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Here’s your program.
Hey everyone, it’s Andrew Warner, I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. How do you save a companies life? By taking it mobile. Rob is the founder of Untethered Mobile, which consults companies on how to develop their mobile strategy and build their mobile products right.
Rob, give an example of what you’re able to do for a client with what you are about to teach us here today.
Rob: I do, well many examples. But certainly the biggest kind of gut wrenching thing happened to my own company. If you’ll take an example. I ran a company in the early 2002, 2003 and it was a web product that did IT administration from a mobile browser, or from a browser. And we had a few features, it was a low priced product. We were out there trying to sell it, and it was a very‚Ķyou can imagine it’s a very competitive, competitive, competitive space. And we were getting rejected continuously. It was a very tough sell.
We took a step back and evaluated what was coming down the horizon. I’m a big traveler. I’ve spent a lot of time abroad, my parents lived abroad. So we kind of saw all this stuff coming in which was, whenever we’d go somewhere somebody’s head was facing down into their palm and looking at a device. And so it didn’t take long to realize that that was going to be coming this day. We didn’t foresee what the next stage was. We kind of mashed that together, the mobile space, this web app, put it into an app on the Blackberry and at the time that was just an e-mail client. And then went back out to those same clients. They started buying this product. They started buying it in an incredible amount of licenses.
And what ended up happening is that some of these large, large, large companies adopted it as their IT administration tool for the Blackberry and changed policy around working from home, or offsite or on-call procedures. So it was a pretty massive change. All because of mobiles. Pretty significant.
Andrew: All right, and we’ve got a set of tactics that we’re going to teach people and we’re going to back every one of them up with examples from companies that you work with. But let give me one more example before we get into the tactics. You work with a national newspaper chain, that, you know, newspapers aren’t really doing that great today, but, you took the mobile and helped. Actually, you tell the story, it’s better coming directly from the man who did it.
Rob: Yes, sure. Newspapers are obviously being challenged today with the digital space and now the mobile space. Because there are lots of small companies, well funded companies, that don’t have the burden of being a large infrastructure plan like a newspaper, with a printing press if you can picture it. These guys, the biggest challenge is taking what they’re doing with their print, putting it into the digital and moving it into the mobile space. And the problem with this is they’ve just taken the same advertising models, in the print, and moved it into the digital space and now just moved it into the mobile space. This is one of the biggest challenges for these guys.
So I came in, they were looking at a digital first strategy, which is get everything on the web, get everything in print, we’ll figure out how to get somebody to buy it later on and then hopefully we can turn it into some revenue. Well I sat down with them and their executive team in two locations and we walked through the process of moving into a mobile first mentality. And how to make money in the mobile space. If you’re not making money, don’t do it.
So we sat down and we looked at this massive opportunity. By the end of this meeting it was painful, it was gut-wrenching, they had to change strategies, but they abandoned the digital first and went with the mobile. They started building apps, mobile web sites, and iPad maps as well. All of the sudden they’re looking at massive adoption. Some of their readership is 23 million page views a month across their mobile products now, which is 22% of all activity on their network in a very short period of time, 90 days.
Andrew: I thought that was just my reading habits that I’m so into digital and mobile that I have read books on my mobile phone, I read the newspaper on my mobile phone, but I can’t for the life of me get through an article in the New York Time on the web. This is the way people are going. What do you do for them? Do you guide them through thinking about how to build their apps? Do you design it for them? Do you build the apps for them?
Rob: The great thing about something like a newspaper is that these guys have content. It’s a dream. They have an audience, an established audience. They have content and people are used to paying for that content because you pick up a newspaper. It’s a perfect line for the mobile space.
What you do with them is you sit down and you assess where they’re strong and where they’re weak and what it is that they can benefit from. You don’t want to find a technology and jam them into that technology. You look at where they’re strong and then find the technology that complements that.
Andrew: Then when you find it do you build it?
Rob: Yeah.
Andrew: So, untethered mobile has coders. We’ll develop those mobile apps for them.
Rob: Absolutely.
Andrew: I realized, “Wait a minute. The way that I asked that question we could just be giving away the later on segments now and not have time to do those segments justice later.” So, I get what you do. You consult them. You help them turn things around by using mobile and you build out the apps for them.
Now my audience is thinking, “Great, Andrew. That’s terrific for Rob. That’s terrific for this great, big Canadian newspaper, but all I care about is myself, not in a selfish way but a practical way. What’s in it for me?”. So, let’s give them what’s in it for them. What’s the first step that the person in my audience needs to take?
Rob: Take a half-step back from that first step because this is very important, and you’ve got to clearly define what mobile is and what mobile isn’t. So, when I talk about mobile I’m not talking about simply a smart phone or a laptop. I’m talking about the dash on a car. I’m talking about the dash in your living room which is your stereo system.
I’m talking about things that are connected to the internet in some shape or form. I’m also talking about the things that you use through these devices, things like pod casts. Mixergy I would consume a mobile product because of the way that people consume it.
Mobile is very broad and it’s not just apps, mobile web, or an iPhone. You’ve got to understand that. So, coming at it with a broad approach, the world is with us right now.
Andrew: Who are your customers and what do we need them to do?
Rob: That’s the biggest one like the web rush of ’99. The web rush was like, “We need a website. I don’t know why but we need one.” So, we’re seeing that to some extent here in the mobile space. It’s like, “I need an app. I need an app. I need an app. I don’t care what it does I just need an app.”
Andrew: I’ve done a few interviews with consulting that have dealt with customers like that and I see that, between you and me, privately, they’re telling me how rich they’re getting off just giving companies apps because they just need an app. Once I looked at the notes that you prepared with Jeremy the pre-interviewer I realized, “Whoa. Of course these guys are getting rich right now.”
The customer’s happy right now because they’ve checked off a box that says “We need an app”, and they look like they’re forward thinking but at some point in the future they’re going to have to justify having this app. Their users are going to have this cruddy experience with them and they’re going to lose confidence in those apps. So, you’re saying the first step again, let me let you say it explicitly and then we’ll get an example of how you’ve done it.
