Today we have a superb interview with Michael Ayalon

Michael Ayalon is the brains behind PetWebDesigner.com, a website design and SEO company that focuses on the pet niche. Michael is 34 and lives on Long Island in NY.

We asked Michael what motivates him and what inspires him? I think his answers say a lot about the man.

“Helping other people succeed motivates me. I enjoy acting as a mentor to other entrepreneurs, college students, and people looking to build successful businesses for themselves.”

“I’m inspired by other entrepreneurs that develop products and businesses that change the way we use the internet. Great examples are guys like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Chad Hurley of YouTube.”

Thanks for a great interview Michael – we appreciate your insights.

Enjoy the interview everyone – I look forward to your comments.

Michael

PS: Nothing is Impossible!

Michael Ayalon Interview

1) You are founder of PetWebDesigner.com,. Tell us a bit more about the site and how you got involved in this market?

Petwebdesigner started seven years ago. My mother in law had a litter of 13 Mastiff puppies, and she needed to find new homes for these dogs that grow to be well over 200 pounds. She knew that I enjoyed creating websites, and she asked if I could build a site with photos of her Mastiffs so she could show it to friends and family.

I built the website, and using some basic search engine optimization techniques, I was able to get her site to the top of Google for the term ‘Mastiff’. She ended up selling all 13 of her puppies within two weeks, and she begged me to help other people in the pet industry. When I created PetWebDesigner.com,, it quickly spread throughout the pet industry, and soon I had hundreds of pet sitters, veterinarians, dog trainers, and new pet products coming to me for website design and search engine optimization specifically for the pet industry. What started out as something I would do at night or on the weekends turned into a full time job, and I finally left the corporate world behind to do something I truly enjoyed. It also gave me the flexibility to work at any time of day, from anywhere in the world, and spend lots of time with my wife and two children.

2) PetWebDesigner.com, is a great example of a Web Design Business that specializes in a Niche — rather than being a webdesigner to lots of different business Niches. That is very smart! What advice could you give young entrepreneurs  – on how to stand out in their own niche?

My advice would be to focus on a particular niche in whatever they do. The best comparison that I have would be to a doctor. If you are a general practitioner, you will earn some money, but there are so many of them – it becomes very difficult to differentiate yourself from all the others. However, if you were to become a brain surgeon, people will pay you significantly more money for your expertise.

Research different industries, look at some of your existing client base, and see what you can do to leverage your past experience and become a specialist in a certain area. Using references from previous customers and a niche that you are familiar with, you can become very successful.

3) Can you share some of the biggest lessons you have learned personally and as a business as
PetWebDesigner.com has grown? If you were to start again, what might you do differently?
As Petwebdesigner has grown, I’ve realized that you have to treat the customers right. Most of my business is from referrals, so I’ve learned that it is critical to continue working on a customer’s project until they are 100% satisfied. By going the extra mile, it separates you from the rest.

If I were to start again, I would hire more help sooner. As an entrepreneur, you sometimes feel that you can do everything. The reality is that you do everything in the beginning, but there reaches a point that you actually harm the business by taking on more than you can possible handle on your own. By finding good employees, you can make the business grow much faster than trying to do it all on your own.

4)I noticed that you have also invested / bought Pet Related domains – eg BuyPups.com — how important in your opinion is having a good domain name?
A good domain name is critical. Since I have been in the industry for so long, there were many domain names available that I felt would have value to a future customer. So, I purchased them many years ago and just kept them until the time was right. Sure enough, many customers see the domains that I have and come up with a business model just from the name alone! Having the keywords that you are targeting in your domain name makes search engine optimization a snap. I would much rather make a small investment in the right name up front, rather than spend thousands on Google Pay Per Click, years on SEO work, and other techniques just to get you to the top.

5) How important in your opinion is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) today and what are your Top SEO tips for people starting out with their first website?
Search Engine Optimization is critical for any business. It means the difference between a successful business and business that ultimately fails. SEO is a commitment, not something that is done once and you forget about it. I am always working on my own SEO, and the results speak for themselves. When you are positioned in the number one spot on Google for your prime keywords, you’ll never have to worry about how your customers will find you.

1. Try to avoid frames or flash on your website. Search engines can’t read photos, so keep lots of text on your page with your keywords spread throughout the page. The content is king!

2. Meta tags are becoming less important now, but it doesn’t hurt to have the right Title, Description, and Keywords listed in your Meta Tags.

3. Use Alt attributes on all your images, and be sure your keywords appear here as well.

4. Link building is so important. Stay away from link exchanges, they don’t work well anymore. Now you are interested in one way links from other websites in your niche pointing to your site, and they should have your keywords in the link text. Make sure to go after sites that have a high Google page rank, that will make it easier to get results. Think about other websites that you could get your link on, such as vendors, customers, affiliates, membership groups, and more.

5. Write articles! Google loves fresh content. Why not write about your expertise with a link at the end of the article pointing to your site? There are hundreds of sites just waiting for you to submit your own original articles. If you don’t have the time to write it, hire someone to write the article for you!

6. Take advantage of the online classified sites. This is a real easy way to get free exposure for your business, and some links to your site as well.

7. Start a blog. Wordpress allows you to create blogs with great looking templates and even better plug ins. The possibilities are endless, and Google loves blogs with tons of fresh content. Your links can go all over the blog as well.

8. Put out a press release! There are services that will submit your press release with links to your site to the Associated Press, like prweb.com.

9. Go and answer other people’s questions with a link to your site. There are sites like answers.yahoo.com that will allow you to answer people’s questions, and then link to your own site in the answer to those questions. Take advantage of this opportunity to position yourself as an expert in the industry.

6) Does social networking play any role in your business? If so what?
Yes, social networking does play a large role in my business. I’m very devoted to Twitter right now, you can follow me @petwebdesigner to see what I’m up to. I basically tweet about pet related stories, pet videos, and other pet news. Other pet lovers read my links, forward it to their friends, and I get many new customers that way as well. I have almost 6,000 followers now, and it’s been really fun to talk to all the pet lovers out there. I also can give help to others in the pet industry if they have questions about marketing their business online.

7) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences?
You have to learn from your negative experiences so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes. Luckily, I worked alongside some very successful CEOs over the last 12 years. I have learned from some of the mistakes they have made, and now I apply that to my own business. You should always have a mentor to talk to when you have a set back, they typically have experience with similar situations, and what has worked for them to help resolve the situation.

8 ) You have a really neat transparent video on your website. How is that working for you?

The transparent video that I have on my site has been a huge success. Everyone seems to notice it. I always felt that it would be helpful to have a host on the website, someone that introduced you to what you were about to see. It makes people feel comfortable, and to reassure them that they are in the right place. We were able to hire the actress, write the script, shoot the scene, and get it on the website within 1 week. It gets many “ooohs” and “aaahhhs”, so if that makes us stand out, then I’m all for it.

9) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

I admire my father for always working hard in life to achieve your goals. There is no doubt in my mind that I get my work ethic from him, and I wouldn’t be as driven without him. I also learned from other CEOs in my corporate career that taught me a great deal in how to run a business from the ground up, even when you didn’t have large funding to make it all happen. That was the training ground for creating my own company.

10) Do you have any favorite business related or web design related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?
My favorite book of all time is “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. If you haven’t read it yet, you need to run out and pick it up today. It’s a great summary of what has happened over the last 25 years with regard to technology, the effects of outsourcing in the world, and it really gives you a different perspective on business. As far as I’m concerned, it’s required reading for every entrepreneur.

11) What is the best advice you have ever been given?
“Nothing is impossible.” At the time, I didn’t believe him, but he was right. We all have the ability to become problem solvers, but sometimes we just get lazy and don’t apply ourselves. It’s important to become problem solvers in everything you do, you’ll be successful and earn a great living!

12) As someone who has achieved success so young, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today?
My advice would be to learn the fundamentals of business first. Either work for a small business or take business courses to understand how a business works. Balance sheet, income statement, and other key metrics are needed to measure your success. You can have a great business idea, but ultimately the business will fail if you don’t understand the fundamentals of business.

13) What do you like best about the Internet?
I love the power of the Internet. I love that anyone can create their own business on the Internet right from their home, and there is no need for costly overhead or big budgets to start a business online. It really gives anyone with a good idea the platform to make lots of money, and there is nothing better than that!

14) What do you like least about the Internet?
Viruses, spam, and people looking to pollute the Internet.

15) Any advice for how young entrepreneurs can bootstrap? (Not spending a ton to get something off the ground)?
Try to get favorable terms from vendors, and get payment in advance from customers. Talk to friends and family about your situation, and perhaps they can help you on an interim basis.

Hi Everyone

We have another podcast and interview transcript for you – this time with two remarkable young entrepreneurs called Jeff Nobbs and Noah Auerhahn from Extrabux.com

Extrabux.com is an amazing new development in the world of comparison shopping:

Extrabux.com is the first comparison shopping engine (CSE) to combine coupons, cash back and comparison shopping at one online destination. Through its free service, Extrabux.com finds shoppers the lowest possible price on millions of products while also granting cash back on everyday purchases at over 1,500 online stores, such as Petco.com and Macys.com.

Jeff and Noah have a lot of wisdom to share here and if you listen or read the transcript you will soon see what I mean. One thing in particular stands out for me:

Effort is never Forgotten

Listen / Read the interview to discover exactly what that means

Enjoy the interview – I look forward to your comments

Best Wishes

Michael

Jeff Nobbs and Noah Auerhahn Interview

Transcript:

Barry Dunlop: Hello there folks this is Barry Dunlop at Retireat21.com and I’ve got two amazing absolutely superb young entrepreneurs on the line with me from a wonderful website that I’ve actually just discovered this week. A website that sounds like an amazing name for a website, that’s extrabux.com that’s extra and B-U-X dot com. The two gentlemen on the line are Noah Auerhahn and Jeff Nobbs

Hi Noah, Hi Jeff

As I said earlier I’ve been getting to know your website this week and the thing actually, the first thing that struck me straight away and I don’t know whether it struck other people as well, you describe yourself as first comparison shopping engine to combine coupons, cash back and comparison shopping and in one online destination. The thing that got me immediately was that one it’s a fantastic idea, I mean because most of us are familiar with websites like, I use a website called fat wallet for example. And I think you know that’s great, I can get me coop from there I can find out what me discounts are, but it seems to me like why didn’t nobody come up with this idea before so, I going to ask you guys when did you have your, well what I call your eureka moment, if you like when did you get the idea of combining all of these things together and creating “extrabux.”

