Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. Boy, I’ve said that over a thousand times with over a thousand entrepreneurs who come here to tell you their stories, to tell you how they built their companies, how they grew it, often how they sold it. And the goal here, of course, is for you and me to learn from them so we can build successful companies, legacy-leaving companies.
And you know what? There’s something kind of interesting that wouldn’t have been possible years ago that you’re about to see today. You know how some YouTubers are now building huge audiences for themselves and they’re really becoming stars on their own? Well, the founder you’re about to meet came up with an interesting business idea. He said what if he could get companies to give influencers like these YouTube stars products to review? Wouldn’t that be valuable to companies? Wouldn’t that be valuable, too, to the influencers? Well, that’s what his company does and he does it for YouTube stars, for bloggers, for Instagram users, and influencers, frankly, on any platform. That’s the heart of the business. We’re going to find out how he built it. Jeff Foster is his name. He is the founder of Tomoson, an influencer marketplace.
And this interview is sponsored by HostGator. Now imagine, you listen to today’s interview and you say to yourself, “Hey, I’ve got an idea for a different kind of marketplace, maybe a marketplace for people who’ve . . . I don’t know, who do in life wacky activities and . . .” Actually, that’s a bad idea for a marketplace. What if you come up with a better idea for a marketplace than me as a result of this interview, and you want to see if it works. You want to see if it takes off. What do you do?
Well, if you go to HostGator, you can quickly launch your site because they’ve got all the tools that you need. You can get your own domain for it. You can start emailing it out to people, and within days, see if the idea actually will take off. And if it does, HostGator service will make sure that you scale, make sure that you can stay up and not have your site crash the way, frankly, mine did when we started Mixergy. And if you want a big discount on it, all you have to do is go to hostgator.com/mixergy. And by the way, my site crashed. I remember being so frustrated by that. When your site crashes, if you’re on HostGator, there’s a real human being that you could deal with that you can talk to and get free support if you’re a HostGator customer. All you have to do is go to hostgator.com/mixergy. You get a big discount. And you’ll get all the stability and all the uptime and all the tools for building your website that HostGator offers. And I’m grateful to them for sponsoring Mixergy.
Jeff, welcome.
Jeff: Hi, Andrew. Thanks for having me.
Andrew: I still want to make sure that we’re clear on how your business works. And I think an example will clarify things. Tell us about SHARKK. What is SHARKK?
Jeff: SHARKK is a technology company that produces phones, tablets, speakers, gaming mouses, and keyboards. And so they’re looking for, in a sense, to reach that type of audience of, in a sense, gamers or technology-oriented people.
Andrew: Okay, and so one of the things that SHARKK came to you with is what?
Jeff: Well, they wanted more brand exposure, especially for their gaming devices, their speakers. And what they said they’ve been working in the past are some YouTubers that have started to review their products, and they wanted more exposure in that area. And so we went out and through our database to find popular YouTubers — tech YouTubers — that have a large audience that are willing to review their products. And we facilitated all those transactions to really get them a lot of exposure very cheaply because most of the influencers did it for free, just to keep SHARKK’s products.
Andrew: Yes, and now when I do a search on YouTube for the word “SHARKK . . .” SHARKK with two Ks, right?
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: I see the very first result is someone called Flossy Carter who’s doing a SHARKK Bluetooth 4.0 BoomBox NFC Speaker unboxing. I see someone else here who’s doing a comparison between Beats and SHARKK. I see someone else doing a comparison between Jambox and SHARKK. I see “Best Bluetooth Speaker Collection” and so on. I just see a bunch of different SHARKK user-generated content here. Some of them are because you sent them product for free. Others, I’m assuming, are people just doing reviews on their own. But what you do is you help create more videos on YouTube.
Jeff: Correct.
Andrew: Is YouTube the biggest platform? Or is it blogging, Instagram, something completely different?
Jeff: Currently, the biggest industry still is blogging, but it is slowly switching, if not already there, to YouTube as well as Instagram as these channels explode. And they’re unique content. They’re dynamic content. Blogs are good, but a lot of written text. People today, they want to pull up their mobile phone, watch a video, see pictures, and so those channels are really increasing fast.
Andrew: I know that when I want to buy something, if I’m not sure about how it works and the Amazon reviews aren’t enough, which they often aren’t for tech products, I’ll go to YouTube and do a search and see if someone’s actually using it. So that’s you guys. What is this site built on? I’m now on tomoson.com
Jeff: It’s coded in Symphony, yeah.
Andrew: Okay. It just seems like such a basic website. Basically, all I have to do is I come in here, and if there’s something that I want, I’ll . . . let me see. Where is that? I see your protection. I see Bluetooth headphones. All I have to do is click “apply,” and that way, I can write a post for them. But it says, “Apply to write a sponsored post.” I thought Google basically killed those sponsored posts. They don’t want those pay-for-post deals.
Jeff: Right. And that’s why the social media area is so interesting is because these Instagram accounts, these YouTube accounts, that is content that is owned by them. It’s content that’s being bought up by companies like Disney. And so it’s so valuable because it’s their own channel and they can sell what they like. And so at the same time, the FTC has come out with regulations on this as well. So although Google might say sponsored, we’re almost beyond Google as people aren’t really doing this for SEO these days. They’re doing it to drive traffic, brand awareness, like you say, when someone wants to buy a product, look for a review. And so as long as they disclose that it’s an ad or a sponsored post, even the United States government, in a sense, is for it. It’s so popular that they’ve regulated it.
Andrew: Is it considered an ad if you send someone a speaker and asked them to write about it?
Jeff: According to the FTC, you need to disclose if it’s an ad or a sponsored post, or you just received it for free and that transaction did happen.
Andrew: I got it. Okay. You’re a guy who’s entrepreneurial. You’ve had ideas like this your whole life. This is one that took off and now is your business. It’s your focus. But I read that as a kid, you used to do what I did. You used to get those entrepreneur magazines, look in the back. And what did you see back there?
Jeff: Oh, man. Back then, it was the whole stuffing envelopes. It was the mystery shoppers. It was the drop ship companies. And I always had those all over my floor, cutting out, again, saving up my money to do those.
Andrew: You know what? I always wanted to pay money to see what it was like to do those stuffing envelopes deal or the mystery shopper just to see what did they send you for it. But I never had the guts, as a kid, to do that. What’s the wackiest of them that you did? and what do you actually get when you send away for those?
