Web Design and Development

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You have found
Authentic Business Adventures, a business

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program that brings you the struggles, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across land.

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Downloadable audio episodes

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of the Authentic Business Adventures
podcast can be found on the podcast link.

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Found at drawincustomers.com. We are

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locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,

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author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.

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And today we are welcoming/preparing to learn from AJ Aluthwala,
co founder of Kallisto Art.

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AJ, how are you doing today?

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Doing fantastic James,
thanks for having me.

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I am excited because you have a good thing

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going in the marketing world, I guess,
and even beyond the app world.

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So how about we start with you telling
the crew what is Kallisto Art?

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Yeah, Kallisto Art is an outfit which can
create you a website,

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create you a mobile app,
create you a web app,

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and also work on your search engine
optimization to make your phone ring.

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Nice.
I love when people’s phone rings.

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Yeah.

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Businesses needs it.
That’s all good.

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So tell me, let’s start
with the website creation.

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How long have you been around
building websites, James?

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We’ve been doing this
for the last 16 years.

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So we started the company in 2006.

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It was almost just a hobby at the time.

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I was at Wichita State
pursuing my MBA and then I buddied up with

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Ravi and we thought that we should
start a company because we got asked

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by lot of friends and family whether
they wanted a website created.

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They asked us whether we can create

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something for them and it was like, yeah,
sure, we just created almost for free

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at the time because it was really
kind of a pit project for us.

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But as time went by,
we realized that there’s a real need

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for it and that’s how
Kallisto Art came into play.

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Nice.

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So back in the 16 years ago,
let me think, there was no WordPress.

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We’re talking dreamweaver or just HTML.

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It was HTML coding.

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There was Dream Weaver too with some

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of the Flash stuff, but
there was front page

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so HTML coding,
hard coding and so the maintainability

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of those sites were just disastrous
because they would consume a lot of time.

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But if you think about it,

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back in the day, if you kind of go back
in time in the 90s having a website was

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just like for bragging rights,
oh, I got a website.

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It was really not a leads gen thing.

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It wasn’t doing any of that.

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It was more like I have a website or
I paid a guy to get myself a website.

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Right.

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And then in the early 2000s this changed
a little bit with everything going

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on with the.com
then people recognize the need to have

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a solid website and there was
a purpose to it as well.

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Right?
So there was a certain level of legion

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which was happening out of that and people
were still kind of dancing around it just

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like how people are dancing
around cryptocurrency, right?

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Because you don’t really know what’s

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you think that you need it,
but you’re not sure.

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And then once you get one,
you won’t touch it.

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For the next ten years,
it’s going to just sit there.

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It’s going to act as your online billboard
and you don’t have to really mess with it.

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And it just stays there.

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And we came in right
in the middle in 2006.

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So I think late 2000,
that’s when people truly start

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recognizing, okay, there’s actually
power to having a website.

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I mean, at the time, I remember

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right around 2007, eight time period,
we were creating ecommerce sites too.

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Ecommerce around.

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I remember we created a website called

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Outman Supply, which was an ecommerce site
to sell Coleman camping products.

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Oh, nice.

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So there was a distributor who wanted
their own website to sell it online.

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That business is no longer
it’s not there anymore.

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But that’s one website I just remember

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from 16 years ago or 15 years ago that we
created, which was an ecommerce site.

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Nice.

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You’re jogging me back memory wise because
I’m thinking, what was my first website?

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Because I started my first
business in 2006.

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I remember building my own website.

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I used Dreamweaver and photoshop.

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And then I remember when

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smartphones came out and you essentially
had to have two websites

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because responsive website
like that wasn’t even a word.

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And so then you’re building and then any

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screen that you looked at,
stuff just looks funky.

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Unless it was the exact screen
that you built that website on.

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Right.
Stuff blocks would turn out all weird.

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You’d end up with sentences that would end

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up on the way left side
of the screen, right?

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It’s just a weird, weird time.

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All the sentences would like sometimes

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they will just flip sidewise
vertically and horizontally.

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Yeah, I remember those days.

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But we’ve come a long journey.

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We just grew from being two person gig.

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Two.

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We have a good sized team now.

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We have project managers on staff.

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We have a separate search
engine optimization department.

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Then we have around.

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Seven.
We have full time around 25 on the other

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side of the world
from Sri Lanka who are working for us.

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And then we have kind of built a pool

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of around 100 people who we
can grab from as resources.

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Again, in Sri Lanka,
when it comes to working on apps,

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they don’t really work on websites
because it’s a little different.

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But to do some technical heavy lifting

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on the apps and web apps,
we use OC resources.

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And we just had another
guy from Venezuela.

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One of our SEO guys is in Tarot.

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My assistant is in Venezuela too.

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So they are all over the place and we
work across multiple time zones.

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And that has back in the day,
everyone came to an office, right?

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But for us, even before COVID,

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we were a full virtual company
because that worked for what we do.

