Guest Speaker: Brian Forth

Brian Forth introduced himself as the owner of SiteCrafting, and gave us a quick summary of what he did prior to starting his company.  He went to Gonzaga on a baseball scholarship, after leaving another college.  He majored in education and became a teacher.  He taught the kids how to code and started having them build websites, which led to the building websites for the parents' employers in his off time for extra money.  He started making really good money doing that, and eventually went into it full time and worked for a company.

When the .com bubble burst, Mr. Forth decided to start SiteCrafting and it's been around for 18 years now.  The company does business building mobile apps, handling e-commerce, building websites among other things.  Some of their clients includes Tacoma Public Utilities, the Tacoma Public Library, several transit companies, the Lemay car museum, and many others.  Since starting the company, they have moved their office 3 times, and are now located next to exit 133 off of I-5.

A student asked how he picks his clients, and Mr. Forth explained that he is careful not to do business with too many clients in the same industry because he wants to ensure that his clients know that they are getting SiteCrafting's best.  Sometimes a client will make an exclusive contract, and SiteCrafting will charge more money, and the contract will be for a guaranteed amount of time.  All their contracts have a kill clause, and if the company cancels the contract because they decide to go in a different direction, they owe the rest of the money in the contract.  He works hard to make sure his customers are happy, because 93% of the work they get is from word of mouth.

Mr. Forth recommended that everyone read "The Obstacle is the Way Forward".  He then went on to talk about building applications for Deluxe, a company that does coloring for several large film companies including Dreamworks.

Mr. Forth said that he's always thinking of things to try and help the company.  Part of being an entrepreneur means that weekends are rarely fully removed from thinking about work.  He also mentioned that he doesn't let himself get too high in the good times or too low in the hard times.

When he started the company, he wore all the hats and has now hired people to do the things he's not good at or doesn't want to do.  In the last year, they launched a separate company called GearLab which does user testing for companies, and they have high tech equipment including eye tracking and provide feedback for design decisions.  Clients can watch the sessions remotely, as they occur.  GearLab also compiles videos of the highlights of the user testing for clients.  SiteCrafting does a lot of work with GearLab.

I asked Mr. Forth who his first client was, and he told me they made a website for North Coast Electric.  The website they have now was not made by SiteCrafting, but they still manage their back end application.  I also asked who their most exciting client was, for him personally.  He first said any project where everyone comes together and cooperates to get the work done.  He then said a company called APS came to them with a project that was 2 weeks from launch, and their programmer had given up on the project.  In 11 days, they designed an app for a digiplayer, to be used on airplanes, and met the deadline.

Guest Speaker: Erik Hanberg

Erik Hanberg talked about what is necessary to be successful in entrepreneurship.  The first thing is hard work.  He mentioned Mark Zuckerburg as an example, pointing out that in the documentary about him and Facebook, he was always hard at work whenever he appeared on camera.  But Mr. Hanberg said it also takes more than that.  It takes emotional energy, and you have to overcome the fear of trying.  He also mentioned that you have to be passionate about the idea you're starting.

Mr. Hanberg talked about writing books on the side, and showed a list of the books he has written.  His first book was titled "The Little Book of Gold" and instead of writing the book first and then trying to generate interest, he went straight to marketing it.  He paid for $200 in Google ads and his significant other made a website to promote it.  Although when people clicked to buy the book, it would say the book is currently out of print, but you can submit your email address and be contacted when it is printed again.  Once he had 15 or 20 email addresses, he went ahead and wrote the book and had it published, and he already had some customers.

From there, he went on to write three mystery novels, and then science fiction.  In 2013, he wrote "The Lead Cloak" but it didn't sell as many copies as he hoped for.  Now that the sequel is coming out in February, he redesigned the cover of "The Lead Cloak" and re-published it.  He got it into a few bundle deals on Kindle, and it includes information about pre-ordering the sequel.  Mr. Hanberg told us that because of this, the book has sold 1,800 copies in the last two months and he has some presales for the sequel coming out.  In addition to the income from book sales, Mr. Hanberg has also started making some money from helping other authors with marketing their work.

He also talked about some of the other things he has done.  He started a stage theater in 2006 called The Horatio, but wasn't financially prepared to meet city regulations that he thought had been worked out, but weren't.  Mr. Hanberg was also a partner in Exit133 with Derek Young for two years, and sold his portion back to Mr. Young when he decided to go a different direction.  Three years ago, Mr. Hanberg and his significant other started a graphic design company called Side X Side, and it is currently their biggest source of income, although it isn't as consistent.

He recommended a list of books for those who are interested in starting their own business.  

• "The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau
• "The 4 Hour Workweek"
• "The E-myth Revisited" by Michael E. Gerber
• "Turning Pro" by Steven Pressfield

Mr Hanberg's advice for an aspiring author is to finish the first book.  He said practicing writing and improving is important.  For as long as he can remember, he wanted to write books, and he ended up going between genres before he found an audience.  Kindle allows for more self publishing, and he gets 70% of sales.  Traditional publishing has more middle men, who each double the price, and a $24 book nets an author 10% of the $3 the publisher received.

Mr. Hanberg said success is based on knowing your audience.  He told us about a woman named Annie Bellatt, who aspired to write science fiction and fantasy novels.  She analyzed popular novels and figured out a formula for gaining fans, such as introducing the hero on the first page, the antagonist on the second page, and each chapter has some sort of conflict, etc.  She has created a brand for herself, and her website says "Science Fiction and Fantasy for Gamers" and it really works.

