Mikal E. Belicove wrote a great post on entrepreneur.com where he shares five tips on how to present like Steve Jobs. 

Read the five tips below, but be sure to read his full article to learn more about each tip. 

1. Know the one critical point in your presentation — then make it clear. 

Watch a Steve Jobs keynote again before you create your next presentation. 

What tips would you add to the list? Who are other public speakers that inspire you?

Photo from Flickr by: For Inspiration Only

• Joe Galante, President of Galante Entertainment
• Galante worked for a record company for almost 40 years, decided he wanted to do it on his own
• he works around the entertainment and digital space
• adviser at FloThinkery
• invested in Artist’s Growth
• in 2010 he became restless and bored in corporate life
• Joe spoke with Mark Montgomery about working together
• as he studied Nashville, he learned about the vibrant investor community and about the Entrepreneur Center (EC)
• he became a mentor at the EC
• business development is similar to how an artist becomes a star
• the music scene has brought interesting people to Nashville
• his mentors taught him how to network effectively, song writing, and artist development
• tips for entrepreneurs:
• the successful companies take their time working through the model, seeking advice, and LISTENING to the feedback
• take criticism constructively
• Joe recently read and recommends the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson
• contact Joe at the EC in Nashville

Instagram

Systrom and Krieger share their first-hand experiences of the entrepreneurial process, including identifying good problems to solve and the value in building simple solutions and minimum viable products. They also discuss aspects of their co-founder working relationship and their efforts to maintain a balance between work and life.

 Can’t see the video?

I expect you didn’t miss the news of Instagram’s $1 billion Facebook acquisition recently. The incredibly popular photo app now has more than 50 million users. Instagram gains one new user every second. One billion photos have been taken with the app, about 58 photos uploaded each second. 

What have you learned from witnessing the explosion of Instragram’s popularity? What was the key thing you took away from the Instagram presentation?

Nashville, Tenn. (May 3, 2012) – Nashville-based tech business accelerator, Jumpstart Foundry, has announced ten selected applicants to build companies in their comprehensive business accelerator program at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center this summer.

“The selection was especially difficult this year because of the vast number of high quality applicants. It made the evaluation process longer than expected,” said Vic Gatto, Partner for Solidus Company and a Jumpstart Foundry managing director. “We are excited to get started with this year’s cohort.”

The ten selected applicants include:

Contigo, a developing a short-term loan solution to compete with the existing “pay-day” loan industry. Loans will be delivered through a proprietary underwriting model and online platform.

OKDJ.fm, a fan-engagement platform which gamifies free music releases by incentivizing fans to act as promoters for artists.

The Skillery, an online platform that connects teachers and learners, who offer administrative support for offline classes and workshops.

Evermind, the first caregiver-friendly senior monitoring system. If you can plug-in a surge protector and use Facebook, Evermind is easy.

Wax, an app that allows extreme athletes to compete with one another by completing tricks and challenges.

Westcrete, which converts traditional building plans into a prefabricated formwork that is shipped to jobsite, erected & pumped full of concrete.

Rental Kharma, a destination where Good Owners and Good Renters find Trust, Transparency and Simplicity for their home rental relationships.

PhotoRankr, a new site for serious amateur photography.

OurVinyl.Tv, which allows users to discover new music through video They want to be the modern day MTV minus the re-runs.

Talkapolis, microcasts new media (mainly talk format) targeted at local markets and distributed on mobile smartphones and smart TV devices.

The JSF 2012 program will accelerate the growth of these ten startups, which will add to Jumpstart Foundry’s proven track record of success. Like other accelerators around the country, JSF measures its success based on the number of graduates that are able to raise capital or boot-strap operations without additional capital. Over the two first years of the program, JSF has achieved a very strong 62% success rate. Eight alumni have raised follow-on capital and are building operations. These results combined with multiple years of experience, deep mentor pool and affiliation with TechStars position Jumpstart Foundry as one of the best accelerators in the country.

#  #  #

About Jumpstart Foundry

Jumpstart Foundry (JSF) accelerates the growth of fledgling tech-oriented businesses. Started in 2010, JSF is a formal, mentor-driven 14-week business acceleration program held over the summer months – with the goal of launching successful companies, prime for funding, at an Investor Day in late August.  

Those startup companies – keying on the areas of healthcare IT, data systems and social engagement tools – will derive resources and guidance from a hand-selected group of mentors who bring a wealth of experience from a variety of fields. Jumpstart Foundry also enjoys key partnerships with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and the TechStars Affiliate Network.

For more information, please visit http://jumpstartfoundry.com.
Contact: Vic Gatto  vic AT jumpstartfoundry DOT com or Tel: (615) 665-3818

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE (PSF)

We have been busy confirming that the following companies are prepared to spend their summer with Jumpstart Foundry.  We are thrilled to write that they have all accepted!

The following are the ten applicants selected for the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry cohort. Stay tuned for more news here soon about these exciting startups.

Contigo

Contigo is developing a short-term loan solution to compete with the existing “pay-day” loan industry. Our loans will be delivered through a proprietary underwriting model and online platform.

OKDJ.fm

OKDJ.fm is a fan-engagement platform which gamifies free music releases by incentivizing fans to act as promoters for artists.

The Skillery

The Skillery is an online platform that connects teachers and learners. We offer administrative support for offline classes and workshops.

Evermind

Evermind is the first caregiver-friendly senior monitoring system. If you can plug-in a surge protector and use Facebook, Evermind is easy.

Wax

Wax is an app that allows extreme athletes to compete with one another by completing tricks and challenges.

Westcrete

Westcrete converts traditional building plans into a prefabricated formwork that is shipped to jobsite, erected & pumped full of concrete.

Rental Kharma

Rental Kharma is a destination where Good Owners and Good Renters find Trust, Transparency and Simplicity for their home rental relationships.

PhotoRankr

PhotoRankr is a new site for serious amateur photography.

OurVinyl.Tv

OurVinyl.Tv allows our users to discover new music through video. They want to be the modern day MTV minus the re-runs.

Talkapolis

Talkapolis microcasts new media (mainly talk format) targeted at local markets and distributed on mobile smartphones and smart TV devices.

Photo from Flickr by: miguelandresen

Download the Press Release. (PDF)

• Gavin Ivester, Partner at Flo Thinkery
• Flo Thinkery build strategies for companies. They are a group of people who want to do cool stuff with smart people, or smart stuff with cool people. Either way is a win!
• Founded by Mark Montgomery (interview)
• 5 core people at Flo + 20 – 25 advisors
• In 1992 Gavin had worked in his first job for 11 years, he decided he didn’t want to be a lifer at one company
• Started an industrial design company in Palo Alto, CA
• Gavin started at Apple at 18 years of age on the loading dock
• Apple’s industrial team coached him and taught him how to get a position in ID
• Tony Guido of Frog Designs gave him guidance about where to go to school and how to build his portfolio
• On starting a business… Know why you’re doing it. Know in what way you will kick ass harder than anybody ever has. In what way are you going to do that?
• Don’t get into business to do something 2% better than the other guy, get into business because you want to change the world.
• Gavin recommends the book From Good to Great
• Don’t worry so much about the big idea
• Have adaptable, smart people who like each other
• Contact Gavin at FindYourFlo.com

In the short piece Heffernan shares the four most common traits she has found in the truly productive people in her life. They may surprise you. 

1. They have a life.
2. They take breaks.
3. They’ve often worked in several different industries.
4. They have great outside collaborators.

Read the full story for her full descriptions of these four common traits in productive people. 

What trait would you add to the list? 

Photo by James Marwood

The acronym-friendly Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, the “JOBS Act”, was signed into law by President Obama last week. It sped through the legislative process due in large part to its bipartisan popularity as a jobs growth bill. It provides for sweeping  regulatory reform of various securities laws, the most we have seen since the Enron / Sarbanes-Oxley reforms of a decade ago.

Most media attention on the JOBS Act has been focused on the provisions relating to equity-based “crowdfunding” – raising money over the Internet in small installments from large numbers of ordinary investors in exchange for an economic interest in a company. Until now, investment in private companies in the U.S. generally has been limited to “accredited investors” – those with a net worth of at least $1 million or an annual income of $200,000. Or, companies have attracted money from unaccredited individuals through non-investment forms of crowdfunding, for example by offering gifts, offering advanced sales of products, or soliciting donations. The money being drawn into these non-investment forms of crowdfunding has been growing fast. Kickstarter, which has made its name by promoting creative endeavors, has seen the scale of its fundraisings rise rapidly. Through a campaign on Kickstarter last month, one video game developer remarkably raised more than $3.3 million pledged from 87,000 backers in exchange for t-shirts, DVDs, and access to the games being developed. But with the passage of the JOBS Act, a company will be permitted to raise up to a total of $1 million in small stake investments from large groups of unaccredited investors for more than just a t-shirt – the investor will now be able to own an equity stake in the company.     

No lemonade just yet

In case you were getting excited to go out tomorrow and raise $1 million to fund that summertime lemonade stand, note that the JOBS Act leaves it up to the  Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to define a set of rules that will govern the implementation of the law. The SEC has until January 1, 2013 to issue these rules and the new law is not effective until the rules are issued. Mary Schapiro, the Chairman of the SEC, has been quite critical of the JOBS Act so it is likely that the SEC will use its broad powers to put in place some hardline rules in the interest of investor protection. This should be considered a good thing, as investor protection is vital to the long-term prospects of crowdfunding. In many ways, the JOBS Act turns its back on established securities law practice, which has led to restraints on how equity can be raised in private markets. Supporters of equity crowdfunding argue that filtering out the best investments and limiting fraud will be solved by tapping the “wisdom of crowds”. Whether the crowd will be clever enough to make money through wise investing or whether harmful mob mentality will result remains to be seen.  

While we wait for the SEC to issue the implementing rules, an entrepreneur eager to take advantage of the new crowdfunding law should use this time to think carefully about how to go about working with the crowd. For example, consider how many investors you will be able to deal with (hint: raising one million dollars from one million investors is probably not a good idea!) and plan out an investor relations strategy. Also, prepare to communicate the terms of the deal clearly. You’ll want to come up with guidelines for the investment, including, among other things, how much of the company you want/need to sell, what equity interest is being offered for the investment, how the price was reached, and the effects of future rounds of financing (i.e. every time new money comes in an investor’s stake in the company will be diluted). 

National Crowdfunding Association

Also, consider which crowdfunding platform you will want to solicit your investors through. Undoubtedly, many new platforms will be popping up in the coming months to take advantage of the new law. Use this time to examine the unique terms, conditions, branding and identity that each platform will offer. It may take some time for the industry leader to emerge. Trade associations will also be created in the coming months, so resources to help you select the right platform are likely to be plentiful. In fact, a “National Crowdfunding Association” is in the process of being formed and will be holding its first conference in July.    

Overall there is great potential for the crowdfunding industry to revolutionize the way start-ups are launched. An entrepreneur interested in this funding structure will want to monitor the draft and final rules to be issued by the SEC in the coming months. Hopefully we will see the development of a regulatory framework with sensible protections and incentives that will nurture success stories for both entrepreneurs and the crowds that fund them.

Photo from Flickr by: Roger’s Wife

Jumpstart Episode 24: Kristopher Lange

• Kristopher Lange: Chief Fool at Book Fool – online book seller
• Book Fool’s mission is to help students with best buy back prices for text books
• Kris began by buying used text books, he then partnered with local book stores
• inspired by his mother, who started an apron museum in Mississippi
• From Fayetteville, Arkansas.
• Nashville has a great creative class, but developers are often found elsewhere
• Tips:
• Stay agile – the key for Book Fool
• Listen to your customers
• Stay positive. Always.
• feels like he has started Book Fool six different times
• Kris recommends behavioral economics books like Freakanomics. Check out the podcast too! 
• read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• subscribe to ecomonist Umair Haque‘s blog
• contact Kris at BookFool.com

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I’m your host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Kris Lange, Chief Fool at BookFool.com. Kris, thank you so much for joining me.

Kris: Thank you so much, Dave.

Dave: Chief Fool… (laughs), that’s a great–– that’s a great title.

Kris: (Laughs) And it–– it accurately describes exactly who I am, I think. We, I don’t know, we just do what we want to do––

Dave: Right.

Kris: –– in this company so it’s kind of interesting.

Dave: So tell us a little bit about BookFool.

Kris: Sure. Well, I started just as a student buying [inaudible-00:00:47] [growing] books and leading into textbooks and then with just kind of this weird premise of an idea that happened at work, built a technology around that premise, around that kind of pricing model and now we’re allowing others to use that software. So basically, we’re an online bookseller in which there are a lot of. There are probably a hundred different online–– large online booksellers that a lot of them buy books directly from students just online. Student ship the books to them.

Dave: Uhum.

Kris: And what we realized was if our mission is to help as many students as we can with the best buy back prices as we can, then we need to partner with local businesses, local bookstores, local campus stores, and allow them to use our platform to pay the prices that online booksellers can pay and allow that price to be paid in a local marketing cash to a student. And so we’re kind of using the power of the Internet to go act into the physical world.

Dave: Which is great (laughs).

Kris: Yeah. And it works really well. And our partners are affiliates of these campus stores and independent used bookstores. It’s kind of exciting for them because it’s something that they’ve never seen before and as well there are other people who, they are these book wholesalers that are out there and they do kind of what we do but it’s an entirely different economic model and basically, they can’t pay as much as we do for the books.

Dave: Do you have like an affiliate marketing background? I mean because that is–– that’s kind of how it works, right?

Kris: It is.

Dave: Yeah.

Kris: That’s right. So if a bookstore buys a book, say we–– we tell them what to pay the students. Say it’s a $50 book. Pay the student $50. We pay for shipping of those books, boxes and boxes of book from that store. When we receive that $50 book, we pay them $50 plus 20% so they get a $60 check for that one book. Of course, we’re not going to write one check per book, but.

Dave: Sure.

Kris: And they enjoy it and it is easy model for them. We bear the risk if the book doesn’t sell and it just kind of gets out of their hands and they have a very happy student.

Dave: Yeah.

Kris: With $50 in their hand, right.

Dave: Yeah. Now, I remember well (laughs), appreciating any cash I could get.

Kris: (Laughs) Right.

Dave: As far as mentorship, did you have a mentor that helped guide you in developing BookFool?

Kris: I never really did. Honestly, it would have to be my mother.

Dave: Yeah.

Kris: Because she has an entrepreneurial spirit and she would always thinking out of the box. She–– my whole growing up, we would–– we would talk business ideas and she is not a business person. She didn’t start her own company which is an apron museum in Mississippi until just 5 years ago. And, but we always talked ideas and so I just–– I just grew up with this kind of inventor mentality that I can–I can invent things whether that’s a product or a business model.

Dave: Interesting. So you’re from Mississippi originally?

Kris: I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Dave: Okay, okay.

Kris: And I moved at Mississippi in the 8^th grade.

Dave: Okay. And then you’re at Nashville, right?

Kris: That’s right.

Dave: Yeah. How long have you been in Nashville for?

Kris: Since 2006. I’m a CPA. I’m an auditor and so I moved to Nashville to work for Ernts & Young.

Dave: Okay.

Kris: To be a financial auditor, yeah.

Dave: So you mentioned the entrepreneurial bug sort of inviting you pretty early from your mom–– mom’s inspiration and then coming to Nashville. So what do you think of the Nashville technology scene right now?

Kris: Um, I hope it just keeps growing and I think it can. I think it’s amazing, right. So we have such a creative class in Nashville and it’s just–– and we have great industry that needs technology. One of the main developers that we use is out of Memphis and funny enough, he said some of his best clients are at Nashville. So I’m always telling him move to Nashville. “Come on, guys! This is right for you.”

Dave: Right.

Kris: But I guess if they can still work remotely, that works for them as well. But yeah, I think it’s a great scene. I have a men too involved with it because I’m not a coder.

Dave: Right.

Kris: I don’t know how to code but I’m a developer. So I–– I see organizations like yours and I need to get involved. So it pushes me and it pushes my entrepreneurial spirit as well the more and more I hear about the scene happening in Nashville.

Dave: Yeah. I mean it’s been great to watch and be involved with different startups and things over the last few years. So do you have some tips for other folks who were just starting out, starting their own businesses?

Kris: Wow! Stay agile. That–– that has been key for us. We never–– we never wrote a business plan for BookFool. We, and maybe that’s just the way that I can operate but it–– it’s a–– if you’re just working hard and keeping–– keeping your ear to the ground and listening to your customers, that’s been really big for us because starting as a student, we have like six different phases that I feel like I’ve started BookFool six different times.

Dave: (Laughs)

Kris: Every different style–– we have a different model every single time and then we look back and we say–– well, some of them were really great and some of them were not so great. So we have to transition out very rapidly.

Dave: Yeah.

Kris: Now hopefully, we can stop reinventing ourselves eventually or else you’re not really doing a business, but.

Dave: Right.

Kris: I think that’s one of the main tenets of our company. Another main tenet is just staying positive always because so many things can get you down when you’re starting your own company, when you’re trying to manage people, when just life happens. And just trying to stay positive, not forcing–– forcing into something.

Dave: Right.

Kris: But you can really get through tough situations if you just stay calm.

Dave: Right.

Kris: And stay in your own skin and just muscle through it.

Dave: Yeah. That’s–– that’s great advice. Are there any books or blogs that you read or books that you would recommend or blogs that you would recommend that other entrepreneurs check out, subscribe to, pick up?

Kris: You’re talking to a bookseller so I can––

Dave: (Laughs) Any textbooks?

Kris: Yeah, and textbooks. And there are a lot of business schools that read a lot of books.

Dave: Right.

Kris: Um, I read–– I read a lot of books about behavioral economics. Freakanomics is a book, kind of in that genre.

Dave: They’ve got a good podcast, too.

Kris: They do.

Dave: Yeah.

Kris: Exactly.

Dave: Yeah, they do.

Kris: I love that podcast.

Dave: Yeah. Me, too.

Kris:Predictably Irrational is a similar book.

Dave: Yeah. Dan Ariely?

Kris: I think so, yeah.

Dave: Yeah, yeah. That’s a great book.

Kris: And then I read an economist Umair Haque (H-A-Q-U-E) and really enjoyed his writing. It just–– it’s motivating and insightful about just kind of on the macro and microeconomics of the world and how it’s changing.

Dave: Interesting. Those are great. And I will leave notes for everything we’re talking about in the show notes on, on the blog on Jumpstart.com, so–– or JumpstartFoundry.com, rather. Well, listen. I know you are busy (laughs) today. You’re at a–– you’re actually at a conference.

Kris: That’s right.

Dave: So I just want to thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Kris: Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it.

Dave: And where can–– where can people find you?

Kris: BookFool.com.

Dave: Okay.

Kris: And all–– all my contact information is definitely there. We’re around Nashville all the time. You can probably find me in some coffee house in the East Nashville.

Dave: Yes, awesome! Thanks.

Subscribe to the Jumpstart Foundry newsletter to be among the first to know when the successful applicants have been selected. 

At midnight tonight applications will close for Jumpstart’s 2012 program.

Apply NOW.

Guest post by Jumpstart Foundry mentor, David Hooper.

“Say it succinctly, sell it quickly.” If you were allowed just six words to sum up copywriting, these six words would just about cover it. After all, copywriting is all about selling. And how well you say it in your sales letter will determine how quickly and how much of it you sell.

Copywriting is like baking a loaf of bread. You know what goes into it, and you know what the end result should be. But if a few steps are missed along the way, the end result is half-baked. These nine copywriting tips will ensure you put all the steps in place to produce a sales letter that brings in money.

9 Tips to Write Sales Copy That Makes Money

1. Get To Know Your Market

One of the most important facets of copywriting has very little to do with writing and more to do with researching your target market. Getting to know your market is essential because, before you write a single word of your sales letter, you must be familiiar with the people you want to sell to.

Think of your sales letter as a personal conversation between you and your reader. In this conversation, you acknowledge your reader’s need or desire and attempt to persuade them that you are the person who can best solve their problem or grant their wishes. To do this, you must gain their trust by making a direct connection.

So, how do you make that direct connection? By speaking to the reader in the language they themselves use. And that is exactly what you will learn during your research. Once you have identified your target demographic, study them – discreetly of course! Watch them at the shopping mall or local cafe. Online, you can do this by looking at reviews on Amazon.com or Yelp. You will learn how they talk, what they respond to, and, very importantly, what they like. This knowledge will help you create a sales letter that speaks directly to your target market.

It seems basic but, remarkably, many copywriters adopt a one-size-fits all approach when communicating with their readers, using the same language for the person who sits in first class as they do for those of us who sit in the cheap seats down the back of the airplane. There is no way you will build a personal, trusting relationship when you speak to your customer in a way that displays a profound ignorance of them, their lifestyle, and their wants and needs. By adjusting your language to connect with your target market, your potential customer will feel they are being involved in the conversation and, more importantly, they’ll feel as if you understand their needs or desires.

2. Start With A Bang, Not A Whimper

Research suggests you have just eight seconds to capture your reader’s attention. Not long is it? But with a compelling headline, eight seconds is more than enough.

Your headline is the key that unlocks the door to your reader’s full and undivided attention. The headline should spell out the benefit of dealing with you, or it should introduce your Unique Selling Point (USP), of which you’ll read more shortly.

For example, a time-poor businessman hurriedly packing for an out-of-town conference is highly likely to respond to a headline like this:

We’ll Dryclean Your Suit Within 60 Minutes – Or Your Money Back!

That’s certainly more provocative than:

We’ve Been The Trusted Name In Drycleaning For 15 years.

While a headline like this…

We Say YES To More Mortgage Applications Than Any Other Bank

…would appeal to anyone dreaming of moving their family out of their cold, cramped apartment and into a comfortable home. It’s far better than this:

Come To Us For All Your Home Loan Needs

Your headline is a promise to the reader. A promise to meet a need, fulfil a desire or solve a problem. Don’t let yourself down by using broad, introductory statements. Something like “Simply The Best” means nothing!

Your headline must create an expectation that you can resolve a problem in your reader’s life. By including a key benefit or USP that promises a resolution, you’re on the right track to hooking your reader, and keeping them hooked.

3. Highlight Your Point Of Difference

Being in business means being in competition. You are not the only one looking to win the hearts and mind of potential customers. Your business rivals are also doing a whole lot of wooing. At the end of the day, it’s one thing that could determine whether or not you are the one who wins over the customer. That one thing is your point of difference, otherwise known as a Unique Selling Point (USP).

Are you cheaper than everyone else?
Do you provide a service that no one else does?
Are you open longer hours?
Have you won a prestigious award for your product or service?

Your USP lifts you above the pack. It makes you the headline act rather than a member of the supporting cast. It throws a light on your business and leaves your rivals in the shade. It is vitally important that you emphasise your USP, whatever it might be.

Here is a quick and easy way to see if your sales letter properly promotes your point of difference. Go over your copy and replace your name with the name of one of your business rivals. If the selling points and claims you make in your sales letter apply as much to your competitor as they do to you, then you have failed to adequately establish your point of difference.

If you are struggling to uncover your USP, survey your existing customers. Ask them why they choose to deal with you instead of anyone else. If you ask enough people, a consistent theme should emerge which you could use as a USP. Or, you might manufacture a point of difference. If you open your business half an hour earlier, you can say “we’re open longer hours for your convenience.” You might introduce an express delivery service, “delivery within 30 minutes.” You might put an old family favorite on the menu amd talk about your “100-year-old, secret family recipe.” However you arrive at your point of difference, be sure you give it the attention it deserves in your sales letter. Your Unique Selling Point could be the one thing that gains you a customer.

4. Make It Credible

The world has changed. The average consumer has changed. The person reading your sales letter has changed. We are much more skeptical than we were 30 or 40 years ago when a deal was done on a handshake and the world was a far more trusting place (or so our parents tell us).

Today, we live by this modern mantra – “if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.” It takes a lot to convince us that something is the real deal – that is why it is so important to have a strong thread of credibility running through every sales letter you write.

It’s relatively simple to look credible – just don’t make claims you can’t support. Avoid the temptation to exaggerate or embellish. Everything you say must be able to be backed up by evidence, such as statistics from an impartial source, independent surveys or, best of all, customer testimonials. Unscripted endorsements from satisfied clients can work wonders and give you the credibility of “word of mouth.” Sales copy sprinkled with quotes from happy customers are very effective. That’s why the content of late-night infomercials is as much as 80% testimonials.

Think of every claim you make as a defendant in a court of law. Could each claim survive a searching cross-examination from a ruthless prosecutor? Will the evidence backing up that claim be accepted by judge, jury, and client? If so, include it in your sales letter. If it looks a little dubious on the surface and fails to stand up to rigorous questioning, leave it out.

5. Vague = Death

Here’s another way to boost your credibility in the eyes of your reader, and impel them to take action at the same time. Be specific. Why say “big discounts” when “discounts of up to $5000” gives them a much clearer picture? Why say “offer ends soon” when “offer must end this Monday” gives them an actual date on the calendar and a deadline to act?

Specific information is real and concrete, and much more believable than a vague statement that could mean anything. By being clear and concise in your sales letter, you show your reader you mean business. It gives your sales letter an authoritative, professional edge. Wishy-washy copywriting only promotes indecisiveness in your reader, giving someone else the opportunity to come in and claim their business.