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The beauty of our business is we can
be wherever and do work for whomever.

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A nice convenience that allowed us to do
work with people around the world.

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A little bit of freedom there.
That’s cool.

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Yeah.

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Tell me chronologically,
you are going to school.

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Who’s your partner?
I’m sorry.

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Robbie.
Robbie.

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To meet Robbie, the two of you are like,
hey, let’s start this web design company.

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I imagine at first it’s just the two
of you putting together websites, right?

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Yeah.

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So, again, I actually knew Ravi

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from Sri Lanka because he’s from Sri Lanka
as well, so I knew him from my college

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days at which the state
I did my graduate work.

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So he was already in Canada.

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So we talked about doing some work

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together, and it was, again,
like a back burner project at the time.

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Just as, okay, if something shows up,
we will do their website.

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And then we didn’t really go out
and do a lot of outreach work as well.

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When things showed up,
we did it because we were both busy.

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I was in school, Ravi was working full

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time at another place,
and slowly but surely,

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we came together as a kind of a full
time gig and full time outfit.

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And we were just doing
websites for a very long time.

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And it’s during the last,
I would say five years

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when we started working on mobile apps
and web apps,

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and I would say search
engine optimization as well.

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Got you.

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Website was our main bread
and butter for a very long time.

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All right, when did you
add your first employee?

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We added our first employee, obviously.
We were employees, right.

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So I guess second and third and fourth.

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We added them three years ago.
Oh, wow.

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Okay.
Yeah.

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So the business is just kind of coasting

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along, doing whatever,
and then you decided, hey,

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let’s shift it into drive
and make something happen here.

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Yeah,
it really kind of, like,

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took off because we noticed
that the amount of need that was existing

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in the market, and we want to really drive
ourselves forward with a lot of force.

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And that’s when we recognize that Ravi

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and I, we can’t just do this on our own
with a bunch of OC’s resources,

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because there needs to be someone who’s
doing full time project management.

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There needs to be a team who’s doing full

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time project management,
and there needs to be other extra hands

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who can help our technical
pushers in terms of website development

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and search engine optimization, someone
who can talk to customers that are in.

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So that’s when we thought that, okay,

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we need to really hire people to
run Kalista in the most efficient manner.

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Got you.
All right.

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Was it tough to find employees?

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Yeah, we have gone through
several sets of employees.

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It’s hard to find,
I guess, people who wants to maybe stay

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with you for a long time
for all kinds of different reasons.

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And I always blame it on ourselves because

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I don’t want to excuse me, ever
blame it on the people who work for us

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because we as employers always
have to take the responsibility.

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If you had a bad hire,
it’s your fault, right?

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Yeah.

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You cannot blame it on the person whom you
hired because they heard what you said

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during the interview and they thought
that they will be a great fit for you

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and for themselves,
and they join your company.

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Now, if for some reason it doesn’t work
out, that is your responsibility, right?

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Yes.

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I guess every entrepreneur goes through
this because you have to learn to hire

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the right kind of people
and it comes from experience.

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Right.

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So we got the experience,
we went through it,

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and I think we are still going
through that experience as well.

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And it’s especially different when you

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have a company who is dealing
with different cultures,

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different time zones, and even
sometimes different languages.

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You have to kind of be very sensitive
to what someone else might think when you

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say a certain thing in a certain way,
what they might understand.

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Right.

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Just last week I actually told my team

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that we don’t know what’s going
on in your country right now.

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We have four different countries
where we have employees from.

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All right?
So

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I just told him that just tell our lead
project manager upfront in every month

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what major holidays you
have for that month.

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So that way we can plan accordingly.

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So you can have the day off,
but we just need to know upfront.

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Right.
Because looking at someone else’s

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country calendar, I cannot pick
which holidays are the major holidays.

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These are very can be looked at as minor

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things, but for someone
in that country can be a huge deal.

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Right?

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You want to take a day off
on your Independence Day, right?

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You want to take a day off.

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We can obviously keep the major known

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holidays like Christmas
and New Year’s those way.

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And in some parts of the world,
even the holidays are different.

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Like New Year’s,

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we celebrate it on the first,
but in some parts of the world it’s sacri

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religious not to come
to work on the first.

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You can party out you can party out till

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four in the morning on New Year’s Eve,
but you show up to work at least for a few

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hours on the 1 January because you do not
keep a business closed on that first day.

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That’s how they think about it.

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So you had to be sensitive
to those kind of things as well.

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So we try to cater to everyone

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and their needs to make sure that we are

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sensitive about what can be going
on culturally in their world.

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Yeah, that’s fair.

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We just added a few people
from the Philippines and I think they were

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starting or maybe their first
week was right before July 4.

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This kind of side thing like, hey,

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we’re going to be closed
on Monday for the fourth.

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They just said, Why?

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Oh, you have no idea, right?

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Dawn on me.
Yes.

