Adrian: Rick, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you want to be when you grow up?
Rick: Well, I’ve always been a computer geek, so I’ve been working on my computer in the basement my whole life. Around college, Microsoft recruited me. I was there from ‘88 to 2000. I had that experience and then went off on my own. I helped my dad’s company a little bit, then I decided to create my own business.
Before I started my business, I wrote down a list of things I wanted out of it. I wanted something that had an asset value. I wanted to create a company that could work and grow and launch new products even without me at some point. I wanted something that could give me at least $100,000 salary with the potential of much more. My last goal was to find things that, even if I blow it, there’s not a whole lot of risk.
Adrian: How far along have you come towards achieving those goals?
Rick: I’m pretty much there. I have an office I’ve rented about a mile away from my house. We have about 7 employees there. We’re creating new products, marketing, taking care of all the administrative duties, customer support, and I have developers overseas as well. I’m still kind of the inventor of the direction, but once I have my whiteboard drawing saying what the features and benefits are, that’s all that’s required to get a project going. Right now, I’m letting the company do its thing and purposely staying away to put pressure on them to achieve without me.
Adrian: Can you talk about what kind of impact you’ve had on the Internet with Audio Generator?
Rick: We have three years of data now from our customers, and what I can tell you is audio and video is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate and not enough people are doing it.
For example, take Jonathan Mizel. He’s an established, well-respected marketer. He knows how to put up a control first and then try to beat it. He had one web page that he had worked on for years, and he was always testing, testing, testing, and trying to beat his previous best. It got to a point where it peaked and nothing he did had a great impact. But then he tried audio. When he put audio on that page, he beat the control by 30 percent!
And we’ve seen even more dramatic improvements when people add audio to pages that aren’t as well tested. I think it’s because many entrepreneurs are better at sales and marketing when they record an audio than when they try to write sales copy.
Overall, I’d say the average increase we see is along the lines of the 30 percent increase Jonathan Mizel saw.
Adrian: Why do you think audio or video make such a difference?
Rick: You’re adding a sales person’s voice and personality onto a web page. You’re adding another medium. It has to have an impact – good or bad. Audio is such a powerful medium that it magnifies your mistakes as well as your assets. So if you try audio and your sales go down, don’t give up on audio – you’ve proven it has an impact. Try a different message so you get a positive impact.
Adrian: Can you tell us about the other things you’re doing?
Rick: We are focusing on expanding our range of products, including information-based products as well as service-based products. We’re also going into tools that anybody in business needs, whether you’re a secretary, a CPA network or a marketer.
Adrian: I’ve seen other services that allow users to record tele-seminars by dialing in and adding them in on three-way. Is that a feature that you’re thinking about adding into Audio Generator?
Rick: No, a better way to record a conference call is using the recording-feature that comes with the conference call service you’re using. It is going to be more reliable because it’s part of the system, then you just upload the service.
What I’ve learned is I’d rather do fewer projects that have more strategy behind them and will lead to bigger numbers instead of a million different little feature changes to all of my old products. If you are always chasing someone else, trying to copy feature sets, then you’re always behind. You’re not going to win. You have to ignore the competition and go out and stake your own claim to get ahead — then the competition is almost irrelevant.
Adrian: You’re also diversifying your risk as well because you’ll have a bunch of companies that have all done well.
Rick: Oh yeah, I felt that risk when all I had was an audio product. I would stay awake at night wondering, okay, what happens if Google does free audio hosting in a smart, small business-focused way.
So, what’s my next product? We came up with video. Video and audio serve the same multi-media advertising need, but they’re a little different so it diversifies the risk. The MarketingMakeoverGenerator.com product diversifies our product-line risk even more. Now we’re hosting actual opt-in pages, we’re doing split testing, and we have an auto responder.
Adrian: Do you have a shopping cart as well?
Rick: Not yet. Our goal was to be the best at one thing — opt-in pages. To fulfill other needs, we interface with the other vendors out there specializing in things like shopping-carts and auto-responders. We do have a simple auto-responder built-in for newbies. We call it “The world’s simplest auto responder” because we have no customizable features! But the newbies love it. Advanced marketers hook our best-in-class opt-in page with their external auto-responder.
Adrian: That’s something that customers are really happy with. They don’t mind not having the features.
Rick: The simplicity of the MMG product was the key to it’s success in the marketplace. I’ve never had more amazing testimonials delivered so fast. If you go to http://marketingmakeovergenerator.com/testimonials you’ll see them — we must have fifty or so up there, including the original audio for most of them.
Adrian: So you went and looked for the basic functionality that people needed and you reduced it to the absolute simplest parts. Can you tell us about where that focus on simplicity comes from?