Rob: It’s business 101. You’ve got to know who your customers are and what they want to do with you in the mobile space. It doesn’t mean that the first thing that you should do is go out and get an app. If you are thinking about it and it’s a check-box and it’s something that you’ve got to do, I implore you, don’t do it. I’ve seen three or four hundred thousand dollars being spent on applications. With my previous company we built a great product. It was unbelievable, we thought, and we were very fond of our own product.
And so, we went out and sold it so we went from a couple of features and a website to 540 features on a mobile app, you know the small screens and what ended up happening is that when we went out and sold it, it was too complicated to sell, we didn’t clearly define who our customer was and what they wanted to do with this, we just rejected what we thought they wanted to do. So, we had to come up back to the drawing board and say this is just not working, so we clearly defined three types of customers, the one we were selling it to, the one who managed it and the one who used it. They were three distinct customers and then we built stories around how to sell to those and we built a product so it satisfied all of those. So, go ahead.
Andrew: No, no, you go ahead please.
Rob: So, it could have been that the CFO wanted to make sure that up time was managed effectively or that it didn’t cost too much money or that labor was low, deployment manager and IT manager didn’t want it to cost too much to deploy or have down time as a result and also, the last thing they really cared about what the well being of their employees, but the employee really cared about the fact that they could do the things from home. So we satisfied the requirements. We didn’t have to do everything, we just had to satisfy the requirements to get the buy.
Andrew: Rove is the company that you founded I think in 2006.
Rob: Yep.
Andrew: 2006 to 2010 is when you want that business.
Rob: Yep.
Andrew: You said that you had spent an insane amount of time building the tool and spending a lot of money and energy.
Rob: Yep.
Andrew: Give me an example of one crazy thing that you added that in retrospect if you had talked to a customer, if you would have thought what is this going to do and how is it going to fit into a customer’s life, you wouldn’t have built it?
Rob: Well, I mean, it was revolutionary, at the time, what we had created was remember, well I mean, it’s like GoToMyPC, we had created that for a mobile device, so picture the small screen of a Blackberry, because that’s what it worked on, low res screen and we were, we had created a way to access your desktop. So, a server’s desktop right from that screen. We thought, wow, this is a killer feature, I love this. But, when we went out to sell it people said, well, the experience is terrible, the usability is bad, it’s slow, it’s sluggish, it’s low speed networks.
Nobody used this feature and we were out there as our number one thing, or our number two thing that we were selling, you know, replicate your desktop, you never have to install another piece of software on your Blackberry, and it just, it didn’t resonate so, what we ultimately did was it nearly collapsed us, we sold that product, we extracted it and we sold it as a separate product to Citrix and they built out a product.
Andrew: So, now, Citrix when they give me the GoToMyPC from my mobile phone that’s built on the back of what you built?
Rob: 100%.
Andrew: Oh that’s fantastic.
Rob: Because it wasn’t our business, right? It was their business.
Andrew: I see.
Rob: It was a big lesson to learn, just because you can put it in there doesn’t mean you should.
Andrew: And it wasn’t, so why is it, why do they have customers that need that, and frankly I got to tell you I use that stuff on my phone all the time, that’s how I control files when we have to upload them and make sure that things are getting done. But, why is their customers but if you would have looked at your customers you would have said, no it doesn’t fit in their lives. Is it that your customers had slower internet, different phones, different mentality?
Rob: Expectations I would say. It’s that, listen an IT, what Rove did was IT administration so if you needed to reset a password or move a VM or something like that, there were specific tasks that these guys did over and over and over again that sometimes required them to drive a couple of hours or log in or stay tethered to their house. They couldn’t go anywhere beyond, you know they had to be thirty minutes from their desktop.
So, what we realized very quickly is that it’s those quick actions, the ins and the outs, so if they got an e-mail saying, listen, somebody’s locked out, and executive is locked out on a Saturday, they could be at the ball park watching a baseball game and they could actually action on it right there without having to disrupt their day. So, we were thinking too broad whereas Citrix and GoToMyPC, that’s their business, their business is secure, you know point to point connection, desktop to desktop and it fit very well for their customers. And of course, they also had, you know we’re jumping, but they have an established base of users, they can take this product and sell into. Big, big difference.
Andrew: Yeah, let’s hold off on that and go to the next one. Do you have the notes in front of you, by the way?
Rob: I do, yeah.
Andrew: What, what’s this feeling like for you, that we just did a pre-interview with you, you I think were the first person that we officially did a pre-interview with that someone else, that Jeremy the new pre-interviewer did, what was that experience like for you before I go on to the next tactic?
Rob: It was grilling. Jeremy was hammering me, it was a great experience, you know it certainly made me think about how I frame my answers and I think that certainly what it helps start the thinking process about, you know, what it is that I’m, what the point is that I’m really trying to make. But he was, he grilled me. That guy kept me on the phone for two hours. It’s like, Jeremy, I thought this was.
Andrew: Oh, wow, so I’ll tell the audience, I said, before I hired Jeremy I said, let’s get someone from the audience who wants to learn how to interview and we’ll use them as practice. They’ll get to see what our pre-interview process is really like. And my new pre-interviewer will get to practice on real people and so I went to this email list I have of people who want to learn how to pre-interview. And I say, “Guys, this is what we’re doing, do you want to jump in on it?” You said yes, you’re supposed to just be a test, but I looked at your notes, and I said, “I’m so curious about this, I’ve got to have Rob on.” And I’ve known you for a long time. Even though I had these notes and I have my research, I still didn’t know everything, but…
Rob: Yeah.
Andrew: Looking at these notes made me even more curious and I said, “We’ve got to teach this to the audience. We have to take a guy who has Rob’s background, and ability to teach this clearly and bring it to the audience. OK. First thing is, forget about the fact that everyone wants an app. And just because you’re supposed to want an app doesn’t mean that you have to have an app.
Rob: Right. Right.
Andrew: Think about how does it fit in with your customers? Does it even fit in with them at all? And start from that point of view. The next is what? What’s the next tactic?
