Calvin Holston - Smeeple - Part 2

Join Mark and Lorraine as they conclude their interview with Calvin Holston, the founder and CEO of Smeeple, an app designed to connect people to curated experts across a variety of specialties. In the second half of this interview, Calvin discusses Smeeple’s position among his competitors, as well as the effects his entrepreneurship has had on his faith and his family.

Spend 25ish with Mark, Lorraine, and Calvin as they talk all things marketing, advertising, entrepreneurship, and of course … positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and today Lorraine Kessler and I are going to be concluding our interview with Smeeple founder and CEO, Calvin Holston. If you missed the first half of this interview, make sure to tune in to last week's episode where Calvin talks about what exactly Smeeple is and his journey from nuclear engineer to entrepreneur. Enjoy.

Lorraine Kessler
So do you have people like interior designers? Because I'm thinking like there's a whole- you know, people don't know how to decorate their house. That's why they go to Pinterest and they copy what they see and everybody's house looks like a Marriott hotel. So, but I mean, I would think like if you go into a La-Z-Boy showroom, for example- we were just talking about La-Z-Boy in one of our podcasts- that it would be so cool to be able to Smeeple someone with this couch and how it might fit in your room. That would be awesome.

Calvin Holston
Right. Lorraine, I have not shared the story since the beginning pitch deck, pre-seed, or the family and friends round. I had a stack of unique dinner plates- antique dinner plates- next to my desk for almost a year. That was the third thing that really led me to go to Smeeple, because my wife says "I bought all these unique looking-" and it's not my world that I live in- "all these unique looking plates, and I want to put them up on the wall, but I just don't know how to, you know, I'll figure it out in a couple of days." A couple of days went to a couple of months, a couple of months went into the year, right? And those plates were not moving. And it dawned on me like, "On Smeeple, we need those interior designers because my wife-" we live in Southern Maryland, and unless you decorate with blue crab, they don't know how to decorate, right? It's only blue crabs everywhere. And that's not the style that my wife wants.

She is actually- I tease her, my wife has more of that grandmotherly feel and she goes very old antique' and I feel like I'm going to break anything that I touch in the house, but that's her style. And she doesn't have anyone to talk to. Well, because of Smeeple, we do have interior designers. She was able to book a single call, go through the whole plan, and those dinner plates are off my floor and on the wall now. So you're absolutely right. And I loved your example. I had not even thought about- you can take them to the store with you. It's wonderful to take pictures and then wait to get a response, and I'm sure several thousands of dollars, if not more, to get an interior designer. You can take that interior designer to the store with you for $30, $50, probably even $20 and be able to get immediate, yep, that fits for you and so forth.

Lorraine Kessler
That's so cool. Limitless possibilities with what you've created.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, Calvin, being a positionist yourself, and of course, this is a positioning podcast, so we have to ask the question. We're all about differentiation. What would you say is the biggest thing? And we always say it's one thing in the mind, right? One thing that differentiates Smeeple from similar services such as "Front Door" or "Plunjr" or other apps and platforms that allow people to virtually meet with experts?

Calvin Holston
Yeah, great question. I can only pick one. I have three, but I'll pick- my first one, I would say the free-market design of what we have differentiates between most other apps, where you're going to find an athlete that costs literally zero dollars. You're going to find an athlete that costs $100, and you're going to have an athlete that has $50 and they all bring little differences on, versus some of our competitors have a flat rate, which means, "Hey, you're going to get consistent no matter what." That person's only getting paid $20 or $30 or $10, you know, however they break that up.

That's fine for a lot of the cases, but sometimes you want to pay for someone that has significantly more experience or, which is interesting, I go back to several NFL players are on our app now, and they are so low of cost if not free because what they want to do is be able to give back. So it's interesting where because we left it as a free market and saying, sure, it actually costs us- I don't want to break the bank here, but I think it's like 0.01 cents a minute for streaming. It's so low because of how common it is. But if someone's doing a zero dollar rate, then technically we're paying for those two people to meet.

