Episode 55 — Peter Awad of GoodBlogs

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Transcription

Geoff Wood: Welcome to the Welch Avenue Show, Episode #55. Our guest today is Peter Awad, co-founder of GoodBlogs. I’ve known Peter for a few years but I don’t see him very often since he’s up in the northeast corner of the state and I’m here in Des Moines. He stopped by Gravitate the other day when he was here and we sat down to talk about what startup life is like in Decorah, how GoodBlogs platform works and his new podcast, Slow Hustle. You can find that online at slowhustle.com.

We also talked about how exactly you pronounce his last name (hint: the answer is "OW WID", like I just said, not "A WAD" like I’ve been saying for years). That makes a lot of sense.

Do us a solid and give the ol’ Welch Avenue Show a rating in iTunes whenever you can, 5 stars preferred and maybe leave a review. That would be super helpful.

And while I'm asking, this is also a really good time to check out our Patreon campaign at P A T R E O N.com/welchavenue W E L C H A V E N U E.

Thanks again to everyone who has supported the show and enjoy episode 55 with Peter Awad.

Geoff Wood: What have you been up to lately? What's the story?

Peter Awad: There's a number of different things. GoodBlogs, we've been testing out a different biz-dev scenario where we're taking it back to the roots, if you want to call it that, where we realized that the majority of our business had been built on personal interaction, engagement, relationships, either new or existing.

We went down this path last year of ... It's called predictable revenue. The guy's name's Aaron Ross. He goes by "Air." He's the guy that took Salesforce.com's outbound cold emailing process from zero to 100 million somewhere around five years. We followed that process for about 10 months and realized it just wasn't really natural for us. We weren't getting a ton of traction. We were still growing the business, but all still through these personal relationships.

We switched gears fourth quarter last year and decided, "You know what? We're going to start going to conferences, do what we do best, which is talk to people, grow relationships." Just had our first lunch and learn a few hours ago here in Des Moines. Went really well. That's going to be our focus for 2015, which is just building relationships. Some may go somewhere right away. Some may not for a year. That's how that goes, and we're fine with that.

Geoff Wood: The product GoodBlogs itself is a crowdsourced blogging platform that your clients, basically, they have an implementation of it. Then they try to get their audience to produce the content. Is that right?

Peter Awad: Yeah. Yeah. For folks that don't know, GoodBlogs is a custom platform we developed. It's currently patent pending. It has been for years now. That's how that goes.

Geoff Wood: How much has that cost you so far?

Peter Awad: I don't even want to think about it.

Geoff Wood: All right. Fair.

Peter Awad: A lot of cash so far. Anyways, yeah. Custom platform we developed, patent pending, crowdsourced blogging. It used to be where we'd implement it, and then the client would service it. What we realized is that they didn't have either the expertise or the time, or both, or even just any interest in doing community management and dealing with the blogger relations. Early on, we realized that.

We added community managers, conversion managers, where they could essentially operate that site from day one, and the client could have as little interaction with it as possible. That's gone really well, because now we've got community managers that are intimately involved in that community. Blogger relations, they know the topic, et cetera. They can interact with those people on a deeper level. Then the client can just see the fruits of that labor. Conversion manager is the person that's going to deliver the success to them. Whatever they want to squeeze out of that user base, he's responsible for doing that.

Geoff Wood: Okay. One of your clients is Iowa Tourism, or ...

Peter Awad: Yes. Yeah.

Geoff Wood: How's that site going?

Peter Awad: It's going well, man. It's going well. It's really fun. All these clients, it's really fun, but it's fun to have this Iowa-based site. It's blog.traveliowa.com. One of the folks from there was actually in attendance today at a lunch and learn to support us, which was cool. It's going well. When you give people a platform and you say, "Hey, we want to hear from you. We want to hear what you guys are working on, what's interesting to you in the State of Iowa," and they start coming out and sharing these ideas, it's fun. It's also cool when you're like, "Wow, that's happening in my backyard. I had no idea it was going on." The site's going well. It's doing well.

Geoff Wood: That's awesome. I just upvoted the other day a story Megan Bannister wrote, one of the members here. That's perfect for her, because she loves to go do touristy things like "World's Biggest Strawberry" and those types of things in Iowa.

Peter Awad: She likes the roadside attractions, for sure. Shout out to Megan, for sure.

