Choose Your Own Adventr with Devo Harris (Springsteen)

Devo Harris (Springsteen), the Grammy award-winning producer who doesn’t play an instrument but helped to launch some of the biggest musical acts in the world, is now taking his unique approach to innovation and transforming everything we know about video through his company, Adventr.

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Transcript

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.

Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.

Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies,  schools, towns, charities, and teams. 

Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.

It’s our first episode and boy are we kicking it off big with our guest today, Devo Harris, the grammy award winning producer and songwriter behind artists like Kayne West and John Legend, who left the music industry,  to launch a small tech company, Adventr, with his own big idea for interactive video. We think it’s the next big innovation for marketers and what we absolutely love is that he’s made it easy to use and affordable enough that small businesses can get in on this.  

PART ONE - Magical people?

[MUSIC: Ghost Beats “Introspective”]

Samantha Castro It’s the late 1990s and Devo Harris is settling in for his next DJ Shift at the University of Pennsylvania’s student radio station, WQHS. It’s one of the things he enjoys doing while studying for his degrees in Economics and Strategic Management. His roommate at the time, John Stephens, was also into music and would sing every week at church and local gigs. 

In 2000 the pair made the move to New York. Devo worked as a business consultant while John continued to produce his own music. Not long after Devo’s arrival in New York, he was prompted to visit his cousin who happened to be in town as well.

Devo Harris My aunt had mentioned, "Oh, your cousin, Kanye West is in town. You should check him out." So we had met once before, so I meet up with Kanye and no one had heard of him. He didn't have a record deal. There was no songs out, but I just felt what he was doing was undervalued. I thought I could help bring some structure to it and connect some dots and I thought it could be something fairly big. 

[MUSIC: GRAMATTYK “Wait”]

So I started working with Kanye as his assistant actually. If anyone here listening, ever happened to have a Kanye West mixtape from before he blew up, that came from my apartment.

Karolyn Hart Nice! How much would that be? Is there collectors? Is there people who collect that? There has to be.

Devo Harris You know what, that's a good question. I should look into that.

Samantha Castro We did look into it. We couldn’t find anyone selling an original Kanye West mix tape but we did find someone selling a vinyl record valued at $105 on ebay. If you’re listening and have an original mix tape, please let us know.

Devo Harris When I started working with Kanye, part of my job was burning CDs. Meaning literally artists would be... Because he was known as a producer then... Artists would be contacting us to get beats from him for their projects. So it could have been DMX or Jay Z, whoever it is working on music, they want music from Kanye and they want a CD. This was back in the day where you had to literally use a CD burner and click record on the CD burner and then play and you have to record everything in real-time.

Samantha Castro But burning CD’s wasn’t all he was doing. In 2003 he signed his roommate, John Stephens onto the GOOD Music Label and helped to change his name to John Legend. 

Devo Harris So at the same time I'm doing the business stuff and marketing and negotiating, and signing artists, but I'm also writing songs and producing. My first songs ever produced were John Legend's first album, like multi-platinum, the big album.

So I mean I produced Kanye and other artists, but at this time I'm still seeing... Even the burning CDs and even through iTunes that was getting passé. 

Samantha Castro Passé because around this time, the music industry was shifting. 

Napster, which was formed back in 1999, was really starting to take off. The rise of MP3s and the ability users had to get content without having to pay for it, made it harder for people within the music industry to stand out. Devo tells us about what it was like during this time.

Devo Harris Well, the circles I was running in with Kanye and a team of people that were in that nexus were very innovative and very much looking for how can we distinguish ourselves? How can we just do the coolest stuff? And what would end up happening is if we did the cool stuff, someone would pay us. Someone would pay you to come and do it for them or do it at scale.

Now we were selling CDs, like mixtapes, et cetera, at this time. At some point, I put together a mixtape for Bacardi I believe like a branded content sort of mixed tape. And I said, "I wanted to make it extra special and make it something that you can't just find on Napster so let's add video content." We just put all this extra stuff, pictures on the actual CD. 

I remember I went to the guy that would burn the CDs for you and I said, "How much is it to burn all this other stuff into the CD?" Because to me, I look at these record companies and they were just really, really upset about what was happening at Napster, et cetera. And I just thought, "Well, you're making videos and you're shooting pictures and you have tons of other content. Why don't you put that in the CD? They can't bootleg that. Give them extra content, it's free for you." So people will use that instead of just downloading the songs and they can get even more invested in those artists, but there must be a lot of costs to do that. 

So I speak to the guy, I'm like, "How much is it going to cost for me to put this other stuff on it?" He said, "It's free. It's just data. You can just put whatever you want on it." I said, "Why am I this random guy in New York making mixtapes putting images, liner notes, videos, all this cool stuff on a CD, but Universal Music can't do that? Or isn't doing that?" You don't need to be the biggest guy in town to innovate. I think often with large companies, there's a challenge in innovating. The challenge in seeing what's right in front of you sometimes.