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Doesn’t the whole world
celebrate this now?

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So like, wait, sorry, time out.

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And then it made me think like, whoa,

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they probably have holidays
that I have no idea about, right.

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So, yeah, we had to figure that out.

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Yeah.

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You want to be culturally appropriate
more than anything, right?

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Yeah.

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They not show up to work
one day and I’d say, Why?

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And they’re like, don’t you know,
it’s a major holiday in this country.

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Funny, interesting.

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Tell me about search engine optimization,

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because I imagine that that has
changed from 2006 even up to today.

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Just trying to think,
when did Google start?

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I guess Google was around 2006,

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but I just think of like Netscape and all
those things that AOL came and went.

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Yeah.
So search engine optimization,

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for those who don’t know what it is,
it’s how you get found in Google when

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someone is using for production
or your services.

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Right.

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When you search for electrician
in Tampa Bay, or electrician in Odessa,

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how does a certain set of electricians
show up in the map results or right down

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there in the search results is because
of search engine optimization.

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So those websites which shows up,
they have the right amount of keywords,

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the meta descriptions,
all kinds of great copy.

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They have optimized their
Google my business profile.

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They have been posting into it,

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they have pictures,
they have really worked on it,

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they have the right address, the phone
number, the name and all of that.

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And that’s how search
engine optimization works.

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Now, back in the day, to your point,

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let’s say in the early two thousand s,
if you created a website

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and in a month you search for it,
if you search for the production services

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or the name of that website,
it will easily show up

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because there were not many websites
that were available out there.

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But now

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a lot of people think that just because
you create a website automatically,

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the next day Google will find you and
Google will show you in a search result.

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And that’s not the case.

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You have got buried in the billions
of websites which are out there.

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Right?

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So if you are not proactive about telling
Google, hey Google, I’m here,

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these are the products
and services that I have to offer.

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These are the first of the top
three things which we do.

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Google will not know who you are.
Right?

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So Google has these bots.

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So these are little programs which cross

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the internet every night
and look for new stuff, new content.

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And when it sees that

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there is some kind of new content,
or that you are queuing up some new

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content to Google, google indexes
your information in its Rolodex.

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All right?
So now when a user goes in and looks

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for your products and services,
now Google pulls from its relatives

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and shows that information
to that user, right?

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So that’s how search engine optimization,

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what search engine optimization is,
and to a certain extent how it works.

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And I can obviously go into more details

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if you would like to know specific
details about how we do it.

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Yeah, I think it’d be great to know.

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Okay, so

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Google has three main areas because we
refer to Google as just Google, right?

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Google has the Google Organic,
then Google Map and then Google mobile.

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So what you see in a mobile search,

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if you look it up on your phone,
might be different from what you see,

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the same products and services if you
look that up in your computer, right?

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So when you optimize your products

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and services,
you can optimize for the phone,

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for the apps, I’m sorry, the maps,
as well as the Google Organic,

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which is just like the desktop view,
right, of search results.

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So you have to think of Google as that
the bees, which exist in Greek mythology

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with the three heads, I think celebrities,
which feeds into the same stomach, right.

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So you had to feed these three mouths.

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And that’s how the search engine

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optimization or you get the biggest
bang for your buck on Google.

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Now you do that and at the same time
get yourself, if you already don’t have

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this, get yourself a Google My
business profile, which is free.

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Anyone who’s listening in, just go
to business Google.com and it’s free.

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Get yourself a Google my business profile
and start inputting information into that.

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Now you don’t have to have an actual
business because sometimes

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there are folks who are content creators,
there are people who are coaches who do

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business under their own name,
and they ask, okay, I’m confused.

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Should I get a Google
my business profile for myself?

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The answer is absolutely yes, get
yourself a Google My business profile.

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And then you go in there and you put
in content about what you do,

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your hours of operation and description
about your production services.

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There’s an FAQ section to enter as much
information as possible in there

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to help the people who are looking
for your products and services.

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So you do that, and then when you have
website, you have to work on the on page

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content optimization, meaning
any keywords that you choose.

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Let’s take an example,
like electrician in Tampa, right?

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Because I’m based in Tampa.
I’m going to use Tampa.

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So electrician in Tampa.

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Now if I’m an electrician in Tampa,
I go to my website.

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I want to make sure that I have
electrician in Tampa

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in the first paragraph of my home page,
because whomever,

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who’s looking for my services is probably
looking for electrician in Tampa.

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So you want to mention your product or

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your service and where
you are located, right?

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And then the keyword in a few different
places throughout the website.

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And also you can
make sure you have your phone number

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on the home page and your
address on the home page.

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So that way it’s very easy for that Google

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crawler, the bot, to pick up this
information from your website.

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And then another thing which we do is we

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create lead gen SEO on steroid
pages behind the scenes.

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And these pages will have the same
keywords written natural language.

