How to Market Your Business On a Budget – Ep148

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:46 — 48.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Stitcher | Email | RSS | More

Ross Kimbarovsky – CrowdSpring.com

Want to hear more?  Hit it:   [themo_button text=”More Business Podcast Episodes” url=”https://drawincustomers.com/category/podcast/” type=”standard”]

 

[00:00:03.680]
You have found Authentic

[00:00:04.120]
Business Adventures, the business program that brings you

[00:00:06.320]
the struggle stories and triumphant

[00:00:08.820]
successes of business owners across the land.

[00:00:11.320]
We are locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:00:13.720]
My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,

[00:00:15.680]
author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.

[00:00:19.280]
And today I am excited because we are
going to welcome/prepare to learn

[00:00:24.240]
from Ross Kimbarovsky,
founder and CEO of CrowdSpring.com

[00:00:28.480]
The interesting thing is
Ross has so much going on that

[00:00:33.360]
we’re going to try to cram as much
content as we can in the short time.

[00:00:37.200]
So, Ross, how are you doing today?
Good.

[00:00:39.360]
Happy to be here talking
with you and your listeners.

[00:00:41.960]
Yeah, yeah.
This is super cool.

[00:00:43.720]
So let’s start just basic foundation here.

[00:00:46.400]
What is crowdspring.com?

[00:00:49.160]
So Crowd Spring was a company I started
we launched in 2008.

[00:00:53.640]
I started working on in 2006.

[00:00:55.480]
So we’ve been a business for 12 years and
over two hundred twenty thousand

[00:00:59.720]
creatives, designers and namers have
helped entrepreneurs, small businesses,

[00:01:04.760]
agencies and non-profits with everything
from logo design to packaging design,

[00:01:09.240]
web design, product design
and naming businesses.

[00:01:12.920]
We ultimately were able to reduce pricing.

[00:01:16.040]
Great design does not have to cost
tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:01:19.240]
Project started two hundred ninety
nine dollars, including our fees.

[00:01:22.080]
And the beauty for small businesses is
that we flipped the model upside down

[00:01:26.200]
instead of picking from bits and proposals
you pick from actual designs,

[00:01:30.280]
custom designs for your new business
or for your existing business.

[00:01:34.560]
So it changes the way you hire designers
upside down and gives business owners

[00:01:39.160]
control. Interesting, you know,
it’s your when you reach out

[00:01:43.880]
to me, the coolest thing or I shoudl say you’re

[00:01:47.000]
your admin or
whatever reached out to me.

[00:01:49.680]
I looked at the website and I thought, oh,
man, I come from a graphic design

[00:01:53.780]
background where I went
to school for graphic design.

[00:01:56.480]
I ran with it for a couple of years.

[00:01:58.000]
Then I decided that sitting on a desk
that long wasn’t my cup of tea.

[00:02:01.760]
But it’s interesting how I mean,
that was early to late 90s.

[00:02:08.120]
It’s interesting how graphic design has

[00:02:10.680]
changed just the purchasing of it,
let alone the creation of it.

[00:02:15.200]
Well, part of it was part of it was
driven by just change in the tools.

[00:02:18.840]
It used to be that tools were not
accessible to to regular people.

[00:02:23.960]
You had to be a designer.

[00:02:25.120]
You had to use sophisticated tools.

[00:02:26.680]
And of course, when you got to computers,
computers were expensive originally.

[00:02:30.520]
And as tools became more accessible,

[00:02:32.840]
not just in graphic design,
but photography is a great example.

[00:02:36.160]
There are phenomenally gifted amateur
photographers who whose work is on par

[00:02:41.660]
with some of the best
photographers in the world.

[00:02:44.360]
But as soon as the tools became available,
digital cameras became more affordable.

[00:02:49.520]
People started photographing
things and designer the same way.

[00:02:53.600]
So there’s a wealth
of designers around the world.

[00:02:56.320]
We have a community of two
hundred twenty thousand.

[00:02:58.320]
They come from 195 countries.

[00:03:00.240]
And where it used to be, you had to work
as a designer for a design agency.

[00:03:04.240]
Today, if you have talent

[00:03:06.920]
and you’re able to create great design,
you can live anywhere,

[00:03:11.680]
you can be anyone and you can work
with some of the world’s best clients.

[00:03:15.680]
That is so cool to talk about
gig economy, holy cow.

[00:03:19.240]
Well, very much so.

[00:03:20.120]
And I mean, there are lots of industries
that move in that direction.

[00:03:22.960]
But but but it opens up the world
to to both sides because think about it.

[00:03:26.760]
For small businesses,
one of the biggest challenges is actually

[00:03:29.553]
what motivated me
to start Crowd Spring.

[00:03:31.240]
One of the biggest challenges for small

[00:03:32.920]
businesses is, is how do you find
a designer or a design agency?

[00:03:36.920]
And when you do,
how do you make design affordable?

[00:03:40.120]
Because agencies historically have charged

[00:03:42.320]
tens of thousands of dollars
to help businesses with design.

[00:03:45.480]
And then even if it’s if it’s somewhat
affordable, how do you ensure that what

[00:03:49.920]
you get is actually good quality
that you’re going to be happy with?

[00:03:53.040]
Because if you’re getting one or two

[00:03:54.430]
pieces of design and you have to choose,
that’s not much choice.

[00:03:57.880]
And those are the problems we set
out to solve initially because I was

[00:04:02.520]
frustrated as a consumer,
as a business owner looking to get custom

[00:04:07.720]
design, I was frustrated that it
was expensive, it was inaccessible.

[00:04:12.200]
It was hard to find I had
problems transferring files.

[00:04:17.560]
And I also had a tough time
communicating with designers.

[00:04:20.120]
So you’re a designer when you hire
designers, you know the language

[00:04:24.320]
that they speak and you can communicate
these things or you can do it yourself.

[00:04:28.000]
But most business owners
are not designers.

[00:04:30.400]
They don’t speak the same language.

[00:04:32.120]
And this is where we thought we can help.

[00:04:33.960]
So we thought we could solve
every part of the problem.

[00:04:37.840]
For a business owner looking
to hire designers and agencies,

[00:04:42.560]
give them custom design at a fraction
of the price they used to pay.

[00:04:45.640]
And and this is this is the beautiful
part, is open up

[00:04:49.680]
the world to all of designers everywhere
because you’re no longer restricted.

[00:04:53.840]
If you’re in Manhattan,
only working for clients that are next

[00:04:57.040]
block from you, you can work with the
client anywhere, whether you’re in

[00:05:00.120]
Manhattan, or you’re sitting on a mountain
in Katmandu. That is awesome.

[00:05:05.800]
That is so cool.
It’s interesting

how I guess what you have

[00:05:08.780]
going on, it sounds like from a
couple of different directions

[00:05:12.080]
with me and a few other people that I’ve
met with just from starting businesses.

[00:05:16.440]
You look at something and you’re like,
this shouldn’t be this hard.

[00:05:19.800]
It shouldn’t be this hard,
especially when it comes to design.

[00:05:22.840]
It shouldn’t be this hard for me
to give money to someone to.

[00:05:26.440]
Get a decent design in exchange and
the experience that I had when I would

[00:05:31.080]
outsource stuff websites
and all that jazz years ago.

[00:05:34.560]
Oh man,

[00:05:35.800]
I feel like it was similar to marketing
where you just throw money at the wall

[00:05:39.280]
and you hope it turns out
the designer would give you their design.

[00:05:42.760]
And sometimes you’re like, yeah.

[00:05:44.480]
And other times you look
at it and you’re like, Hmm.

[00:05:48.280]
Great.

[00:05:50.000]
And you know, the other part,

[00:05:51.480]
the other part that’s frustrating,
and we spent a lot of time

[00:05:54.680]
talking about this with business owners
because this is really important.

[00:05:58.400]
There is a difference between custom
design and that is something that makes

[00:06:02.680]
your brand uniquely you
and generic templates.

[00:06:06.480]
So so, yes, you can go
get a free template.

[00:06:09.800]
ClipArt Stuckart.

[00:06:11.080]
Yes, you can hire a designer
on a service for five dollars.

[00:06:14.640]
That’ll give you a design the thousands
of other businesses have.

[00:06:17.960]
But this is this is the lesson that that I
think successful entrepreneurs all know

[00:06:23.000]
in younger entrepreneurs,
those that are starting businesses,

[00:06:26.120]
those have just started businesses
will know but but struggle initially.

[00:06:31.040]
And that is when you under invest
in good design in the very beginning,

[00:06:34.920]
you end up having a tough
time building a strong brand.

[00:06:39.040]
Now, design doesn’t solve
every problem in your business.

[00:06:43.400]
You can’t have great design
and terrible products or services.

[00:06:47.480]
And so and this is this is, I think,
where we differ very much for some

[00:06:51.000]
agencies that that preach this point
about the importance of design, because

[00:06:55.040]
there are people that suggest
that great design solves everything.

[00:06:58.480]
And that’s just not true.

[00:07:00.240]
You can’t overcome a bad customer service.

[00:07:03.400]
You can’t ever overcome poorly working

[00:07:05.870]
products just
by designing things better.

[00:07:08.320]
But if you don’t design properly,

[00:07:11.340]
if you don’t invest in design
properly, you get lost.

[00:07:14.040]
You get lost in a sea of competitors,

[00:07:15.920]
whether you’re a local business in a small
town who only has one or two competitors

[00:07:20.880]
or you’re a bigger business in a big town,
because the reality today is.

[00:07:26.120]
Whether you’re a retail store or online,

[00:07:28.320]
your competition is global and people
are looking at options everywhere.

[00:07:32.840]
And so you’re not just competing

[00:07:34.760]
with the next door grocery store,
you’re competing with Amazon,

[00:07:38.480]
you’re competing with Wal-Mart,

[00:07:39.760]
you’re competing with Target
and everybody else.

[00:07:42.120]
Mm hmm.
Yeah, it’s interesting.

[00:07:44.160]
Even in the past five years,

[00:07:47.200]
things have gotten even broader than that,
even totally in the past one year.

[00:07:52.080]
It’s crazy how walls have
come down and people are no

[00:07:55.760]
longer looking just
locally as much as they used to.

[00:07:59.840]
Tell me, have any local or even remote

[00:08:05.600]
designers complained about what you guys

[00:08:08.400]
have going on since they used to be able

[00:08:10.680]

to charge thousands
of dollars for a logo?

[00:08:13.880]
So this is an interesting conversation,
and when we started, we had we had a

[00:08:18.920]
lot of conversations about this topic
and there are still conversations about

[00:08:22.560]
this topic because as you can imagine,
established designers feel threatened,

[00:08:28.050]
established agencies feel threatened
by the fact that there is competition

[00:08:31.800]
and that competition could potentially
take away some of their work.

[00:08:35.280]
And so so our focus has been on trying

[00:08:38.120]
to to educate and explain our goals and
our vision and what we’re trying to do.

[00:08:43.280]
First of all,
Crowd Spring has never been about

[00:08:46.560]
the cheapest design possible because
cheap design is not good design.

[00:08:51.160]
Cheap design is cheap design.

[00:08:53.560]
It’s its templates.

[00:08:54.880]
It’s stuff you see everywhere.

[00:08:56.360]
It doesn’t differentiate you.

[00:08:57.840]
And so we’ve always said prices
that we thought were industry fair,

[00:09:01.880]
that that gave opportunities to everybody
but didn’t require a designer to spend

[00:09:06.680]
years in a design school if they
were great at what they did.

[00:09:09.680]
Nobody cares if they got
a degree or didn’t get a degree.

[00:09:12.210]
They just say they’re a great designer.

[00:09:14.360]
And the reality is in the creative arts

[00:09:16.640]
and the creative space,
most of the most talented people didn’t

[00:09:20.880]
have an actual degree in the art
in which they’re working.