Noah Auerhahan: Well I can’t say it was like a eureka moment I think it was more we started this cash back and coupon website and we saw the same problem that a lot of consumers faced. Early on in the site where we were going to comparison shopping engines trying to find the lowest price and then grabbing coupons, cash back from extrabux trying to you know calculate the lowest price together and it was just so difficult, and we started talking to our consumers and talking to friends and family who were using the site and they were experiencing the same thing and so we start to work on the business plan and we end up winning the USC business plan competition. I would say that was more the moment of, it wasn’t a idea eureka moment, but a moment where we said we have to do this you know this we won this competition, and we were competing against grad students and we were only undergrads and I thing that kind of said to Jeff and myself that this is something that we… it must be a decent idea if we got this far

Barry Dunlop: And you were competing against grad students as well actually so that was … were you surprised you one or did you expect to win?


Jeff Nobbs: I’d say it was more of an expected surprise.

Barry Dunlop: This I’ve got to write that down “Expected Surprise” that’s Jeff said that by the way

Noah Auerhahan: The whole time we had thought that, you know, we could just make it to the finals and be able to present we think we’ll definitely win the Businessman competition. And so we made it to the finals and ended up presenting and the feedback that we got was kind of you know, “you guys did a great job, but you know there’s grad students here so they’ll probably end up wining.” And so when the announced that we won, we were of course surprised but we also you know I kind of expected that if we make it to the finals we could present and win.

Barry Dunlop: Okay I mean you’ve had the confidence, if you like that term, that you got that far, you believed you could go all the way. I like the energy I’m getting of you, Jeff if I may say that, cause I thing that is one thing that I found in entrepreneurs, as I speak to them all around the world, is that they all have sort of like, I wouldn’t call it a cocky energy, but they have a confidence if you like, that somehow you know there’s gonna work out okay and obviously clearly you had it.
I got to ask because one it’s a fantastic idea and I encourage everybody you know this is the place you guys need to go and I tried it out several times this week and it really works very well. Tell me you know when did you win this competition? What year was this what time or what month was out of that happened.

Jeff Nobbs: This was May 2008 when we won the competition.

Barry Dunlop: Okay and when did you have the site in like sort of an alpha or beta format.

Jeff Nobbs: We first launched extrabux.com in June 2006 and at that time it was just a cash back and coupon website and as Noah mentioned we kind of got all this feedback that consumers were first going to comparison shopping website figuring out where they wanted to shop. Then coming to extrabux’s to get cash back coupons or going to another cash back website to get cash back then going to a coupon website, so it was a pretty frustrating process. And we started developing our business plan before this three in one website and we… we won the competition May 2008, and just launched this new website on October 6th.

Barry Dunlop: October 6th of 2009?

Jeff Nobbs: 2009 correct.

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful. Okay now, if I go through the website one of the things that again struck me was, oh actually I have to go back, you know did you guys get any funding for this, I mean any state capital? How have you got this far?

Noah Auerhahan: Well we’ve raised a bit of money but it’s been primarily boot strap, using the revenues from our cash back and coupon website, and pumping that into development, because we had to hire a complete development team because it’s a pretty large project, we’re managing a lot of data we adjust about 76million project records every day, to keep our prices as up to date as possible. So we had to hire a new house team to do that, we raised some from private investors, friends and family, extensions of friends and family and then more recently we opened up an angel round which is about half filled and now we’re trying to fill up the remainder of that round.

Barry Dunlop: The development team obviously is a significant cost. Where did you go about recruiting the development team? Where these people you knew or are they people off sure in the U.S.? Where did you find your development team?

Jeff Nobbs: Well we originally interviewed people, we were originally in Los Angeles and San Diego and we found some people we really liked in San Diego, who got really excited about the project and I think in the start up your looking for people who are willing to come in a little below market value because they believe so much in it also adding equity to the deal, so we found some people who were just incredibly talented programmers. Some, you know one guy who thinks way outside the box and one guy who thinks really in the box and together they really lead the development of the system.

Barry Dunlop: Okay and basically the fundamental there was that you interviewed people you got a number of people if you like to come with their service and that’s how you did it you know. And their all local people in California, that are working for you there, it’s a local developing company?

Noah Auerhahan: All San Diego based people yeah we originally tried out sourcing people some of the development but we thought the project was too large.

Barry Dunlop: Yeah I would suggest that most people are going to do a project like yours, I think one of the most significant things you have to overcome in developing, is getting the development team on board and getting them if you’d like to take your brilliant idea which actually is the most brilliant is a very simple idea, but actually putting it out there and making it work is an entirely different thing all together. As you’ve clearly found out.

Jeff Nobbs: Right Yeah Barry this is Jeff. We actually, most of our employees, on our team, we found through a company who’s founder you’ve interviewed before, Craig’s List.

Barry Dunlop: Oh right, Great!

Jeff Noobs: We’ve found pretty much everyone through there, so it’s a lot of a sales job on our end where you need to convince the people your interviewing for them to come on board with no mention the under market value and be excited about your idea.

Barry Dunlop: Wow and Craig’s List is responsible for so many things actually so there we go again. The other thing that actually stuck out for me actually is you guys somehow persuaded some like 60%of the top 2000 online retailers to come on board with you. Is this a case where you signed up as affiliates for them? How does this work, how have you recruited them? Did you go to them direct or is it an affiliate type arrangement?

Jeff Nobbs: It is an affiliate type arrangement. When we first we getting started we definitely struggled in getting the top online retailers to work with us it’s kinda like the chicken and the egg problem. When we first approached them they wanted to see more sales from us, more traffic, more traction and so we would come back and say well we need you to get that traction but it took a while you know we got the traction they were looking for and now we’re at the point where retailers are coming to us instead of the other way around.

Barry Dunlop: Got ya. Can you share, actually both of you can do this, can you share some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned personally from setting up the business EXTRABUX as its grown and if you were to start EXTRA BUX again, and its been around in different forms since June 2006, what might you do differently?

Noah Auerhahan: I think in terms of just the biggest the most important decisions you make are the people you bring on to your team and put around you and that hiring process we interviewed a lot of people because we realized the importance of bring on the right people around you who are gonna make the best decisions so you don’t have to be over their shoulders and making decisions for them. So I think that was the most important thing we’ve done and will continue to focus on the people we hire.

Barry Dunlop: That’s awesome advice Noah I mean and it’s a reoccurring thing that I hear from nearly every entrepreneurs is the biggest lesson they learned is about hiring cause quite often we give it to a member of the family or a friend or something like that and don’t go through the proper… I think we’ve all done it…but any way that is a recurring theme I see as I speak to entrepreneurs hiring is where it is.
What’s next for EXTRABUX do you think, I mean how do you see sites like this developing like I don’t know in five years from now, I mean coupon websites have been around for quite a long time, since the internet have existed virtually. Where do you think EXTRABUX will go?

Jeff Nobbs: Well I think if you look at this market this industry there’s so many different players it’s highly fragmented. There’s so many different comparison shopping engines and a number of cash back websites and nearly endless amount of coupon websites. There aren’t many industries that are like that, so we see this industry consolidating. We think five years from now there’s gonna just a few top layers are going to emerge and so because we see that opportunity we’re kind of positioning ourselves to be one of those top players.

Barry Dunlop: Okay, and in your experience in your knowledge what is the biggest motivator is it cash back or is it is the discount out is it the both I mean a lot of people want the discount but are people also motivated by the cash back that will come back from you guys?

Jeff Nobbs: Yeah what we see consumers being motivated by is just at bottom line lowest price, so people don’t really care whether its cash back or whether its coupons, those two things together give them a lower price than anyone else on the web , that’s what really motivates them.

Barry Dunlop: Okay, comparison shopping engines have got a lot a lot more complicated since the first time I’ve ever come across the thing, the first time I ever came across them was actually a forum where people just shared their coupons if you like, these days it’s a lot more sophisticated. We’re coming back the developers here I suppose here I mean what’s the biggest challenge or what was the biggest challenge? I mean I think you told me earlier about the number of searchers or things done every day I mean what’s the biggest search in….. challenge in building an engine like that.

Jeff Nobbs: I think it’s the infrastructure you’re dealing with, if every processing piece that you do in your system takes a couple of milliseconds, those add up in ways that you really don’t think about, but when you have 76 million products your doing so much sorting and grouping and your buying your algorithms for that its time consuming, so I think that was the biggest challenge we faced with the infrastructure and the processing of that amount of data.

Barry Dunlop: Actually I’ve got a question I’ve got to ask it to each of you, both of you individually actually I’d like to start with Jeff if I may actually, I don’t know whether this is your first business or not but I mean what was your first business and what did you learn from running your first business, your first entrepreneurial attempt shall we say.

Jeff Nobbs: Well this is my first real business. I guess I’ve had a couple entrepreneurial endeavors in the past. One of which was preordering Harry Potter books off Amazon then selling them for an increased price on eBay.

Barry Dunlop: I like it.

Jeff Nobbs: But I never preformed a corporation for that or anything.

Barry Dunlop: Okay, and Noah what are you going to admit to?

Noah Auerhahan: I could never admit to all my businesses but I just think, we both were – knew we wanted to do something that was a little bit different we, neither of us were ready to walk down the investment banking path and were looking where everyone was steered when entering college cause they’re the ones that was making all the money back in 2005/2006. So I think we just wanted to see was there a way that you know we could maybe try a different path that was a little bit more exciting for us.