6. Care Factor?

Ever been seated next to a self-obsessed person at dinner party? If you have, you’ll know what a tedious experience it is as your verbose neighbor proceeds to tell you all about themselves, their promotion, their overseas vacation, their golf handicap, their new car, their kids, their overseas vacation (again), without once inviting you to contribute to the conversation. It is not long before your eyes glaze over and you tune out. Self-indulgent copywriting has the same effect.

Your sales letter is not about how good you are. Rather, it should be how good you will be for the reader. By all means spell out your credentials, your skills and your experience. But, at every step of the way, you must make these things relevant to your potential customer. Everything you say about yourself should in fact say a lot about your reader. It should address their current situation, and show how your strengths will improve their life.

Another way to stay relevant when writing copy is to promote the benefits of your product or service rather than merely list the features. Benefits are far more inclusive of your reader than features.

Here’s a simple example – the all new Prestige Family Wagon features a DVD player in the back seat. The benefits of that DVD player in the back seat are that your kids will be happily occupied and perfectly quiet while they watch a movie on a long road trip. This is a benefit to you in the driver’s seat as well because you won’t be distracted by noisy kids, which is an important safety factor when driving. Two benefits from one feature!

Explaining benefits that derive from features is a great way to show your reader that their wellbeing is your number one priority. This inclusiveness and awareness of their needs will always work far better than self-absorbed copy that makes you number one and the customer a distant second.

7. You’re Not Shakespeare (and You’re Not Funny Either)

Sorry to burst your balloon, but you’re not Shakespeare. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. You’re not even J.K Rowling. You’re a copywriter. Therefore, any pretensions to play the part of a great author while you are writing your sales letter should be cast aside. Your first objective is to sell, not entertain.

Don’t show off by using long or obscure words if your target market is unlikely to understand them. Get rid of that cute but irrelevant line and replace it with another selling point. Dump that clichéd headline and start again, this time using a benefit or USP.

Of course, good copywriting should flow, and be interesting to read. And there’s nothing wrong with humor, as long as it relates to the service or product you are writing about. However, if you think a polished piece of writing on its own will do the selling for you, you are mistaken. Your sales letter must pay attention to the very things that will make your reader want to find out more about you. A point of difference will always be more compelling than a cliché. A benefit looks better than a paragraph of pithy prose. An irresistible offer will generate more sales than a personal anecdote. Be brutal! Kill off those too-cute ideas if they fail to move your story forward, and replace them with words that sell.

8. Have A Clear Call To Action

Don’t leave your reader hanging. Your sales letter has lured them in, kept their attention, and created a desire to act. The worst thing you could do after achieving all of that is to leave them in a vacuum with no idea of how to respond to what you’ve written. Give your reader a clear call to action so they immediately know how to react. A call to action might include an appeal to pick up the phone and have a chat. It might encourage the reader to go online and send an email, or to come and see you in your office. At the beginning of this article it was suggested that you think of your sales letter as a personal conversation. Up until now, the conversation has been dominated by you. A call to action is your invitation to the reader to join the conversation, so always ensure they have a device through which they can reply.

Whatever the call to action, back it up with a summary of the benefits the reader will enjoy should they respond in the desired way. For example -

“Call now and say goodbye to back pain the drug- free way.”

“Email today and be insured for life tomorrow.”

Looks pretty simple doesn’t it? That’s because it is! But don’t, whatever you do, write a sales letter without a call to action. That’s what seals the deal.

9. Make Yourself The Only Solution

You started with a bang. Make sure you end the same way. Go for the jugular.

The conclusion to your sales letter should bring everything together to remind the reader why you are the only person to deal with. Revisit your promise, offer, Unique Selling Point, benefits and call to action. Then, give your reader a point of contact that makes it easy for them to reach you. Whether it’s a telephone number, an email address or street address, make sure your contact details are highly visible on your sales letter and all advertising material.

These nine copywriting tips are indispensable, yet for all their importance, they’re not earth-shattering or particularly revolutionary. They are basic rules, however they are the steps you must follow to create a sales letter that converts. You are now armed with the knowledge to increase sales through good copywriting. You know where to start – by researching your target market. Once you’ve done that, follow the logical and simple steps to sales success. I’d wish you luck at this point – but if you follow this advice, you won’t need it!

• Corey Cleek Co-founder and CEO at Uloop
• He is also a mentor with Jumpstart Foundry
• Uloop is features online classifieds for students
• Launched in 2007 UC Santa Barbara
• Now serves over 1,500 different universities and colleges
• Began by focusing on housing and jobs, buying and selling text books
• Free to .edu emails
• Corey spent 5 hears at eBay before Uloop
• His roommate at eBay, Ryan MacCarthy, helped inspire him to become an entrepreneur
• Corey was mentored by John Brandon, an executive with Apple
• He belongs to a small group led by Michael Hyatt in Nashville, they inspire each other
• Corey recommends you check out Michael Hyatt’s new blog and podcast
• Nashville Capital Network and Jumpstart Foundry have helped to inspire and lead Nashville’s technology business
• Corey recommends you choose an area of passion and become a subject matter expert
• Contact him on Twitter @coreycleek and Pinterest/coreycleek

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart! I’m your host, Dave Delaney. My guest today is Corey Cleek, co-founder and CEO of ULoop. Hi Corey, how are you?

Corey: Good, good, Dave! Thank you!

Dave: Thanks for joining me today. Let’s start by telling us a little bit about ULoop.

Corey: Yeah, absolutely! So ULoop is an online classifieds platform for college students that can be found at ULoop.com and we also carry the classifieds for 200 college newspapers.

Dave: And you’ve been around since 2007?

Corey: Yes, that’s right. We launched initially at UC Santa Barbara as our very first school and then we expanded from there up and down the West Coast and into additional schools across the country. We now serve over 1,500 different colleges and universities on ULoop.com and then 200 college newspapers.

Dave: That’s great! Has the company changed a lot or at all since inception?

Corey: Yeah, absolutely! We started off with ULoop focusing on housing and jobs, so a place for students to connect or find roommates and sublets and housing and also jobs and internships, as well as buying and selling textbooks. And we’ve expanded to other categories: tickets and furniture and car pools and student loans and scholarships, so we’ve added additional categories for students over time as we heard feedback and input from them.

Dave: Yeah, I was going to ask. So these changes typically came from the feedback that you got from the users specifically?

Corey: Right.

Dave: And I was going to ask you about the access to the site. Does it run just strictly on edu emails? I know that’s sort of how Facebook got started, just edu’s only.

Corey: Right. Uloop is free for students. Anyone with a .edu email address can register and access the site, post to the site for free. And then we also charge for employers to post job listings and housing providers to post housing listings to connect with those students.

Dave: Okay. Now, for you, how did you get started in this? How did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?

Corey: Yeah, I spent 5 years at eBay before we started ULoop. And definitely, being at eBay and experiencing the growth and seeing opportunities to serve people with products and services like what we were doing in eBay is part of what prompted the bug, this product, within me. And then also, having a roommate during my time at eBay, Ryan, who’s one of my partners at ULoop, was involved in various entrepreneurial ventures and so seeing him and the enthusiasm around the products that the was building definitely played into it as well.

Dave: That’s kind of funny that you have a service that connect students with roommates and yeah, you’re kind of roommate/officemate at eBay helped inspire this.

Corey: Right, absolutely!

Dave: That’s neat! Did you ever have a mentor growing up or somebody that actually got you really inspired to go at it on your own, someone that helped you with this?

Corey: Yeah, absolutely! During my time at the Bay Area, there was a gentleman named John Brandon and he’s an executive at Apple that I’m with regularly. And presently, I’m a part of a mentoring group here at Nashville with Michael Hyatt, there’s a group of 8 of us that meet with each other like once a month and that’s been a group that’s been awesome to be a part of as well. But personally and professionally, to keep a healthy balance between work and family commitments, as well as to develop business skills and insights from others that are going through similar things.

Dave: Michael Hyatt, actually, is quite an inspiring person as well. He has a brand-new blog that he just launched and a brand-new podcast as well. I just listened to his first episode about blogging for business. And I’ll leave show notes links to Michael’s website and his podcast in the show notes as well for this show, so just for our listeners who want to check that out. Speaking of Nashville, things have changed here a lot for the last 5 or 6 years. You’re a Nashville native, how have you seen the changes and the technology and business space here?

Corey: Yeah, definitely with the advent of organizations like the Nashville Capital Network and Jumpstart Foundry, it’s been exciting to see kind of the network that’s been developed around Nashville to help connect entrepreneurs and mentors with entrepreneurs. It’s definitely one of the biggest things that I’ve seen from the time that I was here in between undergrad and grad school and then the time that I came back about 5 years ago, so it’s very encouraging to see that.

Dave: With working with Jumpstart Foundry, just seeing the applications coming in already for this program this year, there’s been a lot. So there’s a clear sign that people are really interested and starting their own businesses and yeah, things at Jumpstart Foundry are really jumpstarting for sure. Do you have some tips for folks who may be just starting out or people that are experienced and looking for new ideas?

Corey: Yeah, absolutely! I mean, I’d say choose an area of passion to become a subject matter expert in that area and build something out of that context. Being an entrepreneur’s hard enough work already and it definitely helps when you work in an area that you’re excited about and passionate about.

Dave: And are there blogs or books that you—well, not books that you subscribe to, but blogs that you subscribe to or books that you’ve read that you would recommend?

Corey: Yeah, you mentioned Michael Hyatt’s blog, that’s one in particular that I would recommend and he’s one of the most active and prolific bloggers out there and the content that he writes about is so helpful and yet again, the balance of leadership and social media trends, as well as being a family man, just how to balance those commitments that we have to our families with our commitments to our businesses is sometimes I found very worthwhile through keeping up what Michael blogs about.

Dave: I agree completely with you. Well, that’s all the time we have today, but I want to thank you sincerely for taking the time to be a guest on the show. Where can people find you?

Corey: Yeah, so a couple of areas. On Twitter.com/CoreyCleek and then also Pineterest.com/CoreyCleek. And yeah, I’m an internet marketing professor at Vanderbilt as an [inaudible – 7:14] and Pinterest is a place that I’ve been going to place different resources and tools that I find online on an internet marketing board on Pinterest, so that’s another area you can find me.

Dave: Great! And it’s definitely a website that everybody should be keeping an eye on as well. Thank you so much! Have a great day!

Corey: Thanks Dave! I appreciate it!

Dave: Thank you! And you too! Bye!

For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast and much more, visit JumpstartPodcast.com. Thanks for listening! 

Elevator. Escalator. Cab ride. Waiting for the bartender. Unexpected invitation to “take a seat” and chat a while. Coffee. Dinner table conversation. Text. Boardroom presentation. Video-conference call. Email. SXSW handshake. Friend of a friend who has a friend in a high place. Your mom. Your website.

Where are you going to make your next pitch? The ideal of a streamlined and convincing presentation of your business can easily get lost amidst the daily din of to-do’s and minute operational details. On top of that, and especially for a startup, even the basic definition of what the company is and does can change by the week. We can barely keep up with the internal pace of running the company; how are we also to be constantly prepared for these surprising make-or-break encounters with investors, clients, the press, etc.? So often, because of our accidental spontaneity, we end up steamrolling or underwhelming a potentially fruitful conversation.

“The Real World”

Back in college, we were of course told that all the books and papers and discussions were important. The life of the mind, blah blah blah (this coming from a Philosophy major!). What we really believed, however, is that someday we would enter “the real world” where these ideas may or may not be applicable. We thought these two worlds were somehow thoroughly distinct; more specifically, that the skills we were learning in the classrooms were disconnected from practical activities beyond them.

I’ve found this to be wholly untrue. For me, the synchronicity between intellectual and business pursuits has been remarkably refreshing. This is blatantly evidenced in the content. For example, my research in Sound Studies and technology clearly translates into consumer electronics and musical instrument design. But these are only the manifest functions of an academic career, ones that can largely be gained independently through Wikipedia University. More important, I’ve found, are the practical lessons learned by struggling through the academic process itself.

Case in point: while writing a paper or dissertation, you have to convince a few groups of people along the way that 1) you are smart enough to be here 2) you have something interesting to say and 3) you can actually accomplish what you’ve set out to do. Now, as a Sociology professor, this is the biggest shortcoming that I’ve observed in my students (and thus my most pressing lesson): they all want to tackle the world in a 10-page paper. “A Sociological Study of American Culture” and “The Rise of the Internet and the Decline of Communication” are common student-proposed topics. This is not a completely discouraging phenomenon, since it shows both ambition and motivation to tackle something big. It does not, however, display a sense of discretion or context-awareness; however determined they may be to write an excellent inquiry into the depths of an issue, most students in this category end up with an unconvincing surface treatment of a general topic.

We constantly translate our business vision to various individuals in multiple situations

The reason is simple: they did not adjust their scope and approach to the nature of their medium. In my students’ case, it is the 10-page format. In the typical businessperson’s day, it could be any and all of the list with which I began this writing. A mentor early in my career gave me an excellent piece of advice. He said I must pre-consider each encounter and description as a scaled version of the same argument. Indeed, the structure of the dissertation reflects this. One begins with a title, a sentence, an abstract, a first summary chapter, and then the dissertation as a whole. Additionally, one must be able to describe the entire project in a single word. At the risk of suggesting an undue hierarchy of efficient descriptions, here is a visualization:

Clearly, these academic standards don’t literally reflect standards for business writing. Few of us write books, after all… unless daily email output counts. What we do, nonetheless, is constantly translate our business vision to various individuals in multiple situations. The ability to scale this vision, to narrow or extend the scope based on contextual cues, is a skill worth intentionally developing. Here is an alternative illustration to exemplify this pitch scaling:

By tailoring your pitch to the time and attention constraints of the situation, you provide what I’d like to call margin for feedback. The whole point of talking with people about your business is to get a response, but so often we flood the whole encounter with our own verbiage and leave no room for the interlocutor. If you have to cram everything you want to say into a shortened time frame, you should probably just say less. By doing so you allow the other person to respond positively or negatively, but always productively. Hence, why I budgeted 15 minutes instead of the full 30 for the typical meeting time. By preparing for margin, you enable the other person’s excitement to build around your idea; by planning for feedback, that excitement can be expressed in the other’s own words and actions toward your business model.

Not everyone wants to be a partner in your business in the same way that not everyone wants to read dissertations. We simply don’t have that much time or interest. However, by distilling readymade versions of your pitch to suit the circumstances and learning how to pick from these versions on the spot, you’ll not only be more equipped to pitch to others. You’ll probably also learn something about the essential aim of your own business along the way. Businesses are not run on one word alone, but the best introductions often are.

Jumpstart Foundry is positioned to immediately compete for the best young healthcare entrepreneurs. Three of the four Managing Directors have experience in healthcare startups (either as an entrepreneur or investor). We have already begun to build educational programs designed specifically for healthcare entrepreneurs. Further, the mix of 50% healthcare and 50% other technology startups will foster a diverse population of participants and strengthen both groups.

The Silicon Valley of the Health Care Industry

Nashville is the Silicon Valley of the Health Care Industry. Over 250 health care companies have Nashville operations and 56 leading healthcare companies have their headquarters here. This provides the perfect environment to launch your start-up, get immediate feedback, and improve the product.

Of course, not every healthcare startup will be suited for the Jumpstart Foundry program framework. We need to be able to build a MVP quickly and begin getting feedback from actual customers. This model will work for many healthcare startups- but not all. The following describes our healthcare areas of interest for 2012:

• Healthcare Technology Innovations
• Technology solutions which drive efficiency gains in niche healthcare markets.
• Data and information companies that empower doctors and other front-line care staff to make more informed decisions.
• Consumer-facing healthcare tools implementing which drive healthy behaviors and disease prevention in at-risk population groups.
• Innovative, technology-enabled healthcare delivery models that may be tested with small patient populations.

Know a great HC entrepreneur? Tell them to apply today, the application deadline is April 2.

This an exciting time for our city as Nashville cements its role as Healthcare Innovation Center of the world. I look forward to building our city together.

We want to sincerely thank our friends at the Entrepreneur Center for helping us through the evening. A special shout out goes to: Mitchell Evans, Clay Jackson and Chris Poole. We also want to thank everyone for attending. 

The feedback we received was fantastic, with a few notes for improvement for next time. Overall, we had a blast and the post event survey indicated that the majority of the attendees made new relationships, some even found potential co-founders.

Were you there? Was it a success for you? Are you ready to apply to the 2012 Foundry? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2V8JmLb6bY

• InQuicker is a service to wait at home for hospital visits via your web browser and make doctor appointments online. You spend less time waiting in the waiting room. You spend less time waiting at the hospital or doctor’s office
• Entrepreneurship began in the womb for Michael. He tried to start a business at five years old, selling school supplies to his sister and babysitter
• Came to Nashville 10 years ago. Worked with Dell for 8 years
• He was inspired by his grandfather, an entrepreneur who invented the “spork”
• Michael read about InQuicker and jumped at the opportunity to work with them
• Tips for others entrepreneurs:
• Be ready to execute an idea, and then wait for the idea that you cannot deny to come along
• Faith is the #1 requirement. Faith in your gut (Alan Kay quote “The way to predict the future is to invent it”). Faith in your team (see Howard Shultz interview)
• Faith in the unknown. Jason Fried of CEO 37signals
• Nashville is the capital of healthcare for the country. Many of the main people are based here
• Silicon Valley disrupted the music industry built in LA / New York
• The “old guard” in Nashville is helping to mentor, fund and direct the new guard. Unique to other industries. It’s the leaders though, not the industry itself
• There isn’t a lot of HIT (Health Information Technology) consumer focused services in Nashville – yet
• It’s the Nashville healthcare leaders who are embracing innovation and overall organization appetite for innovation
• Michael recommends you read the Howard Schultz biography, ReWork by 37signals, and We Are All Weird by Seth Godin
• InQuicker is writing their first book too
• He recommends subscribing to blogs by Signal vs. Noise and Seth’s Blog. Hear Seth Godin interviewed on Jumpstart
• Find a mentor in your community, somebody who is willing to to speak frankly and truthfully to you
• Michael Burcham chairman of the board and Jumpstart Foundry mentor
• Contact: michael@inquicker.com with questions or comments about our interview or InQuicker.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart, I am your host Dave Bellini. My guest today is Michael Brody-Waite, co-founder and CEO at in InQuicker. Hey Michael, how are you?

Michael: Good, how are you doing?

Dave: I am great. Thanks for joining me today. So tell me a little bit about InQuicker, what is it that you guys do?

Michael: So inquicker.com is essentially an online tool that allows patients to skip the waiting room by checking it online for the closest Emergency Room, Urgent Care Center, or a Physician’s office.

Dave: That’s amazing. So you log into the site and you go ahead and just book. You pre-sched— is this something you— well if it’s an emergency, I guess. How does that work exactly?

Michael: So, really good question. When we started, we actually started in the emergency room space. And for the emergency room component what you do is you check-in online and then you’re virtually waiting, so instead of spending time in the waiting room, you’re waiting from home.

Dave: Oh, that’s great.

Michael: And then for the urgent care centers and the doctor’s office it’s a true static appointment. But the point is really, you don’t have to know which one, you can just check-in for all three, from your phone. And then by the time you show up to any of those, we’ll be ready for it.

Dave: Is it browser-based or do you have an application?

Michael: We actually invested, how do we— in making it browser-based. Thirty or 40% of our users right now are bubble because we don’t believe this type of service is served well through the aid of application.

Dave: Sure.

Michael: Forrester actually published a report recently that said 6% of the apps on people’s phones is health care and wellness. And most people are searching online, so that’s what we optimized.

Dave: Yeah, that makes sense. So when did the entrepreneurial bug bite you. When did you decided go at it and do your own thing?

Michael: Uh, that’s— that’s a good question. So, I don’t have a lot of recollection of what life was like in the room.

Dave: Yeah (laughs).

Michael: I’m fairly certain that that’s when I was bit but I was trying to start my own business when I was 5. I got a bunch of school supplies.

Dave: Yeah.

Michael: And I have a younger sister, and I started trying to renting them out to her and my babysitter. And the problem was my babysitter already own school supplies. And my sister just went to my parents and asked them to buy school supplies for her. So I got put out of business and my first failure was at age 5.

Dave: Man (laughs).

Michael: So I came to Nashville about ten years ago and I started working for Dell and I worked in Dell for eight years. And I always knew that I wanted to go out and do my own thing. And I always knew that upbeat an idea that had I have so much passion for— undeniable passion would hit me. And the opportunity would present itself, and sure enough on 2008/2009, the opportunity presented itself. So I’ve been entrepreneur for life, but I didn’t actually go out and do it until 2009.

Dave: And was there someone than inspired you? A mentor or—?

Michael: Um, you know to make the leap or just to be an entrepreneur?

Dave: Um, to make the leap. To actually— maybe to actually do the— to start InQuicker or perhaps just overall.

Michael: Well, I’d always been inspired to be entrepreneur, my grandfather was entrepreneur. I actually— I know [inaudible – 03:57] I don’t like him a whole lot but he definitely was an entrepreneur [inaudible – 04:02] that.

Dave: Right.

Michael: He invented the spork which is a—

Dave: Are you serious?

Michael: Yeah, I got made fun of relentlessly for that.

Dave: Oh, that’s hilarious. We’ll talk offline, I have a friend who actually her company they use a spork always, and she always hands them out. She has branded sporks.

Michael: (Laughs) That’s great, branded sporks. I’m pretty sure his patent expired a long time ago but um— so you know what, it was always in the blood, but again, I was just waiting for the right idea. And I actually had a great idea that I was ready to execute, the people were ready to invest in back in 2001, but I was not living my life well. I was a mess-up and I couldn’t show up to the meetings. So when I moved to Nashville, I got— I grew up and I got some spiritual mentors it helped me even out. And part of my stories you know I got silver, I don’t know if you know about that but that’s why I moved to Nashville and my life changed for the better.

Dave: Uhum.

Michael: And so you know I always knew I want to be an entrepreneur, but it wasn’t until I was sitting in a doctor’s office. I had a million ideas, I always have ideas. But I was sitting in a doctor’s office and I was just trying to figure out why I couldn’t check-in online and why he wouldn’t send me an update if he was already late. And I started building a business plan for this but this was in 2008, and that’s when the economy was taking a complete nosedive and at the same time Dell wanted to make a big investment in me and promote me. So I shelved the idea but I was always really passionate about it. And then I read about a tiny little company called inquicker.com that was allowing emergency room patients to hold their place right from home. Based on Atlanta, they made three ho— they’d gone from one to three hospitals in three years. And the shorter version of the story is, as I started hounding my partner Tyler, he ended up meeting with me. Long story short, I came into the business part-time while I was working at Dell in 2009. And by February 2010, I exited Dell and started pouring care, seeing on what I saw as a fire getting quicker as far as opportunity goes and it’s been a blast ever since.

Dave: That’s great. Do you have tips for other people that are starting out that maybe new to entrepreneurship?

Michael: Yeah. Don’t let me misrepresent myself as an expert. Uh, so anybody that’s going to use any of my tips, buyer beware.

Dave: Uhum (laughs).

Michael: For me, I’d say, since I always knew I want to be an entrepreneur, I was always extremely passionate. I had about ten ideas a year at the very least I probably could’ve done something about, maybe be successful or not.

Dave: Right.

Michael: Um, the key for me was be ready to execute an idea and then wait for the idea that you cannot deny to come along. Rather than what was tempting for me at times which was used what the desire to be an entrepreneur, and just any idea is a reason to get out of the corporate world, or you know, which was my occupation at that time. I don’t wait for the undeniable idea that I would have enough passion that it was the same me for a very long time. So that’s kind of tip number one and that rules under—to tip number two which to me is, it’s that passion that drives faith, and it’s faith, to me that is the number one requirement for me to be a successful entrepreneur and it’s faith in three things. As number one, faith in my gut, Alan Kay has a great quote that says “The way to predict the future is to invent it.” I love that quote.

Dave: That is a good quote.

Michael: Um, number two faith in your team. I learned that one of my favorite mentors is Howard Schultz from Starbucks, I don’t agree with the alcohol thing that they’re doing recently but when you read his autobio— his first biography, the tremendous faith and empowering his team, is just overwhelming. And then the third is faith in the unknown. And to me, I also, is driven by a spiritual connection but faith in what is yet to be determined requires a tremendous amount of discipline and where I learn that, was another favorite mentor Jason Fried, the CEO of 37 signals.

Dave: Yeah.

Michael: A bunch of their philosophy is really built on without summarizing, faith in the unknown.

Dave: Uhum.

Michael: And faith in holding space for the better idea. And I would say as an entrepreneur, you got to have faith in those three things so the three areas have served me well.

Dave: Yeah, that’s great. And I will leave links to the people that you talked about in the show, notes for folks to check out as well. I know we had a blog post recently about, with Howard Schultz are about— Howard Schultz an interview with him, so that’s on the jumpstartfoundry.com blog, so you can check that out.

Michael: Great.

Dave: Yeah, yeah. Um, so as far as the health situation of the health companies and startups in Nashville, you know a lot of people don’t realize that Nashville is huge for the health industry. You know they think just country music and that’s about it but obviously the health— and rightfully so of course, music city you know. But with health— the health industry, just you know, is huge here. How do you see the health startup scene, if there is even a scene, in Nashville right now?

