David Ciccarelli, CEO & Founder of Voices.com | How to Build a Two-Sided Marketplace From Scratch

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts you should go check out like being boss hosted by Emily Thompson. Now with the holidays just around the corner you're probably thinking what's next for you in the new year what other shows are you going to listen to to level yourself up well on the success story podcast interview a lot of entrepreneurs and I usually dive deep into the creative aspects of building a business so if you are creative a creative business owner or you're thinking about eventually becoming one which at some point everybody kind of has to be because you have to be a little bit creative in how you build a business how you market a business now you sell your product all that does require some creativity but also for people that are hyper focused on the creative niche you may be interested in being boss hosted by Emily Thompson being boss is an exploration of not only what it means but what it takes to be a boss as a creative business owner. You are into some of the following topics you're going to love this show project management and building systems for creatives freelancers or side hustlers opening a retail store rituals that inspire and evoke creativity and taking time off as a business owner to focus on yourself your creativity and up skilling you need to listen to being boss they cover all these topics and more you can listen to being boss on any of your favorite podcasting platforms or at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. David Cicarelli founder and CEO of voices.com the largest marketplace for voice talent in the world voices.com has over one million members they've received $20 million in funding to date numbers wise they have users from 160 countries and 5,000 jobs are posted every single month their clients include marquee names like Microsoft Shopify Hulu discovery and many others. David is responsible for setting the vision excluding the growth strategy creating and ensuring that there is a vibrant culture managing the company on a day to day basis he is frequently published in outlets such as the Globe and Mail Forbes and the Wall Street Journal some of the things we spoke about we spoke about David's journey how and why he started voices.com some of the things he fumbled with when he was first starting voices.com lessons learned while he competed with hundreds of startups trying to make a name for themselves in this category. So that was at the beginning how he still competes how he still maintains market share how he still maintains the fact that he's the incumbent in this particular category and how he stops himself from being disrupted we speak about growth marketing and scaling on a small budget right now they have $20 million in funding they didn't have that at the beginning how he had to be creative about evangelizing scaling growing marketing the company from the ground up just with himself and his partner. And also how anybody can compete with giants by simplifying their business and how when his business got bloated when it was getting big he realized that trimming some of the fat was the best way to continue to scale to grow and he speaks about some strategies for simplifying to expedite to increase the growth of your business. So some great entrepreneurial lessons David is an exceptional founder and entrepreneur so I really hope you enjoy this is David sister rally co founder and CEO of voices.com. Alright well Scott thanks thanks for having me and great to be here I mean yeah origin story I mean I think every entrepreneur probably has you know a kernel of where that idea came from maybe it was your childhood or some event that happened in your youth. And for me it was growing up all around music and sound I think at the time you didn't appreciate you know why your parents put you in you know piano lessons or you know drumming or playing a play guitar and for me it was kind of all of the above and I also really love some of the sound and kind of equipment you know sound equipment that we had around the house I mean there's this old shortwave radio where I could tune into radio stations around the world. Even hearing people speak other languages I thought that was really cool we had this old record player I could listen to not only like music but also recordings of the human voice people telling stories I was just really kept captivated by that. So when it came time to find kind of a post secondary kind of after high school you know what are you gonna do with the rest of your life. I also ultimately decided on this audio engineering program that kind of blended the art and the tech and the music and it was there where I learned how to record and edit and produce music in a recording studio. And I just remember on and it's a story actually tell for new employees joining voices and I remember being there on day one just like a new employee and kind of like day one week one and you're in that orientation. And the teacher from the school got up in front of the class that was this big mixing console at the front you know that look like the bridge of the starship enterprise very intimidating for all of us newbies. And this lecture theater and holding up two things in the hand one was a tennis ball and one was a microphone and just saying if you don't know the difference between these two don't sweat it we're gonna teach you everything and that's actually a same message that I shared a new employees joining voices around kind of learning about the industry and how the business works. But for me after I graduated from that program actually opened up a small recording studio of my own in London candidates about an hour outside of Toronto hour and a half outside of Toronto. And I actually got my name on the local newspaper on my birthday of all days and that's when lo and behold it was actually Stephanie who's now my dear wife of course and co founder and voices calm in. At the time she was a singer she sing at weddings and funerals and other special events and she was also in the music program at the western university so. Her mom actually read this newspaper article and said why don't you go down to the studio and actually get your singing repertoire recorded and then you can have some marketing collateral that you can actually hand out to people you know maybe on CD so I'm kind of you're going back more than 10 years here when you actually stand out CDs. So Stephanie came down to the studio shaperone of course by her mother and we ended up doing those recordings but because of that same newspaper article there are other small businesses in the city that wanted to hire a female voice for some radio commercials for some phone system recordings. And I only knew one girl in the city so I gave Stephanie a ring and I said look at all I've got a gig couple gigs I'll be the engineer and you be the female voice talent and that was it affect not only my proposal of how to work together but I think it serves a double duty