Geoff Wood: That's great. Outside of GoodBlogs, you're launching a new podcast.

Peter Awad: I am. I am. It's interesting. I like to say this is an idea that's been rolling around in my head for a couple years. It stems from this ... I don't know what other phrase to use ... this manic-depressive nature of entrepreneurship. Even if you're not an entrepreneur, you're maybe a intrepreneur or salesperson. You feel this sine wave, and you feel the massive ups and downs of one day feeling like you're crushing it. Maybe even the very next day, you feel like you're getting crushed by the business.

It stems from me seeing my dad start a business when he was young and thinking that he was literally insane. I'm like, "How can this be the same guy operating the same business, thinking these two very polar opposite thoughts?" Then seeing it happen to me, and then having children and bringing the baggage home, I started thinking, "You know what? I'm not the only one." The more people I talk to, they give me this response of, "Oh, you, too? You have that issue? I thought I was the only one," because nobody talks about it. Thus, you think you're the only one. Then you don't talk about it, and the cycle continues.

It's called Slow Hustle. I think it just went live in iTunes. I got to check. I just got a text from somebody. It's about these two polar opposite things, slowness and hustle, and how to manage the pendulum swing.

Geoff Wood: That's pretty awesome, and relevant. We talked to a guy a couple weeks ago here that's doing the Founder Health Initiatives and those type of things, just people recognizing that that's out there, and should be really educational. Are you interviews, or what are you doing?

Peter Awad: Yeah. Yeah. All interviews so far. I've got seven prerecorded. We're launching with four. Then I've got two more high flyers on the books I won't name yet. Then we're going to continue to interview people. The reason I want to do that is because I think that it's good to see people that have ... they're in different walks of life, they have way different backgrounds or in different industries, struggling with the same problem, and then seeing how they deal with it. Ultimately, these folks are finding these triggers. They're like, "Okay."

Zach Ware, who was one of the early podcasts that went up today, he talks about how he knows that almost every Wednesday morning when he comes in, he's down. It's because he's been pushing so hard Monday and Tuesday. What he's realized that if he comes in the office and he's feeling down, instead of trying to push through it and just trudging through that, he's going to say, "Hey, guys, I'm out for a couple hours." He's going to go get on his motorcycle. He's going to ride and just clear his head. Then he comes back, and he's fresh. He's going to be able to crush it again. Is he getting two weeks of productivity out of one? I don't know, but definitely much better than just trying to push through it. Managing those feelings and that sine wave of how you're feeling, versus trying to ignore them.

Geoff Wood: That's great. Recording from Decorah, I see.

Peter Awad: Yep. Yep.

Geoff Wood: What's the startup community like in Decorah these days?

Peter Awad: I wouldn't say it's nonexistent. We're putting a dent in it, man. It's probably less a startup community but maybe more of you've got these freelancers that are working in these little pockets. We're trying to pull them out so that folks can know each other. Small town, and some of the issues with small town is that you just assume that you know everybody, and you assume that you know what everybody's working on. Really, you do not. We still host Co-working Fridays, which is really not a whole lot of working. It's more so beer and conversation. That's the best way to get people to talk. It's fun to see the connections that happen outside of that, connecting two business owners that need each other's help and seeing that happen. It's really cool. You can call it economic development if you want.

Geoff Wood: Nice. Tell me more about Co-working Friday. What types of folks come out to that?

Peter Awad: Sure. Sure. It depends on the weather, and it depends on the time of year. You can have anywhere between three and 20 people show up, usually in the middle there. You've got guys that are design shops, just one-man design shop. You've got programmers. We do have a Google employee now, because his company got acquired there out of Austin. They got acquired by Google recently. He shows up every once in a while. You've got a guy that's doing digital marketing for Surly Bikes. There's just people from all over.

Geoff Wood: Isn't that crazy, that those people are in our communities and you wouldn't necessarily know it?

Peter Awad: Yeah. Yeah. It's because these guys are working out of their spare bedroom or their basement, or they're at the coffee shop. They've got their head down, and they're plowing through work. Those connections are just not being made.

Geoff Wood: I think it's actually, here with Gravitate, probably one of our biggest markets of people to try to bring in to be members of the space. How do you find them? How do you know they're out there?