Michael: Actually, I think it’s really exciting because it’s really for two reasons. Number one, you mentioned it, this is where health care, you know from what I can tell, this is the capital of healthcare for the entire US; and so, all of the people that help make that so, are in this community, a lot of them.

Dave: Right.

Michael: And I see— typically when I look in a lot of the industries that have been right for disruption and that were then subsequently disrupted, oftentimes I’ve seen you know and I’m not an expert in this area, those industries disrupted from a community that was not the same community that built that industry. So Silicon Valley disrupting the music industry built in L.A. or New York for that matter. But what’s really interesting about what’s happening in Nashville is that old guard so to speak is really helping to mentor [inaudible – 09:57] and direct what I see as a new guard. In healthcare, a lot of great HIT companies that are disrupting existing paradigms, and they’re doing it with the help of the people that helped build those paradigms, and that’s kind of a unique situation.

Dave: That is. It’s great.

Michael: For us at InQuicker, the one thing vacuum that I see in Nashville or anywhere else is there’s a tremendous amount of activity in investment, a provider-facing tools or tools that are built to take data from consumers and monetize those, and there’s a lot of HIT startups in that space. Truly, consumer-focused hit.com websites, I don’t know a whole lot in Nashville and I’d like to see more of those.

Dave: Yeah, we’ve had actually quite a number of health startups apply for the Jumpstart Foundry program this summer. So— and as a reminder for folks, that deadline is April 2^nd. So the applications have been piling in but there have been quite a number of health-related startups, so I think it’s only going to grow anyway. So— and as you said it’s good that the traditional health industry companies are actually supporting the startups, which you’re right, it’s not typical I mean— and I think lessons have been learned probably in the music industry and in the publishing industry to, you know, innovate or die is the— as the term goes, so I think it’s good that they doing that. That’s great.

Michael: It is, but let me clarify one thing; I would never accuse the healthcare industry being aware of the slogan “Innovate or die”.

Dave: Right.

Michael: So I think it’s probably a greater testament to the leaders, the actual individual leaders that are in the national community that it is— and I don’t know enough about what the companies or doings that could be wrong.

Dave: Right.

Michael: But I see incredibly strong leadership that’s really embracing innovation that’s driving the overall organizational appetite for innovation. And so I think that it’s not necessarily the industry taking a lesson from those other examples, it’s probably some really strong leaders doing that.

Dave: Yeah, I agree. Are there any books that you’ve read recently or blogs that you subscribed to that you would recommend other entrepreneurs check out?

Michael: Yeah, so I’m a really notoriously slow reader. I would love to tell you that I consume books and knowledge but all the time I don’t, and it’s because I can’t stand sitting still for more than an hour.

Dave: Right (laughs).

Michael: And at the same time what I found about my processes, I’ m able to integrate books that I read then I find really a Bible into what I do on a better and a higher level because I’m taking the time to read each hard. And I would say that over the last three months or so, I finished Howard Schultz’s biography which I really integrated to a lot of my leadership.

Dave: Uhum.

Michael: But there is one book that our entire company has built, its philosophy around, and that is a book called Rework by 37 signals.

Dave: Okay.

Michael: And it completely changed the way that we do business as a company. And actually as a teaser, InQuicker right now as a team is writing our first book on How to Build a Consumer-facing Online Company in a B2B Dominated Industry. And I don’t know when that will be out but we’re working on it right now. Some of the other blogs, I really like Signal vs. Noise also published by 37 signals. I also like Seth Godin’s blog and daily reminder.

Dave: Yes, definitely. He’s actually— we interviewed— I interviewed Seth on a podcast last season so that’s archived on the Jumpstart site too. So if you want to hear the interview I did with Seth Godin. Yeah, it was good, it was fun. He’s a great guy.

Michael: He is. And that book he just recently released has just taken the world by storm.

Dave: Yeah, we are all weird, aren’t we? (laughs)

Michael: Yeah.

Dave: Great. Well, listen I just want to thank you sincerely for taking the time with to speak with me today. It’s been fun talking to you.

Michael: Sure. Can I say one other thing?

Dave: Yeah, for sure.

Michael: Well, I’ve done a lot of research around paper, what I call Paper Mentors.

Dave: Uhuh.

Michael: I would also say that to any entrepreneur out there, find a mentor that’s living and breathing in your community, that’s been there, done that. For me, anybody who listens to podcast has brightened a stranger that you might call Michael Burcham is. He is the chairman of our board and he is my personal mentor for how to be a CEO, to make sure I won’t mess it up.

Dave: Yeah.

Michael: And I would say that as important as it is to read, it is really important to find somebody in your community that’s want to take you into their wing. And there’s a lot of people that I see rich for mentors that they know, mentors that are socially comfortable there at their church, there— whatever, and that’s a bonus. But if they can’t look at a prompt that you have and say “Here’s exactly how I solve that”, then, to me you’re doing yourself an injustice. I walk into entrepreneur center and I don’t know anyone in there. And eventually, you know [15:04 – unintelligible]. Michael takes me under his wing and he’s done an incredible service to me and the company. But it could take several requires walking through that discomfort and seeking a mentor that you don’t know, that’s the right [15:18 - unintelligible]. So I therefore I encourage anybody listening to these, to do that.

Dave: That’s great. Actually Michael is one of our mentors and he’ll be mentoring the startups this summer. Yeah Michael is amazing, you know, he is the master of the pitch and that’s a big part of what he does with our program as he teaches, folks, how to pitch. And yes, you’re absolutely right, (laughs) he will tell you fully, unedited, what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. But you know, it’s that tough love that helps you get better.

Michael: You need it, everybody needs it.

Dave: Absolutely. Hey, where can folks get a hold of you if they want to talk to you?

Michael: Um, I don’t do twitter and that’s not because I don’t, well I’ve been telling you a whole lot and all the reasons that all be twitter, InQuicker as a twitter. So, I believe in wonder work communication, I believe in intimacy, so Michael@InQuicker.com. Shoot me a note. I’m really good about going through my email at separate pairs slow mos than 48 hours if not immediately. And I would love to hear from anybody that is looking for any help or interested 

In the last 20 years over 600 companies have relocated here. Perhaps it’s because we have no income tax, and our sales tax is just 7%. Heck, even our excise tax on net earnings is just 6.5%. That’s unheard of in most places!

Forbes recently chose Nashville has the eighth best city for growth in the US. Forbes also ranked Nashville as the fifth most affordable city in the US. And then there’s Rolling Stone magazine, who said that we have the best music scene in the US.

Rock and Roll!

Nashville’s music industry has a $6.4 billion economic impact, resulting in 54,000 jobs in the music and related industries. It’s no surprise really, considering that we have: 124 performance venues; 79 live music houses; 49 performing arts halls; 52 showcases for the visual arts; and 120,000+ seats in entertainment space. Don’t even get me started on the 80 record labels, 130 music publishers, and the 190 recording studios!

The Silicon Valley of the Health Care Industry

What people don’t realize is that Nashville is also known as the Silicon Valley of the Health Care Industry. 250 health care companies have Nashville operations, which results in 210,000 local jobs. 56 health care headquarters are based in Nashville, which generates 400,000 jobs and $62 billion in worldwide revenue! Not a bad place to launch a health care startup, eh?

Other big industries in Nashville include: Corporate Operations & Financial Services; Advanced Manufacturing; Tourism and Hospitality; Financial Services; and Supply Chain Management.

Among the best cities for college grads

The 111,379 college students in our 18 universities know that Nashville is the perfect place to stay and launch their businesses after college. 234,322 alumni of our higher education institutions live and work in the Nashville region. Livability magazine included Nashville in their top 10 list of best cities for college graduates.

The cost of living in Nashville is amazing too. It’s less than Austin, Charlotte, New York, and Raleigh (just to name a few cities). 

Boom!

Forbes recently listed Nashville as the number three boom town in the US. It is the perfect city to raise a family, entertain guests, and launch something incredible. We’re here to help you with that part. As ReadWriteWeb wrote, Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Nashville!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xzo_-A2GYg

Photo from Flickr by: Jim Nix / Nomadic Pursuits

• Founder and Partner at Evol8tion 
• Founded Crayon interactive marketing firm in 2006 and sold in 2009
• Wrote books: Flip the Funnel. Join the Conversation. Life after the 30-second spot.
• Started madisonandmountainview.com
• Evol8tion connects early stage startups with blue chip brands
• They believe the number one thing right now is to think about innovation holistically from a 30,000 foot overview
• Jaffe was inspired by fear and excitement as an entrepreneur
• “We live in extremely exciting times”
• Your mind is a terrible thing to waste, when you waste it in a cubicle at a corporation
• Jaffe was the eldest sibling with no male influence in his life
• He is reading Startup Nation, but find allocating time to dedicate to reading difficult 
• He uses Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to embrace the chaos and find new books and stories to read
• Find the time and discipline to read
• Dedicate between 8 AM – 9 AM to ONLY READ or ONLY CREATE CONTENT
• Jaffe recommends podcasts: Six Pixels of Separation, For Immediate Release, and the Beancast (so do I!)
• Wants to be remembered as an author, entrepreneur, and thought leader
• Contact Joseph Jaffee

Photo from Flickr by: C.C. Chapman

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I’m your host, Dave Delaney. And my guest today is founder and partner at Evol8tion, Mr. Joseph Jaffe. How are you doing Joe?

Joseph: I am all the better to hear your voice.

Dave: (Laughs) It’s wonderful to talk to you again. It’s been a long time.

Joseph: A disgrace…

Dave: Yeah. So tell me, tell me about Evol8tion. This is a pretty, pretty new agency, is it not?

Joseph: It absolutely is. I mean, you know I … It’s funny because when I was out on my own, before, before Crayon and I launched, I founded a little social media boutique called Crayon in 2006 and I… You know that.

Dave: Yeah. CC Chapman and Scott (Inaudible – 00:51), a lot of great people…

Joseph: Exactly, I mean, you know, we had our little Crayonville community and then I sold it in 2009. But before Crayon, I put together this road show called the Battle for the HeArt.

Dave: Hmmm….

Joseph: And the idea was you know the head and the heart, the left brain and the right brain, science and art. It was really about creativity and innovation in the online space, and why we wouldn’t really, you know there was… It just seemed like the whole digital and online advertising space was dominated by analytics and left brain thinkers and…

Dave: Uh-huh…

Joseph: – you know optimization and… which is important of course. But it’s like ways to… you know, ways to creativity with imagination.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: And I did it for 2 years and then in the third year, I actually went and registered a URL called Madison & Mountain View. And I thought you know kind of like, you know, Mission Impossible 3: Ghost Protocol like I was…

Dave: Yes.

Joseph: You know, Battle for the Heart 3: Madison & Mountain View…

Dave: Right.

Joseph: Because there was this thinking already back then which were like 2004, 2005 that the intersectional technology and creativity, or technology and marketing, technology and advertising was where the future was at or the next big growth area. And I didn’t execute it at all because I started Crayon. So I kind of fast forward to the fact that I went back out on my own last year but it was already a point where I was thinking about how to execute this Madison & Mountain View concept. And so Evol8tion was born. Evol8tion is an innovation agency and ultimately what we do in a nutshell is connect early stage startups to blue chip brands, to establish brands with a view towards partnering via mentoring in advisory relationships, pilot programs and even in ultimately investments which could be all the way from small investment, angel investment if you will, through to something that could potentially even encompass acquisition. And you know for brands, we’re bringing innovation to them with heavy innovation. We’re hoping accelerate their efforts. We believe that right now, the number one, you know, maybe even arguably more important than figuring out how to join the conversation or you know or how to get more likes on Facebook, that is more important to think about innovation holistically from a 30,000 foot but also from a practical and tactical standpoint. How are we changing the way that we do things because the old way or the incumbent way is not going to cut it especially when you think about the rate and the pace and the nature and the disruptive force of change and specifically technology enable change?

Dave: Uh-huh. This is relatively new. How new is the agency?

Joseph: Well, we launched officially on the 24^th of January, so a couple …

Dave: Okay

Joseph: Two, three weeks…. And the idea has been percolating. And I’m glad that this is the right show to be talking about this because …

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: Because you know the idea had been percolating for about a year. But for some reason I just couldn’t execute it and I just, I didn’t… You know it’s one of the… It’s almost like kind of going on diet where… and every day a week, you know, you put on more and more weight so…

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: It becomes even harder to go on a diet. So like, what is that first step and how do you take that first step and when do you kind of switch on and say I’m going to do it? I’m going to put it out there. I’m going to stick my neck out.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: And you know to me that day came when I said, you know I’m going to put some of my own money into this company, not expect other people to have to do it. Or how can I expect other people to do it if I’m not doing it myself? And so that kind of was the exhilarant event in the final quarter of last year.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: That said, I’m going to do this thing and figure it out and be prepared to fail but also be completely open to succeeding and hopefully being widely successful.

Dave: Yeah. You put your money where your mind is.

Joseph: Yeah, and with me, where my mouth is.

Dave: Yeah, that too. That’s great though. I mean, I think it is a really exciting time for startups. I mean Jumpstart Foundry who I do the podcast for, have their applications open right now for their program this summer and yeah, it’s definitely an exciting time. There are lots of applicants. So it’s… Lots of people are going out themselves and giving it a go. So I think, I think it’s really great. So as an early adopter and you are certainly that, early on with Crayon, did you have a mentor, or like who inspired you to kind of go out on your own and you know, do it yourself?

Joseph: You know it’s funny because when I went out on my own, off to being in the agency world, it was initially, I mean and I know you can identify with this in terms of going out on your own. It’s kind of… It’s pretty scary and pretty exciting when you kind of decide to be your own master and work for yourself. And you know, and realize that as a consultant or a freelancer you have no idea where the next dollar is coming from or you know it can, you could get 5 pieces of business in one month and then be completely quiet for a quarter.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: But I think you know once you realized… I mean one of the things through incredibly exciting times where any individual can really, I think, maximize the impact and their potential by just being their own boss and being entrepreneurial and saying you know my mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: And you waste that mind when you work for a corporation and you sit in a cubicle and you have to deal with all the B.S. and all the political infighting and the bureaucracy and the unnecessary meetings and the commuting. You know a lot of this, a lot of this inspiration was behind Crayonville. You know the idea of Crayonville as a place of virtual space, even in second life; the idea that CC could be in Boston and Scott could be in Boston and you know, and Jane was in Hoboken and Greg was in Long Island, then, and so on and so forth. And we could, you know we even experimented with Neville in London and Shoaling in Concord California.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: But this idea of not having to be in the same physical space to be (Inaudible -07:28) or impactful. But now if you think about it, I mean, people, you know, there’s an old saying no one ever said, no one ever said on their deathbed, I should have spent more time in the office.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: And I don’t agree with that. I think you should have said that. I mean, I think in your deathbed you should have said I found balance and I found, you know, a way to suit me, you know, spend as much time with my family as I could. In fact, by being a freelancer and working flexibly, you can spend more time with your family.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: You know you can make sure that you bold your calendar around your kids’ baseball game. So, so for me this idea of living entrepreneurially, I’ve grown into it. I’ve embraced it and I’ve become a big evangelist to encourage people to do it as well. From, in terms of looking around, I mean the original question is who influenced me, and no one really influenced me. A lot of the things I’ve done… I was kind of… You know, and this comes from actually, on a personal level being the oldest child in my family, and you know my dad passed away when I was very young. So I had no male influence. I had no parent. I had no older sibling saying this is how it’s done.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: Oh you’re I, you’re in 9^th grade or you’re in 7^th grade, you know, here are my term papers or… So I just kind of was… I’ve been used to, you know, as a young kid, just figuring it out by myself without precedence. So, you know when I wrote Life After The 30-Second Spot, almost every author that you’re aware of today….

Dave: Yeah

Joseph: You know, didn’t have a book when I had my book, so…

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: I was close to being out in front. You know, when people like you and I started podcasting, and CC and so on and so forth, (Inaudible – 09:14) we were right out there at the front. There wasn’t really 10 years to tell us how to do it.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: And so for me as an entrepreneur, I think Crayon was a natural progression of already being a consultant and a freelancer since 2002. And you know and now that said in terms of, if you asked me which entrepreneurs out there just inspire me on a day to day that I can’t get enough of, I couldn’t even be able to name you one person just because I’m not a referential person.

Dave: Uh-huh

Joseph: I just, I just kind of… I operate for the sample size of one.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: And, but you know, obviously there are people that I turn to and talk to you know, for advice. People like Rishad Tobaccowala that I always go to you know regularly every two to three months to touch base with him. And generally he’s like a good psychologist. He tells me nothing because he makes me do all the talking.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: To tell him what I already knew but he’d know it, you know.

Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah… You’ve had a couple of books or three books under your belt now. All amazing books, by the way. What books do you recommend entrepreneurs to pick out, like what’s a good book for an entrepreneur to pick out to be inspired or maybe, maybe a blog to subscribe to, if you can think of a couple…

Joseph: You see, you see, I’m just, I’m such, I’m such a bad person to ask that question because… Because it’s like, you know, and it’s, it’s hypocritical in the sense that I’ve written 3 books and I want people to read my books. But you know that’s the thing. I’m a writer. I’m not a reader.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: That’s (Inaudible – 10:48), by the way.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: You know, I read by writing, you know. So, so when, you know, last year I didn’t create a lot of content but one thing I’ve always encouraged people to do is when you create content, you are essentially reading. You’re learning by doing.

Dave: It’s true.

Joseph: You know by researching, by being part of the conversation, by being in that stream and in the flow. You know there are a whole bunch of books that I have, you know, on my Kindle to read. You know, recently I was recommended to read, I think it’s called… I bought it. I think it’s called Startup Nation.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: And it’s actually about the book of the whole Israeli startup scene and how that grew and mushroomed.

Dave: Uh-huh…

Joseph: I’m definitely trying to read more books now based on startups and how does, you know, and innovation, etcetera. In terms of, you know, in terms of blogs, I mean there are so many. There are just so many great blogs that are out there. I have found a chaotic existence which is by, through Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, and I just get random stuff.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: That always and to me it’s a serendipity, it’s a chaos that I’ve embraced which is I could miss so much but I’m also just randomly going to pick out stuff and I’m going to read it and I’m going to consume it. And by talking to people like I’m talking to you…

Dave: Uh-huh

Joseph: You tell me a book that I should read.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: You know it’s the wisdom of the crowds and it just works for me. So on one level I’m saying, I couldn’t even name one because, because I’m too busy in general and I’m too busy either creating or interacting with other people. But I feel that sometimes by just being like this, like you can sense this frenetic tone to me. I don’t know how many cups of coffee I’ve had this morning.

Dave: (Laughs)

Joseph: But like in that chaos comes an order and that order is you know it’s the same thing like you never… It’s like the hummingbird or the bee that never stops moving its wings.

Dave: Right.

Joseph: Or the boxer that never stops moving their feet.

Dave: Yes.

Joseph: By just that constant flow of movement keeps you fresh and keeps you current. But there is always value and merit in finding the time and the discipline to read in general.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: And to, you know, and to… I mean that’s just so I don’t have it but I’ll recommend it strongly to people especially people that are either starting out or needing to ramp up their knowledge curve

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: You know by saying, you know be disciplined. You know, and again I should take my own advice and maybe I will. But you know, say that between 8 and 9 am, I will read and I will only read. Or if you’re a content creator, between 8 and 9, I will create content. And I will, and I will find that discipline and I will make the time. You know and by the way, I should say that I’m, so you and I, we have this, this in common. I still consume a lot through podcasting. I listen to the Bing COSEWIC…

Dave: Yes.

Joseph: And I’m on it once a month

Dave: Love it. Love it…

Joseph: Yeah. I listen a lot still to my buddy Mitch, Mitch Joel on Six Pixels and I’m trying to get a bit of FIOR. Generally, the more I can, the more I travel and the more I run…

Dave: Yes.

Joseph: The more I listen to podcasts…

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: It’s my running thing.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: But I mean that’s another thing as well that I would say to people is take advantage of the down time because that’s when you can actually multitask and gain a lot of knowledge.

Dave: I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve also… I’ve subscribed to about 150 different podcasts. And all of the ones you just mentioned are great and I’ll leave notes to those in the show notes as well for everyone. Well, listen. I just, I want to say thank you sincerely for being a guest on Jumpstart. It’s been a pleasure.

Joseph: No. Listen it’s being, I mean I’ve learned, you know as I’ve said, I … One of the biggest moments for me personally was saying, you know what, I’m going to call myself an entrepreneur. And I’ve changed that in my bio now. I wanted to be known as not a social media expert, a.k.a. douche bag. Or I’m not a guru.

Dave: Yes.

Joseph: I want… I’m an author and I’m an entrepreneur. That’s what… That’s who I am. And maybe the phrase thought leader can come in too because thought leadership is the process of creating content, writing, speaking, and being focused on, you know, not a futurist but it’s kind of about two steps back in terms of saying I’m prepared to come up with a point of view and I have a perspective in terms of where the pack is or where the pack is going to be. And so … But embracing being an entrepreneur, to me, it’s something that every day I strive to earn the right to be called an entrepreneur.

Dave: Hmmm…

Joseph: And I’m, and you know, I think Crayon succeeded in spite of me, not because of me. I want now Evol8tion to succeed because of me.

Dave: Uh-huh.

Joseph: And because of (Inaudible – 15:46) and all our partners… And you know the one thing I’ll just leave with all the people listening is if you are a startup and you want us essentially to represent you, just you know, check out startupforbrands.com. Contact me, you know, we’ll aid you to our database and we’ll attempt to find your brand soul mate because I feel if I can do anything through this company…

Dave: Uh-huh…

Joseph: You know, 97% of startups never get fully funded. I want to help those startups get to the next level because there’s so many great ideas that never see the light of day.

Dave: Uh-huh.

Joseph: And again it’s (Inaudible – 16:26) that’s almost like staring at a mirror because here we are as a startup, attempting to do just that.

Dave: Yeah.

Joseph: And so that’s why we’re a startup helping other startups.

Dave: I love it. I love it. It’s a great model. Well I am encouraging you all to check that out. And Joe, thank you so much for being a guest. I’ll talk to you again soon, I’m sure.

Joseph: You’re very welcome and good luck to you with everything and I have no doubt our paths will keep on crossing.

Dave: I’m sure they will. I’m sure they will. Thank you.

Joseph: Cheers Dave.

Dave: Cheers.

Extro: (Music Playing) For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more, visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. (Music)

We liked the TechStars’ model best and became a charter member of the Techstars’ affiliate network. Today there is an overwhemling 120+ programs around the US. It seems like every mid-size town has set up a program (large cities now have 2 or 3).

All programs look the same

• They last about 3 months
• They provide some capital and education
• They have a big pitch event at the end

How can an entrepreneur distinguish the programs that will accelerate your business from the ones that will waste your time? It is actually quite easy – one just has to know where to look.

Mentors are the secret sauce!

The value creation in the accelerator model is accomplished by the Mentor group. The talent and diversity of this group combined with their level of engagement to the program will determine its value to entrepreneurs.

Before you apply – Take 15 minutes and examine the quality of the mentors that will be helping you through the program.

• Are these people that can advance your startup?
• Can you learn from them?
• Have they launched their own companies?
• Do they have the diverse and extensive experience that you will need?

If the mentor group looks like a bunch of service providers and salespeople with no hands-on talent – this is a bad sign. If there is no information regarding the mentor group – run away.

Please check out the Jumpstart Foundry Mentors… I’ll put our mentors up against any other accelerator. They’re incredible – and they provide the primary source of Jumpstart Foundry’s value.

Photo credit: unknown

It’s incredible what you see and learn every day. A few days ago, my 8-year old son Sanskrit got home a fundraiser form – Jump Rope for America’s Heart Association. He learned that a classmate had raised $85 and wanted to beat that. “Dad – let’s go…” and off we were to the neighborhood.

The first house we visited contributed $20, the next house $15, the next house a stack of coins and so on. After every house, I helped him refine his 30-second pitch and we were in business. What amazed me was, there was not a shred of apprehension in his mind of knocking on people’s doors; that thought just didn’t exist in his mind.

A dad in one house said “Come back later in the week, we’re watching a game.” My son came out, looked at his sheet and said “Hmmm… I need to make a note of this house so I can come back tomorrow.” That was the best!

Pitch like an 8 year old

If 8-year olds aren’t afraid, why then are entrepreneurs – some of us with years of experience, an engineering or masters degree, and a Rolodex of the most influential folks around – do we hesitate at the thought of making a pitch?

Get $15,000, three mentors, and space and coffee at the Entrepreneur Center. Meet angels & VCs in the hallway. Take this opportunity to have your business plan shredded to pieces and recreate it into a beautiful real company in three months. And then, raise money on Investor Day.

Apply here or talk to one of our mentors. Come pitch to Jumpstart Foundry. See if you can do better than an 8-year old. Alter your future!

Photo from Flickr by: sean dreilinger

Introducing Founder Speed Dating 

On March 15 you can sit at home and think about what could be, or you can join us for a fun evening of connecting! We think you’ll make the right decision.

Join us at the Entrepreneur Center from 5 – 7:30 pm for a rapid, speed dating style networking event. You’ll spend a few minutes with each person in attendance, and we hope you’ll come away with some new relationships and business opportunities.