Barry Dunlop: Okay that’s great. Obviously I mean, I’m sure along the way there’s been some challenges and I’m sure you’ve had some setbacks and negative experiences. Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs in particular, about how to cope with sort of setbacks.

Jeff Nobbs: I think this is, this is Jeff, I think that for young entrepreneurs and this is a mistake, but a mistake we learn from and in the past was you have to just think of the big picture. So when we were first getting started you know we expected to launch the site and went within a week have thousands of visitors. But you know when we started, I don’t really blame us for this because I think it’s a mistake most young entrepreneurs make, you just kind of you know see the short term, you know you want to get visitors to the site immediately drive up revenues immediately, but you have to kind of think everything , think of everything as one to two to three year plan, so just really think of the big picture, and every negative set back, you just have to take a step back and say am I upset because this is just affecting me just now, probably if it probably just does not affect the big picture.

Barry Dunlop: Do you want to add anything Noah?

Noah Auerhahan: Yeah, I think, first of thought is that Jeff’s thought is as level headed as it gets, so that makes it really easy since he’s my partner, I’m more up and down with my emotions sometimes, but I think what you have to do is you have to understand yourself a little bit, and you’re gonna have days that are really tough, your gonna have days that are really so exciting, when those tough days come around, you know I personally just like alright find myself get a little upset inside, and then relax, okay. And I think the best thing you can do is make a plan, I think the worst thing is when you get anxious when you don’t have a strategy for how you’re going to move forward from and rebound from this problem. So I think like after we’ll have a big problem, we’ll a setback we’ll ok let’s talk about it lets see how we’re going to move around this problem and then usually the next day you get back to work and you’re like okay we have a plan and we’re working towards it.

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful,I like it, cause one of you is very level headed and one of you is up and down and it’s basically your both more or less saying the same thing, just slightly different, it’s about getting on with it anyway. I think somebody once said to me, you know one think you have to learn about being an entrepreneur is that there’s no guarantee you know, there is no absolute 100% certainty about anything. And you guys are obviously copping with that. I’m going to ask a very personal question, you don’t have to elaborate a big thing about this, but I thinks a question especially when I meet co-founders I like to ask because this you know you are—usually I find co-founders work because quite often they’re actually quite different from each other, you’ve already alluded to that, but have you had—what I’m sure there must have been occasions when you’ve had some challenges working together personally or maybe you didn’t I don’t know but do you have any advice for people who are working together especially if they’re friends first of all and neither have been in business together is there a way that you cope with disagreements for example.

Jeff Nobbs: I mean the biggest thing, kind of like I alluded to earlier was that just taking a step back and looking at the big picture. There are of course times where we have disagreements we’re working for the same goal. So if we have a disagreement you know I think the biggest thing to do is just say ok so whats kind of the right way to do this what’s going to create the most value for the company. What’s going to be the best for EXTRABUX.

Barry Dunlop: Excellent

Jeff Nobbs: But there’s definitely a tone of value in, I think in having a business partner, in having a co-founder in a business. We’re constantly bouncing ideas back and forth so a lot of times we’ll kind of start an idea then we’ll finish it off or the other way around.

Barry Dunlop: Excellent. Excellent. Noah did you want to add?

Noah Auerhahan: Yeah I agree, I think there is a couple of things that are really important. You know the first thing is more internally which is, where is your moral compass? I think without being on the same page there you’re going to have issues, it will come up and you know I think we’ve seen different challenges with that, you know running the business bringing people on making sure they fit the same moral compass. Then also making sure your strategy for where you see the business is going like, where is the long run strategy for this business, are you guys in line and then the last thing is just communicating effectively. Jeff and I are not just business partners but we’re really good friends and I think when we have a problem with each other or we have a problem with how we approach something the other one is quick to just say, hey man I’m like I didn’t like and appreciate that you know how we had that conversation or how that interaction occurred, and we talk about it and then we move on, and I think that’s what helped us move forward from you know different challenges that we faced.

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful, I think that’s a tremendous piece of advice. Talking of advice again you could answer this individually. That would be really great. What would you consider the best advice you’ve ever been given? I mean maybe I’d go to you again first Jeff.

Jeff Nobbs: Can I pass it off to Noah and I’ll think about it for a bit.

Barry Dunlop: Course you can.

Noah Auerhahan: I would actually say it was from a friend of mine at USC, when we were talking about the business and he was just like “effort is never forgotten” and I think that really helps me when you think you’ve just did something for the last two weeks and your working on this project and it didn’t work out and its easy to get a set back and say man I just wasted my time or a lot of people say how can you take that risk on this business and is so much risk why don’t you take a more structured path, but I just feel like everything we’re doing working towards a goal, we’re learning so much, we’re building so many relationships with so many people that I think we’re moving forward with our careers each day. No matter how EXTRABUX works out and no matter how each little product works out we’ve learned so much from that our feelings is that we’ve really learned a lot from our experience.

Barry Dunlop: Great, I mean, “effort is never forgotten” I’ve got that right. That’s a great think I’m gonna repeat that. Jeff, you can just say efforts are never forgotten if you like

Jeff Nobbs: Well I do agree with that but yeah in terms of one piece of advice I wouldn’t say for me there’s any one piece of advice that’s been driving me or has been a big motivator for me I’d say it’s just kind of I wouldn’t say there’s any kind of one right answer for a way to do business or a way to do anything for that matter so I’d say the best advice for me has been from hundreds of people all giving their little tid bits of knowledge

Barry Dunlop: O good, good cause that was sort of one of the other questions cause we have so many bits of information coming from other people. Is there any entrepreneurial or it doesn’t have to be an entrepreneurial could be just an individual living or dead that you both look up to or you individually look up to. Anybody who’s been a particular inspiration in your entrepreneurial career for instance.

Jeff Nobbs: I kind of go back to saying just be kind of everyone sharing their little bits of knowledge and everyone has different knowledge that they can share but my role model would definitely be my dad who was an entrepreneur his whole life

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful

Noah Auerhahan: I would say that probably my role model we both had really awesome fathers, who I think helped to guide us from both a moral perspective and you know hard work. I also admire people like Bill Gates who you know just believed in their project and went out and did it and I commend them for that I look up to them for that and I think we take a lot of you know sometimes you get advice from people and you’re like they’re telling you you’re crazy and other people who think you’re doing the best thing ever so you kind of have to stay in the middle and just take every piece of information and really believe in what you’re trying to do.

Barry Dunlop: That’s great. Just a couple of more questions . Actually just 3 more questions, very brief ones they are. Based on your own experiences gentlemen, what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs starting up a business today. I mean if you could just say this is one thing you could remember above all other things what might that be?

Jeff Nobbs: I think you know that’s like you talking about look at the big picture and think of the business as a long term plan

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful

Jeff Nobbs: I would say read a research as much as you can, talk to as many people as you can because that’s what allowed us to develop this technology and to be competitive in this space, how much we’ve learned about this space, by just going out and trying to doing it.

Barry Dunlop: Wonderful, and what do you like best about the internet?

Jeff Nobbs: I like best about the internet that you really have almost all knowledge in the world at your finger tips, and you can find it in a matter of seconds.

Barry Dunlop: That’s an awesome answer I like that one. Noah could you beat that?

Noah Auerhahan: Just to say something about that, I think Jeff speaks to Google in a language that others can’t. Just in terms of, like Jeff could you find this piece of information and two seconds later he’s like sending me a link. I would agree in just in terms of opportunity and on the internet there’s you know every time there’s new innovation, there’s so much more innovation than you could build on – it is so exciting.

Barry Dunlop: It’s a slightly negative one. If there was something negative about the internet that you didn’t like, something if you could do it remove it what might that be?

Jeff Nobbs: Well your asking the wrong person, I really love the internet.

Barry Dunlop: You’re also a free thinker no doubt.

Jeff Nobbs: Although there is like I said a vast amount of knowledge available at your finger tips. There’s also some knowledge that’s impossible to get via the internet. So I think sometimes I and some other people as well rely on a little too much on it and kind of forget that there’s so much value in going out and networking and talking to people and having a real time real life conversation.

Barry Dunlop: That’s awesome.

Noah Aerhahan: I think that as much opportunity there is, it is easy sometimes to get diverted from your core business, so I think not allowing yourself to get distracted by every new buzz word that comes along is important and you should keep FOCUS.

Barry Dunlop: Oh yeah focus is a good word. Okay Gentleman I congratulate you and I thank you and I encourage everybody listening to this call to check out the site, sign up as a member. It is the future I certainly believe in fact that you know, no doubt about it it’s the future of comparison shopping and it’s been a real honor to have you on as a call, I really appreciate it and have a wonderful day in sunny California.

Today we have an interview with a wonderful Young Entrepreneur – Joshua Levitt of usedcisco.com, a company he started aged 29.

Founded in 2005, UsedCisco.com is the world’s largest online network hardware outlet, offering thousands of network hardware products at significant savings off list price.

Joshua is a seasoned entrepreneur – and having gone through the trials and tribulations of starting his own business he has many great insights such as:

“My grandmother once told me when I was running my first business in 2003. ‘You better learn how to roll with the blows.’”

and

“You will never be the cheapest guy out there and remember, people buy form people they like.”

Enjoy the interview and as always let us have your comments.

To Our Success

Michael

Joshua Levitt Interview

1) Hi Joshua, thank you for agreeing to this interview,

You are the Co-founder of usedcisco.com. What made you set up that site? Get involved in that industry?

The decision to build usedcisco.com was predicated on the desire to align our business model with 3 emerging trends, therefore increasing our probability of success.

The first trend being the demand for bandwidth. I recognized the potential impact of the computer revolution while in high school. I wasn’t the best student, but I always had the ability to find relevance between my studies and the environment. I was learning about the industrial revolution in my history courses and I was simultaneously taking basic computer electives. I quickly realized that computers and the internet would account for a revolution greater than that of the industrial revolution. I figured, a career in networking technology would be akin to choosing a career in the manufacturing or the railroad back in late 1800’s. The demand for bandwidth is ever increasing. The growth is and will continue to be exponential and usedcisco.com is selling the equipment necessary to be a part of it

The second trend is that of e-commerce. Studies show that more and more people are doing their shopping online every day. Frankly, I believe with the advent of the internet and e-commerce, most anything can and will become a commodity in the next 10 years. E-commerce affords customers better access to product pricing and product research than ever before. This trend is going to continue growing exponentially as well.