[00:09:24.640]
There are certainly those that did
and they’re immensely talented.

[00:09:27.360]
But but that’s not a requirement
to be great at something.

[00:09:31.120]
And so so we had those initial

[00:09:32.650]
conversations and we took them very

[00:09:34.400]
seriously, because
at the end of the day,

[00:09:36.040]
our goal is not to put designers out

[00:09:38.040]
of business or put
agencies out of business.

[00:09:40.200]
We work with a lot of agencies

[00:09:41.600]
and the reason we work with a lot
of agencies is because historically

[00:09:45.280]
agencies used to hire designers
to create the designs for their clients.

[00:09:49.880]
But the reality of the marketplace,
you know, we’ve had a tough year in 2020

[00:09:54.160]
everybody businesses are struggling,
agencies are struggling.

[00:09:57.440]
So people are cutting budgets and agencies
can’t charge what they used to charge.

[00:10:02.260]
So, you know, they used to charge tens

[00:10:04.160]
of thousands of dollars
to build a brand for client.

[00:10:06.840]
Clients can’t pay that amount.

[00:10:08.560]
And so the problem for agencies is how do
you deliver a high end service

[00:10:13.360]
but not charge what we used to charge
and still be able to make a profit?

[00:10:17.120]
And so one way agencies have approached
this is to focus on what they do best

[00:10:21.560]
strategy, strategy, management and giving
clients direction and outsourcing

[00:10:27.560]
things like the actual production of
custom design assets to companies like

[00:10:31.170]
Crowd Spring and businesses
have been doing that, too.

[00:10:34.120]
So a lot of businesses that that have been

[00:10:36.640]
focused on design haven’t been able
to invest as much with their agencies or

[00:10:41.520]
with some of the designers
that they’re working with.

[00:10:43.520]
And so they’re looking
for other alternatives.

[00:10:45.160]
And that’s why we’re seeing more and more
businesses turn to this crowd sourcing

[00:10:48.960]
model, which which helps
them pick better designs.

[00:10:52.400]
But ultimately, at the end of the day,
you know, creativity is creativity.

[00:10:56.280]
And so you have millions of talented

[00:10:59.120]
people around the world who are looking
for opportunities to create designs.

[00:11:03.280]
And and I had the same reaction
when starting the business.

[00:11:06.280]
Actually, I wondered,
would designers work in this kind of model

[00:11:09.960]
where in a particular project so
and Crowd Spring, for example,

[00:11:13.640]
if you’re looking for a logo design,
we take you through a Q&A.

[00:11:17.200]
You pay two hundred ninety nine dollars.

[00:11:18.720]
Is there an entry price?

[00:11:19.880]
And that includes our fee.

[00:11:21.360]
And we send it out to our
entire design community.

[00:11:24.480]
So dozens of designers might participate

[00:11:27.290]
on your project, giving you
dozens of custom logo designs.

[00:11:30.440]
You ultimately pick one.

[00:11:32.200]
And so the question is that person gets

[00:11:34.360]
paid, but what’s in it for everybody else?

[00:11:36.360]
Why are there to support
requests? That’s

[00:11:38.360]
that’s the question we
asked at the beginning.

[00:11:40.240]
We wondered, would they participate?

[00:11:42.320]
Is there enough incentive?

[00:11:43.640]
And what we learned and continue to learn

[00:11:46.360]
after 12 years in business,
yes, they’ll participate.

[00:11:49.880]
Two hundred twenty thousand designers

[00:11:51.520]
around the world are speaking very loudly

[00:11:53.920]
that this is a model
that they don’t mind.

[00:11:56.520]
They do that for different reasons.

[00:11:58.160]
Some of them participate in this model

[00:12:00.760]
because they do not
have access to clients.

[00:12:05.040]
Otherwise, there may be not great

[00:12:06.950]
marketers, but but they
are great designers.

[00:12:09.380]
And so this is a way for them to create
designs without having to market.

[00:12:13.280]
And if they’re talented,
they end up winning a lot.

[00:12:15.640]
Some of them participate because they

[00:12:17.680]
figure, look, I could either market
my business by creating marketing

[00:12:21.970]
materials and doing pitches for clients

[00:12:23.920]
and spending time
on Twitter and Facebook

[00:12:26.040]
looking at anybody who says I need a logo
or in the website or I can just design.

[00:12:32.280]
And if people like my work,
they’ll pay me.

[00:12:35.360]
Some of them compete because they
feel like it’s the Olympics.

[00:12:39.640]
So.
So we had some creative directors

[00:12:42.000]
from major agencies, moonlight
as designers on Crowd Spring,

[00:12:45.160]
and I’ve periodically gotten on the phone
with them to ask, you know, why?

[00:12:49.360]
And the answer is, well, look,
it’s competition on Crowd Spring.

[00:12:52.800]
Nobody knows that I’m a creative
director for a major agency.

[00:12:55.960]
I think I’m a good designer,

[00:12:57.560]
but I want to see if a client can see that
from my work, not from my name or title.

[00:13:01.800]
And so when I compete against dozens
of other people, if I’ve chosen,

[00:13:06.840]
that proves to me that I
still have good design chops.

[00:13:09.520]
And if I’m not, that forces
me to say I got to do better.

[00:13:12.920]
I got a.

[00:13:13.480]
Prove I got to maintain my art,
so lots of different reasons for why

[00:13:17.250]
people competed, but we’ve taken
it much more seriously than that.

[00:13:20.600]
It isn’t just that we’ve
listened to lots of reasons.

[00:13:23.480]
For example,

[00:13:24.760]
we’ve from the beginning introduced

[00:13:26.640]
various ways that we
can pay more people.

[00:13:29.280]
So we have a project package
called Elite, where you work with

[00:13:36.160]
five of our best designers
on any kind of project.

[00:13:39.760]
Each one of them gets paid.

[00:13:41.240]
So one is a winner,

[00:13:42.880]
but everybody else gets a guaranteed

[00:13:44.770]
payment for doing
the work in the project.

[00:13:47.120]
That means that that every single
person on a project gets paid.

[00:13:50.680]
We introduced last year something called
a finalist round, meaning you go through

[00:13:54.840]
your project and let’s say you look
at 100 different custom logo designs

[00:13:59.080]
and you want to work with with up to five
finalists for another two to three days.

[00:14:03.010]
You pick those finalists and again,

[00:14:04.960]
the winner gets paid once
you pick your favorite.

[00:14:07.560]
But the other four will also
get a portion of that prize.

[00:14:10.840]
So so it provides a more fair
distribution of funds to more people.

[00:14:16.560]
Our goal is to get everybody
paid as much as we can.

[00:14:19.320]
But the reality in a marketplace is that

[00:14:22.240]
businesses have a tough time paying tens
of thousands of dollars for design.

[00:14:26.200]
And so we have to find a good middle
ground where we can deliver a phenomenal

[00:14:30.480]
service at 10 to 50 times
less than the market price.

[00:14:34.240]
Give designers the opportunity to work

[00:14:36.400]
in this model and not ask either
side to to to take a big risk.

[00:14:40.600]
And so so for businesses, we have
a hundred percent guarantee you’re

[00:14:43.960]
going to like the design or you get
a hundred percent of your money back.

[00:14:47.120]
So for business, this is actually a no
brainer because ultimately we feel

[00:14:50.880]
the quality of the design is so high
we can stand behind it.

[00:14:54.520]
And for designers, our promises,

[00:14:56.480]
we’re going to continue to invest in our
design community and look for more

[00:15:01.120]
opportunities so that more people are

[00:15:03.640]
paid, because we
recognize that at the end

[00:15:05.440]
of the day, competition is good, but it’s
important to make sure that more

[00:15:08.640]
and more people are
paid in these projects.

[00:15:10.280]
So we’re always looking
for creative solutions for that.

[00:15:13.000]
That is super cool.

[00:15:14.680]
I want to back up to when you first

[00:15:16.280]
started this thing
you saw 2006 was ready for a crash,

[00:15:24.560]
so you had to start you have
your website as the foundation.

[00:15:30.400]
So you had to bring on businesses

[00:15:32.200]
at the same time that you’re
bringing on designers.

[00:15:35.600]
How like that’s the chicken and egg
scenario that I’m always curious about.

[00:15:39.600]
How did you get people to sign up with you

[00:15:42.200]
as customers as well as getting
vendors to sign up with you?

[00:15:46.360]
Sure.
So this is there’s actually

[00:15:48.600]
an ironic story, if I can digress
for for two minutes to tell it.

[00:15:52.840]
I started my career as an attorney.

[00:15:54.520]
I was a trial attorney for 13 years.

[00:15:56.520]
And and the way that I came to start crowd

[00:16:00.200]
spring was like most entrepreneurs
end up starting a business.

[00:16:04.920]
In 2006, I was leading the redesign

[00:16:08.160]
of my law firms website as
a mid-sized law firm, as a partner.

[00:16:12.240]
And we did what normal businesses do.

[00:16:14.200]
We put together a request for proposal
saying here’s what we need.

[00:16:17.440]
We interviewed agencies.

[00:16:18.960]
We hired one, paid him a lot of money,
waited to see their web designs.

[00:16:23.240]
And I hated them.
I hated the designs.

[00:16:25.440]
I hated the approach.

[00:16:26.520]
And I was very frustrated
and frankly embarrassed.

[00:16:29.360]
And so I went home in frustration.

[00:16:31.120]
I thought, you know, this is this
is tough as a business owner.

[00:16:35.120]
It’s it’s really hard for me to pay so

[00:16:37.440]
much money and then get stuck
with designs that I don’t love.

[00:16:40.560]
And I didn’t have more money
to pay for more designs.

[00:16:42.920]
It was this is it.
Right.

[00:16:44.520]
So I thought there’s
got to be a better way.

[00:16:46.360]
And I started doing this research and

[00:16:48.640]
I found students in Malaysia just for fun,

[00:16:50.880]
competing with print
design competitions.

[00:16:52.920]
They were creating products
and creating print ads.

[00:16:55.560]
And I looked at those ads and I said,
you know, the quality of these ads are as

[00:16:59.390]
high as anything I’ve seen in advertising
age and industry publications.

[00:17:03.240]
And that ultimately led to a lot

[00:17:05.960]
of research and interviews and surveys
and starting crowd spring.

[00:17:10.560]
But but to your question,

[00:17:11.720]
how do we kind of get started,
the chicken and then the egg problem?

[00:17:14.760]
Well, we made we made a silly mistake.

[00:17:16.960]
We hired a design and development
agency to build our site initially,

[00:17:22.360]
notwithstanding this experience
that we just went through,

[00:17:25.640]
we thought that was the quickest way
to get to market and we were wrong.

[00:17:30.160]
They failed to get that done.

[00:17:32.680]
And so we were stuck a couple of months

[00:17:35.040]
from launch without a product,
without a website, with nothing.

[00:17:38.480]
And here’s what we decided to do.

[00:17:40.320]
We said, look, this is a make
it or break it moment for us.

[00:17:43.800]
Either we’re going to prove that people

[00:17:46.760]
around the world can create great designs

[00:17:49.400]
or we’re going to prove
that they cannot.

[00:17:50.960]
So our first project publicly was build

[00:17:53.480]
our website, create our website
design for our company.

[00:17:56.560]
That’s clever.

[00:17:57.400]
And it was a big risk and well,
it would have beeclever if we had

[00:18:00.840]
thought of it initially, or this is
one of these things that we had.

[00:18:03.400]
We had no choice.
Right.

[00:18:04.520]
This would have been a phenomenally
clever stunt had we thought of it.

[00:18:07.800]
But but we backed into it
by making a mistake initially.

[00:18:10.960]
And and.

[00:18:12.560]
So we had this open competition and then

[00:18:14.960]
on the back end
we actually hired our own

[00:18:17.520]
team to to build rebuild
the product and relaunch it.