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They are not really connected to the main
framework of the website in terms of you

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can’t go to those pages from the main
navigation of the website,

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but these pages are written in a way
they are very attractive to Google.

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So Google will show these pages in search

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results, so when someone clicks on it,
it will open up that page,

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and that page looks exactly
like it’s part of the website.

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So that’s what we do.

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It’s a three prong approach when
it comes to optimizing to Google.

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So we work on the website
on page optimizations,

[00:24:08]
we work on your Google My business
profile, and then we work on behind

[00:24:15]
the scenes website optimizations as
well by creating those leads and SEO.

[00:24:21]
Pages on stage on all right, that’s cool.

[00:24:24]
So when it comes to search engine
optimization stuff, I’ve worked with some

[00:24:29]
different companies and talked
with different companies.

[00:24:32]
Some of them were just a guy in his

[00:24:34]
garage, and others were
many people in fancy high rises.

[00:24:39]
Right.
I guess, as far as that goes, yeah.

[00:24:42]
I don’t necessarily know that the high

[00:24:44]
rise people were better
than the garage guy.

[00:24:48]
I guess I base it on how long
they stayed in business.

[00:24:51]
Right.
I guess.

[00:24:52]
How do you know that your employees

[00:24:55]
that are doing the search engine
optimization are doing a good job?

[00:24:59]
Because it’s one of those things

[00:25:01]
that seems to be you don’t know if it’s
working until after it’s already passed.

[00:25:08]
Right.
So that’s a great question.

[00:25:11]
Right.

[00:25:13]
Everything we do is numbers driven.

[00:25:17]
It’s not like we send pixie dust, right?

[00:25:20]
So we want to make sure that

[00:25:24]
we basically benchmark where when we start
working to someone,

[00:25:28]
we benchmark where they stand for
the keywords that we are using.

[00:25:34]
And we track the number
of calls they are getting.

[00:25:37]
We track the number of people who comes
to their website,

[00:25:42]
we track how many people requested
directions for their business all through.

[00:25:49]
And this information is pulled into our
tool through Google Analytics.

[00:25:54]
So it’s coming from Google Analytics.

[00:25:57]
So we benchmark it and working with Google
or just search engine optimization

[00:26:03]
in general, it’s not a
short term strategy for lead.

[00:26:10]
Gen is running Google PPC
or Pay per click ads.

[00:26:14]
And we do that too.

[00:26:15]
But that can get very expensive for some
people very quickly because it is high.

[00:26:23]
So if you are not willing to spend
at least 15 grand a month,

[00:26:28]
then running Google Ads cannot
be a great strategy for you.

[00:26:34]
You said $15,000 a month.

[00:26:36]
I’m sorry, not 15,000.

[00:26:37]
Now I meant to say 1500, still 15,500.

[00:26:49]
So.

[00:26:55]
What we’ve seen is like the minimum you

[00:26:59]
should be at if you want to see
a good bang for your buck.

[00:27:03]
Right now, search engine Optimization is
a long term strategy where

[00:27:09]
you would not see results
for around 60 days to 90 days.

[00:27:15]
So think of it as trying to turn these big

[00:27:19]
heavy wheels and
it’s hard to push them to start turning,

[00:27:26]
but once they start turning,
you gain momentum, right?

[00:27:29]
And because of the momentum,
they keep spinning and spinning.

[00:27:33]
Now with the Ad strategy,
the moment you stop paying for the ads,

[00:27:40]
it just goes right down because
you’re not getting any leads, right?

[00:27:45]
But when you organically grow your

[00:27:47]
numbers, your ranking is
going to stay up there.

[00:27:52]
You have to keep in mind that you
have to keep on working on it.

[00:27:55]
This is like a horse race.

[00:27:56]
It runs Vying for that 1st,
2nd, 3rd position.

[00:28:00]
So it runs pushing forward.

[00:28:03]
But you can have this long term
strategy which can get you to the top.

[00:28:09]
And we brought people who are not even
in the top 100 results to number one

[00:28:15]
position in highly competitive
fields such as legal.

[00:28:21]
And it has work, right?

[00:28:24]
So then we get to show them that, okay,
this is where you started your baseline.

[00:28:30]
And here’s today you are getting
through the last 30 days.

[00:28:36]
You got 100 calls, you had 50
people requesting directions.

[00:28:40]
You had 2000 impressions on your website.

[00:28:44]
Out of the 2000 impressions,

[00:28:47]
88% were actual people who actually
found you through discovery.

[00:28:54]
This is important.

[00:28:55]
Discovery and Direct are the two
ways of someone finding you.

[00:29:00]
Direct is someone already
knew your name, right?

[00:29:03]
So someone knew that your name is,
let’s say Miller Electric, right?

[00:29:13]
And they just type in Miller Electric

[00:29:15]
and there was your website
and they click on it.

[00:29:18]
So that’s a direct hit.

