

JH: Like you, I’ve seen a very strong trend in people pursuing their passion and discovering a career lifestyle. Do you feel this is truly a new thing, and if so, what has been the main driver of this?

CG:I think that this career “lifestyle” might just be a new iteration of a trade in the way that one’s craft or work used to be an expression of person’s lifestyle and skills. We’ve only been on the assembly line for a century or so—and I think most everyone is sick of it.

Technology, the economy, and of course the personality of the Millennial generation have all converged at just the right time to allow people to begin to do exactly what they’ve been wanting to do for decades. For many of us, that means getting out of the factory and getting back into the world.

JH: Marny from NY Creative Interns was at my Reboot Workshop Conference and donated your new book to us to give away as a prize. When I asked her about it, she said she had an extra because they asked you to donate 20 books, but they were thrilled when 120 showed up. Classic case of under promise, over deliver?

CG:Well, they should have actually received 200. So if they received less, that’s more like underdelivery—which hopefully wasn’t the case!

JH: I’ve been promoting the advantages of launching an online business for years, but people always have their doubts. In your new book, The $100 Startup, you interviewed 1,500 entrepreneurs, each making more than $50,000 a year based on businesses that cost less than $100 to create. Was there a common thread among the people you spoke with?

CG:The case studies were diverse and came from many different backgrounds. What they had in common was an ability to create something useful to the world, not just something that they were personally excited by. In addition, I think it’s fair to say that most of the unexpected entrepreneurs were fairly curious (they wanted to know everything about their topic of interest) and also somewhat persistent (if the first idea didn’t work, they shifted to something else).

JH: Once someone has created an online business, in your experience what has been the best way to market your product and get the word out and drive revenue?

CG:People often underestimate just how much momentum it can take to get attention. It’s important to understand, though, that relentlessness isn’t some major commitment you make to incessantly bug the heck out of people; it’s really more a determination to systematically build relationships and alliances that ultimately work together to create a movement that’s bigger than yourself.

I always recommend you start with people you know. When you think about it, you probably know lots of people. How can they help? Is there a way you can invite them to participate? Then once you have one customer, treat that customer like the most important person in the world. Chances are, they’ll lead you to others—if you do your job right and improve their life.

JH: What’s the most valuable piece of advice you can give to people looking to start their own company?

CG:Think long and hard about what you can make, offer, or provide that other people will value enough to pay for. All successful businesses, no matter how large or small, come from this model. And here’s a bonus: Don’t wait. Every day you wait puts you a day further away from freedom.

JH: I am attending your World Domination Summit in July. What should I expect?

CG: You should expect to have a good time, meet fun people, and be challenged. WDS is centered on the question of “How do we live a remarkable life in a conventional world?” Everyone answers that question in their own way, and everyone participates in helping others.

Hopkinson Report Disclosure: I received a free, pre-release copy of the $100 Startup when I saw Chris speak at SXSW, but otherwise was not compensated for this interview in any way. Amazon.com affiliate links used where available.

Jim talks with short-term peer-to-peer rental company Roomorama to find out how you can host or rent an apartment anywhere in the world.

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It’s been recently called “The Third Office.” The lines have blurred, as people “work” from their office, their home, and more and more frequently, from a third office, which could be a local coffee shop, an airport lounge, downtown Singapore, or anywhere you can get a mobile signal. Sometimes it’s a coffee shop IN Singapore, minutes after landing in an airport.

One of the companies leading this new “Gig Economy” is Roomorama, a peer-to-peer short term rental marketplace. The concept is simple… anyone can rent out their apartment while they are away and collect income, and they can just as easily stay in one of Roomorama’s 36,000 cities worldwide. The benefit? Usually much less cost than a hotel, while keeping a local flair.

Since I “buried the lead” a bit in the interview, I want to congratulate Roomorama on their breaking news:

Roomorama And Lofty.com Merge Online Rental Sites, Take $2.1M Seed Round (via Techcrunch)

This is great news for the team, including my friends and co-founders Jia En Teo and Federico Folcia, who I interviewed way back in Episode 26 in October 2008.

This time around, I sat down with Lindsey Piscitell, Director of Global Marketing, and Nicole Padovano, Manager of Marketing and Partnerships.

Listen to the full interview to get the entire scoop, but here is what we talked about:

- Their expansion from 30 cities to 36,000 worldwide
- Lindsey’s background, including her “big break,” when she went to fashion event and one of the assistants at the event was a no-show, and she jumped in, did well, and ended up getting a job out of it.
- Nicole’s background, including never getting tired of talking about travel, and her would-be rockstar life.

How does Roomorama work?
- Roomorama is a peer-to-peer short term rental marketplace, catering to young, upwardly mobile, educated people who are not looking to rough it, but shy away from the hotel model and want to live like a local.
For the host – it is free to list, the Roomorama team vets the property, speaks to the host to make sure it exists, and then it is open for people to send in inquiries
For the guest – they are informed about inventory, understand it’s not 5 Star hotel, but will interact with enthusiastic people about their city, who are also more likely to show people around

- On the business side, Nicole works for with the perks program, which includes luggage shipping, car service for the airport, restaurants, spas, etc. She works on outreach in acquiring new perks, and also partners with art music and international events. One thing is for sure, people love give-aways, whether it is a tote bag or free concert tickets.

Handling the competition: The question that needs to be asked:
Coke and Pepsi. Apple and Microsoft. Avis and Hertz. Any good business has it’s competitors, and this marketplace is no different. Although they were founded within a few month of each other, Roomorama’s main competitor AirBnb grabbed a lot of splashy headlines when the Silicon Valley-based startup received (according to Crunchbase) $7.2 million in funding in November 2010 and $112 million in July 2011.

So while it might get annoying when people say “Oh! You’re just like AirBnb!” and assume that Roomorama is a new player to the game, the fact is that in many ways this has been helpful. This happens in business all the time, because people want to easily ground what a company does based on a model that they know. For example, “We’re the Netflix for video games” or “We’re like child day care, but for your puppy.” So I asked…

How has the presence of AirBnB affected Roomorama?
Lindsey explained that a great thing is that any press that they get, the benefit comes to them as well. My guess is that whenever a major publication is talking about the new trend in renting out your home, the party line goes “Online sites such as AirBnb, Roomorama, and others…” For example, this New York Times article Surfing for a Vacation Rental.

Additional reading: Is there room for more than one Airbnb?

Lindsey went on to explain that in many ways, the industry is still in a stage where raising awareness is important, so they to make the concept of Roomorama more familiar.

What makes them different?
- 80% of properties are serviced apartments or owned by property managers
- It’s less about sharing bedroom in someone’s apartment, vs. staying in a professionally managed property.
- Roomorama is a bit more premium and higher level service

With their concierge program, Roomorama might also be the better for business travelers, who expect things like wireless internet and a washer/dryer, and they have the people in each city deal with that.

Since Roomorama was bootstrapped by a NYC couple, while AirBnb was a Silicon Valley startup with $120m in venture funding, what differences do you see in how they are run?

