The Empire Builders Podcast Por arte de portada

The Empire Builders Podcast

De: Stephen Semple and David Young
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  • Resumen

  • Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.
    The Empire Builders Podcast
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Episodios
  • #159: Calendly – Made It Simple

    #159: Calendly – Made It Simple
    Jun 26 2024
    The secret to creating something viable is you better be highly engaged in it. Tope Awatona learned this lesson the hard way. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [No Bull RV Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple. Today, Stephen mentioned, it's the app, Calendly, C-A-L-E-N-D-L-Y, Calendly. I've used it. We still use it for a couple of things. It's a way that you can give people a link to sign up for a time on your calendar to talk to you or make an appointment with you or make an appointment to get their haircut, or I think all kinds of things now. Stephen Semple: The first time I was exposed to it was through you- Dave Young: Oh, all right. Stephen Semple: ... where you had sent me this link, and I was like, "What the heck? What the heck is this?" which then caused me, after experiencing it as a customer, because the cool thing as a customer, it's just a link you click on, there's no software or anything, and then it sends you something that immediately populate your Google or iCal or whatever, that I ended up exploring it. Now I use it for absolutely everything because it even has automated follow-ups and all this other stuff I'll do. I found, especially if you're trying to get a group of people together, it's a complete game-changer because you can also put all your calendars on it. It'll look at everybody's calendar and find the free spot. This experience I've just talked about, hold that in your head because it becomes important to the story. Calendly was founded by Awotona, I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, in Atlanta in 2013. Today, it has over 400 employees and is valued at $3 billion. Dave Young: A real unicorn of a startup. Stephen Semple: Really, really is. Interestingly, in 2021, Calendly moved to a completely remote workforce. They have no office space anywhere any longer. Tope was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States when he was 15. He went to the University of Georgia where he did computer science, and he graduated with business. During school, he was working for a while at CVS as a cashier. Then he got a job doing door-to-door selling alarm systems in Athens, Georgia, on full commission. One of the things he learned was the best time to knock on doors is right before dinner. He's one of those guys, right before dinner. Dave Young: Yeah, right before dinner because everybody's home. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Now, he made good money, way more than CVS. On the first day, he made like 500 bucks because he sold two units. But the rest of the week there were no sales. But he still liked doing it because he understood there was a hit rate. He also liked that he could influence how much he could make, become better, work harder, make more. And it was a different outlet for him than coding. He graduates from university. He had a few offers. He landed a sales job at a luxury travel company and then IBM. But he started looking for a small, fast-growing company to work for because there'd be more advancement opportunities than a big company like IBM. So gets a job where he moves to Kansas City, and he's working for a company that digitized files and managed content. Now, this was an interesting experience for him. Because while there, one of the onboarding things that they did for all the new employees was they would meet the founders of this company where the founders shared their story of starting this company and growing this company. For him,
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    19 m
  • #158: Yahtzee – Part Myth Part Real