[00:29:20]
But if someone searched for
Tampa Electrician or Electrician in Tampa

[00:29:26]
and your name showed up and they
clicked on it and they found you.

[00:29:31]
Now that’s through discovery,
and that’s the most powerful one,

[00:29:35]
because if they already know your name,
then they already know your name.

[00:29:39]
They will somehow find your information,
right, but they don’t know you.

[00:29:43]
And then they somehow discover you.

[00:29:45]
That’s where the power is.

[00:29:48]
We can track all of that and we track it

[00:29:50]
and we get to see what happened during
the last 30 days,

[00:29:53]
what happened during the last 90 days,
what happened during the last six months.

[00:29:58]
We can track all this.

[00:30:00]
We can try to see when you are getting
the calls,

[00:30:04]
when I say which day of the week you
are getting the most amount of calls.

[00:30:10]
So a report shows that, for example,
monday is your high call volume day.

[00:30:17]
So if Monday is your high call volume day,

[00:30:20]
then you probably want to resource
for Monday to have people in the office

[00:30:24]
to pick up the phone and answer
all those calls, right?

[00:30:29]
If you are getting 20 calls on Monday,

[00:30:33]
you don’t want to miss out
on any of those calls.

[00:30:35]
And then we can also see what time of the
day you are getting most amount of calls.

[00:30:41]
And this is also very important,
especially for small businesses.

[00:30:46]
With some businesses we’ve seen that they
are getting calls right around lunchtime.

[00:30:52]
And that’s because we see a spike
in the graph, right, at twelve.

[00:30:57]
That’s because other people are
calling them during their lunch break.

[00:31:03]
So now if everyone in this company is also

[00:31:07]
out for lunch, then you’re missing
out on all those calls, right?

[00:31:12]
So when you have these kind of analytics,
you can resource for that.

[00:31:17]
You can maybe tell someone, all right,
or figure it out within your team.

[00:31:22]
You guys go for lunch early and come back

[00:31:26]
by noon so you can man the woman the call,
or go after, say 150.

[00:31:35]
So we have some kind of a team
understanding that someone will always be

[00:31:40]
there to answer the phone call,
or maybe one person or two people.

[00:31:44]
So it’s all about knowing data
about your business, right.

[00:31:48]
If you don’t have that dashboard of data,
then you don’t know what’s going on.

[00:31:54]
And you are blindly doing the same thing

[00:31:58]
over and over again, month after month,
and your business is not growing.

[00:32:04]
And this is why interesting.

[00:32:08]
So as far as calls go, specifically,
it’s just good on that road.

[00:32:11]
That’s a fun road.

[00:32:12]
Yeah, these are calls that people
essentially paid to come in.

[00:32:16]
How are you keeping track of that?

[00:32:17]
Is that through Google Analytics
or is that a different tool?

[00:32:21]
Yeah, so we use Bright Local as our tool,
and that’s connected to Google Analytics.

[00:32:26]
So when you run Ads,

[00:32:34]
you have a different phone number, right?

[00:32:37]
You get a different phone number and very

[00:32:40]
easily you can get a Google voice
phone number for free.

[00:32:44]
Or if you have a phone company who is

[00:32:46]
maintaining your phone system, then you
can get another phone number from them.

[00:32:51]
So you want to have a different
phone number for your campaign.

[00:32:55]
So that way you know that this phone
is ringing because of the campaign.

[00:33:00]
Right?
Got it.

[00:33:01]
It doesn’t need to be your main number
because there’s no way of justifying

[00:33:07]
saying that these calls are
generated because of the campaign.

[00:33:10]
Got it.
All right.

[00:33:12]
The clients that you work with,
do they fit in a niche or a size,

[00:33:16]
or is there a target market that your
company specifically works with?

[00:33:21]
Are you helping everyone from the tiny
company to the multi billion dollar?

[00:33:26]
Yeah, I think people who

[00:33:32]
take the most use out of us are the folks
who have been running their businesses

[00:33:39]
for the last three to five years at least,
and they already have a web presence,

[00:33:45]
and then they want to take
it to the next level.

[00:33:47]
Maybe their website was created when they

[00:33:50]
first started their business, and then
they want to take it to the next level.

[00:33:54]
In terms of the outreach,

[00:33:57]
someone who’s doing at least 3000,
$500,000 in annual revenue

[00:34:03]
and all the way up to 10 million,
we can handle anyone within that range.

[00:34:11]
And I understand it’s a big range,
but we have done work with folks who are

[00:34:17]
in that range because
everyone needs a high conversion website.

[00:34:23]
Everyone needs to make sure that they get

[00:34:24]
shown up in Google when someone
searches for their information.

[00:34:29]
And then along the way,

[00:34:33]
to grow your business,
you need to put in internal processes

[00:34:37]
and you have to bring in
systems to bring up your efficiency.