as my marriage proposal because. You got a whole bunch of work. I think I married my first customer it's really what happened in that one but we ended up you know of course getting working together really really well and launching what became you know kind of pivoting which is sometimes it's perhaps an overused term but I think we just kind of move forward in the same direction was me being the engineer Stephanie being the talent to saying. You know let's get a website together so we actually went to the local public library took a web design for dummies and just 10 years ago this feels like well maybe maybe 15 or so yeah and I mean listen there was nothing like you know you think of nowadays you have access to WordPress you have access to like wicks or other content management systems shop a five you're doing e-commerce I mean there really wasn't anything that was nearly that mature yet to hand code your your own websites basically. In HTML that's that's what we did and then soon thereafter realize after putting the site up there were freelance talent you know people who spoke other languages had other actions located in different parts of North America that would contact us and say how do I get on this website you know I see got a few names there how do I how do I get listed and we always just said yeah sure sign up sign up for free give us can contact information will build a page for you. And then concurrently there would be clients who would be you know advertising agency small video production companies that would be saying I see this person on your website it's a link to click and play and listen but how do I actually hire them how do I get in touch with them and that was I refer to that as the aha moment right I mean every entrepreneur has them. Sometimes it's like the epiphany to realize like the world just seems to kind of click and for for us that was why are we still in the recording business why don't we take a step back and facilitate these connections and that's really at the heart of what a two-sided marketplace or an online marketplace is which is a super hot business model nowadays of bringing together buyers and sellers creators and you know consumers if you will. And so you know we can we can unpack that as well but that is an effect the business model of bringing these two parties together for a service and for us it's a voice over service and more recently looking at other creative services like music production and translation and audio editing these other kind of complimentary but that's been the business you know idea from its inception and we just stuck with it all of this time to where we are today. So I want to there is things that I want to first of all thank you for the story I appreciate and I love seeing the evolution of business ideas now let's let's say the first I want to talk about creator you know this marketplace this doubles this two-sided marketplace but okay let's even talk about the domain because I think that's the very interesting that's a very premium domain right there's no more I don't think you can get a single word domain in the English language anymore so not like a dictionary word that's for sure. We actually started as as interactive voices calm which is kind of a mouthful you know it served us well for the first kind of like four or five years I think we got up to about 10,000 registered users had clients from NBC and Microsoft so I mean it it definitely got the thing going so you know maybe first point is like business leaders and entrepreneurs don't feel that you know don't let that being a blocking factor and like I can't launch until I have the perfect. Name I think it's better to launch fast get feedback from the market and validate and then hey it's worth investing in that premium premium domain so for us it was interactive voices your you know your profile Scott if you had one would have been Scott dot interactive voices dot com so again that's okay not great but and it's funny because people would miss ballet they think it was voice interactive like get the words flipped around the dumbest mistakes but it's still it. It's singular plural yeah and and we know it's funny like one lady even kind of you know she complained to us that she had to type it out every time and it was like her fingers are getting tired I'm like you can bookmark the page you know there are easier ways to get to the site but nonetheless you know we realize maybe this is more of a hindrance because it kind of pigeonhole this into like new media interactive medium like but voice over is like a multi billion dollar global market really nowadays anytime you hear the human voice. Voice somebody either went into a studio to create to record or they've actually went into a studio to train one of these synthetic voice systems that sometimes you hear on like tiktok as an example where somebody's voice is actually generating that computerized voice. So either way people are behind every bit all the voices you hear and so it was a much bigger market I was on a bit of a quest to change the domain name and in our address and I actually went I looked at vox dot com and voxio voxie you know dropping vowels and just trying to find something shorter and tighter and I put in a bid actually a hundred thousand dollars for vox dot com which we ended up losing the auction. And that of course went to vox media but you know that I realize well maybe rather than like a name a whole sale like rebranding what perhaps it was like more of a name a shortening a simplification if you will and what if we just caught out the interactive part and we're just like voices. And I did what probably most of you've done is you go to Google you type it in and like see if there's even a website registered and it was it was a site it was a medical journal called silencing the critical voices in your head and it was registered in 1998 hadn't been updated since 2000 so again a good I think seven years since it's been touched and I actually reached out to a lawyer who we just met and I said do you think you can send this do the who is look up right the reverse look up yeah. And send this fellow an email and ask him if he would sell the name and if so what price and he came back with the price of 50,000 which was half of what the auction was with vox so I realized well we're already ahead but I didn't have 50,000 on hand so I went to all of the banks and made the pitch of hey we're we're built in rebranding and building this new website and like see buying servers you're going to hire a bunch of people like no just just a domain name and they're like can't you. Go and just register those like off the shelf you know from go daddy or network solutions or wherever I'm like no they're not really available like that and so I appreciated the value in that so the lawyer actually taught me an important lesson which was everyone was saying no and he's like well don't take no for an answer look at the seller wanted it was willing to sell and they named their price so let's go back with a counter offer