There is still that last hurdle to get over… Handing over keys to a stranger. How do you ease that fear?
- Employees and founders do it
- Customer service works around the clock
- Verification process. Doesn’t go live until it has been verified
- Identity checks (since the beginning)
- Cancellation policy
- Certified guest status

How does the money change hands?
- Roomorama takes money and keeps it in escrow
- 6 digit payment code mailed to the guest when they book the location
- Once they go to the property, ensure that it is legit, they hand that code to the host, and the payment is released to the property owner
- Therefore, guest knows that if they show up and the place doesn’t exist or not what promised, they’re not going to hand over the code
- It protects both sides

What trends are you seeing in the marketplace?
- People are latching on to idea of “repurposing their space” (home, apartment, empty office space)
- People want to be tour guides in their city
- The “gig economy” is the future
- The “third office”

Examples of Roomorama clients:
- Some pay their entire mortgage by renting out their place
- A people quit their day job and only rent out their properties for work
- Big example… the co-founders Jia and Fede quit their day job for this company

How can I list my apartment to make it most appealing?
- Photos photos photos
- As much details as possible

The big news: Roomorama is merging with Lofty.com
- Lofty is based in Europe
- Largest aggregator of short term rentals in the world
- $2.1 million funding injection
- New company will be called Roomorama
- Perfect match since Lofty has incredible inventory, Roomorama has a great process

How do they maintain work/life balance?
- Nicole – startups can be hard work and long hours. Try to be out by 630, most likely 730
- Lindsey – often there till 9pm or longer
- Try to make work environment fun with high morale. Just remember because this is something that they care about and believe in and think is fun. Don’t let that slip away. Everyone should work at a startup at one point

How often are they looking at people’s postings?
- Part of the job (“regretfully”) have to pour through gorgeous lofts in Tuscany
- Always looking at cool new things

Favorite travel destinations
- Lindsey got to go to Singapore… then over to Bali for a week
- Nicole’s recent favorite: Spain
- Most popular destinations are global cities:NYC, London, Paris, etc
- On the rise: Southeast Asia and Australia… embracing the idea of opening up their homes
- Wildcard city… Phuket

Most valuable piece of business advice?
Lindsey – trust your instincts. In a startup, not a lot of experience in many areas. Troubleshooting all the time. But entrepreneurs also have something deeper inside. What makes sense to the mass market? Through all the trials and tribulations, trust your instincts and don’t lose site of that.

Nicole – Listened to interview with Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest, who said “Don’t take everyone’s advice”

Roomorama.com
Facebook.com/roomorama
Twitter/roomorama
Blog-o-rama

Photo above: The sold-out crowd at the premier Reboot Workshop Conference.

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Jim sits down with business partner Nate Cooper to talk about how they created, planned, and got sponsorship for a successful conference in less than 60 days.

Below are the highlights from our conversation. Listen to the audio to get the entire lowdown.

In this podcast we answer the question:
What the heck were Jim and Nate thinking planning a huge conference with no experience?

We break down the steps as follows:

1. Choose the right business partner
Hear the back story of how Jim and Nate connected. Working with the right business partner can make all the difference in the world. We were connected through two different mutual friends, and found ourselves in a position to help each other out.

- Nate wanted to learn more about book publishing.
- I wanted to pick his brain about entrepreneurship.
- We both wanted to quickly get to work on something awesome that would help people and maybe make a little money.

While Nate had a background running events at Apple, and I’ve run large events at SXSW and well, everything from fraternity parties to impromptu roofdeck concerts in Manhattan, we just knew that we could pull it off.

Most business partners are like the odd couple: The sales guy and the tech geek. The CEO and CTO. The person that is good with numbers and the person that is good with people. However, I’d say that Nate and I share far more similarities than differences. While he brings a laid-back Brooklyn vibe and more technical street-cred and my more corporate background matches my Manhattan address, we both are geeks at heart, love to teach, and both brought a very large network of friends and business connections.

2. Come up with a good name
We talk about how we came up with the name Reboot. Like true geeks, we didn’t start with a concept, or something quirky… we started on the web. What is a name that we could come up with that represented the conference, but was also an available URL.

We went through a brainstorming session, throwing out words like bootcamp, career, kickstart, jumpstart, and so on. In the end we had our winner because we were able to secure RebootWorkshop.com (for our 1 day event), RebootWeekend.com (if we want to expand to two days), and RebootNation.com (for when we take over the country).

3. Decide on the format
I think the thing that really made the conference work was our unique format, which was culled together from various sources.
a. The main structure was based partially on the Startup Bus Accelerate “unconference,” which Nate had attended recently.
b. We wanted the day loosely structured, so that we could change things on the fly and adapt to what was working
c. We needed to introduce our 10 speakers and give an overview, but wanted to avoid death by Powerpoint. I suggested the twist of “Ignite-style” presentations, which forced presenters to get their message across in 5 minutes flat. Every speaker had 20 slides, which auto-advanced after 15 seconds. It was a little nerve-wracking to present, it was fun, and it worked.
d. Allow time to network. This was built in during lunch, in between sessions, and afterward.

4) Secure speakers through our personal network
Nate and I talk about how getting amazing speakers was actually the EASIEST thing for us. Both of us brought a strong network to the table and we quickly listed out a group of 15-20 people that might be interested. From there, we narrowed down dates, availability, and relevance to the topic. The list of speakers is available on the Reboot Workshop website.

5. Sponsorship
We knew that we had a valuable audience, but would a sponsor step up to the plate for a brand new conference? We were going to find out.
Here are the steps we took:
a. Create a media kit talking about the audience and the speakers
b. Reach out to your network
c. Divide sponsorships into levels
d. Be willing to exchange sponsorship status in exchange for promotion

Saul Colt stepped up right away and said that Freshbooks would be a premier sponsor of the conference. Now, was this “cheating” since Freshbooks was already a sponsor of this podcast? I say no. We still had to have relationships in place, we needed to bring a targeted audience, and we needed to pull off a 6 hour event without a hitch.

We also named THIRTEEN contributing sponsors that helped us out in many different ways, from promoting the event to their audience, to donating supplies and prizes.

6. Location
When it comes to location, let me tell you it is NOT inexpensive to rent out a large space in New York City. Thus, once again we worked connections, decided on a space and lined it up early. We went with the New Work City co-working space, which is where Nate was working from as a freelancer. Tony and Peter were amazing and gave us access to set up the night before, and the huge loft was great for our purposes. Plus, the key was that everything we were talking about in the conference — leaving your job to go out on your own — gelled with what New Work City did, which is support independent workers.

7. Create a web presence
With any modern business, you need a web presence. Nate and I talk about how we did so quickly in three steps:
a. Built on a low-cost premium WordPress theme
b. Hired a designer for a professional logo treatment
c. Build the site based on best practices from other conferences

8. Collecting money
OK, now that you have a product, how do you collect the money? Once again, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We wanted to use an established site such for commerce that would easily integrate into WordPress, so we chose Eventbrite.com. One of the main advantages, was their ability to give custom, trackable discounts.

9. How do you market your conference?
What did we learn from marketing the conference? How do you get the word out? We touch on several topics:
a. Using each speaker’s extended network
b. Networking at meetup groups based on the conference topic
c. No magic bullet, you might have to go to an event of 200 people to make 2-3 key connections that will attend and tell friends
d. Hire a photographer and video person for future marketing
e. Partnering with key groups around the city and offering unique deals to spread the word

10. Pricing
One somewhat controversial decision was pricing. We made it just $40 (including lunch) so that it would be accessible to all and make it a complete no-brainer to attend. Our goal as unknown entity for our first round was to keep a low barrier to entry and then blow people away with value. Still, others urged us to make the event free -or- charge upwards of $200 or more. Download the podcast to find out the one key move we made halfway through that encouraged earlier signups.