Karolyn Hart Why do you think that is, Devo, with the music industry in particular? I mean, what do you think really gets in people's way when they're... Is it just comfort?

Devo Harris Yeah, I think inertia is strong. It’s one thing for us to like say, "Well, I wish one day they would do this. They would change music so it did look like this or they would change our car so they did this." But who is they? Who are these magical people that are supposed to make our lives better?

[MUSIC: McCall “End Of August”]

I used to live on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan and I remember walking on St. Mark's and there's a guy that sells records out there just on the street. Just there randomly, some days he's there some days he's not, and I was a DJ at this time and starting to make my own tracks and I stopped there. He had some cool records. I maybe spent $10 buying records. Then I went to my apartment and one of them was Shirley Bassey, a James Bond theme, Diamonds Are Forever. From that movie Diamonds Are Forever.

So I spoke to Kanye maybe a week or two later and I know we were on the phone and I was like, "Oh, by the way, there's this song I got. I assume because it's a popular song. Diamonds Are Forever from a popular movie that you and your other producers that work with Jay Z and all these guys, must've heard this song. And there's some reason why you can't use it because you always talk about diamonds. The whole diamonds is a symbol for your whole record label. So there must be some reason you haven't used it. That's why I haven't even touched it in weeks." He's like, "No, that's actually a great idea. We can't think of everything. That's a great idea. Do it. You do it." 

I took him up on that. I made the... I took the samples from that record, ended up making a track for Kanye that ended up winning me a Grammy, took me around the world, set me up in my career.

Karolyn Hart I want to pause there for a second because I love that statement. We can't think of everything. I think I love that statement because your idea, if you ever walked around and be like, "Am I crazy? Or why hasn't everybody else seen this?" It may not be that you're crazy at all. It's just that, it's your unique viewpoint and I love that you can bring those ideas and of course it was brilliant, right?

Devo Harris Yeah. There's so many sort of examples of that. Of things that you can see and even that I'm guilty of saying, "Well, someone else is going to do that and they should do it. They'll do it. Or if they're not, there's a reason why. It must be too hard or it's not illegal or whatever it is." Just some excuse. So the current thing that we're doing with our business is something where I felt pretty strongly they should do this. Someone should do this. Someone's going to do it. So why not be us?

Karolyn Hart I love that. I've been saying that for many years to different people. Why not? Why not me? Why couldn't I be the one that does things? It doesn't mean that I think I'm the smartest. I think the one thing any great entrepreneur ends up doing is going out and finding that talent and saying, "Let's go do something together because together we will go so much farther than if I tried to ever do something by myself."

[MUSIC: McCall “End Of August”]

Samantha Castro After the break, Devo heads to Columbia Business School where he hacks YouTube for a music video, and some of the worlds biggest brands reach out to get on board.

[AD MUSIC - Rhythm Scott “Old Skool 808”]

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Part Two - Ten years ahead

Samantha Castro In 2009, Devo began studying for his MBA at Columbia Business School. Although things were still continuing in the music industry for him and GOOD Music, there was something more he felt compelled to do.

Devo Harris I don't want to be 50 trying to make beats. I think there's so much more I can do and that is interesting to me in the world. So I wanted to reset my career. 

Samantha Castro But jumping back into education while still being a part of the music industry was a little different than what he was expecting. Devo described to us that at times it seemed like his student peers wouldn’t take him seriously because he worked in music. 

Devo Harris It's sort of like, "Oh, that's Devo. He does music, whatever." So it was interesting when a music executive would come to campus and all these people would come in to hear them speak, to hear about what did the music industry do wrong or right about digital disruption. Some of the same questions that you're asking.

[MUSIC: GLASWING “I’ve Been Feeling So Good”]

And as much as people were poo-pooing on music, I was thinking music mainly because it's digital at this point, we're at the forefront of trends, cultural creation, digital disruption. All these other industries are looking at this space saying, "What did they do right and wrong? How should we prepare for our industry?" As opposed to, "Oh, that's not a real industry." I'm looking at it like, "No, we're at the forefront of what's happening to the world."

Samantha Castro But being at the forefront isn’t easy. You’re in uncharted territory, which to some would incite fear and anxiety, but for Devo, it only intrigues and drives him to step in and continue what he’s always done - just making something cool. 

So during his time at Columbia, Devo was trying to figure out what was something cool and different he could do for this music video for the song Attack of the 5 Foot Hipster by the band Riot in Paris. 

So, he reached out to people he knew for inspiration.

Devo Harris A buddy of mine worked in advertising, but in the super cool advertising where they did super nuanced technical installations around the new Mercedes concept car or something. I was like, "Hey, I'm trying to put out a video. What would be cool?" Our whole agenda is what's the coolest thing we can do that has the most scale and we take it from there.