Rob: Well, I mean, so the big thing here is, Mogul is such a personal thing. Everybody carries these devices. I think that they actually had this study that came out that you actually have an emotion, a feeling, I don’t know if it’s love, but an iPhone evokes an emotion. It’s the only smart-phone out there that does actually evoke an emotion. And it’s similar to love, as much as you can love a device. So it’s such a personal, personal piece. You have to try to figure out how you’re going to interrupt the end user in a way that doesn’t turn them off. So it’s about engagement. It’s about making sure that how do you get to that customer? So the strategies, the thing that you have to think about is, what’s that piece that is going to allow you to get to your customer at the end of the day.
Andrew: OK. Give me an example of that, because I’m still not following.
Rob: Yeah. So, you interviewed these guys. Ren?© Pinnell. It’s a perfect example of a company that, it’s a company called Forecast. But before they were called Forecast, they were called Hurricane Party. Which is I think, probably one of the best names. Hurricane Party into Forecast. A good following. So Ren?© and his team build a product with a specific end in sight. An outcome. They were aiming for South by Southwest this year. They said, “Listen. We’re going to find, or build, or tell everybody about spontaneous parties. That’s what Hurricane Party was. And these guys, detailed in your interview, and I’ve interviewed them as well on Tether. These guys spent a considerable amount of time, and money building a product with an end date in sight.
They said, “Listen. We’re going to launch South by Southwest.” They had that in their vision, so they build a product for South by Southwest. So when they finally landed, I mean, people were raving about this product. Scobelwas talking about it. Everybody was using it. And then, throughout all of South by Southwest they were successful. The day after, they realized that they built a product for the event that just ended. And nothing followed through. So there was no product after that.
So they had a really clear idea of what they were building it for. There was just not a long term sustainable business in this. So they pivoted. They changed right away into Forecast. So knowing what your end is, knowing how your customers are going to use it, and getting them to use it is that next piece. And if you’re going to build for one thing, go on and rent that from someone who’s building for events or something similar.
Andrew: I see.
Rob: So you’ve got to have that blue print.
Andrew: If you’re going to be an app for parties, think about parties beyond this first one. How are you going to fit in with those lives? How are you going to get the viral lift that you’re looking for from those parties and so on? And South by Southwest does seem to be this big, monster deadline for people and it’s easy to get carried away and think that that’s the only deadline, that’s the only goal you have. You’re saying, think beyond that. Think how you can engage the customer, and what’s your ultimate end outcome.
Rob: Absolutely. And you’ve got to think, listen. So many companies go through this, especially young companies. And Mogul is a young person’s game. Innovations are happening by 19 and 20 year olds with no previous business experience. And the end isn’t the launch, right? It’s called the launch. It’s the beginning. So if you put out the product, that shouldn’t be the end of the hard work. That’s just the beginning of it. So if your launch is your end, you know you’re not going to find any customers the next day. So it’s pretty important that you have to think about what’s beyond.
Andrew: All right. Next thing we want to teach people is to measure.
Rob: Yes.
Andrew: Well, measure what?
Rob: That’s a good question. That’s the question that it comes down to, is that Mogul is great for metrics. You can get lost in it, but you have to pick one. What’s your super metric that allows you to know if you’re successful in actually launching the product? So in websites and banner advertisements, it was click through rates, or page views, or unique users, which became kind of obscured or obfuscated, so what is it that you’re looking for right now, and you’ve got to define very clearly what your super metric is. So it could be number of downloads, which is pretty broad. It could be the number of times people actually open it, or launch the application. How many times a day, what’s your goal there. It could be something as simple as, do they update, what’s the percentage of updates when we put out a new release. But you have to pick a metric, or two, that really do, that you can measure against. It’s so important. So important.
Andrew: You know, I’ve actually heard two things in this interview, in these interviews that I’ve done. I remember I interviewed Mike Jones, a well known angel investor in southern California and I asked him what is the key, what have you noticed, and he tells me, you know Andrew, it’s the guys who are really into data, that seems to be it. And I was surprised that he didn’t say design. I was surprised that he didn’t say new innovation, new technology, it was just the data. The guys who can figure out how to increase a certain number and so on.
And then, on the other hand, I also talked to Noah Kagan, guy who founded most recently App Sumo but back then he was working at Gambit, and he said, Andrew, one of the big mistakes that we had was, that we made was, we looked at too much data, we got so carried away with looking at every single one that you just don’t know where to go at that point when you’re looking at that kind of data. So you say pick just one super metric. Give me an example, help illustrate it with something that you’ve seen.
Rob: Well, I think that you know, here’s the perfect example of a company that, I worked with a company, it’s a mobile game company that’s targeted for children. So, these games that they built were educational games and a great company, a great product. It was a company called Zeboo.com. These are kind of distraction games for your kid, so you hand your kid your Blackberry and they play a game, it’s you know, educational. One of the big metrics that they looked at very early on, was the idea of downloads. So, they started with downloads, a very broad spectrum. They said, listen, we want to get as many downloads, our metric is a million downloads, let’s get to a million.
So, sure enough, these guys, one of the first companies out there with these kinds of games for children, dominated the Blackberry market. Got to a million downloads and then kind of looked up from a million and said, OK, now what. Like, they hit a million and there was no trumpet blast, no confetti, no fireworks. They hit a million downloads, which is a staggering amount of people using that product but it wasn’t a metric that meant anything. So, they picked the wrong metric.
Andrew: How much money did they make off of that million, by the way?
Rob: Well, not a lot. You know what, I would say not a lot, but say their average spend is about fifty cents a user.
Andrew: Oh, so they got half a million dollars from that.
Rob: Roughly about that, less costs.
Andrew: OK, and how much money did they spend to get to that half million in revenue?
Rob: Well, they built about eight products, right? So, eight products, two years in business that was their total revenue, roughly around that number. Still, for a small company, building applications like this, still it’s a good income, it’s a good revenue income. But, with a million users, a million people using your product, you should be able to turn that around and generate a higher revenue base. So, a million people, great, they hit that, no fanfare, no massive investment. Nothing that they thought would come, came. So, change in the metric, now they realize that of those million people that were using the product, you know, less than 20% of them were going back to it on a daily basis.
