We are now working as a Media Network that conducts surveys and publishes them, we deliver news in three languages: Japanese, German and English and receive a massive amount of traffic (reaching 3 million users each month) working with revenue models like CPA, CPM, CPC and other classical advertising campaigns.

The idea behind Bloginity was simple. Our network believes in the importance of dialogue and of sharing views. We believe that everyone has the right for self-expression, freedom of thoughts and deserves to be heard. Although today we deliver more news reports then actual opinions we still make sure to deliver the same content that spark and enrich and stimulate people’s lives. I believe it adds meaning to our lives, and that’s why it should be treated with utmost care and respect.

Cristian: So it’s a classical online business. What do you need to start an online business nowadays? Do you need to be a technical person?
Daniel: It is, it’s a classical online business however we are not just a ‘blog’ or a ‘news website’ we like to refer to ourselves as an online magazine. We incorporate the same advertising tactics as if they were made for offline advertising. I think to start an online business you must be online-savvy. A few good advices I was told were Learn from others, stop thinking big, and focus your efforts.

As far for technicality goes, if you know PHP, HTML and CSS you can save a lot of money knowing exactly what needs to be fixed and how to express yourself when something needs to move elsewhere. Understanding what is a good solution for a business (using Tumblr, WordPress or Blogger) can be a very hard decision to make and people quick to think that and choose the wrong one. Doing SEO for the company is a very very important aspect and letting someone else do your SEO might backfire, it is basically like you are handing your balls to them, literally.

Cristian: You used to work as a freelancer/employee in New York. How did you decide to start your own company?
Daniel: I’ve been doing online work ever since I can remember myself. If it’s finding the latest schemes how to run bots in old Blizzard games and collaborating with online forums that create communities of traders. Every job I went to I took that talent with me, of understanding how the Internet works, of understanding that when I arrive to a website – that website is owned by someone, who probably designed it and controls the content. Nothing is ‘generic’.

While practicing SEO these past few years I managed to bring great results, which like you mentioned got me to collaborate with big industry name companies. Understanding what SEO can do for you was the best gift I could ever ask for. That’s pretty much when I started optimizing my own sites and developed affiliate skills while creating landing pages for better CR. It’s a gift, there is no say – but I truly believe that SEO people are not born doing SEO. It is something you can learn, and learn well.

Cristian: You mentioned you have 2 partners on whom you know you can rely: Brian Willett from USA and Ben Xie from Hong Kong. How important is to have skilled partners for a business?
Daniel: In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leader must be a partner with their people; they no longer can lead solely based on positional power. Having Brian Willett and Benjamin Tse by my side is probably the best thing Bloginity Networks has ever seen. Their ability to brainstorm, put the idea together within 48 hours is unbelievable.

Brian joined us as a journalist; I noticed his skill within the first weeks. He was eager to learn about SEO, and how to optimize his content to be better. Every article he wrote was receiving 50 comments if not more. Today Brian serves as a company executive, CCO (Chief Communication Officer) he is in charge of pretty much the entire staff, every article that goes into our network, every press that goes out, he is in charge of content development and also has a say in every change to our network.

Benjamin, who read my SEO blog decided to reach out and try to optimize his very small-scaled WordPress blog. I don’t know what made me hand him my Skype name but when I saw his blog, and realized he designed it I was almost left in some sort of a awe. Within the first 48 hours him and me kicked it and started putting together mock ups of what ended up being the Bloginity Networks. With large help from the Gabfire Themes team we managed to do a great collaboration and designed a one-of-a-kind WordPress template that is so advanced it is absolutely mind blowing.

There are a few of things I recommend to those who are looking for partners

1. Know what you need
2. Look in the right places
3. Hire a lawyer
4. Be very picky
5. Assign roles and stick to them.

Cristian: Having a partner, how is this different from having a regular employee?
Daniel: It is not so different in our case. We have the Chief titles, I am the company CEO and they both report to me, and have employees working under them. It is just like having a manager – It’s just that they do their job in such superior level that they deserve to have company options.

Cristian: Do you think your company has roots in you playing games as a child? (Daniel told me he was a gaming addict). I’m asking because sometimes parents don’t feel like gaming will influence their children life for the better.
Daniel: I think that playing games surely got me being an internet-savvy person, and lead me to learn HTML, PHP etc.