how can we meet that and so we came back with $30,000 which was we divided into payments you know $5,000 a quarter over the next six quarters and with that he went for the deal so for $5,000 that I you know probably foolishly did a cash advance on our credit card to get to get the money to go and whatever takes whatever it takes right yeah I got the name which is I mean listen listen looking back those got I'd say that was like one of the defining moments that you know really changed the trajectory went from like this obscure kind of quirky mouthful of a name to voices and it just sounds like we've been around forever the blessing in disguise are that all of that as well was that Google at the time was really I'm going to say overwaiting the age of the domain because it was like one of these factors you can't really manipulate in in the search engine results kind of factors and we ended up just doubling our traffic virtually overnight like we just kind of pointed you know redirect same website same pages all the content exactly the same just on a new domain and the traffic double over that weekend where we made that implementation and just hadn't looked back ever since and other like byproducts like organic traffic up you know journalists and reporters from CNN Los Angeles Times you know they're doing they've written stories about the industry or celebrities and doing voice acting or you know Alexa or the first Amazon Kindle had this like voice that we kind of read out to you with kind of the voice that we kind of read out to you precursor actually to Alexa and whenever there was like some tech story with voice they do research and then reach out for comment so we got a lot of these other knock on effects that I totally were unquantifiable at the time but I think that just shows you that sometimes you just didn't need to take that step out in faith because if you really see the potential in something you just need to take that step. I'm curious where your head was that when you made that so yeah it wasn't 100,000 it wasn't 50,000 it was 30,000, 5,000, a quarter were you revenue generating at this point I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode master works most millionaires do this listen after interviewing over 200 entrepreneurs and investors highly successful people I've discovered they all do one thing in common to become a millionaire you have to invest like one but that's easier said than done because the truth. 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Where was the business I guess we were in the business so the business model at the time which I mean it's slightly evolved since then but it was a it was a membership based site so the voice talent could sign up for free or they could upgrade to a premium subscription which we started at $99 a year and you know every couple years kind of four or five years we you know increased by another you know $100 or so It's now $500 a year subscription but at that time, you know, there is great recurring revenue that comes from a membership-based site. And what are the talents subscribing to? It's really to gain access to those job opportunities that are posted by clients. So hey, for a really, frankly, a nominal membership free in advance, I now am participating in a marketplace where, kind of as a platform, voices is bringing all of these buyers, you know, as I say, from ad agencies, from corporate marketing departments that someone in, you know, maybe a major center might have access to or have like that traditional talent agent. But if you're really talented, but you don't live in New York or LA, how are you going to kind of break through into the industry? And so I think we unlocked a lot of potential and welcome new talent on the platform because that, you know, value prop, if you will, resonated with them. Great. Create an online profile, get access to clients and hopefully be a venue where I can build my career. And I also want to, before we keep going down this story, I want to understand, how did you even scale the first, how did you get the first customers on the platform? How did you get your first thousand customers on the platform? And then I want to understand, after you switch that domain, you can talk numbers or not. It's up to you. But what year MRR was pre domain and then post domain and how that kind of helped you ramp up? Yeah, sure. So the pre MRR would probably be something like, I think the first goal was always to get to 8,000 a month because that would be the 10 or 100,000 issue a year. And then so that was certainly kind of a pre. I think we had like one other employee, we did not pay ourselves, Stephanie and I very much at all. And I think we got up to about $500,000 in annual recurring revenue. And that was, you know, before kind of the domain and, you know, it's really been almost a, you know, doubling virtually every year. And of course, the law of big numbers starts to kick into place where it becomes much harder. That's why it's so admirable when you see these like big tech companies or like zoom, like in the kind of thick of the pandemic, I think grew it like three or four hundred percent and you're just like holy smokes. That must have been like mind boggling numbers, yeah, for sure. It's like there's another thousand employees here that weren't here three months ago. But for us, you know, I'm not clearly a much, much smaller scale. But you know, I, you know, it's, it was a while back, but I would definitely say in kind of like that, you know, doubling kind of before and after. So to get, you know, these, the two-sided marketplace or, you know, an online marketplace, kind of these terms are used a little bit interchangeably. They're actually really difficult businesses to pull off because they require what's known and you have to solve the chicken and egg problem where you have supply. So in this case, talent, but for Airbnb, it might be rooms available for Uber. It might be right, you know, drivers available to take you for a ride. I mean, go down the list of, you know, open table. It's like seats and tables available at restaurants. That's the supply. And then you have to demand people looking to make a booking or to hire a talent or a freelancer. And the supply is not going to show up unless there's enough demand, but the demand's not going to go if they don't think anyone's going to be there to fulfill their request. And so there's a couple of approaches. One is, and the one that we used is what I was kind of like this equal balanced approach where Stephanie and I divided and conquered. And it was always the voice talent, you know, gal and she built relationships with talent reaching out one at a time and saying, you know, literally by email, going to their website, just searching around, going to the website and inviting people onto the platform one at a time. And my job was to reach out to those clients, which I called called like old school, called 10,000 calls over the first kind of like first five years. I just made all the calls to as many people as I could