So, this now became a very important metric. How do you up the number of times people use that, you know, I want them to use it three times a week, four times a week, five times a week, twice a day. All of a sudden, it became a very important metric and it changed the way that they built product. So they didn’t keep building product out, they built modules inside of a product, to draw people back in to the product. So, instead of splintering their audience they kept them in the app, but just kept on bringing new product in and new revenue streams to those million people. So, if a million people buy a product and you don’t give them another reason to go out and you know spend any more money on you, it’s not a great revenue stream.
Andrew: Did you say what their new revenue was?
Rob: Well, I’m not sure that I should right now but it’s significantly higher, at this point.
Andrew: Significantly higher, OK.
Rob: Yeah. Just because you’re using your established audience. You’re working so hard to get them, don’t abandon them. The metric that they were using was, look, we’ll put out as many products to get a million downloads as possible and then we’ll worry about it. But once they turned it into how many times were people using the app, how often they used it and for how long, it changed the way they built their product. Pretty significant.
Andrew: So, one metric, focus on that. It’s OK to have all the others but you need one, and you know what’s the beauty of having one metric is it’s easy to rally the whole company behind it and it’s easy to communicate it to the rest of the world. You know, if you can say to everybody in the company, our goal is to interview a thousand entrepreneurs. Well, we all know now what to do and the audience for example would know what to do.
Or our goal is to get a million people, or to get our, to get a million people, I guess is also a great goal to have and it’s one that rallies people but the next level is saying we’re going to get them all to spend an hour a day, or two hours a day on their app, that again gets everyone to start thinking creatively in the shower or when they’re driving to work about what to do to get there. I’m sorry, you were going to say something and then I’m going to ask . . . [inaudible]
Rob: Well, I was going to say when you look at a master picture here, you start to think even the newspaper business, it’s share of day. That’s what you’re fighting for. Time is a precious resource. Just like [??], how can you get the share of somebody’s day especially in this space? So, newspaper, perfect example is that they’re focused on distribution and page views. Well, I came back and I said, “I challenge [that].”
I said listen, you know what? What if you could . . . How long does it take for you to go through the newspaper, Andrew? Like, how long? 15 minutes, 20 minutes some days? Weekends maybe a little longer?
Andrew: Yeah.
Rob: I said what if you can build a mobile product that engages with them for 15 more minutes in the day, what is that worth? The response is, “Oh, my God. That’s incre- . . .Can we do that?” I’m like that’s what you’ve got to focus on is getting more engagement from them. Even three minutes extra a day would have blown their mind. So, when you start to think about that metric it’s that precise. Be smart about it, be realistic, but be smart about what it is that you’re trying to do. It’s massive impact when you hit that right metric.
Andrew: [Mad Mix] story, I’ve got a note here to ask you about that.
Rob: Yeah, the same thing is that these are all similar stories. [Mad Mix] is a great company.
Andrew: Tell me.
Rob: I ran the company for three years. It’s a mobile gaming company. Again, it was about the number of games they could get out. [??] what we have to do is get four games out a month. Then we push those out, we’re onto the next four games and on to the next four games. Some of the brands that they’ve got, New York Times crossword puzzle, some big brands, RubiK’s Cube.
If you’re playing the Rubik’s Cube on a Blackberry and iPhone or an Android or a Microsoft Smartphone, that’s this company. It was about pushing the games out and on to the next, whereas it wasn’t about brand management and pulling back and understanding. Just because we put the app out doesn’t mean that that experience is done. How do we then look at that app and drive the revenue through that app?
Instead of driving it out the door and leaving it, coming back in a year to do an update, it’s about how do you drive it out the door and then drive revenue through that product. Once you just change the way you look at the product, does it ever make a difference? Revenue just starts to come in because you’re focusing on the right things.
Andrew: All right. What’s the next lesson for our audience? By the way, audience members, tell me, is this useful?
Rob: Of course it is.
Andrew: Rob, you’ve been listening to Mixergy for a long time, how many times have you heard me say come back and give me feedback, come back and interact, come back and let me know what you think?
Rob: Well, every single episode. Now, do people do it?
Andrew: Yeah, they do. I think, you’ve done it.
Rob: Yeah, I have.
Andrew: I can’t think of it specifically, but you’ve done it. I think when I was looking for your Skype number name to connect with you today, I happened to come across an old email that I sent out that said, “Hey, guys what do you think of this?” This went out to everybody on my list. You responded with like five points with feedback. And I thought, boy, this Rob is going to be a guy I’ve got to, first of all I’ve got to thank him in this interview and if he is as organized in the interview as he is in the email, it’s going to be a valuable interview.
But that’s my feedback. [inaudible] guys in the audience come back and give me your feedback.
Rob: I’d appreciate it one way or another, only good feedback.
Andrew: Let me say this to the audience, look at this. Here’s something that you may not know and [then we’ll continue with the message here.] Guess, even the most comforting guess, and, Rob, you’ve done interviews on your site, untethered.tv, so you’ve probably have seen this. Even the most confident people when we say all right, do the wave, I say good bye at the end they’ll say things like, “Whew, did I do a good job?”
They’ll email me and say, “Andrew, how was that? How did I come across?” That moment, if you’re an audience member and you shoot them an email to say, “Hey, I think you did well . . .” with a little bit of substance to it, “I think you did well especially when you did that other thing over there or this specific story.” You special emailed it. They love you. They connect with you because you’re at their most vulnerable spot coming in with reassurance, giving them that confidence.
What a good spot to connect with a guess. I say this to my audience all the time because I know that when they connect as a result of my interviews it’s good for me that I in a way am reaching out to them at their most vulnerable spot and picking them up and thanking them and so on. I hope the audience does that. They can do it with you. I’m pushing them to do it with you, but I’m also pushing them to do it with everyone.
Rob: Well, I appreciate it. I’ve done 325 interviews on my own site and none are as nerve racking as this one. How’s that? I know the subject down cold, but still, I don’t know, it’s the Andrew Warner methodology that’s surrounding us right now.