Cristian: What are the most important revenue models for an online business like http://www.bloginity.com/ ?
Daniel: Advertising, without a second thought. There are many ways you can do revenue streams for an online business like CPA, CPM, CPC (all very similar) you can do full page advertising (which falls into the advertising folder as well) and you can also do music revenue, collaborations, sponsorships, partnerships.

If I could recommend anyone what it is that you need to learn before opening a site like ours it would be: define your audience – and then be sure that it is a good audience to advertise to.

Cristian: Since starting up, how many employees you hired?
Daniel: I keep on talking about these business advices that I’m getting and following. It is a really great article written by entrepreneur Neil Patel, ‘Business Advice in three words’ (ref: http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/02/03/business-advice/) he reminded me of a very old saying

1) Hire employees slowly
2) Fire bad employees

But as for your question – our network has hired approximately 35 contractors, and 4 full-time employees.

Cristian: What are the most important http://www.bloginity.com/ topics?
Daniel: We recently ran a very interesting survey about this topic. We write a lot about Celebrity Scandals and let’s face it Americans love their celebrity gossip and nothing seems to dominate the headlines like a scandal involving a famous actor, athlete, musician or politician. According to a new survey we ran more than half of American adults (52%) said they feel validated when a celebrity is sent to jail, feeling the punishment fits the crime committed. Just 24 percent of adults surveyed said they are surprised to learn about a celeb going to jail because they normally don’t receive harsh punishment for their crimes, while 17 percent feel disappointed in the star that’s a role model for children.

56 percent of Americans prefer to read about celebrity crime to any other celebrity scandal, including celebrities entering rehab or making and distributing sex tapes. You can read more in this press release in Yahoo! Finance (ref link http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Bloginity-Networks-Survey-bw-3467385107.html?x=0)

Cristian: What about the typical consumer of your content? How does the demographic looks like?
Daniel: We target female audience, 18 – 35 mainly industry people who are either bloggers, or live the celebrity lives. We’ve had so many times cases to which we wrote about a celebrity and their management called us up to include a different image (a more recent one) or ask us to remove some content, or even give us a feedback and let us know that they liked the article. So we are sure our audience are either the celebrities themselves, their management, the webmasters, and everyone else who comes from Google News and other referring sites. Our demographics are the biggest in the English speaking nations: USA, Canada, UK an also big in Germany and Japan. (as we’ve launched in different languages, http://japan.bloginity.com and http://de.bloginity.com)

Cristian: How does http://www.bloginity.com/ differentiates from other similar sites? What makes people come back?
Daniel: I like to think our cool way of reporting news, our staff and because we create our own personal unique opinion and reports. People share the same thoughts, we always leave room for more thoughts and our readers love that. They also love to communicate with us via comments – and we always reply back. Our web design is unique, our topics are great and we are just rocking it!

Cristian: Just to give people an idea could you share the most important metrics of your traffic?
Daniel: Surely, in a report we recently published about June 2010 we had a string of successes for our Network. As of June 2010 we were pleased to share encouraging news in terms of our company’s health. In the past months we have seen a steady growth, with revenue and readership increasing beyond even our most optimistic expectations. Our focus on efficiently producing high quality unique content has helped us stand out among our peers. The most important metric is bounce rate, and page view per person which we are struggling to achieve (our goal is 13 pages per person) and we are now on 5.3 and bounce rate is low as 10.1%

Cristian: Online is still a new business. Does the educational system prepared skilled workers for this? Or it’s something you should learn on your own?
Daniel: Cristian, I’m a high school drop out. The educational system did not teach me anything! Besides, from talking to all my friends that are the same age as me it seems like the educational system left them hanging to the moment where they need to figure everything out – themselves. You should learn your own – however, I don’t encourage people to leave high school or college. If I could I would stay there and learn but I am not eager to study, I like to teach.

Cristian: Daniel, how old are you? And is online a business only available to young people?
Daniel: I’m 22 years old; it is available to anyone who is willing to work hard.

Cristian: At the age of 16 you moved to America to consume the American Dream.  Is the American Dream still possible during the crisis?
Daniel: I won’t lie, the past two years have been very rough especially to start a business and now it’s hard to maintain it. But we are a great team and we are pushing forward and succeeding.

Cristian: Any plans for the future?
Daniel: We are planning to expand our network, partner with more blogs and recruit more authors and create a beautiful and reliable network for both readers and advertisers to join. We recently launched the network’s homepage; http://www.bloginity.net there is lots of information to be learned there about us, and about our staff.