[00:18:20.720]
And so as we were building,
we were doing two things.

[00:18:24.470]
First of all, the designers that were
creating website designs for us and we

[00:18:28.320]
took it through the same process
that ultimately became crowd spring.

[00:18:31.200]
We did the same thing.

[00:18:32.400]
You got a free legal contract
when you and the project,

[00:18:35.720]
you can give feedback to designers,
designers interade. And so we ran it

[00:18:40.760]
quasi manually, but then we ultimately
automated the whole process.

[00:18:44.720]
So as designers were submitting designs,

[00:18:47.120]
we were looking
at the quality and when we

[00:18:49.320]
found pretty good designers,
we brought him into an internal data

[00:18:53.200]
which we were running behind the scenes
with a product we were building.

[00:18:56.560]
And in the first couple of weeks we called
my mom. We called my brother and said,

[00:19:01.120]
hey, do you have any design projects you
need? Can we help you with something?

[00:19:05.080]
We’ll pay for it because we needed
to be able to test the product.

[00:19:09.560]
We needed to be able to get some advice.

[00:19:11.310]
And we knew that people wouldn’t trust us

[00:19:13.360]
in the very beginning,
just randomly posting a project.

[00:19:16.000]
And so we spent two to three
weeks with friends and family.

[00:19:19.840]
They were posting projects.

[00:19:21.280]
We were paying for them
until we got to a point where we had

[00:19:24.480]
a decent amount of designers
and we had a decent amount of projects.

[00:19:28.120]
And we said, you know what?

[00:19:29.160]
Now we’ll pay only half,
but we’re going to reach out

[00:19:32.040]
to associates, people we know
who are not our immediate friends,

[00:19:35.440]
but who will trust us enough to at least
spend half the funds on a project.

[00:19:38.880]
And we did that for a few weeks
and until about six weeks.

[00:19:41.600]
Then we said, you know what,
we feel like we’ve got the kinks out.

[00:19:45.000]
We feel like it’s a good product.

[00:19:46.680]
We can offer 100 percent money back

[00:19:48.720]
guarantee and and we can just open
for business and let people post.

[00:19:53.320]
And that’s what we did.

[00:19:54.240]
We said, OK, we’re not paying
for anybody’s work anymore.

[00:19:57.680]
Whoever wants to can post
a project and we take our fee.

[00:20:00.480]
And and we launched in in May of 2008

[00:20:03.960]
and since then have grown our so we had
a couple of clients at the time.

[00:20:08.160]
We had a couple of

[00:20:10.040]
maybe a couple of hundred designers
in our community in 2008.

[00:20:13.240]
And today it’s, you know,

[00:20:15.400]
60000 clients from one 100 countries
and two hundred twenty thousand plus

[00:20:18.820]
designers from one hundred
ninety five countries.

[00:20:21.520]
Oh,
so I get how

[00:20:24.960]
word can spread within designers
because a few designers end up

[00:20:29.440]
on the website that they win a few
designs, they make some money,

[00:20:33.280]
they’re probably spread the word just

[00:20:34.400]
because that’s their
little sewing circle.

[00:20:36.640]
When I’m interested in are curious in

[00:20:39.360]
is how you got small businesses
to find you and then trust you to

[00:20:46.120]
do the designs for them.

[00:20:48.280]
So we did a couple of things.

[00:20:49.480]
This is, as you know,

[00:20:50.840]
and hopefully as your listeners know,
this is one of the hardest problems

[00:20:54.280]
to solve for a small business,
especially if you’re a new business.

[00:20:57.840]
How do you get people to to learn who you

[00:21:00.190]
are? How do you get people to remember who
you are? How do you get people to tell

[00:21:04.350]
their friends and family and associates?
So we did a few things.

[00:21:07.800]
First of all, we

[00:21:09.240]
we have a two sided marketplace,
clients and designers and neighbors.

[00:21:14.200]
And in any two sided marketplace,

[00:21:16.560]
we we know that one side is generally

[00:21:19.240]
going to be more
difficult than the other.

[00:21:20.920]
This is true of nearly every
two sided marketplace.

[00:21:23.720]
And when we looked at it early on,

[00:21:25.760]
we we concluded that it’s probably
going to be much tougher for us to find

[00:21:30.320]
businesses, to find the demand side
of the marketplace,

[00:21:33.120]
much easier for us to find designers,

[00:21:35.440]
because after all,
if we give them enough

[00:21:37.240]
business, they’re freelancers, they’re
going to go to where the business is.

[00:21:40.040]
So we’ve invested the vast majority of our

[00:21:43.200]
effort on looking for businesses, not designers.

[00:21:47.080]
In fact, just to give you an example
of of ultimately how right we were

[00:21:51.400]
for the last five years,
our registration has been closed.

[00:21:54.600]
We have waiting lists.

[00:21:56.080]
And so we don’t let people designers
register whenever they want.

[00:21:59.480]
We have waiting lists and they tend

[00:22:00.880]
to grow to ten, fifteen, twenty thousand
before we start letting people in.

[00:22:04.240]
And periodically throughout a year,
we’ll invite groups of people to to come

[00:22:08.280]
in and we qualify every single designer
in every single product category.

[00:22:12.520]
And then once they’re qualified
once or twice a year,

[00:22:15.680]
we do a thorough review of all of their
work in every single project category.

[00:22:19.480]
That’s a huge effort.

[00:22:21.160]
So so on the design side,
we weren’t so much worried.

[00:22:24.600]
On the on the business side,
we did the things that small businesses

[00:22:28.200]
need to do when they start all the
guerrilla tactics we can possibly do.

[00:22:31.960]
So at the time in two thousand
eight forums, we’re pretty popular.

[00:22:36.070]
And so we would be in forums,

[00:22:37.720]
participating in conversations around
design, around starting businesses.

[00:22:42.400]
And it wasn’t about hire me, hire me
composter logo project and crowd spring.

[00:22:47.960]
It was really trying to help
people solve their problems.

[00:22:50.820]
So if somebody ran into a problem with

[00:22:52.920]
incorporation or had issues with how
do you build a marketing strategy

[00:22:56.960]
or had questions about what are
some options for logo design or

[00:23:02.000]
business insurance,
we would actively participate.

[00:23:04.730]
And the idea was we would build
some credibility with with people.

[00:23:08.280]
And when they later thought, hey,
I need design, they would come to us.

[00:23:13.240]
We also invested really
heavily in customer support.

[00:23:15.960]
This is one area where we differentiate it

[00:23:18.480]
significantly from our competitors
from the very beginning.

[00:23:22.080]
Day one, we recognize that customer

[00:23:24.960]
support was one of the most
important things we do.

[00:23:28.120]
And so we did a number of things.

[00:23:30.440]
First of all, I continue to periodically
get involved with customer support.

[00:23:35.160]
So there are times when I’ll give
my entire team the holiday off and I’ll

[00:23:39.360]
work customer support phones,
chat and email tickets.

[00:23:43.720]
And the reason I do that is because.

[00:23:46.320]
Your support people,

[00:23:47.680]
if you’re running a retail business,
your sales people are far closer to your

[00:23:51.280]
customers than anybody
else in your business.

[00:23:53.480]
They know the customers pain.

[00:23:55.240]
They know the customer’s preference.

[00:23:57.360]
They know what customers are irked
about when they visit your business.

[00:24:00.760]
And these are the people that are in the
best position to help your customers

[00:24:06.160]
be more successful.

[00:24:07.240]
They’re in the best position to help you

[00:24:09.150]
build a better brand than
for most small businesses.

[00:24:11.800]
Whether you’re a retail business,
an online business doesn’t matter.

[00:24:14.680]
Word of mouth is the single most powerful
channel you’re ever going to have.

[00:24:18.960]
So, yes, spending some money on marketing
on Facebook and Instagram and spending

[00:24:23.320]
some time on Twitter may
or may not help you, but.

[00:24:25.960]
But if you can’t build great word
of mouth as a small business,

[00:24:30.240]
it’s going to be really tough
for you to build your business.

[00:24:32.000]
So that’s that’s what we invested in.

[00:24:33.520]
Really strong word of mouth.

[00:24:34.920]
We delivered great service.

[00:24:37.520]
We gave a guarantee.

[00:24:39.070]
So if somebody was unhappy and and it was

[00:24:41.320]
really encouraging
when occasionally we do

[00:24:43.600]
have a client that says, look,
I the designs are great.

[00:24:46.190]
I just don’t find something that inspires

[00:24:48.440]
me and that’s OK, because
that’s the reason we have a guarantee.

[00:24:52.120]
But but it’s always rewarding to get

[00:24:54.120]
a note from them saying,
you know, I ran my project.

[00:24:57.440]
I didn’t find something inspired,
but but you guys make it so easy and it’s

[00:25:01.160]
so comforting to know there’s
a guarantee I’m going to be back.

[00:25:04.080]
In fact, I just recommended
your business to other people.

[00:25:06.800]
So this is one of the things

[00:25:08.400]
that that a lot of small businesses
miss is the opportunity to create word

[00:25:13.680]
of mouth, even with those
customers that may not have.

[00:25:18.440]
Been exceptionally happy about what they
received, they received the service,

[00:25:24.040]
they ultimately said, you know
what didn’t work for me this

[00:25:26.560]
time, but if they will still recommen
you to others, that’s phenomenal.

[00:25:31.360]
Word of mouth.

[00:25:32.110]
And this is where we really invested
a significant part of our time.

[00:25:35.760]
And over the years, we’ve gotten involved

[00:25:38.520]
in in a lot of different
other initiatives.

[00:25:40.440]
So content became a much more prominent

[00:25:42.760]
way that we spend our time and share
like every business.

[00:25:47.800]
You know, for me, like every business
owner, I make my share of mistakes.

[00:25:51.480]
Tons of them share.

[00:25:53.040]
And we regularly write
about these mistakes.

[00:25:55.960]
We regularly write about
things we learn about.

[00:25:58.200]
So on the Crowd Spring blog,
we are publishing long form content.

[00:26:03.480]
So these are guides from three thousand or

[00:26:05.795]
twenty thousand plus
words on how to build

[00:26:07.960]
a brand identity marketing psychology,
how to start a consulting business,

[00:26:13.000]
a real estate business,
a marijuana dispensary,

[00:26:15.500]
all sorts of businesses
with all the steps that you need,

[00:26:18.400]
all the things that you need to get

[00:26:19.520]
through, because ultimately it was really

[00:26:21.560]
tough when we started the business
pulling all this material.

[00:26:24.680]
It takes a lot of time and we
figured, you know what?

[00:26:27.000]
We have some some knowledge
about what it takes.

[00:26:30.000]
Let’s share it with people.

[00:26:31.440]
And it’s the same the same effort to build

[00:26:33.480]
credibility to to get
people to understand

[00:26:35.920]
that we’re ultimately hoping to help
them and educate them along the way.

[00:26:40.240]
Why design is important.

[00:26:41.760]
So if they have a need and a future point

[00:26:44.240]
for design, they can think of us
as one of their alternatives.

[00:26:47.480]
Mm hmm.
That’s cool.

[00:26:49.720]
So when you first started in 2006

[00:26:52.440]
and 2008, was it just you
or did you have a team?

[00:26:56.680]
So I had a partner in the business

[00:26:58.240]
initially who ultimately exited
the business in twenty fifteen.

[00:27:03.000]
It was just us.

[00:27:04.080]
Initially we hired a director of marketing
and then as I mentioned,

[00:27:07.640]
we hired a design and development
agency who we later terminated.

[00:27:11.200]
And then we built our own team.

[00:27:12.560]
We hired customer support people,
we hired engineers.

[00:27:16.120]
But I’ve always been of the mindset

[00:27:18.600]
that us, the founders,
the business owner,

[00:27:21.560]
to the extent that you can,
should do every job yourself first.