[00:34:43]
Right.
So in a case like that,

[00:34:45]
we can obviously help them out with mobile
app or web app or internal apps or

[00:34:50]
whatever they need in terms of
helping them out with their software.

[00:34:58]
Got you.

[00:34:59]
Let’s shift gears and talk about
the app part of your business.

[00:35:03]
Yeah.
Apps.

[00:35:04]
That’s the hot word.

[00:35:11]
Mobile apps have been
around for a long time.

[00:35:14]
Right.

[00:35:14]
So I think there are
billion apps out there now.

[00:35:19]
And
apps are a very interesting thing because

[00:35:27]
a lot of business owners comes to us
and say that I need to build an app.

[00:35:32]
And I asked them, who told you this?

[00:35:35]
And they say, I think we need an app.

[00:35:38]
So that person came up
with the idea of I need an app.

[00:35:43]
And I tell them,
make sure that your users need the app.

[00:35:49]
Right.
It’s not that I need an app.

[00:35:52]
It’s like, would my users actually

[00:35:54]
download this app, have it in their phone,
and actually use it?

[00:35:58]
And that’s when you want to create an app.

[00:36:00]
You don’t want to create an app
just because you need an app.

[00:36:04]
It’s not cool to have an app unless

[00:36:06]
there’s an actual real need for it
and people will actually use it.

[00:36:11]
So the app development,

[00:36:13]
the way it works with us is
someone who has an idea for an app.

[00:36:18]
A lot of people who has an idea

[00:36:21]
for an app, they don’t have
an It background, right?

[00:36:24]
So we kind of walk them
through the process.

[00:36:26]
They come to us, and we do a zoom call,
and we gather from them what exactly they

[00:36:32]
ask them, and then we write it up as
a requirement specification document.

[00:36:39]
So we show them that we have
understood your idea for the app.

[00:36:44]
And during this process,
we might have to meet with them another

[00:36:47]
time just to answer some
follow up questions.

[00:36:51]
And then we create a pricing proposal.

[00:36:57]
We have a task list, which we create

[00:37:00]
the modules which will go into each
of the features of the app.

[00:37:04]
And then we come up with the pricing
proposal, and we get it out to them.

[00:37:08]
And then if everything’s good to go,
then we start working on it.

[00:37:12]
Now, app development can take a little

[00:37:14]
longer than how long it will
take to create a mobile website.

[00:37:20]
So apps can range from three,

[00:37:25]
four months to multiple years based on
the size and the complexity of the app.

[00:37:33]
All right.

[00:37:36]
We are actually in the process

[00:37:38]
of finishing up an app for one of our
clients, which is almost like a clone

[00:37:47]
of Netflix for public
broadcasting television stations.

[00:37:51]
Oh, really?
Yeah.

[00:37:54]
So I’m very excited about that.

[00:37:56]
And once it’s actually out,
we’ll do like, media updates about that.

[00:38:04]
We can pretty much take any kind of like
just to show you, give you an idea.

[00:38:10]
We can take apps of any kind of complexity
that Netflix like app.

[00:38:16]
There’s a lot to do with behind the scenes
in terms of optimized video rendering,

[00:38:23]
optimized playback,
and you have to deal with bandwidth

[00:38:27]
of each user, those kind of things which
you have to take into consideration.

[00:38:31]
And the other bad thing which is going out

[00:38:33]
for us is that there is already
something called Netflix.

[00:38:36]
So people are used to the
network experience, right?

[00:38:40]
People are already used to the
Fire TV experience.

[00:38:46]
People are used to a lot
of streaming content.

[00:38:49]
So when you create an app,

[00:38:51]
you have to have it at the same level or
above the quality which someone has

[00:38:58]
already experienced
with another app, right?

[00:38:59]
So it can be below quality.

[00:39:02]
No one will use it.

[00:39:05]
These are certain things which we
take into consideration.

[00:39:08]
And also, we just don’t
behave like a hired gun.

[00:39:14]
We always try to think with you,

[00:39:18]
think with the business owner,
think with that entrepreneur.

[00:39:23]
What do they actually need?

[00:39:25]
What can we give them to make them
successful,

[00:39:30]
whether it’s a website or an app,
or maybe they miss out on something,

[00:39:33]
we’ll point it out to them and ask them,
do you think this is important?

[00:39:38]
I mean, do you think that if you do this,
would this be important?

[00:39:42]
And they might have an idea which we will

[00:39:45]
tell them up front that we
don’t think is a great idea.

[00:39:48]
All right, yeah, we will.

[00:39:51]
And it might be not just the idea.

[00:39:55]
It can be something along the way of we

[00:39:59]
are creating an app and we are trying
to add a new feature which

[00:40:05]
the entrepreneur will say,
why don’t we add this feature?

[00:40:08]
And we might say that, oh, I don’t know.

[00:40:10]
I don’t know whether that’s a great

[00:40:12]
feature because we’ve seen that this
feature has actually not gone so well

[00:40:16]
with other apps and we can show
examples and things like that.