11. What didn’t go right?
Of course, we’d be lying if we said everything was PERFECT. In fact, I don’t think we even mentioned that I got violent food poisoning the night before, to the point where I lost my voice, barely made it through my speech, and at one point lost hearing in my right ear! We explain the one thing we’re definitely going to outsource for the next round.

12. The future of Reboot
With the success of our first conference, we’re excited to not only do more, but to make this a real business entity. We’re focusing on three things:
a. Reboot Newsletter sponsored by Emma email, to let people know about future events and speakers that support the Reboot brand (sign up here)
b. Reboot Happy Hours used for pure networking and fun, held regularly to build the brand and promote the conference. Find Reboot Happy Hours on Meetup.com
c. Quarterly Reboot Conferences, maybe even a summer getaway conference

Get more info at RebootWorkshop.com
Want to become a sponsor? Email nate [at] rebootnation.com

Jim interviews Nate Cooper, a former Apple employee that is now teaching technology in New York, and his use of kickstarter to fund his webcomic, skillshare and meetup classes, coworking spaces, and the startup bus.

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The following are some excerpts from my awesome interview with Nate Cooper. Check out the entire podcast to hear the whole interview.

Nate’s background
After moving to New York City from California without a job, this ‘independent academic’ worked his way up from being a seasonal hire at Apple, to full time employee to event trainer. Jim asks what is it really like to work at Apple, and what was his greatest experience there. Nate talks about the fact that since the Apple brand can attract such a quality, creative workforce, the type of people he got to work with were really amazing. Many went on to some really high profile jobs.

The conversation moves to how Nate made the transition from working the floor at Apple to running their events and training, and the reason he decided to leave.

Meetup
Nate credit’s meetup.com as the online tool that inspired him to take the next step in his career. Because he was excited about teaching, here was a way for anyone to get online and easily organize people into classes around a given topic.

Jim wonders, “Are we spoiled in New York City?” The stats would seem to indicate so. A search for internet and technology meetup groups numbers 276 in the New York area, vs just 14 in Phoenix. Even major cities like Boston (47) and Chicago (55) have fewer than a quarter of the number of available groups. Ironically, it was our mutual friend John Murch (from Episode 146) — who I met at a meetup — who introduced us.

Our connection worked as successful ones often do… both parties benefitted.

- Nate contacted me because he was looking to turn his course into a book. As he spoke to his network about this, my name came up in 2 different conversations based on my experience with technology and publishing.
- Meanwhile, after getting laid off just days before, I was firing “what do I do now” questions at Nate, since he had been working independently for almost a year.

Freelance advice
The one thing Nate kept hearing over and over as advice for those trying to go freelance… You just have to do it.

In his first year, he has seen projects take off and others fail, but he has learned to adapt. A site like Meetup makes it easy to try something out and see how it goes. The downside of too many meet ups might be that there is TOO much going on for people to focus.

Key advice
I realized that Nate had hit on the very thing that this new direction of my blog was going to be about.

Between Wired and Apple, we were at some pretty great companies… names that people would die to work for. Living and working independently sounded like a dream, right? Everything you hear about working remotely, hanging out at home, and controlling your own hours. The only little problem is, how do you make money? We bonded because we were both teachers at heart with the same problems…

- Meetup and Skillshare were great, but how do you best leverage them?
- How do you find the sweet spot when charging for a class?
- How do you market it to get the word out?

Reboot Workshop
We start to talk about why and how do we decided on the Reboot Conference. Advice he got was to learn by doing, so we figured maybe we just get a bunch of people together that we like and see how they do it. We handpicked things like accounting, storytelling, social good, got all these people together, and just went for it. See the next episode for a full analysis.

Startup bus
Our thoughts then turn to the Startup bus. Like SXSW, some people are like hmmmm, what’s that? While others are speechless with excitement.

For those not in the know Startup Bus is a “hackathon” on a bus. It’s a 72 hour trip from various cities (NY, DC, Boston, etc) to the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX.

During the trip, the riders put together a company, completing as best they can by the time they pull into Texas. What was surprising was that it wasn’t just a bunch of website geeks, but actually hackers, designers, programmers, and even [gasp] business people!

Kickstarter
Nate’s flagship course is “website bootcamp for creative professionals,” a course that is not really HTML, not really servers, but weaves in and out of the themes. There are a lot of people that need help and know certain terminology, but don’t know what other things mean or how they work, like FTP or whatnot.

His Issue?
The class has been successful here in New York, but he had no way to reach people outside of the city.

He had already been writing a book, and since he wanted to get it across to a non-technical audience, he had a seminal moment: make it into a comic book. He teamed with talented illustrator Kim Gee and is funding the project through Kickstarter as a way to teach a technical subject to a broader audience.

What is Kickstarter?
It’s a new social media way to raise money, sort of a grassroots way to fund a passion project. If you don’t need ton of venture capital, just some help starting, pitch your project to the crowd and they will tell you if it is good or not.

Key takeaway and advice
In a microcosm, Nate had illustrated the exact steps that someone can take to lead a better career lifestyle:
1) Experiment with your core skills. Nate knew he wanted to be a teacher and was good at it, so he used free services like Skillshare and Meetup to rapidly test his ideas.
2) By doing so, he knew what was successful and what wasn’t within days and weeks, not years.
3) Once he knew what resonated, he was able to hone it with each successive class
4) Finally, once he had a great product in person, he could then reach people outside New York by creating a digital product

The other huge piece of advice was building relationships. We know someone at almost every co-working space in the city, yet have remained “workplace agnostic” with our business ventures. Coworking functions as the modern day coffee shop – with the difference being that people go there because they WANT to run into others.

Jim says, in a major corporation, you’ve got your collection of management, low level employees, slackers, new people, and old farts.

But in a coworking space, every single person is outgoing and exciting and working on 17 projects at once. Amazing connections continually happen.

Wrapping up, we discuss:
- As a newbie, what is Nate expecting at SXSW and what are his goals?
- What would he do other than his current profession?
- How do you maintain a worklife alance?
- What websites do you visit every day?
Answer: Reddit and Jason Kottke
- What is the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up in the morning?
Hint – his phone is his alarm clock
- What book he puts out to impress visitors
Answer: Book he is reading right now: Where do good ideas come from? by Steven Johnson
- What advice do you have for those looking to start own company, or make the transition

Find out more about Nate at NateCooper.co and @natecooper

Jim interviews co-founder and CEO Kevin Hartz of Eventbrite.com.

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This week I had a great interview with with co-founder and CEO Kevin Hartz of Eventbrite.com.

Eventbrite is a simple but powerful tool to manage, promote, and sell out your event. I’ve used it in the past and can attest that it takes the process of planning an event — be it a class, a meetup group, a yoga retreat, or a concert — and makes it simple and professional.

As a user, the interface is clear and easy to understand, and makes it feel like you are buying a ticket from a professional ticket agency.

As an organizer, you can plan the fun things about your event, without having to worry about building an RSVP system, creating tickets, or collecting money at the door.

As usual, for the full interview make sure to download and play the podcast.

