Category: Digital Marketing

Metaverse Use Cases: Facts & Importance

Isn’t it highly enticing to have a virtual setting where users can practice their daily routine in the comfort of their homes? Everything can be done online for meetings, social gatherings, or shopping. The idea behind the Metaverse is this. The Metaverse can be closely analyzed, along with Metaverse use cases and instances, to discover if the Metaverse assumption holds up throughout time.

The Metaverse can generate many commercial opportunities in addition to those for enjoyment and personal gain. Still, users must understand all sides of the argument to use them fully. With $38.5 billion in revenue in 2021, the popularity of the Metaverse is anticipated to soar to $678.8 billion by 2030.

Business owners and investors took notice of Facebook’s adoption of the Metaverse business model. As a result, users are forced to consider the Metaverse’s utility and operation carefully.

Let’s begin the metaverse discussion.

Metaverse Overview

The Metaverse is a blockchain-based shared virtual world where users can interact with and explore virtual worlds. The device is independent of the operator and is not tied to any specific device. Digital currencies, NFTs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence power the decentralized Metaverse. With these technologies, users can virtually represent themselves and explore their surroundings.

The term “Metaverse” has been used before. Neil Stephenson first introduced this idea in his 1992 book Snow Crash. However, recent technological developments have increased the viability of shared virtual space. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology have lately become more widely used due to the Metaverse concept, but 5G networks are developing quickly, and people now have a greater knowledge of what it was like during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When so many individuals have to work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, how can they possibly work? Investors and regular Internet users worldwide are interested in Facebook’s new entry into the Metaverse industry.

Metaverse Use Cases: Businesses Implications

The Metaverse can replicate the real world by utilizing cutting-edge technology like AR and VR. As the next generation of the internet and social media, the Metaverse provides global economic prospects to businesses.

As an illustration, in the future:

• To provide unique storytelling experiences for advertising, Metaverse leverages 3D technology.
• The Metaverse project’s interoperable concept enables the conduct and entry of digital events.
• Despite regional restrictions, the Metaverse examples allow advertisers to interact with a global audience within the e-commerce framework.
• Because Metaverse supports digital wallets, businesses can manage transactions easily within the virtualization environment.

Numerous options exist for businesses to gain from the Metaverse. Businesses will use Metaverse applications depending on their business models and user needs. According to a recent survey done in March 2022, more than 17% of worldwide IT firms have invested in Metaverse. Additionally, sectors like education, finance, healthcare, and marketing are adopting Metaverse at a 9–12 percent rate.

Metaverse Use Cases In Different Industries

1. Metaverse In Education

Teachers might design personalized curricula unique to their pupils or courses if they can generate and share content. Students could benefit from a more individualized learning environment as a result, and teachers would be better able to monitor students’ advancement.

Additionally, students and teachers can collaborate via Metaverse. In a virtual setting, students can collaborate on projects and discuss ideas, enabling them to form deeper connections.

2. Metaverse In Caregiving Services

The potential Metaverse use cases for healthcare services are connecting people with doctors and other healthcare professionals worldwide. Thanks to this, people would benefit from better care without traveling far or waiting a long time.

Additionally, it would let patients see multiple doctors in a single visit, saving them from unnecessary medical procedures.

3. Metaverse In Real Estate

There are countless ways that Metaverse could be used. Real estate transactions and property leasing may both take place within a Metaverse.

It could also be used to trace a property’s history or administer property rights. Other options abound, and the only thing limiting them is our imagination.

4. Metaverse In Travel

Travel data tracking, reservation management, and customer service may all be done in the Metaverse. It can also track goods across numerous sites and manage inventories.

Metaverse can even be used to create a virtual gift shop for tourists. The Metaverse has allowed visitors from far-off countries or locales to enjoy virtual tourism experiences.

5. Metaverse In Finance

Banks are utilizing the Metaverse to create fresh approaches to client engagement. They can also use it to keep better customer data records and monitor transactions. The Metaverse provides opportunities to stop fraud as well. By monitoring actual transactions and comparing them to anticipated ones, banks can spot fraudulent activities much more quickly than conventional approaches.

Financial firms may also create virtual portfolios that customers may access from anywhere using Metaverse technology. The creation of secure online banking systems is another use for metaverse technology.

6. Metaverse In Manufacturing Sector

Making a shared manufacturing area where businesses can work together to make things is one such Metaverse use case. By doing so, the need for costly and time-consuming shipping and distribution procedures would be removed, and manufacturers could maintain local control while benefiting from economies of scale.

Inventory control and data tracking might both be done with Metaverse.

7. Metaverse In Social Media

A Metaverse as a platform for entertainment and social media interactions is one potential application. Users might sign up for accounts on a Metaverse, for instance, and use it to share images, films, and other types of content.

They might also communicate with one another in various ways, such as through chit-chatting or engaging in competitive activities.

Key Metaverse Benefits For Businesses

Many businesses are already adopting a permanent remote work policy due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has profoundly transformed how people work. For instance, both Airbnb and Spotify permit their employees to work from home or anywhere in the nation (or worldwide).

People still need to connect and work together, though. Business organizations rely on virtual and digital communication channels, such as video conferencing across platforms and devices, most frequently over the internet, to socialize and interact online to enable this flexibility.

Imagine taking this further and making video conferencing feel as authentic as face-to-face communication. Those 3D virtual interactions can become much more exciting and lifelike with the help of an AR or VR headset and a Metaverse.

Metaverse benefits provided to companies operating in various sectors, such as gaming, entertainment, e-commerce, and education, are listed below.

1. Improve The Experience Of Working Remotely

The lack of face-to-face interactions that remote work presents makes it challenging for employees to interact and communicate with one another. Employees can communicate digitally in a Metaverse, allowing them to read each other’s body language and understand their feelings while maintaining their emotional connection.

2. Online Gaming

Blockchain-supported NFT exchanges are made possible by Metaverse games like Axie Infinity, creating a new method of value transfer throughout the Metaverse. Lending, borrowing, and real estate search are a few other commercial activities that can be anticipated in the Metaverse.

3. User Satisfaction

In recent years, many businesses have already embraced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology to enhance the consumer experience. For example, museums and galleries have organized online art exhibitions and allowed viewers to enjoy the show using a VR headset. Another example would be branded using augmented reality (AR) to enable their customers to test how furniture will fit in their living rooms. In the Metaverse, these encounters can be improved and made to seem more genuine. The Metaverse benefits could drastically alter future interactions between commercial organizations, consumers, and providers of goods and services.

How Can Markovate Help With Metaverse Development Services?