Jeff: Well, most of the time, the problem is you just get a kit. You actually don’t get started with anything. It’s more of an e-book that tells you how to do the steps. And so you’ll get a kit. You might get the envelopes, things like that. But it’s then teaching you, in a sense, how to go find out these companies that you can get connected with. You’re not being hired at by anyone. It’s just more information. And that was [inaudible 00:07:55].
Andrew: So you pay to be a mystery shopper, but what you get is an e-book about how to get a job as a mystery shopper.
Jeff: Exactly.
Andrew: What about the stuffing envelopes? You remember what that was?
Jeff: Same thing. It was more a kit on the envelopes, the information templates on how to do things like that. And then they reach out to the companies to, in a sense, ship out their products for them, ship out their promotions, things like that.
Andrew: I see. Basically, what they’re telling you is stuff envelopes with ads that you write for a company that you come up with. Then we’ll give you a few company ideas and somebody is going to respond to those ads that you’ve stuffed into envelopes and be your customer.
Jeff: Exactly.
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: It’s frustrating, as you can imagine.
Andrew: It’s interesting that that kept going on. You blew a lot of your money on some of this stuff, you said.
Jeff: Oh yeah. I would save up, and I would order many at a time as well. My dad would always give me the whole conversation, “That’s not going to happen.” It frustrated me. And I think that motivated me though, as a kid to want to produce something and want to help start businesses. Because I was so frustrated that these companies would leave and let advertise these businesses in their magazines.
Andrew: That’s the weird thing, too, that reputable companies would actually run these stinking ads. At least in the classified ads section, they had no quality control. They didn’t care.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: So that’s the thing that you got into. But the cool part about being in that is that your imagination just gets fired. You just start thinking about all the different ways that you could get rich from this if you work hard and you actually stuff a lot of envelopes, right? It’s that kind of thing.
Jeff: Yeah. I guess maybe that might’ve been an alternative benefit of that is I never really wanted to work for anyone else. I never had any real desire to go get a real job, even from early on.
Andrew: In college, you created a site. What was the site for drop shipping?
Jeff: In college, I created a site called Wholesaler’s Club for drop shipping, and really it was just a membership-based site. People would pay, in a sense, a subscription every month, and they would be able to have access to databases of these companies that drop shipped. And that was one of the first companies that I built. And it’s got some interest in it and so I flipped it. Hey, you’re in college. You got disposable cash. It was great.
Andrew: What did you sell it for?
Jeff: $10,000.
Andrew: $10,000.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: You know what? It’s a pretty good idea that it continues to go on to this day: charge people for a directory of things that they need, a directory of wholesalers, a directory of drop shippers. I think largely today, with Google, you’d expect that wouldn’t be that helpful anymore. But now what I’m seeing is people would charge for a directory of resources that they hand curate, like a directory of freelancers that will create your videos for you. So if you’re going to create a video design company, here are all the freelancers you need, and here are all the tools that you need in order to build a site for it. That kind of thing I’m seeing.
Actually, where’d you get customers for that? I understand how you could spend some time googling around and find all the wholesale and drop shipping sources and put it all into your site. I understand that they’re off-the-shelf solutions. Even Square today, will allow you to easily create a membership site. Now, how do you get people to come and buy memberships?
Jeff: Well, that time period was when Google AdWords was cool. This is when eBay was cool and a really nice marketplace, but Google AdWords was literally five cents a click for the word “wholesale,” “drop ship,” “distributors.” Actually the most useful e-book I’ve ever bought for $10 on Google AdWords, and within that evening, put my post up . . . and just thousands of traffic from there, about five cents a click. And that was my 100% advertising source, and it was converting so well because Google was exploding. And it was just probably the best type of advertising I can do.
Andrew: What’s the best thing that you did with the $10,000?
Jeff: Oh, man. Well, the best thing that I probably did, besides the partying in college and then living it up, the life with that, is I thought I had something about flipping businesses. And so instead of going to classes, I would sit in the computer lab and build more businesses like this.
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: And that was probably the thing that really got me going. I’m like, “Hey, I’m on to something.” And I would flip little businesses here and there, like $3500, something like that. It got me by. It was nice, easy revenue.
Andrew: Is webbizideas.com one of those businesses?
Jeff: Well, as I was doing this over and over and over again, I started getting some clients that wanted businesses. They wanted to buy internet businesses. And so the idea was . . . well, at first, it was to collaborate and put all the businesses that I was running and flipping on that site. So that’s how it started out. And then more people started asking me to develop their own ideas. They liked my ideas and things like that. So I went from running my own and flipping them to building other people’s, and that’s where things got complicated. And let’s just [inaudible 00:13:03]
Andrew: Let’s start with the simple version. The simple version was you created . . . was it a directory of businesses that people can buy? And once they pay, they have . . . and you were basically launching the site for them.
Jeff: Correct.
Andrew: So I see, for example, that you had a Zippo lighter website for sale. If somebody wanted to sell Zippo lighters, they pay you money, you give them the site. If they wanted a dating service site, you . . . right?
Jeff: Yup, that’s exactly it.
Andrew: And it wasn’t that these sites were already built. You basically would go and build the sites for them and say, “Here, turnkey solution, here’s your site. Go to work.”
Jeff: Right. Yeah.
Andrew: That’s a great idea.
Jeff: It’s interesting that those same magazines . . . like a small business opportunity that frustrated me so much as a kid, we started advertising in the same ones in the sense to help people start their own businesses, that we’re actually working, in a sense . . .
Andrew: That’s how you got traffic? You were buying ads on those magazines?
Jeff: Yeah, we were one of their biggest advertisers for a while, got a lot of PR, and really helped build the business actually.
Andrew: One of the kinds of businesses that I see is adult businesses.
Jeff: Ah.
Andrew: How did that go for you
Jeff: Yeah, you know what? At first we started that, and then we had some bad experience with clients.
Andrew: What do you mean?
Jeff: Well, when you’re dealing with those types of businesses, you’re dealing with customers that might not be the . . . they’re shady. And so when complications arise, it’s not an email or phone call. It’s like a threat. “I’m going to come to your office and kill you.”
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: And so once that happened, we were like, “We have to get out of this business and get out of those types of businesses.”
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: Yeah.
Andrew: So you started this whole company . . . I think it was early 2000s, right?
Jeff: Yeah, early 2000’s in college.
Andrew: 2001.
Jeff: Yup.
Andrew: All right. So far, I’m seeing that it’s simple. It feels almost reproducible today. Build a website where you say anyone can buy a business. It works right out of the box. As soon as they pay you for it, you build the site and you hand it to them, right? Where’s the complicated that you were starting to tell me about? By the way, that sound was from your website. You used to have flash animation at the top, and . . .