[00:27:26.200]
It doesn’t mean do every job yourself
in perpetuity, because we can’t do that.

[00:27:31.080]
I mean, ultimately,
there are too many things to do.

[00:27:33.040]
And the reality is, I’m not
I’m not great at everything.

[00:27:36.760]
I’m not even good at everything.

[00:27:38.040]
There are some things I’m great at.

[00:27:39.360]
There’s some things I’m good at.

[00:27:40.560]
But but there are people that are

[00:27:42.180]
phenomenally better than
I am at most things.

[00:27:44.680]
And so so one of the insights we had
and this is something that really proved

[00:27:50.240]
really helpful for us across the board
through today is customer support.

[00:27:55.350]
As an example, I ran the customer support

[00:27:57.600]
function for six months and searched
every ticket, every phone call.

[00:28:02.440]
And and that helped me
understand several things.

[00:28:06.440]
As I said earlier, there’s no better way

[00:28:08.200]
to get to know your customers
and their pain points.

[00:28:10.510]
And so it really helped me understand

[00:28:12.560]
whether we will solving for their
problem or not and what we were missing.

[00:28:16.640]
But it also helped me understand,

[00:28:18.440]
if I hire somebody,
what are they going to do?

[00:28:21.720]
How long is it going to take him to do it?

[00:28:23.920]
What kind of skills do we want?

[00:28:25.780]
Because I did this job for six months,

[00:28:27.880]
so I was essentially
looking to replace myself.

[00:28:30.680]
And now I needed to find somebody that can
understand what they needed to do,

[00:28:35.240]
come up with a game plan,
be efficient at it, do the job well.

[00:28:39.680]
And and that helped us really understand
what kind of team do we need to build.

[00:28:44.240]
And we’ve tried to do
that across the board.

[00:28:46.040]
So so we’ve slowly built a team.

[00:28:48.120]
But our team has never
been more than 10 people.

[00:28:50.280]
We have a community of something like 350,
400000 people, designers and clients.

[00:28:57.360]
But we’ve supported them
with a very small team.

[00:29:00.120]
That’s cool.
That’s cool.

[00:29:01.440]
It reminds me of,

[00:29:03.720]
oh, my gosh, my mind is blank.

[00:29:05.280]
I’m trying to think what company was sold.

[00:29:07.040]
Maybe it was Instagram.

[00:29:09.240]
They had like 40 people or
something like that and got sold.

[00:29:12.680]
Yeah, millions of dollars
to Instagram, if I remember.

[00:29:15.430]
I think Instagram had
had less than a dozen.

[00:29:17.710]
I want to say four, but but it
was a very tiny number of people.

[00:29:21.160]
And so, so you can build really, really
successful companies with a small team.

[00:29:26.040]
And I mean there are plenty of successful
businesses that are in Chicago,

[00:29:30.110]
for example, base camp is is
one of our favorite businesses.

[00:29:33.190]
It’s a great product management tool.

[00:29:35.240]
We use it ever since the beginning,

[00:29:37.400]
but they have about 55 employees, I think,

[00:29:39.960]
you know, phenomenally
successful business

[00:29:42.080]
and they intentionally don’t want
to grow into a huge company.

[00:29:45.480]
And, you know, there are some people

[00:29:46.680]
that look at and say, well, you’re
missing an opportunity because you

[00:29:49.200]
can grow into a huge company
and make more money.

[00:29:51.200]
And their perspective is,
you know what, we’re very comfortable.

[00:29:54.320]
We’re an immensely successful business.

[00:29:56.050]
We control our destiny.

[00:29:57.400]
We don’t have people that we answer to.

[00:30:00.000]
And I think a lot of business owners
start businesses for that reason.

[00:30:03.120]
A lot of business owners start businesses
because they want to be their own boss.

[00:30:06.480]
They want to control their own time.

[00:30:07.840]
They want to make the investments

[00:30:09.280]
that they need to make and not
be beholden to somebody else.

[00:30:12.560]
And and that’s how we feel about it, too.

[00:30:15.080]
Yeah, that’s a there’s an interesting

[00:30:17.120]
conundrum when I talk
with business owners

[00:30:19.600]
about or potential business owners about
why they want to start their business.

[00:30:23.760]
And a lot of times they mentioned freedom.

[00:30:25.760]
I want to be my own boss, blah,
blah, blah, the typical stuff.

[00:30:30.240]
And I question them or challenge them

[00:30:32.800]
a little bit to see at what point,
where do you want to be?

[00:30:36.000]
Do you want to be a job owner or do
you want to be a business owner?

[00:30:40.240]
There’s nothing wrong
with being either one.

[00:30:42.520]
But from the coaching that I do,

[00:30:44.120]
I try to steer people more
into being a business owner.

[00:30:47.120]
This is a job owner.

[00:30:49.480]
Like you probably have more success
as a job owner working for someone

[00:30:54.800]
at least getting paid more
vacation or that kind of stuff.

[00:30:57.360]
When you you start adding employees
and being able to outsource.

[00:31:02.120]
I feel and this is just simply

[00:31:03.920]
my perspective, that you can
you can do more and get more

[00:31:08.160]
of the freedom that you initially
started the business for.

[00:31:11.360]
Yeah, I 100 percent agree with you.

[00:31:13.000]
So I think about it in exactly the same
terms, just maybe different terminology.

[00:31:17.160]
And I actually think this is

[00:31:18.760]
an area where where the vast majority of
business owners make a common mistake.

[00:31:23.720]
And I did four years to.

[00:31:25.280]
So, you know, the terminology I use is

[00:31:27.520]
the difference between working on the
business and working in the business.

[00:31:32.040]
And so so the problem with almost every
small business is that as the business

[00:31:37.600]
owner is the person who starts
the business and this is people in your

[00:31:40.920]
audience are thinking
about starting businesses.

[00:31:42.960]
They may be running businesses.

[00:31:44.840]
This doesn’t disappears like three,
four or five years later.

[00:31:47.860]
You’re still working in your
business as an employee effectively.

[00:31:51.360]
And the challenges when you
when you sit down and say,

[00:31:55.600]
I am frustrated that I can’t grow

[00:31:57.720]
my business fast enough
and I don’t understand why.

[00:32:00.320]
Well, there are lots of reasons.

[00:32:01.640]
I mean, marketing is one reason.

[00:32:03.520]
Maybe poor design is another reason.

[00:32:05.120]
But one of the fundamental reasons is
you’ve spent one hundred percent of your

[00:32:08.720]
time working in the business,
doing the work as opposed

[00:32:12.280]
to on the business
thinking about strategy,

[00:32:14.440]
think about big picture, thinking
about how to grow your business.

[00:32:18.000]
And so at the end of the day,

[00:32:18.840]
I agree with you that most people will
be better off if they just want to work

[00:32:21.720]
in a business to work for somebody else,
because you don’t have the headaches

[00:32:24.540]
of running a business,
you don’t have challenges.

[00:32:27.240]
But if you really want to be a business
owner, if you really want to be your own

[00:32:30.240]
boss, the quicker you can extricate
yourself from working in the business

[00:32:34.580]
to working on the business,
the more success you’ll feel.

[00:32:37.480]
Now, that could take time.

[00:32:38.600]
There is no overnight success.

[00:32:40.280]
You know, the most successful companies

[00:32:42.520]
can take 10, 15, 20 years to succeed

[00:32:46.240]
and some get lucky
and do it more quickly.

[00:32:48.480]
So.

[00:32:48.900]
So the time frame is
different for everybody.

[00:32:51.400]
But but you have to, as a business owner,
recognize that it took me some time

[00:32:55.880]
to really understand that principle,
that the quicker I could focus

[00:32:59.760]
on the business and think about strategy

[00:33:02.000]
with my team, the more
successful will be.

[00:33:04.480]
And so my goal is to replace
myself for everything we do.

[00:33:07.640]
And like I told about the customer support

[00:33:09.960]
function at the beginning,
I did customer support and then replaced

[00:33:12.960]
myself with somebody that did
it much better than I did.

[00:33:15.560]
And with marketing the same way
and with engineering the same way.

[00:33:18.560]
And so everything that you
do in your company, you.

[00:33:21.200]
Want to find your own replacement there?

[00:33:23.600]
You know, it’s interesting,
I was looking at your history,

[00:33:26.280]
your background, you were a trial attorney
and then you shifted gears into this.

[00:33:32.720]
Those are two like that’s a 180 pivot.

[00:33:36.280]
Tell me about what made you change
from essentially your partner,

[00:33:41.080]
but still essentially an employee
from wanting to be an employee

[00:33:44.880]
into starting a business and starting
your business into something that was

[00:33:49.080]
completely unrelated
to your original field?

[00:33:51.880]
Well, so the second part of the question,
unrelated, just happenchance.

[00:33:56.080]
As I as I explained earlier,

[00:33:57.320]
I just happened to have stumbled into this
problem that I was frustrated

[00:34:00.720]
with and solved or thought
I could solve for myself.

[00:34:04.280]
And maybe it will work for others.

[00:34:06.040]
But I’ve always been entrepreneurial

[00:34:07.880]
and not always I started becoming
entrepreneurial in law school.

[00:34:11.120]
I wasn’t so much I worked three jobs

[00:34:13.120]
before law school
and one of them was an interesting job

[00:34:16.320]
where I was helping companies
facilitate technology transfer.

[00:34:19.680]
So acquisitions, product acquisitions,
company acquisitions.

[00:34:23.040]
This is why I was in college and
in law school.

[00:34:27.080]
I just started getting entrepreneurial.

[00:34:28.600]
I enjoyed starting new things, a school
newspaper, several different groups.

[00:34:32.680]
And when I started practicing law,
I started new practices.

[00:34:37.080]
So so the Internet had just become

[00:34:39.160]
commercialized in 95,
the year I started practicing.

[00:34:42.040]
And so I created a practice
focusing on work with startups.

[00:34:46.040]
And this is a time when
it was the Wild West.

[00:34:48.520]
So people would be trying
to create an online bank.

[00:34:51.560]
And I would have a client call me and say,

[00:34:53.040]
I’m meeting in New York with a bank
and they want an online function.

[00:34:56.640]
And nobody knew what any of that was.

[00:34:58.520]
I mean, none of these
contracts were written.

[00:35:00.700]
Nobody had coded anything.

[00:35:02.200]
And so to me, it was exciting to be part

[00:35:04.660]
of an industry that was
just being built.

[00:35:06.820]
And the beauty was that was the first year

[00:35:09.120]
attorney, but no partner
knew more than I did.

[00:35:11.840]
I mean, everybody started from ground
zero because it was new to all of us.

[00:35:15.680]
And so that put me on a level playing

[00:35:17.800]
field with everybody else,
which which helped later on to think

[00:35:21.000]
through how do we create the same
level playing field for designers?

[00:35:24.520]
And so as I work with more and more
startups, that was exciting for me.

[00:35:28.680]
I found that that I was very excited

[00:35:30.710]
by the opportunity to help
people that are starting out.

[00:35:33.760]
I love learning.

[00:35:35.080]
And so so part of what I enjoyed in trial

[00:35:37.880]
work was, you know, I represented
clients across different industries.

[00:35:41.080]
So I had to become knowledgeable
in mechanical engineering,

[00:35:44.320]
electrical engineering, chemistry,
in product design.

[00:35:48.450]
And that was great.
I love that.

[00:35:50.600]
And it occurred to me when I was
trying to overcome this problem,

[00:35:54.120]
I read into with our Web design
that learning about starting businesses

[00:35:58.600]
and their respective issues
that that entails was an analog.

[00:36:02.880]
I was I was really pleasantly surprised
that there was so much to learn

[00:36:07.920]
that it was is kind of like I was a robot
trying to consume all the information

[00:36:12.280]
available in the world,
which of course, is not possible.