Cristian: What makes it different from other t-shirt companies?
Jeremy:  We are focused on organizations and licensed institutions (Baseball teams, universities etc.)  I like to think of VoteForArt.com as more of a marketing and promotion site than really a t-shirt company.  We are allowing these organizations the ability to really engage their supporters and market themselves in a more organic way, and at the end of the contest (usually 2 months from start to finish) they will also have a proven design that they know will sell well.  Its a win-win for the organization.  The artists who use our platform, get huge exposure that wouldn’t be possible on other t-shirt platforms.  We had a contest for the fan football tee for Oregon State, the winning design has been on the front page of the Oregon State Bookstore for over two months and will be worn by the entire student body.

Cristian: How exactly does it work? Who orders the t-shirts, who makes the designs and who prints them?
Jeremy: It is very simple 1.  VoteForArt.com sets up a contest page for a specific organization. 2.  The artists follow specific contest guidelines and submits designs.  3.  The organization selects the top 10-15 designs that they feel are the best.  4.  The designs are posted to VoteForArt.com to be voted on by the organizations fan base and the VFA community.  5.  Based on the votes, the organization selects the winning design.  6.  The winning design sells at the organizations retail location and/or our site.

Our Factory in the US produces all of the merchandise.

Cristian: You had a previous business (in the t-shirts industry) that didn’t go that well. What did you learned from this failure?
Jeremy:  I don’t like to think that my previous experience was a failure.  I made some amazing connections and I learned a lot.   With Tees and Tats (my previous t-shirt business), we launched right before the recession (obviously we didn’t know what was going to happen).  Not the best time to launch a high-end t-shirt line.   But we were making it work, our sales were continuing to grow.  I was faced with the opportunity to run voteForArt.com, which I felt considering the partnership we formed with MV Sport and the economy that it was a better decision for me to make.

Cristian: Have you ever applied for a job?
Jeremy:  I applied for a few summer jobs during college, working at different retail stores and political campaigns, but nothing since Jr year of college.

Cristian: So is it better to look for a job after college or if you have an idea, to start your own business, even if you don’t have a lot of experience?
Jeremy:  For me there is nothing better than taking an idea and turning into a real business.  It is a lot more stressful, but It is a lot more rewarding.

Cristian: What is the most notable success so far for Vote For Art?
Jeremy:  We launched in January 2010 and we have already held over 25 contests for major organizations including ASU, University of Wisconsin, University of Maryland, Purdue University, Oregon State, Reno Aces, Moondance Jam Rock Festival to name a few.  We have partnered with top licensing company MV Sport.  We are growing naturally without spending any money on marketing.

Cristian: How many employees do you have?
Jeremy:  I have two employees

Cristian: Probably one of the first things you had to invest when starting Vote for Art was the website. Is it made in-house or outsourced?
Jeremy:  It was outsourced, but we were lucky that the programmer lived a few blocks away from me so it was more of a collaborative process.

Cristian: As an entrepreneur, do you have to know the technical part of the online business if you want to start something that relies of a website?
Jeremy:  I definitely think it helps, but it is not a must.  You will learn a lot on the job and you will pick up more coding terms than you would ever want to know.

Cristian:  I know from your other interviews that it was very important to have contacts with MV Sport owners that had license and a distribution network to sell in college bookstores. So how important is to have a network of people in your industry?
Jeremy:  It is very important. The more people you know in the industry, the easier it is to get things done.  Having the connection will not answer all of your problems, but sometimes just getting in the door is the hardest part and then you need to really sell what you are doing.

Cristian: Any advice for young people willing to start a business?
Jeremy:  Do something that you are passionate about, because when things don’t work out the way you planned and your business doesn’t take off instantly like you dreamed it would, you still need to feel that with hard work you can make it successful.  If you don’t have that passion, your business will never work.

Cristian: How do you market a company like yours? Which are the most effective marketing techniques when you start small?
Jeremy:  We haven’t spent any real money marketing Vote For Art.  We paid a hundred dollars here and there to test out some future marketing initiatives but nothing significant.  I think the best way to market a small business is to tap into the blog network/ video sharing sites where your users are hanging out.  For us it has been a little easier, because every organization that signs up with us has their own marketing initiatives.  But really what it comes down to is the more you put yourself out their the better results you will have.

Cristian: What about the legal implications of running a small business? Where could one get advice on tax and law?
Jeremy:  I was fortunate to have the MV Sport lawyers help us out.  But there are always lawyers willing to work for small equity or differed payment.