Andrew: I appreciate that. Well, if it helps get a great interview then I’m glad of it. You’re doing great here. All right, so, next tactic, technol-, you tell me actually. I’m not going to read it.
Rob: Yeah. So, I alluded to this. It’s not about looking at a technology and seeing how you fit into that technology. A lot of companies ran to companies like Groupon or Four Square or [??] right away and said, “Listen, I, look, whatever it is I’m going to give you a discount of your check-in, I’m going to do this thing, I mean even Facebook places. Up here in Canada Chapters, and Indigo is our major bookstore, it’s like a Borders. These guys get onto Facebook places. They said, listen, we’re willing to give a 4% discount for anybody who checks in with Facebook places, just without thinking.
They came to me and said, Rob we’re doing that. And I thought, what are you crazy? You’ve got razor thin margins and you’re giving it away, for what? So people in the store were checking, and they were standing in line with a book and you’re giving them a 40% discount? There’s a study that said that people would travel over an hour, like through rain, snow and sleet, to get a 40% discount. What you’re doing is, taking it right out of your own pocket, while you’re standing in line three feet away from the cash register. Insane.
So, when it comes to this, don’t just use the technology that’s out there, find your strategy, then use the appropriate technology that gets you what you want it to be, without giving away the farm. It’s so important. I know a good friend of yours, Gary Vaynerchuk, his media team did so well with Duwalla and the New Jersey Mets. I think this was maybe a year and a half ago, but this was one of those moments where you thought, I’ve never seen this before, and it’s something that is the perfect implementation. Like the New Jersey Mets suck as a basketball team, they’re not a strong team. It was their last year, they were playing way out at the Izod center, in like Hobocken New Jersey, or somewhere around there.
They had 11 wins all season, and the last game of the season, they engaged with Vaner Media and said, listen we need something. They brought in Duwalla, and what they did was put virtual goods in 75 locations. 75 pairs of tickets in virtual locations about within a 50 mile radius of the Izod center, and so when people used Duwalla, checked in, some of them found a pair of tickets to a New Jersey Mets game. Redeem those tickets, they went to this stadium and game. They were treated to a red carpet service, given shirts, like jersey, front row seats, the experience was spectacular and it was all in hope that these guys would come back and have an understanding of what it was like to go to an NBA game.
The experience was unbelievable, thousands of Twitter posts, Facebook posts, pictures follow- ups the whole thing. They created little fans, small fans, out of people who would normally not to go an NBA game. Boy, talk about using this technology so effectively. It gives me shivers just thinking about that, that’s beautiful.
Andrew: He really does know how to use all of the social media really well. Gary and the team over at Vaner Media. OK. I see what you’re saying. You’re saying get a big audience by leveraging someone else audience, and you’ve shown us two examples of that. Chapters, which didn’t do it well, we can actually say that. All they did was give away money in exchange for getting more traffic that was already in the store. On the other hand, Gary used Duwalla really well, to use the audience really well, and not just tap into that audience but tap into their friends via Twitter.
Chapters, that’s your Borders in Canada? Can you in Canada, by the way, we’re just chatting, but let me ask you this question. Do you in Canada get Amazon deliveries as quickly as we can in the U.S.?
Rob: So, in Toronto, I’m actually working with a client in Toronto, I’m from Ottowa, but in Canada there’s an Amazon outlet or warehouse. So it delivers in 24 hours, anywhere in Canada. For a long time it would take three or four weeks to get across the border, but they changed that.
Andrew: I saw that, and I couldn’t believe that I just couldn’t get something shipped overnight like I could in the U.S. because I’m used to being what it is. All right. Next lesson for us, what is that?
Rob: So, you know when you start to go through here, we’ve got this thing where you build a deeper customer engagement, a little bit. But, this is a deep thing for us, which is quite literally, what we’ve got to do is be where the customer wants value. So, there’s a bunch of examples of this, when you start looking at companies like Best Buy. What did these guys do? They were known as being an Amazon showcase, basically.
These guys are the ones that are out there trying to push new product. You go there and touch and feel it, then you look it up on your smart phone, or your home and you can buy it online. This is a tough challenge, because you’re trying to engage with those guys a little bit deeper, and for most of the time you’re losing that battle. Because of selection, because of customer service, because of price. So quite often you’re looking at your existing customers.
There’s a decision that you make very early on in mobile development, when you’re looking at mobile products, is that do you go after new customers or do you have to go after existing customers. And most people tends to say, ‘Well, we’ll go after new customers’, that’s the natural thing, more money more customers. My inclination is to go after your existing customers. You want to protect the one’s you have, before you alienate them by going after new customers.
I think about like a 40% discount for new customers, I mean, I think about the checkout line, that express line, 1 to 10 items. Why do they let those guys through fist? I’m spending $400 in your store, I should be the one you let through first. And that’s the way that I think about mobile, is that go after your existing customers, and make that decision to build that deeper relationship, and engage with your existing customers.
Andrew: I see. So what you’re thinking is that if most of us are in Best Buy, just fondling the electronics, trying to figure out which one is the best one for us to buy off of Amazon when we get home, or off of Amazon’s iPhone app while we’re in the store, or I should say android app, or whatever app. Say, no, they should be thinking the same thing, they should be thinking how can we get them to use our own app in the store. As long as they’re going to be buying online, as long as they’re already our customers, it’s easier for us to win these guys over, than it is for us to go after new customers. I see.
Rob: And Best Buy is doing this, they know about all those shop savvy apps, or with laser, that check, do price compare, so they came up with their own. They said, ‘Look, find it, we’ll match it’. They know, and they’re aggressively going after it.
Another great example is this, how many people walk in everyday to Starbucks, they walk into Starbucks and they buy a latte. And Starbucks keeps this, Starbucks is a very advanced company, when it comes to mobile payment, and mobile processing in cards. But what if, I mean, they understand that everyday I spend $3.25 on this latte. What they don’t know is that, when I leave, I go to the store next door and I spend another…. They think my total spend in the morning is $3.25, but really my total spend in the morning is $7.25. But they’re only seeing a portion of that.