finding, you know, lists or directories or, you know, conferences or somebody was, you know, sponsoring. I would just give them a call and invite them. That was the whole thing was just invite invite invite. And it would be at their discretion whether or not they wanted to, we wanted to sign up if you will. It was it wasn't some some platforms go all in on one side and then shift their direction. I think for us, as we started, it was each side very incremental and more recently, where we expanded from just voice over into these new complimentary categories. As I was mentioning, you know, audio production and music in particular and translation. Here, the approach was a little bit different. And it's kind of like, let's go to the playbook initially. We started with a think a few hundred talent before the first clients would come on and post jobs, but maybe not quite that many few, you know, up to around a hundred. And so by that same product, you actually need a lot less supply than you would think because let's just get enough that we can fulfill that first request. And just at one point, I just want to ask quickly, sorry, before you keep going, just to clarify something. When you when you cold call these 10,000 people or when you're reaching a cold email, you're just getting everybody on like you're again, that that Paul Graham doing things that don't scale mentality. Like that's like the step one, but you're not you're not charging these people. You're just bringing them into that you can keep you have that sort of that that baseline that you can now exactly now charge a bill. Okay, okay, sorry, but I don't want to clarify. Okay, and so yeah, I know a great point and it is exactly that. Like it did not scale and actually have a funny story about that that when we went to expand to these new categories, we're like, wow, how do we how many free how many freelance translators do we need in order to go live, right? And in speaking with our board member, one of our board members who was a previous like SVP at Upwork, and she's like, well, you know, we always kind of use this proxy of like 10,000 freelancers to make a category to have sufficient was referred to as marketplace liquidity. And I thought seemed like a huge number to me. So that took us we plan that was going to take us six months. And by just welcoming in and inviting freelance translators and audio produce, we end up with 50,000 translators over about a four week period. So clearly there's a lot of supply, if you will, or creative talent that are out there that are wanting to participate in the gig economy. And so we read that was a huge lesson. We did mostly, I mean, the most effective means was through online advertising, you know, Facebook and Instagram, a bit of Google AdWords. What we tried to repeat that was successful more than 10 years ago was those one on one emails and just calling, you know, calling people from again directories that we found totally did not work just cold, like cold standing and email saying we're expanding to these people hadn't heard of us at all did not work at all. We spent a couple weeks trying to do that. And I think our big takeaway when we did our retrospective, which is another great, you know, I think is a nicer turn than a post mortem, right. It's a retro of like what worked and what didn't about this launch was recognizing that we have to do things that scale at this point. We don't it was just very inefficient. And so that was, you know, that was just a small kind of lesson learned it just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it's going to work again in the future. So therefore try it and be quick to let it go. And that was that's what we found and then pivoted accordingly. Do you think there's a reason why it worked because for an entrepreneur that's very disheartening right because for an entrepreneur, they don't have capital to test at scale. They can't pump $10,000 into ad words and see if people are converting for a new product category, they have to call, they have to email us. Was there a nuance as to why it didn't work now? I have a hypothesis. I think it's very different when you're a founder making a personal plea for somebody new to try something out versus, you know, have utmost respect for our team members. But I think they were it was it was an assignment right and it's like, okay, we're all going to send 300 emails right to all these people and it was just it may have lacked the. It was templated like we went through and kind of like it may have lacked the personality and the you know that the not personality like the personal approach that was like we I've listened to your, you know, I've reviewed your credentials. I think you would be great to the platform like a founder can say that with such authenticity and in a convincing manner and it's like if you don't, you know, if this doesn't make sense to you like let me know you're all like there's such a thirst for feedback amongst founders that you're willing to try whatever it is and even if someone says no, it's like we'll help me understand why not and so I can learn for next time. So I think that would probably be the nuance Stephanie did it such a phenomenal job the first time the personal plea and so forth and maybe there was something there that that would be kind of the only you know that that's my hypothesis. It's a smart it's a smart lesson to and it's a smart lesson for founders it's a very smart list for founders because sometimes they they fall into this trap of not understanding why. The employees don't have the same evangelism and conviction but it will never be and I think that something you have to just be okay with and that's something that you are running into when you actually try to replicate the the founder led strategy that you know originally got you that success very smart yeah I mean it reminds me it reminds me Scott of like. When determining where you should be spending your time as as the founder or as the CEO is to do those things that only you can do. And I'll say that again because it's so powerful when you're evaluating do I do this or that and what's the most important on my might to do list. What are those things that only you can do and some that might be talking to an investor it might be leading the you know for new employee training doing the here's who we are in how and sharing the vision here's our cultural norms that is so powerful coming from the founder as one of those things that only you can do with that enthusiasm. And compared to perhaps a number of other tasks which might be interesting might be you know they might inspire you but you might not actually be the best person to do so and I found. You know myself in a lot of those situations as well where and I see that another entrepreneur is like and you're kind of in your own way here like you are preventing the company from scaling. Now there's things that you can do and only you can do and therefore go all in on those and let other people thrive in their own right. And kind of stepping into your shoes