Cristian: Most people are afraid their business won’t work. What is your advice for them?
Jeremy:  Make sure before you start that you believe in your business.  You should never go into something without feeling passionate about it.  You need to feel that you can make it successful.  If you are confident in your business that go for it.  What’s the worst that could happen?  an important learning experience that you can apply to all future challenges.

Cristian: Any plans for the future?
Jeremy:  We are launching contests for blogs, magazines, film festivals, music festivals.  We are adding products (hats, sweatshirts etc) and we are going to make this the easiest and least expensive platform for all organizations big or small to market them selves to their supporters (or future supporters).  For the cost of buying merchandise, these organizations will have two free months of promotion and will have a proven design that they know will sell well.  There is no reason that any organization who sells merchandise or wants to sell merchandise should not use our proven model.

Raymond: My name is Raymond Lei. I’m a 19 year old student at UC Berkeley, and I own the business ooShirts.com. ooShirts is an online custom t-shirt printing business. I started the company when I was 16. I was ordering t-shirts for my high school group, and while dealing with a few of the companies that sold them, I saw that the industry could be made more efficient.
Cristian: What is your typical customer?

Raymond: My customers are people who want t-shirts for their group or event. We sell to people all around the United States.

Cristian: What are the main advantages that set you apart from the competition?

Raymond: We sell the same product, but provide them to customers faster and at a lower price. Our prices are 30 to 50 percent lower. If you order 24 white shirts with a custom 1 color design, for example, you can at $4.17 each. And that’s with free shipping.

Cristian: You are on a path to grow your business to $1million in revenue this year. How does a million sounds for the business started when you were 16? Did you expect it to grow that far?

Raymond: No, I didn’t expect it to grow this far at the very beginning. It actually started off as an offline business – I went from classroom to classroom at my high school selling shirts to the organizations there. But it wasn’t until a year later that I launched a website and began working online.

Cristian: What made your business so successful?

Raymond: Our prices are lower, and it’s not because our products are lower quality. Our business is more efficient than our competition – we have 20 suppliers around the US, we have outsourced programming in India, and advanced order automation tools. As a result, we can focus our spending more on our product and less on everything else.

Cristian: Did you have the family support for this?

Raymond: My parents approve of what I’m doing, but have not financially contributed to it.

Cristian: I suppose at 16 you have little experience on how to run a business. Where did you get advice on how to run a business?

Raymond: A lot of business is common sense. You have to provide a product that people truly want. For my business, this is low prices, and I’ve been able to do this well. I haven’t received much advice from other people, but rather studied existing well-run businesses and learned what I could from them.

Cristian: How did you have your first order done? You took the order and went to a printing center to do the shirts?

Raymond: I actually started out importing from China. I had went to China the previous summer and made a few friends there. I contacted them, and basically had them buy custom t-shirts from a local place and ship them over. However, a few months later, I stopped importing and switched back to the United States because I was able to find some good suppliers here.

Cristian:  How many employees you currently have? And how was the hiring process?

Raymond: Two. They are two high-school friends who were looking for a full-time job. I knew who they were and what they were capable of, so it wasn’t difficult to make the decision.

Cristian:  How important is to start a business while you’re young? What are the risks?

Raymond: I think it’s best to start when you’re young. When you get out of college, you need to have a steady income to maintain a decent standard of living, and starting a business does not guarantee this. But when you’re in high school or college, you have the free time to work on your own projects without risking your standard of living.

Cristian: You told me that you are outsourcing overseas the shirts production and the website development. How did you find your partners and how did you make sure they deliver good quality?

Raymond: For the shirts from China, I had a friend who knew a trustworthy local company. Right now, for the shirts, I have my printers send me sample shirts with my logo on it. It was most difficult to find a quality team for website development. It took a long time to talk with many different programming teams to determine who was right for the job.

Cristian: Do your college colleagues know you’re running a business? What do they think about this?

Raymond: Yes, they do. Many people claim to own a business, so simply knowing someone runs a business isn’t that spectacular. But for the closer friends that do know about how my business works, they are always interested.

Cristian: How did the crisis affect your business? Any tips for entrepreneurs having a hard time?

Raymond: I don’t think it affected it. If anything, it was good for business, since customers would want to look for businesses that provide lower prices. All businesses are different, so I don’t have much advice for businesses having trouble, but as a general rule, be efficient.

Cristian: What would be your advices for teens wanting to start a business?

Raymond: Believe in yourself.

Cristian: What about the legal requirements when running a business? How difficult is for a young entrepreneur to keep up with the legal stuff?