The third trend is the environment. Green IT and environmentally friendly corporate philosophies are on the rise globally. Driven by the necessity to minimize our impact on the environment this trend is not going anywhere soon (or ever). Our ethics have evolved in the past few years to consider the environment on a scale never before known by the human race. At UsedCsico.com we are selling pre-owned network hardware and therefore reducing the impact of e-waste. E-waste accounts for more than 3% of the global carbon output, which is equal to that of the airline industry. Reuse and recycling will continue to be part of the mainstream in the years to come both socially and legislatively.

2) You mentioned starting a business was an emotional rollercoaster. “It’s a Rollercoaster in the sense of the emotional constitution required to build a start-up with limited resources”  Tell us a bit more about how you dealt with this and what gave you the strength to persevere?

The strength comes from my desire to succeed and my passion to win. I am a competitive person and I think it carries over to my career as well. I draw strength daily form my team. We are all overworked and under-paid; it’s the nature of any start-up business. My team continues to be highly motivated and committed to the success of UsedCisco.com regardless of our ups and downs. Finding the right people to build your core team is tantamount to the success of any entrepreneur. It’s imperative that you surround yourself with individuals who buy into your business model. These people need to be driven, hungry and willing to make a sacrifice. These people are not your typical 9-5ers and I could not do it without them.

3) Can you share some of the biggest lessons you have learned personally and as a business as UsedCisco.com has grown? If you were to start again, what might you do differently?

My biggest lesson has been the management of cash flow. Any business needs capital to succeed. This business was started on a modest bootstrap and therefore resources have always been limited. I regret not working harder towards raising additional capital to grow the business. I thought we would grow organically and therefore have no debt. We have done just that. However, looking back, I now realize that we could have grown markedly faster with the assistance of outside capital. Faster growth is essential to staying ahead of the competition.

Regarding cash flow there is a very delicate balance between re-capitalizing profits back into the business and dedicating cash for operating capital. Start-up businesses are less likely to secure loans and lines of credit from a traditional bank due limited history and less than 3 years of financials. So be very careful not to screw up the balance even once because you will have little or nothing to fall back on. At a start-up you have to carefully re-invest in your businesses to reach its goals. This balance is rather difficult to budget because there are no historic trends to assist in budgeting. Revenues can fluctuate drastically with no benchmark to call upon. A few consecutive slow months in sales can sink your shiny new ship before it ever gets out of the harbor.

4) Do you have any recommended strategies for getting customers who buy once to come back and use your service again – other than of course good service?

Well that’s just it, good service! Our philosophy here has always been to exceed our customer’s expectations. I try to drill in the philosophy of under promising and over delivering. A customer of ours should be pleasantly surprised after ordering a small part from us and hopefully next time she will come back to make bigger consecutive purchases. My definition of over delivering can include; an early arrival of your order by a day or two, professional packaging, friendly and knowledgeable sales rep’s and terrific post sales support.

I try to push our sales team towards providing business solutions to their customers. I tell them, “you are not here to quote people on hardware; you are here to solve their business problems.” Hardware itself is a solution to a business problem, and we try to understand the bigger picture of what our customers are trying to accomplish. If we can fully understand them, then we can suggest out-side of the box solutions or configurations. Sometimes even at the expense of losing the deal if hardware is not the appropriate solution. I believe when we can get a customer to consider an option that they had never previously thought about, is when you truly begin to add value and stand out form our competitors. These are the customers who will award us with the most lucrative long term relationships.

5) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences?

Yes, my grandmother once told me when I was running my first business in 2003. “You better learn how to roll with the blows.” This advice was imparted on me after I had just finished complaining to her how I was having a spell of bad luck with equipment break downs and bad help. I said my life will be a lot easier when everything is running smoothly and I don’t have to put out fires so often. I soon realized that the days of “smooth running” are often fewer in numbers than those of fire extinguishing. It’s the nature of being in business. If you want stable, repetitive, and thoughtless tasks to work on daily then stay as far away from a start-up business as you can get. I learned to expect the unexpected and to make the best decisions I can with the most information I have. I commit to those decisions quickly and move forward with tenacity. It’s simply the best I can do. At the end of the day you can’t beat yourself up for doing your best.

6) How do you keep your business focus – Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?

It’s very easy to get caught up in the day to day operations of any business. It’s imperative that you take a step back every so often and consider the bigger picture. This also included celebrating milestones. There are always more goals to achieve and deadlines to work towards, but you need to make a concerted effort to document these milestones and pat yourself and your team on the back after reaching each one. Sometimes, talking about your business to a perfect stranger helps you stay in touch with the bigger picture of where you are trying to go. If you experience tough times, fall back on that broader goal and draw strength from where you have come so far and the milestones from your past.

7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

I look up to My Dad and grandfather who were both successful entrepreneurs and who taught me early on about what it means to succeed in small business and most importantly how to control costs. More recently I have looked up to Joe Asady my co-founder and angel investor for UsedCisco.com. Joe owns and manages several businesses in the network hardware arena and was a mentor to me in the early stages of development. He pushed me to grow and become the best I could be. I call upon both Joe and my Dad for my toughest business questions. They always have the right answers.

8 ) Do you have any favorite business related or web design related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

I highly recommend a book by Jessica Livingston called Founders at Work. It is a collection of in depth interviews and stories of start-ups’ early days during the dot com bubble. The case studies found in that book are invaluable to anyone who is thinking of starting or exiting from any business.

9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

You will never be the cheapest guy out there and remember, people buy form people they like.

10) As someone who has achieved success so young, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today?

The devil is in the details. Having a good idea is the easy part. There is another good idea every 30 seconds in this country. The difference between those of us who succeed and the majority who fail is EXECUTION. Execution is 98% of the equation. There s no short cut to success and substitute for hard work and diligence. Everyone I know thinks they have a good business idea. They talk about their product and or service, and its superior advantages. However, if you cannot manage cash flows and you cannot motivate a team of the right people you will get nowhere fast. Understanding of basic accounting principles and the intricacies of running a business financially are equally as important as your great idea, if not more so.

11) What do you like best about the Internet?

I like how the internet brings people together. It is shrinking the world at a rate faster than the railroad, automobile and airplanes combined. I love the collaboration this affords. When you can you combine so many minds and information in one place the potential for advancement is insurmountable. This is all afforded by the ability to upload. Historic mediums like newspapers and television always projected information in one direction. Never before has any other medium allowed people to contributed in real time.

12) What do you like least about the Internet?

I dislike all the unscrupulous behavior. The hackers, the phishing scams, certain  unethical marketing platforms etc…

13) Any advice for how young entrepreneurs can bootstrap? (Not spending a ton to get something off the ground)?

Yes, in the words of Joe Asady, one of my mentors previously mentioned. “Beg, Borrow and steal,” all kidding aside, you need to remain humble and keep your costs to an absolute minimum.

Hi Everyone,

Today I am delighted to present an interview with a remarkable Entrepreneur – Dan McComb.

Dan is one of the co-founders of Biznik.com

Biznik.com is a website I only discovered recently and I have to say I am very impressed. In a very short time, Dan and his co-founder Lara Feltin have built a remarkable community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed. What brought Dan and Biznik.com to my attention was the recent Biznik National Entrepreneur study sponsored by iStockphoto

Some incredible stats and information have come out of this survey – such as:

– Nearly 33% of people said they “wanted to do something they enjoy”
– Nearly 60 % said that “personal interests and values were the main
drivers behind their entrepreneurial pursuits”
– Another 25% cited the fact that they did not want to work for someone
else
– And, while only 60% of the respondents said they were satisfied with
the performance of their business, 91% claim they are satisfied with their
decision to work for themselves

This is an amazing interview (conducted by my Father – Barry Dunlop) and we have both a Podcast (above) and a Transcription below. Dan comes out with some real gems of information — one in particular that got my attention was:

Collaboration beats Competition

Read / Listen to the interview to discover more and as always I look forward to your comments.

Very Best Wishes

Michael

TRANSCRIPTION:

Dan McComb Interview

Barry Dunlop: Folks, this Barry Dunlop at Retireat21.com. I’m very fortunate to have a very special guest on the line today, a gentleman by the name of Dan McComb. Dan McComb is from a wonderful website I’ve just become familiar with recently called Biznik.com. Now let me spell that to you, that’s B-I-Z-N-I-K.com. Biznik.com is a community for entrepreneurs and small businesses, dedicating to helping each other succeed. I’d actually probably call it a social network but we’re going to be speaking to Dan in a moment and he’s going to enlighten us a whole lot more about Biznik and what it is. Are you on the line there, Dan?

Dan McComb: Hi, Barry.

Barry: Good, good to have you, Dan. We really appreciate you coming on board. We know you have a very, very busy time at the present. One reason being actually you seem to be all over the internet at present because of the Biznik National Entrepreneur study sponsored by iStockphoto. It’s a survey to determine the primary concerns and motivations of US entrepreneurs.

Normally I’d start off by talking about Biznik but this survey is fascinating. In fact, the more I look at it, the more fascinated I become with it. So, first of all, tell us how you got involved with iStockphoto.com, how the survey came about and then we can maybe talk about some of the surprising results and things that came out of it.

Dan: Absolutely, yeah, well you know I was so fascinated with entrepreneurship and why people are willing to leave a comfortable job and strike off into the unknown and start something despite the challenges associated with it and so one of the questions we asked entrepreneurs was, “What is your biggest challenge, what are you facing, you know, what are the hardships?”. And the first thing, the really surprising finding of the survey was that the number one thing that people report as the biggest challenge was that it’s the reduced income associated with starting a business. I suppose that actually shouldn’t be surprising because, you know, when you jump off, quit a day job and start your own business, you know, often you can expect not to make as much money at least initially and there’s certainly more people with their hand out, you need to hire web designers, you need to get a graphic designer to build you a logo or a website, whatever, all those things, right? Two other things came up. The other one was isolation; people feel isolated and then the other one is they’re working really long hours. So, these are the three biggest challenges entrepreneurs face but to back up and specifically address your question, I kind of got ahead of myself here, iStockphoto and myself and Biznik, we actually found out about each other through Bruce Livingstone who is the founder of Istock who got started up in Calgary, Alberta which is actually where I used to live when I was a kid.