So if I’m Starbucks, what I should be focusing on is, ‘Well, that guy is in the store, how do I convert some more of that $7 everyday?’, ‘How do I bring that money into my store, so it doesn’t go some where else to be spend?’. ‘I got the sandwich right here, what do I do to change that behavior?’ Through mobile, that’s where the real power is, get more of their wallets into your store. They’re already there, find a leverage edge, try to build that.
Andrew: Rob, what I’m take away from this is, ‘Hey, its great that I also hear Mixergy got all these ways of bringing new people into my site, from Facebook, from Google, etc. To come in and buy, but really if I just focus on the people who are already here, signing up for this interview, or downloading some other interview. And find more ways to get them engaged in a premium program, it’s much easier and it’s much tighter connection, because they’ve met me and know me for a long time and will trust me when I say, ‘Money back guaranteed’, instead of strangers, who might say, ‘Uh-uh, I see that all over the place.’. And you’re also saying, ‘Well, once I get them in as buyers, I should think, what else can I get them to do. This is not the only educational product that they’re going to buy, this is not the only program, that they’re going to spend money on online. How can I get more from them? Before I look out and see, who else I can bring into my store.
Rob: That’s exactly it. It’s very costly to go and find a new customer, bring them in. The acquisition rate for new customers is outrageous. But if you can get an extra dollar, and not doing this in a seedy kind of malicious way. But by convincing them, one way or another, to spend the extra $1 a day in your store. You up their spend in your store by $1, that’s 25%, focus on that.
And mobile has a really powerful way, to make you the store, and the brand, to that consumer to be able to do those things. That’s what I love.
Andrew: You know back in my days of Bradford and Marie, it wasn’t until the economy started to getting rocky and it was harder for us to acquire new customers. And I said, ‘Wait a minutes, this is share market vs shared wallet. Let’s see if we can start thinking share wallet’. And that point I sit down, and boy, if I would’ve, just a year before, I said, ‘Wait, all these guys are coming into my site to get greeting cards, and this is not the only activity that they are doing online, they’re not just getting greeting cards and moving on offline’. What else are they doing, how can I get them to do it with me. And thought more creatively about that earlier on, I wonder how many other businesses we could’ve created, and how much more we could’ve done.
In the end we did, we created Grab.com for online contest and many other sites but if we could’ve done that sooner, and thought that way sooner, I wonder what would’ve happen there.
Rob: You just think there’s endless number of customers, that are going to come through the door and it’s always better to get more. I call this people hording. That’s what people are doing. I talked to entrepreneurs all the time at Mobile Space, they say, ‘Well, we have 10 million users’ , I say, ‘Well, how you are going to turn that into revenue?’ They say, ‘Well, we’ll worry about that later’. I’m like, ‘Well, how much later do you need ?’. You’re hording 10 million people, that likes your product, even if 20% buy, that’s two million customers, what do you need? How many more do you need? You’re hording them. And some of them are going to go stale, some of them are going to go away. So you better start engaging them.
It’s like Instagram. I love this product, I use it all the time. I don’t know why it’s compelling, because it makes my pictures look great from an iPhone. But they haven’t turned that into revenue. They have 12 million users right now. And they’re going to think of ways to turn it into revenue. But there’s a little company called Postalgram, they said, ‘We want to be the postal child for the, it’s a big company called, ‘Sincerely’, or their parent company, Sincerely’. They want to be the new Hallmark for the digital age. So they took Instagram photos, create postcards out of them, a pretty cool, perforated, a way to perforate the picture of, and charged $1.99, or $99 to send it and they’re making money on it. Now they have extended out to photo booth pictures and different ways to communicate.
Might not be a long term business. But you’re showing that there’s an audience, you can turn it into revenue, do that. And do it for some of those people who want to spend money on. Just there is opportunity every where.
That’s what, when I see 10 million users, I think okay, well, ‘Turn on the spigot’, if they don’t like it, go and find something else they like to spending money on.
Andrew: All right. So what else? What’s the next lesson?
Rob: So, the next lesson is, it’s not going to cause a lot of money. Which is a big thing. People are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on apps and they don’t know if their mobile strategy is going to play out. Start with something so simple like a mobile website. But don’t just implement a mobile website the same way as you would have a website. All of you guys right now, I hate to pick on Best Buy, but take your mobile devises and go to BestBuy.com. And it’s the exact same site, as you would go to on a desk top. Except you’re going from a 22 inch experience down to a three and a half inch experience, fat finger friendly, it is not.
So look at your mobile website as a separate product. but build it. So you can make some assumptions about who your customers are. So if you’re a coffee shop, for example, when they do a Google search in the browser, and they come up to your website. You’ll know of one or two things. One is that, they are on a mobile devise. You can access their GPS if they let you. You know they’re probably trying to find you. So do something as simple as, put up your phone number, or a click to call, or a map, on how to get to your coffee shop.
Something like that, that’s in context, to the fact that they’re on the road or where they are. There are some assumptions you can make. Don’t just put up your front page, on the top right corner, says choose your location, ‘No.’. You know where they are. Start down there and if they want to expand, let them come back out.
But, the mobile experience is so different, let them get to their information very quickly. So mobile website, Google is now ranking how you come up in the search engine, based on how mobile ready your website is. So there’s bunch of criteria, if it’s simple, does it have flash, it’s easy to navigate, that kind of stuff. Google is now putting that as heavy ranking on where you come up in mobile searches. If you’re in contrary to what they want, you would not come up very high in mobile searches. Now it’s a necessity and it’s cheap.
Andrew: I didn’t realize that.
You also say we need to build deeper customer engagement, using things like loyalty cards, send this, signup. Tell me about that?
Is this the same things you have talked about except with a different heading, that I read exactly that way. That’s the problem with notes, it’s great because it gives me great direction, but it’s also a little bit nasty in that it seems to force me in that specific direction, that specific tactic, the way that we wrote it down. That means maybe it’s not exactly the way that we did, we need to do it again.
All right. I see, is there a final one or?