We are adept at utilizing the services the Metaverse provides to suit the needs of all the countless Metaverse use cases it can support. Typical components of our suite of enterprise-focused Metaverse development services include:

• Metaverse Marketplaces: We also create the most complex Metaverse marketplaces. For those platforms, we also provide cryptocurrency and specialized NFT development services. We deliver a fully customized marketplace with several features, including price bidding, a product gallery, and product resales.
• Metaverse Games Development: We develop single- and multi-player Metaverse games, marketplaces, NFT trading opportunities, and more utilizing blockchain technology. We also use augmented reality, virtual reality, AI, machine learning, and full-stack programming to create future-ready Metaverse environments.
• 3D Space Development: We build innovative 3D worlds using the best Web development, augmented reality, and virtual reality technologies that are aesthetically pleasing and efficiently employ as much data as possible. Our developers seek to enhance the general public’s access to the Metaverse by making it compatible with most 3D hardware.
• Metaverse Integration Services: We can enhance Metaverse’s functionality and develop a more engaging 3D environment with the help of Metaverse integration services. Our team develops or implements all solutions that strengthen the ecosystem’s value through data integration, API integration, tool integration, DApp integration, NFT marketplace integration, etc.

Metaverse Use Cases: Commonly Asked Questions

1. How will Metaverse change the world?

Many fields cannot yet predict how the Metaverse will affect reality because it is still in its early stages. Some exciting concepts, though, might become a reality soon. Even though people will still need face-to-face interaction, the Metaverse might develop more effective means of connecting with people far away. Users may easily access shopping, work, doctor appointments, and personal styling. The Metaverse, which is still in its early stages, has the potential to transform lives all over the world.

2. Are there any drawbacks of the Metaverse?

The Metaverse is the internet’s next generation, and we employ augmented and virtual reality technologies to immerse ourselves in it. With all of this digitization comes new privacy concerns. When we browse online, we already have privacy issues. Our online behavior will continue to be tracked using the same technologies in the Metaverse, where it is likely that the surveillance will intensify and become even more intrusive.

Rajeev Sharma

author

I’m Rajeev Sharma, Co-Founder, and CEO of Markovate, a digital product development company. With over a decade of experience in digital product development, I have led digital transformations and product development of large enterprises like AT&T and IBM.

My main areas of competence include mobile app development, UX design, end-to-end digital product development, and product growth. I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and certifications from the Scrum Alliance. Aside from my work, I am interested in Metaverse and closely following the latest developments.

Payment App Development: Facts & Stats

Traditional banks are gradually losing customers due to their complexity and lines. Digital solutions like payment apps are gaining popularity at the same time. And it’s not shocking, either! The global digital finance business is expanding with a wide range of apps—personal financial apps, online banking apps, money transfer apps, etc. From 2021 to 2026, the payment app market is expected to grow by 23.8% per year; therefore, now is the ideal time for payment app development.

In the United States, most people actively use smartphones for daily transactions. More than 200 million users fall under this category. By 2023, researchers estimate that 52.5% of smartphones sold in the United States alone will conduct at least one financial transaction. As a result of their quick and easy operation processing, payment services are becoming increasingly popular.

• The most promising peer-to-peer payment options include standalone p2p mobile apps, transactional platforms, crypto-based p2p mobile wallets, and messaging-based payment apps.
• An agile team with experience, prototyping, and the release of an MVP with a trackable referral program are crucial elements for successful payment app development.

As a result, we have decided to provide information concerning payment apps and a step-by-step process for developing one.

Payment Mobile App: Overview

A money transfer or payment app is a type of app that enables users to send money to others without using a bank account or credit card. Additionally, it allows users to exchange currencies and bank transactions using cashless payment methods.

How Do Payment Apps Work?

Although they appear to be quite simple to end users, payment apps are pretty complex. Let’s take a closer look at how the payment app functions.

Digital wallets are typically included in payment apps that allow users to store money that will later be used for transfers and payments domestically or internationally. If both parties use the same payment app, they can send money to one another by specifying the recipient’s email address or mobile number. The money sent is debited from the sender’s wallet and credited to the recipient’s wallet.

In cases where a bank account or credit card is involved, encrypted data will be sent to the payment processor, credit card issuers, or banks for verification that the required amount is in the sender’s account.

Payment App Development: Must-Add Features

Payment applications offer a range of capabilities that can be useful for both consumers and businesses. These apps make sending money to friends, family, and other connections quick and straightforward. To save users from having to use cash or spend hours paying their bills in person, they also provide the opportunity to pay bills, acquire airtime, or make in-app purchases. The following is a list of the most important.

1. Digital Wallet

The ability for end users to store, transmit, request, withdraw, and top up funds makes it the brain of the P2P payment system. Given that VISA and Mastercard cover the majority of nations and banking institutions, integrating their payment tokenization services is essential. These services also offer users of the app out-of-the-box capabilities, saving money on peer-to-peer P2P payment app development.

2. Request & Send Funds

Users of payment apps carry out two essential tasks: transferring and requesting money from other users. Due to this, a robust payment gateway is an absolute necessity for the app to accept transactions securely and quickly.

3. Send Invoices/Bills

Most companies and individuals frequently ask for a transaction invoice or bill to confirm that the sender has completed the money transfer operation. Therefore, businesses should build and provide users with an intuitive option for creating bills and invoices that support the most widely used file types, including PDF, email-centric, and in-app. A simple method for sharing the created bills and invoices with the recipient is also implemented.

4. Expense Tracking

By assisting users in more effective money management, this feature delivers value. It entails categorizing all transactions by volume, status, location, etc., and visualizing them. Users will benefit from superior UX and the opportunity to maximize their expenditure in this manner.

5. Online ID Checks

Payment apps frequently include online ID checks since they safeguard both the sender and the recipient. The sender and the recipient may be guaranteed that their information is being delivered safely and that no scams or fraudulent activities will occur. There is no need to meet in person or exchange phone numbers thanks to payment apps with online ID verification.

Essentials To Consider While Payment App Development

1. Avoid Storing Card Information

Even though it might seem obvious, it’s vital to ensure that the user’s debit/credit card information is not saved when shopping online. Many of us preserve the information to prevent having to enter everything again from scratch in the future and to facilitate quicker payments. To minimize the danger of identity theft, it is advisable to remove the card details after making any online transaction.

2. For Transactions, Make Use Of A Private Window

The best way to protect yourself when making digital payments is to avoid dubious apps and websites and only use legitimate, trusted apps recommended in the app store.

3. Never Exchange Passwords

Although specific advice, it is essential to safeguard financial stability. To prevent cyberattacks, users’ internet banking passwords must be secure, never shared with anybody, and frequently changed. Additionally, let the bank know if you ever receive a bogus call from someone requesting information like passwords or ATM PIN. Further, it would be ideal for transactions using one-time passwords (OTP), as these are more secure.

Payment App Development Like WorldRemit: Steps To Create

1. Compile Your Requirements

Choose the payment gateway app you want to use before developing a payment platform. Decide what features your MVP must have to convey to end customers the real benefit of your peer-to-peer payment application. The list of essential characteristics will aid developers of money transfer applications comprehend technical aspects.