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t want people to think that I’m suddenly getting text messages or something here. There it is. Listen.
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Andrew: All right.
Jeff: I put on a good old tune.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, it’s hard to replicate. It’s one thing to come up with an idea, a great business model, sell it, and actually have it work, and then it’s another thing to start reproducing these businesses that might be good ideas but really aren’t doing that. So it’s hard to replicate it on a large scale. And so I partnered with another college friend who is a management major. And he really helped me take that company from this flipping business idea into a digital web development agency where let’s take on clients of anyone that needs a website or a business and help them market it, and take our marketing skills, and then kind of have this all-in-one solution where it’s web and marketing.
Andrew: I see. And what kind of marketing would you do for them?
Jeff: Well, that’s when we mainly got into the SEO side of the business.
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: Because as AdWords was established . . . and the new thing was SEO. That was where cheap advertising was, and so that’s where I got involved and provided that type of business.
Andrew: Okay, and you would also do some AdWords buys for them, that kind of thing.
Jeff: Yeah, we managed it all, with heavy emphasis on SEO.
Andrew: Yeah, look at this. The site used to say at the top of the SEO section, “Show me the money!!!!” Yeah, we went there.
All right, you guys were having fun with the business. What was next for you? How do we go from that to Tomoson? And how does the bathroom lead to it?
Jeff: Well, interestingly, as the SEO industry evolved, it was harder and harder to do it legitimate. It was harder to build, as they say, white hat links. Everyone started getting into these black hat areas and buying links, and it’s just becoming complicated.
Andrew: And there was a period there where it actually worked.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Black hat guys were doing really well, I remember.
Jeff: It was hard to compete against them.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff: It really was.
Andrew: Because they were so good and so aggressive.
Jeff: Yeah, and so it was frustrating. And actually, that was what we were competing against. We had this client called Smelly Washer. We were competing against Tide and a few other [inaudible 00:17:37] companies. And Smelly Washer, they had like $1000 budget a month. And looking at the black hat and everyone else was doing, it was like $100,000 plus. From an SEO perspective, knowing that . . . and so the only thing that we could do to combat that was to give away free products. That was the only cheap type of marketing we could do. And so we started this process of finding influential bloggers within this industry and sending them free products, and just asking them to “Hey, let me know your opinion.” And his product worked so well. It fixed the product of smelly washing, which I never knew existed.
Andrew: What is your [inaudible 00:18:11]? What is Smelly Washer?
Jeff: Well, I guess, frontloading washing machines, at least back then and still now, sometimes give a smell. The odor and mildew from those washings, it builds up, and with them, the heat and water mold builds up, and it has this smell. And so basically, it’s an organic cleaner. You throw it in the washing machine, it kills the mildew and mold and fixes the smell.
Andrew: I had no idea. All right. And I’m looking at it now on Amazon. It’s got high ratings. Is that from you guys?
Jeff: No.
Andrew: No. I see verified purchase. Right. Verified purchases are rating it.
Jeff: What’s interesting though, back then, same thing. You could also have the person buy the verified post and reimburse them. Amazon has changed their policy since. So a lot of the reviews on Amazon, a lot of the reviews online . . . you still search for Smelly Washer cleaner, they’re still number one now. And that was the idea. We sent these products out to hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and they just started generating the reviews. It started generating buzz, forums. Everyone was talking about it online, and we were beating out these corporate competitive $1000-a-month budget. And that’s when we really knew we were kind of on to something [inaudible 00:19:23].
Andrew: How did you get the initial bloggers?
Jeff: Well, we just used our SEO background to find influential people within industries, so whether it’s home improvements or . . . there’s a lot of mommy ones at the time that were willing to do this. That’s kind of we did it. It was just manual searching.
Andrew: Manually searching, and then you’d find their contact information. And was it you doing it?
Jeff: Yeah. Initially, I started all of it. I was finding them. I was contacting them. I was building my databases of directories, the people that were willing to do this, in Excel, and on Google Docs. And so it was this long drawn out process to do it for one client, Smelly Washer, to a full-time gig.
Andrew: Yeah. The bathroom references, that’s where the idea came to you. Am I right?
Jeff: Pretty much, yeah. The idea of the bathroom reference, is one, we were a connoisseur of domain names. As an internet company, we just buy domain names like, I don’t know, people go to grad sales and buy trinkets. And so I had this idea of Tomoson in the bathroom, literally, and connected with that as well. Maybe we could turn what we’re doing into this business, slap it on Tomoson, and run with it. And that’s kind of how that idea was formed.
Andrew: What is the name, Tomoson, T-O-M-O-S-O-N?
Jeff: Your guess is as good as mine.
Andrew: It just came to you.
Jeff: It means absolutely nothing as far as I know.
Andrew: Hey, is SimilarWeb right when it comes to your traffic? What kind of traffic numbers are you doing before I tell you what they’re showing?
Jeff: Right. Well, SimilarWeb, I think, says around 600,000. Monthly, right now, we’re doing about. 2.5 million views a month, and around 200,000, 250,000, in a sense, for the visitors.
Andrew: Two hundred to 250,000 visitors a month.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Wow. Yeah, they’re showing visits for monthly visits. They’re saying, for some reason, April drop down to a little over 500,000, and March was 1.5-almost million. [inaudible 00:21:29]
Jeff: Yeah, I think they did a big update . . . almost every website I look at has a big drop, so I think they’re changing their algorithm. I think the thing is a little too high.
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: Although I think it’s one of the best that’s out there. We’re considering actually integrating their API and switching the numbers a little bit.
Andrew: Yeah, they’re freaking fantastic with this stuff. The best for part for me is as someone who has a pro membership, I could see where people get their traffic. And it gives me a good indication of what’s going on.
All right. Smelly Washer paid you $1000 a month. That’s what you were all this hustle for.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: All right. But you realize, “Hey, you know what? There’s an idea here. What if I could do this for other companies? What if this becomes the business? And I own this great domain, tomoson.com. I’ll slap it on there and we’ll see what happens.” And so for the next year or two, you were doing this all manually.
Jeff: Right. We were doing it all manually. A lot of it was myself, and then I started training a few other people within the company to do it. It was such a headache, though to do it.
Andrew: Who was in the company? What kind of company did you have at that point? Was it friends?