The summary below highlights what we cover:

- How Kevin got his start, first as an angel investor in PayPal, then co-founder of Xoom, and now co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite.com
- How Eventbrite is “Democratizing Ticketing,” bringing the tools that the pros use down to the consumer level
- An example of how Eventbrite helped a major technology conference with their ticketing
- Eventbrite’s custom-developed iPhone app that lets organizers scan tickets
- How people with a special skill can run and profit from events using Eventbrite

- Using their motto ‘No event too small, no event too large,’ Eventbrite partnered with the Robin Hood Foundation, a non-profit that raises money for the homeless. Using their ticketing system, they held a benefit concert featuring the Black Eyed Peas in New York’s Central Park for tens of thousands (NY Times coverage).
- Their international expansion into the UK, launching October 25, 2011

- Lessons learned from working side-by-side with his spouse (and whether or not work discussions carry over to the weekend)
- Lessons learned from being a successful entrepreneur
- The #1 formula for success as an entrepreneur

Finally, Kevin covers what he thinks are the three biggest trends in technology and business today:

1) Social media integration

2) Mobile (iOS vs Android, and the transition from desktop to the mobile device)

3) The “Big Data Movement” (Using algorithms similar to Netflix, they can use the massive amounts of data collected on servers to help sell more tickets and enhance the user experience — if you like this event, you might like this; Using data, analytics, and visualization to help fight fraud; letting organizers see information too, with a dashboard that can show things like time period for biggest sales and tickets sold via certain sources such as Facebook)

So whether you are planning a conference, a class, or a kickass birthday party, check out Eventbrite.com.

Jim has a high-energy interview with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

This week I had a great interview with with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.

As usual, for the full interview — and trust me, we had great energy and lots of fun sharing stories — make sure to download and play the podcast. The summary below highlights what we cover:

Krista’s background
- Her start at Proctor and Gamble
- Working on marketing for brands like Tide and Folgers Coffee
- Her transition to a startup
- The founding of Bootcamp Digital, which teaches companies how to use the web and social media to build their business

Her travels from Canada to Cincinnati
- What does that have to do with bowling?

Social engagement
- Not the kind of engagement you like – we’re talking on a train to New Jersey

Boot Camp Digital
- What makes a truly good social media program?
- Huge opportunity to show businesses how to do their own social media
- “You’re doing it wrong” – what is the #1 thing companies are doing incorrectly with social media
- Why “free” social media is a problem

Monetizing social media
Top 2 reasons people join a fan page
1) To get coupons and discounts
2) To learn about new products
These easily can convert to new sales, but are they incremental sales?

Her Book – The Social Media Field Guide
- Most social media books target a certain area
- Some people still need a true marketing plan around social media, but don’t know how to do it.
- Covers all the tools to get businesses to think more strategically – not immediately jump to Facebook
- ‘People need to get a grip about new sites.’

Institute for Social Media at Cincinnati State
- Social media nerds in white lab coats?
- Testing mice on angry birds?
- No… how do you get a comprehensive overview of social media industry without going to a conference or just reading websites?
- Certification – what do other industries do to certify professionals?
- Answer: Show they know and can apply knowledge of industry; Instruction, tests, application of information

Speaking
- Can reach lots of people all at once
- How she made herself a better speaker
- Some speakers have 1 presentation they do over and over (usually around a book), while others customize every speech they do
- She built it up 100% word-of-mouth
- The key turning point in her speaking career
- The two ways she is able to charge clients, and how to prove value

Speed Round – What’s the trend around the following:
Facebook
Google +
Twitter
Tumblr/blogs
Instagram
Foursquare
Youtube
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Klout

A true or false game: Can you guess what are the things that influence your Klout, and which are made up?

——————-
Learn more about Krista:
Bootcampdigital.com
KristaNeher.com
WinAtKlout.com

Note: Some links in this post contain affiliate links

Jim interviews Rey Flemings, the cofounder and chief executive of Stipple, a company trying to revolutionize online photos.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

Photographs. With billions of Facebook photos being tagged, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, camera phones, Flip cameras, low-cost high-res DSLRs and more, there’s no doubt there’s huge numbers — and business potential — around this industry.

One of the companies trying to take advantage of this is Stipple. I spoke with cofounder Rey Flemings, and you can listen to the entire podcast for his insights. Highlights include:

What is Stipple?
Imagine this: You tag a photo in Facebook, but your friend grabs it and brings it outside Facebook’s network and puts it on their blog. Thus, you lose all of the tags.

Stipple allows anyone with a photograph to tag it and stay connected with a photo. This allows you to add tags, media, and commerce hooks around and products to sell. Once tagged, the data you specify stays with the photo throughout the web.

Stipple also offer publishers the ability to connect their sites to the “Stipple cloud.” Thus, when photos are published, they can connect back and earn publishers a revenue share.

Rey’s background
Previous to Stipple, Rey founded a company called Tennman Digital, which was an incubator in San Francisco that helped make early stage investments in companies.

This included helping celebrities like Justin Timberlake. While Jim lobbied that Justin should be given carte blanche to host Saturday Night Live every other week, Rey talks about the double-edged sword of being a celebrity investor.

The path of how he started the company
Where was the opportunity? Rey asks, “After moving from film to digital, has there been any true innovation for photographs?” He started looking for what the next big thing would be for photos.

The problem he set out to fix: Once you take a photo and goes out on the web, you lose all connection to it. Stipple will let you:
- Monetize
- Search for the photo
- Remain in touch with it
- Receive real-time analytics
- Tag once, have it stay together

Four killer use cases
1) You have a local business making wedding cakes in San Francisco. Wouldn’t you like every picture of your wedding cake to link back to your website Joe’s Bakery with the ability to contact you? Then find out 500 people moused over it and 37 clicked more info.

2) You’re Toyota. Wouldn’t you like to have every photo of a Camry on the web in your control? And say for a Labor Day Sale, tell people about 0% financing. Then change to a NEW promotion on every photo with one click.

3) Or how about Nike uploads photos of their athletes, and is willing to pay 5 cents per click. A blogger with a sports blog or publisher go to the Stipple Marketplace and can embed the photo on their site and receive revenue when someone clicks ‘shop’ within the photo.

4) Lastly, A band could upload a photo embedded with a single in it, then upgrade it with the band video 2 weeks later.

I added, what if every GQ slideshow we produce had the photos tagged that identifies what the model is wearing: jeans from J. Crew, shirt from Calvin Klein, watch from Seiko, etc

The tech side
- Uses Javascript similar to Google Analytics
- Monitoring done via a dashboard
- Bloggers can use affiliate codes

There’s no doubt photographs on the web are a huge market. If this company can help track and monetize them, Stipple will cause a ripple in the industry.

Jim interviews designer Shaun Sanders to learn the key to building amazing infographics.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

Today I speak with Shaun Sanders, a graphic designer specializing in infographics. I met Shaun through our mutual friend Alexis Ohanian, who hired Shaun to produce some awesome infographics for Hipmunk.

Listen to the podcast for the full interview, but here are the highlights, thoughts, and things that we discussed:

Definition of infographics
I view infographics as another option in a marketer’s social media arsenal. Surprisingly, there are a lot of people that don’t know what the term means when I told them my plans for doing one.