[00:36:15.400]
But I found that to be as rewarding
as what I was doing in law.

[00:36:18.400]
So so I wasn’t I wasn’t a lawyer who was
frustrated with the practice of law.

[00:36:22.480]
There are some lawyers that are really
frustrated and leave that law industry.

[00:36:26.120]
For that reason.
I was very happy.

[00:36:27.920]
I had phenomenal colleagues,
phenomenal clients.

[00:36:31.720]
I was successful in my practice
and kind of at the peak of my career.

[00:36:35.400]
But entrepreneurship and the concept of
starting a business and doing something

[00:36:41.280]
unique and helping to solve a problem
for a global audience of of businesses

[00:36:47.200]
and and freelancers
was was both challenging,

[00:36:51.160]
but also intellectually really
interesting and hopefully rewarding.

[00:36:55.520]
That’s fair.
That’s fair.

[00:36:56.880]
That there is a challenge there

[00:36:58.680]
because I look like a trial attorney
to be doing OK financially.

[00:37:03.000]
You’ve got a decent gig.

[00:37:04.840]
You kind of you’re winning
at life, so to speak.

[00:37:07.960]
Now you’re going to stick your neck out,

[00:37:09.800]
starting a business
which is totally cool.

[00:37:11.840]
It’s adventurous,
but that’s security goes away.

[00:37:16.480]
It does.

[00:37:17.200]
And it it’s a tough conversation
to see with my wife.

[00:37:19.720]
I said, you know, when I take the step,

[00:37:21.920]
we’re going to take a ninety
seven percent pay cut.

[00:37:23.840]
Yeah.
Literally the next day.

[00:37:26.160]
And so but listen, I have
a very understanding wife

[00:37:29.320]
who understands, you know,
we are investing for the long term.

[00:37:32.560]
I have small kids and and part of the part

[00:37:35.680]
of the challenge was to try to see if
we can we can build a business that was

[00:37:39.360]
that was scalable, sustainable,
that that could help solve a problem.

[00:37:43.720]
And at the end of the day,

[00:37:44.800]
I think everybody has
to understand what motivates them.

[00:37:48.760]
So so for me,
money wasn’t the key motivator.

[00:37:51.810]
And I mean, taking ninety seven percent

[00:37:53.960]
pay cut is by itself, I think
pretty good evidence of that.

[00:37:57.560]
Right.

[00:37:57.880]
It wasn’t a key motivator
for many reasons.

[00:37:59.960]
I’m an immigrant.

[00:38:00.560]
I immigrated with my family from from
Ukraine in nineteen seventy nine.

[00:38:04.160]
And so when I saw my parents build
their lives from scratch in seventy nine

[00:38:09.800]
we got to America with a couple hundred

[00:38:11.640]
dollars to our name
and then in the eighty

[00:38:13.800]
seven market crash they lost everything
and they had to rebuild it again.

[00:38:17.680]
So for me that was pretty
good evidence that.

[00:38:21.440]
You know, if I’m

[00:38:22.960]
put in that position where I have
to rebuild from scratch here,

[00:38:26.560]
I see people I love, people
who are my parents close to me did

[00:38:30.360]
it twice and I felt like I couldn’t
do it and the risk was worth it.

[00:38:34.680]
So every person has to evaluate that risk
themselves ultimately because, you know,

[00:38:39.240]
a new business can be
intellectually rewarding.

[00:38:41.600]
It could open up your schedule.

[00:38:43.200]
It can let you control your destiny.

[00:38:45.320]
You can do things that you are incapable
of doing, working for somebody else.

[00:38:49.880]
But there are risks and you
have to put in the time.

[00:38:52.240]
And just as an example,
I work hard as an attorney.

[00:38:55.240]
For 13 years I was, except
for one year the top Beyler

[00:38:58.480]
in my firm by far the one year,
the one year when I was not

[00:39:03.160]
the person who who outbuild me was
in the hospital for three weeks

[00:39:06.840]
with a detached retina because
he had read so much that year.

[00:39:10.320]
So so I thought.

[00:39:13.480]
Being an entrepreneur,
being a business owner would let me

[00:39:16.920]
calm down a little,
but I knew it would be challenging.

[00:39:19.200]
But I thought, you know what,

[00:39:20.120]
compared to law,
it wouldn’t nearly involve as much time.

[00:39:24.240]
And boy, was I wrong

[00:39:26.200]
as our partner has has taken
up every available minute.

[00:39:30.160]
And there’s something I didn’t really
appreciate as much as as much as I do

[00:39:33.380]
today, which is
when you’re on your own business,

[00:39:36.080]
your brain is focused on that business
100 percent of the time.

[00:39:39.760]
You can figure out how to find
a balance in your life.

[00:39:42.840]
And I’ve fortunately been able to do that.

[00:39:45.480]
But but your brain doesn’t stop.

[00:39:47.400]
I mean, ultimately, it’s still focuses
on trying to solve these problems.

[00:39:50.800]
And at the end of the day, if an employee
has a problem, you have to solve it.

[00:39:54.080]
If there’s a problem in your business,
you have to solve it.

[00:39:56.200]
And so it created a very
different dynamic.

[00:39:58.920]
I wasn’t necessarily ready for it
because I didn’t expect it.

[00:40:03.000]
But but I appreciated it.

[00:40:04.760]
And I appreciated even more so now.

[00:40:07.160]
Yes, interesting how even
I guess I find myself,

[00:40:11.160]
other businesses that owners
that I talked to,

[00:40:13.920]
it’s almost like you’re
always on at some level,

[00:40:19.240]
even if it’s you know,
you get one of those late night phone

[00:40:22.120]
calls where something’s broken or
somebody dropped the ball somewhere.

[00:40:25.440]
You get a call at 1:00 in the morning
is really not that tough to

[00:40:30.280]
just solve the problem, even
just out of a dead sleep kind of thing.

[00:40:33.960]
Is this weird how you just always or

[00:40:36.520]
you’re looking at things and sometimes I
find myself coming up with solutions

[00:40:41.440]
and thinking like, oh my gosh,
this business could do X, Y and Z,

[00:40:44.000]
and you’re thinking,
I don’t need to do this right now.

[00:40:46.200]
This doesn’t matter.
Just relax.

[00:40:48.120]
But it’s tough.
It’s so just great.

[00:40:50.840]
Yeah, it’s very tough.

[00:40:51.880]
And I think I suspect most business owners
don’t have a secret way to overcome it.

[00:40:56.840]
I mean, ultimately, a couple of weeks ago,
I find myself sitting in a dark room.

[00:41:01.000]
My wife came in and said,
why are you sitting in a dark room?

[00:41:03.200]
I said, this is, I think the first moment

[00:41:05.000]
where for three minutes
I literally did nothing.

[00:41:07.960]
I didn’t watch TV.
I didn’t read a book, I didn’t play chess.

[00:41:10.680]
I didn’t think about my business.

[00:41:11.980]
I didn’t think about the pandemic.

[00:41:13.880]
I just I just sat there in dark silence.

[00:41:16.440]
And so it’s really hard to get

[00:41:19.240]
to that point as a business owner.

[00:41:21.000]
But it’s really important because
ultimately, when you start a business,

[00:41:24.200]
you have to recognize,
you know, there’s a trade off.

[00:41:27.120]
If you have kids, there’s a trade off.

[00:41:28.920]
You have to have a plan.

[00:41:30.600]
You know, how are you going to build
your business while raising a family?

[00:41:35.120]
And, you know, for some people,

[00:41:36.160]
the plan is, well,
my spouse will raise the family.

[00:41:38.320]
And for me, that wasn’t
an acceptable plan.

[00:41:40.450]
I had to find a good middle ground.

[00:41:42.200]
I wanted to be involved with my kids.

[00:41:44.120]
And so so at the end of the day,
it just takes some thinking.

[00:41:47.680]
And

[00:41:49.120]
but the thing that I talk about

[00:41:50.560]
to business owners,
probably more than anything,

[00:41:52.720]
and this is where I think
the people who tend to succeed do

[00:41:56.400]
something different,
they actually get started.

[00:41:59.000]
I think a lot of people worry

[00:42:01.070]
that that the business they want to start

[00:42:03.120]
is the pinnacle
business of their career.

[00:42:05.400]
And the reality for most businesses is

[00:42:08.560]
you’re probably going to start a number

[00:42:09.800]
of different businesses and most
of them are going to fail.

[00:42:12.640]
And that’s OK.
So so the businesses we see

[00:42:15.480]
in the industry today, even some
of the most successful startups

[00:42:19.080]
are started by people who started
other businesses who failed

[00:42:23.080]
and failed multiple times.

[00:42:24.790]
And it wasn’t until this latest business
that they figured out something magical

[00:42:29.040]
and something magical happened, including
luck to get them to a point of success.

[00:42:33.520]
And so so this is the thing that I think

[00:42:35.320]
a lot of business
owners don’t get is you

[00:42:37.400]
have to get started
in order to start learning.

[00:42:40.400]
And it doesn’t take a whole
lot to get started.

[00:42:43.080]
It’s a couple hundred dollars

[00:42:44.360]
to incorporate your company,
come up with a business plan

[00:42:47.600]
and a business idea, get some basic design
elements that create a professional

[00:42:52.200]
looking company and then
and then practice work.

[00:42:55.720]
I mean, this is this is nothing beats
getting started.

[00:42:59.240]
Reading, thinking, planning.

[00:43:02.520]
Those are all good things.

[00:43:03.600]
But but they’re not enough.
Oh, experiences.

[00:43:06.040]
Name of the game.
You got to actually do it now.

[00:43:08.560]
Yeah.
I always joke with them.

[00:43:10.760]
There’s a plumber that I have as a client

[00:43:13.400]
and I always joke with him because he’s like people. I’m the best
plumber there is and I’m

[00:43:18.600]
like, well if nobody knows you exist,

[00:43:20.130]
nobody cares that you’re
the best plumber.

[00:43:22.480]
His name is marketing awareness.

[00:43:25.400]
You’ve got to get out
there and spread the word.

[00:43:28.360]
Don’t just hang out it, man,
and hope that the phone rings.

[00:43:31.840]
Yeah, it’s recognition.

[00:43:32.920]
We talk a lot about the importance

[00:43:34.120]
of building a brand identity,
a visual brand for your company,

[00:43:36.960]
because at the end of the day, you know,
whether you’re a plumber or you

[00:43:40.440]
have a retail store or you
have an e-commerce store,

[00:43:43.240]
if people don’t know who you are or
that you exist or if they can’t remember

[00:43:47.240]
who you are, they can’t tell others,
they can’t find you again.

[00:43:50.640]
Right. And that puts you
at a huge disadvantage

[00:43:53.240]
to the businesses that are easily found,
easily remembered,

[00:43:56.840]
and who create this warm connection
with their potential audience.

[00:44:00.720]
And that’s one of the key differentiators

[00:44:02.680]
between people who start
small businesses.

[00:44:04.480]
Yes, it’s about your work ethic.

[00:44:05.880]
Yes, it’s about the people you hire.
Yes.

[00:44:08.200]
It’s about luck and the funding
and all these other things.

[00:44:11.480]
But it’s also about
making the right choices.

[00:44:14.480]
A lot of business owners
spend a lot of time

[00:44:18.760]
doing things right.
They want to get this perfect.

[00:44:20.880]
They want to get that perfect. And,
of course, you know,

[00:44:23.000]
for small businesses to be successful,
you’ve got to do the right things.

[00:44:26.920]
Mm hmm.
Yeah, a lot of times,

[00:44:29.680]
I guess it’s interesting,
you’re in the Midwest as well,

[00:44:32.320]
maybe Chicago, you guys are
faster decision makers in

[00:44:35.560]
north of you, but locally here
we’re slow decision makers.

[00:44:41.000]
So it’s interesting that I
find business owners

[00:44:44.800]
just too apprehensive.