But in reality, that's okay with us because we're spreading knowledge and it's just helping overall people be introduced to Smeeple because we also found a very- we're blessed in this way- we're about 30% of people that have booked once in one category, go over within the first month and book someone else in the other category because they realize this is more simple than going to Google. It's more trustworthy than going to Google, right? Instead of anyone can post and have there. So I would say that the free market system of allowing anyone to be on the app as long as you're a top expert and put their own rates and availability in is probably the biggest differentiator there. I'll tell you the next one is, and we've already talked about- am I allowed to say the second one?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, of course.

Calvin Holston
Okay, yeah. So the second one is- and I cannot stress this enough- there's a very popular platform that if you want to install something in your house, you can go on as an expert, or know, you can go on and pick the expert and they come to your house and they go do the work for you. I'll just call it "Thumbtack". So Thumbtack, I thought, was an amazing- and their valuations way better than ours, so just so you know, I'm not throwing stones at them. However, be very careful who you pick, because right now I am a carpenter in Southern Maryland because there was no vetting process, right? And I'm not a carpenter, do not hire me at all. But there was no process to truly vet me.

And then the worst case, as I signed up as a plumber, as a carpenter, and then said, "You are officially on it now. Now send us 10 reviews that you've had before to give yourself immediate credibility." So that means I could be going over to somebody's house. They have full expectation that I'm going to be a carpenter in their house. And that's not the case, right? So we made sure of ourselves- and that was some of the research that we did- we have to have the top experts. I'm sorry, if there's a little bit on the border, we send them into that private profile, say, "Hey, sorry, you need a little bit more work before you come to the actual public profile." And that's why we have that 18% acceptance rate.

And one of our biggest competitors, who I'm not going to mention, is- they have some amazing talent on the top row that are very popular in the social media world. However, you go one layer deep and it's just complete garbage for the experts because, I challenge anyone that says they are a NFL scout, and also a top gardener, and then also a top shoe designer, and then also a key maker, right? And it has all of these different things that there are specialists and experts in. You can't trust that, right? No, no, you might be a jack of all trades, but you're not going to find a jack of all trades on our site. When you go into a specific category and a specific specialty, you're going to find a top expert in there.

Lorraine Kessler
Now, Mark knows this about me. I'm often a contrarian. I think your big position is trust, trusted experts. The pricing, the free market is a benefit, but it can be replicated. Someone on any site, if they needed to, they could do that, right? There's nothing to stop them from doing that. But it'd be really hard for them to match your vetting process and your commitment to the trust. So I really feel like that's, I would just reverse those.

Calvin Holston
I love it. Lorraine, you're hired. If this was an interview- but we probably can't afford you.

Lorraine Kessler
Great. I mean, you know the web. mean, that's the problem with the web. You don't know these people who you're talking to. The fact that you've curated experts and that you've gone through a very thorough process and I can trust you as a third party, in other words, is really important to me. And so whether I pay $12 or $0 or $200 I just want to make sure that I had a real expert who's either local if I need them local, or whatever that is. And I think that's your big, to me, that's your big deal.

Calvin Holston
Awesome, thank you. I love that. Thank you so much for saying that.

Mark Vandegrift
Lorraine, we have a question from our producer, Denver. Would you like to go ahead and ask that question? Do want me to take it?

Lorraine Kessler
No, I'll ask it. "As someone who worked in a few different trades and intermittently through college, I appreciate your perspective on the trades as a viable option instead of college. So we've been hearing a lot about that lately, right? So given this perspective, what advice would you give to anyone just graduating high school who isn't quite sure of what to do in their future?

Calvin Holston
That's a great question. Yeah. Don't rack up bills of college. Don't go to college and get $80,000 of debt and then try to figure it out where, you know- and I shared this recently on another podcast. I grew up in such an ignorant area where, or an ignorant time, where college was pushed so much when I was growing up in the public school system, where I really truly believe this- and as I shared with the other podcasts, don't edit this part out because it's going to make me look terrible and my company will go under if you don't hear the second part- but I thought smart kids went to college and dumb kids did not go to college. And I share that story everywhere that I go because, truly I went to college, I did well in school. Hey, and if you didn't go to college, it just means that you were dumb and a low performer. I went through college still with that mindset. I graduated college with that mindset.