Jeff: We had friends out of college. And then we quickly learned that that doesn’t work that well. But then after that, one of our first hires was just another entrepreneur running a web development firm. And it was just too big for him to do it on his own. Especially with SEO and marketing, there’s just so many parts of it that for one person to do it, it’s just very hard. And so we started adding on people like that, and then just hiring for specific jobs. But a lot of times, initially, people kind of came to us saying, “Hey, I like what you’re doing. Let’s work together.”
Andrew: And there were two main parts of the business as I understand it. One part is blogger outreach: get as many of them as possible on your database, and reach out to the good ones, and make sure that they’ve got reviews, and that they actually follow up and write the reviews and not just ripping you off for free stuff. And the other side is getting companies to send you product and to pay you for it. Am I right?
Jeff: Correct.
Andrew: What was the harder of the two?
Jeff: Well, it’s definitely the second because . . .
Andrew: The getting companies.
Jeff: Oh, you mean in regards to beginning the database?
Andrew: No, which part? Is it getting bloggers or getting customers?
Jeff: Oh, I see. The easy, actually, part was getting brands into the system, getting businesses into the system. And the reason is, again, we have an SEO background. It’s very easy for us to go online, in a sense, search Google, and find brands that are already doing this. And it’s such an easy sell because we know how long it takes us. We’re like, “Hey, we got software that does the same thing,” and they’re all on board. And actually the hardest part right now is getting high-end influencers into the system, social media stars. I might have a million subscribers that, in a sense, are wanting to come into the system and work with these brands. But that’s working out pretty well now as we’re [inaudible 00:24:13].
Andrew: And that was even true in the beginning.
Jeff: Even in the beginning, it was a little hard to get the people in. The people that are willing to do it for free, that’s a dime a dozen. Anyone will come into the system and say, “Great. Yeah, send me a product. I’ll write a review.” Fantastic. But once you’re influential, once you know that you’re popular, and once you know that you can charge for this, then it gets a little tricky conversation. Because these people have hundreds of people asking them every month, “Hey, would you like to do this? Would you like to do this? Would you like to receive my product?”
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: So it’s hard to distinguish between what we’re doing and them.
Andrew: Let’s talk a little bit about getting brands on board. What was the process? I know you’re a process-oriented person. How do you find a potential customer? Or back then, how did you find a potential customer? How would you get the right person on the phone? And what would you say to convince them to buy?
Jeff: Well, when we were doing direct marketing, when I started doing it, I started calling and explaining what Tomoson was and explaining the benefits. And that did not work at all. I would not get to the decision-making floor. What I found to be the best direct marketing is sending a simple email saying, “Hi, I see you send out your products to other influential people. Do you do that for a lot of people?” And that same sentence we still send out today. And the reason is because they love doing this. And then it gets routed to the direct person at the company that does this and say, “Hey, there’s another blogger that wants to send the product.” And then once that person emails us back, we say, “Oh, well, we’re not necessarily a blogger. We represent thousands of bloggers.”
Andrew: I see. And how would you find these companies that were already doing this?
Jeff: You know it’s a simple search. If you go to Google, for example, and just search “reviewing giveaway” plus the word speakers, or “reviewing giveaway plus organic,” or “in title review,” or “in title review . . .”
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: . . . or “in title giveaway.”
Andrew: “Review giveaway speakers,” and now I see “LuguLake Speakers Review & Giveaway (ends 4/22/2015).” So that one’s gone. I see. So that’s the process. Someone gets to review it, and then once they’re done, they want to give it away.
Jeff: Yes, exactly. Well, that’s how it started out. And so we find them in Google. We crawl that entire blogger’s website because if they reviewed one, then chances are they’ve reviewed hundreds. And so we’d extract all the companies of people that have saying, “Hey, I saw you.” So today, we’re still doing that. We’re not convincing companies. There’s so many brands doing this that we’re just asking them to use our software to manage it. [inaudible 00:26:37]
Andrew: Okay, so now I see. Let’s suppose I see something like what you might have seen back then, something called LuguLake, which is a speaker and iPhone, iPod, and other device holder. Now, I have to find their website. So I go to lugulake.com, and I’m caught looking for any contact information, or do you have some kind of special way of finding contact?
Jeff: Well, we crawl now a little bit for the email addresses. But the best contact forum, email address, and now it’s now Facebook and Twitter have come on. Sometimes we’ll message them through that, which has an entire conversion rate.
Andrew: And when you were doing this on your own, what software did you use to keep track of it all?
Jeff: Internal. We built the software.
Andrew: You’ve built something internally just to contact them even though there are tons of CRMs out there.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Why did you decide to build that internally instead of using whatever CRM was out there at the time?
Jeff: Well, you know we’re a software development firm. And so as we’re doing this process manually . . . before we really said, “I’m going to do this as a business,” it was, “We need just software internally to manage what we’re doing.” So we already had the databases, and so it was just kind of easier and cheaper to do this. And plus, CRM, we can’t build in information on how to crawl a website. So our system works in sync. So it not only crawls the website, extracts it, and we’re almost getting to the point where you can contact them on their own.
Andrew: I see. And so you didn’t just want a CRM where anyone can find the contact information and put it in there. You wanted — and you dreamt of one — that would automatically go and find the contact information and pop it into the right field and make it easy for you. Got it. I see. By the way, this one, for whatever device I just mentioned was, her email address is shescribes@optonline.net.
Jeff: We’ll have to contact them.
Andrew: What is optonline.net? Let me see. Cablevision, yeah. So we’re talking about like a regular mom-and-pop person who doesn’t even know to use Gmail. That’s the kind of person we’re looking for.
Jeff: Well, yeah. That’s the influencers that are doing it, or that’s the influencers that started doing it. But now, it’s turned into these big-time social media stars. Because the thing is that a lot of these mom bloggers, they just don’t have the audience. They’re willing to do it for free. And initially, those are what brands were contacting. But now the brands, they want the big boys. They want to get the Justin Biebers to talk about their products.
Andrew: I see. And that’s why a lot of the listings on your site now aren’t just “Hey, get this for free.” But it’s “We’ll give you this coffee maker. It’s a French press. Here’s one by Lake House Products. But the prerequisites are you need 3,000 unique monthly views, 500 Facebook friends and fans, 100 Twitter followers. And you need to be in the United States.” So now your software allows companies to screen people out like that. How do you make sure? Does your software make sure that they have 3,000 views and 500 Facebook friends?
Jeff: Yes. Yeah, we connect the APIs of Facebook, analytics, Twitter. And so we have a direct connection and then our software actually updates it. It’s almost like a live media kit for influencers . . .
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: . . . that’s [inaudible 00:29:46].