[00:44:45.920]
They’re looking for every single nugget

[00:44:47.560]
of data they can possibly get
instead of just taking the chance.

[00:44:51.480]
And the by the time they decide
that potential opportunity has been gone,

[00:44:56.680]
somebody from New Jersey
saw it and acted on it.

[00:45:00.480]
So there’s there’s a there’s a concept

[00:45:03.320]
that I talk about with with my team
and with other business owners.

[00:45:08.160]
We’re a data informed company,
not a data driven company.

[00:45:11.600]
And the difference I think this is

[00:45:13.280]
an important difference
for for a lot of businesses.

[00:45:15.960]
Data driven companies make their decisions

[00:45:19.120]
almost strictly based on data, meaning
they let the data drive their decisions.

[00:45:23.840]
But that also means that if they don’t

[00:45:25.200]
have data on something,
as you just described,

[00:45:27.240]
they’re going to wait,
they’re going to sit there and wait

[00:45:30.040]
and won’t make a decision
where a data inform company.

[00:45:33.080]
And I’ve been a data informed
entrepreneur for a long time.

[00:45:36.000]
And the difference is that No one,

[00:45:38.160]
I know that most of the time
I’m not going to have any data.

[00:45:41.160]
It’s just the truth of business.

[00:45:43.320]
Most of the time you have to make

[00:45:44.680]
decisions based on very
limited information.

[00:45:46.880]
But to succeed as a business
owner, you have to decide.

[00:45:50.200]
It’s the one thing that I
tell everybody I hire.

[00:45:52.220]
So I hire people and I give
them a lot of accountability.

[00:45:55.120]
I give them a lot of responsibility.

[00:45:56.280]
And I say to them, listen,

[00:45:57.720]
I don’t want you to come to me
for questions or for make decisions.

[00:46:02.020]
You’ll be wrong sometimes.
That’s OK.

[00:46:04.560]
I’d rather you be wrong,
but that you made a decision.

[00:46:07.720]
I don’t want you to avoid making
a decision and never getting to a point

[00:46:11.520]
where we know whether
you’re right or wrong.

[00:46:13.080]
And so a lot of times
you won’t have any data.

[00:46:17.080]
Most of the time you’re
going to have some data.

[00:46:19.320]
But if you’re a data inform company,
the data informs your decision.

[00:46:22.840]
You fill in the gaps with your own
gut because as a business owner,

[00:46:26.080]
you’re going to have a gut
feeling about a lot of things.

[00:46:28.200]
And you have to because most things
you won’t be able to know for certain.

[00:46:32.460]
If you’re hiring a person,

[00:46:33.960]
you won’t know whether they’re
going to make a great employee.

[00:46:36.160]
You’re going to have a guess if you’re

[00:46:39.160]
if you found a vendor who’s
going to supply products to you,

[00:46:41.880]
you won’t know whether they’re going to be

[00:46:43.040]
on time every time,
whether they’re going

[00:46:44.840]
to have all the products you need,
whether they’re going to mess up

[00:46:47.000]
the orders, you’re going
have to make a guess.

[00:46:49.360]
And so you can talk to references,

[00:46:51.200]
you can talk to them,
you could look at their facilities.

[00:46:53.880]
But ultimately, there’s a bit of data
and there’s a bit of gut feel.

[00:46:57.680]
And so so data and form companies
use the data as a reference point.

[00:47:01.680]
But to fill in the gaps and that’s what I

[00:47:03.560]
encourage business owners to do,
is don’t let data

[00:47:07.280]
paralyze you into not making decisions
or into making the wrong decisions.

[00:47:12.760]
Look at the data, fill in the gaps,

[00:47:15.440]
make decisions, because the most
important thing is do it hopefully.

[00:47:20.440]
Right.

[00:47:20.800]
And if you make a mistake,
just don’t repeat the same mistake.

[00:47:24.000]
Figure out what you did wrong
and do it differently next time.

[00:47:27.600]
I think these kinds of businesses

[00:47:29.400]
that that that are able to,
in an agile way, make decisions and move

[00:47:34.200]
forward a step at a time, tend to be more
successful, tend to be more sustainable.

[00:47:38.800]
These business owners tend to more quickly

[00:47:41.250]
start working on the business than
in the business because they appreciate

[00:47:45.200]
the value they can bring to their
business if they focus on strategy.

[00:47:49.000]
Absolutely.

[00:47:49.920]
And when they’re working on, well,
making decisions with gut and data,

[00:47:54.640]
the data that they have, they can
grow more quickly because they’re

[00:47:58.120]
not hindering themselves
by looking for more data.

[00:48:01.640]
I’m thinking about when you started this
business, there probably wasn’t any data

[00:48:05.920]
on whether this would
be successful or not.

[00:48:09.280]
If you want to start a plumbing business

[00:48:10.720]
or something like that, like, hey,
we have X number of toilets and sinks.

[00:48:14.200]
We get so many miles of pipe, sooner
or later something’s going to clog.

[00:48:18.310]
So you can kind of figure out

[00:48:19.960]
what you’re going to do,
what you’re going to make all that jazz.

[00:48:22.200]
And you start a standard business

[00:48:24.200]
for something like this where
you’re sticking your neck out.

[00:48:27.280]
Let’s just hope it works kind of thing.

[00:48:30.280]
So in most in most cases and we’ve written

[00:48:32.680]
about this quite a lot,
we have this phenomenal guide on how

[00:48:35.160]
to start a business, where we
have a chapter on market research

[00:48:38.280]
and and this chapter is
based on our own experience.

[00:48:42.120]
So so when we were starting, we didn’t
know we would start with graphic design.

[00:48:46.320]
We have this white canvas and we asked

[00:48:49.320]
ourselves what we’re we’re can we make
the biggest impact? What’s the biggest

[00:48:53.880]
need? And so we looked at some
existing traditional RFP marketplaces.

[00:48:59.400]
You know, at the time it was elans.com

[00:49:03.160]
where you can hire, where you can hire

[00:49:05.600]
people, contractors to do
all sorts of things.

[00:49:09.440]
And and so it was not easy to get,
but we set up some tests.

[00:49:13.000]
We actually monitored them for two weeks.

[00:49:15.560]
Every product category,

[00:49:16.720]
the number of projects that were
launching and what happened with those.

[00:49:20.080]
And we built a spreadsheet model to see
what were the most popular categories.

[00:49:25.360]
How many?
Projects in each category,

[00:49:27.320]
how many people were working and when we
looked at it, we saw this interesting

[00:49:31.640]
trend, we saw that graphic design
was a third of all projects.

[00:49:35.720]
It was by far the biggest
category of projects.

[00:49:38.280]
And that

[00:49:39.800]
on that online site,
I remember Ilan’s holy cow.

[00:49:43.560]
And so we looked at each other and said,
well, there’s obviously a demand.

[00:49:47.880]
If a third of their business involves
people who need help with graphic

[00:49:52.640]
design, then there’s
definitely a problem here.

[00:49:55.720]
And so we built some surveys for small

[00:49:57.920]
businesses and we got on the phone
with business owners and freelancers

[00:50:02.200]
and started talking about graphic
design and ultimately ended up.

[00:50:05.760]
So today we have three
categories of projects.

[00:50:08.000]
So it’s graphic design
like logos and websites.

[00:50:10.410]
It’s industrial design.

[00:50:11.760]
So designing products,
it’s naming businesses.

[00:50:15.680]
It’s it’s outdoor billboards,
big outdoor billboards.

[00:50:20.280]
And we’ve done work for for lots
of different kinds of clients.

[00:50:23.320]
But but at the time,
we didn’t know what we were doing.

[00:50:25.360]
And so we started with logos,

[00:50:26.720]
we started with websites because
that’s where the need was.

[00:50:29.760]
So so whether you’re starting a business
in in Wisconsin or you’re starting

[00:50:35.320]
a business in Ohio or a California market
research works the same way.

[00:50:39.760]
If you have competitors,

[00:50:42.040]
you have to think loosely about
competitors because we were starting

[00:50:44.720]
an online business that was
going to be global ultimately.

[00:50:47.040]
And so our competition was global.

[00:50:49.000]
But if you have competitors
find a way to pay attention to what

[00:50:52.880]
they’re doing and where their
business is coming from.

[00:50:55.160]
So you can understand,
if you don’t have competitors,

[00:50:58.000]
that’s a red flag, obviously
because if nobody is interested in your

[00:51:01.520]
industry may speak more to the fact
that it’s not a real problem.

[00:51:05.400]
But listen, we’ve had
innovative businesses like

[00:51:07.640]
Airbnb came out of nowhere to create
a business that didn’t exist before.

[00:51:11.510]
They didn’t have any competition per say.

[00:51:13.760]
And so you have to figure
out how to test the market.

[00:51:17.000]
And so there are lots
of different approaches.

[00:51:18.600]
And and for business owners that are
struggling to figure this out, you know,

[00:51:22.440]
the traditional way to talk to people is,
is focus group research.

[00:51:27.160]
It’s interviews.

[00:51:28.160]
You meet with a person and say, hey,
tell me about your biggest pain point.

[00:51:32.560]
And and the historically,

[00:51:33.920]
one of the ways that the business owners

[00:51:35.760]
and marketers
in particular will ask this

[00:51:37.520]
question is, you know,
if I built a product that does X,

[00:51:40.560]
would you buy it and would you buy
it for thirty dollars a month?

[00:51:44.920]
Here’s the thing. That’s
a terrible question to ask,

[00:51:47.760]
because everybody’s going to say, sure,
they’re not paying you money.

[00:51:52.520]
They don’t have to worry.

[00:51:53.840]
You don’t have the product.

[00:51:55.280]
They don’t even know what the product is.

[00:51:56.960]
So that framework
generally isn’t as effective.

[00:52:01.760]
What’s what’s really critical when you do

[00:52:03.920]
market research in the beginning and we

[00:52:05.240]
learned this over
the years and that’s how

[00:52:07.360]
we do it now, is it’s to try to understand
what ultimately created enough pain

[00:52:12.280]
for a customer that they need
it to solve the problem.

[00:52:16.200]
It doesn’t really matter what they

[00:52:19.000]
hired to solve the problem, but tool
they use, what service they use.

[00:52:23.200]
What’s most important is what created

[00:52:25.480]
that pain that led them
to solve that problem.

[00:52:28.560]
And so there’s this great
framework called jobs to be done.

[00:52:31.760]
There’s a lot written online about
it’s the jobs to be done framework.

[00:52:34.980]
And it frames the questions in a different

[00:52:37.280]
way in terms of how you interview people
about the potential problems they’re

[00:52:42.280]
running into and how
you do market research.

[00:52:44.720]
And we’ve been really successful in using
this framework for our own client

[00:52:48.720]
interviews because it helps you understand
what’s the actual pain point your

[00:52:53.240]
perspective customers have, because
you can have a great business idea.

[00:52:56.760]
And this is something that
we learned early on.

[00:53:00.240]
You can fall in love and most

[00:53:01.760]
entrepreneurs fall in love
with their own business idea.

[00:53:04.320]
They think it’s great.

[00:53:05.520]
They think it’s going to do well.

[00:53:08.840]
Business ideas are can be great,

[00:53:11.480]
but if there’s not a problem, if you’re
not solving an underlying problem,

[00:53:15.640]
you’re not going to be successful.

[00:53:16.880]
There are very few companies that create

[00:53:19.080]
a business around a great product
that doesn’t solve a problem.

[00:53:22.480]
It could happen.
Instagram is a good example.

[00:53:25.080]
It wasn’t a problem.

[00:53:26.280]
They created this great
product that became popular.

[00:53:28.800]
But but if you look at every other
business, nearly every other business is

[00:53:32.640]
actually solving a real problem
that somebody has to overcome.