    #158: Yahtzee – Part Myth Part Real
    Jun 19 2024
    Edwin Lowe, yes the Beano... uhm Bingo guy took all he learned and created Yahtzee. You need to be observant. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is... Well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Travis Crawford Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Steven Semple. And as we always do, Steven... Wait a minute. You didn't whisper anything in my ear during the countdown? Stephen Semple: No, I didn't this time Dave Young: We're going into this blind. I have no idea what we're going to talk about. Stephen Semple: I didn't this time, but there's one thing I ust wanted to mention before we got into it is we're north of 156 episodes. I think this is 157 or 158. And when you think about it- Dave Young: Isn't that crazy? Stephen Semple: It is crazy. We've crossed the three-year mark. And for you and I, we haven't missed, we've not missed a week in that three years. Dave Young: I'm amazed. That's double the number of birthdays I've had, at least. Stephen Semple: I wanted to recognize that because I was looking... when I was doing the preparation and looking at this, I went, "Wow, three years. That's quite amazing." When we started this adventure, I knew we had committed to a year, and here we are still at it, which I think is pretty cool. Dave Young: It is. I don't have any stats handy, but I know that podcasting, this is one of these things that is like, "Oh, this is going to be fun." It's going to be fun to do a podcast. And it is. My participation in it is a lot of fun because I show up, you do a countdown, and I chat. But I know that it's a heavy lift, and people thinking that they're just going to start podcasting, unless you're just going to just start your own live morning show without any back-end production, it's not an easy thing to do. And you've got a whole team working behind the scenes. Stephen Semple: Yeah. There's you and I. And then we have an outsourced person who does the production, and then Dylan Bernier turns all this stuff in the shorts and whatnot. And then Matthew Burns and Gary Bernier get it all posted to the social media. And I'm going to say, if this group of people were not working on it, this would not still be going today. And I think last I looked at the stats, most podcasts I think are 10 or 12 or 14 episodes or something like that. They- Dave Young: Yeah. That's as far as you get. Stephen Semple: As far as you get. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, this is a grind. This is more work than I thought it would be." And things along that line. So, well- Dave Young: You're like, "I'm going to go back to grad school," and, "Oh, God, what was I thinking?" Stephen Semple: Exactly. Dave Young: I started podcasting in 2010 and got 30 episodes in before I gave up. And I think it was just because the shine came off, the shiny object, for me, and nobody knew what a podcast was in 2012. So- Stephen Semple: Yeah. So I just want to thank you, thank the team, and just recognize this milestone. But onto the reason why people actually have tuned in, it's not to hear us chat back and forth. Dave Young: It's not. Stephen Semple: Well, it's not about that. It's not about praising ourselves. What we're going to talk about today is a game called Yahtzee. Dave Young: Yahtzee. I grew up with Yahtzee. I mean, Yahtzee's been around for a long time. Stephen Semple: Sure has. Yeah. Dave Young: And I never played it until, I think after I got married.
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    18 m
  • #157: Pictionary – Followed a Path To Success

    #157: Pictionary – Followed a Path To Success
    Jun 12 2024
    Recognizing problems growing a new game and then looking for solutions that have worked in the past. WTG, Robert Angel. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Tappers Jewelry Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. I'm Dave Young, and Stephen Semple is sitting right here with me. Well, we're recording. We're virtually sitting directly next to each other. I'm in Austin. He's in Canada. He's right there, and he just whispered the name of today's topic into my ear, and it's Pictionary. And man, it's been a long time since I've played it, but I have played it. I don't know the whole story about it, so I'm all ears and I've always sucked at it because I couldn't draw a paper bag to save my life. Stephen Semple: I'm with you there. Dave Young: And convince you that it was a paper bag. Stephen Semple: My challenge is drawing even a straight line. Dave Young: Yeah, exactly. Stephen Semple: Pictionary is a pretty big deal. In 2001, it was sold to Mattel. At that time, they're in 60 countries, 45 languages, and just in the United States, 11 versions of the game. And I haven't looked into what the different versions are, but they have sold a total of 32 million games worldwide. Dave Young: Oh, that's amazing. Stephen Semple: That's a big deal. Dave Young: It's almost like Charades, but you're drawing. Help me remember, literally, it's been a long time since I've played this. Stephen Semple: It is very much Charades on paper, and that was the inspiration to the game. So it started in 1982 in Spokane, Washington. Robbie Angel has a degree in business and he's working as a waiter and a bunch of his friends would stay in to play games, right? Because they don't want to go out to spend money. They want to hang out together. And so what would happen is they would start drawing something and people would guess what it was. And again, it was like this whole idea of Charades on paper. But the problem was what made it slow was they would struggle with a word to come up with. That would be the slowest part of the game. So it'd be like your turn to draw something and it would take you forever to even think about what it is you wanted to draw. So they would start opening the dictionary to look for words randomly to come up with the idea to draw. And they realized this would make a great game. And it led to the name Picture plus Dictionary, Pictionary. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: And so they started thinking about doing this as a game. And Robbie's Mom sent him Trivial Pursuit to make him understand how to package a game, because remember how innovative that game was at the time in terms of the packaging. In looking at Trivial Pursuit, he realized the words would become the challenge. And he also looked at Trivial Pursuit and he saw Trivial Pursuit has 6,000 questions, so he probably needs 6,000 words, but he looked at it and said, they've made it work with that. So that's probably the goal. And them, he created four categories. So the whole idea categories and the number of words came from looking at Trivial Pursuit, and you need to make it fun. So how do you make it fun? It was by creating a time limit. The other problem that he noticed was one team versus the other. Dave Young: You already draw poorly. Now do it fast. Stephen Semple: I'll do it fast, but at least we only have to watch you for a short period of time. The other problem that he noticed was when it's one team...
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    17 m
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