Andrew: All right. So now you’ve got your model. You got your Smelly Washer. You got your case study that works, right? How are you feeling about this interview? Is it going your way?
Jeff: Yeah, I enjoy talking about this industry and reflecting about it.
Andrew: I’m checking you out. You don’t seem like you’re fully enjoying it. You know what? I feel like maybe I’m asking too basic questions for you. You’re like, “Andrew, I thought you were this smart Silicon Valley interviewer and you’re asking me about Smelly Washer for five minutes.”
Jeff: Well, ask me where I feel the industry is going. Maybe that might be good. Because the industry’s good, but it’s just going different places now.
Andrew: What do you mean? Where is the industry going?
Jeff: Well, I think, one, the bloggers are slowly dying out. I think almost bloggers and media outlets in general online are going to be taken over by these social media stars. Because we’re seeing such a high conversion rate, whether a YouTuber or an Instagrammer, and they might be 14 years old. And for a brand, it’s almost going where we’re taking Michael Jordan being sponsored by Nike and we’re bringing it down to the average Joe where the average Joe to be sponsored, let’s say, by Huggies or by Michael Kors. And the brands today, like makeup brands, they’re starting to sponsor these Instagrammers and get them into their system. And so we’re kind of seeing the industry going there, away from these reviews and giveaways. That was nice back in the day, but where things are really driving money is in those social media stars.
Andrew: In the sponsorships, someone who is so big on Instagram or Vine that a brand pays them. Give me an example of one that you’re especially proud of that you did today. And I got to go back and figure out how you got here, because frankly, I think that looking back and understanding how people built their businesses is helpful. I think it helps us understand how we could build our businesses using whatever discoveries we find about the market today. But I’m curious about one example today that you look on that you’re especially proud of.
Jeff: Yeah, I kind of wrote down a few that are really doing it. For example, there’s a star called Kaila Yu. She has about 500,000 Facebook followers.
Andrew: Kaila Yu.
Jeff: Yeah, and the interesting thing about her, she’s got kind of the whole combination where she’s got the high-traffic Facebookers but also the website. It’s K-A-I-L-A-Y-U dot com.
Andrew: What is it? You said, “K-A-l-L . . . ” Actually, give it to me again. I’ll shut up and let you do it.
Jeff: Yeah, so it’s K-A-I-L-A-Y-U dot com.
Andrew: Okay, so she is one who is really popular. Let’s see what she’s doing here. All right. So far, I’m seeing the standard type of blog with the pop-up ad on entry. I see. I guess that’s a photo of her at the top. Oh, Kaila Yu. All right. Now, where do I go to see her Facebook? So far, none of her posts are getting any activity.
Jeff: Oh no?
Andrew: Maybe I’m on the wrong site. K-A-I-L-A-Y-You? I want to see her . . .
Jeff: You want some engagement, huh?
Andrew: Yeah, I want to see some engagement, or I guess, maybe there’s a . . . oh, here we go. Now, we’re talking. I see her Twitter account. I see she’s big on Pinterest, Facebook. Let’s have a look and see how she’s doing.
Jeff: I’ll see send you over some of [inaudible 00:33:15]
Andrew: All right, 15,000 followers on Twitter. So what makes you excited about her?
Jeff: Well, she’s what’s called a lifestyle blogger . . .
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: . . . and a lifestyle, in a sense, social media star, where she’s a fashion expert. And she’s one of those people that, in a sense, defines fashion. She’s one of those people that when she puts on something, it makes it cool. And brands are so attracted to these, not necessarily even for the reviews, but it’s like, again, Michael Jordan wearing Nike.
Andrew: I see. They just want the association.
Jeff: They just want the association, and so that’s what we’re finding. We’re developing this as we go. As this industry evolves, a lot of our database still is the bloggers and social media stars, but who we’re contacting are those types of people.
Andrew: I see, like here. There’s one that you just sent me, wheninmanila.com. This guy’s got 1.1 million fans on Facebook, hundred plus thousand Twitter followers, right?
Jeff: Yeah, click on his Facebook and look at his engagement . . .
Andrew: Let me see.
Jeff: . . . when he’s talking about things.
Andrew: All right. He just posted a link to beauty of Callao Caves. Forty-eight people hit the like button on that. Let me see what else he’s got here. “Check out these cool Mailai [SP] iPhone accessories.” Is that you guys? That’s the kind of ad you’d give him.
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: Okay. So that’s what he’s promoting. Oh, look at this. “Is that who we think it is? Yes, it’s Gab Valenciano.” I don’t know who that is, but just linking to that got him 1,300 likes and 50 shares.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Got it. I see. All right, so this is the kind of person that brands want to be associated with today.
Jeff: Yeah, let me just send you one more. This is actually someone that’s not in the system, but these are the people that we actually really want to go after.
Andrew: Matthew Espinosa, you just Skype chatted me.
Jeff: Yes, and he’s just a teenage kid. He’s got one of the popular Vines.
Andrew: I’ve seen him. His Vine videos just are so good.
Jeff: Exactly.
Andrew: And they’re goofy and they seem so amateurish, and they’re damn good.
Jeff: Yes. And so this is kind of more what I’m trying to get at. Sorry for the other two, but these are the type of people that we’re really targeting and going after. They might not even be in our system now, but this is the future. And this is where we really are going, and we’re making a lot of changes to go after this type of person. They’re young. They’re hip. They talk about anything. It’s cool.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff: They wear hats.
Andrew: Right.
Jeff: [inaudible 00:35:42]
Andrew: I know what you’re talking about.
Jeff: It’s like a new [inaudible 00:35:43]
Andrew: Yeah. You know what? Anyone out there who hasn’t seen Matthew Espinosa on Vine should go and see it. Just scan his Vine feed and you’ll get a sense of where the future of online content is. It’s him.
Jeff: Yes, so that’s an understatement.
Andrew: People like him, right?
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: That’s what gets you fired up.
Jeff: Yes, that’s what gets me fired up.
Andrew: But there are bigger agencies that handle that.
Jeff: There’s bigger agencies that handle that, but we’re trying to bring it down to, again, the average Joe.
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: We do want the celebrities, but we also do want the mid-level that any brand and any business can afford to do because they’re within niches. There are the Matthew Espinosas, but there’s also the vegan star that might only have 50,000 subscribers that a vegan brand would just love to target.
Andrew: I know what you’re talking about. There’s one . . . I don’t even know her name, but I follow her on YouTube. While I eat my lunch, I watch her cook vegan stuff. That’s the kind of stuff that you’re talking about.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: All right. So that’s the future. Let’s go back a little bit more to the past. You’d figure this thing out. You realized, “All right. I got my washer. I got my business. I need more customers.” And then you go to the conference in Vegas.