RSVP now and let us know you’ll be there. Bring a friend too. We’ll have pizza and cold beverages to help fuel you as you meet many of Nashville’s brightest minds.

Let’s see how fast you are now. Ready? Set? Go! 

Icahn’s candid speech during the commencement ceremony covers the economy and corporate directors. Take seven minutes to watch it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcWg4897yIM

4 things every CEO needs to do

1. Stand up against the trends
2. Think for yourself
3. Be innovative
4. Slam the table

What should #5 be? 

SourceYourCity better connects reporters with expert sources for local news stories. As a member of the inaugural 2010 class of Jumpstart Foundry, SourceYourCity was chosen in the month of August. From there, we secured tech talent to build out our minimally viable product in preparation for a January 2011 beta launch in Nashville — the scariest and most exciting thing I’ve ever done.

A Year in Review

In this past year, I’ve spent time marketing not just a product but a concept—a new way of operating in what many consider to be an antiquated industry. In my humble opinion, it’s merely changing. What I can’t learn, absorb or process in my waking hours, I instead address in my sleep.

What most people don’t expect when they become an entrepreneur is that it NEVER stops. By starting a company, you agree to carry an 800 lb. gorilla on your back at all times, even when you’re not necessarily physically, mentally or emotionally prepared to do so.

The good news is: if entrepreneurship is in your blood, you will keep going. Once you fall down and pick yourself back up a lot, you get stronger. And while the pressure is never off, the weight somehow starts to lift. This is because you build a new source of strength that’s impossible to have from the start—perspective.

5 Things I’ve Learned

What I’ve learned from my first year as an entrepreneur under the mentorship of many talented individuals, including those in JumpStart Foundry:

1. Set Goals — There’s no set path in entrepreneurship. No single recipe for success. When you have multiple goals to achieve and multiple ways to achieve them, establish and rank your priorities. It sounds simple but failing to do so can fragment your attention and delay your progress.

2. Listen to Market — You’ll hear a lot about pivoting in the world of entrepreneurship. While pivoting is essential to the success of most startups, pivot wisely. Listen to the market, find out what it needs and when possible, test. This helps ensure that your pivot is a value-added decision rather than a wild-goose chase.

3. Take Advice from Others but Listen to Yourself —  As a new CEO, the amount of advice you receive can be overwhelming. Listen to it all but take only what you need. You know the market and concept better than anyone and as the CEO, it’s up to you to filter all recommendations to determine the best course of action.

4. Networking Never Ends — A strong network is critical to the success of a startup. No matter how busy you are, make time to meet with new mentors, peers and contacts relevant to your market or industry. With these connections, don’t just ask but also give when you can. 

5. You Get 10 Minutes — Good or bad, you get a limited amount of time to grieve a failure or celebrate a win. That’s because the highs and lows are endless and there’s a lot of work to be done.

A Year Ahead

In November, we launched in Austin, Texas as our second of many markets to come. All the while, we’ve been prepping for a Spring launch of SourceYourCity San Francisco — a decision that was made to test a major market and better position us for our next round of investment.

From one Jumpstart Foundry startup to all those considering this journey, be thoughtful in the decisions you make but above all, Go Be Amazing.

Listen to Neely’s interviewon the Jumpstart podcast.

Are you ready to apply to JSF 2012? Do it now.

The Jumpstart Podcast is back and we’re looking for more great guests. Please leave a comment with a suggestion of who you would like to hear interviewed on the show.

If you wish to be a guest, please contact dave at jumpstartfoundry.com. It’s going to be an amazing new season! 

You may recall that we spoke with some innovative entrepreneurs last year. Our guests included: 

• David Hooper
• Jason Moore
• Jacques Woodcock
• Kate O’Neill
• Scott Rouse
• Cliff McKinney
• Justin Davis
• Chris Ennis
• Seth Godin
• Dan Hammond
• Nicholas Holland
• Rajeev Gupta
• Neely Burks
• Drew Fassett
• Jackson Miller
• Robert Hendrick
• Chris Blanz
• Marcus Whitney
• Mark Montgomery
• Rex Hammock

Don’t miss your chance to be a guest on a future episode of Jumpstart, a podcast for entrepreneurs. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes now, so you never miss an episode. You can also subscribe here to get new episodes in your inbox.

If you don’t know Robert Scoble you should. He is not only an early adopter, he is among the very first digital content producers (he’s also a great guy!).

Watch this presentation where he speaks about his days with companies from Microsoft to RackSpace. Scoble shows examples of how quickly communication travels across the social web. He studies how people work and how ideas spread from person to person. He has much to teach any new business or established business about using social media. 

Robert Scoble Notes:

• Follow Scoble’s Twitter lists for insight from business innovaters and thought leaders.
• Learn that we must tell our stories and how to spread your our stories across the web.
• Determine who you want to reach and how to achieve your goals.
• If you’re trying to raise money, go to where the money is.
• Study who’s following who. Take someone out to lunch.
• Start with someone you know. Ask who else you should meet. Ask for introductions.
• How do you build networks and gain trust.
• Figure out how to get your company on 24 hours a day. Look at Rackspace and Zappos as examples.
• When you meet someone face to face, they become credible.
• Don’t get caught up in the tools. What’s the story you want to tell? Decide this and then use the tools.

Do you agree or disagree with Scoble’s thinking? Have you used his methods? What have your experiences been in business on the social web?

Photo from Flickr by: Kris Krug

Photo by: Ferf

Needless to say, applying to Jumpstart Foundry is a crucial part of getting accepted into the 2012 program. Early applicants are in an even better position, because of the perks that come along with it.

Jumpstart For A Day

On February 22, we will invite all of the 2012 applicants for Jumpstart Foundry to a special event called Jumpstart For A Day.

This event will let you see behind the scenes of Jumpstart Foundry. Get answers to all of your questions including: How is it possible to achieve 18 months of progress over the summer? What goes on? Will it work for my company? What are the drawbacks? If I know I want to attend JSF, how do I make my application stronger?

You’ll get to hear from our Managing Directors, Mentors and Alumni about what it takes to create a killer startup with JSF.  Most importantly, you’ll be able to meet everyone in a fun, casual atmosphere.

Don’t miss this important early opportunity. Apply right now and we’ll see you at Jumpstart For A Day soon. 

January of last year I had a vision. At first it was just a stream of ideas in my head. But then I started to believe in it. I believed enough to pack up everything I owned, move across the country, and start a company.

I think many entrepreneurs are believers by nature. We believe in ideas about things that don’t yet exist. We start companies to close the distance between what “is” and what our hyperactive imaginations tell us is possible.

The problem, I discovered, is that entrepreneurs are often wrong. Even when our vision has legs, we often lack the discipline, resources or sustained focus to hone our vision and convert it into reality.

Jumpstart Foundry helps solve this problem

My name is Steven Buhrman. I’m the CEO and founder of Wannado (formerly “Kahootzz”), a 2011 Jumpstart company. Wannado is a mobile platform that recommends local events based on your unique preferences. Think eHarmony but if you were somehow “dating your city”. Or Pandora but for all the everyday stuff you “wannado” but don’t always have time to search for. Makes sense, right?

Naturally, it makes perfect sense to me. I’ve been consumed by the idea since I saw the Promise Land back in January. But I also learned quickly that personal conviction and a few catchy metaphors aren’t enough to get a business off the ground. I needed some help.

Jumpstart helped my team and I accelerate through early stages of ideation, business model generation, prototyping, and customer development. The process was transformative, not only for our fledgling company, but also for me personally as a first time entrepreneur facing a trial-by-fire scenario.

Looking back on this 14 week experience, I’m extremely grateful. Because I see that so much of the progress we’ve made springs from the investment of others. Ironically, I’m perhaps most grateful for aspects of the program I most resisted early on. Like the bootcamp-style programming, and the early morning pitch sessions, which had a way of crushing my best efforts, perpetually demanding more from me.

This transformative (but often painful!) process began immediately. Day one, 7:00 a.m., my first pitch. Thinking of it now actually makes me cringe a little. What I lacked in substance, I compensated with high flying rhetoric. And the critique that followed was pretty damning: “I have no idea what he is talking about,” one person said. “Who are the customers? How does this make money? What’s the model?” another added. The conclusion in the room: I didn’t have a business – just a half-baked idea and a lot of unwarranted enthusiasm. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of rejection. My instinct was to defend myself. How could they not see the genius in what we were doing? After all, my team and our faithful interns all “got it”. My friends and family seemed to understand and “believe”. It took some time, but I eventually came to appreciate the scrutiny, as well as the singular purpose behind it: to make us stronger.

Sleep less, work harder…and smarter

In fact, there were a number of glaring weaknesses we needed to face. Our revenue model was overly complex and unrealistic. The structure and content of my pitch was convoluted and failed to address some of the obvious questions investors need answered. And the initial product design relied too heavily on technology we couldn’t yet support. The amount of work in front of us was unsettling. But it was ok. It just meant we needed to sleep less, work harder… and smarter.

Fortunately, the resources at our disposal were essentially inexhaustible. We were able to lean on the experience and counsel of our mentors, who stepped in and advised in critical areas of need. We also learned to take advantage of the collective genius available via the Jumpstart Rolodex, which gave us access to many of the region’s leading technologists, consultants and business leaders. This extraordinary support system allowed us to see every obstacle as surmountable. When challenges arose, we simply identified those who could help, zeroed-in on solutions, and carried on with our mission. What a gift.

Since graduating from Jumpstart, we’ve been fortunate to secure Series A financing and are now aggressively moving to launch a new and much improved product in the first quarter of 2012. We’ve still got a ways to go to. But our vision has deepened and clarified. Our team is stronger and more resolved. And I’m personally better prepared to lead my company in the coming months and years ahead.

Also of interest: Kahootzz eyes capital raise to fuel ‘opportunity engine’

Howard Schultz

This week we selected Harvard Business Review’s “We Had to Own the Mistakes”. An Interview with Howard Schultz by Adi Ignatius

 Schultz answers the following questions:

• He had a vision, built a successful company, and moved on. But then Starbucks ran into trouble, he had to return as CEO. How hard has it been to get things right?
• To what extent did the financial crisis add to the management crisis?
• How did he face serious competition during the emergence of social media?
• What was the low point after his return?
• How had things gone so wrong?
• Is there a clash between trying to be a premium destination with a premium-priced product and being a public company?
• Every company that begins small and “authentic” eventually finds it hard to retain that image as it expands. How can you combat that?
• How did he start to get things back on track? To what extent was it an advantage that he had been in the CEO chair before?

Please read (or listen) to the full interview with Howard Schultz, then leave a comment here. What did you learn? How can these lessons be applied to your startup?

Photo from Flickr by: University of Denver

To be a real entrepreneur, the words in the title need to be in a different order. But, since the first one is non-negotiable for those of us with families, it comes down to the other two. How then do you balance the other two? It took me a while to get over the fact that “I can do both” at the same time. It’s incredibly hard. Pesky things like a day job get in the way. But, you can work toward it…. and it takes a few years. Of course, you could also jump into cold water and alter your future, but very few do that. And we all admire those who do.

Urge is our startup. Will Clark, Tyson Tune and I started building our prototype in 2009. The idea for the product was – we all spend money on unnecessary purchases, be it coffee on way to work everyday, lunch in the cafeteria, buying pajamas at the supermarket when you really went in to buy a gallon of milk, petty items at your local electronics store or online; the possibilities to spend money are endless. What if there was a way to allow consumers to save this money at the point of decision; better yet provide an easy mechanism to transfer that money from a checking to savings accounts toward specific goals? These goals could be to pay down credit card debt, pay off that car or home loan, take that family vacation, buy a flat screen TV cash down or simply give to charity – just because…

Don’t make us do work for you – create a product… then come talk to us!

In March of 2010, we got seed funding from Townes Duncan, Vic Gatto and Jumpstart Foundry – a micro-fund in Nashville. We didn’t really want or need the money; we wanted the experience and connections of people who had both succeeded and failed as entrepreneurs – to help us think through our business idea and make it a reality. We talked to banks that were and are still are our potential customers. But, most of them said – “Don’t make us do work for you – create a product, figure out a way to transfer money across accounts then come talk to us!” So we spent a year trying to build or acquire this technology. In the meantime, we continued simplifying the product down to literally 3 taps on the iPhone.

Then in 2011, we had a breakthrough. We licensed technology from Buxfer Inc. (a Y Combinator company) for the banking backend. We continued to have conversations with banks to offer Urge to their customers. Dave Andrews, a superstar iPhone app developer in Nashville helped us with the development. Suddenly, we were in business. We launched Urge in private beta to friends and family. It’s an awesome experience creating jobs, even if fractional, and investing money back into the local economy.

Jumpstart Foundry and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center have been great partners and mentors for us.

Here are 5 things we learned from the Jumpstart Foundry experience

1. You can’t sell an idea. Create a working product quickly. Vision is great, but focus on execution. Line up customers.
2. Don’t do it for the money. Mentors will tell you that money is directly proportionate to your passion.
3. Put in your own money. Your chances of success go up tremendously when you have skin in the game. You also gain credibility with your sponsors and within your community.
4. Listen to suggestions of where your product could go, but never forget your original vision. If you do, you might come back 360 degrees. Stick to what you know best.
5. Don’t give up! Working on your startup will make you go through phases of excitement, depression, almost giving up, breakthrough, and excitement again. Be determined, talk to successful entrepreneurs & VCs. Some of them may become confidants. Develop and nurture relationships one at a time – one every week is good enough.

Today, we announce the worldwide launch of Urge on iTunes. Urge is available not only in the United States but also in the UK, Canada, Australia, India and many other countries. Urge is available as a free app for anyone who wants to save money by not making those impulse purchases. The $1.99 version (after a free 7-day trial) lets US based consumers at 300+ banks and credit unions transfer money from their checking to savings account. Urge doesn’t ask for your email, doesn’t store your banking credentials on our servers, and doesn’t ask for any other personal details. Try it – we think you’ll enjoy saving a little money every day. You can download Urge here.

So, where does Urge go from here? We have many products in our pipeline, but the one we’re most passionate about is helping charitable organizations become successful in their humanitarian missions. What if, during the lunch hour or on the way home, there was a way for consumers to give $5 to their charity with three taps on their smartphone – just because?! That’s what Urge is working on next.

Become an entrepreneur. Help the economy. Take a shot at changing the world.

Disclosure:
I am a founding member and investor in Jumpstart Foundry. My partner Will Clark pitched to JSF with full disclosure to everyone involved that I was also a cofounder of Urge. I did not participate in the voting that selected Urge as the first investment of JSF.

Additional Reading: Urge helps you stop nickel and diming yourself into the poorhouse

Richard Branson

This week we selected a 15 Small Business Lessons from Richard Branson by Anne Handley.

The 15 lessons encompass these topics:

1. big companies vs. small companies
2. the foundation of a brand
3. his inspiration in nature
4. seeing things through your customer’s eyes
5. positioning
6. hiring
7. listening to customers and employees
8. social media
9. having a sense of humor
10. failure
11. his fascination with space travel
12. the importance of company culture
13. partying with employees
14. success
15. which business is his favorite

Take a moment to read the interview and leave a comment here please. We’d love to know which point resonated with you most? How does it apply to you and your startup?

Photo from Flickr by: riz94107

Nashville, Tenn. (January 31, 2012) – Nashville-based tech business accelerator Jumpstart Foundry has opened its application process and is now accepting applications from entrepreneurs interested in participating in the JSF 2012 program.  The application form may be found on the JSF website:  http://jumpstartfoundry.com.

Competition for last year’s class was robust, as nearly 100 tech-oriented businesses from 25 different cities and 8 countries were considered.  “A year ago we were overwhelmed by the response to our call for applicants,” said Marcus Whitney, chief technology officer for Moontoast and one of Jumpstart Foundry’s managing directors.  “Given the program’s established track record of success for our graduates, I expect this year to be bigger.” 

The JSF 2011 program accelerated the growth of six startups and built on the overall Jumpstart Foundry track record of success.  Like other accelerators around the country, JSF measures its success based on the number of graduates that are able to raise capital or boot-strap operations without additional capital. Over the two first years of the program, JSF has achieved a very strong 62% success rate.  Eight alumni have raised follow-on capital and are building operations.  These results combined with our multiple years of experience, deep mentor pool and affiliation with TechStars position Jumpstart Foundry as one of the best accelerators in the country. 

Jumpstart Foundry has just launched an Alumni section of its website.  Please go check it out at http://jumpstartfoundry.com/the-alumni/            “I am pleased with the quality of JSF program graduates.  We have proven that the Jumpstart program can help entrepreneurs achieve 18 months of progress over one intense summer experience” said Vic Gatto, Partner for Solidus Company and another of JSF’s managing directors.  “JSF has a strong program in place.  However, we are always learning and adopting other best practices for ourselves.  Expect us to announce a few surprise changes before May.”

#  #  #

 About Jumpstart Foundry

Jumpstart Foundry (JSF) accelerates the growth of fledgling tech-oriented businesses.  Started in 2010, JSF is a formal, mentor-driven 14-week business acceleration program held over the summer months – with the goal of launching successful companies, prime for funding, at an Investor Day in late August.  

Those startup companies – keying on the areas of healthcare IT, data systems and social engagement tools – will derive resources and guidance from a hand-selected group of mentors who bring a wealth of experience from a variety of fields.   Jumpstart Foundry also enjoys key partnerships with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and the TechStars Affiliate Network.

For more information, please visit http://jumpstartfoundry.com. Download Press Release (PDF). 

Contact: Vic Gatto  vic AT jumpstartfoundry DOT com or Tel: (615) 576-0573.

Jumpstart Foundry will prepare you for war. No, we don’t fire live ammo and haven’t anyone killed (yet). But answering the call to action to build an important product, disrupting an entire industry and beating down competitors, feels a lot like war. This is why JSF runs an intense, competitive and fast-paced program modeled after a Marine-style boot came.

Over the course of the 14 week JSF program, you will do the following ten things:

1. Pivot your business model multiple times (in the first week)
2. Work 15-18 hours per day – six days a week
3. Learn methodologies, strategies, tricks and shortcuts to help win battles
4. Get advice from 100+ Mentors who have been to war multiple times (having both won and lost)
5. Build your product and get customer feedback
6. Rebuild your product (lots)
7. Meet 25-30 other entrepreneurs from around the country preparing for their own wars
8. Craft a story to sell to angel or VC investors
9. Have a lot of fun, but not sleep much
10. Change your perspective on business and life

Are you planning to go to war with a start-up concept? Are you crazy enough to want to join the JSF Marines? We will teach you to kill with your hands and be a bad-ass entrepreneur for the rest of your life. APPLY NOW.

Too hard for you? That’s not a problem, we understand – not everyone is cut out to be a bad-ass entrepreneur… go back to watching reality TV. The world needs followers too.

• David Hooper is founder of musicmarketing.com
• MusicMarketing.com began as a music marketing site, but evolved into a syndicated radio show Music Business Radio (WRLT), print books, audio books, seminars, home study courses, and other content
• David loves getting into the minds of different audiences
• they look for the hungry customers and find the low hanging fruit
• got his first taste of working as an entrepreneur working gun shows with his grandfather at 12 or 13 years old
• thank god for Rambo!
• his grandfather provided him with anti-inspiration
• Seth Godin failed first. Hear his interview here.
• David loves reading biographies, recommends Paula Dean’s biography, It Ain’t All About the Cookin’.
• loves MindSet books (books), recommends As a Man Thinketh. Also, Think and Grow Rich.
• has traditional direct marketing business interests
• he loves the magazine and the online versions of Cosmopolitan, because it is attention getting and it builds curiosity – which sells products. Same applies to: Maxim, Shape, Ask Men, and the National Enquirer.
• a great book is Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins
• NSFW: Adult Video News is the most competitive marketing on the Internet
• ClickBank is a great source for innovation among affiliates and direct marketing
• the most effective form of marketing is word of mouth
• David shares his thoughts about the future of marketing
• Contact David at www.privatevictory.com
• you can’t get to where you want to go being who you are NOW. Being who you are NOW got you where you are NOW

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I’m your host, Dave Delaney. And my guest today is David Hooper, founder of MusicMarketing.com. Hey David, how are you?

David: Dave, I’m great. Thank you so much for having me today.

Dave: Thank you. I really appreciate the time. So tell us a little bit about MusicMarketing.com. What is it that you do?

David: Well Music Marketing is part of my company. I’m actually a marketing guy. And Music Marketing is something that I have because I used to be musician. And this is really the first kind of niche that I got into professionally. It just helped me sell more CDs, get more people with shows and make more money.

Dave: Sure.

David: I’m really just a general marketing guy and we work with all sorts of content, not just music. I’ve got a syndicated radio show that I own. It’s called Music Business Radio you might have heard it locally, and nationally it’s on WRLT Lightning 100.

Dave: Yeah.

David: But we’re also into print books, you know that whole thing is going digitally. We’ve got audio books. We basically have content, seminars, home study courses. And people know me for music and that’s what I market myself as here but we’ve got everything from Alzheimer’s to Christian books and Christian content to, I mean who knows…

Dave: Yeah.

David: Little bitty niches and that’s what I love about my job is because it enables me to get into minds of different audiences and find out how they think. And I think that’s something that’s really special because it, I think it makes me a better person, you know, learning about different types of people.

Dave: These areas… are these things that you decide to focus on before or did like a client come along?

David: You know what, at this point I’d like to have skin in the skin and play with my own money because I find that it makes it a whole lot more exciting…

Dave: Uh-huh

David: – to me. Now it wasn’t always that way but basically what we do is we look for… Well I’ll just ask you a question, like if you wanted to sell… You had a hamburger stand, okay? And you wanted to sell a lot of hamburgers. What would be the number one thing that you would need?

Dave: Meat and stuff…

David: Hungry customers.

Dave: Hungry customers.

David: Hungry customers.

Dave: Okay.

David: One thing you would need because…

Dave: Yeah.

David: I’m a vegetarian actually but…

Dave: Yeah.

David: You know there’s not really good meat in McDonald’s hamburgers, right?

Dave: Yeah, right.

David: So, yeah, so we look for the hungry customers. I guess that’s the bottom line.

Dave: Sure.

David: And try to look, you know that’s a low-hanging fruit, like what would be the easiest to sell. So we just create a product and service to people. We position it so they want it even more. But just having that low- hanging fruit makes our odds to success a whole lot better.

Dave: It sounds like an amazing career. At what point in your career did you discover that, you know, you wanted to do it yourself?

David: Well, I got a first taste of being an entrepreneur working with my grandfather. He was… I come from a white trash, redneck family.

Dave: Right.

David: And he would go to gun shows and he’s selling like, you know, bullets or cartridges. I don’t even know, what the stuff was they were selling, you know. They’ve got all sorts, everything from automatic weapons and missile launchers. I don’t know if you have been to one but it’s a real experience.

Dave: (Laughs)

David: I would tag along with him and I would help him because he’s this old guy and I was you know maybe the 12, 13 years old. And they would see this young kid there, and once I was finished with him people would come up to me and these old guys and they have to pay. You know, I mean…

David: Yeah.

David: Okay. And just will go, you know, unload bullets and ammunition…

Dave: (Laughs)

David: Things that they would … the tips.

Dave: Right.

David: And you know I figured out pretty quick. You know the next time I was there, I showed up for the (Inaudible – 03:41) and I started making it a business. But when it really became what I would call like entrepreneurship, is at the very end I had, you know, a bunch of cash in my pocket and I was looking through all this stuff and I remember seeing a box of what I call Rambo knives. This is how old…

Dave: Right. I remember Rambo knives.

David: Yeah ’85. It looked like a big machete and had a hollowed out handle.

Dave: Sure.

David: – on the end and inside the hand you start a fire, neon thread…

Dave: Yeah.

David: – matches…. I don’t know. You know there’s something (Inaudible – 04:14) basically it’s a survivalist knife. And this guy had this cheap Japanese or Chinese knock offs of these things. You know it’s like 3 dollars or 5, 5 of them for $10.

Dave: Right.

David: I was like hmmm… Okay, you can’t really argue with economics, right? (Inaudible – 04:27) I could sell four of these to my buddies. And I was selling these things for like 10, 20 bucks each.

Dave: Nice. Nice…

David: I was making even better money than I was making and that’s kind of how it started. It just kind of gave me that taste.

Dave: So thank God for Rambo.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah… Thank God for that and just the testosterone of being a little boy and wanting to prove something with a big knife.

Dave: Right. Well we talked a little bit before the call about Seth Godin as quite an inspirational character. Who inspires you? I mean, obviously it sounds like your granddad certainly helped in some regard as well.

David: Well he gave me… in my start.

Dave: Right.

David: And he was a guy that inspired me in maybe in a negative way because I saw him work a job. He really wanted to be a teacher and that was really his thing. He was probably the first guy in my family to go to college but ended up having four kids. This is in the hills of East Tennessee and you can’t support 4 kids on a teacher’s salary.

Dave: Uh-huh….

David: He was a salesman and he did that to make money and he was good at it but it just wasn’t his dream. So you know, I’ve seen a lot of people that, you know, it can be a really long life…

Dave: Uh-huh…

David: – when you’re not living your dreams. So he did inspire me but it was kind of an, maybe an anti-inspiration.

Dave: Sure.