The easiest, old school comparison I make is like the USA Today “Snapshots” that would appear in the newspaper, using cartoon-esque images to represent data. You know, like the quantity of pasta consumed:

Shaun jumps in to give me us a more purist definition: Data visualization
The key: Crossing data visualization with fun, color, and additional elements

“Infographics work because most people will look at them vs sending them a long text article. Because it comes across as fun cartoon, they are more likely to check it out, as well embed it and share it on Facebook.”

What the average person might not know about infographics
- How they help website traffic
- How they can build ‘link juice’ around certain keywords
- Example of How long could you survive chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?

What is the advantage of an infographic over a video in an attempt to create something viral?
- Better bang for the buck
- No time constraints like a video
Example: Foursquare had a great one at the end of 2010
Example: Taking a complicated topic and explaining it visually WTF is HTML 5 and why should we care?

The thing that sets Shaun apart
- He can create the infographic
- Does all illustrations
- Most importantly, he does all the research
* As a student, he is used to writing papers with research that can withstand a professor’s prying eyes
* Has taken 3 statistics classes such as advanced business statistics
* All of this is fresh in his mind

‘I would rather spend the time to make sure everything checks out, than to have 1 tiny error ruin the entire integrity of the graphic’

Case study: How to make an infographic to support the Salary Tutor book launch – a 10 step evolution:

Step 1: Determine Timing
My initial email to Shaun was July 24, and we hoped to have it complete by the week of 8/8.
We ended up working on it a bit longer to make sure we had it perfected.

Step 2: Provide direction
I outlined the following as my goals:

The 3 big picture topics are:
* Current state of the economy
* Getting a raise in your current job
* People that are leaving for new jobs

A few sub-topics that I think are real button-pushers:
* The disparity between men and women’s pay
* Does weight and looks have anything to do with income
* Anything social media related (Facebook has youngest workforce; social media skills matter, does HR google you and check your FB page for drunk photos) etc

I set up a Google doc to share links from stories containing a lot of the research to get him on his way

Step 3: Decide on payment
Shaun was at a slight deficit since, well, it WAS about salary negotiation, but he read the book so we were on the same level. Shaun charges an hourly rate, which includes all the hours worked on the three stages (ideation and research, custom illustration, creation). We settled on a budget range we were both comfortable with.

Step 4: Organize the data
- Shaun goes through all the research and tries to distill it down to a one page Word doc
- During this process, he discovers data which must be interesting, but also able to be represented graphically
- What he starts with is never what he ends up with
- Shaun got real excited when he found this much data

Step 5: First pass
Shaun started with a vertical layout, with the primary focus being happiness vs salary level
This is an important step, just getting things down and free flowing the graphics to see how lays out. You can design in your head all you want, but like an author that just starts writing, you need to get in the flow.

Step 6: Getting to the Eureka moment
At some point, Shaun hits the eureka moment when the research is done, the graphics come together, and he just starts moving forward with the direction he knows it will take. In this case, he knew the focus was going to be on the timeline.

He showed it to me in paper form for approval of this primary direction, which I approved.

Shaun tells me one of the most difficult things to deal with in infographics are “outliers” in data, and how he deals with it.

Step 7: The first “final” candidate is sent
- Good news bad news. Jim loves the majority, bottom is great.
- But not the top. Felt it was off topic. How does Shaun handle it?

Step 8: Almost there
- Right topics, 3 out of 4 looks are right
- Jim debates dropping the “weight” stats due to potential user pushback, but Shaun convinces him to stay the course
- We talk over a new way to represent it

Step 9: The Final product
The final product, as seen on SalaryTutor.com/infographic

Step 10: Spread the word
We are releasing this post before putting it out into the wild, so unfortunately I can’t tell you how it did in advance. Check back and I can give an update in a later podcast. Here is a rough plan of where we plan to ‘seed’ it:
- Submit to reddit
- Post on Facebook of my personal account and book account
- Tweet on my personal account and book account
- Email my “100 super influencers” that have my book
- Submit to coolinfographics.com
- Send to salary sites
- Embed in blog posts

Contact Shaun at his website, ShaunSanders.com

Jim interviews Jeremy Mims, co-founder of OwnLocal.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

There are a few big trends in the ever-evolving tech world right now:

1) The first is that the market for local business – combined with online – is exploding. A recent study showed that Nearly All Consumers (97%) Now Use Online Media to Shop Locally.

2) The second is the continuation of “old school” media such as newspapers and publishers trying to monetize their products as web and digital tablets evolve. Check out this interesting article, which shows that magazines like the Atlantic are already moving beyond phase one of the tablet era (replicate your publication for the iPad) and into phase two, which could be an HTML5-based freemium model with upsells:

The Atlantic iPad app: A new model for publishers?

3) The third is that Y Combinator keeps cranking out cool startups that are taking advantage of emerging trends, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to sit down with several of them to discuss their vision. Today is no different.

I sat down with Jeremy Mims, co-founder of Ownlocal, who is actually on his second venture-backed startup. OwnLocal makes a suite of products for local businesses to succeed online, a byproduct of which is making newspapers and other publications considerably more money.

We discuss:
- Jeremy’s background and how he got to his point
- How he got connected with Y Combinator
- The challenges of reaching local small businesses
- How he structures partnerships
- What kind of investors he’s had
- How a local hardware store could sell more hammers
- And finally, time travel

So go ahead and listen to the podcast on this page or from iTunes, or read the full transcript below:

Jim Hopkinson: Hey everybody, this is Jim; welcome to the podcast. Today I have a special guest, Jeremy Mims, who is cofounder of OwnLocal, which is a Y Combinator company; it’s actually his second ventured-backed startup. And, what OwnLocal does is make a suite of products for local businesses to succeed online. So, thank you, Jeremy.

Jeremy Mims: Hi, thanks so much for having me, Jim. I really appreciate it.

JH: So, first, give us a brief overview of what OwnLocal does, and…

 

JM: Sure. So, OwnLocal is an app store, if you will, for small businesses; and our entire purpose for being is to make sure that small businesses have the best tools, and the resources to succeed online.

JH: Very cool. So, we’ll get deeply into that, but, I always like to get in the back-story. So, tell me, where did you grow up, how did you get involved, how did you end up as a Y Combinator of a company, and go from there?

JM: Sure. So, I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, I went to a college in a small town in Virginia. And then the first thing I ever did when I left college was to build up a local market place for restaurants when I was living in Boston; and, I really got the bug. I went to a conference put on by Y Combinator in 2005, when nobody knew who they were even. And, it was very exciting to see other technology founders; and a few years later I applied, and did my first company through there. And then met up with the founders of OwnLocal and joined up with them.

JH: Cool. I mean it is such a great thing to be around other entrepreneurs, and when you have that happen for the first time you realize, like, ‘Oh, there’s people like me out there.’ So, you got hooked up with Alexis Ohanian. And for people that don’t know what Y Combinator is, I’ve talked about it a few times, but, it’s kind of an incubator for small companies, for startups. And, one of the resulting ones was Reddit.com, which is owned by Conde Nast; and, Alexis has been great of bringing me all these cool new companies that are making their way in the digital world. So, you met up with them, and then how did the company start to evolve from there?

JM: So, when we started, our goal was to help find a way to fund journalism in the 21^st century. And, while that’s a complex problem to solve, we saw that most people were kind of avoiding the hard problem which is – they need to make more money. So, when we started approaching newspapers, we figured out that what they really needed to be successful was something that approximated a digital ad agency: a set of services that they could sell to their small business customers, so that those customers could be successful online. And, this is something that they’ve never offered to those customers before.