2. Verify Compliance With Regulations

Many nations have tight regulations governing the fintech and peer-to-peer payment industries. Ensure that the app complies with all PCI-DSS, or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, requirements. Do an extensive study on the area businesses wish to release their app.

3. Create The UI & UX

The interface is your customers’ first and most crucial point of contact. To discover the golden means of engaging with clients, businesses should create something distinctive yet straightforward. We advise creating clickable prototypes, mockups, or wireframes that depict the ultimate user flow to improve the user experience.

4. Develop MVP Features

Once your design is complete, you may implement the chosen MVP features. Based on their experience and track records, consider businesses that have experience creating payment apps. Follow these straightforward guidelines if you hire a business to develop a payment platform. They will assist businesses in making the best provider decision and in payment app development.

5. Launch, Evaluation, & Scale

Businesses should launch their app and deploy the updated version to production as soon as its features and design are complete. The main objective here is to use early customer feedback to validate the concept of your project. This is typical because your main objective is to turn the minimal viable product into a fully functional mobile payment system via payment app development.

More Examples Of Payment Apps

The fact that WorldRemit is among the best ways to send money abroad cannot be disputed. It provides far better conversion rates than the bank and has a sleek, user-friendly interface that makes sending payments faster and more convenient.

However, not everyone will find using WorldRemit to be the ideal choice. There are other choices to examine whether WorldRemit doesn’t send money to the location users want it to or if they believe they can find lower costs and currency rates elsewhere. Remitly, Wise, and Revolut are the top three WorldRemit-equivalent applications.

1. Remitly

Remitly is a US-based digital remittance app that frequently offers Monito users the quickest and most affordable money transfer options. It provides currency transfers to more than 85 countries worldwide, just like WorldRemit, but it’s frequently 2 to 5 times less expensive!

2. Wise

Wise is a popular platform for international money transfers that is inexpensive and easy to use as a replacement for foreign bank transfers in recent years. It routinely top Monito’s list of the least expensive ways to send money internationally. The Wise money transfer service is ranked among the best on Monito overall (compare WorldRemit’s 7.7/10 to Wise’s 9.5/10 on our Monito Score ranking), and its mobile app is rated as the best money transfer app. It supports transfers to dozens of foreign currencies worldwide, just like WorldRemit.

3. Revolut

A well-known name in online banking, Revolut is a fintech company with 12 million users worldwide. Revolut offers some of the most competitively priced international money transfers available anywhere on the market, in addition to its mobile banking app and other smart features (you must sign up to make transfers).

Payment App Development: How Much Does It Cost?

Users can send and receive payment transfers electronically using this application. Although there are many different app categories, they all can send and receive payments swiftly and conveniently. The cost of building will vary based on the features and functionality you need. A straightforward solution might be created for as low as $5,000, although a more complicated system with more capabilities may cost as much as $50,000. The app’s price will be influenced by several variables, some of which are:

• The currencies that the app must support
• Number of languages the app needs to support
• The number of platforms the app needs to support (iOS, Android, web, etc.)
• Payment methods (credit/debit cards, bank transfers, cash) the app needs to support

The cost of the payment app can vary based on these factors.

Payment App Development: Markovate’s Take

Briefly stated, the new ideals of digital financial services are laying the groundwork for widespread acceptance in the future. Financial services are increasingly being provided through digital channels focused on the consumer. The most widely used technologies also give new significance to developments in the construction of payment apps.

It’s critical to remember that sending money abroad is never free and that every currency transaction carries a fee. Money transfer services are not all created equal; some have far cheaper prices than others. Utilize a minimal viable product to ensure that the app is profitable. Each of the app’s essential features will be included.  Additionally, it displays to users what they may expect from the finished product. The MVP can also be utilized to draw in investors.

Still have concerns? Markovate has been actively putting business concepts into code and offering answers to difficulties in the real world. Our professionals might streamline the intriguing process of developing a payment app. Online commerce is possible, and conventional banking is already digital. Ready to create a product that resembles the WorldRemit app?

Payment App Development: FAQs

1. How much time does it take to build a payment app like World Remit?

Although it is difficult, creating an application has several advantages. Based on the complexity of the software, the entire development cycle before launch can take anywhere between 4 and 6 months. Many businesses invest up to 10 months in the creating phase because they do additional research.

2. How does World Remit differ from PayPal in terms of technology?

Currently, PayPal only transfers funds to other PayPal accounts or bank accounts. Transfers to bank accounts, mobile wallets, cash pick-ups, airtime top-ups, bill payment, Alipay, and door-to-door delivery are all available through WorldRemit. Due to its lower fees, better exchange rates, and increased payment and receiving options, WorldRemit triumphs in every manner. And due to its percentage-based fee structure, PayPal is still a good choice for transfers under $300 or £200. Due to its set costs and superior currency rates, WorldRemit is better for money transfers over $300 or £200.

Rajeev Sharma

author

I’m Rajeev Sharma, Co-Founder, and CEO of Markovate, a digital product development company. With over a decade of experience in digital product development, I have led digital transformations and product development of large enterprises like AT&T and IBM.

My main areas of competence include mobile app development, UX design, end-to-end digital product development, and product growth. I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and certifications from the Scrum Alliance. Aside from my work, I am interested in Metaverse and closely following the latest developments.

Imagine opening a fulfillment center in a vacant morgue. That’s exactly what Joe Spisak did before he started Fulfill.com.

These days, Joe helps connect third-party warehouses and eCommerce companies through Fulfill.com so they can both grow. But before he did that, he ran a warehouse himself and invented a couple of board games (Dicey and OK Boomer). Along the way, he learned a lot of lessons you can only learn the hard way / the best way.

You can learn more about Fulfill.com on, well, fulfill.com. You can also follow Joe Spisak on Twitter and LinkedIn. His DMs are always open!

Check out the Weird Marketing Tales website if you haven’t already. If you want to follow Weird Marketing Tales on social media, go to @WeirdMarketing on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Go to @WeirdMarketers on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

0:00 How Joe Spisak Opened A Warehouse In A Morgue
0:45 What is Fulfill.com?
4:19 Joe Spisak’s board games – Dicey & OK Boomer
5:48 The magic of starting chaotic, messy businesses
10:52 Building a social media following: then vs. now
15:55 From board games to order fulfillment
22:46 The growth of ShipDaddy
29:51 How Joe sold ShipDaddy
32:44 How Joe Spisak decides which business opportunities to pursue
40:03 Parting advice from Joe Spisak & where you can find him online

Transcript

Joe Spisak: The, building was actually a, a vacant morgue. So they, they, they used to, they used to keep the bodies in this building, but I looked at it and, you know, all of that aside, I was like, this actually is a pretty good spot because where they would keep the dead bodies, um, was makeshift racking for us to keep product.