David: As far as successful people that I try to emulate more directly, yeah I like to read like a lot of biographies. You talk about Seth Godin and you know what a lot of people don’t know is, you know, Deth Godin is almost broke at one time. And Seth Godin has had a lot of, you know, things like every entrepreneur business owner would have. He’s had a lot of things that go wrong. And you have to get over these things and continue because there’s a lot coming against you when you’re an entrepreneur business owner. And you know financial troubles, people don’t understand. Your family thinks you’re crazy. Who knows? So I like to read biographies. One that I read recently that I was really inspired by, going back to our Redneck gun show roots… Paula Deen.

Dave: (Laughs) Oh yeah.

David: (Inaudible – 06:40) because I didn’t even know who Paula Deen was. Being in school one time, and okay, you know who Paula Deen is? I never watched television then I heard her story and I read the biography. Did you know she was 48 years old when she started?

Dave: No kidding.

David: She was, had agoraphobia. So she was afraid to leave the house. Home ridden, divorced, no skills except for she could cook. She knew how to make tasty dishes out of butter, cream and whatever else they’re throwing there, meat.

Dave: I thought that’s all she uses. (Laughs)

David: Yeah. Beans, shell and lettuce… And Paula Deen has 3 ingredients and she can make about 50 things with it. She’s got a really fascinating story.

Dave: Huh…

David: And it isn’t about the cooking. And I think it’s… that’s what it says. It’s not something about cooking.

Dave: I’d love to pick that up.

David: – autobiography.

Dave: Yeah.

David: And I really love stuff like that because I’m a big mind psych. I was always really into the mindset stuff. When I was 15 years old, the guy gave me a book called As a Man Thinketh. Yeah. If you haven’t read it, it’s really a short book. It will take you about 20 minutes to read it. It basically says you know, it’s from the Bible and you know basically if you think it, you can make it happen. (Inaudible – 07:53)

Dave: Sure. Yeah. And I will include links to everything we’re talking about in the show notes so if people are interested, they can definitely check that out. Are there blogs or websites that you read regularly?

David: Yeah, I’m traditionally, are in the traditional direct marketing business, I should say.

Dave: Uh-huh

David: So I’m really fascinated by any kind of like direct marketing type of websites. I really love, and this is going to sound silly, but I really love Cosmo. I like Cosmopolitan Online. I love the magazine, Cosmo.

Dave: Right.

David: It’s like AskMen. The reason I do is, it’s in… Like any of those when you’re going through the check out at a grocery store… It’s attention-getting and it builds curiosity. And I think those are things that really help sell a product. So I’ve subscribed to probably a dozen or more magazines for men and women – Maxon, Shape, National Inquirer, anything that builds curiosity has fascinated me. So I really spend a lot of time on those sites like looking at the articles. If you get to like AskMen, it’s like Seven Steps to Be a More Effective Date; Seven Reasons That She Dumped You; The One Seat You Should Never Sit In An Airplane. I love that kind of stuff and any of those books they try to sell you through direct mails that would be one of them. And I love any of that stuff. A great book is Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising and this is from back in the early 1900s. Claude was one of the guys that did that Schlitz ad for Schlitz Beer.

Dave: Uh-huh…

David: And this is what’s fascinating to me. I mean, he took a system of making beer which every other beer maker used. But he got in there and explained it to people and I think it’s like, you know what? It’s like the history of stamps. That’s why stamp collectors love stamps. It’s not just because for pretty picture. It’s the country. It’s the story behind it. It’s the hops and the malt and the purified water in Schlitz beer. It’s the… how the cattle was raised for the 100% Angus burger.

Dave: Right.

David: Wherever, you know… So it’s like the story behind it. And I think getting that kind of skill is really, really good. And so any kind of direct marketing stuff that explores the curiosity, you don’t get much better than Cosmo. They got guys and all they do is come up with the headlines for the covers. And that to me is fascinating and how they test it. And I would recommend that for any, any entrepreneur. You know, and on that, you know another great site… This is also very competitive, and also something that you’re trying to get attention from. I love AVN.com.

Dave: Uh-huh…

David: – which just as a word of warning, that stands for Adult Video News.com. It is an adult site but adults serve this pornography, I guess just for lack of a better term. That is the most competitive market on the internet.

Dave: It’s also one of the most innovative as well.

David: Absolutely. Well that’s exactly why I go to AVN.com. Those guys are pushing forward with video, with media tools. You know I had one of the first membership sites on the internet back in the mid ‘90s, about ’94, that was not pornography. And I got the idea from that. I actually had to use the pornography system. I was the only non-pornography guy getting the, it was this called net building…

Dave: Uh-huh

David: – at the time and used in the system because people didn’t realize it. So they’re pushing, everything that we do now, you know, the pornography guys are 10 years ahead. And if you want to see where things are going with technology, AVN.com is where to go. And again as a word of warning you may be offended by some of the stuff but it really is like a business publication. They also have a really great print magazine and if you get yourself a dirty domain and sign up as a business, you can get to that print publication for free.

Dave: Hmmm…

David: So I love that. Another one, ClickBank, which is where all the direct marketers went when they first got online… So ClickBank, if you wanted to see innovation and affiliates. You know, what these guys do to really get people fired up about selling the product for them is really great. They’ve got a lot of direct sales letters like this one page websites that you go to (Inaudible – 12:00) anything like that. I’m always clicking on ads when they talk about, hey, how’s life in New Jersey or how’s life in Nashville? That can actually geo-target it. So how’s life in Nashville? Just lost a million pounds on the Asi Ad Berry …

Dave: Right.

David: You know this little known trick will blast belly fat.

Dave: Right.

David: Oh really? You know, and I’m fascinated by that and how that works because it’s extremely competitive and if those ads are out there, people are making money for those sites, I want to know so I can make similar money with other sites.

Dave: What would you say is the most effective form of marketing?

David: The most effective form of marketing is going to be word of mouth.

Dave: Right.

David: And I think that it is really fascinating that we have these tools here and I think really the technology is coming forward so fast. We really haven’t really figured out how to maximize them. You could hear about like things like transparency.

Dave: Uh-huh

David: And (Inaudible – 12:57) you know we see some things that work and some things don’t, you know….

Dave: That’s true. It is early days to… as far…

David: It is early days

Dave: It really is.

David: I think one thing about social networking is… or social marketing, whatever you want to call it, is it’s really, really easy to kind of get caught up in it and think that it’s marketing. And I saw this a lot with Boot Bands that they thought just by like adding friends to Myspace was going to help them out. And I can tell you first hand that, you know, I’m just going back to the old school direct marketing every time because of that, that if I have a mailing list of a thousand people, especially if they are a thousand paying customers, I would rather have that than 10 or 20 times friends on Facebook or Myspace. I mean, I think that there’s so much noise out there that that is going to be… I mean, that’s out biggest hurdles, the distraction.

Dave: Uh-huh. That’s true.

David: So that’s why I think something like you know, AVN, if anybody has ever ended up accidentally of course on a porn site…

Dave: Just for the articles.

David: Just for the articles. You can see all the banners and pop ups and you want to talk about distraction. These guys are cutting through that noise and I think that’s going to be an important skill to have.

Dave: Yeah.

David: I’m not sure where this is going to go. I mean I think about things like radio and how radio I think is going to have to go what I call local-local.

Dave: Yes.

David: To survive broadcast radio. And we’ve got the social media on a worldwide scale but you know, we still like to get together locally.

Dave: Uh-huh…

David: And that’s the kind of stuff that I try to concentrate with. I’m like some very old school. What’s old is new again.

Dave: That’s true.

David: So you know, for example, if I were to send something through the mail, I mean, nobody’s sending mail anymore. So it makes my direct mail campaigns a whole lot easier. I’m going to call somebody. Nobody picked up the phone anymore. It makes it a whole lot easier.

Dave: Uh-huh.

David: So in some ways, you know, that’s going to be your best bet to cut through the noise, is doing what your grandmother would have done. No more grandma get a long distance call shush…shush…shush…

Dave: Yeah.

David: It’s long distance.

Dave: Right.

David: The whole house had to be quiet.

Dave: Sure.

David: So…

Dave: Yeah.

David: We may be going back to something similar like that. You know, it’s really easy to leave email messages in Facebook Invites and eBites and Twitter messages and…

Dave: Yeah

David: You know, we’ll see. It’s an exciting time though, no doubt. And it’s going really, really fast and I’m very thankful for the technology because I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if that stuff didn’t exist.

Dave: Yeah. I finish each show asking for 3 tips that you would offer any entrepreneur and you’ve given a lot of great tips. So if you want to rehash long or one said, a refresh in your mind, I would love to hear, or maybe a few tips…

David: Well, let me go back to the Paula Deen gun show tip which is I’m vegetarian. So Paula Deen and I have nothing in common as far as the food that we eat. I don’t own a gun. As a matter of fact, I would say that I’m anti-gun. I’m a very liberal guy and I don’t care for guns. But that’s not to say that you can’t learn from somebody…

Dave: Uh-huh

David: – that have a gun or that would eat six of butter, you know. So don’t… you know, I think that a lot of people hang out with people that are just like them. And I would encourage you, if you’re liberal and you’re a big Obama fan, you know, turn on Rush Limbaugh. Turn on Hannity. See what those guys are saying. If you like Hannity, and if you like Rush Limbaugh, and if you like Atlas Shrugged, you know turn out Obama and see what he has. Because I think hanging out with different kinds of people is really the best way to come up with stuff because the truth is we woke up with really good ideas and that you can take the most. So, you know, if you’re Christian go to the Unitarian Church. Unitarian… I don’t know. Go … go… Unitarians would go. Go with the Southern Baptist Church. So that would be one tip.

You know, secondly, I would say, be stupid. And what I mean by that is you know this is actually the reason I joined Jumpstart Foundry because I’m absolutely not the smartest guy in the brim. And I want to surround myself with really, really brilliant people. I mean, I get in to Jumpstart Foundry and I see these guys are talking off pivots and you know investments, and venture capital, VC. You know, I had to… what’s VC man? Oh it’s venture capital. Okay and what is that? What’s a hedge fund? And these guys are talking so over my head. I had no idea. But, you know, that’s the way that you get better. You hang around (Inaudible – 17:16) being a musician. When I was a guitar player, the way I got better with guitar was hanging out with the guys better than me.

Dave: Right.

David: Anybody, you know, high school guy in the little league, that’s just not just fair, is it? So to get better, you really need to be the dumbest guy in the room and this is sort of related to that is obviously get out of your comfort zone. You know building a business is very, very scary. You’re being pushed to the limit. You cannot get where you want to go, being who you are now, because being who you are now got you where you are now. So you know I think it’s really important to get out of your comfort zone. I’m planning a trip off to Toronto in about a month and one of the things that I’m going to do when I’m up there is they got something called CN Tower. CN Tower kind of looks like the stratosphere…

Dave: Uh-huh. I know. Actually, Toronto is my hometown.

David: Oh is it really?

Dave: It is.

David: Well CN Tower is… You can talk about this and see… I believe it’s the tallest manmade structure that’s not a building.

Dave: Yeah.

David: – With America or the world or something.

Dave: In the world definitely, it’s the second tallest free standing structure in the world

David: Okay.

Dave: Well and we shake our fist and we say… Yeah, it’s in Dubai. So I always shake my fist and go Dubai!

David: So, well, I think you can do this in Dubai. You can actually walk on the outside of CN Tower now.

Dave: You can.

David: You can Dave. I mean, you’re strapped in.

Dave: Yes.

David: But you can get up there and it’s… They use meters so I don’t know what meters is but that’s a thousand meters. Who knows? It’s really, really high up in there and look down in the glass floor.

Dave: Yes.

David: And you can actually walk outside of CN Tower. You got the strap on you.

Dave: Yeah.

David: But I mean, what better way to get out of your comfort zone? And I think that that really, it relates to business like this. You walk back in. You discover that you’re not going to die, that you’re still alive. And you say, wow. And when you’re doing something like the CN Tower, you’re really, really present. You’re just thinking wow, you know, I’m really focused. And I think those are two skills that are going to come in handy for business and that’s what you get from being outside your comfort zone. It was a lot for me to even be on this podcast Dave. I mean, I’m nervous. I’m nervous I’ll make a mistake and sound like an idiot.

Dave: No, no…

David: (Inaudible – 19:28)

Dave: You sound right.

David: Yeah, so thank you. And that’s how you get better though. You keep pushing, pushing yourself.

Dave: That’s great.

David: We have to do that CN Tower man. And you need to fly, fly back up there with me.

Dave: Oh I know. I’d love to. I’d love to.

David: Yeah. Maybe I have to hang on to that. We’ll do that together.

Dave: Yeah.

David: That’s the kind of stuff that I’m looking for. I love people that like to get out of their comfort zone. I find that to be… People think entrepreneurs are crazy. You know Richard Branson or Tony Robbins or some of these guys that are known for you know driving fast cars or flying around the world on a balloon or something. That’s the reason they do that and look for a Gotham.

Dave: Yeah, definitely. Well, listen, I want to thank you so much for taking the time tonight. Hey, where can people find you online?

David: You know what? MusicMarketing.com is a site that I’ve just put up for musicians. But if you want to just cut up my inside thoughts on what I call the “Inner Game” of Entrepreneurship, I’ve set up a blog and I just, it probably has 30 people who read it. It’s called privatevictory.com.

Dave: Great!

David: So Private Victory just kind of has my thoughts on just all these mindset stuff because this stuff fascinates me. I read books on it all the time and I think that’s really the key. It’s not necessarily knowledge. It’s just belief that you’re able to make it happen.

Dave: Well, I’m going to include all the links in the show notes. So for anybody listening who’s interested, definitely reach out to David and check out that blog and check out MusicMarketing.com. Listen, thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

David: Dave, it’s awesome. Thank you for the opportunity.

Dave: Thanks. Have a good night.

Extro: (Music Playing) For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more, visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. (Music)

Guest post by Nicholas Holland.

I made a mistake. And while I’m not sure what “an honest” mistake actually is, I can tell you that this mistake was shameful and I hope to avoid making it again. Simply put, I got lazy. Let me further explain…

I’m one of the original founders of the JumpStart Foundry program and I’m currently a mentor for RentStuff. Over the summer, I pulled my weight as a mentor and worked hard for the RentStuff team. As a result, they gave me the honor of introducing them on the official pitch day. To prepare, Michael Burcham (president of Entrepreneur Center) asked that every mentor come to the ‘Practice Pitch’ session so they could receive constructive feedback.

Here is where I made my mistake

Instead of preparing my speaking points and practicing my delivery, I whipped out a few ideas off the cuff and delivered them from memory the day of the practice pitch. After my delivery, I sat down and felt pretty good about my performance. In fact, I distinctly remember looking around the room and feeling smug that I was one of a few mentors that even bothered to show up. As the RentStuff pitch came to a close, I switched to checking my email/twitter/facebook while I patiently waited for the panelist to deliver their constructive criticism to the young entrepreneurs.

Imagine my surprise when the first judge said, “I actually have more feedback for Nicholas than I do for the RentStuff team. Nicholas, that was a terrible introduction that droned on for way too long and told me practically nothing. Your delivery was awful, full of ‘umms’, and you had your hands in your pocket. I strongly encourage you to prepare your intro and practice before pitch day.”

I was speechless

I’ve been a CEO for the past 9 years and I haven’t had anyone talk to me this way in a loooooong time. However, I was speechless because I knew at my core that she was right. I broke a cardinal rule – I was lazy and tried to wing it. But the shameful part is that my actions could have had a negative impact on my team – entrepreneurs that have poured every ounce of their souls into preparing for pitch day. Thank the stars for the structure of the JumpStart program – I needed a wake up call.

For me, the biggest take away from this situation is that age and success are not a substitute for hard work and preparation. In fact, I shared my thoughts with Michael Burcham (who is far and away more successful than myself) and he shared that less than a week earlier he stayed up late into the night preparing for a speech the next day, practicing in front of a mirror. The scarier part for me is that I’ve seen this characteristic in myself in the past – but I’ve always thought my ‘awesomeness’ is what allowed me to wing it. Now I realize that I wasn’t awesome – I was lazy… the only difference was that I didn’t have a judge giving me feedback.

I hope future Mentors will learn from my lesson. If you were barely involved in your team’s success, you were lazy and ill prepared for this summer. If you didn’t come to the pitch day and expected to wing it, you were jeopardizing the future of the very people you agreed to help.

Bottom line: There is no substitute for hard work and preparation, regardless of your age/experience/success.

Hear more from Nicholas Holland in episode 10 of Jumpstart. Listen Now.

Sign up to our email newsletter. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to announce new mentor and startup opportunities.

• Jason Moore is Founder and CEO Stratasan
• Stratasan provides advanced data analytics around healthcare and other market data such as demographics and psychographics
• had their soft launch in Fall 2010, began bringing on customers in Jan 2011
• brought Series A funding in May
• Jason featured recently in the Nashville Business Journal: Forty Under 40
• he started his first company 11 years ago with 3 friends called bigWebApps
• at age 24 he quit his job, bought a car, loaded it up and moved to Atlanta to launch bigWebApps with a few friends
• bigWebApps was completely bootstrapped
• Jason is inspired by local entrepreneurs, people who are willing to take advice and stick to their guns
• people like StudioNow‘s Dave Mason, Adam Solesby and David Corts
• people who are willing to give it a try inspire Jason
• Jason reads to Chris Dixon and Mark Suster
• he also enjoys the This Week In series
• Contact Jason on Twitter @jasonRmoore and like Stratasan on Facebook
• you can also follow CTO Brian Dailey and Tod Fetherling head of business development
• Stratasan is hiring!

Jason’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Identify and find mentors
2. Listen to your mentors’ advice
3. Make the decisions yourself

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Jason Moore, Founder and CEO of Stratasan. Hey Jason, how are you doing?

Jason: Hey Dave, thanks for having me today.

Dave: Thanks for coming I really appreciate it. Tell me a little bit about Stratasan, what is it that you do?

Jason: Stratasan provides advance data analytics around healthcare data and other market data such as demographics, psychographics, and being cloud base we can bring in various data sets to help people answer questions about a marketplace around healthcare. So in the end we provide cloud base applications on top of all that data. Basically remove the data processing work from our client base so that they can get back to making strategic decisions around their market instead of haggling with the data.

Dave: That’s smart. How long have you been doing it now?

Jason: We sought to launch the company in fall of 2010. Then we started bringing on customers that’s kind of like one of those quotation mark customers.

Dave: Air quotes.

Jason: Yeah air quote customers. In the early part of January of 2011, those weren’t really our target customers as far as our long term target customers but they had a need and some money and we had need for their money.

Dave: Right.

Jason: So we took them on. Really we brought on a series, a round of funding in May and that’s really when we really ramped up and launched the company then.

Dave: And I also noticed recently just last Friday that the Nashville Business Journal listed you as one of the Forty Under 40 people?

Jason: Yes, they did.

Dave: Pretty cool.

Jason: Yeah that’s very cool. It’s always cool to see yourself in print and I kind of made some good ball answers but that’s kind of my personality. So it’s always interesting to see people’s reactions to those.

Dave: That’s funny. At what point in your career did you recognized the entrepreneurial bug biting you and that you want to do something yourself?

Jason: That was quite awhile ago. I’m still under 40 as the article alludes to. But I started my first company about 11 years ago. Myself and two friends, one friend that I’ve known since elementary school and the other guy we actually met in college. We started a company called bigWebApps which was a web based software company well before the term software is a service and cloud were around. But we were a fully hosted nothing to install Application Company in 2000. We grew that business for over 10 years. We ended up having customers mainly government and K12 school districts. We have customers in 42 of the states and 13 countries.

Dave: Wow.

Jason: And so we grew the company over 10 years granted. It was completely boot strapped which has its advantages and disadvantages.

Dave: Yeah.

Jason: But back then Open Source wasn’t readily available to have a full blown company running on. So we were a full .net shop and I’m one of the I think few people around now that Stratasan is A full Open Source Shop but I’m a big fan of .NET. I think DOT 2 DOT net framework is a very solid platform and a good platform. It’s just difficult for small businesses to get started on doing the price.

Dave: Right and you were saying that your childhood friend, the two of you decided to start bigWebApps. What brought that on? Was it one day you guys are saying, “Hey, let’s start our own company!”?

Jason: Kind of, we went to the University of Georgia together and there was a third person it was three of us. And the third person John had actually started the company doing tech support and had just happen chance started bringing on some K12 school districts. In the end he just found that it was very difficult to run a company because they were like faxing orders in. My printer is broken and they send it over a fax or phone calls.

Dave: Right.

Jason: So he wrote the original application which ended up being the anchor application for bigWebApps. He probably wrote that in I don’t know over the course of three nights. Yeah he wrote the baseline of it. So when I saw that as soon as they introduced that tool that he was just using out of necessity, some of the schools districts were asking if they could use it for other things. So I was living in Cincinnati at that time, they called and I had said a few times that if we started the company together I would move back to Atlanta. And so they sent me the business plan which consisted of about a one-paragraph email and at the age of 24-25 that sounded like a very well thought out plan and I quit my job. I had a company car at that time so I did not own a vehicle. I bought a car in the parking lot of a Wall Mart and literally loaded it up and I was moving to Atlanta the next day after I’d given about 3-weeks noticed to my current employer.

Dave: Right.

Jason: Bought a car in the parking and literally the next day had it loaded up for and I was driving to Atlanta with no place to live and we were going to start a company.

Dave: That’s amazing. Wow. Who inspires you?

Jason: There are a lot of inspirations in the world and I’m a family man. Our Christian faith is at the center of our life as well. From a business standpoint I’m very inspired by local entrepreneurs, people that are just willing to take advice but also stick to their guns. There are a lot of great local entrepreneurs. I think the guys at StudioNow.

Dave: Yeah.

Jason: Dave Mason, Adam Solesby, David Corts is a personal friend of mine. And those guys are inspirational in the sense that there weren’t a whole lot of people in town that really got what they were doing.

Dave: Right.

Jason: But they knew they were on to something, they stuck through it and ended up working out very well for them.

Dave: Yeah, AOL understood.

Jason: AOL understood, yeah.

Dave: Exactly.

Jason: And you know what? And the thing is I think it’s not just selling the company because they’re still all with AOL but they saw the vision of what StudioNow is wanting to do and AOL has put a lot of responsibility on them because they were doing something great. Bu it doesn’t have to be something huge like that, people that are just willing to give it a try instead of just continuing to complain about their job and complain that their boss doesn’t know what they’re doing. Anybody that’s willing to take that step up is really an inspiration to me.

Dave: Are there blogs or websites that you subscribe to or read often?

Jason: The number one blog that I read is Chris Dixon’s c.dixon.org is his blog. That to me for an entrepreneur that’s really wanting to build a scalable business is probably the number one blog to read.

Dave: That’s great.

Jason: All the others I mean the Usual Suspects, Mark Suster’s is fantastic. Really DisWeekend is one of those things that’s not talk about very much but no matter what your interest is DisWeekend has probably something that fits it.

Dave: Right.

Jason: Whether it’d be comic books or startups or wine or craft beer. DisWeekend probably has something that you can check out.

Dave: Yeah that’ a good tip. I should add that I’ll include links in the show notes for anybody listening who’s travelling or whatever. They can visit the blog and find the show notes there. What about three tips? What would you recommend on any entrepreneur?

Dave: The number one, I beat this germ quite a bit, find mentors. That is by far the thing that changed my entrepreneur path more than really anything. In over 10 years you learn a lot of running boot strap companies. You learn a lot of good things. You learn a lot of bad things, bad habits. But having mentors, I didn’t do this early on by the way and when I opened up to mentors it really did changed who I was as an entrepreneur.

So I think identifying and finding mentors is really probably my number one piece of advice to any entrepreneur out there and really to anyone. I mean whether your mentor is going to be business focus or family focus or faith focus, it doesn’t matter. Find somebody out there. And the thing about what I found about mentors, I’ve been very fortunate, very blessed with great mentors but I think that really people out there that have the experience of working together, one, they’ll probably not regard themselves as somebody that’s qualified to be a mentor. I don’t really know anything about that but then you get them talking and they’ve forgotten everything that you want to learn so that it gets them excited to be a mentor for someone. To see a younger, hungry, person that’s kind of going out there and it’s always fun when you’re in the mentor session or just having a conversation with the mentor and you’re talking about something and they’ve got one of those little smirks like, “I’m not going to correct you now but you’re going to come back to me in a week, a month, a year, a decade, whatever it is, and come back and you say, “ You know that was a really bad idea.” But a good mentor is not going to make you make a different decision.

Dave: That’s true.

Jason: They’re going to guide you and give you their opinion. I think that’s kind of one A or let’s call it two since you asked for three. I mean probably from my list here. When you have a mentor or mentors and I do recommend mentors, find a mentor, get their advice, listen to their advice but the important thing is to make your own decision in the end. A mentor is not someone that’s a manager or someone that should be telling you what to do. They are a source for guiding information. How did you it? What did you find? What do you think of this? Get all of the opinions you can but your job as an entrepreneur, let’s call it the CEO or the Founder of whoever you are, your job is to basically take in all of that information and make it your own. That means to make your own decision from the inputs you’re getting.

Dave: Those are good tips. Where can folks find you if they want to get in touch?