[00:53:38.640]
It’s like the difference
in a pain pill and a vitamin.

[00:53:42.120]
Some people take vitamins, but they
take them if they want to or not.

[00:53:46.680]
People who are in pain,

[00:53:48.000]
almost everybody takes a pain pill,
they have to they don’t have a choice.

[00:53:51.440]
And so so when we create new products,

[00:53:54.520]
when I talk to business
owners creating new products,

[00:53:58.200]
our focus is on find that pain point.

[00:54:00.960]
You know, build a pain pill,
something that people can’t live without

[00:54:05.080]
as opposed to a vitamin
that they can choose to ignore.

[00:54:08.280]
Oh, that’s clever.
I like that.

[00:54:10.360]
It’s interesting because we when I first
started Calls On Call the answering

[00:54:14.480]
service that I have,
well, even now we still have that issue

[00:54:18.840]
with some people where the problem exists,
where companies don’t answer their phone

[00:54:24.200]
and the callers feel
that that is a problem.

[00:54:27.320]
But the callers aren’t
the one right in the check.

[00:54:29.760]
It’s the business owners that are just
like, if it’s important, I’ll answer it.

[00:54:33.800]
If I’m busy, they’ll voice
message if it’s important.

[00:54:37.400]
And I try to look at them and say, no,
the only way to grow your business is

[00:54:40.600]
to actually communicate with your
customers without communication.

[00:54:43.600]
And I can talk to them blue in the face.
They don’t care.

[00:54:47.400]
So it’s interesting how we’re still

[00:54:49.680]
struggling with that, sometimes
with some potential clients.

[00:54:53.440]
We see the problem.

[00:54:55.040]
Other people have other callers have given
us names of companies are just like I’ve

[00:54:59.690]
been trying to get a hold of these
people for months, no luck.

[00:55:03.040]
And we reach out to the business owner
and they’re like, not a problem.

[00:55:07.960]
And if only we could have
the callers pay us some.

[00:55:11.680]
Well, and this is and this is one
of the reasons why I get on the phone

[00:55:15.360]
with customers and why I still
do support tickets periodically.

[00:55:19.920]
Because unless you hear from an irate
customer that’s been trying to reach you

[00:55:24.360]
directly, you don’t appreciate
that they’re frustrated.

[00:55:28.240]
And you may assume that they’ll call
back or they’re not so frustrated.

[00:55:31.600]
But when you have an earful

[00:55:32.880]
from a customer who was trying to reach

[00:55:34.200]
you, that’s when you
begin to appreciate.

[00:55:36.360]
And the difference, you know, listen
here’s something that that that a long

[00:55:40.280]
time ago I read from a letter
Jeff Bezos wrote to shareholders.

[00:55:43.580]
This is early on in Amazon’s days.
And yeah.

[00:55:46.160]
And he was trying to set up
a situation that that he was essentially

[00:55:50.820]
foreshadowing that Amazon is going to lose
money for a long period of time

[00:55:54.720]
and reinvest in the business before
they would start making money.

[00:55:58.840]
And so he was trying to explain
why investors should trust him.

[00:56:03.160]
And what is it about the investments
that Amazon was going to make that would

[00:56:07.240]
ultimately become successful
and the way he phrased it?

[00:56:10.120]
I’ve always found the fascinating,
really helpful is he said, look,

[00:56:13.800]
we try to focus on things
that will not change in 10 years.

[00:56:17.640]
So in 10 years, customers are still going
to want to have great customer service.

[00:56:22.160]
Customers will still want to have
affordably inexpensive products.

[00:56:26.920]
Customers will still want to have products
delivered as quickly as possible.

[00:56:31.160]
Nobody’s going to say in 10 years.

[00:56:32.920]
I don’t mind if it takes three
months for me to get this product.

[00:56:35.880]
And so Amazon focused on investing

[00:56:38.640]
in areas that would not
change for customers.

[00:56:41.640]
And one of the ones and so we think
about our business the same way.

[00:56:44.920]
Where do we make an investment?

[00:56:46.440]
And we did this from the very beginning,

[00:56:48.200]
which is why customer support
was so important for us.

[00:56:50.560]
We said there isn’t going to come a time

[00:56:52.560]
where people say, I don’t care
if the customer support is

[00:56:55.320]
good or bad, because at the end
of the day, everybody runs into issues.

[00:56:59.310]
Occasionally they need to contact

[00:57:01.110]
a company about a product
or service they purchased.

[00:57:03.960]
And when we do as consumers,
we expect good service.

[00:57:08.040]
Some of us expect great service.

[00:57:10.160]
Most companies don’t deliver good service.
Right.

[00:57:13.520]
The vast majority of companies
don’t deliver great service.

[00:57:16.600]
And so our goal in the beginning was
to create a company and a culture

[00:57:21.360]
that delivered great customer service
because we believed it was important.

[00:57:25.360]
We believed it wasn’t going to change.

[00:57:27.550]
And we believe that increasingly more

[00:57:29.600]
and more the way companies will
differentiate from competitors isn’t

[00:57:33.480]
featured a feature, but just
outshining their competitors

[00:57:36.640]
and supporting customers and creating
a great user experience.

[00:57:39.910]
And and ultimately, the market has proven
that that what Jeff Bezos said several

[00:57:44.160]
decades ago is true, that the user
experience is really important.

[00:57:48.060]
Great customer support doesn’t change.

[00:57:50.090]
People still want things
delivered as quickly as possible.

[00:57:53.240]
Know it’s one reason why we created the

[00:57:58.720]
100 percent guarantee

[00:58:00.400]
because we want people to be comfortable
and that they’re not taking a big risk.

[00:58:05.080]
Nice, that’s clever.

[00:58:06.920]
Yes, interesting that Jeff Bezos thing,
that’s interesting.

[00:58:10.680]
He’s got clever, clever,
clever stuff going on in communication.

[00:58:15.280]
That’s the name of the game.
People just want to be heard.

[00:58:17.600]
Yeah.
So I like what you got going on.

[00:58:19.380]
That’s super cool.
I want to ask you before and your accent.

[00:58:22.400]
We don’t have a ton of time.

[00:58:23.960]
How did you figure out your pricing model?

[00:58:27.360]
Because that had to be just

[00:58:29.160]
no one else there, not many companies
had been doing it at the time

[00:58:33.280]
and locally designers were charging,
let’s just take logo design.

[00:58:37.880]
Thousands of dollars, if not many,
many, many, many hundreds of dollars.

[00:58:42.680]
So how did you figure out what people

[00:58:44.920]
would be willing to pay and what your
designers, the the outsourced designers,

[00:58:49.600]
so to speak, your crew
would be willing to get paid?

[00:58:53.800]
So that’s an important question for every
business it was for us. And the first

[00:58:58.160]
question we figured out was where did
we want to be in the price point?

[00:59:02.800]
Did we want to be the most expensive, the
least expensive or somewhere in between?

[00:59:08.240]
That was the important question we had

[00:59:09.920]
to answer first, because
your market research,

[00:59:12.400]
your competition,
the amount of money you need to raise

[00:59:15.200]
for your business are all
impacted by that decision.

[00:59:17.620]
And we said we don’t want to be
the cheapest for two reasons.

[00:59:20.920]
Number one, because cheap and bad,
you can get a Loga for five dollars.

[00:59:27.200]
It’s ClipArt.

[00:59:28.160]
It doesn’t help you as a business
that hurts you as a business.

[00:59:31.320]
Expensive meant that we would have
to deliver at such a high level to a very

[00:59:36.040]
tiny number of clients and compete
with well-established agencies.

[00:59:40.160]
And we don’t feel we can improve their

[00:59:43.160]
well-established agency to doing
great job for those clients.

[00:59:45.840]
So we felt we got to find a middle ground.

[00:59:47.730]
And when we looked at what people were
paying for design and we looked at what

[00:59:51.880]
designers were getting,
we tried to find a middle ground.

[00:59:55.240]
And for every project category like logos,
for example, we said, you know,

[00:59:59.760]
a freelancer
may be willing to do the work for

[01:00:03.800]
a couple dollars, but but not a qualified
freelancer, not somebody who’s creating

[01:00:08.080]
custom designed, just somebody
who slap some clipart.

[01:00:10.640]
You know, what is a qualified,

[01:00:12.840]
experienced designer willing to do
to build a book of business.

[01:00:16.760]
And the way we looked
at it is, you know what?

[01:00:18.760]
What is their interest?

[01:00:20.240]
I mean, why are they going to work

[01:00:21.440]
on crowds spring and get two hundred
dollars is an award in a project?

[01:00:24.960]
Well, we figured they were going to build

[01:00:26.680]
a book of clients, 30, 40 clients,
and then go on their own way,

[01:00:30.160]
start their own little agency
working with us, 30, 40 clients.

[01:00:33.240]
And so we thought, you know what,
over the long term,

[01:00:35.560]
our goal is to help designers create their
own many agencies and go on their own.

[01:00:40.120]
And that’s ultimately
the approach we took.

[01:00:42.160]
So for Logo’s, we said

[01:00:43.880]
two hundred ninety nine dollars
is the baseline entry point

[01:00:47.520]
two hundred dollar award,
ninety nine dollars fee to us.

[01:00:50.360]
And we tested we talked to designers a lot
about this. We asked them, you know,

[01:00:53.970]
what are you currently get paid? What
do you currently spend on marketing?

[01:00:57.920]
What do you feel is is worth
your time? And that varies.

[01:01:01.400]
So webdesign is more expensive,
product design is more expensive.

[01:01:04.880]
But but it’s an example.
Product design.

[01:01:07.080]
So this is industrial design,

[01:01:08.480]
designing mobile phones,
designing actual products.

[01:01:11.440]
And we work with small companies and big

[01:01:13.570]
companies like LG
and mobile phone design.

[01:01:15.920]
You know, you could pay agencies hundreds

[01:01:18.520]
of thousands of dollars
for product design.

[01:01:21.320]
And our designers who are highly qualified

[01:01:23.880]
do this work for for one
or two thousand dollars.

[01:01:26.720]
And it’s a huge difference.
So why do they do it?

[01:01:29.000]
Well, they do it because they don’t have

[01:01:30.680]
access to these clients paying
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[01:01:33.880]
They’re very experienced designers who are

[01:01:36.080]
happy to do the work for a couple
of thousand dollars.

[01:01:38.800]
The clients, first of all,
small business can afford a couple

[01:01:42.280]
of thousand dollars but can’t afford
two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

[01:01:45.480]
The clients have a way to reach
designers who are doing phenomenal work.

[01:01:49.560]
So so we’ve set pricing across every

[01:01:51.760]
category that we felt was a good
middle ground between what designers

[01:01:56.360]
needed to make and we
adjusted periodically.

[01:01:58.400]
If we see that, you know,
the market shifts a little bit.

[01:02:01.090]
So, for example, we initially said custom
illustration of two ninety nine two,

[01:02:05.240]
but we felt that there was
much more work involved.

[01:02:07.200]
There’s more sophisticated
required more designer time.

[01:02:09.800]
We raise it a little to three ninety nine,
still ten to twenty times cheaper than

[01:02:14.600]
the market, but it gave businesses a way
to get great custom design and designers

[01:02:19.920]
a way to make a fair return
on their investment of time.

[01:02:23.720]
Interesting.
That’s cool.

[01:02:26.160]
Yeah, the pricing thing for any
businesses is challenging.

[01:02:29.720]
I remember my first business,
I started in 2006

[01:02:33.400]
and it was a printer repair company and I
essentially just duplicated the pricing

[01:02:37.880]
of a place that I was working at before
because I didn’t know I was and new.

[01:02:44.760]
And then you realize, well,

[01:02:46.920]
I’m not making as much money as I want
and I’m better than other people.

[01:02:51.550]
So the whole service quality price thing,

[01:02:53.800]
if I’m better at service, have higher
quality than I should be charging more.