Barry: I’m familiar with it. It’s a great place. I’ve been there last month.

Dan: Oh yes, cold place but great place. In any case, I started making a film about entrepreneurship last April and this film, we had interviewed about 270 people to find out, you know, more about why they do what they do despite the challenges. And one of the people I interviewed for the film was none other than Bruce Livingstone and so he had an extraordinary story that actually did make it into the film. The film is in post production right now. And that’s how we connected. That’s how we decided, you know, this is great, we’re both kind of doing the things and we should try to find a way to work together and that’s what happened. We jointly authored this survey along with a professor at the School of Business here in Washington Sate, University of Washington.

Barry: That’s wonderful. I do know there are one or two surprising outcomes about the survey as well. Do you want to take about those in particular because, I mean. Actually I think I will actually just say something. That reduced income at the beginning is something, I think, that is the obvious thing but I find that a lot of young entrepreneurs are not really aware that that’s going to happen and I think the other thing they’re not aware of is that there’s going to be a lot more people with their hands out expecting you to pay them for things.

Dan: It’s really true, yeah.

Barry: It’s really true.

Dan: And it’s interesting, you know, it’s probably not the most surprising thing, right? Because when you think about it, when you take those risks it’s not surprising that that would happen but what is surprising for me in the results of the survey was getting to the motivation of why people start businesses. Many surveys have shown that the number one reason why people start a business is nothing more complicated than this: they simply don’t want to work for someone else. Now, we expected that that would be what we would find in our survey too. It’s a very consistent finding in many surveys. However, that’s not what we found. The number one reason that people told us why they start their business is because they want to do something that they enjoy. Now, that’s interesting, right? So, it’s not like, “I want to make a lot of money”, “I want to change and revolutionize an industry”, “I want to become famous” or “I don’t want to work for someone else”. It’s “I want to do something I enjoy”, “I want to love what I do”, “I want to be happy”. So, you know, that’s interesting. Actually, the number two thing in our survey, in fact, was “I don’t want to work for someone else”, and it was a close second. It was 33% to 27%. But nevertheless we really thought that was striking and it actually supports a finding that the Gallup Polling organization found very recently. In fact, they released the results of their survey about two weeks before we released ours. And what they found for the first time was across all professions in the United States including such categories as doctors and attorneys and, you know, engineers. One of the categories they listed was entrepreneurs and people who are running their own business and they asked them a bunch of questions about job satisfaction and guess who came out number one as the happiest.

Barry: Entrepreneurs?

Dan: Entrepreneurs!

Barry: Amazing.

Dan: Entrepreneurs. They’re happier than any other category of professional and that is despite the challenges, right? Despite those challenges that I outlined at the beginning that you’re going to be making less money, you’re going to be working longer hours and there’s a lot of uncertainty and risk that comes with it.

Barry: This is all fascinating stuff, Dan. Actually, I’m going to encourage everybody. When we publish this interview online, we’re going to include a link to the survey. If you’re the scientific type, it’s obviously going to be very interesting for you. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s going to be very interesting to you. There’s so much there, which actually for me as an entrepreneur reading it was just nice to know that somebody was paying attention to us and it was also nice to know that actually it represented us all very well. If I can come back now to Biznik, if I may, Dan, as I said in the beginning, it’s an amazing website. I know it’s been around actually I discovered the other day, it’s been around a little bit longer than I anticipated. It’s been around something like four years now. So, possibly first of all, could you give us a little bit of background on how it got started, what was the thinking behind it starting? I mean, am I fair to call it a social network? It’s sort of a different kind of social network because there’s obviously a bit of meeting up and so on and so forth. So, I’d love you to elaborate on that, Dan, please.

Dan: Absolutely, yeah. Well four years ago my wife and I were both self employed; she as a photographer, me as web developer and we were looking to grow our businesses and we looked around at the options for networking here in Seattle and we were disappointed with what we found and so necessity being the mother of invention as it is often for entrepreneurs we decided to roll our own and just invite a bunch of our friends and see what we could start. It didn’t even start out as a business idea. It really just started out as solving our own problem and so we got together with some people. I built a website in my spare time. Literally, over a weekend I used some code on a different project I’d been working as the foundation and got it up and running and here we are four years later. About 40,000 members mainly active in the northwest around the Seattle area because of the fact that we emphasize face to face connections. And so it is a social network but it’s a little different than the kinds you’ve heard of like Facebook or Twitter in that there’s a very strong face to face component in what we do.

Barry: And I think face to face is still pretty cool and pretty good actually. I’m very confident Dan it’s going to make a comeback despite Twitter. I think I also read something like you’re in a 140 different countries, something like that. Is that right or did I read that wrong?

Dan: No, it’s correct. We’re in 140 countries but the reality is that, you know, there’s 4 people in Malaysia and, you know, 20 in China or whatever. It’s a power curve that really has a long tail with not much activity even though it sounds great. The real activity is happening in English speaking countries and certainly the United States is by far the largest.

Barry: And you mentioned earlier about solving problems. Actually, I think I saw it on the website or maybe it was you or somewhere I saw the best ideas come from solving one’s problems or solving problems and that’s what entrepreneurship is almost to some degree, isn’t it?

Dan: I think it is and that’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to meet other entrepreneurs because it’s often in conversations that you have with other people who are facing the same challenges and the same opportunities as you are that you can really discover possibilities and opportunities. And sometimes it isn’t even about finding new opportunities and exploiting them. It’s really about just the support that comes from having the comradery and feeling like you’re part of something, that you’re not just going it alone. And that’s been really a powerful thing and it’s really one of the things that people tell us why they really like being part of Biznik is really the community piece.

Barry: I mean, no, it’s quite clear just looking at the website how important this is and the thing that got me in particular was sort of this localized community as well which was obviously a very, I mean, I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur but if I had my time again the one thing I would have done sooner would’ve been got into mastermind groups or mentoring groups with fellow entrepreneurs. They didn’t have to be in the same industry, completely unrelated industries just because there’s support in doing that. And what Biznik is doing is a phenomenal example of making that much easier for people to do. One other thing which I like about website which really got me and is you make a statement which is “collaboration beats competition”. I mean, it’s a very competitive world of business out there so you’re making a great, great statement, there.

One which I happen to personally agree with but which I’d love you to elaborate on a bit is:

Collaboration beats Competition

Dan: Well I think we have a very competitive world; certainly a media landscape that emphasizes competition because, you know, I think we’re hard-wired as human beings to really key on when there’s conflict, you know. So we’re very interested in who’s winning the search engine war, is it Google or is it Microsoft or is it Yahoo? You know, these are compelling because anytime there is stakes where there can be winners and losers it really gets our attention. We’re just born that way, it seems. But the reality though is that when it comes to entrepreneurship and starting a business, if you approach a business which that kind of a mind set you really are setting yourself up for a really big challenge. I mean, if you’re Microsoft you can certainly take a very competitive stance against the rest of the world because you’ve got the resources but when you’re small and you’re a one person company or just a very small team you have much more to gain by collaborating with even people who you might otherwise think of as competitors to get ahead. In fact, Microsoft is really an example of this on a really epic scale. When you think about how Microsoft was competing with Apple Computer in the beginning, Apple really took a go at it alone stance and, you know, Apple they’re extraordinary, their products are amazing and they actually are rare in the case of large businesses that successful that actually can go it alone because they’re that smart, however, they only control a small percentage of the market.

Microsoft has upwards of 90% of the market even today and that I think is a result of Microsoft’s much greater emphasis on partnering with other firms, existing firms to get ahead.

Barry: Perfectly put, Dan, perfectly put. Obviously, at Biznik how long was Biznik in existence before you sort of became like…I assume it’s more or less your full-time position at the moment is working on Biznik. When did you become full-time on Biznik?

Dan: It took us about, let’s see, close to two years, I think, 18 months before we were able to make the leap to full-time away from our other existing client work. And that’s something that’s really good to point out to people, especially young entrepreneurs who are eager, just in early stages who are starting a business or thinking of taking the leap. And that is, you know, don’t quit your day job too soon, you know. It’s tempting, I think, to think that you have to leap with both feet and devote all of your attention or the worse thing, I think, would be find funding for what you’re doing, you know, get someone to give you a bunch of money and then go ahead and start working on your idea. Now, there are types of businesses where that, you know, that works for example pharmaceutical companies that take years and years and years of development before they can ship a product. But, I think, certainly many, many businesses today are the kind of business that you can figure out yourself and you can get started on yourself and you can actually start the most important thing which is connecting with customers yourself. And that’s really important, I think, because as entrepreneurs we like being in charge and we like the idea that we get to create a product that’s really an extension of ourselves and an expression of ourselves on some level. And when you, if you’re worried about how you’re going to pay the rent next month and you’re really struggling, it’s tempting to start making bad choices that can get you into a situation down the road where really you just created a job for yourself and what’s the point of that.

Barry: Absolutely, I mean, that’s the one remarkable thing is a number of people who go into business, or as I often say, they buy a job, you know, it’s not a particularly good idea. Everything you’re saying here, Dan, perfectly resonates and I know it will resonate with our audience. What would you say is some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned personally and as a business with Biznik as it’s grown because it’s obviously come a long way now? I mean, like if you were to start again what might you do differently for example?