Jason: Yeah find me on the normal channels on Twitter I’m Jason R. Moore, and Moore with two O’s. I’m on Facebook, look me up Stratasan has a brand new launched Facebook page. We’re still trying to figure out how to exactly use that in healthcare IT world. Maybe people out there can like that page and kind of give us some direction.

Dave: Yeah.

Jason: We’re also on Twitter as a company @stratasan. And that’s S-T-R-A-T-A-S-A-N. You can also follow if you’re on the tech side our PTO hit keys of developers developer as I like to describe him. But his name is Bryan Dailey.

Dave: Yup.

Jason: And you can find him on Twitter @bryan_dailey and Dailey is with an E, D-A-I-LE-Y.

Dave: Yup.

Jason: Then we also have Tod Federling on the business development side. He also does a ton in technology so @jaytodwork. And Tod is with one D. So we have all kinds of little stipulations on our names.

Dave: They’ll all be in the show notes. So that’s the good thing. Anybody can click on through so they’ll find it.

Jason: So that’s the core team right now is Tod, Bryan, myself and we actually are hiring three positions. Two of them already accepted offers so they’ll be starting on the next couple of weeks. And then the third is identified, we’re just waiting on some things to work out. Yeah so we are hiring data analysts or written healthcare world technology we’re on a fike on jingo framework. So we’re always looking for great talent of people to add up the team.

Dave: Good stuff. Well Jason, I really appreciate your time today.

Jason: All right Dave. I appreciate you having us on and all the Jumpstart companies out there I’ve been watching your progress and all I can say is I’m glad I was in the class before you guys at Entrepreneur Center because I wasn’t a Jumpstart company but at the Entrepreneur Center because I’m not sure if they’d let me in.

Dave: I don’t know about that. All right man, well thank you very much. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Jason: All right Dave. Thanks man.

Dave: Thanks bye.

[Music playing]

Moderator: For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. 

Best of luck to everyone. Have a great time today.

Jumpstart Episode 18: Jacques Woodcock

• Jacques is Founder and President of theKit
• theKit is a fully hosted CMS platform built around affordability, usability and customer service
• WordPress and Drupal
• theKit was in development for 2 years
• Nov 2010 went launched publicly by sponsoring Nashcocktail
• Jacques is fascinated with controlling his own destiny
• he is motivated by finding solutions for people
• Jacques spent two years at his prior job where he was not recognized for his accomplishments, so he spent one year preparing to work for himself
• he is inspired by Nashville’s technology community which is young and vibrant
• inspired by Steve Jobs
• get into a group of like-minded individuals locally to keep you excited every day
• Kate O’Neill interview
• Nashville’s Entrepreneur Center is the place to be
• Jacques subscribes to 99%, 37 Signals, Slashdot and Apple
• contact Jacques at @jacques_thekit or @thekitportal on Twitter. Or visit www.kitportal.com.

Jacques’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Wait until you have enough experience and contacts in your industry before going solo.
2. Understand the venture capital industry
3. Remember if it doesn’t ship it won’t make any money

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Jack Woodcock, Founder and President of theKit. Hi Jack, welcome to Jumpstart. How are you?

Jack: Hi Dave. I’m doing well thanks.

Dave: Thanks for joining me.

Jack: Yeah my pleasure. Thanks for having me on here.

Dave: So tell us about theKit. What is it that you guys do?

Jack: Well theKit is a fully hosted CMS Platform built around affordability, usability, and customer service. And what we do is we really target companies who have a need greater than WordPress, something like Drupal and anything like that but don’t have the budget to pay fulltime staff to support it. So our system we have 15 different specific tools to manage website contents and then we throw in customer support with any of our packages.

Dave: That’s great.

Jack: Yeah we really look at ourselves as a partner for these organizations, really trying to be there back in technical team as they have issues with their website or they’re looking to grow their website. We can easily direct them into using what tools to do what and creatively find solutions for them.

Dave: Yeah I know that WordPress is the popular blogging stuff but Drupal has quickly become quite popular as well. Also because as an alternative because of all the CMS functionality.

Jack: Yeah Drupal is a really robust and great solution especially if you have a technical background, if you’re a programmer.

Dave: Right.

Jack: But a lot of the organizations we work with they don’t have anybody technical on stuff. They don’t have anybody who’s ever look in the line of code but they need something that robust. And so that’s where we come in.

Dave: How long have you been around now?

Jack: Well theKit has been secretly in development for about two years now. It’s a pretty robust system that we’ve been working on.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: I think we became public knowledge about November of 2010. That’s when we went public and I think we did that sponsoring the Nash Cocktail.

Dave: Right.

Jack: Was our first stay here.

Dave: Yeah that’s great.

Jack: And so I guess we’ve almost been a year now out in the public. So our main focus is really been on getting awareness out there that we’re even here and what we do and what makes us different.

Dave: Right. And at what point in your career did you realized the entrepreneurial bug had bitten you?

Jack: The entrepreneurial bug really never has bit me per se I would say. I mean I’m really fascinated in and of course like all Americans are fascinated with like controlling my own destiny.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: But what motivates me more than anything is solving solutions for people. The moment that I realized that I needed to be an entrepreneur was with my last job I worked for, the last company I worked for. I spent two years there. I was there Director of web technologies or whatever, pretty much the Web Division. And when I came on they’ve been doing small web stuff and they were doing about 10% business in the web technologies.

And I spent that first year working about 70-80 hours, 3 different jobs really, I was doing the web development, I was doing the PHP programming, the multi-media programming, the product management. I was really doing a number of jobs at one time which working from small agency I’m quite used to. But by the time I was done that first I was also doing business development. I brought them in over $100,000 business. I had run a couple of jobs. I increased the capacity of the Web Department, educated everybody. I think in that first year we got up somewhere around 45-50% of their income was coming from the web and I got my bonus check. And I looked at it and it wasn’t even enough to cover 5% like business development fee for bringing a business.

Dave: Right.

Jack: [Inaudible – 00:04:20].

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: I looked to that and I was like, “Well maybe I should work for myself.” I spent the second year preparing to work for myself.

Dave: Good for you.

Jack: Yeah so that’s kind of how – I guess I kind of got thrown into it out of just common sense.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: You’re working that hard, you really want a bigger piece of the pie.

Dave: And who inspires you?

Jack: Man, everybody really inspires me, this community that we’re in a fantastic community. It just feels young and vibrant even though Nashville has been around for a long time but like the players in it are really starting to change. I’ve been in Nashville for about 12 years.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: And I’ve worked in a number of different industries. I’ve seen the healthcare. I’ve seen the music and what not. But this new technology industry that’s popping up here is super exciting.

Dave: It is yeah.

Jack: The players they’re coming out, the things they are doing, the EC, the Entrepreneur Center, all these things are just really encouraging for anybody who has ideas.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: It’s really supportive. And then really it’s just this community in general. Of course you can layout – I’m always inspired by people like Steve Jobs of course and stuff. But where it really comes to being an entrepreneur I think it’s really easier to get into a group of likeminded individuals locally to keep you excited every day.

Dave: It’s funny. I interviewed Kate O’Neill previously and she had mentioned the same thing. She actually said that Nashville’s tech community is who inspires her as well. So that’s great to hear.

Jack: Yeah we’re such in an exciting point. You wonder when this thing grows when it actually gets recognized we have our homeruns like 10 homeruns on our belt.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: Are we going to be the same startup community?

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: I’m just dying to get there to find out. I would hope so.

Dave: Yeah me too. Well the stuff coming out of Jumpstart Foundry is pretty exciting. She almost plug their of course but it is really an exciting place to be. Actually anything at the Entrepreneur’s Center that’s happening there as you know is exciting.

Jack: Definitely and I actually was down there was it Wednesday or Thursday and I took a walk around to see the new crop of businesses out there was some really exciting things going on for sure.

Dave: Definitely. Hey are there any blogs or websites that you read regularly?

Jack: Blogs and websites regularly. I don’t do a lot of motivational websites and stuff like that. 99 Percent is pretty awesome.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: It gives you practical knowledge on how to take a deep philosophical question and answer it.

Dave: Interesting.

Jack: Then of course 37signals, I only come up with 32 signals.

Dave: 5 short.

Jack: Yeah. It’s my math ability I guess. 37signals is always fun because they’re the really one company out there saying, “Screw it.” to all like traditional business concepts.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: Which is at times a little too much, they do it a little too much. But it’s fun because it challenges your perspective on what’s a typical business is. And then other than that I do a lot of industry news websites. What going on in the industry, deep level technical stuff/dot.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: Because I technically have to geek I guess. I do a lot of programming and a lot of technical solutions and stuff like that. So I guess I got to satisfy that end.

Dave: For sure.

Jack: And of course being an Apple fan boy I got to follow all the Apple thread which is exciting because more and more they get into patent cases because you’re getting expose to so many other industries right now because everybody is suing them or they’re suing somebody else.

Dave: Right. Yeah there’s a lot of that going on.

Jack: So fortunately being an Apple fan boy you get all the great news on what’s actually trending in the tech industry with Google and the patent issues and all that stuff which is quite funny. Microsoft coming out and being like, “Google said they didn’t want it.”

Dave: Right. Yeah.

Jack: Ops.

Dave: Ops. I usually end each show to ask for three tips that you would recommend on any entrepreneur?

Jack: Great well for me the three tips would be first if you’re trying to go solo and you’re already working in the industry, it heeds you to wait until you get enough practical experience in that industry to justify you going solo and along with that contacts for you to go solo. When I went solo I had already 10-19 years in the industry. I had a pocket or rolodex full of contacts that I could call.

Dave: Right.

Jack: My first year I made well over what my salary was at my agency justifying the move. Especially if you’re a sole income person, it really deviates so much of that money pressure. That applies more for like a consultant thing. If you’re really going to do a startup it’s very important for you to understand the different avenue of your startup. So you really need to do some research on that. Having an idea is great and going out there and trying to raise money for that idea is great but you know there’s three different ways primary ways that you can raise money for that idea and which ones should you do win and all that stuff and how much should you expect to lose percentage ownage of your company. I mean it gets pretty deep and pretty personal. And if you go into it blindly, you’re going to get hurt. So that’s the second piece of advice is to understand the VC, the Venture Capital industry. And then the third is to remember that if it doesn’t shift it’s not going to make any money. So going back to Steve Job’s quote, “Shipping is success. You got to ship.”

Dave: Right.

Jack: So we spent two years in secret development of theKit and that is a tremendous amount of time for any startup. But we did it on purpose per se. We had clients lined up, we multiple clients on the systems since the beginning since we started development. So it made sense for us to do it that way. But if we were just in our garage trying to launch a business and we had no client lined up, we got to shift. You can’t spend two years waiting to launch a product and then hope that it’s still relevant.

Dave: Yeah that’s great advice. So where can people find you?

Jack: I’m on Twitter jack_thekits on Twitter.

Dave: Yeah.

Jack: I’m on Google Plus, Jack Woodcock on Google Plus. You can find me on LinkedIn. I don’t really do much there though. And then you can find theKit on Twitter @kitportal and you can find us online @kitportal.com.

Dave: Okay and I’ll show all the links that you’ve mentioned in the show notes. So if anybody wants to connect with you they can certainly hop on over the blog jumpstartpodcast.com and find those links there. Jack, thank you so much for today. It was a lot of fun.

Jack: My pleasure Dave, anytime.

Dave: Talk to you soon.

Jack: Bye.

[Music playing]

Moderator: For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. 

Jumpstart Foundry

Everyone wants to know “What does JSF do?” The answer both simple and complex… The basic facts are pretty simple: we provide $15K, an educational program and support from Mentors to help 6 teams launch their business in 90 days. However – the manner in which JSF combines these facts leads to very successful (albeit tired) entrepreneurs. I hope the following story is a useful framework to understanding how it works.

What JSF does… an allegory

On the first day of the program, 15 entrepreneurs and 6 business models are loaded onto a big boat and carried into the middle of the harbor. JSF gives a short pep talk and then dumps the entrepreneurs and models overboard. JSF then tells the entrepreneurs to swim home with their business model.

Does the business model float? Of course not… The entrepreneurs are inexperienced and have not built the business to be sea worthy. They showed up at JSF with big and bulky business models. Every one has lots of extra features that look cool, but add more weight than value. Some teams make progress; others do not, but by the end of the 1st day all six models sink to the bottom of the harbor.

The entrepreneurs are tired, wet and depressed. It has only been a few hours and they have loss the entire business while almost drowning themselves. JSF tells them to rebuild the business models – this time designed to be sea worthy. They will have 1 week and then (ready or not) they will be headed back to the water. Week 2 is better but still only one makes it home..…By the 4th week, all the teams have a model that floats.

Then in week 5, JSF introduces 60 experienced mentors to advise the teams as to how to make the models faster, better, more profitable etc. while still keeping them sea worthy. Much of the advice offered by the mentors conflicts with other advice. Therefore, the entrepreneurs must learn to make decisions with limited and contradictory information. Every Thursday, businesses are dropped in the water and teams begin to compete with one another.

By the end of the program, each team has built strong, sea worthy businesses. They are quick, nimble and look very different than the slow bulky models that rest at the bottom of the harbor. Everyone looks forward to testing their business on Thursday mornings and begin to look forward to taking the business out of the safe harbor into the open sea.

Don’t miss JSF Investor Day!

It’s been a long, challenging summer, but the JSF 2011 cohort has build great businesses and I’m proud of both the effort and the product.

Please make plans to attend the JSF Investor day (2PM on 8/25) to watch the businesses leave the safe harbor of the EC and head out to open water to conquer the world. Request an invitation at www.JSF-Party.com.

I will see you there – Vic

John wrote a wonderful debrief on his blog post entitled Top Ten Things I’ve Learned from Mentoring at Jumpstart Foundry.

So, was Jumpstart Foundry worth all the time and energy? With any project it’s good to do a debrief at the end and see what worked, what could be improved, what could be changed, etc. Here are the top ten items from my personal debrief.

READ MORE 

• Kate O’Neill is founder and CEO of metamarketer
• now in year 3, metamarketer uses their client’s marketing channel data to better understand who their customers are
• was mistakenly taken for social media and SEO experts. Kate made it her mission to have people better understand metamarketer as an analytical firm
• MO does not stand for Marketing Optimization, perhaps it needs an acronym.
• Kate started a non-profit when she was a teenager
• in 2009 she felt ready to start her own company with it’s own distinct identity
• had trouble separating her personal brand from metamarketer at first
• Kate was inspired by Nashville’s growing technology community
• moved to Nashville eight years ago to become a songwriter. Kate sees similarities in Nashville’s technology family with it’s music family. It’s about growing up together and seeing friends become successful.
• she enjoys watching her local peers doing it for themselves like: Marcus Whitney, Jason Moore and Jackson Miller.
• Google Reader is an essential part of Kate’s day
• Kate recommends listening to our podcast, check out the Seth Godin episode too.
• Connect with Kate: kate at metamarketer.dom @kateo @metamarketer

Kate’s 3 1 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Nobody needs another stuffy entrepreneur. We need more people with a sense of fun in the space. Go about entrepreneurship with a sense of fun!

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Kate O’Neill, Founder and CEO at [meta]marketer. Hi Kate, how are you doing?

Kate: Hey, Dave. I’m good. How are you?

Dave: I’m well. Thanks for joining me.

Kate: Thank you for having me.

Dave: So tell us a little bit about [meta]marketer. What is it that you guys do?

Kate: We’re in here 2 ½ – no actually I guess you say we’re in year 3, right? We’re 2 ½ years in.

Dave: Yeah.

Kate: And we sort of gone through a few mini pivots, mini transitions on how exactly I would answer that question. But I feel like where we have arrive now makes the most sense for the marketplace. And that is what we’re doing is using the data in our clients’ marketing channels to help them better understand who their customers are and do validation against those hypothesis about those customers. So they have a really confident sense of how to message and really connect with those customers. How to provide them a better experience on their website and then throughout their touch points with those customers? And then we’ll also be able to extrapolate that message out through our offline marketing channels and continue to validate them when they drive those customers online.

Dave: Interesting, so you sort of dig in deeper into the analytics of where people are coming from and who they are and that kind of thing?

Kate: Yeah exactly. We’ve been saying for a long time that we’re like a marketing analytics and optimization company but I think we just didn’t really have the full picture of what value that really provided to customers until just kind of iterating through that a few times and really coming to the realization that people don’t want analytics. They don’t want optimization. What they want is to be able to better understand their customers and be able to make more money from connecting with those customers more effectively.

Dave: Right and customer probably sometimes don’t understand even what SEO is even though what you’re providing them is sort of what they’re seeking but they don’t realize it yet. So by selling it as an SEO thing is probably confusing, maybe a little bit.

Kate: That’s true and we never try to position ourselves around SEOs. That’s kind one of the interesting lessons learned about this whole thing is that there was a time in I think it was 2009 when I was first getting started, somehow or other and I’m not really sure how this happened, I ended up just kind of personally branded around social media and ended up getting a bunch of sort of speaking engagements around town, around social media. And then everybody was kind of talking about me as the social media person in town which was kind of weird because I never really set out to do that or be that. And then I realized that was not really useful to us because we weren’t doing anything actively around social media in terms of how we were tactically engaging social media for our clients. So that wasn’t a valuable kind of positioning for us.

So I actively set out over the next year in 2010, I decided, “Okay I’m going to take hold of this and I’m going to use the term Marketing Optimization and that’s going to be kind of the way I describe myself to people, Marketing Optimization.

Dave: Right.

Kate: Well unfortunately when people hear the word optimitization in this day and age they think of SEO.

Dave: Yeah I just did it. That includes me too.

Kate: No, no it’s cool for the purposes of branding and positioning that didn’t really help because what ended up happening over the year 2010 was got a lot of inquiries around SEO which turned out not to be very good matches for us because the people who are, the companies who come to us interested in SEOs specifically aren’t necessarily interested in the particular value that we bring to the table which is that really deep analytical skill set where we can really help you trace that back on a broader marketing level to who your customers really are and doing a good with your marketing overall. So we really think of ourselves as kind of a new generation of classic marketers.

Dave: Right.

Kate: This is the skill set that marketers used to always have to have and I think it’s kind of gone full circle through a phase where marketing was more about marketing communications and creative. And as important as that is, it’s not the date driven discipline that marketing classically was.

Dave: I know what you mean. You just need a fancy acronym I think like SEO.

Kate: Yeah. Well HMO I guess which is not very useful because that means [Inaudible – 00:04:30]

Dave: Right so that’s sort of confusing. But we’ll work on that for another episode.

Kate: Our new tags would be RMO is Marketing Optimization.

Dave: There you go. So at what point in your career did you realize that you wanted to do it yourself and start your own company?

Kate: I think I was a little bit of a slow savvy at that. Well in some ways I’ve often pointed out in these kinds of interviews or opportunities to talk with people about this that my first company was really non-profit that I launched when I was a teenager. So in a sense I knew very early that I had a little bit of entrepreneurial bug. But that was almost the last venture that went that way because I did a few stints as a consultant or a freelancer here and there throughout the last X number of years that I’ve been in the professional work world.

But it wasn’t until ’09 when I launched [meta]marketer that I really felt ready to launch a company that has its own distinct identity. That was the real kicker. So, much of everything that I had done up until then that was in any sense entrepreneurial was really more solo entrepreneurial. It was really kind of branded around myself.

And to be honest I’m not really sure especially in the early days how distinct the brand of [meta]marketer was from Kate O’Neill. Like I think a lot of our early scaling problems were because the clients that we were able to attract on the strength of my reputation and then it was very difficult to extricate myself as a resource, as a tactical resource instead as the person who’s running the agency and I should be able to bring resources to bear. You should be able to trust me as the leader of the agency to do that.

It was an interesting and I think it’s one that I’ve been able to make some headway on. But yeah in 2009 kind of setting up [meta]marketer and really going about that as I’m really interested and really in building something that is bigger than myself, that has a brand that separates from myself, that feasibly could be run by somebody else, that I could hand over the reins at some point.

Dave: Right.

Kate: That was a totally idea and experience for me.

Dave: Right.

Kate: I don’t exactly know how to say when that happened. I just don’t know how to say why that happened other than there were a series of professional situations that led me to feel like, “I don’t know I feel like this could be done better like I could maybe do this better. I don’t know if I can be the person who does it better but I got to give it a try because I just don’t necessarily feel like things are being done right.

Dave: Right.

Kate: Out there.

Dave: Did anyone inspire you to do this, to start [meta]marketer?

Kate: I don’t know. In a specific way if that’s true. Certainly I think one thing that’s been happening and Dave you know this very well that in the last few years in Nashville there’s been this growing momentum of community around the Nashville Technology scene and the gigs and everything. I think just being connected with a bunch of people who have if not an actual entrepreneurial events going on certainly an entrepreneurial spirit.

Dave: Right.

Kate: I think that embolden me in a lot to be around people at least for talking about it and thinking about it and trying to figure out if it was the right thing to do. And then knowing people who actually were going out and starting ventures and being a part of almost like a graduating class out of the community, right?

Dave: Yeah.

Kate: I always say that about the songwriting community a lot. I moved here 8 years ago to Nashville to be a songwriter. And that was one of sort analogies that give news a lot about the songwriting community in Nashville. It’s almost like being in high school or college where you come in as a freshman and the people that you meet in that year you kind of grow up with. And then there’s a point when they start getting deals and you start getting deals, everybody is kind of helping each other because you came up together.

Dave: Right.

Kate: And I see that a lot kind of happening to geek community too. There’s the class of us that kind of came up like ’07 or ’08 or whatever we all knew each other as bloggers and through social media. And now a lot of us are starting our ventures. You’ve got Marcus Whitney doing moon toast. You’ve got Jason Moore, Jackson Miller both doing their things that were recently incubated at the Entrepreneur’s Center.

Dave: All guests on Jumpstart as well I must say. Or Jason is coming up soon actually.

Kate: Okay good cool. Yeah he’s going to be great. Yeah so I mean it’s a very interesting thing to be watching your peers kind of coming into their own thing and starting their own things and to recognize too. To sit where I am and recognize, “Hey I’m doing as well.” It’s neat to be finding that footing and seeing that happening all around you too.

Dave: That’s great. Are there blogs or websites that you subscribe to regularly that you would recommend for other people getting started or have already started?

Kate: I don’t know. It’s funny I have my Google Reader is a staple of my day to day experience and I’m on there pretty often throughout the day. But I have it all grouped into categories so I don’t necessarily always have a sense of what I’m reading all the time.

Dave: Yeah fair enough.

Kate: So I can say for sure that there are some great Nashville resources and this is obviously one really solid one. If anybody is checking this episode out because it’s been link on to Twitter, Facebook or whatever and it’s a first on I highly recommend going back and listening to. Some of the earlier ones especially I mean we have Seth Godin on. You can read out and [Inaudible – 00:20:40]

Dave: Thanks Ma’am.

Kate: Yeah that’s cool.

Dave: Thank you.

Kate: And then there’s just a bunch of the folks around town. The names I just mentioned as well as other folks who have started their own companies who are starting their own companies that do blog. It’s really cool to watch them have time Jackson does.

Dave: Yeah.

Kate: To watch them occasionally post their thoughts about where they are in the process and what they’re learning so I think that’s really valuable.

Dave: For sure. Okay I end every episode by asking you for three tips that you would provide for other entrepreneurs. Do you have three tips?

Kate: I’m going to go all Seth on you. But there’s really only one that I’ve got for you.

Dave: Okay.

Kate: And I probably have other bits of advice but they don’t necessarily stand out as much to me in the moment. But I guess what I would say to folks listening is no one really meets, I don’t think that the market or Nashville or the country in general really needs another stuffy entrepreneur. But what we definitely need is more people who are going to approach this space with playfulness and a sense of fun. And even maybe a little bit of a sense of reverence. I high encourage everybody to think about whether they have a business idea in them and a startup in them. But definitely go about it with a spirit of fun.

Dave: That’s true.

Kate: It’s way fun. Just have some fun with it.

Dave: That’s true. Life is too short.

Kate: Absolutely.

Dave: Yeah great. Thanks Kate, I really appreciate it. Where could people find you?

Kate: You can find me at metamarketer.com, kate@metamarketer.com if you like the old email. But on the Twitters I am @kateo or @metamarketer.

Dave: Cool well thanks so much again for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Kate: Hey man, thank you I really appreciate it being on here.

Dave: Talk to you soon.

[Music playing]

Moderator: For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. 

To celebrate, Deb Babbitt from YouTern, wrote a fantastic blog post describing Lucille Ball as a remarkable entrepreneur.

The following are Ten Lessons Learned from Lucille Ball. Be sure to read the full post to see how Babbitt creatively describe’s each item.

1. Perseverance
2. Find a Niche
3. Innovation
4. Invest in Yourself First
5. Set the Pace; Let Others Chase
6. Be Humble and Brave
7. Diversify
8. Keep a Fresh Personal Brand
9. Never Too Late to Start a Family
10. Leave a Legacy

Just for kicks, I included one of the best clips from I Love Lucy. Enjoy.

Kate wrote a terrific blog post last week about her experiences mentoring at Jumpstart. In fact, she touches on some important thoughts about how she decided to become one.

You’ll learn more about Kate’s Return on Involvement.

The opportunity to become a mentor will return before you know it. Sign up and we’ll let you know. Watch for Kate as a guest in an upcoming episode of Jumpstart too.