What we soon figured out was that by offering these services to the small businesses, we were really serving those small businesses, and, as a by-product, we were helping make newspapers a whole lot more money than even we thought possible. For example, one small newspaper that we’re working with in a rural town in Nebraska, about 8,000 people live there – a small daily newspaper, and they made $150,000 in new revenue last year, which was probably about 25 per cent of their profit.

 

JH: It’s such an interesting approach, because everyone, the whole argument all the time is, ‘How about a pay wall, people pay for content, what about this, should we go digital, should we go online, what about newspapers?’ And, no one was really thinking of what they have. Like in a community is they have that level of trust, and a relationship with customers; and, it sounds like you did a good job of saying, ‘Well, let’s not focus on, kind of getting more readers or a different digital ad model.’ It’s giving them something else to sell, so to speak.

JM: It’s almost going back to square one. It’s like saying, ‘What do our customers need, and how do we make something that they want?’ It’s actually very similar to Y Combinator’s entire reason for being. Everybody who goes through it, they get a T-shirt that says, ‘Make Something People Want.’ And, that’s what we do. From the very ground floor, we’re not really into being gimmicky. And, I think that a lot of the things that newspapers are doing these days, they’re ‘Hail Mary’ passes. They’re saying, ‘Well, let’s cut off our readership; let’s charge for our content right now.’ And, it sort of breaks the way the internet really works.

And coming back to square one and saying, ‘OK, well what are your customers going to be buying; what are they going to be paying for?’ You know, advertising worked for over 300 years, well, almost 300 years now in the United States for newspapers, ever since Ben Franklin’s brother in Boston, Massachusetts. And, here we have a situation where our distribution costs have been lowered almost to nothing to put something out there. And, almost anybody can access your product. And, it’s sort of a miracle that you can’t figure out a way to make money on that. If somebody walked into my office tomorrow and said, ‘I’m going to take away your major cost centers,’ – I’d be thrilled. And that’s the situation that they’re in. So, what we’re helping them do is realize it and figure it out.

JH: So, take us through the products that you offer. So, you’re kind of going; at first you do work directly with local businesses, but you’re also kind of going to newspapers and chambers of commerce, so almost like the middleman in giving them tools to let local businesses succeed. So, what tools are those?

JM: So, we start off with a white label directory. Think of it as a Yelp for non-urban markets, most of the time. And, that’s really the center for our products. Beyond that, what we offer is websites for small businesses, search engines optimization, social media, and other services that they need – anything from Wii generation to search engine marketing. So, really what we focus on offering those businesses is sort of a comprehensive package of exactly what they need to get going and to really be successful. We follow that up with things like daily deals; although, our daily deals function a little bit more like Woot.

JH: Huh.

 

JM: So, the simplicity without the tipping mechanisms and things like that.

JH: So, it’s difficult because we sometimes forget, we live in New York City where you have 8 million people, and it’s the media capitol of the world, so you know about this stuff – about the Yelps, and Groupons, and Living Social, and so many stores.  But, so, you forget that like if you’re in Nebraska and you have a small town of 10,000 or so, you’ve got your newspaper and if you’re a hardware store or something, maybe there isn’t a Yelp directory, there isn’t a Groupon, and so you’re giving them, they might have heard about it, but you’re giving them the tools to have that.

JM: That’s right.

 

JH: So, take us through. So, say, you are the local hardware store, and you’re probably getting sold to, from getting calls from Yelp, and if you started something 10 years ago, you’re telling me if you started the business in 2000, you didn’t have to think about this stuff. So, all of a sudden, they’re being told, ‘They have to be on Facebook, they have to be in social media, you have to search engine optimized, and they’re getting these calls from Groupon,’ and it’s probably pretty scary for them.

JM: Yeah, you have to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who takes their life savings and they invest in this business, and it’s usually a physical retail business; whether that’s a restaurant or a hardware store like you said, or a dance studio, whatever it is, they’re putting this business together because they have a real passion for what they’re doing. You know, if you’re making a pizza parlor, you’re going to make the best pizza you know how. And then somebody comes along with all these new things and they keep throwing more and more at you, it doesn’t get less complex.

JH: Right.

JM: It only gets more complex to them. So, if you weren’t on Facebook in 2006, and someone told you need to get on Facebook today, well, what about Foursquare; what about Groupon? What about all of these other products and services that exist in the market? And, how do you control your business presence on there?

We have many businesses that we work with; and, I’ll never forget this couple of women who came in, they’d been running a deli for about 30 years. And, recently, somebody had put some negative reviews about them online. And they were furious, and they didn’t know what to do. It’s such a difficult thing to read about you, and not really have anyway to counter that. So, they felt like that it was happening to them. And, what we able to do is give them a way to take control over what people were reading, what people were seeing – at least in some part. It’s one thing if your deli has eight reviews on Yelp and one of them is negative, or two of them are negative, and you can feel hopeless about it. So, we actually give them these tools, we turn it around for them and then the results are fantastic. If they start showing up at the top of a Google search or near the top of a Google search they start posting blogposts and tweets, and all that, and actually this is stuff we do for them. What they end up with is this feeling that they’re in control of their business again.

JH: Yup.

JM: And, that’s really what we offer them.

JH: And so, what are some of the challenges that face a local business? We just talked about a couple, and I would think there must be challenges on the newspaper side trying to sell technology. They probably have a lot of old school people that don’t get this either, how do you train them to train the local businesses?

JM: So, actually what’s really interesting is the biggest problem facing most small, local businesses doesn’t come from online right now. Even somebody like Amazon isn’t the driving force that kills a small business. It’s somebody more like Walmart who comes into the town, and Walmart, obviously, has a wonderful page rank because they’re huge, and they’re everywhere. So, people who are small business owners don’t really know how to compete with that. So, we can help them do that. If you’ve ever been to a small town, you’ll see decimated downtowns and these clusters of businesses near on-ramps and exits on the highway. And what we help do is really help them build that downtown back up, if only online. And, small businesses have this harder way – it’s harder for them to be discovered just by virtue of them being small. Walmart has big signs, big billboards, all of this, and small business doesn’t really have very much unless they are on a main road or something.

So, that’s one area. And then on the other side, newspapers, historically, have been terrible at offering their customers these kinds of services. They’ve always treated things that were online to be competition for the paper. It’s been a fascinating process to see. Some newspapers come around and realize that they’re not the paper they’re printed on; to realize that they’re the news, that they’re providing these services. And, their ultimate goal, and their goal all along, wasn’t to sell ads in the newspaper, it was to help the small businesses that they serve in their community succeed.

JH: Right, because they’re doing like profiles on the business, and here’s Susie who owns a local flower shop, and then offering her an ad, and classified ads, people want to sell stuff or buy stuff, so, it’s interesting. In some of the rural towns, you’re saying like it might even not have internet access, so…

JM: Actually, we do have customers that have no internet available to them, or they…

 

JH: You’re talking like in the shop, right?

JM: In the shop, or they don’t have, even at home, that can happen. One of the closest analogies I can think of is this is a little bit like rural electrification for small businesses. It’s at an accelerated pace, but when that program started in the 1930s under the New Deal, the idea was that rural areas would be electrified and it would happen fairly quickly. It turns out that the Rural Electrification Administration only shut down in 1994.