Raymond: There are enough resources online to teach anyone about anything. It’s not so much a matter of difficulty learning as it is a matter of time.

Cristian: Most people are afraid they won’t have a good enough idea to start a business. What is your advice for them?

Raymond: If you don’t think your idea is good, don’t start a business based off of it. That’s common sense. But if you truly believe you have a good idea, and you have a good sense of how you’re going to make it happen, then step forward and make it a reality.

Cristian:  Any plans to expand further or maybe start a new business?

Raymond: I think ooShirts is far from its maximum potential. We have less than 1% of the market share, but also have what I believe to be the best product offering. So we can still grow 100 times larger.

Cristian: Ryan, I’m a big Honda fan which made me wanting to learn Japanese at some point but I never seem to have enough time. I’ve heard you have created a software that can actually help me learn Japanese no matter how busy my schedule is. Tell us about it.

Ryan: I’d be happy to tell you about PlaySay Cristian. Briefly, PlaySay empowers busy people to unlock value from any idle minute with the most practical language learning on the go. Anytime. Anywhere. On any mobile device. We turn cell phones into walking, talking, foreign language teachers.

Cristian: How did you come up with the idea?

Ryan: I needed to learn Japanese fast and easy for the Japanese marketing firm I worked for in Tokyo, Japan. I only had minutes at a time to learn, mainly on my commute to and from work. I figured if I could learn 20 new words every day in these idle minutes, I’d gain a substantial competency in Japanese in no time. I hated paper flashcards, so I decided to make my own digital flashcards to use on my cell phone. It worked.

Cristian: What would be the typical time needed to learn a new language? Let’s say French because I know Japanese takes a long time?

Ryan:If you’re in France and you force yourself to not speak in English, you should be conversational in a matter of three months. If you had used PlaySay every day in the many spare idle minutes of your day, you would have been conversational in less than two months.

Cristian: Did you always want to become an entrepreneur or did it sort of happen?

Ryan: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I blame my Dad for that (successful business owner). I’ve earned money ‘freelancing’ in some fashion since I was five years old. I never had to ask Mommy or Daddy for money for the coolest pair of shoes, skates, or hockey gloves.

Cristian: Who is the typical user of your application? Students?

Ryan: Yes, students learning foreign languages through textbooks in the USA.

Cristian: Does it work on any device or you need something special?

Ryan: PlaySay is unique in that our downloadable files work on any mobile device – iPod, cell phone, PDA, etc. We do not have to create a native application for each device (e.g. iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.). That’s one of our competitive advantages.

Cristian: What about language coverage, how many languages does it support?

Ryan: PlaySay currently offers products to learn Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. We’re now geared to launch a new language each month, with French right around the corner for you, Cristian.

Cristian: I’m very curious of the process of getting things spelled out for the audio. How is this done? You hire natives that read words?

Ryan: Another of our competitive advantages is the high quality of our content and audio. We use nothing but the most trusted content sources, the best professional translators, and professional native voice actors for our product production.

Cristian: You got funded from Japan. What is most important when pitching for money?

Ryan: Traction, social proof, team, passion, and vision…and keep things simple.

Cristian: Do you need to be a technical person to start a software company, or you just need to find the right persons to work for you?

Ryan: You do not need to be technical as long as you have the right technical person to work for you. Focusing on what you particularly do best and letting others do the same is what makes a good leader and a healthy team.

Cristian: How do you test an idea like yours? I mean most of the people are afraid that their idea won’t sell.

Ryan: Ideas are a dime a dozen. Just do it.
Cristian: So did it actually help you to learn Japanese?
Ryan: Most definitely. I successfully handled business nearly entirely in Japanese throughout my two year tenure at the Japanese marketing company I worked for in Tokyo.
Cristian: Can you use it to learn English as well? Or even in between 2 non-English languages?

Ryan:
Although many Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish users do use PlaySay to learn English, it is not the best way to learn English. This is because our lexicographical content is made for English speakers learning either Japanese, Chinese, or Spanish (as opposed to the other way around). It is counter-intuitive, but it is not fully accurate to simply swap headwords and counterparts of a lexicon. We do not do this, although many competing language learning solutions do. This is unfair to the users, and they’ll find out sooner than later, at which point they’ll egg our competitor’s offices and likely begin using PlaySay if they haven’t already.

Cristian: It was adopted by several US Universities. What is it that makes it successful when compared with other language learning solutions?