• IdeaBang started in the 80′s when Scott was working in a recording studio
• he realized that merchandise should be sold in addition to the music
• musicians need their live shows and merchandise in the future
• friends with Mark Montgomery (who was interviewed here)
• thinks that music will become like electricity or cable, a user will pay a fee each month for all the music they want
• Scott was raised in a creative atmosphere. His dad was a doctor, songwriter and studio musician.
• Scott’s dad would instigate them (his siblings as well) to solve problems
• how to catch a lizard from a hole
• Scott co-founded iAgree with Chris Blanz (interview), a company in Jumpstart Foundry
• Chris draws as he talks to visualize
• iAgree was conceived as a service to provide video NDAs
• met with Michael Burcham who runs Nashville’s Entreprenuer Center
• iAgree evolved into GoodJob QSR
• Scott shares his experiences with Jumpstart Foundry
• Inspired by his father and brother, the other 20% from being around smart people like Chris Blanz, Mark Montgomery, and Robert Hendrick (interview)
• Scott mainly reads Seth Godin’s blog (interview), CopyBlogger, Ray Kurzweil, Fast Company, Michael Burcham (5 truths about being an entrepreneur), Dave Stewart’s Business Playground
• Michael Burchem takes out the trash
• teargas lamps
• contact Scott Rouse at Scottrouse.com or IdeaBang Blog

Scott’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Start as soon as you have the idea
2. Think about it all of the time
3. Talk about it constantly. Knowing how to do.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delaney. My guest today is Scott Rouse, Founder of IdeaBang. Hey Scott, how are you?

Scott: I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Dave: I am well, thank you. Thanks for taking the time this morning.

Scott: Yeah, hey thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dave: Yeah it’s great to have you. So tell me about IdeaBang, what is it that you guys do?

Scott: Well IdeaBang started I guess back in the 80’s.

Dave: Right.

Scott: When I was working in a studio, we have these little bands to do like kids’ band that end up for pop music, that kind of thing.

Dave: Right.

Scott: And so the little bands we do with new products for them to sell, not just the albums. But I said, “Hey, we can also sell pencil cases, flashlights, or what you can think of.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: So I came up with little ideas for those things and I need a name for it so I figured for that company. And so I’ve synapse when you get an idea all things run through your bring connects your thoughts to your brain through action or synapses. So I figured that’ll be an Idea Bang, the tiny little noise that you would make.

Dave: Yeah.

Dave: A little spark in there. So that’s where it came from.

Scott: I love it. It’s great. Actually do you think nowadays merchandize is even more important considering that how many artists are starting doing for themselves and selling online or a lot of artists now are giving away their music. Do you think merchandize is even more important now as that goes?

Dave: Yeah that’s all you’re really going to have in the “future” for musician is your live show and much we have to sell, merchant t-shirts, whatever it is. Because music, the reason Mark Montgomery and I became such close friends so quickly was because he thinks the same way I do as far where music is concerned. It’s going to be like electricity or cable you just paid for example 10 bucks a month you get all the music you want.

Dave: Right.

Scott: And you can do anything what you want because they’ll be no stoppage. You just pay that fee because it’s loose now the way things are digitally.

Dave: Right and I should mention for our listeners that Mark was also a guest on a previous episode at Jumpstart. So if you’re interested you can always check that out and I’ll have links to everything in the show notes today too. So at what point in your career did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?

Scott: Say when I was kid.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: My family, my brother and sister and I we’re raised in a very creative atmosphere. My father is a doctor and my Mom is I guess a Mom she was at home guarding us and making sure we went to school and all that. My Dad come home, he was actually a studio musician here in Nashville before I was born. And my Mom, “Look you got to be either. Be the thing you want, be a doctor or a studio musician and songwriter. But you got to pick one because I’m leaving if you don’t.” He said, “Okay, I’ll be a doctor.” She said, “Great, you don’t have to but that’s what you’re going to be.” So he’s a very creative guy and when we were little he would almost – he instigate us taking things up to solve problems. We’d be going on these long trips, we live in Kentucky, I remember the point when he first started. He had a studio there in our background in the old garage and he would present these little problems, since you can’t get to the – there’s a little lizard that live in a little hole in our backyard at the bottom of the stairs by the sidewalk. And he would always say – and I would sit out there trap and get that thing? He said, “Looks like you got a problem. How are you going to solve that? How are you going to get that lizard into that little jar you have?” So I came up with a little trap to do. I said, “I could do this, this, and this.” I presented I guess 3 or 4 scenarios. He said, “Number 2 sounds good. Why don’t you try that?” So I did that and I was maybe 5 or 6.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: I did catch the lizard. So I made a little trap where I would catch the lizards and I took that to my old friends. We had a little friends group. And I helped them make old traps and they’d all trap lizards too. Then it went to other things not just traps but add a little almost products at a very young age. It started there pretty much.

Dave: That’s neat, trapping lizards.

Scott: Yeah.

Dave: And you’ve done a lot of other things. Currently you’re also working with I Agree. Tell us a little bit about iAgree because you’re part the foundry Jumpstart too.

Scott: Yeah, so iAgree is Chris Blanz and I were sitting in a coffee shop. Ed Shaw Coffee Shop down there in the music world. And I met him again, Mark Montgomery again but I met him through Mark Montgomery a couple of years ago.

Dave: Right.

Scott: A long break because he’s an idea guy and I am too. And we talked a lot and when I met Chris I don’t know if you know about this guy. Have you ever met Chris Blanz?

Dave: Actually surprisingly Chris has also been a guess on the show.

Scott: Right.

Dave: But I’ve had had in-person meetings with Chris as well.

Scott: Okay, then you’d seen this. First time I saw this happen, number one I couldn’t believe it when I realize what was happening. When you were talking to him, he’ll draw whatever he’s talking about. If you’re talking about –but it’s not what you’re talking about, he draws a picture he draws these things that reminds what’s going on. And then like an hour later when we refresh, he said, “You go back to these pages of these pictures he’s drawing. Like, “What is this guy doing?” And he would look at these pictures and he’ll said, “Well here you said whatever it was.”And whatever it’s like I’m like, “What is wrong with this guy?” So we got along really well. He seems like straight on, “Hey, I’m a normal American guy. I used this [Inaudible – 00:05:52], I was working on that.

Dave: That’s cool.

Scott: So he and I got along great. We were sitting in Ed Shaw Coffee Shop and he said, “Look man, I got an idea.” And I said, “Well what do you got?” “Here’s an idea for a video NDAs.” And I said, “Hey that sounds pretty good. Let’s talk about that.” He said, “Would you be interested in making that happen?” I said, “Yeah.” To make a long story short he ended up talking to Michael Burcham. Michael said, “Why don’t you try that here in Jumpstart. Put it in the pile of entries.” So that’s where we’ve “pivoted” now to something completely different since we’ve been here, since we got into Jumpstart Foundry.

Dave: Right.

Scott: But it started off as Video NDA and now it’s this thing called Good Job. But it’s the On the Spot Employee Assessment for the quick service restaurants, QSRs.” Now as uninteresting as that may sound because when I say it people say, “Are you a record producer?” And I go, “Yeah, I really am.” It has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever done. I mean I’ve eaten a lot of McDonalds and don’t know places and stuff but I’ve never had anything to do with those other than that. So it’s really interesting, for me anyway, venture to get into dealing on the techno or technical side of a product for quick service restaurants.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: It’s really interesting I mean it is excruciatingly boring when you talk about it. Going to seeing it happen, “Hey that’s pretty cool.”

Dave: Yeah. Has it been fun working with Jumpstart?

Scott: It’s been a blast. It really has its – now it’s becoming a blast because now we’re like after, I guess we started this in May. Were almost 2 ½ months then, some of the stuff we do really like. But the first night we all got here and I met Michael and I’ve always seen him around, heard about him, and now he had on shorts I think and some kind of a shirt and having a lot of people just standing and relaxing. Up to that point Chris and I was, “Hey man it’s going to be tough. You got to pay attention. It’s going to like 14 weeks crash course college course.” And I thought, “Well talking to these people who are on it, Clay and I met Cal and everybody here and Sam so I’m staying in school too.” But people were here like Robert Hendrick and Rob Humphreys and all these people, they seem pretty mellow. So we left that evening because it was Sunday before the Monday of the beginning of Jumpstart. Chris and I were in the parking lot and I said, “I don’t know about this.” He said, “I don’t either if that I think is going to be as hard course it seems everybody seems kind of laid back.” I said, “I know it kind of bugs me out.” So we discussed whether we’re going to do it or not. We really did. We got nothing else. “You know what man? I don’t have time for something like this.” Because I’m one of those people that knows everything, Yeah I’m one of those leopards. Being the know it all. “Hey, I don’t know man, maybe we shouldn’t.” He’s like, “Yeah.”

So we said, “Look, we’ll just go a week and see what happens.” We came in next morning because I said, “Okay, well don’t forget tomorrow we’ll start 7:00 in the morning. And Michael said, “Then we will wake up then, great.” So we got there and thank God like ten tale and we go scooting in and sit down and get a seat and picturing them in there in the little rehearsal room where we sit and Michael is already in there. It’s 6:59 and 7:00 o’clock. He looked at me and said, “All right, here we go.” He looked at Chris and said, “Okay, let’s see your pitch.” Chris goes, “What?” “Let me see your pitch.” He goes, “Get up, you got 3 minutes let me hear what you got.” “My God,” everybody heads go down and get a paper and starting writing their 3-minute pitch.

Dave: Right.

Scott: Their product deals. And Chris said, “Let’s see we’re doing Video NDA.” It was horrible for him.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: For me to watch but nobody else saw it because everybody else was working on their own 3-minute pitch.

Dave: All right.

Scott: It didn’t stop for like 3 weeks almost a month. I found I spend a month at Jumpstart Foundry one day and the next thing I want in my life is, I’m here like 5:00 in the morning going, “I’ve got to get this done.” My wife is calling, “Why are you leaving so early? I’m starting to get worried.” Then he said, “You have to talk to your wife and said, “Look, I’m doing this for 14 weeks.”

Dave: Right.

Scott: It almost got her hand there for a minute because it was so intense because if we just lay it back but if you put your head down and you jump in swinging, you’re going to get a lot more out of it a lot quicker if you’re ready. We just had to get ready as it happened.

Dave: Right.

Scott: So fast and so intense. The next thing we know we’re in the second day. We’ve pivoted from our NDA over this thing called Good Job and it happened quick and we were bonged up first at the end of the day for a different reason.

Dave: Yeah, just shifted like that.

Scott: Gosh, it’s been non-stop. And he had been here this morning where we got 3 weeks left and I was here this morning 5:15 or 5:30 something like that.

Dave: Right.

Scott: Our video stuff is done because we got meeting starting at 8:00.

Dave: Yeah. Thank God for Cathalina.

Scott: Yeah. It was interesting people here crying. You’ve seen people bonged out. But it was all for good I mean it’s nothing life shattering. Nobody has ever thought that but it’s really, really intense. But it’s such a wonderful experience. I tell you what, I would not trade anything for this if I had done – coming in like I said before I’m a know it all. You can’t tell me, I’m one of those guys. You get here for about 14 minutes, you hang out with Michael Burcham then you go, “My God, he must hate my guts.” If you think you know it all until you meet someone like that.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: Not talk yet and then when he start talking and your brain goes bang because there’s so much information and concepts you never had an idea of d[Inaudible – 00:11:54].

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: I kept rambling but nobody has asked me that yet. I just don’t have time to sit down and get through all of this. It’s on Kansas bid.

Dave: Well it all stretch.

Scott: Yeah.

Dave: So let’s talk about people in your life. Is there someone that inspires you on a day to day basis or just inspired you overall?

Scott: In the beginning I guess it would be my father.

Dave: Right.

Scott: And my brother. My brother writes movies and TV shows. He’s in Los Angeles, that’s what he does.

Dave: Great.

Scott: He’s very good at it. He does very well. So I think those two are the ones that kind of 90% of the time inspired and cause all those sparks to go, “Yeah I know how to do this,” because I want to impress them.

Dave: Right.

Scott: And I’m sure my brother does the same thing. He wants to impress me and my Dad.

Dave: Right.

Scott: But then luckily I’ve been able to surround myself with people like Chris and Mark and hang around people like Robert Hendrick and Rob Humphreys and I end up here. So 80% of it is coming from my Dad and brother and the 20% is that everyday being around smart people and the idea people have fire stuff off that will make you think of stuff.

Dave: Are there blogs or websites that you subscribe to that you read regularly?

Scott: Yup, actually I have tons of them. Let’s say the ones I read most, obviously everybody reads Seth Godin’s blog.

Dave: Sure, yeah.

Scott: That was a great interview by the way.

Dave: Thank you. Yeah it was great to have him on the show.

Scott: He’s a pretty cool guy. He always seems like it.

Dave: Yeah definitely. He’s great.

Scott: You email him and within like 4 minutes he’ll email you back.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: Always blow my mind when he does that.

Dave: Yeah he’s awesome.

Scott: Yeah he really is great. But I’d say I always read his – I do copy blogger, just got to have a blog. Google will do. It depends, Rick Corswhile has great one. He’s like a futurist trying to find out what’s coming down the pipe. I really pay attention to what he’s doing.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: So those are – Fast Company of course everyone I’m sure does that.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: The main ones and Michael Burcham’s. He’s got a great one actually.

Dave: He does. He’s been blogging quite a lot lately. It’s been great to see that.

Scott: Yeah and you read there’s one on there that’s 5 steps of being an entrepreneur. When I first got here I went to the side and I was reading all these things and I said, “Who’s this guy? Because he says, “To be an entrepreneur, this, that, and the other thing you have to balance it. And you also have to take out the thrash.

Dave: Right.

Scott: This guy really I don’t think he likes thrash. Here we go, earlier I said I came here at 5:00 or 5:30.

Dave: Yeah.

Scott: And I showed up at 5:30, I was the first one in here I thought. And I see coming out the hall there was Michael, he’s got 2 garbage cans. I said, “It’s 5:30 in the morning,” I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I’m taking the thrash out.” “Where’s the guy?” He goes, “What guy?” “The guy that takes out the thrash.” He said, “I’m the guy who takes out the thrash.” And he does. I won’t let him do mine but he goes by and he picks up all the trash in everybody’s little garbage cans by their desk. I think everybody now knows he’s doing it so we had a little discussion in letting him do it. So he’s that guy. It’s real. That’s another thing that makes us to think so intense.

Dave: Yeah that’s amazing that he does that though.

Scott: Yeah he’s a great blog, he really does.

Dave: He does. So I like to wrap the show with asking for three tips that you would suggest for entrepreneurs.

Scott: Okay.

Dave: Put you on the spot here, right?

Scott: It’s totally cool. When you give an idea because I’m sure you do the same thing all the time. You say, “What should I do?” When you get an idea, the first thing you do is you start working to what you say if it’s going to be let’s see a lamp that has tear gas that come out when you pull the thing. One of the things would be, you think about that constantly, and number one, once you have that idea you start working toward it, and you think number one, I’m going to do that. If you decide, “I’m going to make that thing come into a reality or I’m thinking about it, this thing I’m thinking about my brain.” That’s all you do is you think about. That’d be the second thing. Yes, we see it happening. You begin putting number one you just begin forming it and think of how am I going to this? Number two, you think you see it finish. Say, “That’s what’s going to crack. That’s going to happen.” And then that’s all you talk about until you get it done. Until you hold in your hand a little prototype.

Dave: Right.

Scott: And tell your Mom, your Dad, your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whoever it is until they go, “Here comes that lamp tear gas thing.” And so that’s what you want because it does something. When you talk about it that what helps call it on into being I guess. You say, “It sounds corny but it really is true.” Everybody that is listening that knows how to do that we call it knowing how to do or knows little until our parents called. You think of something and you want it to happen and you want to become I guess a reality when you use that terminology but that what’s you do. Those are I would think the three most important things. Start on as soon as you get an idea. You start making it happen. Number two start thinking about it all the time. It should be the foremost thing in your brain and on your mind. And then number three, talk about it constantly. Talk about it to everybody [Inaudible – 00:17:41] tear gas. I just talk about it. It really makes it happen quicker I think. That’s the way I approach everything.

Dave: And the next thing you know you could use a tear gas lamp to get a lizard out of a hole.

Scott: There you go.

Dave: Hey Scott, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time today.

Scott: Listen, I really appreciate it too. I had a blast. I love this podcast man. It’s really informative.

Dave: Thanks.

Scott: To say the least. I’m learning a lot of people that I am getting to know and really learn about them.

Dave: That’s cool. Thank you I appreciate that. Now listen, how do people get a hold of you? Where do they find you?

Scott: They can get to me at scottrouse.com. You got my email address and my number is there and everything or IdeaBang blog if you want to see what the blog looks like for my little company.

Dave: I do appreciate your time today and I will talk to you again soon.

Scott: Okay, thanks so much, brother.

Dave: Thanks Scott.

Moderator: For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. 

Bill Gross thrives on turning innovative ideas into pioneering companies. He serves as founder and CEO of Idealab, which started over 75 companies since 1996. In this stimulating lecture, he shares how Idealab continues to bring incredible ideas to market, and his personal insights on starting and running successful organizations. Gross also describes the work of eSolar, a spin-off company of Idealab that works to make solar energy cost-competitive in the global marketplace

Can’t see the video?

The following are notes from Gross’ presentation by Henry van Wagenberg.

Startup Checklist
adapted from 02/2011 Bill Gross talk at Stanford by hvw 08/2011

1. Create products that you care about, would want yourself, and that you’re passionate about.
You have to be in love with what you’re doing, because every start-up is going to face deep dark days, and if you and your team aren’t in love with it, you’ll give up.

- Started JumpStart (no relation) software business after watching “Multimedia Beethoven” CD-ROM that he found beautiful, and a desire to create educational software for his son

2. Found your business with a team that includes all four talents: Entrepreneurs, Producers, Administrators and Integrators.
This team working together can take a bad idea and turn it into a brilliant idea. A brilliant idea with a bad team will fizzle.

- Entrepreneur: sees things in the distance, ahead of their time, inventor
- Producer: gets things done, executes, sells the products, all the execution steps to get it in customer hands. some people are actually negative on this – detract from producing.
- Administrator: the bureaucrat. keep the wheels on the bus when orders are flowing in – create systems for the business to run itself
- Integrator: people person. helps other three talents get along – b/c often the other three talents hate each other’s guts.

3. Get out there and try stuff.
You never know what you’ll learn if you put yourself out there.

Bill learned this lesson while working on his JumpStart Educational Software  (no relation). They started a program called “Weekend Warriors” – every employee went to CompUSA on Saturday and Sunday mornings and would set up at end of aisle to demo shoppers.

3. Listen to your customers. Build your business around customer needs, interests and feedback.
You’ll find new directions to take your business if you engage customers and keep your ears open.

While doing Weekend Warriors, Bill learned that customers were confused about which product to buy for their particular child. Everyone would make their products super-broad, like theirs said “fun for everybody ages 8 to 108.” So they came up with the idea for products that were one-year age range, like “JumpStart Kindergarten”. Big risk but sales exploded 20x increase and they sold 20 million copies.

4. Ignore “the experts.”
Bill created pay-per-click in 1998. Wall Street Journal and Yahoo both said it was the worst idea ever. Yahoo bought their company 5 years later.

5. Try the business idea in a small, cheap way first.
Bill created CarsDirect.com – their idea was that Bill wanted to be able to buy a car over the internet and have it delivered in a flatbed truck to avoid the hassle and lies from car salesmen. They put up the CarsDirect.com site without any car deals to see if anyone would buy through it. And sure enough, 4 people ordered cars that week. They quickly shut down the site, and drove down to a dealership and bought the cars and delivered them themselves. Then they built a business – forged relationships with manufacturers, etc.

6. Persistence.
The hallmark of success is perseverance. It’s sticking through it when you hit the inevitable hard times.

Sometimes the ‘first mover’ wins, but usually the better executor with the greater persistence wins.

7. It’s very hard or nearly impossible to know analytically whether the business will succeed or fail in advance.
There’s no tangible step to know when to stop. It’s a matter of judgment. Outside advisers can help.

8. Have regular brainstorming sessions. Bring in outside people to help.

9. Equity is a powerful way to motivate people.

You should follow Bill on Twitter and Google+.

Zwilling writes…

Entrepreneurs are well positioned to become the new leaders, because they perceive problems as opportunities, and have the mental mindset to innovate and execute. They have the required passion, perseverance, and work ethic. What they don’t have by default are the skills required, or the relationships. These don’t come automatically with the CEO title.

He continues by describing six leadership skills:

1. Leadership is a learned behavior, not a character trait.
2. Listening is the most important skill for a leader.
3. Communicating and storytelling.
4. Acknowledging contribution.
5. Negotiation is a practical skill for every leader.
6. Too many leaders are focused on personal ambition.

Read the original post to see how he defines these six skills.

Can you add any leaderships skills that Zwilling missed?

As a mentor, there are a few things I have to keep saying as a mantra:

1. I am not the CEO
2. This is not my company
3. I probably wouldn’t have listened to me either

So, now I have the unique perspective of being on the other side of the fence and trying to help others avoid the mistakes I made, and it feels a little like this….

Most mentoring relationships start hand-in-hand going towards the promised land. Everyone can see it, and we all want it. One of us has the land already surveyed and the other is just putting one foot in front of the other.

Suddenly, there is a huge canyon up ahead

The mentor says, “Hey, there is a huge canyon up there. Let’s stop and spend the time to build a bridge.”

The entrepreneur responds, “No, we can’t stop now. Let’s just deal with it when we get there.” To which the mentor responds, “Okay,” and starts to build a bridge anyway.

The mentor and the entrepreneur reach the canyon and peer down the steep side. The mentor says, “Don’t worry – I built you a bridge.” The entrepreneur responds, “I think there may be some opportunity down there, so I will just climb down.”
Mentor responds, “Okay,” and goes to find a rope.

The entrepreneur soon realizes that once he got down one side, he then needed to figure out a way up the other side. The mentor, after crossing the bridge and waiting, says, “Don’t worry. I brought you a rope – just climb up.” The entrepreneur
decides to climb up the canyon by hand just in case there is opportunity under each rock.

The mentor and entrepreneur finally meet hand-in-hand on the other side of the canyon. Both turn to reflect on the experience.

The entrepreneur turns and says, “I wasted so much time in that canyon that had no opportunities for me. I should have just gone across the bridge.”

To which the mentor responds, “Yeah, no shit.”

As mentors to entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them from their mistakes because, as we all know, those mistakes are incredibly valuable assets.

The point is that on the other side, they just need to know how to build a bridge next time.

Guest post by Rachael Qualls, Founder and CEO at Angel Capital Group.

Even if you are already head over heals in startup mode, it’s worth reviewing Paul’s post. Is there a step that you might of missed along the way? Do you agree with his tips?

Here are the first five of ten. Check out the full How To Start A Business post on Company Founder.

1. Understand profitability and break-even analysis — too many people go into business not understanding these basic concepts.
2. Understand upside goals and potential — what kind of business are you trying to create? Does the business you are starting right now match your objectives?
3. Screen and sort your ideas/opportunities using criteria that make sense.
4. Understand the psychology of markets and niches.
5. Develop products and/or services that meet a true market need.

I’ll give you the first five, but you should read the full post to find out everything Brad has to share on his 10 tips.

1. Be What You Are
2. Make It Pretty
3. Know Your Customer
4. Find Your Audience
5. Craft Your Media Pitch

Photo from Flickr by: ☺ Lee J Haywood

As mentioned in this week’s brief episode, we would sincerely appreciate your rating of the show in iTunes. The better rated the show, the more listeners we’ll get and the more exposure our guests will receive. It’s a win win!

We’re also actively seeking new guests for the show. If you would like to be interviewed, or if you know someone who would be great on the show, please feel free to email me directly: dave AT jumpstartfoundry DOT com.

We’ll be back soon with more episodes of Jumpstart. Thanks for listening!

• Cliff McKinney is CEO and Co-Founder of Work For Pie, works with Co-Founder Brad Montgomery
• Work For Pie is an anti-resume for software developers
• they focus on work that you do, by algorithmically searching opensource code repositories like GitHub and BitBucket
• programmers highlight their code on their own profiles
• they aggregate the information and developers receive scores
• Cliff subscribes to hackernews.com and stackoverflow.com 
• Cliff was going to start an education-based social network for high school kids
• he submitted the idea for Work For Pie to Seed Hatchery (Memphis sister of Jumpstart Foundry) here’s a first month recap blog post
• Ayn Rand inspires Cliff. You’re judged by your merit
• reads Hacker News and TechCrunch
• Cliff listens to This Week In Startups and Stanford Entrepreneurial Series podcasts (which has an iOS app too)
• listens to lots of Audible audio books during his long commute. Currently enjoying Predictably Irrational
• contact Cliff at workforpie.com and on Twitter @workforpie.

Cliff’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Get something done. Build it!
2. Listen to your customers.
3. Don’t always do what your customers say.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delany. My guest today is Cliff McKinney; co-founder of Work for Pie. Hi Cliff, how are you?

Cliff: Hey Dave, how are you?

Dave: I’m great, thanks! Welcome to Jumpstart. I’m happy to have you on.

Cliff: Thanks man, we’re excited about it too.