And it wasn't until I got into the nuke industry did I realize how foolish that was and how ignorant I was where I went to go work my first job at the nuke plant and it was hourly. And even that, I thought, "Well, this is below me, right? I was salary beforehand." Now it's like- and I shared this on the podcast- I'm like, "I would never not want to be hourly. Please pay me hourly the rest of my life so I'm paid for every hour that I'm working." Cause as we all probably know, that's not the case, right? There's way more than 40 hours. It's, you know, 80, 120, you know, maybe even more than that. But, so I went in there with just the mindset of, "I am one of the smart ones coming in", and it just hit me with a ton of brick. I'm like, "No way. These guys are brilliant." Most of them hadn't gone to college. Guess what? I found out some people had to go into the Navy because they couldn't afford college. Some people actually had to help out with bills at home, so they had to go right into the workforce instead of going to college. It was like, wow.

And it made me realize I truly was not spoiled at all growing up, but I'm thankful for food was always on the table, roof always over my head, you know, and I didn't understand that part of the world. I was just so entrapped in a small bubble and it just truly was just ignorant in that case. So I'm so glad that I was enlightened in regards to saying, "No, no, Calvin, there's so much more for you to learn."

And then I really do say, it's unfortunate it's just pushed on so many people saying that you have to go to college. So if someone came to me and said, "I'm not sure what I want to do", I would immediately go, "Go shadow people, right?" Whether it's, you know, if you're interested in potentially going on the trades, I cannot imagine a business saying a kid that is being proactive saying, "I might be interested in going into the trades. Can I go shadow for a couple of hours, if not a full day and go out there just to see and experience it?" Or walk into a business and say, "I would like to shadow the business owner." And as long as you go in with the right mindset and the right attitude, shame on the business owner for not saying yes. Because truly you want to build a zealot for your potential to raise up. One of my biggest investors said that there was someone that was very on the bottom of the totem pole in regards to his company, but really mentored him up now, and he's second in command of this massive company now. He was willing to take that mentorship role and feedback into him just as much as the kid wanted himself.

So that's what I would encourage people to do, is definitely do the research, come on to Smeeple and utilize that one. If there's a kid out there I really mean that that says, "Hey, I'm interested in this one, but you have a trades and HVAC person and it's $20", I'll pay it. You email me directly, calvin@smeeple.com and you say, "I'm interested and I'm not sure what to do", I will gladly encourage any child to email me directly. I will cover it in my calls because it is just so valuable to find out what is good for your strengths, what is, you know, what's the right step that I should take before you take that risk of $80,000, $100,000, whatever college would cost.

Now, being that said, my wife and I are in a position to hopefully help pay for college if my children would like to go. But I told my wife, I said, "There is no basket weaving, right? It's three or four things that you should go to college for." You know, if you want to go to med school, you got to go to college, right? And if you want to be a lawyer, you got to go. But even from a business perspective, I was a double business major, right?

My wife and I have been talking now of saying, "Hey, if we were going to spend $50- $80- $100,000 on college in the future for someone to go into business, would it not make more sense to say, 'Here's $50- $100,000, go start a business, go experience what it's like to start a business.'" If you really want to learn, you know, one of the most successful business people that I've talked to that destroys any business book that I've ever read, his business acumen, just the success that he's had. He'd ran a commercial HVAC company. He did not at first graduate from high school. And you hear those stories back in the day and I always thought, "Well, that was because of their dummy and they were distracted." No, they were just built different. I would love to continue learning from this guy. And he eventually went back to high school and finished it just to show his family that you should. But I mean, there's just so much more out there. And that truly is one of my passions, is true mentorship. And you might even find out, "I'm glad I did this for a day because I don't want to do it, right?"