Rob: Yeah. The last piece is this, this is not just a mobile check and then on to the next. Mobile is a, should be looked at as an ongoing and evolutionary process, because the technology changes, and trends change in the space, every 72 hours. This kind of equates what’s going on in the mobile industry to molten lava. And there is whole bunch of people trying to build right on top, and it just eventually disintegrates into something else, and it’s a very difficult time to be a part of this. But when you’re building in the space, when you’re building a mobile, you’ve got to consistently come back, refresh, refresh, rebuild, rebuild.
Take a hard look at your customers, and you’ve got to start the whole loop over and over again. Because of the changes that happen so quickly. And then you can take a look at other technologies. So great you’ve got a iPad app, you’ve got a iPhone app, you’ve got a mobile website, you’ve got a HTML app, you’ve got a blackberry, yeah, that’s great. First of all it’s going to be costly to maintain. The second thing is, what happens when smart TV come out, right?
What happens when, you know, everybody’s got the equivalent to a Ford Sync, which is smarts are computing in the dash board of your car. Or what happens when, you know, LG does release that internet fridge. You know, a lot of these things, now you have to assess based on what the landscape looks like, how to bring your product to those or interact with those. So, it’s constant, constant change. So always go back.
Andrew: Do you give an example here, do you want to talk about that? About the company that built an app and what happened to that one?
Rob: Yeah. Well this was another experience that I had with another company, is that we built an app and it was a very successful application. It was a support tool that allowed you to use a gateway to log on to a PC and adjust, you know, basically launch applications. We were targeting towards a consumer, so you could set your TiVo, you could launch Photoshop, all on the mobile device, from a centralized server. And, what ended up happening is we put it up onto the iTunes store. Very successful, we did two to three thousand downloads a day, two to three thousand downloads a day.
We thought, OK, we’re done. People were paying us a monthly subscription fee and we said, OK, revenue in the bank and then, you know, a new version of IOS came out. And, the thing started to break. And a new version of Windows that we had to administer, or a new Mac OS came out and we were slow in maintaining it because it wasn’t out focus, it wasn’t our priority. We thought, you know, it’s still generating revenue. And then the bottom fell out, it tanked, revenue disappeared. Stuff stopped working, half of the products that people were buying were getting a Google green screen of death, you know, we didn’t have a full breathe or full support on all platforms.
So, what a total disaster this was because we took our eye off of it. We didn’t go back to the beginning and consistently, you know re-op it, basically re-build it from what was necessary from the changes. And, we ultimately had to plead to get it down. Took down the website, gave people money back, cost us a fortune, got rid of the product because it just was tarnished. Big back, mobile has an ability to create awesome brands, it can also destroy brands if you don’t attend to them very, very, very, very closely. It’s a bad experience.
Andrew: That’s the things about business, is that if you don’t tend to it very carefully, over and over again, it gets destroyed or it gets eaten by competition. It is such a challenge, the only way to live with it, like I always think, or I see other people think this, I never really buy into it, this idea that, I’m going to build it and then I can just sit back and have passive income and life will be good. It just doesn’t ever happen, you know, there’s always, you know you build it up and then there’s always a competitor or there’s some disaster that happens or there’s something that you just didn’t anticipate. There is no sitting back, the only alternative is to just really fully enjoy it. To just jump in and say, you know what, if I have to fully pay attention to it then I better enjoy every bit of it. And, if you come with that attitude, it is fun, it is a challenge, it is interesting to tinker and play and see what’s new and make it better and think about what’s new and jump into that and make that a part of what you’re doing.
Rob: Absolutely, and you know, the great thing about this space, around mobile, very enthusiastic about this because I’m passionate about the mobile space, but for the first time in a long time, this is a step technology, right? So, you know, there are gradual technology changes. Shifts. Mobile is a step. Big companies are destroyed and created in this kind of step, when it comes to technology. And industries that we’re about to see being uprooted or destructed, you name it, from cameras and personal computing devices, payments and commerce. Certainly any kind of retail establishment is about to be disrupted. Publishing, we talked about that, that’s every piece, media, TV, radio, print, books, magazine, like this is wide spread. So, when you look at this.
Andrew: Rob, that’s so fun about business too, like in Hollywood, if you’re trying to make it in Hollywood Dustin Hoffman is Dustin Hoffman, the same Dustin Hoffman that he was back when he made “The Graduate”, the same one just keeps producing movies and getting the limelight. The same with Tom Cruise and the others, there is no period in Hollywood where we say, all you actors, gone, you have to rebuild from scratch. But in business there is, you know, right? When big box stores came out we said all you old book stores that thought that you were going to love the life, you guys are pretty much gone and now Barnes & Noble and Borders and Chapters and all these big guys are going to take over and no opportunities for new people.
Rob: Blockbuster.
Andrew: And, then technology comes out and we say, all you guys, gone. You know, the local stores, I see Borders used to be king, Barnes & Noble used to be king, and now people are pitying them and worry that they are going to disappear. Amazon is great and Amazon, actually they did it to themselves, they said Amazon the bookstore is gone because we are going to send people to the Kindle devices now and that’s the fun part and if you’re on top of it when everyone else is gone, you could be the new new. You could build the new products, the new businesses, the new empires.
Rob: Absolutely, Andrew. Amazon is a – you want to look at a company that was left for dead in ’99, 2000, 2001. They’ve recreated retail. They would be what I classify the only retail company out there right now that is thinking like this. It’s that this Amazon fire tablet that they’re building, this mobile device. You know what? So what. Read on it, play games on it, do whatever you want to do on it, but it is the new retail window. It is 100% the new retail window. Amazon will be the largest company on the planet at some point because of what they’re thinking. They’re thinking two steps ahead of, say a Sears who’s just putting iPads in the hands of their salespeople saying, hey listen, we’ll check that inventory for you. I mean, that’s where Sears is. And look at where Amazon is. They’re building the storefront of the future in your hand, and . . .
Andrew: And on a small level, we’ve also seen many small app developers say hey, there’s this brand new world out there. What we’re going to do is create those scanner apps that will scan products at stores . . .
Rob: Yup.
Andrew: . . . and tell you where you can find it cheaper in your neighborhood, or where you can find it cheaper online. And of course, they’re collecting affiliate program fees from sending you to online stores. These opportunities are there. I’m going to ask you one question in a moment . . .