Dan: That’s a great question. There are so many things I would do differently if I could start over again. Here’s a good one: I’m not sure how many people this affects but you know they say you should never start a business with your spouse or with a domestic partner and Lara Feltin, the co-founder of Biznik.com, and I are married to each other and, you know, it worked great for two years. We actually loved working together. It was fantastic, we worked shoulder to shoulder, you know, shoveling coal all day long making the business, breathing life into it and that was awesome but by year three we started to disagree and have a lot of, you know, not seeing eye to eye. And by year four it became absolutely untenable. So what I would say is…actually just to give you some background I am now the editor of Biznik and of course the co-founder but Lara is the CEO. So, we actually kind of sat down one day and said, you know, “We need to split this up somehow so that there’s one person in charge and not two” because, you know, co-founders, I think ultimately, you know, every business kind of needs one person ultimately responsible. So I would say it maybe worked in the beginning, but know when to adjust course and know when to make it work.

Barry: Dan, that is an awesome share. I really appreciate that because it takes courage first of all to mention it because everybody who is sort of, you know, even people who aren’t actually married or living together or whatever, you know, co-founders will have issues that they’re going to have to come against from time to time. The good thing here of course is that you were able to sit down and work out a way around it. And it’s something actually which in the heady days of getting started if you like, it often over neglected if you like but down the line when the business is somewhat successful, it’s something that certainly has to be addressed so there’s a great share there really appreciate it. Have you had to hire many people? How is that going for you in the hiring process or is it still quite a small organization?

Dan: It’s very small. We have had a lot of hires though and, I think, that would be something that would get back to your previous question about making mistakes and what would you do over. You know, I do think that hiring is one of the most important things that you as an entrepreneur must do and you must do it well. If you don’t hire well, the future success of your business is put in jeopardy. The right person can make or break your business. It’s literally that simple. We’ve made the mistake, I think, early on of, you know, everybody has friends who you think are amazing people and they do something, you know, that you need, you know, they work for a marketing company or something and you think “hey, I could just hire you”. And it’s really tempting because it allows you to not have to go through a big interview process, it can be extensive and time-consuming and take you away from what you’re really working on. But what I would say, my advise there would be take the hiring absolutely seriously and don’t take the easy way out because inevitably what you’ll end up with is someone who is not your friend at the end of the process and was never really the right person for the job in the first place. And then you have to go do the hard work anyway.

Barry: Once again, Dan, I think a lot of us have been there. Was it you that I think recently I was speaking to you, you mentioned a book called Talent Is Overrated?

Dan: That’s right, yeah that was fantastic book and I highly recommend it to any of you who are interested in how you nurture and develop talent inside your own business. It’s called Talent Is Overrated, the name escapes me of the author but if you Google it, you’ll find it.

Barry: I have a birthday coming up shortly so it’s going on my Amazon wish list so I’m looking forward to that. Now, what’s next, what’s on the horizon for Biznik? I mean, where do you see in the business in say, I don’t know, let’s say three years or five years from now? Where do you believe you’re headed if you like? What’s the emphasis going to be like in say five years from now?

Dan: Well it’s interesting because when we started Biznik we really had stars in our eyes and we really had this idea that we could be the next big thing on the internet and, you know, that we would be, you know, the Facebook of entrepreneurship and small business. Well it didn’t happen that way and, you know, I think it’s actually, it was good and valuable experience to learn that most businesses do not experience explosive growth and that’s okay, it’s perfectly okay and it’s still a solid business so whatever business you may be starting as the listeners out there. You know, most businesses are grown one customer at a time, one relationship at a time and that’s how we’ve kind of evolved into what we’re doing. So, I think in the future, we’re going to see more steady growth and that’s really what’s been working out for us is that the curve on the charts when you look at how much growth we’re experiencing, it’s not, we never hit the J curve, you know, where it just grows exponentially but it’s been steady growth and I think that we’ll see more of that and that’s certainly our goal to grow as fast as we can but do it organically, you know. And instead of kind of reaching out and having to raise a bunch of money and lose control of the company, we’ve just decided to take it one step at a time and that’s what we’ll do in the future. I think you’ll see us focusing on English speaking countries, the United States for now and that we’re thrilled to as many members and certainly anyone in the world including especially England is welcome to sign up and use this site and all the tools are available for you.

Barry: Tremendous. I mean, I’m the same as you, Dan. You have a great future, no question about it. It’s an amazing website and it has so much to offer and will have more to offer. And I think it’s one of those things, once an entrepreneur finds it they’ll mention it to another entrepreneur so it’s quite amazing. I’d like to go back quite a long way, maybe not that long ago but, I mean, I often find when I speak to entrepreneurs that it’s always interesting to find out what entrepreneurs did for their first business. And it is, I get the most interesting replies and I also with respect get some of the most boring replies because some of them are very predictable but it’s a question I do like to ask all entrepreneurs. So maybe you’d share with us what you’re first business was or the first time you were working for yourself and what did you learn from that first time you went into business for yourself?

Dan: Great question. Well I used to be a journalist, a photojournalist actually and I worked for newspapers and covered a lot of news and I eventually ran into a problem with that and the problem was that I didn’t really own my own work so sooner or later, about four years after working professionally and one day my boss called me into his office and told me to take down some pictures I had published on my website and I said, “Well those are my pictures”. He’s like, “Do your homework”. So I did my homework and realized they weren’t my pictures, they belonged to my employer and I simply was working there. And I realized I could spend my whole career doing that and have nothing to show for it so that was really what kicked off onto the entrepreneurial path and so my first business was freelance photography. I thought, ”Screw you. Why should I work for you? I’ll just freelance photographer, that’ll be awesome”. Well it didn’t quite work. It took me about 18 months to fail at my first business and that was because I really had no clue about how to run a business, you know, I mean, I was a freelance photographer, I could take great pictures but marketing them and building a name for myself and getting people to pay me my day rate was a whole other matter. But I learned a lot in the process and then I was able to think, “Alright, well, let’s try a different business”. And that’s how I got started in web development and I learned I was able to make a relatively, modestly successful business and acquire the skills that led to starting Biznik.

Barry: Oh, wonderful! Obviously I mean, you mentioned after 18 months your business had to cease or didn’t go on. So you obviously had your fair share like all of us of coping with setbacks and negative experiences. Do you have any sort of strategies or anything you want to share about that would help people who come across those sort of situations?

Dan: Yeah, you know, the one thing that I often tell people is don’t be afraid to fail but try to fail quickly so that you can learn in time to recover and go to work the next day on moving your project forward. You know, you will make mistakes there’s no doubt about it. We all do it but you can’t second guess yourself while you’re in the middle of it so just look at the options, make a decision, go forward, do the best you can with what you experience. But then here’s the big kicker and that is: in order to learn from your mistakes you really have to be an observer of what’s going on.

I think it’s very tempting to just kind of just keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result which I think was Einstein’s definition of insanity.

Barry: Yes!

Dan: And so it really is important to take an action and then to step back and say, “What happened there? Did that achieve what I was trying to achieve? Is that result going to be enough next time or is there something adjust about my performance or how we approach this that could give us a different result, one that takes us in the direction we want to go?”

Barry: That’s a great share once again, Dan. Really appreciate it. I’ve got two final questions which I don’t know maybe they’ll be long answers, maybe they’ll be short answers. I think you know that the audience of Retireat21.com as you might imagine is a relatively young audience though I have to say lots and lots and lots of older entrepreneurs also visit the site. Young entrepreneurs, is there anything based on your experience, if a young entrepreneur came to you and said, “I’m going into business for the first time for myself” and you could share some words of wisdom with them, what might you share?

Dan: Here’s the thing I would share more than anything else: don’t equate success with getting funded. So many young entrepreneurs, for them it’s just like, “Oh my God, we got a $100,000 in funding. We’re landed!” You know, and that’s not the case. If you get funding, basically what that means is now somebody else gets to tell you what to do. I’m not sure that that’s what you really want, you know, is that really what you want? You know, I would say bootstrap, if you can find a way to bootstrap your business your going to be so much further ahead in the game and you’re going to have so much more fun doing it. So really look hard and long before decide whether you really need to get somebody else to give you money to do what you need to do. Now, the average business in the United States is started with $20,000 of a founder’s own savings and personal borrowing. So it’s not atypical to have a situation where you get $10,000 out of your own savings and maybe $10,000 out of, you know, you borrow from your family or you use a credit card. We actually put our first server on a credit card, which I don’t recommend. If you can get it a different way that’s better but I recommend trying to maintain control 100% yourself just as much as you possibly can. You’re going to be so much further ahead.

Barry: That’s fantastic and bootstrap equals fund. I’m not sure I’ve heard it that way before, Dan, but it does make sense to me I promise you. Finally, what might be the best advice you’ve ever received personally? Can you remember any particular sort of big Ah Hah moment in your life when you thought, “Wow, that’s great”? Do you want to share some of those or one of them?

Dan: Yeah! Well this one actually comes from the film that I’m making right now. It’s called Shine and it’s a thirty-minute documentary about entrepreneurship and we interviewed everyone from a toothless cowboy poet to a guy who sold his business for $500 million. The guy who sold his business for $500 million told me something when I was interviewing him that has really stuck with me and that is this: it’s tempting when you’re an entrepreneur when you start out to really get heavily invested in your company if you only have one. So if you’re starting one business, and obviously most people that’s what start out with, oh my God it’s so much work to do one why would you do more than one? But this guy what he told me was always have more than one business going at a time and the reason he said was because it allows him to be more objective in making decisions about those companies. He was never fully invested in one and so he was never blinded to the reality of what’s actually going on in that market and he could always sort of step back and make more even handed and less emotional decisions. I thought that was really excellent advice and I’ve actually followed that myself and now I’m making films in addition to being editor of Biznik. I have an income making films and I think that’s the good

Barry: That’s again a very powerful share and the film is called Shine. You’ll obviously keep us informed about the release of it of course, Dan.

Dan: For sure, yeah.

Barry: Let us have a trailer or something and we’ll obviously be very, I mean, it sounds like must watch to me.

Dan: You can go to https://biznik.com/shine and there are some trailers there right now and it’ll be probably six to nine months before, because we’re taking it on a festival circuit and it takes time for all that to play out.