[00:40:20]
All right, well, that’s cool.

[00:40:23]
I wonder this is just more curiosity
question, I guess,

[00:40:26]
for the people with ideas that are
afraid to implement them on their own.

[00:40:32]
Every entrepreneur that I know has just

[00:40:35]
zillions of ideas falling through
their head any given day.

[00:40:39]
And that may be one of those.

[00:40:41]
But just like any other idea you’re like,
what would it take to actually implement

[00:40:45]
that return on investment,
stuff like that.

[00:40:48]
So just can you give a range for entry
level app, what people are talking about?

[00:40:54]
Just ballpark price wise?

[00:40:56]
I mean, we’re talking hundreds
of dollars, thousands of dollars.

[00:40:59]
Tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah.

[00:41:02]
I would say for entry level app,

[00:41:06]
you are looking at
ten to $20,000 entry level app.

[00:41:13]
And you have to remember that apps,

[00:41:18]
any kind of software, especially apps, are
never a one and done type project, right?

[00:41:24]
You got to come up with version two,
three and so on and so forth.

[00:41:28]
So just kind of keep that in mind
as you plan out creating an app.

[00:41:33]
Right?

[00:41:36]
App costs can go up very easily.

[00:41:40]
Sure.

[00:41:43]
But what I would say is I know that all

[00:41:46]
the entrepreneurs who are listening,
they have zillion different ideas.

[00:41:52]
When you have an idea,
don’t delay working on that idea.

[00:41:56]
Because if you delay it,
someone else will pick up on that idea.

[00:42:00]
And because I guarantee you,

[00:42:01]
you’re not the only one who’s
thinking about it, right?

[00:42:03]
There will be other people who are

[00:42:05]
thinking about it and they
will implement it before you.

[00:42:08]
And then there’s that
first move advantage.

[00:42:10]
So don’t be that guy or girl.

[00:42:14]
But I said that when you have an idea I

[00:42:18]
didn’t say that build an app when you
have an idea, research on that idea.

[00:42:22]
See whether there is already an app or

[00:42:25]
something similar
to your idea, which you might be able

[00:42:31]
to or which people might be able to use
without really

[00:42:38]
not you having to create a new app or
whether that particular app which already

[00:42:44]
exists, completely missed
the mark on your idea, right?

[00:42:50]
So just do a very thorough
and this research is very easy.

[00:42:56]
Just get on Google
and search it top to bottom.

[00:43:00]
See that there’s an app which kind
of does the same thing.

[00:43:03]
So for entrepreneurs, there are
two ways of doing it, right?

[00:43:08]
So you can create your own app or you can
start using an app and maybe change your

[00:43:14]
workflow or process in order
to fit into what that app allows.

[00:43:21]
And then I guess there’s another way where
you can take an app and you can maybe

[00:43:29]
white label it and then use
it for internal purposes.

[00:43:33]
Now, if you are thinking about making
money out of apps

[00:43:37]
and I guess that’s what everyone wants
to do,

[00:43:41]
you want to obviously have a return
on your project,

[00:43:45]
then you want to think about how
you are going to make money too.

[00:43:52]
It can be through having Google Ads.

[00:43:55]
You can have like a version which has ads

[00:43:57]
and then someone will pay 599 or 499
a month for those ads to go away, right?

[00:44:06]
And then the other
model which you can go off by is

[00:44:13]
you remember back in the day you had
the live version of the app and the pro

[00:44:18]
version, but now within the same app,
depending on your subscription pricing

[00:44:24]
level, we can toggle like enable disable
certain features for certain uses.

[00:44:31]
Interesting.
So yeah, you can do that.

[00:44:34]
So they have the option of

[00:44:38]
having a website where someone will
get the premium version.

[00:44:45]
And then there’s 499 a month,
1299 a month,

[00:44:50]
$99 a month based on the features that
they are going to get out of the app.

[00:44:56]
Right.

[00:45:00]
You definitely can get a return

[00:45:02]
on the investment and then with a very
heavy user base,

[00:45:09]
you can really monetize it and one day you
might even be able to sell your business.

[00:45:16]
Imagine right now if you have a user base

[00:45:19]
of 100,000, right, paying you
$499 a month, that’s big money.

[00:45:25]
That’s all right.

[00:45:28]
So, AJ, what is the future for Kallisto Art?

[00:45:33]
So we are actually going
to change our name.

[00:45:36]
All right.
That’s the number one thing, right?

[00:45:38]
So we have been known as Kallisto Art for
the last 16 years and we came up

[00:45:46]
with the name when we are just
a web development company.

[00:45:49]
So creating most beautiful art form

[00:45:51]
on the web was our passion and that’s
how close to our name came into play.

[00:45:54]
And now we are more of a tech company

[00:45:56]
because we are involved
with search engine optimization.

[00:45:59]
We do mobile app development,
web app development.