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: And what happens there?
Jeff: That was an interesting experience. Well, that evening, learning about that conference . . . and I flew out the next morning in a suit with my iPad that I just picked up. And I really didn’t know what I was getting into. All I knew was there’s this conference, consumer goods on one of those brands on our site to launch this. And so when I got there, I learned that you needed a wholesale license. You can’t just get into this conference and go in.
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: So at that time, we were also running a drop ship keychain business of all things. And I had a wholesale license for that, and quickly called up my business partner, got that in, got in his door, walking around with this badge of wholesale keychain all day. It was great just talking to all these consumer brands, and all I talked about was Tomoson. And I just asked them, “Hey, are you on Tomoson? Is your brand on Tomoson?” And I just signed up so many brands that day, and it was kind of like the concept proven the marketplace was there. [inaudible 00:37:59]
Andrew: What were you charging for, Jeff?
Jeff: We didn’t charge anything from 2010 to 2014. We just . . .
Andrew: Really? So where was the revenue coming from?
Jeff: Our other business. Our digital marketing agency was pulling the weight, and then eventually we took out a line in credit just to get this project . . .
Andrew: Why go for about four years without any revenue from this business? You’re a guy who understands how business works. You’re a guy who dreamt about revenue going all the way back to the stuffed envelopes business.
Jeff: Right. Well, I never had a cool business. Everything was a service-based business. And yeah, a transaction, that’s good. But I’ve never had — not comparing it to Facebook — but it’s like a fun business to be around. And so I just wanted to build this marketplace. We had a lot of interest, a lot of buzz, and I didn’t want to make it uncool, in a sense, at first, for making it pay. We just wanted to let it go. Let people use it.
Andrew: I see. The other businesses were more businesses. This is more of a dream company, like a Silicon Valley-type startup.
Jeff: Yeah . . .
Andrew: Got it.
Jeff: . . . fast growth, hyper growth that was kind of going . . .
Andrew: Got it. And you figured if you could get this marketplace going by removing all kinds of friction like payment, then you’d have lots of brands in this marketplace, lots of influential writers on there, and this would be the place, and then you could figure out where the revenue comes from, the way that Instagram has that flexibility. Got it.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: All right, and you even got a $100,000 line of credit. How did you get a line of credit considering that there was no revenue?
Jeff: Well, we have our digital marketing agency that’s been around for 10 years. So in the banks that was, I guess, easy, just with the past experience.
Andrew: Okay, and then what happened to you is what happens to a lot of non-venture capital-backed companies that don’t have huge revenue is you guys had how much money left in the bank?
Jeff: Well, we had about a month left of burn before that $100,000 was over. And then not only that, we’re about $10,000 a month was going to be taken out. So we were at this point where we had to either stop the project or make it paid. And there was this huge internal arguments about what to do.
Andrew: Which side were you on?
Jeff: I was on the paid, and I was actually on the “I’m stopping, doing everything else for my other company, telling my business partner to deal with that, and I’m going to [inaudible 00:40:22] onto this, make it paid, do it.” And a lot of other people were on the free or “Let’s just stop it.”
Andrew: And naturally, you won.
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: How did it go?
Jeff: I loved it. It’s been a while since I’ve been in control of a company again, because my business partner, he’s the manager. He runs the show. So it was very fun again to be part of this type of growth company. We have traction. We make changes. Things happen, and nothing changed. Every business owner’s using this.
Andrew: Your customers were all happy. Businesses were willing to send out free stuff to people who are willing to send out cash to you for introducing them to those people.
Jeff: Yeah, all the brands that we’re using, they kept paying. And as we increased the prices, they kept paying, and it’s because they were making so much money doing that. Like $100 a month to them is nothing compared to . . . we were seeing ROIs of like 50%, 100%, 200% on average for a lot of these businesses that are doing this type of marketing.
Andrew: And you started out by charging them $25 a month just to have access to all your influencers. And then you kept [inaudible 00:41:25], and then you kept ratcheting it up to $100, which still seems like nothing.
Jeff: Right. We really hadn’t seen any change in the conversion rate of people signing up from $25 to $100. And some packages now are $500. So it just seems like it’s working. People are willing to pay whatever. Not that we’re going to do that. We’d like the $99 price. We think it’s a fair price in the market, and so we’re probably going to stick here because we just think it’s a fair price to charge.
Andrew: So how many businesses do you have now in your network?
Jeff: We’ve had 8,000 businesses try our system, and over a thousand that are currently paying on a recurring basis.
Andrew: Wow. That’s a good model.
Jeff: Yeah.
Andrew: Software as a service basically. They’re paying you on a monthly basis. You can count on that money. Life is good.
Jeff: Yes, and then the other revenue though . . . interesting that [inaudible 00:42:17] we also take transaction. So early on, it didn’t matter that much because a lot was free, where we’d always take a 20% transaction of whatever’s going in between the business and . . .
Andrew: Because they could also pay for advertising, not just give products away for reviews, but also say, “Hey, I’m going to give you some money. You promote me any way you want.”
Jeff: Right, and so that is going beyond belief right now. Last month, 44% increase. This month, we’re expecting to almost give out around $50,000 just to influencers that are [inaudible 00:42:49] .
Andrew: $60,000 in May 2015 is what you’re anticipating.
Jeff: $50,000, sorry.
Andrew: $50,000.
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: Okay.
Jeff: So we’re seeing this massive growth, and brands are willing to pay the Matthew Espinosa’s of the world to do whatever he does to promote their brand, and . . .
Andrew: Do they get any say over what he does? Because my sponsor, HostGator, doesn’t get to say anything.
Jeff: We try to limit it as much as possible. Currently, we have the brand to prove it, but we even think that’s kind of uncool as well. We’d rather just get Matthew Espinosa, in a sense, anything he wants, to do anything he wants. Because that’s where the creativity comes in, the content creation. And so most likely, the businesses are going to go that way. We just need better tracking software to make sure that the business knows what Matthew Espinosa’s doing. Once that tracking software’s in there, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.
Andrew: What is your tracking now? Is it a human being who goes in and looks it up?
Jeff: Currently, we require the influencers to manually verify the post. And so, in a couple of months, that’s going to be all automated through hashtags. So as long as they as they put the hashtag into the post, it automatically verify, automatically update the brand, get a notification, “Hey, you know this person is talking about you.”