Rob: Sure.
Andrew: . . . which is you’ve given people a lot of tactics and you and I spent a lot of time together. You even more than me, thank you, Jeremy for doing the pre-interview on my behalf. But from all of this, the person who’s sitting back now is feeling satiated and maybe a little overwhelmed. Kind of like when you have a big full meal and you feel like [makes noise]. Let’s give them one thing that they could do, but before we do that, I’m going to do a little plug here and say that if you’re a premium member and you want even more depth and maybe you want to see the process take shape in front of your eyes, we’ve done for Mixergy premium members multiple courses where you can actually watch an iPhone developer. In fact, not a developer because I know that you’re not all developers.
Watch someone who’s an entrepreneur who wants to build a mobile app do everything from come up with the idea to then sketch it out and we show you how you can sketch it out using an actual wire frame tool and how to label it properly and how to make sure that outsourcers if you’re using them, or insourcers or in-house developers if you’re using them understand what you’re building and understand how you want it to act. And we want to make sure that you go step by step by step by step and understand it based on how it works and watch someone – I want you to see how it works for someone else. I want you to understand the process as it works for someone else and I want you to be able to take it home and use it and see results within a week. We’ve got that for you if you’re a premium member. I hope you go to Mixergy.com/premium.
If you’re not, go to that same page and join us. We’ve got tons of courses like that where we go in-depth. You see the person on their computer doing what you’re supposed to be doing and so you can learn from them and go out there and do it. You’ve taken a course. What do you think of my level of commitment here to educating and arming my audience?
Rob: I mean, I love it. I’ve taken more than one course, Andrew. This is something that is needed. So much talk, like we just spent an hour talking about this. Now, I mean these are tactics, these are things you should be doing. But, you know, as you said, you kind of leave overwhelmed. So to take it and break it down to this level, and it’s not just so much the one or two hours that these sessions are, your courses. It’s the after, it’s the follow-through. It’s, you know, I did a course and then, you know, maybe two or three weeks later you did a secondary course based on that first course. You say hey, come on, ask me any question you want. Right, for two hours, ask any question. And we had you live and we were asking questions back and forth. The value that we get, I mean I said it during our pre-interview here, I said I don’t know how you find the time to do this. Because it’s such a commitment and yeah, totally valuable. Totally valuable.
Andrew: Thank you so much. Yeah, that was the one course that I did myself. I said if I’m going to bring all these entrepreneur to teach, I should do it myself.
Rob: Absolutely.
Andrew: Let me say this, too. I’m so – when I knew that you were there as a premium member, I said this is a point of pride for me, and I’ll tell you why. Between you and me, and the audience, we’re all smart enough to know that if you want to sell and make big money in this base, the way to do it is to sell to entrepreneurs. The people who are never in business will buy anything because they have nothing to base it on, who are so desperate that they will spend any amount of money to get out of the cubicle job or to pay the . . .
Like, one guy I remember, Neil Patel said, Andrew, if you’re going to charge for anything on your site, what you should do is target the people who need to make the mortgage payment right friggin’ now. Because they’re going to pay you a ton of money, you know. They’ll put it on their credit cards because they need to make that money. And I decided not to and it’s so – it gives me so much pride to know that the work that I do lives up to your standards.
That you, a person who’s in this base, I’ve gotten, and we didn’t even go into this, I’ve got like your whole bio because I’ve got researchers here. Everything from what you did in 1993, founded a Thunder Road Communications to, I didn’t even get to ask you about this, 2011 you won Kick Ass Canadian. I don’t even know what that is, but Canadian – there’s a Kick Ass Canadian award, Top 40 Under 40 in Ottawa 2009. So to know that you were there and getting value, that’s, to me, the reason that I do this.
Rob: And it transcends, but it transcends everything. So, you know, you don’t have to be in the technology space, which is where I am, to appreciate the lessons that are learned in the master classes. You just don’t. Everybody should be using these. That’s ultimately the goal.
Andrew: Thanks for doing that. It meant so much more coming from you than I know it that it did from me. And the audience, I hope that you join us, Mixergy.com/premium. Rob, one thing from this that they could take and start off with, what’s that?
Rob: Well, I’m certainly not an alarmist, but what I would look at here. If you’re going to do anything from this is that the key is to…There’s a methodology called agile development, which is stop thinking so much and start. Stop documenting everything too much and just document what is necessary. And what I would say is to bring that into this mobile play. Go out and do something. I don’t care if you’re a dry cleaner, if you’re a restaurant, if you’re a chimney sweep. I don’t care if you’re a homemaker, you mow lawns, or shovel snow, mobile can move your business. Now the question is where do you start? There are ways to start this right away. If you’re looking for work, you can jump into some of these companies like Gatewalk.com, which is an app that is burstable for temporary employment. Those kind of sites, they’re all around there. Go and do the research very quickly, but participate. Get involved right now because it’s not expensive to do. It can benefit you. It can change the way that you look at what you’re doing. Start. Start. Start. I can’t stress it enough.
Andrew: That is great advice. Start. Start. Start. Rob, the website is…
Rob: Start. Start. Start.
Andrew: Untetheredmobile.com? Do I have that right?
Rob: Yep.
Andrew: Untetheredmobile.com. And as always I hope you guys will reach out to Rob if nothing else just to say thank you for doing this. But I know that if you connect with him, I know you will have a valuable connection and for many people when they do it, it ends up being a life-long relationship with the person that they watched.
Rob: I hope so. I also want to push untethered.tv which is…
Andrew: Untethered.tv. That’s where you do interviews. You saw me do interviews. You said, “I can do it” and you’ve actually been doing it. Hundreds.
Rob: I have and they’re all mobile experts. They’re all people in the space, entrepreneurs paving the way…
Andrew: You focus on mobile, for the most part. You go outside of it occasionally, but mobile is your spot.
Rob: It is. It is. And these guys are the guys that are building the companies. And you can learn a ton of lessons from these guys as well.
Andrew: All right. Untethered.tv. Thank you all for watching.
Rob: Thanks, Andrew.