Barry: Wonderful, okay. Dan, it’s been a real honor to have you on the call today. You have shared so much and you’ve done it with such a big heart and that to me is always the sign of great entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs I find are real sharers. I really appreciate it. Have a wonderful day and we look forward to speaking to you again soon. Really appreciate the call. Thank you very, very much.

SURVEY LINK: Biznik National Entrepreneur study sponsored by iStockphoto

BONUS: The Latest Shine Trailer

SHINE Official Trailer 4 from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

Hi Everyone

Today I have an interview with a remarkable Young Entrepreneur – Chuck Gordon, the CEO of SpareFoot – a venture-funded company that he started during his senior year at UCLA about one year ago. Chuck is just 22.

SpareFoot.com is like an Expedia for self storage. With more than 100,000 listings nationwide, SpareFoot has the largest inventory of storage options on the Web, making it a destination for consumers who don’t want to visit web site after web site or make a bunch of phone calls to find the best deal near them.

There is lots of great Takeaways here from Chuck — just one that I liked is:

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to fail quickly. If you think you know what’s going to work in any aspect of your startup, you are wrong

And another great quote that Chuck reminded us of is a quote from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, (about starting a company) who said:

Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff, and building a plane on the way down

Thank you Chuck — very best wishes from everyone here at RetireAt21.com for the future success of SpareFoot.com

Enjoy the interview — and as always I look forward to your comments

Michael

Chuck Gordon Interview

Background:

First off – can we have a little background information on you – Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? What inspires you?

I currently live in Austin, TX and I am 22 years old. I graduated from UCLA in March, packed my bags and moved to Texas when a great opportunity for SpareFoot presented itself. I’m motivated by many things, some of which include creating an awesome product that saves people time and money, building a company where everyone is excited to go into work everyday and of course, generating great returns for my team, my investors and myself.

Other Questions:

1) You are founder of sparefoot.com – tell us how the company formed, you mentioned you were in college at the time? What made you go into this niche?

People often wonder how I got into the self storage industry, assuming that I must have been grandfathered-in. But, the original idea for SpareFoot was very different than it is today.

When we started back in 2008, SpareFoot was strictly a person to person marketplace for storage. People who had extra space in their garage, bedroom or backyard could rent it out to others who wanted to save money on storage. I came up with the idea when I was getting ready to study abroad in Singapore during my junior year at UCLA. I needed to find a place to keep all of my furniture for the entire year, and traditional self storage was going to cost thousands of dollars.

Needless to say, this was beyond my budget. I needed an alternative, so I distributed my stuff to a friend’s attic in Bakersfield, an apartment in Los Angeles and a garage in San Diego. In the process, I realized people could make and save money by doing just this. I teamed up with fellow UCLA students, Mario Feghali and Anna Andersen, as well as Anna’s older brother, Thor Andersen, to create a website facilitating person to person storage.

After launching in late 2008, we got some great traction, but we realized there was an even bigger opportunity in the storage industry itself. We expanded the marketplace and now offer traditional self storage units in addition to extra space in people’s homes.

2) Sparefoot.com has been described as Expedia for self storage. Could you elaborate on this?

Much like Expedia, SpareFoot gives consumers a true comparison shopping experience. SpareFoot is the only place you can book a self storage unit the same way you book an airplane ticket or hotel room on Expedia. Instead of visiting web site after web site and making phone call after phone call to compare and find the best deal on storage, SpareFoot offers customers an easy way to find the space they need from a single website in less than 5 minutes.

3) Can you share some of the biggest lessons you have learned personally and as a business as sparefoot.com has grown? If you were to start again, what might you do differently?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to fail quickly. If you think you know what’s going to work in any aspect of your startup, you are wrong. You have to try everything, iterate quickly and eventually you will figure out something that actually makes your company some money. We are still doing this everyday at SpareFoot.

4) What’s next for sparefoot.com? Where do you see the business in say 5 years time?

We are in the process of tripling our tech team so that we can execute even faster. In 5 years, SpareFoot will be the go-to destination for booking self storage units, saving millions of customers thousands of dollars and helping storage facilities fill their vacant units. We’ll probably be doing a few other things by then, but you will have to keep checking on us to find out.

5) Do you have any recommended strategies for getting customers who buy once to come back and use your service again – other than of course good service?

Getting return customers is a major challenge for SpareFoot because most people lease a self storage unit only once or twice in their lifetime. However, after making that buying decision, people stay in their storage unit for 13 months on average. We’ve even heard of cases where people rent for 30 years! Our challenge is to stay in front of the customer for the duration of their storage experience rather than getting them to book storage units multiple times.

That being said, I do believe breeding return customers requires a few critical elements. You need a great customer experience from start to finish. If you want your customers to come back, they need to like you. Deliver real value, prove that you care about your customer’s needs and treat them like real people rather than data points on a revenue graph.

6) Does social networking play any roll in your business? If so what?

Social networks and personal connections have far more influence on consumers than your marketing messages ever will – unless your business knows how to harness them,” co-author of Trust Agents Chris Brogan said. We use Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis and drive a fair amount of traffic to our site. Although these people don’t always convert to storage customers, it’s great for building awareness, keeping our friends and fans updated and even getting press. Our social media presence also gives people the sense that we are real people rather than a faceless company. We have developed good relationships with storage operators through Twitter, some of whom actually signed up after finding us there.

7) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences?

My favorite quote about starting a company is from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who said, “Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff, and building a plane on the way down.” This is SO true. You have to roll with the punches, and expect to get punched. SpareFoot has definitely been a roller coaster ride, and it will continue to be that way until the day we get acquired (and probably after).

8: How do you keep your business focus – Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?

Often times it’s hard to keep focused, but you have to prioritize the business above all else if you want it to work. Nothing about starting a business is easy, but you have to accept that and do what needs to be done.

9) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one person)

We had the opportunity to participate in the Capital Factory startup incubator/accelerator program this summer, which gave us the opportunity to work one-on-one with 20 successful entrepreneurs (they’ve all started and sold at least one company). It’s pretty hard to name specific people that I look up to from this group, but you can find most of my role models on the Capital Factory mentor list.

10) Do you have any favourite business related or web design related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

I just started reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank, and so far it is fantastic. I would also recommend You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar by David Sandler and How Would You Move Mount Fuji? by William Poundstone.

11) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

Fail quickly.

12) As someone who has achieved success so young, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today?

We’ve been successful in making it this far and raising Series A funding from Silverton Partners and Maples Investments, but in the end, it’s not true success until you exit. That being said, you need to surround yourself with brilliant people to move in the direction of success. This has been the case with the SpareFoot team from day one; you know you’ve done something right when everyone else at the conference table is smarter than you.

I also believe that big egos can hurt entrepreneurs. Yes, confidence is important, but understanding that you are young and don’t always have the right answer is equally as important. Surround yourself with people who’ve done it before and let them help you make decisions.

Another exciting Young Entrepreneur interview, this time with Steve Shapiro (26), founder and CEO of Digsby.com

A few facts about Steve:

1) After an entrepreneurship class in his last year of college at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology), Steve had a business plan sitting in his lap and the confidence that he could pull it off. And so after a round of seed funding, he started work on Digsby – which is a desktop application that helps people manage all of their IM, email, and social network accounts from easy-to-use interface.

2) Digsby.com has grown from less than 100,000 users to over 1,000,000 in just over a year. Digsby.com now have over a million users managing over 4 million IM, email, and social networking accounts. Digsby.com has received coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and are frequently featured in blog posts in several top 100 blogs including Mashable, Techcrunch and CNET.

3) Most importantly Steve has been able to monetize an IM application without showing ads in the actual program like other major players (AIM, Yahoo, Live Messenger). Digsby.com have an innovative and unique opt-in research module that allows users to contribute their spare CPU cycles for research. This is similar to non-profit projects like Help Conquer Cancer, The Clean Energy Project or FightAIDS@Home. Along with non-profit projects, it does have commercial applications as well.

My Big Takeaway from this interview:

“The biggest lesson has been that things always take longer than you think they will and there will always be unforeseen road blocks”

Wow Steve — I can certainly relate to that one

Enjoy the interview – let me have your comments and feedback

To Our Success

Michael

Steve Shapiro Interview

1) Hi Steve, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.

You are founder of Digsby.com- can you tell us a bit about how the company formed and what made you go into this niche?

Digsby started as a school project for an Entrepreneurship class I took while doing my MBA at RIT. The goal was to build a product which helps people save time by making it easier to manage your IM, email, and social network accounts. After the semester was over, I closed a seed round of financing with two angel investors and hired the team. The entire team is RIT grads and our office is in the campus incubator.

2) Digsby has grown from less than 100,000 users to over 1,000,000 in just over a year, could you give the readers a bit of insight into how you managed that?

The product is not naturally viral – you get no benefit from inviting your friends like you do when you get them to join Facebook or Skype. In our eyes, that makes the growth even more impressive. We now have over 1.5 million users manging more than 4 million accounts and exchanging over 25 million IMs every day. I think the reason for the growth is that Digsby provides these people with real utility. As a result, our users have been spreading the word just because they like the product. We’ll keep pushing to make it even better!

3) Can you share some of the biggest lessons you have learned personally and as a business as digsby.com has grown? If you were to start again, what might you do differently?

I don’t think we would do anything differently. It’s hard to say what effect even the smallest change has on an outcome and we are happy with the outcome thus far. The biggest lesson has been that things always take longer than you think they will and there will always be unforeseen road blocks.

4) What next for digsby.com? Where do you see the business in say 5 years time?

Next on our list is adding group chat and launching for Mac/Linux. We have over 400k people on our mailing list (http://www.digsby.com/signup/maclinux/?os=mac) awaiting the mac release. That’s a lot of potential users and potential evangelists we are leaving at the table.

As for 5 years from now, it is hard to say. We help people manage their online communication, whatever channel that may be. I bet 5 years ago no one could have predicted the rise of Twitter. Similarly, who knows what will happen with Google Wave. It may go nowhere or it may become our most requested protocol. We just need to keep our ear to the ground so we can understand the trends early and ride each wave (no pun intended) as it happens to simplify people’s lives.