[00:46:01]
So that’s why we are changing
the name to Kallisto Tech.

[00:46:05]
And that change will happen here shortly,

[00:46:07]
I would imagine within
the next couple of months.

[00:46:10]
All right, that’s soon.

[00:46:12]
And then we are also
growing in terms of team members.

[00:46:19]
So very excited about that as well.

[00:46:21]
Nice.

[00:46:22]
So you’ll be on a yacht somewhere
in a few months, something like that.

[00:46:28]
So talking about a yacht, we actually
partnered with another business.

[00:46:34]
We are creating a yachting listing
and closing platform as well.

[00:46:40]
I’m a 50% partner in that business
and that will be out here shortly.

[00:46:44]
And once it’s out and we’ve been working
on it for the last one and a half years.

[00:46:49]
So I’ll keep you posted.
Nice.

[00:46:51]
Maybe come here another
time and talk about it.

[00:46:53]
Yeah.
That’s awesome.

[00:46:55]
AJ, we are out of time.

[00:46:57]
That went crazy fast.

[00:46:58]
I know, right?

[00:47:00]
Can you tell people how they can find you?

[00:47:03]
Absolutely.

[00:47:04]
Anyone who would like to connect with me,
you can go to aja360.com

[00:47:11]

again.

[00:47:12]
That’s aja360.com

[00:47:16]
and you’ll see
all my contact information from my social

[00:47:20]
media accounts to email, to
phone numbers, all of that.

[00:47:25]
So feel free to please go
connect with me on social media.

[00:47:31]
When you go to aja360.com, just click on the contact link

[00:47:36]
in the menu and you’ll find
my information out there.

[00:47:40]
Nice.
Awesome.

[00:47:41]
I appreciate that.

[00:47:42]
And then Kallisto Art,
what is the website for that?

[00:47:45]
Kallistoart.com is spelled
as K-A-L-L-I-S-T, as in Tom,

[00:47:54]
-O- art.com. It’s again.

[00:47:57]
Kallistoart.com and James

[00:48:03]
can I give a free gift to the listeners?

[00:48:06]
I’m sure they’d be okay with that.
Okay.

[00:48:08]
All right.

[00:48:09]
So
when you visit Kallistoart.com,

[00:48:15]
there is a link called Free Gift
in the top right corner.

[00:48:20]
And just click on that and you get to see

[00:48:25]
a free white paper
which talks all about SEO.

[00:48:29]
You’ll be able to download it and it talks
about what are the benefits of having SEO

[00:48:35]
and how you can even
sometimes do it yourself.

[00:48:37]
So feel free to go and check it out.
Nice.

[00:48:40]
I love it.
Internet is not just a fad, right?

[00:48:43]
Yeah, it is sticking around a little bit.
Awesome.

[00:48:47]
Well, thank you, AJ.
Absolutely.

[00:48:49]
Thanks for having me.
This was a real pleasure.

[00:48:51]
Yeah.

[00:48:52]
This has been
Authentic Business Adventures, the business

[00:48:54]
program that brings you the struggles, stories
and triumphant successes of business owners across the land.

[00:49:04]
We are underwritten locally by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:49:04]
If you could do us a favor and give us the big old thumbs up subscribe.

[00:49:06]
And of course,
comment or ask any questions that you may

[00:49:09]
have for AJ or myself below that keeps
us doing what we’re doing here.

[00:49:13]
My name is James Kademan.

[00:49:14]
And Authentic Business Adventures is

[00:49:16]
brought to you by Calls On Call,
offering call answering and receptionist

[00:49:20]
services for service
businesses across the country.

[00:49:22]
On the web at callsoncall.com. As well as

[00:49:26]
Draw In Customers

[00:49:27]
Business Coaching, offering business coaching,
services for entrepreneurs looking

[00:49:30]
for growth on the
web at drawincustomercom.com. And of course,

[00:49:34]
The Bold Business Book, a book
for the entrepreneur in all of us.

[00:49:37]
Available wherever fine books are sold.

[00:49:39]
We’d like to thank you are wonderful
listeners as well as, I guess,

[00:49:42]
AJ Aluthwala, I probably
destroyed that last name.

[00:49:45]
I’m so sorry about that.
All right.

[00:49:47]
Co founder of Kallisto Art,
soon to be Kallisto Tech.

[00:49:52]
Is that right?
That is right.

[00:49:54]
I love it.
I love it.

[00:49:55]
Growth and progress, that’s all happiness.

[00:49:58]
AJ, thank you so much
for being on the show.

[00:50:01]
Thank you so much for having me

[00:50:02]
James, appreciate you.
Sweet, sweet.

[00:50:04]
Past episodes can be found morning, noon and, night.

[00:50:06]
The podcast link found at drawincustomerscom.com.
Thank you for listening.

[00:50:10]
We will see you next week.
I want you to stay awesome.

[00:50:12]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.