[01:02:58.160]
So I did buy pretty I think it was twenty
five percent and no one better than I.

[01:03:03.600]
And I’m like, oh man.

[01:03:05.360]
I gave up the past few years
of not charging enough.

[01:03:09.320]
And it’s just one of those things.
Right.

[01:03:11.160]
So that’s an interesting conversation
to figure out or just to talk with other

[01:03:15.800]
entrepreneurs to figure out
how did you come up with your pricing.

[01:03:18.920]
So that’s awesome. We actually
put together and I’ll send it

[01:03:22.120]
over if you want include US
outs we put together cost of design,

[01:03:25.720]
pricing guide for logos, websites,
business cards

[01:03:28.960]
that walks through the different price
points and benefits and disadvantages.

[01:03:33.560]
The questions you should ask your

[01:03:34.880]
freelancer, a design firm, the things
you should be. Look for because

[01:03:38.280]
it’s a it’s a question that that every
business owner should ask themselves is

[01:03:42.400]
how much should I pay for designing
the unequivocally clear answers?

[01:03:46.580]
And there are two two parts of the answer
you shouldn’t underpay in the sense

[01:03:50.680]
that cheap and free design
is never cheap or free.

[01:03:54.880]
You’re going to pay for it in the in
the midterm by by hurting your brand.

[01:04:00.520]
The most expensive design can be

[01:04:02.720]
phenomenally great, but good design
doesn’t have to be the most expensive.

[01:04:07.400]
There is a there is an area where there’s
a lot of room where business owners can

[01:04:12.160]
get phenomenally great designs,
a very affordable pricing.

[01:04:15.760]
And that’s really what we focus on.

[01:04:17.360]
That’s what we wanted to focus
on with crowds from the beginning.

[01:04:20.080]
I think that’s what we
accomplished over the years.

[01:04:22.240]
And that’s what we really strive to do,
is to make sure that that we deliver

[01:04:26.280]
that custom designed at an affordable,

[01:04:28.450]
fair price that meets
the budgets of every

[01:04:30.800]
kind of business owner
and give designers a fair

[01:04:36.240]
return on the time they’re investing
and creating these custom designs.

[01:04:39.680]
Nice.

[01:04:40.680]
Can you I guess before we end this,
can you tell me how you came up

[01:04:44.040]
with the name of crowd spring
naming as tough took us 50 hours.

[01:04:48.640]
This is why we started naming services.

[01:04:51.120]
So we named businesses
because it was frustrating.

[01:04:53.520]
And as an entrepreneur,
I’ve named other businesses since then.

[01:04:56.260]
It’s like hitting your
head against the wall.

[01:04:58.760]
You know, we learned about this concept
crowdsourcing that that that was around.

[01:05:04.320]
At the same time, we started
looking at this business.

[01:05:06.160]
It was first coined in 2006.

[01:05:08.280]
Right at the time we started looking

[01:05:09.560]
at this business and we
liked the name crowd.

[01:05:12.840]
And so we spent a lot
of time brainstorming.

[01:05:15.160]
At one point we had this idea that I think

[01:05:17.200]
every entrepreneur has at some point
maybe, maybe we’ll pick a Swahili word

[01:05:21.000]
and looks like everybody else had the same

[01:05:23.040]
idea because we just
couldn’t find names.

[01:05:25.200]
Sure.
And then we started thinking about,

[01:05:27.090]
you know, what are some connotations,
what are some ways people differentiate?

[01:05:31.040]
And and we ultimately stumbled
on this concept of spring.

[01:05:33.760]
You know, you spring from the crowd,
you stand out.

[01:05:36.520]
And so because we were having a really
tough time finding a normal word

[01:05:41.840]
and because we realized that good branding
requires you to do something unique,

[01:05:45.880]
you don’t want to have a name that can be
confused for other businesses,

[01:05:48.920]
lots of other businesses
with the word design in them.

[01:05:51.360]
And we didn’t know we were going to be
in design and we knew we wanted to be

[01:05:54.300]
a marketplace, but design
would be only a part of it.

[01:05:57.200]
So so we combine the two
words crowd spring.

[01:05:59.880]
Nice, cool.

[01:06:01.960]
And it’s worth apparently and it’s work.

[01:06:04.470]
That’s the thing people
people forget about.

[01:06:06.720]
Branding is a lot of the companies we know
today that are ridiculous, that Google,

[01:06:10.920]
you know, nobody knew what Google was
day one day, two days.

[01:06:14.720]
So so you build your brand with with good

[01:06:17.560]
design, good choices with marketing,
with time with good customer service.

[01:06:22.120]
And over time, people associate your name,
your logo with your business.

[01:06:26.120]
And it takes time in every case.
Yeah.

[01:06:28.920]
Yeah, it takes too much time.

[01:06:30.400]
But that’s it’s interesting
how some things like that.

[01:06:34.120]
Right, there’s the the pain in the butt

[01:06:36.080]
factor where if it was easy there would
be way more competition than you’d want.

[01:06:40.280]
So there has to be

[01:06:41.400]
a little bit of a hurdle
to keep the riffraff out, I guess,

[01:06:45.080]
from there from the
competition pool, I suppose.

[01:06:49.160]
Well, I mean, listen,
this is an opportunity for four business

[01:06:52.160]
owners to to think through a plan and get
going, because the reality is that most

[01:06:58.240]
of your potential competitors
never get started.

[01:07:01.120]
Yeah.
So they’re planning and thinking.

[01:07:03.120]
And the quicker you get started, the
quicker you start getting ahead of them.

[01:07:07.040]
And that’s, you know.

[01:07:09.600]
Exactly.

[01:07:10.920]
Yeah, that’s cool.
Awesome.

[01:07:12.680]
Well, Ross, I don’t want
to take any more of your time.

[01:07:14.760]
We’ve already gone over,
so thank you so much.

[01:07:17.150]
I do want to ask is really quick.

[01:07:19.000]
You guys have a ton of content on your
website and I’ve seen you it looks like

[01:07:23.200]
you blog for Entrepreneur
magazine, is that right?

[01:07:25.920]
So I’ve just written
for a few publications.

[01:07:28.200]
Yeah.
OK, OK.

[01:07:29.640]
So is this just fun for you or is it

[01:07:33.600]
marketing, is it all you
or do you have writers.

[01:07:37.160]
So we don’t we don’t generally accept
guest posts, people on our team.

[01:07:40.800]
Right.

[01:07:41.600]
I write and I’ve written
from the very beginning.

[01:07:45.240]
It started as a way for us to to market.

[01:07:49.280]
So it’s a channel for us content

[01:07:51.080]
marketing, which is important
for every business.

[01:07:53.760]
But I also made a commitment when I
started the business twelve years ago.

[01:07:57.480]
Chicago at the time had
almost non-existent startup community.

[01:08:01.560]
There were there were companies, but there
was no connection, nothing uniting them.

[01:08:05.080]
And so when I started running into
challenges, how do I hire engineers?

[01:08:09.880]
What do I make,

[01:08:11.880]
what kind of choices do I
make for support software?

[01:08:14.360]
I don’t really have anybody to ask.

[01:08:16.440]
And so I would reach out to people

[01:08:18.560]
and say, hey, can I can I buy you a cup
of coffee and ask you two questions?

[01:08:22.880]
And so half the people said no.

[01:08:24.240]
Half the people said yes.

[01:08:25.600]
And people said yes are lifelong friends.

[01:08:29.400]
So I committed to giving back.

[01:08:30.710]
And part of the way we give back it crowd

[01:08:32.960]
spring is is we write long
form content, so we write.

[01:08:37.280]
Big guides, you know, 2000,
3000 to 20000 words on how to start

[01:08:41.720]
a business, how to create a brand

[01:08:43.960]

identity, how to create

marketing strategy

[01:08:46.920]
on marketing psychology,
and how to write a business plan.

[01:08:50.160]
And we share, just as an example,
how to write a business plan.

[01:08:53.800]
One of the resources we share is probably
a 10000 word guide with seven or eight

[01:08:58.760]
free templates, four for one page business
plans, budgeting, spreadsheets,

[01:09:02.920]
sale spreadsheets, all sorts of stuff that
you can just download and start using.

[01:09:07.880]
And we do that in part because, again,

[01:09:10.120]
as I mentioned earlier, we want
to build credibility with people,

[01:09:12.960]
but we genuinely want to help
people start businesses.

[01:09:15.880]
I think it’s important for us as business
owners to support other business owners.

[01:09:20.080]
It’s such a huge part of our economy.

[01:09:22.760]
It makes me feel good when I can help

[01:09:24.600]
somebody do something
better in their business.

[01:09:27.440]
And I want to avoid making
the mistakes I’m making.

[01:09:30.400]
So part of what I’m doing when I distill
these mistakes into writing is teaching

[01:09:35.560]
myself how to avoid these
same mistakes in the future.

[01:09:38.600]
Nice.
I like it.

[01:09:40.480]
I love it.
That’s I can

tell you from the books

[01:09:43.720]
that I’ve written in blogs,
it’s the same situation.

[01:09:46.840]
You start doing a video or writing or
something like that and you’re like, oh,

[01:09:51.640]
and you end up learning almost as
much as you’re attempting to teach.

[01:09:56.600]
And that’s that’s the secret of writing
and teaching is you actually if you if

[01:10:00.120]
you’re open to it, you can
learn as much, if not more.

[01:10:02.880]
Yeah.
Yeah.

[01:10:04.090]
Something cool.
Something cool.

[01:10:05.840]
Ross how can people find you? So

[01:10:08.520]
CrowdSpring.com C-R-O-W-D-S-P-R-I-N-G.

[01:10:12.240]
Our blog is CrowdSpring.com/Blog.

[01:10:15.800]
I am Ross Kimbarovsky
on Twitter and LinkedIn.

[01:10:19.760]
So it’s R-o-s-s, K-i-m-b-a-r-o-v-s-k-y
and @crowdspring on Twitter.

[01:10:24.920]
Nice, super easy.

[01:10:26.800]
This has been
Authentic Business Adventures, the business

[01:10:29.030]
program that brings you the struggle
stories and triumphant successes

[01:10:32.880]
of business owners across the land.

[01:10:35.080]
We’re underwritten locally by the Bank

[01:10:36.520]
of Sun Prairie and if you’re
listening to this on the web,

[01:10:39.400]
which I’m sure you are, please give
a thumbs up, subscribe, comment,

[01:10:42.920]
and of course, share with your
other entrepreneurial friends.

[01:10:46.200]
My name is James Kademan

[01:10:47.360]
and Authentic Business Adventures is
brought to you by Calls On Call offering

[01:10:50.930]
call answering and receptionist
services for service businesses

[01:10:54.280]
across the country, on the Web
at CallsOnCall.com.

[01:10:57.680]
As well as

[01:10:58.440]
Draw In Customers Business Coaching
offering business coaching services

[01:11:02.240]
for entrepreneurs looking for growth
on the web at DrawInCustomers.com.

[01:11:06.920]
And of course, The BOLD Business Book,

[01:11:09.120]
a book for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.

[01:11:13.320]
We’d like to thank you our wonderful
listeners as well as our guest.

[01:11:16.080]
Ross Kimbarovsky.

[01:11:17.200]
Oh my goodness gracious.

[01:11:18.440]
Ross Kimbarovsky.

[01:11:20.120]
See what happens when
you drink orange juice?

[01:11:21.560]
Right.
Founder and CEO of CrowdSpring.com.

[01:11:25.760]
Past episodes can be found
morning, noon, and night

[01:11:28.080]
at the podcast link found
at DrawInCustomers.com.

[01:11:30.960]
Thank you so much for listening.

[01:11:32.480]
We’ll see you next week.

[01:11:33.480]
I want you to stay awesome.

[01:11:34.800]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.