 

JH: Huh.

JM: It took that long. Even in the late 1970s, two per cent of the United States didn’t have electricity; and it impacted, predominately, rural areas. What’s happened now is that the technology has actually clustered in urban areas – places like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc., and these guys are getting left behind. What we’ve built is a bit like a time machine. It’s time travel, and when we go into these markets we’re actually able to help these businesses catch up; and, it’s a wonderful feeling.

JH: Yeah, so you’re a little hardware store, you can catch up and all of a sudden, you can go to a trusted source like the newspapers, so it’s not an agency coming in, they might not even be agencies in a rural area, but, they’ve trusted these newspapers in the past; and, if they do it right, then all of a sudden they’ve got a blog page. They can have a Facebook presence, they can do a, ‘Hey, come in and buy a hammer and get a free nail,’ [Laughter] or something like that.

JM: Yeah, that’s right. One of the interesting things is social media, especially Facebook, has had a bigger uptake in rural markets than pretty much any other technology has had. So, that social media is an acceleration; but, they don’t have any of the tools to really maximize it right now. So, if you don’t have a website, but you’ve got a Facebook page, you’re missing out on Google searches, you’re missing out on all these things that you could be driving more customers to your business with.

JH: So, you’re working with a couple, you sometimes work with small businesses, sometimes with larger entities, how do you structure, how does this work, how do you structure these partnerships?

JM: So, our partnerships are set up, primarily, to leverage certain assets that a newspaper or a radio station or a chamber of commerce, or whoever we work with in a community, already have. And we bring to the table what we do really well, which is our software products and our customer service. So, for a newspaper, they’ve got these great long-term relationships with these small businesses. Usually what we do is we actually go into the market. It’s something we’ve been accused of being a little too light about it, because most people are really afraid of doing something like that. Most technology companies, most digital companies, don’t go into a market, they don’t send somebody who’s going to actually talk with these businesses.

They say that it takes about 10,000 hours of time to be an expert, and we’ve really, in the past year, done at least 5 or 6 thousand hours of talking to small businesses to really understand what their needs are. So, one of the things that really matters to a small business is trust. They need to know that the person or group that they’re buying this from isn’t just going to leave. And, we make sure that we work with the most established partner we can in the market, and then we use that partner to help drive leads. And, we guarantee a certain amount of revenue; and then we do a rev share on our end, so, usually, what’s happening with that business is if we’re successful and they’re successful, we make money. We’ve never had a situation where somebody hasn’t hit their targeted goal because we really take it quite seriously; and when we go into a market, we’re really there.

JH: Yeah. So, give us an example, like kind of start to finish, of something, a company that wanted this service, you went into this town, and kind of the success that came out of it.

JM: Sure. So, right now we’re actually running the largest newspaper directory in the country with the Press Enterprise, which is a fairly large newspaper in California. They’ve got a circulation of over 100,000 and they’re, actually, in the 13^th largest demographic area. But, when we went into that market about seven months ago now, they were making, I can’t tell you exactly how much, but they were making some amount of money; basically, I think they’re going to make about five times that this year from what we’ve done.

And, that’s really powerful. That’s game changing, as it means that they can focus more on producing journals and they can…

JH: And, how did you do that exactly? What was their need and what did you bring to them?

JM: So, really, really serving small businesses; and, it’s not a magical thing – it’s sort of unsexy!

JH: Yeah.

JM: To be honest, it’s talking to the small businesses on an average for about 45 minutes, figuring what their real needs are, and then giving them things like directory listing, search engine optimization, a website, and helping them manage their social media; as well as figuring out how we can help them drive leads. It’s an education problem in many ways.

JH: Yeah. So, how would they do like a social media? So, say the hardware store, and I sign up through the newspaper, what tools do I get to kind of work with social media?

JM: So, one of the tools that you get, this is a big difference, is a phone number. You get a phone number that you can call and say, ‘Actually, we’ve got a special on hammers this week, what do I do; what should I do?’

 

JH: Yeah.

 

JM: So, we come back and we say, ‘Well, let’s write a blogpost about this, and let’s make sure this ends up on your Facebook page, and let’s send out a tweet here, and let’s do some email marketing for you, too.’ And, they say, ‘Oh, thank you!’ And, we say, ‘We get the information, and then we handle for them.’ And, that handling it for them is the piece of the puzzle that they’re missing, is they can’t afford to hire somebody fulltime who’s going to sit there and do this. They don’t necessarily even know the questions to ask to have somebody do this; but, to have it done for them is a very powerful thing.

JH: And then how does that scale for you guys?

 

JM: So, that scales really well for us, actually, because we take, if I were just to work this backwards, the newspaper gets a revenue share, we get a revenue share; we have fixed costs for every last little piece if what we do. At the end of a month, it’s incredibly profitable for us.

JH: But do you outsource, like who writes the blogpost on the hammer?

JM: So actually, we have writers from around New York City and in other areas; even in some cases, newspaper writers or ex-newspaper writers are helping to do these things. And, it’s been a fortunate situation for us because there’s been a lot of available writers; but, at the same time we’re able to provide good, easy paying work for them.

JH: ‘Extra, extra, ball peen hammer on sale, $4.99!’ [Laughter]

JM: Exactly.

JH: All right. So, we’ve talked about most of the products you have, so creating a directory, daily deals, building a website, what’s AdForge, tell us about that one?

JM: So, AdForge is actually something we built for the newspaper, specifically. And, AdForge is an old concept done right. And, that’s to take print ads, put them online, make them searchable by consumers in Google, and all of that, and then to give the newspapers a really solid and easy way to upsell their customers into things like coupons, directory listings, maps; we make everything sharable, they can actually have something sent to their mobile phone if they want. And, AdForge is really powerful for the newspapers because it’s an ‘instant on’ revenue generator for them. The average newspaper that we work with will make anywhere from three to $20,000 a month from AdForge alone.

JH: And, those ads run on the newspaper website?

JM: And, it runs on the newspaper website. There’s widgets, people can use it in all the social ways you expect.

 

JH: So, for dozens of years, it was just like, ‘Come to John’s Used Car Sale,’ and he’d have a picture of him with a Buick on the front; and now it sounds like, through almost like a wizard, like step-by-step, it’ll take, ‘Do you want to upsell them to an online ad, and do you want to put a map on it to show where you can find them, and do you want to make it clickable, and offer a discount for the first 10 people that come,’ and stuff like that?

 

JM: Right, so it’s a way to help businesses that are wary of doing anything online – take a baby step towards where they actually need to be. And, it’s a relatively easy sale, it’s really simple for the newspaper, and it solves one of our goals, which was to make newspapers more money.

JH: Right. And, who are some of the investors that you guys are working with?

 

JM: So, we’re really proud to have, of course, Y Combinator, but, also Baseline Ventures, Paul Buckheit, Leher Ventures here in New York City, backed by Ken and Ben Leher, 500 Startups, the Knight Foundation, and many, many other guys; Josh Schachter who started Delicious, and we really have this wonderful team is helping us.

JH: So, having gone through this before, when did you start and finish at your last startup?

JM: So, I finished my last startup around the end of 2009, and this one went through Y Combinator in early 2010.

 

JH:  So, a lot of people are saying that things have kind of changed, and there’s all these new angel investors, have you seen a shift like that?