Where I was just at Liberty University for the past two days at a CEO summit. Amazing opportunity. And a freshman came up to me- great, by the way- I'm a huge Grove City fan, but Liberty is there also. So just to warn Grove City, I didn't know much about Liberty, and now I'm actually really impressed with the kids. So, you know, Grove City, I got a couple of pointers that I'm going to bring your way of the Liberty students. But one of the freshmen came up to me and he said, "I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to develop an app and etc, etc", you know, asked him all these questions. And I said, "Yes, by all means, please shadow because you might find out that you don't want it, right?"

Where I went from running a nuclear power plant for 13 hours a day, to now- I'm not exaggerating when I say this, though last week, and Mark probably gets these emails every now and then for me- I worked until 2am, and then I got up at 4am and continued working multiple days in a row, two hours of sleep because I just have so much stuff to accomplish with such a small team. That's not fun, especially when you have a wife and kids and it's a huge challenge to be able to do that. I don't recommend that for everyone, right?

It is a huge sacrifice one takes to start a business, run a business, et cetera, where I was just interviewing and talking to a good friend of mine, Andrew, who's the CEO of Red Balloon. Fantastic site if anyone's looking for work. They believe in just a free market, no strings attached, just people that wanna work hard and have the politics stay out of the job, right? And Red Balloon's a fantastic company, and he himself has been sharing how much of a struggle it is as an entrepreneur, right? So many people desire that, but I've gone to Andrew and saying, "Hey, I've struggled where my wife has asked, 'Put me on your calendar'", and I told Andrew, I said, "I don't want to my wife on the calendar. She's more important than a business appointment, right?" And he said, "No, no, no, she's right. Because if you don't, your calendar is going to completely fill up and then you're not going to have time for wife." You have to make sure that you're doing that every single day because at the end of the day, it's just, know, my faith is extremely important to me, my faith, my relationship with the Lord, and then my family and then everything else has to come. But I caveat that with "I fail all the time also at it."

I wish I could say- I was speaking at Grove City last year in several entrepreneurship classes, and I said, "Pray for me", because guess what? I should be doing my devotion right when I wake up. I should be immediately spending time in prayer, but the weight of the business is just so heavy. It's not that I don't want to do that. It's that I get distracted because there's so much pressure and I'm doing the wrong prioritization in my life.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, very honest and very true. And before you ask that next question, Mark, I'm going to ask a question, make a comment. Years ago, when I used to fly every week to Chicago, because I had like the red-eye to Chicago to handle clients, I happened to be on a plane with a man who worked with entrepreneurs. That was his total consulting gig. And he had done it for many, many years. And I asked him, "What is the common denominator? And is there one in entrepreneurs who make it?" And he said, What I have found, it's nothing to do with personality type A, you know, driven, C, or disc, or any of that. It has to do with, they were first very good employees." He said, "Because they're responsible. And when you're an entrepreneur, it's all on you and there's no one to blame, so you have to-" so he said, that's what I found. And a lot of people get into it because they, want to be not accountable to anybody else, right? They don't want to work with anybody else's agenda. They're not responsible. And they think, "Well, if I do this, I have free reign." So anyway, I think what you were saying, what fits into that just perfect.

Calvin Holston
I would say it's exact opposite, right? Where before in the corporate world, I only had one person to play the boss, right? The one person. Now I have like 17 people that I needed to- or, you know, factors in my life to make sure that I've taken care of and responsible to and so forth. I mean, that's well said there where it's not- and I don't want to take away from the corporate side of things, right? And obviously I have lots of friends who been in there for many, many years too, but I'm kind of jealous of the one person to please, not the 16 people or factors to please. Yeah. Well said.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you went back to, you were talking about the hard work and everything. And it made me think about the podcast you were on with Lia. And you talk about someone that has gone through the school of hard knocks. She certainly has, and is now, I would say, a very successful electrician and influencer.

