Seconds and Cents

The Facebook files - all political. It's about the power shift between the media and your community. Supply chains - how does this end? At Teammate: We are launching an online course soon, and my book comes out 11/30!

Automation inside of organizations. I think there are 3 groups of people to really focus on. 1. Solopreneurs and teams of < 10 people 2. Employees at companies larger than 10 people. 3. Large (1000 employees+) organizations. Most importantly, I think it's an opportunity for an explosion of fulfillment and innovation.

Today, we're going to be kind of talking about headlines, things that are in the news. And a lot of the things that are in the news right now actually affect teammate. They affect I think all entrepreneurs as a whole, they really a lot of them really affect me.

Seconds and Cents. Today we're going to talk about successes and failures. This pertains to me personally in my life. But I've spent a lot of time this week on successes, on failures on kind of growing successes and on turning down failures, shutting down failures, recognizing them, and kind of accepting them for what they are. And what's been very interesting in my life is that lately, the successes and the failures have diverged quite a bit.

It's been a couple weeks but I'm back! I want to start by saying that my purpose with this entire podcast is to sort of document the journey of what it's like to be a big ambitious entrepreneur growing a company. My goal is to have a diary to be able to look back at, but also to give people a real world sense of what it's like. And to give new entrepreneurs a real world sense of what it's like, because it's really easy to get caught up in the day to day and to kind of look at things over year long timeframes.

Here we go. This is gonna be a quick one. What I want to talk about today is this newfound phenomenon called Clubhouse. If you are unfamiliar with Clubhouse think of it like AIM where you just kind of drop into chatrooms and people hangout. You can be somebody who runs the clubhouse and limit who talks and doesn't. It's like an informal podcast. You can listen to it while it's going on and have it in the background but it's not high produced or high pressure value. You can just drop in and listen. If I want to leave, I can leave. If I want to ask a question, I can ask a question. Clubhouse is only available on IOS by invite. You have to get an invitation in. What I'm finding is that if you download the app, you'll get an invite. It's not available on android right now and it's growing like wildfire.

Today we're going to talk about teamwork. If you an entrepreneur listening to this, how can you create teamwork that keeps your teams engaged and employees excited? If you're an employee, what does successful teamwork look like in a remote world?

It's been almost six months since I've posted a Seconds and Cents. Everything is alright. The whole reason why I've not posted is we've gotten a couple of big new contracts that were signed in the last quarter of 2020. These projects have dominated my time and kept me dialed in to develop the products our clients need. Second, we've decided as a company that we're going to place a heavy emphasis on automation. I mean, we're not promoting the Pinterest business anymore outside of servicing our current clientele.

Seconds and Cents Episode 39, we're going to talk about life slowing down today. This is just a little quick little tip. This is something to add into your daily life as an entrepreneur as Eve as an employee, anybody can add this into their lives. But it's something that I've been doing for about a month now, I'd say that my world has slowed down sizably. And it's that I've decided that I'm only going to focus on one to three things in a day.

Seconds and Cents Episode 38. I took last week off, I'm excited to be here today, we're only going to do headlines and thinking that maybe a shorter podcast is going to be a little bit better. So we're going to do just three headlines today, three things that are happening in the world that I think you all will find slightly interesting. So I want to start with layoffs. So it's been announced that Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Raytheon, Charles Schwab, are cutting thousands of white collar jobs is the way that it was being put when I read it. I think this is no surprise, I think this is going to keep coming. I think that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the layoffs that are going to happen here.

Seconds and Cents Episode 37. I just started this podcast back in and maybe July 2020. We're at Episode 37. Already. My goal, when I had started it was I just wanted to see how I did over the course of 40 episodes if I liked it if it was something that I wanted to continue at the time, I just didn't know anything about podcasting, I hadn't even really found my voice yet. And actually, I had not found my voice. And so now we're 37 episodes, and I think I'm starting to find my voice a little bit better, I hope that for you as as a listener, it sounds a little bit more, more coherent.

Welcome to Seconds and Cents Episode 35. So we're going to start with something new today. I've never done this before, but I'm calling it hot. Take headlines. So this is I'm just going to talk about my hot take towards the headlines that I found today on CNN business. I try not to go read the news. In fact, I've deleted the apple news. I've deleted all news apps from my phone. Um, I don't go to I don't go to any news websites. This is kind of a first for me going to see anything business and and probably 18 months or two years. But I think it's important to say that I do keep up with current events. I just don't read the news.

Episode 36 of Seconds and Cents, I'm having a wonderful time today recording these, today, we are going to talk about a business model using an iPhone calculator. This is a phenomenon I've been watching for probably about six months now. And it's something that I kind of want to caution a lot of people away from, I am seeing a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm seeing a lot of people do this, they're starting a business, and then they're using their iPhone calculator to calculate how much money they're going to make and how much time it's going to take for them to be rich.