Peter Awad: Because we have the advantage of being in a small town, so if you're like, "Hey, man, bring a friend." You've got friends of friends of friends that turn out to be these people. Those help. You've got a friend of mine who's trying to start a co-working space there that I'm trying to help him with. One of the things I thought, I'm like, "Where are these people at? They're either in their basement, or they're at the coffee shop. Let's leave some free three-day passes at the coffee shop." Coffee shop people don't want those folks sitting at their coffee shop, anyways, and so they're more than happy to hand them out for you.

Geoff Wood: Taking up a table and spending two dollars for the day?

Peter Awad: You got it. You got it. Yeah, two dollars on bottomless coffee. We haven't tried that approach yet, but I approached these two coffee shop owners in town. Believe it or not, small town of Decorah, we've got three coffee shops, but they're good. I approached a couple of them and said, "Hey, would you be willing to hand these out for us?" They're like, "Yeah. We don't want those people here." I think that once we get those printed up, that's going to be a good way to get those folks to come out and check out the space.

Geoff Wood: That's a great idea. The team for GoodBlogs, mostly in Decorah at this point? Because it's not just you and Jason anymore. How many folks?

Peter Awad: Yeah. I've lost count, as bad as that is to say, because we've got folks all over. Then we've got some interns mixed in there. We've got a couple freelancers mixed in there. I'd say, if I had to give a number, between 12 and 14, when it's all said and done, between part-timers and full-timers and freelancers, and stuff like that.

Geoff Wood: All in Decorah?

Peter Awad: No. Yeah, I didn't answer that question, did I? Decorah ... Let me think about this. Decorah, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Omaha, and sometimes Spain.

Geoff Wood: Spain. Wow. How does the remote distributed culture work with you guys?

Peter Awad: It's working well. So far, it's working well. It's funny. We just ran into Cameron. I hit him up because I was going to check out Sqwiggle, because we do mostly Google Hangout. We do Asana, or Asana, however you want to say it, and Slack. So far, the communication's working out well. Whether we need to ramp it up with something more robust is to be determined. So far, it's working well.

Geoff Wood: Then as you grow, do you have a limit on where you ... Do you just want people in Iowa or the Spain employee, or are you just searching for wherever you find the best person?

Peter Awad: I think we're open, because as long as ... The Spain thing, and that was actually Amanda, who you met. She's a part-timer all over. She lives all over, which is cool. When you get to too many time zones out makes it difficult. I know I listen to Josh Cramer, who recently said something like they try to keep it within the States just so you don't have too many time zones to deal with. That may be the route we go. So far, it works well. As long as they've got an internet connection and they can manage their duties, it seems to work out well.

Geoff Wood: We talked recently with Juan Santiago, who's from Cordoba, Argentina, but has an office here in Des Moines. That's a whole continent away, but they have basically the same time zones that we do. The work day really helps them quite a bit, as well.

Peter Awad: Yeah, yeah. You still have collaboration still needs to happen. People need to see each other face to face, if it's through video or whatever. When you've got too much of a time shift or time delay, it can make things inefficient, I think.

Geoff Wood: Yeah. Kasey with Bunchball, who's here, as well, those guys always tend to come in at 9:30, 10:00 in the morning. I asked him one time if they were just lazy. He's like, "Well, the majority of the company's in California, so this is when everybody else starts work, too." It's fun to watch people adapt to that new work situation, I think. It's something I find really interesting.

Peter Awad: Yeah, yeah. Then conversely, he could maybe shift his schedule also so that there aren't anybody in the office for half the day. Then you don't have the distraction of instant messenger and Slack and stuff, too, right?

Geoff Wood: That's true.

Peter Awad: Sometimes I'll do that, where I'll come in just really early, before my kids wake up and all that stuff, and just get some stuff knocked out, because I know it's going to be a distraction-free environment.

Geoff Wood: What's your background? How did you get to GoodBlogs? What's the story? Because you mentioned your dad's an entrepreneur, so you've seen that.

Peter Awad: Yeah, yeah, small business owner, sure. Yeah. My parents both moved from Egypt to the States. They didn't speak much English, didn't have any money. You know that whole story. Worked their asses off, and then started a business. They moved to Florida. This was from Cleveland. They moved to Florida, started this grocery store. Not being rude, but that's what Arab folks do in Florida. They own grocery stores, which is the truth, because they're hard-working people.