Rick: You might laugh but my focus on simplicity actually came from Microsoft. Microsoft gets dinged by critics as being too techie or too hard to use, but the truth is Microsoft is trying to achieve extremely complex goals with each of their products while trying to meet literally everyone’s needs. I have a lot of advantages because I’m focusing on a narrow segment of the market. I know exactly what they need in this one product, and I don’t waste my time, or their attention on anything they don’t really need.
Adrian: Interesting. So can you talk a little bit about your low risk partnership strategy?
Rick: Partnerships are a great way to grow your business, but a lot of people do them wrong. If you end up in a bad partnership, it’s pretty much hell. When I look at a potential partner, I try to do a small deal with them first, one that is low risk. What I like to look for are small can’t-lose partnerships so that I can feel out the partner and learn what it’s like to work with this person.
Adrian: Let’s say that you’ve done a small trial with someone, it’s low risk and both sides have a good feeling and they say, “You know what? There’s value here.” How quickly do you move ahead with working on a partnership and how do you structure that? Because even though things may have started off well, they can still go bad.
Rick: Well one of my partner’s rules is that every partnership hits a bad point eventually. That’s just the law of averages. So the real question isn’t: “Is this partner not going to have problems with you?” The real question is: “How do both of you handle the problem once it happens.”
Adrian: How many partnerships do you have going at the moment?
Rick: I have one long term with Alex Mandossian and Armand Morin, and then I have two other smaller partnerships. Also, I always have one other partnership kind of in the wings that is active, but doesn’t require a lot of my time. I let it succeed or fail on it’s own – but I own a piece of it if it succeeds. For example, I may find a software developer who has a great idea for a product who wants to partner up with me because I can provide some inspiration in terms of product design as well as access to markets. Or sometimes I’ll take one of my ideas and give it to a developer and have him work on it for a percentage of the sales once it ships. I’ll partner with them and see what they can do. But I have to admit, usually that kind of partnership has failed. But then, that’s why I spend so little time on those partnerships.
What’s cool about that is I’m out almost no money. I’m just out a little bit of time. So I view it as one of those can’t-lose low-risk potentially high-reward situations.
Looking forward, I’ll probably end up doing fewer partnerships with new people now that I’m successful and have a proven history with Alex Mandossian and Armand Morin. It’s kind of like marriage. Polygamy, on one hand, sounds kind of cool, but the truth is, I don’t know if I could handle five wives! Likewise, I can’t handle five major partnerships. Just one major partnership is enough for me.
There’s another important point about partnerships. Very often, the product development partner underestimates the value the marketing partner has after the product has launched. During launch, the marketing partner is clearly adding a lot of value, so there’s no problem. But after launch, the marketing partner gets a breather, and it seems like they aren’t adding value any more… but the truth is, that marketing partner earned that breather. The asset value of a marketing partner is the entire sum history of experience and contacts they have. The next time the company is in a tight spot, you better have your marketing partner excited about your partnership, or your company will tank fast – so keep writing those checks!
Adrian: Very smart. Any other thoughts about partnering?
Rick: A lot of times partners go into business and they have the same skill sets. That never made sense to me, like, two or three software developers will go in together. Or two or three marketers will go in together. Well then, really, you’re overlapping skills and basically just cutting your revenue into a third, or however many partners you have.
Adrian: So in going forward, how would you like to see things turn out for your company?
Rick: I’m working towards growth and strength and stability. Some people build a company with acquisition as the only exit-strategy. I think that’s risky. I look at being acquired as a happy accident. If it happens, great – but until then, I’m focusing on building a company that will last, one that will have value and can run on its own without me being there. I want a company that has some defense in terms of its ability to maintain its market position so it can grow. So I’m just focusing on creating a healthy company that has enough strength to it that my employees are not at risk and neither is my financial interest or my family.
Adrian: Any thoughts in closing you’d like to add in?
Rick: Well, I’m reading a book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It’s about many things, but for me, it’s mainly about enjoying the wealth you have created without guilt. I think we as entrepreneurs have a social responsibility to help other people understand how the world really works. We don’t get paid if we’re not adding value to the world. Customers may try my AudioGenerator.com service, but if it doesn’t add value to their lives, to their business, they’re going to cancel. So I only make money if I help other people. It’s not about greed. It’s about customers and their needs. In business, the reward for helping other people is that you get rich. And you don’t need to feel guilty about that success.
Adrian: So you’re providing value.
Rick: I’m providing value. As entrepreneurs we only have wealth because we added value to the world. We entrepreneurs are the “motor of the world” as Ayn Rand put it. And what wealth we have, we earned it by contributing to society.
Adrian: Great! Thanks a lot for making time.
Rick: You’re welcome, Adrian.
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