Brandon Rollins: My name is Brandon Rollins, and this is the Weird Marketing Tales Podcast. On this show, I interview small business owners, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals who are doing things that you probably didn’t know that you could do for a living. And so on today’s show, I’ve invited on Joe Spisak, who I know through Fulfill.com.

How’s it going, Joe?

Joe Spisak: Doing great. Thanks for having me, Brandon.

What is Fulfill.com?  

Brandon Rollins: So usually when I start these things, I, I like to give a little bit of an intro on, um, exactly what it is that my guest does, but there’s actually so much to talk about that’s interesting that I just wanna let this stuff kind of naturally unfold, if that’s cool with you.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, let’s do it man.

Brandon Rollins: So, like I said a minute ago, I know you through Fulfill.com.

So can you tell folks a little bit about what that is?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, sure thing. So Fulfill.com is a marketing company for third party logistics companies. So 3PLs or warehouses that ship goods for other companies, they can come to us and we can take over their marketing, help them grow, help them find their ideal customer profiles to fill up their warehouses.

And then alternatively, we’re also a finding service for e-commerce brands or companies that are looking for the perfect shipping partner. Uh, so they can come to us, we can run full RFP for them. They can submit all of their information and then we can send that out to hundreds of different warehouses, 3PLs on our network and they can bid back and we can help them get, you know, a cheaper, faster and really overall better shipping partner in as little as seven days. 

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. And that’s a really cool service to have because when you start running an e-commerce store and you start getting, I’d say more than like a hundred orders a month, it becomes a real hassle to start shipping stuff on your own. And this is something I’ve learned with another, um, client of mine who I’ve been working with, they actually run a third party logistics company, so they ship for others as well. I, I’ve learned that it’s just, it’s an immense burden to handle that stuff on your own. But, of course, it’s also a real pain to try and find the right warehousing company because there’s just a lot of choices out there.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, you’re, you’re spot on. So I actually, uh, we’ve coined that couple hundred order a month mark as the graduation period where you either need to make the decision to double down and basically become your own commercial grade fulfillment operation or you need a 3PL to, to help you with the shipping portion of it.

And so many people, like you said, they, they find out that, you know, they, they don’t want to end up having to hire a warehouse team and figure out the warehouse and fulfillment technology. And even if they may save, you know, a couple percentage points or, or they may not, especially depending on where they’re located in the country with cost of rent and things of that nature. 

It ultimately just makes sense for most people to just use a great 3PL. Easier to scale, less burden, they can focus on sales, marketing in, in growing their brand.

Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm. And I can tell you from personal experience, I did a Kickstarter way back in ’16 and it was like a really small project I had like, oh, 130 rewards to ship out or something. It was called War Co. It was a card game. And it took an enormous amount of time to ship that out. I mean, I’m talking 130 orders of cards and I, it was different SKUs because I, I did this in such a silly way, but I was 22, 23 years old, so what you gonna do?

But, um, like all the card decks were different SKUs, so I had to pack ’em in different orders. So of course that’s pick and pack, that’s a big thing in the warehousing industry. And it took, I wanna say seven or eight hours to prep 130 orders to go out. And that’s not including the big run to the post office, as well, where he had to have those scanned in too.

There’s better ways to do it, mind you, but it was like, it was an incredibly time-consuming thing.

Joe Spisak’s board games – Dicey & OK Boomer

Joe Spisak: Exactly, and then you had to pay for retail shipping rates once you got over to the post office. And I, it’s hilarious because we actually come from similar backgrounds in the board gaming space. I’ve run two, uh, Kickstarters as well for different board gaming companies that I’ve started. And it was a super similar experience.

Like we did all of our fulfillment from home. You know, couple, couple hundred, different backers for each Kickstarter. And, uh, we, with the, the first Kickstarter that we did, we made the mistake of offering so many different items for the different rewards tiers. So we, we had like t-shirts and coolers and, like, all sorts of little knickknacks, so it took us, oh man.

I had like my whole family in there and it took us a couple days just to get everything good to go.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, it’s a ton of work. So like the, you did OK Boomer, right? That was the card game you did.

Joe Spisak: Correct. So our very first game, it was called Dicey, and Dicey was actually a party game, a drinking game. And so that’s, that’s where we started. And then I ended up learning a ton from creating Dicey over the course of a couple years. Uh, kind of graduated out of the drinking game phase and had a great time and learned a lot from that.

I was getting exhausted from guerilla marketing it, drinking like five times a week trying to sell this. Uh, so ended up pivoting in the other direction and created a, a game, uh, in the trivia space. That is an awesome family trivia game, generational trivia game called OK Boomer.

The magic of starting chaotic, messy businesses

Brandon Rollins: See that. That’s really cool. And, And now was Dicey the first business that you had built?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, so good question. 

So, 

Brandon Rollins: was that?

Joe Spisak: Dicey was right after I graduated college in probably 2015 or 2016.

Brandon Rollins: Oh gosh.

Joe Spisak: Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Rollins: That’s when I started Pangea Games back when that was a thing.

Joe Spisak: Yes, exactly, man. So I mean, it was an awesome, I’m sure you had like a similar experience, but it was an awesome experience for me. It took probably like over two years to get a product to market and I was working on it pretty dang hard, but, you know, you take all those learning lessons, then you fast forward to OK Boomer and we put together what I consider to be a much better product than what Dicey was.

And we probably did that in like six or seven months. So, you know, it’s just, once you actually know what you’re doing, you can cut down the time immensely.

Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm, especially like, I, I would say there’s definitely a big difference between kind of mass market and family games and hobby games. And hobby games will take forever for the most part, although sometimes you’ll stumble into a design, uh, family stuff is a lot easier to crank out. So if, like, if somebody’s looking to make a lot of money on that, I would say go for, like, a family game, a trivia game, a party game, a drinking game. Put that on Amazon and you don’t even have to go with Kickstarter or anything.

Joe Spisak: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely concur with what you just said there. Um, and you know, even just to add on to that, you can kind of find a game design that has been similarly done in the past and kind of overlay your, you know, rules and design and experience on top of it. There’s no need to, like, recreate the wheel.

And then anytime you add in multiple game components, because correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the games from Pangea that you created, you had all sorts of, um, different game components, correct? Like, like with OK Boomer, it. It’s just cards, which makes the printing process much easier with Dicey, it is cards with a 12 sided die, very similar to like a, a Dungeons & Dragons die that’s also included in the game.

And just the nuance of having a little die like that added a completely different logistical hurdle that we were just, were not anticipating

Brandon Rollins: Yep. Yeah. For Tasty Humans, as an example, I mean, that was, that was multiple boards. That was tiles. That was a custom meeple was in there too. I mean, like, there’s uh, decks of cards, instructions. Of course a box itself is materials, and it’s like, that’s a simple game too, like, but a still quite a bit of goes into it as far as materials.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, I admire, I admire you putting together all of that, especially for one of the first entrepreneurial projects you did like that. That must have been crazy.