He said, "You know, what would be cool is if you made a choose your own adventure music video." So yeah, I was like, "That's super cool. I've never heard of that." Again, just keep in mind this was 10 years ago if you were listening. So, yeah, we put out this video and you know, regular video and you see that the feedback on YouTube was like, "Eh, this song is okay. Eh, whatever."

Then we put out an interactive version. Exact same song, same visual content, except the viewer can choose what happens next, et cetera. This took months to do this and we hacked YouTube. Then we see the comments. They're like, "Oh, this song is amazing. I love this song. Oh, this is going to be a hit. This is an amazing song." The exact same song was perceived like night and day based on the format, it was delivered. People really just liked it a lot more. 

Samantha Castro If you’re interested to see how the choose your own adventure music video worked, we linked a section of the video on our podcast page for this episode. It is listed as an Explicit song on Spotify so if that’s not your type of music, that’s ok.

If you do watch the video we linked it’s about halfway through the adventure. The video starts with a tussle of you (as the characters in this adventure) saving an old lady from these guys you were passing in the alley. Through a couple of fun moments the tussle turns into friendly jamming and at the end of this video you’re left with three options to choose from while the song continues to play instrumentally and the video itself loops back and forth giving you time to choose either - 

Option 1 - to go shopping with the guys you just met, 

Option 2 - just go skateboarding with your friend, or 

Option 3 - to follow the old lady for a special ‘thank you’ seeing as you just helped her.

Which would you choose? 

When the amount of views started to go up on the music video, other people and companies started to take notice. 

Devo Harris Next thing you know, all these companies are contacting me saying, "How can we get that?" And I said, "Well, why?" These are huge multibillion-dollar companies saying, "Well, why would you want that? And number one, I'm just some kid in school. I don't really... I just hacked YouTube." 

And they said, "This is a better version of what you put out. We need to keep people, especially young people, on our page longer and we think this might keep them on our page longer. So our numbers will go up so we can show more ads." And I said, "Okay, that makes sense."

Karolyn Hart And what's crazy about this is that was 10 years ago and it's still now 10 years later, it's now becoming leading-edge, kind of thought-provoking interactive video on a whole new level. It's still new, but here you were 10 years ago playing with it. I think that's absolutely fascinating.

Devo Harris Right. And that's the thing is at that time I started researching and I said, "Oh, this is how it's going to be." There's no reason on the internet why I shouldn't be able to say, "I'm a smoker so show me the smoker insurance plan." 

Or there's a video and there's a professor teaching about some botany, but I just need the part about photosynthesis. How can I just get to that part about photosynthesis? There was no way to do... There's still no way to do that. There will be in the next 12 months because we're about to put it out, but either way, it's very interesting. We even have users now that we had users... Someone maybe a week ago had left some feedback and they're like, "Look, I heard from my friend that this company is about to be the biggest video company in this space. So I want to help be part of it on the creative side."

I'm like, "Who are these people? Where are these rumors coming from?" I agree but it was interesting but that was the context. And just again, from all that time, looking at media and how it's shrinking and how it's becoming more flexible and less of a... Like it was a piece of plastic, that was a record. Then it was a small piece of plastic, it was a CD. Then it was a file. Now it's not even a file. So the next it will be executable code. That's what we're doing. 

So at that point, I figured this is, it's inevitable. In my mind, this is going to be a thing where people should be able to interact with content, to customize it, to dig within it. But we're just getting to where bandwidth would support those sorts of things. So I started learning to code and started building little prototypes, eventually built a basic platform with a buddy of mine that let people make these interactive experiences very easily on their computer and then share them.

Karolyn Hart So, I have a few ideas and principles on life. One is I believe that success and all that comes with it actually makes you more of who you are already. People talk about being altered or whatever. I think that if you are a generous person before a success, you become more generous after. 

I think what I love about your story is you may have not used the word developer. In that sense, you were a music producer, but what you are is an inventor and an innovator, and that was there right at the very beginning, you were like, "Okay, we have this new technology. Let's go and burn CDs." At a time when people weren't really thinking like that and you just keep that next evolution, that next innovation going. 

Because I'm sure when people hear, so you won these Grammy's, you were in the music industry. Why would you ever leave it? And what I hear differently maybe than other people and what I'm seeing is that it's not that you're leaving the music industry to go to the tech start, you're just doing what you've always done. Do you think that's a fair assessment?

Devo Harris I think 1000%.

Karolyn Hart Because that's a different mindset. Right? I do think that small businesses and entrepreneurs are wired extremely differently. There are people in the world who will never start a company. There are people in the world who will never innovate. There are people in the world who will never take that big jump to go. They have a dream in their mind, some may be business they would love to do one day and they never actually do it. 