I worked there from an early age. I just had this natural interest for what he had going on. To me, it was interesting, like, "Hey, you buy at this price. You sell at this price to make profit. That's cool. I like that a lot." Then turn into the typical stories of mowing grass and selling things. I was selling candy in middle school and all those things. Then just started this company Import Auto, which is a automotive business I still own. Started that in college when I was going through school for engineering. Didn't do engineering when I graduated. My parents thought I was crazy.

Then led me down the path that ended up in Iowa. Long story there. Then Jason had this idea for GoodBlogs way back in the day. Kicked it around for a while. Had got a little bit of angel investment just a little bit. Four years now, we've been kicking the can down the road. It's looking good.

Geoff Wood: Yeah. College, was that at Luther, or ...

Peter Awad: This was UCF, so University of Central Florida. I graduated from there. Then a couple years after that, my wife and I moved to Iowa.

Geoff Wood: What brought you to Decorah? I'm really interested in this, because I feel like Iowa's a state that doesn't import a lot of people. I think it's probably one of the biggest opportunities we have to diversify our culture is to bring people in that don't have the same experience of ... I grew up in Cedar Rapids. I live in Des Moines now. Not a lot of difference between the two.

Peter Awad: Sure. Yeah, I get the question a lot. It is interesting. It's like, "Iowa, really?" I love it here, except for February. My wife's originally from Cedar Rapids, and I'm originally from Florida. We met on ... I call it vacation. She said we met on spring break. You call it whatever you want. We were long distance. We were both in college. She's at Mount Mercy. I'm at UCF. We did this long-distance thing for a while. She graduated first, so she moved to Florida. That worked out really well for me.

We getting married, and when we were realizing we were going to have our first kid ... I had told her, I'm like, "There's no way I'm moving to Iowa, so just put it out of your mind. You want to move to the Midwest, we'll figure something out, but I'm not moving to Iowa." Then I'm expected our first kid. I didn't even talk to her about it yet. I started thinking, I'm like, "I can't raise my kids here. I can't raise my kids in Orlando." I started thinking about it.

She has family in Cedar Rapids, in Minneapolis, and St. Louis, and then Decorah. I had taken a trip to Decorah. I remember asking my brother-in-law, "How do you live here? I don't get it." I took a trip again. This is after the light bulbs come on, and I'm like, "I could dig it here. I could raise my family in this town. It's awesome. People are great. It's slow. It's quiet. I can run my business from anywhere." We decided seven years ago, almost eight years ago now, and a couple months later, we moved. That's how we ended up in small-town Decorah.

Geoff Wood: That's pretty awesome. Decorah, I think, is a special place. I don’t know that you would have just picked anywhere in Iowa to go to.

Peter Awad: We think so. We think so. For folks that haven't been there, it's a beautiful place. It's just got a different topography, if you want to call it that. It's a weird town, because there aren't a whole lot of people there, but there's a lot going on. Lots of musicians come in. We have an absurd number of good restaurants for the size of the town. It's cool. It's good stuff.

Chris New: I remember the last time you guys were on the show, you were bragging on Decorah pretty good.

Geoff Wood: Oh, the show title was like, "Decorah is number..."

Chris New: "Number one at everything," or something like that, yeah.

Geoff Wood: Yeah, that's right.

Peter Awad: Yeah. That's true.

Chris New: It's the place to be. I'm curious. A town that size, I had to look it up. I was just curious, like, "How big is Decorah?" It's little bigger than I thought, about 8,000 people. We hear a lot of stories coming out of Decorah all the time, for a town that size. You don't hear stuff out of a Carroll, Iowa, or a Storm Lake the way you do Decorah. What do you think makes the city noticed that much?

Peter Awad: I wonder this all the time. I think it's really interesting. You could speculate that there's a lot of old money there that brings some other industry that maybe wouldn't show up there. I'm not really sure. I think the college has a lot to do with it, because there's lots of good music that comes to that town, a ton of good music that comes to town.

Geoff Wood: Dave Matthews Band, Live at Luther College.

Peter Awad: Yep. Yep. There's a story with Mumford which I won't get into. There's a little controversy there. Mumford had picked Decorah to come to and is not coming to now. You guys can look that up. I don't know, man. We've got Toppling Goliath, which went from zero to 100 miles an hour in just a few years. It's amazing beer.