Brandon Rollins: Honestly, it was a little bit insane, but I, I’ll, I’ll tell you, I’m super glad that I did it the way that I did. As nuts as that sounds, I’ll say to anybody, like, if you wanna make a hobby game and you’ve got like the, the patience and the time and, and the investment needed to do that, it’s like, honestly, go for it.

Like, if that’s what you really, really wanna do, go for it. I gotta say that what it, what it taught me was like how you manufacture something, how you source materials, how you,, like, for, for games it’s play testing, how you, um, go back and forth on a product until you get it to be what your audience wants.

And, like, that is a better crash course and marketing than anything that I got in school. And school didn’t slouch on the lessons either, 

so I don’t know. It was just so instructive.

Joe Spisak: You are like 100% on with that. Uh, I’d say the same thing to anybody that I mentor as well. It’s like the best way to learn is just to dive in and start…

Brandon Rollins: Make a freaking board game.

Joe Spisak: Make a board game, make a business, do something with, you know, minimal risks so you don’t have to, so you don’t have to try and start your first company that’s gonna take hundreds of thousands of dollars, uh, to bring something to market.

Um, but yeah, that’s just, I’m super thankful for dicey, even though things didn’t necessarily pan out exactly how we thought it were, we’re going to at the time. Um, the lessons I learned along the way helped with all of the businesses that came after that.

Brandon Rollins: And I feel like that’s kind of what you have to do to build a business. It’s like you just try something. Obviously be smart about it, plan it out. Don’t invest anything you can’t lose. Like there’s different things you can do based on your circumstances in life. But it’s like, just do whatever you can to give yourself as many tries as you can when you’re starting out, cuz you don’t know what’s gonna be the thing that’s gonna succeed.

Just give a lot of things a shot and give yourself the room for that.

Joe Spisak: Fail faster. That’s, that’s what I call it. That’s what you have to do early on in your entrepreneurial career. Like try a little bit of everything, fail as fast as you can, don’t get discouraged and keep going. And to add to that, one of the things that I wish I did, But I just never did for the first couple years I was doing this, was seek out a great entrepreneurial mentor, basically just a great mentor.

Someone who has done what you are trying to do in the past, you’d be absolutely shocked. How many awesome people are, you know, would be excited to kind of help coach you through, uh, what you’re trying to do.

Building a social media following: then vs. now

Joe Spisak: And that would just put you so, so far ahead. And it’s funny because, you just kind of alluded to this, but I think one of the reasons that, you know, I am having success in marketing like I am is because of the mistakes that I made with Dicey. I tried to do every single subset of marketing that you could to promote this product, when in reality I really just needed to pick one or two great social channels, great strategies, and kind of dive in on those instead of trying to, you know, take all of these different marketing genres and, and do every single one of them.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, and it’s like if you don’t know what to do with marketing, you can do a lot worse than trying a little of everything. Again, as long as you don’t go over the amount of money that you truly cannot afford to spend, but like you can do a lot worse than trying everything. But at some point, at some point, you’ve gotta narrow it down and focus on the things that are actually getting ROI.

Joe Spisak: Exactly. And if you’re on social, and your audience lives in, you know, uh, primarily on certain channels, you may want to start there, but it’s always great to focus on one social channel and build a big following, and then use that big following to leverage growth on other social channels is what we’ve noticed.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, and one thing I did actually, that’s on a small scale, I think just about anybody could do this if they wanted to. When I was building up an audience around game development and the games that I was working on, I got on Twitter and Instagram, and at the time the strategy was just to follow a ton of people.

Okay. That’s not necessarily the best strategy anymore. That’s not my point here. Point is, I got as many people to follow me as I could using the strategy that made sense at the time. And then I set up a chat room on Discord because that’s where the gamers were hanging out in ’17, ’18. And I started direct messaging everybody by hand.

And I ended up messaging probably 10,000 people over a bunch of different networks over a lot of time and invited them to the room. And in doing so, just by, like, messaging as many people as I could, trying to get ’em in the circle, I found mentors. I found people who I could give work to, you know, people who I could contract and hire.

I found friends, I found a community and it’s, like, that’s really, really critical I think is try and build up that community as early as you can.

Joe Spisak: Oh my gosh, 100%. And especially whenever you have minimal spending money in the positions that both of us were in the, the guerilla marketing is how you’re gonna actually be able to drive the needle. And we did something very, very similar. You know, I was DMing people left and right and ended up building out like a pretty complex bot network off of something called Jarvi because I wanted to automate those processes more and more, and, and years and years and years ago, like the follow and unfollow method was, was really big in order to get people, um…

it, I know, I know. It was ridiculous. Like marketing has changed so much.

Uh, like…

Brandon Rollins: thank God it 

Joe Spisak: year year, thank God, right. Seriously. Yeah. I don’t miss those days one bit.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. No, not at all. There was actually a stretch in my life where I was working for an insurance company and I would just, whenever I took a break, I’d just like follow a hundred people on Insta. It was awful. Like, I’m so glad that’s not a thing anymore.

Joe Spisak: Yeah. I don’t even want to know what my phone screen time was during those days. I pretty much just lived, lived on the different social media channels and was just copy and pasting messages and, and following. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But nope. 

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, it, it’s like, yeah, goodness, I don’t miss that. I was just thinking, um, so after you were doing games, you, and you did this for a few years, I think OK Boomer, you can actually still buy that, is that right?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, you can actually still buy both games, it’s just we have haven’t been pushing, um, dicey, uh, as we haven’t been pushing it as all at all. It’s basically just… It, it is, We still have kind of like a small emphasis on small cult following of people that still like to play. It is a great game. It’s just we’re not pushing it from a marketing perspective anymore.

So I have a couple thousand units left, and you know, we’ll just keep it up until hopefully those sell out one day. But we are still actively marketing OK Boomer. It’s doing very well. We have like over 3,500 5-star reviews between Amazon and our website, over a thousand on Amazon. We’re actually getting ready to come out with our third SKU um, so second expansion pack here within the next few months.

So yeah.

Brandon Rollins: All those links are down there, by the way, in the show notes, in the transcript, if you wanna buy a copy for yourself.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, definitely check it out. Would love, would love for uh, everyone on the show to check it out? Uh, let me know your thoughts too.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Leave thoughts in the um, I’m actually thinking about where, where are we gonna have people do comments? Uh, pretty much any social media you find this on, how about that?

Joe Spisak: Yes. Shoot us a DM just like we were doing back in the day.

From board games to order fulfillment

Brandon Rollins: Uh, send us a telegram, carrier pigeon. I’ll to just about anything. But anyway, where I was going with that, was that after you started with the games, you actually ended up creating your own warehousing company? I think it was in ’19.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, it was right around that time period, and you’re absolutely right. So the games were taking off and doing really well to, you know, we got to that graduation period that we talked about earlier, and we ended up going through three different, 3PL partners over the course of a year and a half.