Guest Speaker: Derek Young

Mr. Young talked about his career thus far, and has done a variety of different things.  He got his undergrad from the University of Puget Sound, majoring in Biology and Politics.  After graduation, he took a job with REI, thinking he'd work there for two years but ended up being there for 10.  He was hired to do small stuff around the office like filing papers, but worked his way up to lead negotiator.  He also moved into working with IT.  He also worked on side projects just as a creative outlet, and some of these things ended up getting bigger than his day job.  During this time, Mr. Young also got his MBA from University of Washington Tacoma, in 1.5 years instead of two, by taking three classes at a time instead of two.  He commented that work-life balance is something he's still working on.

He said that he ended up leaving REI because he reached a point where it was obvious that everyone above him was going to stay in their position, and there was no longer any opportunity for advancement.  Mr. Young said his breadth of experience was deliberate.  He has an MBA, because in his position, business partners expect him to have one.  He also has the IT background, marketing experience, and finance, so he's familiar with a lot of the different aspects of business.

Mr. Young also talked about a number of successful businesses he has started.  He made a website to test code that helps organize workplace sports, and he made it available for his coworkers.  Someone at Microsoft heard about it, and in one weekend, his site was flooded with new users because Microsoft started doing lunchtime sports.  From there, it just took off and when the hard drive failed and the site was down, they made $15,000 just from people sending in money and saying "fix it".

He also started Tacoma Runners, which is a running club that was made into a business because they needed insurance to run in the parks, and it was very expensive.  The club has running every week, and has traveled to China and ran on the Great Wall of China, and has made other trips too.  They make their business on membership fees, selling products, and sponsorships.  This organization was for life experiences, not for making money.

Mr. Young also owns Exit 133, which is a blog for Tacoma politics and news.  They cover city hall meetings, local businesses, and other local current events.  It has been around since 2005 and has been around for longer than any of the other local reporters.  He doesn't personally write much for the blog anymore, but it is still quite successful and bringing in advertising revenue.

Another side project he created for his own use, is a tool that allows him to put in a search term such as a particular brand or a subject, and it will track news, positive and negative feedback and other information from the internet.  This tool allowed him to educate himself on public housing issues before he went in to start working with policymakers on this issue.  He made the mistake of showing one person 4 months ago, and now has lobbyists and several companies around the world contacting him to buy the tool, and offering money.  It was only designed for his personal use, so he'd need to scale it up before it can be usable by others, so right now he's working on hiring people to build a tool big enough to sell.

He also had some wisdom that is valuable for anyone wanting to start a business.  He stated that he doesn't like having parners because negotiating with a partner who wants to leave is worse than some of his friends' divorces.  He prefers strategic partners and contractors.  One student asked how he comes up with business names, and he said that's actually one of the things he does often for businesses who contact him.  He and his team use large white boards, and just start drawing a mind map of key words relating to the business, and words that associate with them.  Once they have a big map of words, they start putting different words together until they have something they really like.

Mr. Young also mentioned that entrepreneurship is about more than just the money you make from it.  There is also value in the life experiences you never would have gotten if you didn't start that business.  He told a story about how he had been doing a lot of work in London, and was flying there nearly every week, so when his significant other got laid off, they decided to move there on a week's notice, and ended up living there for a year.  After that, they almost moved to Australia but decided against it in the end.

Three Business Ideas

The first idea is a business that provides businesses with online training regarding Service Dogs in their business.  A surprising amount of businesses don’t know anything about service dogs or what the laws are, and either let in anyone who is brave enough to enter with their animal, or they deny access to all, including legitimate service animals.  There’s also plenty of misinformation flying around, regarding how to identify a legitimate service dog, and even what the laws state.  A service dog education company would implement an online portal to provide training for these businesses so that they are educated on these issues and more.  Videos and interactive media would be provided to educate on the laws, how to differentiate between legitimate service dogs and imposters, and other related issues.  Businesses could pay a monthly membership fee based on the size of the company for access to the content, which would be kept up to date on changes in laws, current issues, etc.  This information would be very useful for training new hires as well as keeping employees, managers and owners up to date.

The second idea is a business is to create an mmorpg where people who play it can pay money to contribute to the design of some aspect of the game, such as a particular non-player character’s appearance or a quest.  There will be a set genre and art style to the game, and players ideas will be molded to fit the look and feel of the game as much as possible.  Some things will be less money, such as naming an NPC that just stands there, or the color of the flowers in a particular vase.  Some things will be a bit more, such as contributing to the story in a quest or if the player wants a wearable item.  And some things will be the most expensive, such as contributing to the design of an end boss, or wanting to design their own house.

The third idea for a business is to create an app that compares prices on grocery items.  Users tell the app which store they are in, and can scan prices to contribute to the online database, or can scan prices to compare to prices in the area.  The app costs a little bit of money to buy, and comparing prices on one item can be paid for using points or using a microtransaction, at the user’s discretion.  The user can earn points by scanning item prices to be stored in the database, and it would take something like scanning 50 items to get one price comparison.  This would incentivize people to do the data collection for us, or pay a little bit of money.  It might even be feasable to estimate demand for certain prices from certain stores.  If people are wanting to just pay microtransactions in certain areas, special points could be earned for contributing price information, which can be exchanged for a fraction of the money collected from the microtransactions.