Ryan: Many language learning solutions require you to sit in front of a computer for hours at a time. PlaySay empowers busy people to unlock value from any idle minute with the most practical language learning on the go.
PlaySay is focused on being the fastest and easiest way for students to learn and retain the vocabulary of their foreign language textbooks, and just that. Focus is a competitive advantage.

Cristian: Any further developments?

Ryan: Lots of developments are currently in stealth mode. Our ultimate vision is to advance cultural awareness and international fellowship through language by being in every language learning student’s pocket.

Interesting? If you want to stay in touch with Ryan and find out how things are working out for him you can fan PlaySay on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/playsay or follow them on Twitter http://twitter.com/playsay

CRISTIAN: Who is your typical customer?

SETH: It’s funny you ask that because our typical customer is everybody. Everybody has to eat, you know? Though lower income families don’t reach out to us as often because we are somewhat of a luxury service, we have delivered to some who are just unable to make it on their own to the store.

CRISTIAN: What makes it different from other home delivery services?

SETH: We’re different because of what we offer directly from local growers and producers. We have partnerships with a organic CSA farm, a grassfed cattle farm, a honey/cosmetic producer, a mushroom farm, beer cheese producer and a local grocery store.  Our partners are growing daily and the way we see it…. If you can’t get it locally from our partners, you can get your food from our local grocer.

CRISTIAN: How did you come up with the idea?

SETH: Michael Rumpke(co-owner) and I just did a lot of brainstorming really. It started simply as a grocery delivery service. Overtime, we did our research and contacted local growers/producers and it developed from there(still is developing). We understood what other companies similar to us were doing and after that,  Michael and I put our own little spin on the business.

CRISTIAN: How did you find out there is a need for your services in the area?

SETH: Our business type is successful in many markets in the U.S. and there is nothing like it here in Lexington, KY. Before opening up any business in any market, I believe one has to understand the city. You have to feel the heartbeat of the city. I have lived in Lexington my whole life so I believe I understand the city.

CRISTIAN: Your using Twitter and Facebook to market and keep in touch with your customers. How does this work for a small business like yours?

SETH: Well its nice just to be able to advertise without expending large amount of capital. Facebook (especially) has aided in our local connection to our customers.

CRISTIAN: Any business plans before starting the new business?

SETH: Of course. However, I will admit most of the planning was done vocally between Michael and I. We are currently seeking start up capital and we’re currently formulating something more concrete and physical as far as a business plan goes.

CRISTIAN: And what about outside help. Your family, outside counseling?

SETH: First and foremost I credit all of my entrepreneurial knowledge to my parents. As a child, I watched my parents develop a fabric/interior design business grow from our basement into a annual $1 million + business.

CRISTIAN: So how did the first 2-3 weeks went? I know it might be too soon to speak but any sign of success?

SETH: I’d say one of our proudest moments came within our first 2-3 weeks of operations. Both Michael and I were driving around town delivering groceries and literally 5 – 10 people shouted out our names and voiced their support. It was pretty surreal!

CRISTIAN: What are the benefits of cooking at home versus ordering or eating out?

SETH: Just overall health. We also try to help people save money.

CRISTIAN: You partnered with your friend Michael Rumpke to start the business. How important is to have a partner?

SETH: Honestly, it can be very trying at times. Michael and I have known each other for over 15+ years. We competed in over 1,000 baseball games together so our relationship is very natural. Michael and I are able to push each others very hard without any damage to our actual relationship as friends/business partners. This is a blessing because the stresses of starting your own business can be very overwhelming at times. Michael is an ideal partners(at least for me), so his importance is very vital to OUR success as a business. With all that being said, I have been involved in two ventures that failed ultimately due to poor partnership relations. My advice to anyone considering a partner to start a business, make sure it is the right fit. Partnerships can make or break a business.

CRISTIAN: Any plans of expanding the business in other areas?

SETH: Yes. From the moment we began forming our business process our intentions to franchise were always present. Therefore, our processes must be very sophisticated, yet simple enough to transfer into different markets.

CRISTIAN: Any advice for young entrepreneurs like you willing to start a business now?

SETH: Just don’t be scared. So many people our age have this idea molded in their minds that you must go to school, get a degree and find a safe job. The problem lies within supply and demand. If everyone has a degree and are competing for the same jobs, something has to give. The only option is to create more jobs to compensate for the increasing supply of college graduates in need of jobs. Other than that, just be yourself and believe in what you offer to the world.