And, you know, it was just one thing after the other, like, I was super disappointed in like the lack of pricing transparency. The customer support was, was really, really impressively bad. You know, we would send an email out to the support line or the account executive we were working with. We’d wait three or four days to hear back and pray to God that’ll get triaged to the right person in the company that could actually, you know, help us solve our problems.

So, you know, like, like every great business starts by solving a, a big problem that exists in the market that other people are looking to get solved as well. So I ended up starting a, a 3PL basically out of my parents’ house.

Called that 3PL, ShipDaddy and ended up bringing the games in-house, found a couple other customers that were having the same problems and created a flexible fulfillment organization that focused on being an extension of these e-commerce brands and a true partner instead of, you know, just another warehouse where you’d ship your stuff to and say a prayer that they’d be able to deliver good customer service for you. 

Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm. Any 3PL that will actually answer their emails and phone calls in the same day is pretty much a gift. If you’re running a business and you depend on them, Cuz it’s, it’s actually relatively uncommon to find that. And if you can get the same person every time, even better.

Joe Spisak: Exactly, and you could see why something like that would may happen for these big 3PLs is because their support team is, there’s a high likelihood that they’re not actually on the floor in the warehouse where their orders are being picked and packed. So there is, you know, there’s a delay, there’s a lag time in the communication there whenever you’re not able to communicate directly with the people that are picking and packing your product.

Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like one of the good things about warehouses is it’s actually a relatively, well, it’s a simple enough business model, like a small business can actually run a 3PL and not have too hard of a time of it. Like you do still need substantial, you need a building, you need some staff, you need a lot, you need some equipment to some degree.

But it’s, like, it’s not a totally far off thing, like creating the next social media network or something. Like you don’t, you don’t need an auto making factory or something. It’s relatively straightforward to do, which, as a result, means there’s actually a lot of folks that you can contact who would do a pretty good job of shipping out your orders.

You just have to know where to look for ’em.

Joe Spisak: 100% correct. So we’ve noticed in our experience that working with what I call boutique level 3PLs, so you know, 3PLs and their owners that are much smaller than the big guys on the market. Uh, they’ve been able to deliver better pricing and a better overall customer experience like almost every time.

But like you said, the actual nature of the business, taking something off a shelf, you know, putting it in a box, printing a shipping label, slapping it on that box and, and shipping it out through you know, an existing carrier network like a UPS or USPS, you know, that’s not something that’s technologically super advanced, but you know, you need to have good technology that you’re able to link into the e-commerce stores.

The Amazons, Walmart.com, Shopifys to be able to ingest that order data and then print the shipping labels effectively, manage the inventory effectively. And within the last, you know, several years, I got lucky and was kind of starting my 3PL around the time where this cloud-based warehouse management system technology started to become commercialized.

So we, we didn’t have to hire a team of software engineers and create our own proprietary tech. That would’ve been an a nightmare, and it would’ve cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get right. But, we were able to, you know, uh, use one of these cloud-based technology programs and offer high level service, you know, right away.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. See that’s very cool and I, I think also because you started it in ’19, you also kind of had, in a very sick way, good luck because e-commerce started doing really well in ’20, too, which I’m sure that probably helped order volume.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, it was so strange because, so the town that we’re from in central Pennsylvania, I’m from like a more rural part of Pennsylvania. You’re watching, this is like primetime COVID time, whenever we were building up ShipDaddy and you’re watching, like, these small mom and pop stores, these restaurants, other small business owners all around you.

You know, this was like the nail in a coffin for a lot of different businesses around us. And it was really tough to see. And then alternatively, we somehow stumbled into this industry that is like 10X-ing e-commerce growth around the globe, uh, over the course of that time period. So it definitely didn’t hurt us.

I’ll tell you that.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, and that’s a twisted thing is, I’ve actually talked to a lot of people who their business model took off because of the pandemic. And honestly, I started doing better because of the pandemic too, because like people needed more marketing online. And because I was working with people adjacent to e-commerce, I started to do a little bit better as well.

I found that a lot of people feel kind of bad for that good luck. I, I just kind to me, I see the pandemic as a sort of, well, I mean actually it is a literal force of nature – I mean it was really, really, really, really, really awful. Um, there are these little silver linings if you’re able to look for them.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, no, I totally understand what you’re saying. And yeah, I definitely, uh, I don’t, I don’t feel bad about it it because nobody could have predicted it. It, it, um, ultimately ended up helping our business. But at the same time, you know, there will be stuff like that that happens that will inevitably hurt our business in the future too.

So, you know, it’s kind of just the, the ebbs and flows and you have to be able to adapt in a super quick manner and you know, it’s crazy seeing like some companies out there that are so large and growing so fast that you look at them and you think like, “Oh, these guys are going to last forever. They’re gonna keep growing to infinity.”

But in reality, if you can’t continue to innovate and be able to not get stuck in the status quo, sometimes your company will inevitably start shrinking or die one day. So yeah, I mean, I think that’s just part of the game. It’s the ebbs and flows of being an entrepreneur and trying to grow.

The growth of ShipDaddy

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely. Now, speaking of growth, I figure that ShipDaddy probably still isn’t in your parents’ house, right?

Joe Spisak: No, no, no. We ended up getting kicked out of there pretty quickly. The, the landlords, my mom and dad didn’t want us putting too many pallets in the basement. So…

Brandon Rollins: yeah. I don’t blame 

Joe Spisak: Yeah, so this is actually a good story that I think you’ll like. So I was doing some web work on the side while I was growing ShipDaddy and uh, one of my dad’s friends from college owned a real estate company in the area and he was looking for an update on his website and some strategy on, filling his, his properties in, in our community. So I volunteered to help do some web work for him in exchange for using a, a vacant building that they had to upgrade from my parents’ house. So we did this web work for him and we ended up upgrading to the building and we got in there.

We didn’t have a truck dock. The, building was actually a, a vacant morgue. So they, they, they used to, they used to keep the bodies in this building, but I looked at it and, you know, all of that aside, I was like, this actually is a pretty good spot because where they would keep the dead bodies was makeshift racking for us to keep product.

So we were able to slide pallets in to where this racking was at this facility. We didn’t have air conditioning. We didn’t have heat. We didn’t have a bathroom there, so we were driving down the road to go to the bathroom at a local gas station. And um, and I told you there’s no truck dock. So whenever people, whenever these 53 foot trucks would come to drop stuff off at our warehouse, you could barely even call it a warehouse.

But they would just be in awe like, What are you guys doing? Like, where do you want us to drop all this stuff off at? So it worked for us great for like about six months. We ended up filling that up and then, at that point, we had enough cash flow to move into, like, a more commercial grade building.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. That’s just totally crazy to even think about operating a 3PL out of an old morgue. But it’s like, yeah, it, it actually, if you can get past the sort of ickiness of it, it’s like it’s actually not a terrible building for it in terms of like where things are stored and that kind of thing. It’s obviously terrible to not have a liftgate and to not have a restroom of all things, but…

Joe Spisak: Yeah, exactly. 