there fine you can provide some guidance and mentorship along the way but you know if if four people can do it and it doesn't have to be you then just don't don't insert yourself unnecessarily so I hopefully that was that's helpful to somebody listening out there. I think so I think these are very you've lived it and you've and you've learned from from from obviously doing doing probably the wrong thing more than one and then getting out of your own way that's something that I think if the sooner the founder can figure that out and find a way to make themselves as redundant as possible that's when the business can really can really take off. Okay so we talked okay so we spoke about okay so how you got your first first thousand customers growth after the acquisition with with voices calm any other any other tips for how you scaled and marketed the business anything innovative or different that you tried failed at learned lessons from that you want to talk about. Yeah I mean there's you know maybe just kind of breaking apart some of the marketplace dynamics because you know I often you know we'll speak about this and then even like get the questions like well I actually have an idea for a marketplace in like X category you know often the like Uber for excellence like okay well. You need to understand how these things kind of work and what are those critical components and there's and there's four of them and the I mean this is really inspired to give credit where it's due is from a great book called platform revolution I highly recommend it's by a number of like Boston College MIT you know professors it's really well done. And they describe the difference between kind of old traditional world pipeline business where it's very much along a value chain and everyone's trying to take their piece of the pie and and control. The information and who does what and what kind of move through because they're incentivized to keep it a closed system and control their part of that value chain. So the complement of that or the modern day equivalent that is not a pipeline but a platform and a platform has four components you have the participants we talked about this the buyers and sellers the creators and the consumers so even on YouTube or podcasts there are people creating and then there are people listening and or on Twitter it's like 99.99% of the people are just consuming or reading content there versus. The creators who are actually posting so who are the participants and then those participants need to actually second you know critical factor here it would be sharing of information you know different than again that pipeline where you're kind of all those participants are holding and trying to you know control the information they actually want to you want to enable as a platform you know owner or entrepreneur you want to enable the sharing of information. Hence you can go on and look at a profile of a creative talent on voices and actually see all their historical information you know jobs that they've done their ratings you know ratings you know what's in their studio all of that's you know there for the taking. Then there's the exchange of services and so it could be a product or a service it might be purely online like like an upwork or five or it's a digital service or a voices or might be what sometimes called oh to online to offline I start online with with lift I call for my ride and then it shows up offline right right start online for with grub hub or seamless and then the meal actually shows up offline. And then the last one would be the exchange of currency and I use the term currency specific I'm not saying money although that could be that it's most people think of it as a true platform you actually have to enable commerce to happen and that might be capturing the payment up front processing the payment and paying out that service provider or that you know that that supplier if you will on for work well done. If it's one of these kind of creative let's call it content platforms YouTube or Twitter even then the currency is actually more social currency and that would be gathering likes and and you know favorites and even kind of ratings and reviews and so it's these four components that make a platform successful and the absence of any one of those. Almost devolves into just purely a directory you know you're not really facilitating interactions it's just to kind of go glean information but the actual transaction or interaction happens elsewhere it's like the platform covers all of that so you know again that that's that's I think a great way to think about how to structure the key components of a business especially a lot of services businesses are trying to move into reinventing themselves as a platform. That's how I would think about it and having cut a built it and stumbled upon those and then reading about in a book and over a weekend like oh my goodness that could see the decade right there and then. What do you think is the what do you think is the number one thing when somebody's building a platform the people don't get right out of those four items is there one stands out more than others. You you probably you probably don't appreciate the need to have supply and demand all all marketplaces and I use that term platform marketplace a little interchangeably again. They're going to be either supply constrained or demand constrained and if you don't know which one it is for you you're probably going to be you know servicing and building up the wrong side for too long and so you know case in point you actually had a friend who was one of Uber's first 50 employees and I mean there's tens of thousands full time employees and all that's really on. Very early on and he his job was to actually go city to city to get drivers and once they got enough driver he basically launched new cities. And once they got just enough drivers that they immediately changed years to he would place these cards there's almost like business cards in hotel keep like a front desk and it would just say like your first ride free up to 50 bucks or whatever it was and that's just to get this flywheel going the flywheel of network of facts and you know you have to know when when do you have enough supply in order to change and then you got to go. All in on the other side so knowing what sides constrained I couldn't it's not prescriptive it's different for every it's not to say oh well it's always the demand that's constrained sometimes it's the supply I mean Airbnb for a long time how to hard time having. Enough people willing to open up their doors and welcome in strangers right welcome in new guests and so you know it will it will vary depending what business is but if. If you don't get the people in the marketplace using it and both supply and demand you actually can have. Negative network effects not where it's self reinforcing upwards we're getting more and more more people you know an example might be you know the installation of the first fax machine you know not useful the second fax machine useful and third and fourth and fifth but at some point people started throwing these facts machines out because like why do I need a fax machine so that's now negative network effects where. You know every time someone gets rid of one the remaining people who have fax machines it's less valuable than it once was so you have to be constantly investing in that positive network effects where you're growing your base and doing so in that that kind of equilibrium fashion. One last point I wanted to bring out because this was an interesting and interesting point that I thought we should touch on you said that you can easily come not easily you can compete with larger players by simplifying now this is not just platform specific but I mean this is a great lesson so talk to me about that. