Peer Effect

Navigating Sustainable Entrepreneurship with Bob Bowden

• James Johnson • Season 3 • Episode 32

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Ever felt overwhelmed by the challenges of starting and scaling a business? 

In this episode, we’re joined by Bob Bowdon, founder and CEO of VidaFair, a pay-per-stream video platform. Bob has worked as a reporter and producer for companies such as Bloomberg, Choice Media, and PBS.

Together, we explore:

• How leveraging your immediate network can make all the difference in hiring.

• The importance of embracing a sustainable growth mindset for long-term success.

• Knowing when it's time to pivot in your entrepreneurial journey.

For more insights connect with Bob Bowdon on LinkedIn and explore his work at VidaFair.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com


Speaker 1:

As a founder, it's sometimes really hard to know whether you're on track, because often your vision is so much further ahead of where even the numbers are or what your team feels. How do you know you are on the right track? Today, I'm joined by Bob Bowden, founder and CEO of VidaFair. He's got a background in media and education. Rest assured, bob knows the power of a good story and in this episode we're digging into why building a business with sustainable growth in mind is key to lasting success. Welcome to Peer Effect, the podcast that helps you scale to 10 million plus, thanks to your peers sharing the one thing that has changed the game for them. I'm James Johnson and I'm a founder coach who's worked with hundreds of founders globally. Surviving to 1 million is just the start. I offer practical help and advice to founders looking to scale to 10 million plus and enjoy the journey.

Speaker 2:

I've been a media person for years. Early on I'd been an engineer and then decided I wanted a career change in my 20s, pretty young, and then I went to film school and started over and then worked in television most of my career, also some film, and along the way I ended up, you know, thinking about content a lot. In fact. I remember when the web was new I'm that old and there were a lot of newspapers that would publish their stories on the web and then people would often talk about gee, how are they going to make money? Who's going to buy a newspaper anymore if you can see the story online? And I remember thinking at the time oh well, the most logical thing to me which was different than the rest of the world, it turns out is that they would charge a micropayment price for each story. That, to me, struck me as the most logical thing. Whether it's 12 cents or 30 cents or some small-ish amount for a particular news story, then a lot of people who want to see that news story, they won't care about spending a small amount of money. It turns out the whole world went the other direction, which is subscription model for monetization, and that kind of stayed with me as I continued my television and then film career.

Speaker 2:

Eventually I made a documentary film that did very well about corruption and public education in the United States.

Speaker 2:

But I would go to these film festivals and I would see people with other films who would have nowhere to take, like, if they were lucky, they got into a local film festival, invited all their friends, they saw it once, one night, and then it was over.

Speaker 2:

They just had to all go home and maybe put it on YouTube. And I still kept thinking like there ought to be a way to monetize this work where you can charge a small price to people and if they, you can't make them rent it or pay for it, but if they like your work and they like you and they want to support you, they would pay an a la carte rental price for your content. And so that kind of stayed with me to the point where I was then able to start Vitifair, which is a company that does that basically monetizes content, really anything that could be on YouTube, if you can imagine kind of a broad. So not just film, not just podcasts, not just music videos, not just comedy, anything really that could be on YouTube and it allows people to make money from their content by cutting out the middleman, cutting out the gatekeepers and setting their own fee for their content, and then putting it out there in line and sending it through social media to their followers.

Speaker 1:

And so, if you've been on this journey for a while now, what's the one thing that you would share with other founders that really works for you, as sort of a thing that helps you to be successful?

Speaker 2:

There's a bunch of lessons I learned the hard way in this process because I'd never been an entrepreneur before, and so one thing is that I, in terms of hiring people, I basically learned to leverage other people's knowledge of the people I'm hiring rather than just rely on my own knowledge of the people I'm hiring. So oftentimes none of us can be the experts in everything. There's some areas we don't know about, and so when I first started, I was, you know, I would be interviewing people and receiving resumes and trying to, you know, assess people's ability to do the back end kind of technical work, and it was terrible. I ended up hiring really, really, the wrong people. I wasted at least a year wasted I don't want to add up how many tens of thousands of dollars and had to essentially start over, but the way I started over was the lesson.

Speaker 2:

The good side of it is I found somebody who really knew that space and I asked them for their advice, their recommendations of people, and it turns out, if you ask people's advice, a lot of times they really do take it seriously. They, you know, even if you're not paying them, they're just maybe friends of yours or someone you even met and called up. Um, so I have. For example, I found someone who ran a school for full stack coders, basically computer coders, uh, programmers, in a variety of different areas. They had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of graduates over time and they had a really good sense of who who was good and, uh, who was also not just talented but also honest. Like a lot of these. They really you ask someone if you get someone who recommends people to you whom they really know them, rather than you just doing an interview for a few minutes, it turns out that's just a more solid way to find the right people.