Calvin Holston
Yeah, she's fantastic.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. On that podcast, you shared a little bit about your faith journey. So would you say that the formation of Smeeple has impacted your faith journey, or would you say that your faith journey has been consistent throughout your walk with Smeeple?

Calvin Holston
That's a great- so I'll be real if everyone's okay with that one. Yeah, so I was just sharing a little bit about this yesterday in a one-on-one conversation. Never thought I'd be sharing this on a podcast with people listening to this one. I'm thankful for the situation that I'm in because I'm challenged in ways that I've never been challenged before. So to be completely transparent, finances because of the nuke industry, I never had to worry about a bill. I really didn't. So once I got in, they pay very well. Everything was great. My wife and I purposely lived below our means. For years and years and years, it was essentially, "Hey, we can give more to people. We can do more things with our money." It's essentially just turning into a dollar on a screen. And essentially, as long as we were being good stewards of our money, there's no issues. I really became not really reliant on God in that way, and not in a bad way, right? It was just, I was completely taken care of. I knew where every single dollar was going to be. I knew that if my wife wanted to do XYZ, we could do it because we could financially afford it. Everything was fine.

Now that's different, right? As an entrepreneur, I'd love to say, I was talking to Andrew, the CEO of Red Balloon, and I was like, "Everyone has these dreams. Once I run my own business, I'll have a Ferrari and drive it down the street and stuff." It's like, I'm looking for $12 now, right? And making sure that I can pay my bills and different things like that. And just made me realize what an amazing experience. And it's one thing to say- and I read it a little bit ago where it's, this is the one life that you're living, right? And enjoy even in the stressful times, the hard times, et cetera, still enjoy, because this is what the Lord put on your path, right? And still be joyful about it. So I would never have had this experience truly of relying on the Lord. How are we going to get our next check? You know, we're opening up a seed round to raise more money in a great sense. Smeeple is completely debt free. We are revenue generating. We've really reached a spot where we are absolutely, we've proven a product market fit where technical feasibility is there and so forth.

It's an amazing spot where someone, very humbly I say this, said we have now reached the 1% for tech startups where we have product launched, et cetera. Everything's going well and now we're going to the next step. So for a seed round, that's very exciting to bring in money. I would like that to happen faster, right? It would be really nice, but I have to really rely on the Lord in ways that I never thought beforehand or even before, where it was like, you know, discipling my family. My first priority, right? I am failing as a husband if I'm not washing my wife in the word and praying over her. I'm really not, right? And I'm failing. And guess what? That's a huge challenge now. Beforehand, that was easy, right? Hey, okay. The challenge was, I watch TV tonight with my wife or do we really just, you know, buckle down and sit on the couch and read the word together. Now it's, I feel so obligated to do something with the business every single hour of the day, not because I love feeling that way. No, it's because we're such a small team. If I'm not doing it, nobody else is. And I feel obligated to that. And it's made me realize I have to be better at prioritization and putting the Lord first, which is actually great because it's, like I said, in so many years, I've never had to worry about that that much. "In regards to saying, Lord, I have to rely on you in ways that I've never had before, thank you for showing me this side of things."

And I don't know if that makes sense, if I answered that well or not, but truly it's put me as a much more vulnerable state and I have to rely on the Lord more, which is a fantastic experience, right? Because in the end it's all about him- truly, I say this so carefully, no investor listen, turn off your camera- let Smeeple fail if I do something that goes against God's glory or do something that goes against his will or what's good in life, right? There are several topics and categories that we could put onto Smeeple and be successful where there's big movements in the world of dealing with children and psychology and different things like that you can find on different websites. Zero chance you'll find that on Smeeple. I don't care if the left, the right, the center, whoever disagrees and says that we should do it, doesn't matter. I completely- there's no chance it's gonna be on Smeeple because I have to put- I'll stand before the Lord one day and be held accountable to every single decision that I make. When my employees come in, I make sure to say, "Hey, just so know, I'm a Bible-believing Christian. I'm also a free market libertarian. I am fully supportive of however you want to live your life, but I want you to understand that you will also respect the way that I live my life. And I want to be able to worship the God that I want to worship, and I want to have my family and the values that I have."