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now this time of year is all about change whether your teams your systems are your Q4 to Q1 shifts a CRM platform is a critical tool keeping your business connected throughout all of that change and HubSpot it's constantly working to make its platform more connected than ever before to help you with that change with brand new features get into details about what makes your customers tick with custom behavioral events track site behavior. And understand your customers buying habits all within the HubSpot platform this is built in intent data right into HubSpot and if you're looking to find more ways to keep your data clean and have a centralized system the all new operations hub enterprise gives you the ability to curate data sets for all users meaning even faster and more consistent reporting learn more about how a HubSpot CRM platform can connect your business at HubSpot dot com. Well you know I mean the let's let's let's talk about you know the definition of of strategy right and which is this might sound incredibly academic I've had the great experience of doing some executive education as well over the last couple of years. And this definition is kind of stuck with me of the strategy which is arguably one of the most you know used overused terms and it's it's not a vision it's not your values it's it's it's not employing best practice because that's what everyone else is doing strategy in short is choice and it's the it's the interaction of the unit you know the integrated choices that affirm makes. Like a business is going to make that differentiated from other players in the industry to deliver long term financial results so the integrated set of choices what are the choices that you're going to make as a business that are different. Then someone else and that can you know we talk we're talking about simplification if the you know big brand co in your space is really over complicated they serve the high end of the market well you go and carve out some other end of the market maybe it's a specific vertical maybe it's a sub segment of the customer base. And so you know again for for us at voices early on it was i mean upwork and or elans and odes two big freelance sites combined become upwork this massive five billion dollar you know market cap you know business that's now publicly traded but they do every category right they you know you can hire a higher and listen we totally admire they're doing the crushing it. But you can hire a you know a musician to an electrician to a graphic designer to a virtual assistant and a web developer and so on and so forth they have you know 70 80 categories and like 8000 skills that are all represented so huge breath. So how do you look at that and go well what aren't they doing right or what isn't my big competitor doing that maybe I can take that slice and own it and for us that was that was voice you know and voice over now I you know I risk of sound like it was completely calculated and so forth I think what we've discovered over time is that that's held up to be true we can. You know I would much prefer to go really deep on in one vertical area and own it as much as possible becoming the you know domain expert expert in this area again kind of like the thought leader again term probably overused but owning that space before you go like go deep before you go wide is is probably the simplest way to describe it. And so that's it's like you know do something different and then cut out all of the non value added X you know activities that if you talk to your customers like do you appreciate that we do this. You know have you run any service to understand what's working and what isn't and we do it's like quite periodically both let's call them quantitative surveys to new customers long standing customers and then follow that up with the qualitative interviews. We always ask at the end of the survey do you want some of the contact you to quickly talk through you probably get about five or 10% of people are like yeah I actually like to talk to you about this and share more more in depth feedback. So and then those kind of it's those kind of key findings that you can do that different chain figure out those places where you can get your business to be a little bit simpler. So you so you simplify and then I also want to there's actually you know you're you're telling you're dropping a lot of entrepreneurial knowledge and insights I feel like we could go on for a while you have to do a follow up at one point so I appreciate it because you you're this is this is just great lessons for entrepreneurs in general outside of just of course building up platforms. There's some great lessons there now we're talking about simplifying you know going going deep versus going wide. Yeah the one other thing that I wanted to to understand is and and feel free to you know drop what what voices calm is expanding into and and I want to first yeah you can we can you can promote yourself a little bit promote like where you're going in the future but also the mindset and the strategy and maybe some of that feedback loop that you use and incorporate into your decision making process for deciding where to take. The company after you've reached these mile after like keyword after you've reached certain milestones when should a company look at the next shiny object and how did how did they decide where they want to go next. So the you you probably there's a couple ways to to evaluate like I've achieved you know looking when you back from when I you know when you first started and go oh I've achieved that milestone. Okay now that I'm here you know what is next and you know I I described it as almost like it's like walking towards the sunset or if you've ever taken a flight going west you know maybe to the west coast of the US or Hawaii or Asia you're you're flying into the sunset. And it's like bright for way too long almost and you kind of never quite get there and that's almost like the journey of entrepreneurship you always see the glowing sun off in the distance and it's illuminating you and it's giving you direction but the more you walk to it the further almost it kind of feels like it's going away from you right. And so in a similar way