Speaker 1:

So that was, that was one lesson so I really that's idea of like bringing an expert to help hire, because I think obviously as a founder, you can't know everything. This example you gave of someone who ran the school were the people they were recommending people from their school or were they helping you do interviews of people that you found?

Speaker 2:

I ended up getting referred to one of their former teachers at the school, and so this person had had all kinds of many, many students and had lots of great ideas for people, and then I ended up actually hiring that guy. I ended up hiring the teacher to help me. After you know, after this, these conversations, and it just worked out great. Like these were people that really knew that space and they also had extensive experience with all of the people they were talking about. If you can leverage people that have a long exposure to lots of other people in that space, that's what I found to be very valuable.

Speaker 2:

The marketing mistake this is the next mistake. Number two that I'm talking about here is thought oh well, we're brand new, to exude credibility, to sort of give off the sense that we are worthy of people's time, that we're for real. We need to try to seem like a big company that will convey to them that we're real. So we'll get a big, giant booth space at a trade show. We'll have a bunch of staff there, all wearing T-shirts, all giving away all kinds of swag and whatnot. Anyway, we had a breakout session, you know, during the conference part of the trade show where you know I'm up giving a talk, all this stuff.

Speaker 2:

It was a waste of money. It was basically. I realized that in this era that's maybe old thinking, right in this era the concept of trying to seem like you're a big company, no one cares. They like it better if they feel like you are being authentic and you're just telling the truth. And anyone who wants to, you know, send us a, send us a question. We'll respond in 24 hours, if not sooner, and you just seem real and that's, that's a lot more um persuasive to people than this big company idea and it almost seems like in both cases.

Speaker 1:

so the starting point is I'm going to seem like I know what I'm doing when it comes to hiring, or like the size, or it's kind of like. It's a sense of I need to present a certain face and actually what the letter is like. If you're authentic, it means to who you are and what you're doing, people really respond to that. They're responding to you. That's kind of like they're buying you.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's true, that's true, and it's not like when I was doing those early interviews I was inauthentic. It's not like I was trying to be someone else when I was interviewing these people about programming, but it's, yeah, I think that I see the connection you're making in a way that if you're, if people kind of like you and understand your vision and you're clear about what it is, it works out in ways you may not expect it works. It's kind of a force multiplier.

Speaker 1:

And actually you do more damage to yourself by like pretending that you know what you're doing or can be like hiring the wrong people or give them too much space or going too big at a trade show. It's kind of I see a lot of founders that sense of not wanting to admit that they don't know. It's first time I would have seen, like I'm doing this, this kind of transition into like more sort of just I want your feedback. I don't know everything was. Was there a bit of a a mental shift for you in this?

Speaker 2:

well, I, I did a lot of media jobs. I was a tv reporter for a while. I did finance reporting for bloomberg television, for example. Um, I, there's a lot of uh when you're doing uh news stories where you a lot of times don't know you're, you're curious all the time, you're learning all the time. So there's nothing new about me being in a space where I, you know I had to, you know I couldn't act like I knew it all. If I'm doing a story about a you know a steel company who their entire business model is recycled steel and like there are this one story I did literally like what do I know about that? Nothing, you have to learn on the job.

Speaker 2:

I guess I was one of those people who I would get bored easily from things. So I liked challenge all the time. So, yeah, I guess there's two sides of that same coin. Sometimes the challenge is like oh, you know, you sort of are wishing you took the easier road in the fork, in the road of life or something. But by disposition and most of the time was I'm not like that Most of the time if I'm more engaged, then I'm more excited about what I'm doing, I'm enjoying what I'm doing more if I am learning.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I would say that it's a different world. My father worked for the same company his entire career, his first job, and then he retired. It's a different world. My father worked for the same company his entire career, his first job, and then he retired. It's a different world. Now A lot of people do very different things. I mean there are some people who are doctors or lawyers and they kind of mostly do the same thing in their careers, but I almost think for a lot of the rest of us we do different things as the technology changes, especially.

Speaker 1:

My dad restarted his whole new career path at age 55.

Speaker 2:

Oh did he. Wow, that's so cool. I love that.

Speaker 1:

And I mean arguably his most successful part of his career was after 55. And I think it's interesting. I think a lot of people think of founders as kind of Mark Zuckerberg, 26, 23, and actually look at the stats, most successful founders sort of start like in their 30s, in their 40s kind of actually don't really make that sort of big stage until much later. People start later and it take longer than sort of the public narrative would have you think.

Speaker 2:

I'd never thought about it in those terms, but it makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean, oftentimes you're wiser when you're older. You know not just more about a particular industry, but you know more about people. You know, and even if you're in a new industry or an emerging industry that didn't exist before, yeah, I can see. I can see exactly what you mean. Yeah, those are the, those the Steve Jobs kinds of stories seem to dominate the movies about entrepreneurs or whatever. But yeah, in real life I think, I think having just having some wisdom and maturity doesn't hurt.