Geoff Wood: One of my two favorite Iowa breweries, I think. I won't name the other one because we have a lot of Iowa breweries that help us with things, but yeah. I really dig it. That's a good ... I've never actually been to the brewery, just had the beer.

Peter Awad: I want to say it's 20,000-square-foot facility that just went up in the last 18 months, 12 to 18 months. You've got that, and you've got USA Today named Iowa's best pizza ... I don't know how they come to that conclusion, but they got that. We actually have really good sushi.

Geoff Wood: They tried every place.

Peter Awad: What's that?

Geoff Wood: They tried every place in Iowa.

Peter Awad: Oh, yeah, every place, for sure. There's no doubt. That guy is now 1,000 pounds. Yeah, we have great sushi. We have a pretty big co-op there for the size of the town. It's weird.

Geoff Wood: Some eagle hatchlings or something, too?

Peter Awad: The Decorah eagles, yeah. How can I forget the eagles? It was funny seeing a friend of mine from Florida post about the Decorah eagles not even knowing that I live there. It's like, "Wow, that's how far around it's made it." Yeah.

Geoff Wood: Is it you or Jason that lives off the grid and does ...

Peter Awad: Jason.

Geoff Wood: Okay, that's Jason. We'll have to get him another time. I want to hear that story of how you work on a tech startup and then live off the grid at the same time.

Peter Awad: You come into town.

Geoff Wood: Short story, you come into town.

Peter Awad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It's a good place.

Geoff Wood: What sort of effort does it take to stay plugged in? Because I think of most of the people that are in the far reaches of the state ... and I'm just saying that because of distance to Decorah ... I see you guys more often, once or twice a year, than I do people maybe that even live in Sioux City or something like that. What sort of effort is involved?

Peter Awad: I think it was Andy Stoll, that him and I got into it a little bit, just talking about this. "Into it" in a good way, in that you've got to have this windshield time. It was Amanda Styron, I think. She was laughing about something. That one day when I was down at the Vault, she's like, "Everybody thinks Peter lives in Cedar Rapids, because he's here all the time."

I do have family there, too. I'm like, "You know, if I want to live in Decorah but I'm going to stay plugged in, I need to get off my ass, get in the car, and make it a point to see people." Then you see folks that are in Cedar Rapids, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, 1 Million Cups Iowa City. I'm not going to drive that far." I'm like, "Buddy, it's 30 minutes. In any big city, people are stuck in traffic a lot longer than that every single day, in both to and from work." I guess my biggest advice for people, it's like, you got to get out and make it happen.

The other theory that I have, too, is that I think that I see folks more, like you said, more than people that are in town, is because if I'm going to make the effort to drive somewhere, I've got a location-based reminder in my iPhone that when I get into Cedar Rapids city limits, it gives me a list of people that I want to make sure I touch base with when I'm there the next time. I'm making every trip count. I think that I could possibly be seeing more people because I live out of town than I did if I just took it for granted because I'm just down the street from them and I can see them any time. Just being more deliberate about getting some face time with folks.

Geoff Wood: It makes a lot of sense. I think we could all do better with that. I know Des Moines has a reputation of "We don't travel" to anything, but we're trying to change that a little bit. I know you got to run, because you guys got another seminar coming up tonight. Where can people find out more about GoodBlogs if they want to check that out?

Peter Awad: Yeah. Goodblogs.com, obviously, they can check that out. They can tweet at me, @PeterAwad. That's Peter, P-E-T-E-R-A-W-A-D. I spell it because everybody thinks it's "Allan" when I say that. Then they see my last name, and they think, "Oh, yeah, no, your name's A-wad." You can call me that if you want. I think you guys have called me A-wad before. Yeah, call me whatever you want.

Geoff Wood: I call you that. I know it's wrong as I'm saying it, but I searched for it, and I can't figure what the hell it is.

Peter Awad: Here's what's funny, man. I did some research and tried to spell it phonetically, and I couldn't find anything. Call me whatever you want.

Geoff Wood: All right, fair.

Peter Awad: @GoodBlogsCrew if you want to tweet at GoodBlogs.

Geoff Wood: Your twitter?

Peter Awad: @PeterAwad and then @SlowHustle for the new podcast.

Geoff Wood: And that should be up when this goes out.