 

JM: It’s really funny. When I started my last company, what we found was that you either did angel investment or you did venture capital. And, with services like Angel List around today, you have this really exciting early stage investor culture happening; which is anybody who’s an accredited investor can have access to these startups, and put their money where they believe the future of technology will go. And, I feel like it’s become a little less formal, a little less insidery, and I think, ultimately, that’s a good thing for…

JH: Is there any requirement, I mean, I’m sure people would love to just take your money, right, but, let’s say, so, ‘I’ve interviewed you, I’ve interviewed Grub with Us, I’ve interviewed Whitey Board, I interviewed,’ I’m trying to think of the other ones he sent me. So, lets say I just wanted to give 500 bucks to each of you and hope that it hits and get back ($)510; is that something I could do, or do you have to be kind of in that network?

JM: So, you have to be in the network in the sense that you have to an accredited investor.

JH: OK. So, you have to take a test? [Laughter]

 

JM: Well, you have to have a certain net worth or have hit certain amounts of income over the past year, which is, or may be over the past several years. And, there are new restrictions actually coming out that you can’t count your home as part of that net worth, and all of that. And, part of that is to protect ambitious investors from giving their money to people who really can’t afford to lose it.

 

JH: Right.

 

JM: But, on the other side, you’ve got something like Kick Starter, and Kick Starter fund projects, not necessarily companies so much. And, like the last Kick Starter project that I just invested in was something called, ‘Table for One,’ and it’s a film that’s getting made, and they needed $10,000. So, giving a couple of hundred bucks is not that hard, and it’s not a whole corporate thing, I’m not getting shares in the company or anything; and, that really just changes the dynamic for getting these smaller projects funded.

 

JH: Yeah. Very interesting, and so, getting accredited as an investor, is that a government thing?

JM: Yeah, it’s a government thing; basically, you just need to specify that you have a certain amount of income; that yes, you can cover this, and [then you can participate.]

JH: And do they give you a certificate, and then like a card you can carry around? [Laughter]

JM: No, I don’t think so, but, the interesting part of this is companies don’t want to take money from people that aren’t accredited investors.

JH: Right.

JM: In all startups for probably forever, the friends and family funding has sort of been a right of passage where you say, ‘Look, I got to quit my job, I’ve got $25,000 saved up, that’s going to last me five months,’ and, you go to your aunt and uncle, you go to your guy who works in finance, and you say, ‘You know what, I need $100,000.’

JH: Yeah.

JM: ‘Let’s build this prototype, let’s get this done.’ And the system allows for that, but, usually, once somebody gets a little more established, or they’ve figured out what they’re doing, then it goes to the accredited angel investors, and then, venture capitalists.

JH: I like the analogy, I think it was a Y Combinator guy that said; there was someone in the Wired Business Conference that said, ‘There are three stages of money for an entrepreneur, was it negative to zero.’ [Laughter] So, you’ve got student loans, and you’ve got all  […], and your credit card, and then like zero to $25K where you’re at least positive, and then above, you know, $100K or something when you’re at least making some money; and, if it fails, you know you can do something different.

JM: Right. And there’s different stages of profitability, too. Paul Graham is quite famous for coining the term, ‘Ramen Profitable.’ [Laughter] So, at the point where you can afford ramen noodles; and you’re not spending more money that you have coming in to make that happen, that’s a really big stage for a lot of companies. You know when the AirBnb guys who just raised quite a bit of money this past couple of weeks, when they first got ramen profitable, we asked them how they were doing, and they said, ‘Well, we got ramen profitable.’ And then we talked to them a month or two later, they said, ‘Well, we’re steak profitable.’ And then a few months after that it was, or really probably a couple of weeks after that, it was, ‘We’re filet mignon profitable!’

JH: Exactly. I love the food analogies. The other one is, ‘We like to break people up into two pizza teams’ – any group of teams working on a project that could be fed just on two pizzas.

 

JM: Yup.

JH: Well, this is great stuff. As always, I’m always impressed by the companies coming out of Y Combinator, and where can people find out more about OwnLocal?

JM: So, if you go to ‘ownlocal.com,’ that is the only way to get in touch with us, really. You know, send us an email, you can call us, we’ll respond to you pretty quickly. And, right now we’re only working with publishers, so if you have a newspaper in your market that you know has been struggling; we can help them, too.

JH: Maybe I can go check with the Weymouth News, my old hometown newspaper, and see how they are doing.

JM: Absolutely.

 

JH: [Laughter] All right, thanks for coming in, Jeremy.

 

JM: All right, thanks so much, Jim.

This has been the Hopkinson Report podcast. I’d like to thank my special guest, Jeremy Mims. Remember, you can check them out at ‘ownlocal.com.’

I’d like to thank my good friend, Alexis Ohanian, who’s a Y Combinator advisor for sending me along these great startups. And, if you’re in a startup and aren’t quite ramen profitable, and want to learn negotiation skills or have a fulltime gig and want to be paid what you’re worth, check out my book at ‘salarytutor.com.’

And, as always, thanks for listening.

Jim interviews Nick Gammell, CEO and founder of workout app Gain Fitness.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

When it comes to working out, there are questions that come up time and time again:

- We all know we SHOULD work out, what can be done to make sure I DO work out?
- How can I find the time to work out on a crazy schedule?
- How do I keep from getting bored with my workouts?
- How can I keep better track of my results?
- Why do personal trainers cost so much?
- How do I see results once I’ve reached a plateau?

And for the Apple fans out there…
- My iPhone can do just about everything, but can it make me look better naked?

On this week’s podcast, I spoke with Nick Gammell, the CEO and Founder of Gain Fitness in his attempt to answer all of those questions.

He comes from a good pedigree of brains and brawn… a lifelong athlete and former college football player to address the workout side of things, and an analytical brain with experience at Deloitte consulting and a little tech company named Google to fuel the technology side.

After chatting for just a few minutes, it became clear that I was the perfect demographic for his product.
- I enjoy working out but don’t have a lot of time
- I generally do the same workouts so need variety to get out of a rut
- I like to track my progress and see results

What the gain fitness app on my iPod touch allowed me to do was set up some initial parameters (gender, equipment access, intensity level) and then enter how long I wanted to work out.

On a Saturday, I did 45 minutes and did a lower body gym workout. On a Tuesday before work, I did 30 minutes of “push” exercises (incline dumbell press, etc) at the gym as well.

But then life got in the way. After hitting snooze a few too many times the next day, running late for work, and still feeling a bit sore, I did something I wouldn’t have done without the app.

Instead of skipping the workout, I programmed a quick 10 minute, low-intensity, at-home workout. This ended up being mostly stretches and a few strength exercises, but I could see how getting in an extra quick workout or two every single week would really pay off.

The best thing for me was it was like having a trainer, telling me new exercises and structuring my workout.

In the interview, I go on to ask Nick:
- What was his background that led him to consulting, Google, and then CEO

- What kind of advantage does having a group of former Google employees give their startup?

- How do the analytics on the backend help customize the workout?

- How is Gain marketing the app and getting the word out, given the $120,000,000,000 fitness industry and hundreds of thousands of apps in the app store?

In the end, success in any workout plan comes down to changing habits. So far, bringing along my own little personal trainer has given me a new level of excitement. Only time will tell if I’ll be uploading before and after workout photos to prove that success.

Gain Fitness Website | Gain Fitness On iTunes