Speaker 1:

So taking a step back in terms of looking at the story again. If you were a founder listening to this, what would you suggest?

Speaker 2:

I would advise a new entrepreneur to be careful with money, because so often I hear people start businesses and they seem to be good ideas, or at least there's a lot of enthusiasm, and they oftentimes really do run out of cash before there's really a chance for the business to have made it. There's people that just go in head first and somehow make it work, and other people who build it over time and basically give yourself a chance, give yourself time to make mistakes, learn from from them, overcome them and keep going, because it is cumulative, especially things like as you build a social media presence, for example, or build an email list. Even that kind of thing build customers, build people who know about you. There is a cumulative effect that is powerful, and a lot of these guys go in just like a bull in a china shop and the next thing you know they're, you know they're, they're bankrupt and just, and at that point you know they're looking for looking, you know looking just looking for money to eat.

Speaker 1:

So that's you don't want that I think it's like rush, isn't that like? I think sometimes when you're, when you're starting business sense of like I've got to rush to the stage, I've got to rush to success, and that can lead you to make try to shortcut it and go okay, I need to big bang this, I need to be, I need to be very successful, very visible there, and actually it's more about staying in the game, admitting it's like a longer, longer term thing, hopefully enjoying it. I think really enjoyment's a thing that we probably don't talk enough about as fans, like if you don't, if you don't, you don't enjoy it, you're not going to do it for a long time.

Speaker 2:

So yeah and you desperately don't want to just think back later. Gee, I wonder if I'd have given myself longer, like I wonder if that would have made it. I wonder if this company would have taken off if it had long. You know longer to do it, but instead it kind of you're a flash in the pan seriously.

Speaker 1:

I spoke to a founder a while back who said actually he almost had the opposite thing, where he had worked on a business that and he'd worked on several successful businesses with other people and he'd seen a certain trajectory. And it became clear to him after about two years that his business was not on that trajectory and it wasn't unsuccessful, it just was not on the trajectory and he couldn't see it getting to the trajectory and he actually stopped Like he had. He had a further fundraising offer on the table and actually this is not, this is not the business, and I think that is equally difficult, that kind of sort of partial success which takes you on a journey stepping away from that. So it's kind of like not wondering what if, but also being disciplined enough sometimes to go no, this is not the one. And not because you ran out of money just because you've gone. Actually the trajectory is not what I thought it would be.

Speaker 2:

That can be and no one can answer it for you. If you've tried something and you've decided now it's not going to work, I mean, yeah. So just as important as it is to kind of stay with stuff, it can also be important to know when to quit and uh and, and no one can, especially if it's a new kind of business like that, like vitifair is. No one can really answer that for you. It's like deciding, you know, when a marriage is over, or deciding, I don't know. It's all kinds of things in life like that. That you, there's just no one answer for different people.

Speaker 2:

What I feel about what we're doing is that you know, beyond just kind of a business, you know a way to, you know, serve customers who offer them something, then, as well as us, we can make money from it and as well as that, I almost see it as kind of a noble calling in a way. Like you know you said, belief, like I think, like you know, allowing people to make money from their work that is done on video is to me like a form of democracy, it's a form of fairness. It's like we're doing something that's kind of morally good, and I know that might sound grandiose to some people, but I actually do feel it. If it weren't me, someone else it really is. I think, a good thing for the world to basically let people offer their work to be rented and then they get paid and they can do more work. That means meaningful to them, and then it's a good thing.

Speaker 1:

Essentially, I work with a few founders who, their businesses have social purposes and I find that can come with an additional pressure on founders in terms of I need to make this work because there is a greater purpose to this working and if I don't succeed, I've always damaged that greater purpose or I've failed the purpose. I need to make this work, I have to make this work. I don't know whether, from what you just said, you feel that pressure slightly too.

Speaker 2:

No, that's a simple answer.

Speaker 1:

No, that's a simple answer.

Speaker 2:

I think maybe if I was at a soup kitchen feeding hungry people and I would say, oh, my soup kitchen's failing, where are these hungry people going to go? Then maybe I could see something like that. But in this realm it's people making videos. So it actually seems like a lot of fun, because a lot of people have a lot of fun with creativity and that's kind of what we're hoping to foster, so but it doesn't seem quite like a life and death kind of thing, in other words in today's chat, bob shared our resilience, having the right network and knowing when to pivot a must-have for any founder facing a rough patch.

Speaker 1:

He showed us that with the right mindset and a willingness to adapt, growth is always possible. Thanks for listening to this episode of Peer Effect. I release new episodes every Wednesday, so don't forget to add Peer Effect to your favourites to avoid missing out on new insightful founder stories.

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James Johnson

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