And just so you know, Smeeple itself is not a Christian organization. Anyone watching our content can see that. We don't lean left, we don't lean right. We don't have the Kamala and the Trump hat facing both ways and I'm not gonna be either because it's not. It's all about knowledge transfer, right? We have people of all different faiths and political views and so forth. But for me as a true believer, there is a set standard that I can never violate because I will be held accountable to God. So as structuring this company, I have to do right by my investors. I have to do right by the product and the people that are on my platform. I have to do right by the consumers. I have to give the advantage to everyone else because I represent something, the most important thing out there and that's Christ, right? And it's all for him and it's all in vain if I do something wrong.

So that's just the mindset that I have. And I just know I'm thankful for the journey that he's put me on. At times I'm like, why? God, you know, life was so easy beforehand, but it's just encouraging too where even seeing it with my children right now where I might not be able to necessarily say, "Hey kids, we're going to go play basketball for two hours every single day." But today as I'm working with my creative director, Aaron, he's on one side of the room. I'm on the other side of my room. My two boys came in and started playing cards. They're homeschooled. They did do their school earlier, but they started playing cards in the middle of the carpet, listening to us interact. And I thought, "What a unique experience where they get to listen as a startup is going and how do you interact back and forth in professional standpoint and so forth."

So I also have to remind myself, Lord, you know what? You've given me this opportunity. It's a very hard season right now, starting a company, but what good can come from it and what messaging can I go when I get to go on podcasts like this and share my faith where I can tell you what, in all seriousness, people could be the biggest success and destroy all the AI companies out there and all this money and it's still not gonna lead to satisfaction. I can promise you that where in my earlier career, people laugh all the time because I was in the music industry and the radio industry and there's stories out there with Taylor Swift and Big & Rich and lots of things that my old self had done.

And I can tell you what, I had almost everything that the world says is good, and it was never satisfying. It really was not. I led to more and more things trying to say, "Okay, well, if I date this girl and I go to this party and I do this and I drive this car and I have this amount of money in my bank account-" it's not gonna satisfy. Every day that went by, I felt less and less satisfied with what the world had to offer. And I'm so thankful for the foundation that my family built in me in regards to Christ. And I said, "You know what, I give it all up, I'm dropping to my knees, I'm gonna follow Christ at age 25, I don't know what that's gonna look like, but I'm gonna try to do it." And since then I've been running towards him and I say all the time, "You know, Paul says he was the greatest sinner. Huh-uh. I think I got that title where I'm constant like this." So, you know, I truly need to, you know, yeah. So, again, I go back to just the life that I lived in God's- the platform that God has given me, whether both through Smeeple or because of Smeeple, I'm just proud to be able to say who I am, what I represent and just make sure that carries through both within my family and also the company that I started.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I'll just finish that with a big amen.

Lorraine Kessler
Amen. Amen. That's beautiful.

Mark Vandegrift
That's a great way to end our podcast today. And Calvin, I just want to thank you for taking the time because you sacrificed it from your business and you, more importantly, sacrificed it from your family. And we appreciate that. So all I'll do is give you one last big advertisement. Folks, go to Smeeple.com and you can find some really smart people to consult with. And it's just exciting to be a part of all this. And go to the app, it's free to download, and it'll grant you access to over 600 and counting subject matter experts that cover a wide variety of topics. There's everything from athletes to HVAC to world renowned chefs to homesteaders, you name it. So you'll find something that interests you. Thank you again for joining us. And we just want to thank our listeners for joining us today. If you haven't liked, shared, subscribed, or told your friends about the Brand Shorthand podcast, please do. And until next time, have an amazing day.

Calvin Holston
Thank you.

Lorraine Kessler
Thank you. Thank you, Calvin. That was so great. So great.

Calvin Holston
Thank you. Yeah, honor to be here and I appreciate you even wanting me to be on it. So yeah, thank you so much.