Seconds and Cents story time, we're going to talk about the pizza app today. So when we started the company, I was testing out all sorts of different business models, all sorts of different types of products, and most importantly, different types of customers. And I was kind of looking to answer the question, what type of customer do I actually want to work with? What type of customer do I want to serve? So there are all sorts of different types of customers out there. And I was just kind of thinking about what what, what impacts do I really want to make here with this business? How do we really want to kind of create our engagements and and who we do, who do we want to work with.

So this morning, I'm on the phone with my dad. And we're working together on building a sales process for a product we have we're working together on and how we are going to expand into a new customer segment, my dad has, I don't know, 30 years, I'm aging him of experience in large corporate sales, he's probably the best corporate salesperson I've ever seen. And so he's helping me out with some stuff, especially stuff that I'm just really, really bad at.

Seconds and Cents Episode 31. We're going to talk today Tik Tok Oracle. We've talked about Tik Tok a lot on this podcast considering that we're only 31 episodes in I think they've occupied content, like four or five of them. I don't even have the app. And I talked about Tik Tok what feels like an awful lot Tik tok, Oracle, and Walmart, the President, quote, unquote, gave his blessing to the CEO, the executive team, co CEOs, the executive team over at Oracle to do this deal with Tik tok, which would make Tik Tok not be banned. We're going to talk about whether or not it matters.

Seconds and Cents Episode 30 it's the podcast This is presented by me, Evan. Today, it's just gonna be real life updates. You know, it's we've done this is our 30th episode. I'm super excited that we've made it 30 whole episodes together and this is just sort of a real life update what's actually happening let's get away from the theory for a second. Get away from the experiences that I've had in the past that led me to where I am or the things that I'm thinking about that I think could really help other entrepreneurs just sort of context for everything else context for what's really happening in my life. How do I really view the world right now you know, it's Coronavirus City everywhere. We've got the election going on in the United States which is just the most delightful experience I've been a part of in a long time. This is September 11th... September 11th... This is the 19 year anniversary of the attacks. This is September 11 2020. Real Life updates, what's really going on?

Seconds and Cents, Episode 28. Today we're going to talk about how I adjust my day when it's not going according to the plan. So right now it's 11:26am. Last night, I spent about 90 minutes awake in the middle of the night between 230 and four. I was just absolutely furious about it. And what I thought was going to be today what I had kind of mentally mapped out last night was going to be today is now no longer going to be today because I didn't sleep well.

Seconds & Cents Episode 27. Today we're going to talk about why all bloggers, why I believe all bloggers should be absolutely crushing it on Pinterest. And this is because I think the bloggers have the best business model for Pinterest. But it's not for the reasons that you think though. Before we get into it, we really have to understand well, what is Pinterest? What does Pinterest do? Well, Pinterest takes inspiration, seekers and matches it with an inspiration source. That's it.

All right, everyone, emergency Seconds and Cents. Today actually yesterday, American Airlines announced that they're going to layoff or furlough. 19,000 people come October. And this is something that to be honest with you, I think the American people should be absolutely pissed about. So here's what happened a couple months ago. COVID hits, right? We passed cares act, Congress passes, the cares act like this 2.2 $2.3 trillion bill. It has PPP in it. It has the unemployment insurance, and it has 400 and $50 billion under Treasury Secretary minuchin in it. And part of that $450 billion is to bail out the airlines. I believe the airlines in total got something like 50 billion or $25 billion a major airlines like American, Southwest and united and delta. So that seems like all well and good. I'm sitting there I'm thinking to myself what's probably good that we bail out the airlines because they're going to see kind of this like, unexpected and sort of, to be honest with you from their perspective, unwarranted loss in loss in revenue loss and customers.

American Airlines just announced layoffs of 19,000 people. 19,000 people just got robbed by billionaires, hedge funds, pensions, and family offices. I recorded an emergency pod as to why.

So blog posts are one of the best ways to boost SEO, they're one of the best ways to get yourself on the top page of Google or on the second page of Google, right? They really boost your site ranking, they really boost your social proof, they really boost your validation in terms of well, is this company legit? Is this a company that I should answer my credit card information for? Is this a company that I should be doing business with? Or are they just kind of a one off company where you know, who knows what they're gonna do a good job? Is it worth if I pay them a monthly fee to manage my Pinterest account? Right?

Seconds and Cents, Episode 23. Today is August 17. Today we're gonna talk about Pinterest. So I see when a lot of people ask me about my business, one of the things that kind of doesn't compute in their mind is why we invest so heavily into Pinterest. Why? It seems like the market isn't really that engaged in Pinterest, but we're continuing to double and triple down on Pinterest. And so today we're going to talk about kind of what we see is the business case for Pinterest, and why we think that it's a really engaging platform for the next 10, 15, 20 plus years.

Seconds and Cents, Episode 21. Today we're going to talk about just some of the things that I did when I was just starting out the business. This is probably the first year and a half of the business. And yesterday we talked about experimenting, we talked about kind of how nine out of 10 experiments really fail, they really fail miserably. And so at least in my world, nine out of 10 experiments fail really miserably. And so today, I was just going to kind of tell some stories, some things that happened when I was when I was just getting started. When it was still a one man show.