5) Do you have any recommended strategies for getting customers who use your service once and come back and use your service again – other than of course good results?

Keep making the product better – that’s all there is to it. When you uninstall we ask you why and we read every response we get. It helps us focus our development efforts. I read tons of tweets of people saying that they tried Digsby, didn’t like it, and are now trying it again with much better results. We’ve come a long way since our launch last year in terms of functionality, usability, performance, and reliability.

6) How long did it take to develop Digsby.com’s technology?

It took two years to develop the initial alpha – 3.5 years to get it to where it is today.

7) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences?

Don’t give up – the essay by Paul Graham entitled “How Not To Die” has always been inspirational and I couldn’t put it in better words.

8: Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one person)

There are lots of great entrepreneurs out there and I try to learn from all of their experiences. As for who I try to model myself on, I think Steve Jobs would be at the top of that list.

9) Do you have any favourite business related or web design related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

Crossing the Chasm was a great book about how to take technology products into the mass market.

10) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

You can accomplish anything you set your mind to (courtesy of immigrant parents)

11) As someone who has achieved success at a relatively young age, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today?

Do it while you are young – before you have a mortgage, and house payments, and kids, and other things that prevent you from dedicating yourself fully to the success of your startup.

12) What do you like best about the Internet?

That it is endlessly evolving.

13) What do you like least about the Internet?

404, 500, 501, 502, and 503

14) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

At some point it would be nice to end up living in the same city as my wife again. She is off in England doing her PhD right now

15) Digsby.com is based a lot on the boom of social networking – do you feel this is a niche that is going to continue to grow?

I don’t think it matters. I think the Internet will always be used as a communication tool. More importantly, no single medium will ever kill all the others. There are times when an email is the appropriate medium (long letter). There are times when Facebook is most appropriate (share photos). There are times when IM is most appropriate (synchronous conversation). As a result, people will always need to manage multiple accounts and if you can make that process easier then your product has value to the end user.

Checkout the Paul Graham Essay “How Not To Die” here

Hi Folks

Another Gary Vaynerchuk Young Entrepreneur Video for you.

This is from my visit to New York in September. I really love Gary’s message – very inspiring.

To Quote Gary:

“Entrepreneurs get knocked down because were taking chances. Were taking risks. But we love the game, dont we? Just keep loving the game.”

“Dont listen to your parents, or your teachers, or anybody else besides yourself. If youre entrepreneurial enough to be watching this man, to be part of this community, or listening, that already means that you have something different”

Highly Recommended – Gary’s new book: Crush It

You can watch the complete Gary Vaynerchuk Interview and read a transcript over at my other website: IncomeDiary.com

To Our Success

Michael

Hi Everyone,

Today we have an interview with and amazing, high pedigree Young Entrepreneur – Zac Brandenberg

Zac (aged 32) is the Co-Founder & CEO of Hydra, the largest and fastest growing affiliate advertising network (110 million last year).

As I look over Zac’s replies, one point in particular stands out:

“It’s better to be profitable today, than perfect tomorrow”

In the past I have subscribed to the thought that ‘good enough is good enough’ but as I read Zac’s replies I appreciate that “It’s better to be profitable today, than perfect tomorrow” says what I am really trying to say, much better or to take it a step further as Zac also says in the interview: ‘Perfection is generally unrealistic and can be paralyzing”

Zac Brandenberg is already a seasoned Internet entrepreneur with hands-on experience developing and leading online-based ventures.

Some of his accomplishments include:

* Co-Founder & CEO of Hydra Networks
* Founder GreatUSAflags (launched the official “Iraqi Most Wanted” playing cards, grossing $10 million in just six weeks)
* Launched OpinionSurveys, an online consumer panel with more than 10 million participants for The Dohring Company, the nation’s largest provider of custom automotive research
* Consulted the interactive kids’ entertainment website Neopets, Inc. which sold to Viacom in 2006
* Investor and Board member of Teleparent Educational Systems, a provider of notification services to educational institutions
* Investor and a Board member for Meteor Games, LLC, an online, multi-player gaming studio
* Former investor in Dogswell, LLC, which subsequently received an investment from TSG

Enjoy the interview – As always, I look forward to your comments.

Best Success

Michael

Zac Brandenberg Interview:


Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you founded Hydra (hydranetwork.com):

I am currently 32, grew up in New Jersey, and have spent the last 14 years in Los Angeles where I went to college. Previous to founding Hydra in 2003, I ran an online research and advertising business, then started several ecommerce websites (selling patriotic products, holiday gifts, pet products, and more) while a partner at a boutique performance advertising business. I started Hydra to combine multiple Internet businesses under one roof to take advantage of the synergies between them. We did email marketing, database management, e-commerce, lead generation and ran a CPA (cost-per-action) ad network. Given our timing in the market, the ad network experienced such explosive growth that it overshadowed the other operations. So we dropped everything else and focused our efforts on that, although in the last year or so, we have been re-diversifying to provide greater reach and service capabilities to our clients.
 
2)Hydra generates millions of customers or customer leads for advertisers every month through campaigns distributed through banners, social media, email and search marketing. Could you elaborate on how you use social media?

Different marketers want to access different components of social media. We provide reach by advertising in social display and text-display hybrid spaces (think Facebook), as well as placing advertising in social media applications, such as casual games.Taking it one step further, we also run marketing campaigns that use fan sites/pages, twitter, blogging, and communitiesto build a custom social network for our Clients.These tend to be more interactive between the marketer and the consumer, and less of a unilateral manner of communicating with consumers.

3) Can you share some of the biggest lessons you have learned personally and as a business as Hydra has grown? If you were to start again, what might you do differently?

My experience has proven the need for speed, not just in entering new markets and pursuing strategies, but in cutting your losses. It’s important to execute quickly, especially in the Internet space. And don’t wait to achieve perfection before you make your move. Perfection is generally unrealistic and can be paralyzing.

4) What’s next for Hydra? Where do you see the business in say 5 years time?

I see performance-based CPA (cost-per-action) advertising becoming a mainstream strategy for major brands, not just to acquire sales and leads for direct response campaigns, but also to drive engagements for brand campaigns. The trend has already begun and we are evolving our operations to help lead and accelerate the process. Ongoing investments to build our creative and optimization capabilities, direct distribution, web operations and more will result in a Hydra that’s much closer to a full-service online agency than just a pure ad network.

5) Do you have any recommended strategies for getting customers who use your service once and come back and use your service again – other than of course good results? 
  


First off, as the CEO of a results-based ad network, I wouldn’t downplay the importance of delivering “good results.” That’s how we make money for our clients and get paid. But beyond that, we strive to provide a positive customer experience that delivers highly responsive, personalized attention and demonstrates to our clients how important they are to us. We achieve it by hiring great people and instilling in them our mission of service and performance.

6) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences? 

It has been said before because it’s true. Every set-back is a learning experience. Reflect on what brought you to the situation, so you can fix the current problem and take measures to prevent it from occurring in the future.

7) How do you keep your business focus – Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?

I’m not really big on affirmations or ethereal concepts; I am much more about setting targets and continuing to try until they are reached. Focus in business is like anything else – know what you want and go after it.

8: Do you have any favorite business related or web design related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

We’re big fans at Hydra of “Good to Great” by Jim Collins; we have given copies to all our staff. Personally, my favorite recent read was “West of Eden” by Frank Rose. It’s a fascinating tale about Apple, which is an amazing company.

9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

The 5P’s – Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

10) As someone who has achieved success at a relatively young age, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today? 


It’s better to be profitable today, than perfect tomorrow.

11) What do you like best about the Internet?
Unlimited information.

12) What do you like least about the Internet?

In many ways, it has doomed privacy (going back to my unlimited information comment).

Thank you Zac for an amazing interview and insight into how you think about business. It is very inspiring.

About Hydra

Since 2003, Hydra has been delivering customers for advertisers including well-known household brands, online service providers, and hundreds of consumer product and service companies. A leading online advertising network where advertisers pay only for new customers, Hydra generates millions of customers or customer leads for advertisers every month through effective results-based campaigns distributed through banners, social media, email and search marketing. Learn more at www.hydranetwork.com .

Hi Folks

Another Gary Vaynerchuk Video from our recent Meet-up in New York

This time Gary Discusses Video Blogging and Customer Care. No question about it – Gary cares about his customers and his followers – and it shows!

To Quote Gary:

As big as I am and listen, I’m going to be big ass but as big ass as I’m going to be, I’m going to be and sometimes people think Im a big ass, too. But as big as I’m going to be, I’m never, ever going to forget where I came from, and that’s a very big differentiator. The reason Im winning is because I care more than my competitors”

Gary Vaynerchuk Talks about Video Blogging and Customer Care

Highly Recommended – Gary’s new book: Crush It

You can watch the complete Gary Vaynerchuk Interview and read a transcript over at my other website: IncomeDiary.com

To Our Success

Michael

PS: Do you have any hot Young Entrepreneurs that you suggest I interview? Individuals doing well online or offline? I would love to hear about them and interview them. Please CONTACT ME here

Back in September I had the pleasure of being in New York and getting to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and interview him about his new book:Crush It

Gary is a Super Guy, full of PASSION and ENERGY and he has this remarkable ability it appears to almost make an Instant Connection with you (or at least that is how it felt to me)

The Interview took place at the offices of Vayner Media – It was wonderful to get a look behind the scenes of that business – a really great bunch of FUN people, Happy in their work for sure.

Below is a short extract from the interview. Gary makes no bones about it:

If you want to build a real business, it takes years, and years, and years, and it takes lots of passion and lots of hard work

Gary Vaynerchuk, There Are NO 4 Hour Work Weeks

You can watch the complete Gary Vaynerchuk Interview and read a transcript over at my other website: IncomeDiary.com

To Our Success

Michael

PS: Do you have any hot Young Entrepreneurs that you suggest I interview? Individuals doing well online or offline? I would love to hear about them and interview them. Please CONTACT ME here