Andrew: Interesting. So overall revenue, where are you guys right now monthly?
Jeff: Monthly? At the end of May, we’ll probably do around $100,000 recurring revenue here.
Andrew: Wow. And let’s say, last month, April, what did you do?
Jeff: Last month, April, I think it was at $85,000 or so, right around there.
Andrew: Wow. That’s really nice growth.
Jeff: Yeah.
Andrew: What did you think when . . . who was it? It was pay-per-post. What’s the name of that guy?
Jeff: Oh, the pay-per-post?
Andrew: Yeah, I remember he raised a ton of money. He was going to really change things.
Jeff: Is that IZEA now?
Andrew: Yeah, IZEA. Right, IZEA.
Jeff: Right. His name is . . .
Andrew: Let me see . . . IZEA founder. Well, I remember seeing him. He was Ted Murphy.
Jeff: Ted Murphy, yeah. Yeah, they do the sponsored Tweet, and they add everything to [inaudible 00:45:09] IZEA platform.
Andrew: But they raised millions. I’m trying to look up exactly how much. But when you see yourself as a bootstrapper who has to get a line of credit out, who has to bootstrap and build everything yourself, and this guy is getting a ton of attention, and frankly, you’re doing more work than he is, does that burn you?
Jeff: Yeah. It upsets me almost the same as back in the day with the ads and the magazines, and . . .
Andrew: Right.
Jeff: . . . it burns me. Same thing with Smelly Washer fighting against the corporate. Don’t get me wrong. I think IZEA and the whole marketplace is doing fantastic things, but at the same time, they have raised over $20 million. And at the same time, our marketplace right now, even according to SimilarWeb has more traffic. It’s more engaging than that. And so, yeah, it upsets me.
Andrew: Meanwhile, though, it looks like he took IZEA public.
Jeff: Right. Yeah, I think the company’s worth around $25 or so million.
Andrew: That’s it.
Jeff: Yeah. I think there’s . . .
Andrew: I see it. They’re a penny stock. We’re talking about like 40 some odd cents a share.
Jeff: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay, so not the huge windfall that the investors were hoping for when they were revolutionizing things with that.
Jeff: Yeah. But again, not to puff up my competitor, but I think his company is worth a lot more. I still like what he’s doing within the industry. The only thing is it’s kind of onesie-twosies paying for a post where I’d rather go into the kind of cooler aspect of getting sponsored. If you want to sell banner ads on your ads, you go to Google AdWords or something like that. You go to buy and sell ads. But if you want to monetize Vine or an Instagram account, or a YouTube account, where do you go to get clients to respond to you?
Andrew: William Morris Endeavor. That seems to be where you go if you’re big.
Jeff: William Morris Endeavor.
Andrew: Right. They represent the big stars. They have only a hundred stars or so. And what they do, they negotiate deals directly. And it’s a couple of companies like that. There was one in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times about another company, the one that represents several of these Vine craters. Why can I not think of a name? Can’t even do the search for it fast enough, but there are a couple of companies out there that do this.
Jeff: Yeah, and I think [inaudible 00:47:29]
Andrew: But they do it for the big guys only.
Jeff: Yeah, like Disney bought a company that was a little similar as well, that owns the content. Yeah, exactly. So there’s some big companies that do that. Again, our mission here is to bring it down to the average Joe. When I say average Joe, I still mean maybe 50,000 subscribers plus. It’s still popular enough enough to have an impact. But to bring it down to the level that everyone that has a social media channel can do something like that.
Andrew: Here’s another guy. There’s Darren Lachtman of Niche.
Jeff: Right. Niche got purchased, what, $30 million, $50 million — something like that — by Twitter. So yeah, the industry is [inaudible 00:48:05]
Andrew: So the industry is heating up. I could see why you want to talk about that and not the old days when you had to go into a Vegas conference, and frankly, try to worm your way into it.
Jeff: Yeah. How does Twitter make money? They’re selling sponsored tweets. And now Pinterest, they’re selling sponsored posts. And all the social media companies are selling sponsored something. In some way, shape, or form, that is the new banner ad of our day, I feel. This is how social media channels are making money, is selling sponsored advertising. Even blogs are selling sponsored content rather than, in a sense, advertising.
Andrew: Right. So I understand your process for, in the early days, finding brands. Now, it’s still fairly easy to get brands. It’s tougher to get these influencers, because everybody’s trying to contact them. What’s your process for getting through to them?
Jeff: We just send a simple email out [inaudible 00:49:00] saying, “How much do you charge for a sponsored post?” They tell us how much they charge. And then we ask them, “Would you like to work with these brands?” which again, is very different than what we used to do which is explaining Tomoson. So with this new approach, it’s actually working extremely well, because we have so many unique brands on our website. We don’t have a toilet paper that IZEA might be working with, or THAT Schick razor that you can pick up at Walmart. We have the competitive throwing axes that are on our website. We have the unique companies like that.
Andrew: I see. So someone could find something that’s more in tune with they are.
Jeff: Yeah. Just the other day, I saw someone that’s a professional archer, and there I have a YouTube channel that’s 10,000 subscribers. He’d be perfect for a throwing Tomahawk on there. And so we have these niches that we’re connecting people with, and we’re finding that the new influencers are loving that. And we have almost about 10% conversion rate now with just emailing them, asking them how much they charge, and showing them the brands that we’re working with. And that’s really working well.
Andrew: I see. There’s one that I really like. You know what? It’s this group. Let me see what their name is. They were given Oreo cookies as a sponsor and told to do whatever they want. It’s Tomska versus Oreo. And his name is Tomska. And so he basically shot this two-minute video that’s got almost a million views of him and his woman basically . . . I guess it’s a woman who is killing people with Oreo cookies. And the big discussion online is should brands allow people to do whatever they want, and even let them kill people with Oreo cookies. I got to tell you, it was really good. It’s such a good video. Brands, absolutely, 100% should do this. This is where Oreo should be. I finally care about Oreo again after seeing stuff like this. And there’s no way that, well, that most brands would have okayed this if they got to see it ahead of time.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Or maybe . . . I know what it was. She was zapping people and then turning them into Oreos. And then someone had to bury the Oreos, but they were so delicious.
Jeff: This is what people want though.
Andrew: This is what you want to see. This is your future.
Jeff: It’s funny because our future’s like 14-year-old kids producing videos and pictures. That’s just it.
Andrew: I know. People used to be pissed that Bill Gates was as young as he was. He was in his early 20s when he started Microsoft. We should now make the same mistake and now see 14-year-olds as being too young.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: Right?