even when you achieve those milestones you probably have to have this moment of pause to go okay I'm acknowledging here you know probably too many of us don't stop to celebrate enough could be a small thing a dinner out you know sleep in the next day whatever it is just you know appreciate yourself and your colleagues but then you're probably going to wake up going I'm thinking of the next thing but how do I evaluate. Those opportunities and there is you know again I'm just kind of pulling some tools off the shelf here one that's coming to mind is like this innovation I think it's called the innovation ambition matrix where it's like a two by two grid right. We're on the on the horizontal you have markets so like existing markets or new markets and then on the vertical you have products existing products or new products and so you can kind of map this out to go am I selling am I going to stay in this comfort space of like my existing products and my existing markets or am I going to use my existing products but find a new geography. Or find a new adjacency some new audience right it's a new market or on the other hand I've got this amazing market this list of customers what else can I create for them what else can I sell to them so I like using this markets versus products. Two by two matrix to start to plot out where my ideas might fit and then see where it's kind of like are some of them clustering together do I frankly do I even feel more passionate about moving into a certain area maybe it looks like it's a big opportunity but I just don't have it in kind of in my you know sold move into that area seems risky or a little bit off brand or off mission so you know there is a degree of like subjectivity but at least as a communication tool that innovation matrix. You can circulate that to your board of directors your business partners your other members of the leadership executive team as a way to communicate the ideas that are happening in your head and the natural extensions or sometimes we use the term growth factors unlike we could go in this direction or this direction. And I use that actually as a communication tool I found that really helpful just to move from the perception of being the entrepreneur with a bunch of ideas that seem disjointed it's like actually I can fit them onto one page and here's my one pager now let's talk about and then you can have I think a more meaningful conversation. Because there's logic behind behind that very good that's a great idea I've never heard of that matrix before I figured with your your background in the NBA you would have probably seen something like that before I've heard of urgent important matrix like the eyes and how I've heard of all these other one this is a new one for me the new matrix. I mean listen I think I think McKinsey consolidates like they run their business off of these two by two matrix because you boil really complex ideas down to something simple that and it makes you get out of your own head to it makes you totally get it out of your own head which is half the half the battle anyways. Yeah incredible okay thank you that was very good I think that's going to be the social clip to be honest I'm very useful. Before I want to pivot into some rapid fire you still good for just a couple rapid fire question of course yeah that's good. Okay cool I wanted to I wanted to just get from you you know your future for for voices dot com as well as closing thoughts on some of the topics we spoke about for entrepreneurs and then where do people reach out to you social and website. Well outside of voices dot com I guess that's a kind of an easy one to remember but other other. Sure yeah yeah so I mean kind of future voices and where we see it going is really this evolution from a voice only marketplace to a creative services marketplace and when you know looking at all those opportunities we were just talking about in kind of this innovation you know landscape and realizing that there are post certain you know pre production services and post production services. Before the voiceovers recorded you need somebody to write a script sometimes that needs to be translated into other languages and then the voiceovers recorded and then inevitably afterwards there's audio editing maybe mixing in music I might even want to sync that audio track to a video that I'm working on. So these these post production services and clients are already you know kind of almost like hacking our own our own site to figure out I need these other complimentary services how do I get them done so that is the best way to be pulled into a market as opposed to forcing yourself on it. And so that was happening at voices were just really enabling it now and that was through a bit of kind of a brand refresh and an extension of enabling these new categories so that's what's on my heart and what's up next. The best place if if if any of that is of interest to those listening you know you can reach out to me probably the best place would be linked in to be honest David sisterly or looking at you know the on Twitter of course same same handle and then following the company we've been fortunate to get the at voices on virtually every every social platform. It's very good that's out there which which also those are many other stories as well to I told you there's more stories here. So those are yeah that I mean that those are kind of the best best ways to get in touch I love to let to hear about kind of the businesses that people are working on and maybe if there's an opportunity that I can be supportive. Amazing thank you thank you David okay so let's do some rapid fire okay so biggest challenge in your in your personal life or professional life what was it how did you overcome that. So I would say the biggest challenge is that you know in all humor aside about kind of marrying my first customer I think it actually has been working living eating breathing sleeping. Thinking about this business with your spouse kind of 24 seven that has been very challenging also very rewarding but I think the you know the the the toll that that's kind of taken just to be always on without the space even bringing it to the home is I think we could have had better and healthier boundaries which we which we established over time so that's kind of the challenge. But also how we solve this and Dr Henry Cloud who's written a ton on creating healthy boundaries and actually the book is just called boundaries. You know speaks a lot to this is a clinical psychologist of you need to create margin in your life you need to create space and that real that relates to yourself and what is acceptable behavior. It also relates to your relationships of what are the call like how are you interacting with others and how do you create to reuse the term boundaries of what is acceptable to when is it okay to talk in about business and I mean we have a silly thing right now where we just say is it okay if I bring up this topic and kind of asking permission to proceed. You know before kind of diving in so I