Seconds and Cents, Episode 20 Episode 20. We're going to talk about something it's a Tuesday, I didn't record one on Monday. And this is something I was thinking about over the weekend. It's something that kind of is pervasive in my life. It's a mindset, I found. It's not a capability set. It's not something necessarily for somebody who has money. It's not something for somebody who doesn't have money that's trying to get money. It's not for somebody who has a team or doesn't have a team, it's just purely a mindset. And that is experimentation.

Seconds and Cents. All right, Episode 18. Today we're going to talk about the product vision for search kind of what's, what's the vision for the company as a whole right now Yavay is broken up into two parts, we have Lede AI, right, which helps newspapers helps news publishers, it helps just publishers in general, as they cover more sporting events as they cover more content, and they cover more content at a smaller cost. And we have the search component, the search component is primarily driving traffic to our clients websites through Pinterest. It's helping our clients utilize content they already have in order to create a larger impact inside of their business.

Seconds and Cents Episode 17. Today we're going to talk about something that popped into my mind yesterday, today's Monday. We're gonna talk about something that popped in my mind yesterday. It's because I spent a good portion of this weekend watching the Imagineering story on Disney Plus, it's all about how Disney's Imagineers kind of have helped Disney develop over time from particularly parks perspective. But it was really interesting that I started to do some research after I finished the last episode, I spent too much time watching it. And I finished the last episode I'm looking through Well, what did the critics say about this? How was it received? I thought it was brilliant. I told probably 10 or 15 different people about this show that I thought they would absolutely love this show.

Seconds and Cents Episode 15. Today we're going to talk about Facebook, we're going to talk about Twitter, we're gonna talk about them as publishers. So this is something that's relevant to my life through lead AI, through some other partner projects that we have. Just simply through any business venture that I have, where I'm leveraging Facebook, or Instagram or Twitter, in order to promote my business, promote my brand, promote whatever I need to promote, right.

Seconds and Cents, Episode 13. Today is July 22 2020. We are going to talk today about media. We're going to talk about print media. We're going to talk about kind of my perceptions of the media. And the reason why we're going to talk about it is because of Lede AI. So Lede AI is a company that I am in collaboration with. a newspaper called Richland Source. It has been one of the greatest collaborations of my professional career so far. And what we do is we write automated high school sports articles. So high school sporting event takes place, we get the data for that we write the article about it, we publish it on behalf of on behalf of our clients.

Your assistant is a requirement to your success, not a reward for it. It took a shift in perspective for me to realize that adding an assistant to the team to help me was not a reward, but, rather a requirement for my long term success and sustainability.

What's the biggest struggle that I face on a daily basis? And what are the steps that I take in order to mitigate that? What are the ways that I think about it in order to mitigate that, and my largest challenge in business is every entrepreneurs largest challenge in business which predictable growing cash flow, cash confidence, it's knowing that next month we are going to make more money than we did last month, or in some cases of my business next month, we're going to lose less money than we lost this month

Right now. I mean, we have a team of five people, we have several strategic projects going on, we have two different revenue streams, we have a whole bunch of we just added a third revenue stream, we have a whole bunch of stuff that's going on right now. And so what gives us the tools to succeed and what gives us kind of what are the habits that we need and most of the habits that I need in order to keep everything organized? So my hope here is that my day is that you the listener, the entrepreneur, that big, ambitious entrepreneur, know that. Listen, my day is like any other day, it has routine.

Seconds and Cents, Episode Nine, Today is July 7 2020. Today we're going to talk about how time is simply different for me than it is for most people and how it's different for entrepreneurs in general than it is for most people. And the reason why time is different is because of the economy that we live in, and because of the risks that we take as entrepreneurs. And so today, I'm really excited to talk about time, I'm fascinated by time, I'm fascinated with the way that you can bend time as an entrepreneur and that you can kind of operate outside of the conventional norms of time.

And today what we're going to talk about is how I have spent more on education in the last three years being an entrepreneur than I did during college, combined.

Anxiety and fear never stop. Entrepreneurs are going to have to take risks which means a lot of added anxiety and fear. Every new level of success brings new challenges.

What is the attention economy really and who is deciding what the attention economy pays attention to?

On this episode, I'm just chatting about something near and dear to my heart; Pinterest. What is Pinterest, really? What's the business case for Pinterest? How do I feel about it's long tail?

On today's episode, Evan discusses why he started Yavay all these years ago. We talk about what extreme poverty is, why the issue of poverty is such a complex issue to solve, and we talk about how technology works. Ultimately, can you use technology to solve a problem as complex as poverty? Let's find out!

Welcome to the first episode of Seconds and Cents! My name is Evan, and I've successfully bootstrapped a technology startup for the last four years. I spent 2 years finding my footing and 2 years becoming interesting, and now I can't wait to share what I've learned. Today's episode is all about why I started the company, what inspired me, and what we do. With any questions, please email hi@yavay.co