Dave: Cool man!

Cliff: It’s pretty cool.

Dave: Thanks! Thanks a lot. So tell us about Work for Pie.

Cliff: Sure! So Work for Pie is – in short, it’s an anti-resume.

Dave: Right.

Cliff: It’s something that we specifically built for software developers and – so rather than focusing on kind of all the fluff that you see on a standard resume or a linked-in profile, we decided to focus on work that you actually do.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Cliff: So we looked to open-source code repositories; places like GitHub and Bitbucket, and pull information from their APIs so you can now highlight your code on your own profile. And we also pull in information from two other sites: Hacker News and Stack Overflow which are both pretty big in the development world. And we aggregate all that information and give you a score, and that score basically validates your talent as a software developer especially if you work in open-source and participate in those communities.

Dave: So I was looking at your site and – so the communities score you or is part algorithm or – how does that work?

Cliff: So we develop the algorithm, so the score is basically – we pull information from APIs of all of those communities and the algorithms are our own, so we give to a score based on things like how many people have [Inaudible – 00:01:54] your repositories on GitHub and we take a look at your reputation score on Stack Overflow. We take a look at your karma on Hacker News and aggregate those things together.

Dave: That’s really cool. That’s really smart. How long have you been doing it for?

Cliff: So we were a part of Seed Hatchery which is Jumpstart’s sister accelerator.

Dave: Yeah, you’re out at Memphis right?

Cliff: Right, Memphis, Tennessee.

Dave: Yup.

Cliff: And so we started I guess towards the tail end of February. And we actually came into the Seed Hatchery with a completely different plan, so we’ve only really been working on Work for Pie in its current state for about three months now.

Dave: Oh wow! And what’s the – how’s the response been?

Cliff: It’s been positive. We’ve gotten some pretty good user feedback and we’ve gotten some pretty good adoption rate too. Given kind of the minimal amount of press that we’ve gotten so far, we’re really pleased with the numbers of people who’ve just kind of picked it up organically. We’ve gotten a lot of positive responses from the development community about it.

Dave: That’s great. What got you inspired to do this or kind of to go it along? Is this your first bite of entrepreneurialship?

Cliff: Well, yes and no I guess.

Dave: (Laugh)

Cliff: I’ve kind of always been a little bit of a different bird and wanted to start on my own thing. I kind of false started a couple years of ago with a group of guys. We were going to do an education based social network – you know, something for high school kids and college kids.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Cliff: And – so that didn’t work out so well. And one of the biggest issues was – back then, I didn’t know HTML from – you know, a hole in the ground. So I spend a couple of years actually teaching myself to write codes. And then kind of came up with the original idea for Work for Pie and submitted that to Seed Hatchery, and that’s really what jumpstarted to use you guys…

Dave: (Laugh)

Cliff: That’s really what jumpstarted this version. And I think – you know, I read a blog post about the first thirty days in the Seed Hatchery, and one of the comments I made in that blog post was – you know, the first couple attempts on entrepreneurship were really playing house. You know this last attempt is – you’re in there and actually running the business. So it’s definitely the first real attempt I’d say.

Dave: And how many people are working with you?

Cliff: I’ve got one co-founder; Brad Montgomery. He’s definitely the developer side of the house. I know enough HTML to kind of tick him off every now and then.

Dave: (Laugh)

Cliff: And he does the vast majority of the development on the site.

Dave: Right

Cliff: And he’s a super solid guy.

Dave: Great! And – maybe Brad – who inspires you? Who gets you going?

Cliff: It’s funny – so I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand.

Dave: Uh-hm

Cliff: The author; she wrote Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Dave:The Fountainhead, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cliff: And so, she’s really done an inspirational – a lot of her ideas have been an inspiration for me just to – you know, her idea that you’re judged based on your merit and you do things – and really, ironically enough, that’s kind of what we’re doing with our company. We’re saying – you know, forget all about the resume fluff and let’s focus on what you actually do, so it’s kind of a neat thing.

Dave: Yeah, yeah, I could completely see that. I’ve read Fountainhead so it’s definitely – I can see how that analogy works with that.

Cliff: Yeah, [Inaudible – 00:05:30] takes a little bit of digging in to, but if they’ve got a movie, it’ll probably be on DVD pretty soon because I don’t think it was that great.

Dave: Right.

Cliff: But if you want the Cliff’s notes of…

Dave: (Laugh)

Cliff: [Inaudible – 00:05:42] watch the movie.

Dave: There you go. What about blogs and websites that you would read regularly – you mentioned Hacker News – are there other blogs that you read?

Cliff: Sure. So clearly, Hacker News is something I read every day.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Cliff: It’s nearly open in my computer pretty much all the time. Also, I really like Tech Crunch. I like to see what’s going on in the world – in the startup world. I enjoy This Week in Startups; a podcast by Jason Calacanis. He does that twice a week. That’s a pretty cool podcast; I enjoy that. And I listen to a lot of books. I’m a – I’ve got a little bit of a long commute, so I’m a member of Audible.com.

Dave: Of course. Yeah.

Cliff: Two book to download every week. Right now, I think the book right now is Predictable Irrational.

Dave: Right

Cliff: I know I really like it – it’s the Stanford entrepreneurial series.

Dave: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s great.

Cliff: That one’s great. Some really, really great entrepreneurs have spoken in that, so I listen to that. They have an iPhone app too.

Dave: Ooh nice, I didn’t know that.

Cliff: Yeah, yeah. It’s very cool.

Dave: I’ll have to grab that. And of course, I’ll include links to everything we’re talking about in the show notes for our listeners, so if anyone’s interested, they can certainly go to the blog and find out more. So speaking of entrepreneurship, I usually close each episode asking for three tips that you would offer anyone. You got three tips for me?

Cliff: Sure man. I think I can pair it down to three. Really the biggest tip is: get something done – build it. I can’t emphasize that enough. You know we went through the three month program at Seed Hatcher which is very similar to Jumpstart. We go in the first month and really do some product discovery, and then we spend the second month building. And we stuck to that schedule pretty darn closely, and we built a really, really ugly product in a month’s time. But we put it out there and we got a lot of great feedback. And we’ve gone back to the drawing board and we’re making improvements based on what our actual users are telling us. And you can’t do that by taking surveys and asking people what they might like.

Dave: Right.

Cliff: nothing out there that exists. That would be tip number one.

Dave: Yeah.

Cliff: And tip number two just to follow onto that is I think – listen to your customers. And – you know, you get much more information from actually surveying and talking to people who might use your product than you do from your own brain.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Cliff: And then, you get a lot more information from actual users of your product than you do from people who might use your product. So…

Dave: Right.

Cliff: So kind of go in that progression, I would say is a great tip. And then the third tip: listen to you customers but don’t always do everything your customers say. I mean I think there’s a fine line between making your customers extremely happy and doing what you think is right for the company going forward. You know, we’ve gotten feedback all over the board, and so our job really is to take the feedback and determine which of those feedbacks make the most sense for us as a company, and is going to satisfy the majority of our customers — the majority of our users – so that’s a key thing.

Dave: Definitely! Definitely! Hey, where can people find you?

Cliff: Sure. We are at workforpie.com.

Dave: Right.

Cliff: That’s pretty easy. It’s the P-I-E; the food, not the mathematical symbol.

Dave: Sure.

Cliff: And we’re at @workforpie on Twitter. And we’ve also got a Facebook page, so they can find us in any of those three locations – and we hope they do.

Dave: Okay. Well, I will definitely add that to the show notes. And hopefully everybody will reach out to learn more about Work for Pie because I think it’s a really great idea.

Cliff: Well thank you very much. We’re excited about it. We think we’ve got a shot at doing something kind of unique and special – so we’re excited for sure.

Dave: Cool! Best of luck to you.

Cliff: Thank you very much.

Dave: Thank Cliff!

Cliff: Take care.

Dave: Bye!

• Justin Davis CEO and Founder at interactive product design firm, Madera Labs
• moving from Nashville to Tampa
• Justin is a great worker, but a terrible employee. He was inspired by his father, who is a doctor
• Justin worked in technology at the United Methodist Church. Inspired by his boss Steven Downing, who helped him approach every project with a human centric way
• Dave mentions Ronni Bennett speaking at Gnomedex
• we discuss user experience and design
• Dave Ramsey talks a lot about running a business with integrity and serving customers
• Rabbi Daniel Lapin has a great book called Thou Shall Prosper, which explores the nature of work
• your success is a reflection of the service you provide.
• capitalism with a conscience
• Justin subscribes to Seth Godin’s blog, Tim Brown’s Design Thinking, Designing For Devices, and Jeff Cornwall’s blog on entrepreneurship.
• check out IDEO’s case studies too!
• Justin meets his accountability group at 6:30 each Monday morning to review and set goals for each other. They share financials and everything. They each work in their own industries, so competition is not a concern. The group consists of Joel Widmer, Kenny Silva and Travis Robertson, who has written two blog posts about how to create your own accountability group.
• contact Justin at MaderaLabs.com or on Twitter as @jwd2a

Justin’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. Never follow Seth Godin (when you’re doing a podcast interview)
2. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t underestimate yourself. Jump in a do it!
3. Form an accountability group with fellow entrepreneurs

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delany. My guest today is Justin Davis; Founder and CEO of Madera Labs. Hey Justin, how are you doing?

Justin: Hey Dave, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Dave: Yeah. Thanks a lot man. I know you’re a busy guy. Tell me a little about Madera Labs.

Justin: Sure. Madera Labs is a com interactive product design company. It started out just as strictly user experience design company – and that’s my passion’s huge experience design. We work to help companies create and design interactive products; be they websites or applications, kiosks, [Inaudible – 00:00:50], appliances, whatever – anything that’s interactive with a screen. We work hard to help make using those things a better experience for the people using it.

Dave: Uh-hm. How long have you been doing that now?

Justin: Madera Labs has been around about a year and half so far. I’ve been in the web games since the late ‘90s and I’ve done user experience work for a while. But just about a year and half ago, I finally started Madera Labs and kicked it out on its own.

Dave: Very nice. Very nice. And you’re moving – you’re picking up shop and moving to Tampa, Florida from Nashville?

Justin: Yeah. I think it’s about four or five days from now.

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, we have a truck in the driveway loaded with most of the stuff. Right now, we’re sad to leave Nashville. I absolutely love Nashville – big family here that I’ll miss greatly, but Tampa’s a cool place and we’re going to try to see what we can do down that way.

Dave: That sounds good. So at what point in your career did you recognize the entrepreneurial bug biting you? (Laugh)

Justin: (Laugh) Yeah. It’s a strong bite no doubt.

Dave: Yes, yes.

Justin: You know, I think that for me, I always kind of knew that I was going to do that. My dad is a doctor; owns his own practice and so I grew up sort of in that environment. And I always thought that I would do something on my own. I’ve always said this that “I’m a great worker. I work my ass off, but I’m a terrible employee.”

Dave: (Laugh)

Justin: I’m just really not a good employee. And so I realized that early on that I just don’t fit well into the corporate mold or in – or just working for somebody. I’m just a little bit too – maybe not a loose cannon but – you know, I just…

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: I always wanted to do my own way. It just took a little while to get there, right? So I had to work in companies for while to get the skills and to get – sort of boned up and knowing exactly what I wanted to do. But I guess it was about two years ago back in – what is now – 2011—back in 2009, when I was finally – you know, I was over it and had the confidence to be able to say, “You know, let’s just go ahead and make the jump, and see what happens. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?” And so far, it’s turned out incredible, so it’s great.

Dave: Yeah, you’re doing a great job. As far as user experience stuff goes, how did you get into that world?

Justin: Yes. So I was working for the [Inaudible – 00:03:14] Church actually for four years. And I started out there just doing just typical web stuff development design – that kind of work; project management. And I worked for a guy named Steven Downey who was my boss, and he had this unbelievable knack for understanding people; who’s a psychology major out of school.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: But he was a technologist who [Inaudible – 00:03:39] technology. And so everything that we did, every time that we went into a project; he would approach it with this very human centered type of way, talking about – you know, not like what features do you want but let’s think about how people are using this, and sort of cognitive theory of interface and this kind of thing. And over the years working for him, that sort of became my de facto standard for how I did this kind of work, right?

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: And I really – through that, developed a passion for helping make technology just to deliver better experience – easier to use for people. So that’s where it all started.

Dave: Yeah, it’s interesting when you think – I mean, I think a lot of people – especially a lot of young designers may not necessarily always think about the design that their doing as far as who their reaching and how they’ll use it. I remember seeing a woman named Ronni Bennett speak at Gnomedex a few – a number of years ago now – Gnomedex Conference. She calls herself like an elder blogger. She’s probably in her – I would guess late 50s late 60s. And so her blog was all about – you know, not just design but about blogging for older folks. And it was interesting; she was talking to the audience in her presentation about young designers designing white copy on black sites and how that kills older people’s eyes, and just things like that that were really fascinating, and things I hadn’t really thought about too.

Justin: Yeah, it’s remarkable. I mean, there’s a whole world out there – stuff you wouldn’t ever think of. And when you start to look into it and you start to look at the science and you start to watch people use interfaces and find out why they fail in this kind of thing – it’s remarkable; the things that you find out and that you take for granted every day.

Dave: Right, right, right. And are you talking mainly about placements of links and things or color and design as well or kind of everything?

Justin: So I think it runs the gamete right.

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: It goes all the way from a sort of this very high level – sort of service design experience design type of work where – you know, you’re talking about – like when somebody comes to use an interactive product; website, web app – anything.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: What context are they coming in? Like what cues do they use to get there? And so what message do you need to provide to them to allow them to continue that task? And then when they leave using that thing, what the next piece of that journey, right? Like it’s very large scale look at the service design of things. And then it goes all the way down into sort of – on a particular page you know? There’s this concept of affordance where like physical cues like underlines and colors on links actually tell us that those things can be clicked. And if we sort of style those things out it makes it harder for us not to understand what those things are. So yeah, there’s a wide range of places where this is applicable.

Dave: And you mention before about your dad and also this former employer – who inspires you today? Who really gets you heated up and going?

Justin: Boy, there’s certainly a very long line of people. I tell you one of the people who right now inspire me and has for years, and it may be a slightly unusual person to name especially in the entrepreneurial type of thing but is Dave Ramsay.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: I’m a huge Dave Ramsay fan and have been for a long time. And he’s been doing a lot; he’s writing – he’s written a book called [Inaudible – 00:0:05] Leadership that’s coming out this fall.

Dave: Right.

Justin: And that’s not a shameless [Inaudible – 00:07:08].

Dave: (Laugh

Justin: Although it sounded like it – in stores in September 20.

Dave: Right. (Laugh)

Justin: But he talks a lot about how to run a business with integrity and how to serve customers. There’s also a guy who I’ve read a lot of that is very inspirational named Rabbi Daniel Lapin. I read a book called Thou Shall Prosper. And again, it talks about the nature of work and the nature – and this isn’t necessarily inspiration for like user experience although there’s plenty of those. These are people who talk about – you know, how to run a company that honestly serves people, not just goes out and tries to shill for people and get money, and all these kinds of things. And honestly it serves – and of our success, reflection of that service that you provide. It’s very inspirational and it’s certainly been a guiding light for how I run my company; and it works. (Laugh)

Dave: And it’s pretty nice to be able to sleep at night too right?

Justin: Yeah.

Dave: (Laugh)

Justin: It’s capitalism with a conscience.

Dave: Right.

Justin: That’s the way it works.

Dave: Are there blogs or websites right now that you’re subscribed to that you’re getting stuff from for sort of feel your business and sort of that entrepreneurial mindset?

Justin: Yeah, you know there’s – I mean, obviously Seth Godin.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: I read Seth just about every day.

Dave: He was just on in this podcast.

Justin: Yeah.

Dave: He was interviewed in a couple of episodes ago.

Justin: Yeah, yeah, I listened to that.

Dave: Great!

Justin: Amazing. Amazing.

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: So Seth is a big one. There are some design things that I read to – Tim Brown from IDO. It’s a great design company. He has a great blog called Design Thinking. There’s a guy who does – oh, now I’m forgetting – it’s called – the blog is called Designing for Devices. It’s a great interaction design blog.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: You know I – Jeff Cornwall’s blog is great.

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: He’s a local [Inaudible – 00:09:07] guy here on entrepreneurship.

Dave: Yeah. He mentors actually on Jumpstart as well.

Justin: Oh, yeah.

Dave: A Jumpstart founder – yeah.

Justin: Excellent! He’s a great guy.

Dave: Uh-hm.

Justin: So there’s – those – you know on the design front, IDO a big inspiration for me. I sit at night and just look through their case studies and read their case studies.

Dave: Right.

Justin: Very dorky way to spend the evening.

Dave: (Laugh)

Justin: It’s very, very inspirational stuff.

Dave: Oh that’s great. I’ll be sure to add show notes – add links and things in the show notes so people can find these blogs. Usually with each episode, I wrap up each episode with asking for three tips that you would offer other entrepreneurs.

Justin: Yeah well, the first one is – you know, because I listened to the Seth Godin episode of this podcast.

Dave: (Laugh) Don’t give me one tip. You have to give me three.

Justin: (Laugh) And then like the next day, I got your email about being on the podcast, and I was like “Are you kidding?” (Laugh)

Dave: (Laugh)

Justin: And so my first one is never follow Seth Godin.

Dave: (Laugh) That’s funny.

Justin: You know my second tip I guess would be – oh man, I just had this in my head, I should have written them down.

Dave: Another advice.

Justin: I guess my second tip – one that I would always say, it’s very cliché obviously is the whole don’t be afraid to fail thing, and everybody says that. And I think that what’s – the reason everybody says that and the reason it’s become so cliché is because – once you’ve done this, you realize how true that is. And I think the corollary to that is don’t underestimate yourself you know? A lot of people don’t make the jump into working for themselves – don’t make the jump into entrepreneurship because they think “Oh I’m not ready. I don’t know enough.” – Whatever. That’s false. You know, just jump in and start doing it. And I mean, really learn by trouble by fire. The third thing I would say which has probably been one of the biggest helps for my business over the last year and a half is form an accountability group. I do this every week; myself and three other entrepreneurs who have just started companies within the past couple of years or so – in that same sort of stage of business. We each get together on Monday mornings at six thirty in the morning for two hours and we set goals with each other. And every week, we review the goals that we set for last week, talk about why we didn’t hit those or why we did. We talk about what’s working in our business, challenges, and all that – it’s very open. We share financials, we share everything.

Dave: That’s great.

Justin: It’s a very open group. And having that support group of people to go to every week – every Monday morning, is absolutely priceless. It has – I think to a large extent – been the reason that I’ve been able to do so well over the past year and a half.

Dave: Well, that’ a great tip actually. And how did you – are these like long time friends or are these people you’ve met in the industry kind of thing? How did this come together?

Justin: You know it was one of the – a friend of mine; Travis Robertson here in Nashville…

Dave: Yeah.

Justin: He and I have known each other for a little while and then he actually was the one who came up – he had heard about this from someone else. And he asked me and said, “Let’s do this.” So it was the two of us for a little while. And then added in a couple of the folks; Joel Withmere and Kimmy Silva – who – Joel, I’ve worked with on a project last year – early last year so not really a long time friend, but now has become an extremely close friend. And Kimmy was kind of the same way, someone who I knew from about but didn’t really have a long standing relationship with. The key is none of us are in the same industry, and so there’s no competitive issues there or anything like that. And very – you know, when you sit around with people are in your same industry, you just tend to tell each other how right you are.

Dave: Sure. Yeah, kind of preaching to the choir.

Justin: Yeah, and this isn’t that because you get people who are in totally different types of businesses helping you work through problems and yours that they know nothing about your industry but they can give a – because of that – because of that truly unique approach, they can give a whole lot of valuable advice.

Dave: Yeah, no that’s a really, really good idea.

Justin: And Travis – just – if anybody’s listening wants to plan one of these…

Dave: (Laugh)

Justin: Travis – travisrobertson.com. He wrote a blog post – like a two part blog post about how to set one of these up.

Dave: Oh that’s great. I’ll definitely add…

Justin: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah, I’ll add the link to that in the show notes as well so people can find that.

Justin: Yeah. Excellent!

Dave: Awesome! Well listen, I know you’re a busy guy with all your moving boxes and such, and we’re sorry to see leaving Nashville but we wish you all the best I know.

Justin: Why thank you. You’ll still see a lot of me.

Dave: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Hey, where can folks find you if they want to learn more?

Justin: Sure, you can find Madera Labs at maderalabs.com. That’s maderalabs.com. And you can catch me just in Twitter at jwd2a.

Dave: Cool! Well thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Justin: Excellent! Thanks Dave!

Dave: Okay. Bye!

• SimpleEnergy, from Boulder, Colorado, was founded in Dec 2010
• a web based technology to bring people together to make energy more fun and more social
• how they joined TechStars
• selected as 1 of 12 teams from over 600 applicants – harder than entering Harvard
• Help Scout from Nashville from TechStars Boston
• Chris became an entrepreneur at 20, he worked at a music store and developed an online inventory system
• corporate people and middle managers who were ill-equipped inspired Chris to become an entrepreneur
• make the rules and call the shots.
• be aware of your customers and what they want
• building web apps for 15 years
• worked with SoberCircle
• Chris recommends subscribing to Brad Feld, David Cohen, Fred Wilson and the Foundry Group
• Contact Chris at ChrisEnnis.com, on Twitter @chrisennis and www.simpleenergy.net.

Chris’ 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know

1. If you’re early in to entrepreneurship. Find mentors who can provide thoughtful feedback, not just people in your industry.
2. Don’t get caught up in building the perfect product. If you’re not embarrassed with your first product, you’ve launched too late. Launch a terrible site first, then improve it to show progress.
3. You don’t have to raise money to get your startup off the ground. Find the right people to do the jobs first – bootstrapping is a 100% the best way to go at first.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the podcast is in iTunes, so you’ll get new episodes as they are available.

Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.

TRANSCRIPT

Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delany. My guest today is Chris Ennis; VP of Technology and Product Development at Simple Energy. Hey Chris, how are you?

Chris: I’m doing great. How are you Dave?

Dave: I’m good. Thanks for joining me.

Chris: Great to be here.

Dave: Tell me about Simple Energy. What is it that you guys are doing?

Chris: So Simple Energy is a web-based technology that brings people together to make energy more fun and more social through Facebook games and challenges that you and your friends may participate with to see who is most energy efficient.

Dave: That’s cool. So you’re actually competing with friends – kind of comparing scores and things like that?

Chris: Yeah we are. If you think about it, if you’ve ever paid an energy bill, then you are using kilowatt hours, and you’re basically already playing the game so to speak. You’re just not actually participating in a scoring mechanism that lets people actually see how they’re doing against others. And that’s the element of this that we bring to the table.

Dave: Very, very cool. And that’s – you guys are out in Colorado?

Chris: We are. We’re based in Boulder Colorado as of May 2011 prior – previously we were in downtown Denver, and we moved to Boulder to participate in Tech Stars which is a very well-known technology accelerator that the flagship is based in Boulder.

Dave: Yeah, that’s truly exciting. So you guys got picked up by Tech Stars, and tell me a little about that.

Chris: So yeah, we applied very late in the process to Tech Stars – we had started our company in December of 2010. And applications – I believe the deadline was in March of 2011. We had done various things – you know, submitted to various competitions and other showcases – and the opportunity to participate in Tech Stars came up. And at first I think we were a little but weary – I think a couple of co-founders were not so sure whether we wanted to do it or not do it. But then we decided the pros just vastly outweighed the cons…

Dave: Oh sure.

Chris: when it came to – you know, all the exposure that Tech Stars gives you, not just to the general tech community but also to unbelievable entrepreneurs who have years of experience and have numerous levels of success under their belts. So – you know, at the end of the day, we’re like – we got to do this. And we did. And we’re fortunate to be picked as one of the twelve teams out of over six hundred entries which is – I think I’ve seen this before where they – they claim that that ratio makes Tech Stars hard to get into than Harvard in terms of the admission.

Dave: (Laugh)

Chris: the admission ratio. But it certainly feels like I’m being thrown through Harvard in three months in this program right now so…

Dave: Yeah. (Laugh) That’s amazing. I know our own startups are going through the Jumpstart foundry right now. So yes, I can sympathize but I’m also envious of the stuff that you’re going through. It must be pretty incredible.

Chris: Yeah, you know – I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but there’s actually a team that just came out of Tech Stars Boston that’s from Nashville as well so…

Dave: Oh no kidding, that’s great.

Chris: Yeah, if you go check it out, I think they’re called Helpscout.

Dave: Okay.

Chris: And I found out about this when we first started the program because within Tech Stars there’s a wiki site that basically all the different programs share so just kind of going through and prying through that one. And I realized “Hey, there’s some guys on here that have followed me and I followed them on Twitter from Nashville.”

Dave: (Laugh)

Chris: And I went to look at their profile and – yeah, yeah, how amazing.

Dave: That’s great.

Chris: It’s really cool. And all of the things that you are doing at Jumpstart – you know, its’ – you know, this is an amazing time to be an entrepreneur and get into – you know, doing any sort of type of business.

Dave: Uh-hm. Definitely, definitely. And speaking of business – I mean, I know you’ve been doing it yourself for as long as I’ve known you. How long has it been since you’ve been an entrepreneur?