would say that's been both the most challenging but and rewarding I'm sure you hear that all the time right well that yes so that's something that's it's a nuance that not everybody not everybody deals because they don't all work with their spouse but I think that that's an important. It's a super power for some but it's also something to have to figure out how to leverage because it can be a detriment too and it can be very harmful or it can be something that I know that I've heard it from Michelle Romanov the what's dragon den you know founder of now clear code now before clear bank she always speaks about how it's one of the best things that she's done for her business is is you know her partner Andrew he's like he's have. He's actually involved like I think he's co founder for no mistake yeah and it's because they're so candid with each other like it's like it's absolute trust right which is already the biggest hurdle in business it's it's something that they never had to deal with it that level of trust and it just let them really just you know always count on the other individual but at the same time it's hard to shut off your work you're always on right very good. Okay next one next question a person could be I know there's been many but a person who's been highly influential impactful in your life who was that and what did they teach you. Well you know one you know this again might hopefully this doesn't seem too corny but I'd actually say my father I mean my dad was and still is you know that that sounding words sometimes you all need to just have a conversation could be just frankly letting off some steam or saying again about a difficult situation or he's arguably like the biggest champion like every time there's some like other article that he finds online about you know the industry or able to kind of connect thoughts and like does this seem of interest to you um he's been a huge huge champion um you know from the get go that recording studio I mean he he you know help me get into the bank and co signed the first loan for I think $15,000 I'm not you know I was like too young to kind of realize what co signing alone men but really he was like on the hook for that and looking back now I realized wow he he really you know in his own way stepped out to be supportive you know almost you know with with me being so naive that I that I'm thanking him now I guess is is is the point and I of course I I do quite often um but I you know I I think I think you know despite not working in the business but kind of more in the behind the scenes and listening and encouraging you know we all need people like that amazing um a book or podcast that you would recommend people to go well I mentioned I mentioned platform revolution already um other good ones I mean big one around strategy is um is actually uh by Richard rummelt called goods uh sorry good strategy bad strategy and um the difference in why it matters is I think that is the tagline and you know he kind of describes that there's this like kernel of strategy uh he has a bit of a different take I said the strategy is really the set of choices that differentiate you his his take is like strategy is really the response it's still a set of choices but it's a response to market conditions like the world is doing something your customers are doing something um how are you responding they're always changing so therefore you always need to be responding um and be be willing to evolve your strategy over time uh and so I I think that was um one of my favorite uh one of my favorite it's actually you know I listened to it on audiobook uh and um I probably listened to that once in at least once if not twice a year uh you know just in the background as you're doing the other things so uh big big audiobook uh listener what would be uh one thing you would tell your 20 year old self probably have some great investment advice that's that's for sure what to invest in what to not um you know one of the things we touched on earlier about you know not taking no for an answer there's you know no shortage of people who in the moment you're like is this a good idea and it's their own risk adversity that tends to dissuade you but if you have the conviction yourself that you are so determined to move forward I think there is a few times where I would have been more assertive um and kind of push through and um that's probably I would I would I would encourage myself to kind of you know develop more confidence to you know almost like believing in yourself and your capabilities a lot more um so it's but you only grow that over time so it's hard just to you know some things that are learned and some things are best experienced and so I think developing confidence is over experience you can't just say someone to be confident and they are you develop it because you've had a track record of success or a series of wins or flags that you've planted all around in the ground that you look back and you're like oh look at that line it's all lining up every one of those flags like planted at each one of those milestones and then you look forward and and extrapolate out and see like oh I can kind of see where that line of flags is is going and um that was from a fellow and Sean Sean Wise who uh wrote in a book that he read to me is that you know really an advisor an early advisor and and um the subsequent and an author and I remember him writing in the cover of the book follow the flags and I'm like thinking like what does that mean what does that mean it's like yeah you plant these flags in the ground and you and you look out into the future and go are you following them in a certain direction and if you got some weird flag that's way out in left field and you're like don't worry about that one it's off the path you know it's like follow the flags that you've planted for yourself it's probably going to be your best indication of of success you know in the in the absence of some you know other epiphany there's usually some there's usually some direction that's been established through your historical choices that lead to your future choices and the last question what does success mean to you well for for me um it's actually the realization of the vision i mean i'm you know it it could be i just enjoy you know building i enjoy creating uh helping to realize um you know what i'm hoping to create is is a creative marketplace uh that is you know informing and educating and entertaining you know audiences around the world through through the human voice you know people are needing to have that story be told and so success is the is the realization of that vision and that's really we're living it out every day you know through the talent that sign up and and earn it living through the clients that are being able to actually have really important messages shared in the world um so i i find that um rewarding on on a on a personal way and i hope by extension uh certainly our whole team that voices does as well perfect that's all i got David that was perfect thank you very much