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: But it is a little creepy for an adult to watch a 14-year-old’s Vine videos. Sometimes it feels a little inappropriate. All right. So that’s where you’re going with this business. That’s where you’ve built it up. What’s the next one big thing that you need to do that if you could get there, then everything just clears up for you?
Jeff: Well, I do think, although we love playing this role of [inaudible 00:52:08] and the startup that’s built from nothing, I do think that we need to get VC funding to compete within the industry. I think we have a concept that works, a revenue model that works. And even our marketing, it works. And well, to compete with the big boys and not to have them completely blow us away, I think we’ll have to get funding to really do that. Our growth is good now, but that’s probably our next new goal.
Andrew: What about this? Do you need a little more cool?
Jeff: Absolutely.
Andrew: Like instead of a button-down shirt, maybe a sports jacket and tee. Like I’m wearing a button-down shirt and a jacket. I told the woman who dressed to me to, “Please, no more of these collared shirts. Get me a T-shirt.” I feel more comfortable in T-shirts anyway.
Jeff: Right. That’s actually interesting. We have our PR firm tell us that quite often.
Andrew: That you need more cool. That Matthew . . .
Jeff: We need a little bit more cool.
Andrew: Yes, so what are you going to do to get more cool?
Jeff: Well, one, it is getting these influencers into our system. Two, reaching out to a couple of interviewers, professional interviewers that video and interview these stars. And we’re going to try to fire them on board, in a sense to try to reach that audience as well. Just today, we’re in Minneapolis, and Minneapolis has the old Warehouse District and a lot of converted warehouses into offices. And so I think we’re going to move our company into that industry, into that area, and try to attract also the hipsters that want to work for a cool startup company, get this talent into our company, and that knows the audience, the younger audience, that can help us, bring us in here.
Andrew: I see.
Jeff: Yeah, we’d like to bring the talent in-house.
Andrew: I like the way you’re thinking.
Jeff: Because I’m old. No, I’m not that old. I’m 33, but I want the young talent. The interviewer’s . . . she’s 16 years old at this interview.
Andrew: So there’s someone out there who’s doing interviews with the Matthew Espinosa’s of the world and the Tomska’s of the world.
Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew: Who is that person who’s doing those interviews? I think that’s a great idea because frankly, those people have tremendous traffic, right? If I interview you, I’m going to get some traffic. Somebody’s going to come over here because you got a big audience. But imagine someone doing interviews with people who do nothing but focus on growing their Instagram accounts and their following.
Jeff: Right. Exactly. Let me show you. She actually just signed up for Tomoson as an influencer in our system a few days ago, and so I reached out to her.
Andrew: Can you give me this person’s name via Skype chat so I don’t mistype it the way I mistyped other things?
Jeff: Yes.
Andrew: I’ll give you some time to do that. And while you do it, I’m going to look around here to see . . . right. There we go. You linked it.
Jeff: Like on her YouTube channel . . . and actually, I think on her About Page, she has the Matthew Espinosa interview on that. I think she’s only 16 years old
Andrew: Perfect. This is the model, frankly, if you’re looking for traffic. Now for me, I’m looking for a legacy business. I need to be more of the Fortune magazine of the space, but I can see. I see what she’s doing. I’m looking out here. I want to look at her videos. Oh, she did put the Matthew Espinosa video as the main one. Let’s click over to that and see how many views that got.
Here’s the other thing. I talked to you for an hour. Matthew Espinosa, you only need to talk to for five seconds, because that’s what his Vine videos are, right? Just short videos.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: So she talked to him for three minutes and 37 seconds. She got about 100,000 views, and it’s just her and him on a couch with a mic that they’re passing back and forth.
Jeff: Right.
Andrew: That’s the model.
Jeff: But same with influencers doing influencer marketing into our system, we need to start doing influencer marketing, right? I want to be associated with Matthew Espinosa.
Andrew: I see. So you need someone like that who is going to start interviewing people.
Jeff: Exactly.
Andrew: Right. And then they bring him to your site. Look at this response from Savannah Rigdon. “His smile, OMFF. Oh.” That’s the kind of response you’re looking for. Now, look. Now 14, I think, is starting to get a little bit too old. Let me suggest this. I got a child who actually this morning turned one year old. Now, think about that. Obviously, he has interviewing in his genes. We set him up with Matthew Espinosa. Think of the traffic.
Jeff: I’m not sure of a one-year-old, but I have seen little kids on YouTube. There was one that was making $1 million. He was reviewing toys.
Andrew: Look at that.
Jeff: I forgot how old he is, but that’s all he does.
Andrew: But look, here’s the thing. My son doesn’t even need to ask a question. If he just sits there, Matthew Espinosa will go something about how cute he is, right? That’s the whole gimmick.
Jeff: Kids sell. Kids sell.
Andrew: Right? And you get . . .
Jeff: [inaudible 00:56:49]
Andrew: . . .three seconds of that and then you move on. And then it’s not up to my son to really keep the show going. He just plays around. It’s up to Matthew Espinosa to make a child interesting, right? If someone could make Oreos interesting, then you know they could make a baby interesting.
Jeff: I like that idea.
Andrew: Boom. That’s the thing.
Jeff: I like that idea.
Andrew: Someone’s out there right now creating a new website, hosting it on HostGator . . .
Jeff: Postagram baby is on HostGator.
Andrew: . . . just so they could try this idea out. All right. I really like this business. I’m glad to see how far you’ve come with it. The website is tomoson.com. If you’re ever here in San Francisco, I’d like to get together with you in person. I want to talk to you more about your strategy for the business.
Jeff: Perfect.
Andrew: Anyone out there who’s listening to this interview, if you want more of my work, here’s what you need to do. See, you can’t just go to Vine. You have to actually do a little bit of work to get this kind of goodness. Go to iTunes and look for Mixergy. Or go to whatever your favorite podcast app is, look for Mixergy, subscribe. All the latest interviews will come directly to your phone, to your Apple TV, to whatever device you have, to your raspberry pie. I know my audience. And if you want to do me a solid, please write a review in the iTunes store. It helps other people find me. And make it as goofy as possible because I like to read them when I’m down. And I don’t need a great review. I need an entertaining review for me. But don’t get so goofy that you start giving me four stars. Please, five stars or more. You’re hackers. You could find a way to do it. Please.
Jeff, thank you so much for being a part of Mixergy.
Jeff: All right. Thanks, Andrew, appreciate it.
Andrew: You bet. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye everyone.