Brandon Rollins: It works better than you’d think it would.

Joe Spisak: From a compliance perspective, we weren’t quite up to the exact standards we needed to. We didn’t even have a bathroom or anything like that. But then again, it was just me, some people from my family and like two of my best buds since childhood. So we really weren’t that picky. And at the end of the day, it’s like you couldn’t beat free, right?

So we had, we had a free place to expand into that in exchange for doing some web work. So wouldn’t, wouldn’t have traded that for the world.

Brandon Rollins: And then it was just jumping into a bigger building after that sign, a lease on a larger property?

Joe Spisak: that that’s correct. 

Brandon Rollins: Actual commercial real estate? ,

Joe Spisak: Yeah, that’s correct. So we ended up moving into 6,000, like right around that. It was like 6,000, 6,500 square feet. Which at the time I was walking through that and I was like, “Wow. Like I’ve made it. This is, this is amazing, man. I can’t believe this is happening.” It was nice because I didn’t get locked into like a year or two years or five years, like some of these big industrial real estate buildings.

You’ve got a five year lease, 10 year lease. So I basically worked out something where they were kind of desperate for people to move in. Uh, again, not like the Rolls Royce of, of facilities where we’re moving into here, but it was enough where we had one truck dock and 6,500 square feet that we could move into.

So I ended up signing for a month to month lease there and kind of set out to, to fill that up.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. And then did you end up moving to a larger building after that too?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, so we, we filled that up over the course of, oh, I don’t know, probably about a year. And we ended up, and during that time I knew we were getting full, getting full, and this is, I was on the hunt for like a more permanent location. Something that we weren’t gonna have to keep moving here every year.

So I ended up, um, purchasing 140,000, quite, quite a big jump from where we were at, actual warehouse facility, in a town about 15 minutes from where we were at, called Newville. And it probably took me, I don’t even know, like five or six months. Buying, buying commercial real estate is, there’s a lot of things that I never expected we were going to have to do.

It was just a very long process, but it, it ended up working out really well. Got a good deal on the building. Seller financed it. So, so we were able to work out a, a good agreement with the seller that worked for both parties. And then ended up moving into that building and started filling that guy up.

Brandon Rollins: Man, that’s, that’s nuts. I gotta imagine that moving the warehouse multiple times is like, kind of into ordeal. Cause you’ve got all those people’s inventory, you gotta move.

Joe Spisak: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s beyond an ordeal. So…

Brandon Rollins: Like, is, is there a process for this or did you just do the best that you could with it?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, well we tried to make a process, but it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of sweat equity, um, as you can imagine in in organizational components as well. So, packing up all of these customers and all of their product and moving it from one facility to another. We ended up purchasing a truck to do that. Because just we looked at the economics between renting at U-Haul, estimating the amount of hours this was gonna take us, and we ended up purchasing a truck.

The thing is, nobody at our facility actually really knew how to drive a truck too well. So the very first day I dropped probably 40 or 50K on buying this, this truck, ended up running it into a tree and ripping the top off of the truck. So I ended up having to… yeah. So I ended up having to go the U-Haul route as well and not being, while having to still pay off this dang truck.

So, you know, again, learning experiences, something I can laugh about looking back, but at the time, oh my gosh, I was, I was not happy and we, we were in a tight spot for sure.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, that sounds absolutely miserable when that happens cuz like man, wrecking a vehicle, especially when you’ve just bought a new building. It’s like that’s gotta be terrifying.

Joe Spisak: Oh my gosh. Absolutely. And we like just got the insurance for it and it was all, it was a whole thing. So we ended up taking care of it. But basically how we ended up transitioning everything we would get in early every day. We’d print the labels for all of our customers. We’d pick and pack everything, and one person would stay there for the carriers to come, um, to come pick all the product up.

And then everybody else would just load as much as we could in our U-Haul truck and would just run all the pallets there, come back, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then we had a, a smaller team at the new spot, setting up the pick and pack location, setting up all the new racking. So there was a lot of moving parts.

It took us a couple months, but, you know, then, then we weren’t gonna have to do it again.

How Joe sold ShipDaddy

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s the beauty of moving into a much bigger warehouse. And so now, now I understand you do Fulfill.com, like that’s your full time gig, right?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, that’s correct. So…

Brandon Rollins: Someone else is running ShipDaddy right now?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, that’s correct. So I realized over the course of building Ship Daddy for several years that, you know, I loved my time there, especially getting to work with my best friends and being so close to my family, but that my expertise and what I really love to do is in the sales and marketing portion of everything and, you know, having a lot of success with filling up ShipDaddy and being able to grow that , I basically created a business thesis for how I could replicate my marketing strategies and do this for other boutique level 3PLs, across the country. I was doing the sales and marketing and then my buddies were really handling a bulk of the operations.

Although whenever you’re a growing company like that, you pretty much wear all the hats. Like, I’ve packed tens and tens of thousands of items, you know in the warehouse as well, so I basically got them to the point where they felt comfortable running the show there and ended up selling, back to them and having them take over full time so I could start Fulfill.com.

And help other 3PLs with their marketing and help other e-commerce brands like the OK Boomers of the world and, and the, the games that you created at Pangea find 3PLs, um, that would be the best fit for them.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. So is, is it a total exit at this point, or are you still kind of like owner and someone else’s manager?

Joe Spisak: No, it’s, it’s a, it’s a total exit at this point. They run everything and I get to hang out with them during Thanksgiving and Christmas whenever I’m home and catch up on the business. But they’re all doing very well and I’m definitely cheerleading for them from the side.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, that’s really cool. I’ve actually, I’ve never exited a company, not like exit-exit where you sell it off to somebody else. So that’s like, that’s still kind of mysterious to me. I, I just, I don’t really know how that works.

Joe Spisak: Yeah. A lot of paperwork, a lot of lawyers.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, I 

Joe Spisak: Not a, not a super fun process but once you get it to the finish line and everybody, you know, everybody is comfortable with, with what the deal is, then you know, it, it, it ends up working out for everybody. But yeah, it’s, it’s, I equate it to like, trying to close on the commercial real estate stuff.

Like you’re gonna spend a lot of money with lawyers because that’s not something that you wanna skimp on. Uh, is, is setting stuff like that up incorrectly.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. There’s a handful of things in this world that you don’t want to go cheap on. Lawyers is one of ’em.

Definitely, I would say most seafood probably qualifies to, I mean, there’s just a handful of things you don’t wanna cheap out on.

Joe Spisak: Yes, exactly. Good lawyers and sketchy street meet. So that would, uh, those, those both are in the same category for sure.

How Joe Spisak decides which business opportunities to pursue

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. So I, I was just thinking, you, you’ve done quite a, an eclectic bunch of businesses at this point because Fulfill.com is, it’s kind of marketing agency. You’re at least it’s got agency roots, although I guess really it’s better to say software as a service. But when you look at your resume and you, and you think about it, it’s like board game, board game, 3PL, software as a service.

So how do you know what to start? What? What gives you the inspiration to pursue these opportunities?

Joe Spisak: Yeah, great question. And you’re right, like whenever you kind of look at my background at face value, it is super eclectic and looks to be all over the place. But then if you take kind of a deeper look at it, you can see the strategy, and, and how the trajectory kind of happens. So started with the board games.

Realized that there was a problem in the fulfillment industry from starting these board games, kind of dove one layer deeper into, uh, start, you know, starting the fulfillment company, started the fulfillment company and realized that there was a big problem in 3PLs is not being able to grow effectively.

And realized that I was really great at that. So, kind of dove, dove a layer deeper in to that sub niche. So that’s like, you know, kind of my entrepreneurial advice, in a nutshell, is to find a place to start, right? Minimal barrier of entry for you where you don’t have to drop a super high amount of cash, something you are highly interested and passionate about, and something that your, your skill set can aid in, right? Something that you, you’re gonna have to teach yourself a lot, but something that you are, are pretty confident in your ability in as well.

And then go for it, right? And then as you’re going for it and you start to build a product, a company, et cetera, uh, you always keep your eye out for a potential pivot or something else that you could start and dive a layer deeper into. And that has seemed to work really well for me on my journey. And I’ve seen a lot of other entrepreneurs that have followed, you know, a similar, what seems to be unconventional progression, but in reality they’re just realizing more problems along the way as they gain more expertise and as they learn more about themselves and what they want for their future, then they can, they can kind of start to pivot into other areas.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, and that’s kind of the assumption this podcast is based on. It’s like, I know that if I get small business owners and entrepreneurs and creative professionals on here, whoever I talk to is going to have gotten into whatever they’ve gotten into by some unusual path. It is inevitable. I mean, like sometimes you’ll hear somebody like inheriting a business or something, but it’s like for the most part, people just have to try different things until they get to what really clicks.

I would say also if anybody’s listening to this and you’re like, you really do have no capital to invest at all, yeah, it’s definitely tough to, to build a business without any capital. But I will say, probably the surest way to get on the path to starting to build businesses and like do really, really, really big things like what you may want to do, very ambitiously like…

if you can build one sellable service, if you can just come up with one sellable skill, it’s like that gets you on the pipeline right there, because skills, um, or at least some skills, you don’t actually require investment to learn. There’s a handful of ’em out there. There are very much in demand.

Joe Spisak: Absolutely. That’s a great approach is starting a service based business where, you know, companies are out contracting out to you on an agency level where you can help them with a certain subset of their business and you can, you can, you know, learn from that and kind of still be in the startup environment and, and, and kind of grow with them there.

And then also, you know, the path that I, I took was I had a full-time corporate job that was completely work from home that allowed me to work on my side hustles, my businesses, on the side, and there’s never been a better time in. The history of the world to start companies than I think now because there’s just so much opportunity out there with a switch to this work from home environment, you know, there’s so many people that are starting their own side hustle side. Hobbies, it’s, it’s, it’s easier to monetize a business, nowadays because of the internet than, than any, any other time.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, I think so too. And it didn’t even feel particularly like a particularly hostile environment in 2015, 2016, ’16, cuz it’s like we’ve got the internet, we’ve got social media, we’ve got all these new things, e-commerce and so on and so on. But now it’s like, because work from home positions are, if not dominant, at least common enough to not be unusual.

Like that guy you hear about who works from home all the time, because it’s relatively common now, it’s actually somewhat easier to be able to do that if nothing else because you get your commute time back.

Joe Spisak: Yeah, 100%. And, and like, I just thought of this too, like adding onto your point of service level work, contract work. So I told you, you know, I used to do web work online. Upwork, you know, you can sign up as a contractor on Upwork or Fiverr, and, you know, build a profile for yourself and seek out jobs and have other people seek you out.

And not only can you learn about what you may want to do in the future, more long term, you can, you can, you can make money and work on lots of different projects, in lots of different areas, uh, of business. So.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, my, my absolute favorite for like scrappy, bizarre ways to start a service based business is, and this is one of the episodes I’ll link to in the transcript. Check out the Kenny Goodman podcast. He makes digital versions of board games for money these days, and it’s enough to pay his bills. And it’s like, he just makes demos of board games on a Steam app called Tabletop Simulator.

It’s a $20 game. Nobody said like, “This is the way, you know this is a profit, profitable business.” You just noticed that like publishers needed to make online demos, especially for COVID, and he started doing it and people started paying. So it’s like, it’s actually, there are more possibilities in this world to make money in fun ways than are immediately obvious.

Joe Spisak: Exactly, and, and that comes back to our previous points of like meshing out hard in a, a, a sort in a certain category, right? He is literally creating digital demos for board gaming companies, 

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, he’s, he’s literally the guy for it. 

Joe Spisak: Exactly. So whenever you’re in a niche that is that specific and there’s, there’s a need for it.

Oh, man, like, can you grow fast. If you can just take over an entire category and be the person of that category?

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely. So I’ll say this because we are actually coming up on a pretty healthy length podcast. I have just one more question for you.

Joe Spisak: Let’s hear 

Brandon Rollins: which I’ve gotten in the habit of asking everybody. So if you could just give yourself advice, give your past self advice, what would you say?

Parting advice from Joe Spisak & where you can find him online

Joe Spisak: Hmm, great question. I think I would tell myself to just keep going. 

Just keep going. You know, my, my philosophy that I’ve really championed since I’ve been an entrepreneur has been fail faster. And once you get over the fear of failure or the fear of being judged by other people, you know, it’s actually a beautiful thing to be the person in the arena that’s actually battling it out through all the trials and tribulations, all the failures.

Whenever you can wear that as a badge of honor. Instead of a, a mark of discouragement, it just really frees you up to go and create and have fun and you follow, follow your dreams. So I would tell myself just to keep going, pushing.

Brandon Rollins: Honestly, I think that’s good advice to end on. So with that in mind, where can people find you online?

Joe Spisak: LinkedIn, Joe Spisak. You can add me on there. Twitter, @JoeSpeezy, that’s probably the platform I’m most active on. Yeah, please add me on Twitter, reach out, like give me some advice on, on how we did today on the podcast. My dms are always open, for anybody, you know, that is striving to create the, create a business, grow as an entrepreneur, someone who’s deep into the game, whatever.

Let’s talk.

Brandon Rollins: All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, and thank you to everybody who’s listened to this whole show. I really appreciate that as well.

If you’re looking to find us online, you can go to weirdmarketingtales.com. You can also find us on social media. Pretty much every one of ’em known to man, it’s either @WeirdMarketers or @WeirdMarketing. All the links are in the transcript and the show notes, so you can just click on those. If you happen to be listening to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave a five star review.

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