Then, of course, your success is the type of success that everybody dreams about and you achieved it. 

So here you are starting over in many respects. Certainly, you've got experience behind you. You have awards behind you. You have a great network behind you, but it's not like other industries. When you come into tech it is kind of ruthless either it works or it doesn't. Either it's adopted or it's not, and they don't care who you are. So it's just if users don't like something, they don't do it. What would you say for yourself being an innovator, this is your whole thing, do you see yourself as this brave, innovator, inventor, or... Is that how you see yourself?

Devo Harris I do see myself as an innovator and I do see myself as an executor, but I think that the things that I do are things that lots of people probably think about. I just am willing to take the pain of doing it and putting it together. 

I don't really code very much or very well. I don't play any musical instruments, but what I do is think of things that I think the market or I would really like to see or hear. Then I get the right people together and compel them to put it together with me. 

I think I'm just... And I'm not the first person to think about interactive content by any stretch, but I'm willing to put in the work to be the best. So I think that's some of the difference for me. 

Seeing my roommate in college that would just sing at church every weekend, and then we would sing, we would perform in bars literally for years, he loved it. And that's part of the process. Then him becoming John Legend or my cousin who everyone said, "No one wants to hear you rap. Get out of here. Just keep making your music. No one wants to hear that." And him becoming Kanye West, one of the biggest stars on earth, it makes me believe anything is possible. 

So I think that's the difference between me and the next person isn't a bunch of any genius. I think it's I literally do believe anything is possible and I think that anyone can win including me. I think too many of us don't believe that.

Karolyn Hart I love the fact that you... I think it's probably blowing people's minds right now to hear that you won a Grammy and you don't play an instrument or that you're now leading a tech company, and you're not a coder. Because what we usually see in movies and through Hollywood is the opposite of that. We don't see people being, yeah, no, you must have this talent in order to succeed in that industry. Certainly, that's something that bonded you and I, because I am a senior solutions consultant and I wasn't coding, but I was overseeing the teams of developers and creating architecture and understanding the flow of data across countries. I can write my own functional specs, but when it actually comes to coding, that's where my talented team comes into play as well. I think there's this real misunderstanding about what your skill set is and what your passion is.

It's not always having to be all-encompassing. It's really about embracing what is your talent? My talent is I love, I call it unleashing people. I love bringing people together and giving them big ideas and saying, "How can we go do this thing together?" Then I get out of their way. That's my talent is I get out of the way.

So I love the fact that you've had global success and it was just being your authentic self and that's what I want small business owners to hear is it's okay if you don't have all the boxes checked. It's okay if you don't have all that, that's not the point. The point is get out there and start doing.

Part Three - Adventr for Small Business Owners

Samantha Castro Devo got out there and he started doing what he could, to learn more about the video space. He researched, taught himself basic HTML, looked at video trends, and envisioned what video and specifically interactive video was going to become in the next 5-10 years - which is now. 

Devo Harris In the market now you see companies like Netflix is heavily invested in interactive content. YouTube is starting a new division for interactive content. Walmart did a quarter-billion-dollar interactive video deal, 2018. Whether it's BBC or Tinder, Fox HBO, everyone's investing in interactive content, at least trying to experiment and figure out what it means and I'm like we were doing that 10 years ago.

So my new understanding of media and where it's going and what we're doing is really that video is still the same as 1940s. Whenever the television was introduced, people listened to it like it was a radio. That was the only paradigm that they knew. 

[ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: Front Page Detective - ‘Seven Seas To Danger’]

Archival Footage Presenting an unusual story of love and mystery on Front Page Detective. Starring Mr. Edmund Lowe and brought to you by Feld, F-E-L-D, Cheverolt. And now another thrilling adventure of the famed newspaper columnist and ametur detective David Chase.

Devo Harris No one was able to take advantage of the television and this miraculous new technology. So creatives had tools that would let them broadcast things that are moving and add audio to it and et cetera.

So I feel like we're doing the same thing now with video. Video we're still looking at as this static just piece of information that floats on top of the internet and comes to your phone or your TV and hopefully you like it. That's not how the internet's supposed to work. 

So right now the vast majority of the internet is video. Over 75% of the internet is video, but it has no interactivity. There's no intelligence, there's no communication between video and software. It's just some information sitting on top of the internet. So what we envision and what we think it has to happen is that video will eventually become part of the internet. Video will be able to be searchable. It will be able to be an actual interface to other software and systems. That's what we're doing now. So at Adventr, we're really a platform for intelligent video.

So yes, you can click on videos and you can choose, okay, this is the... I like the Tudor style houses, you can certainly do that. But the overarching mission is to really enable video, which is the bulk of the internet to have access to all the capabilities and features of the web and these devices that we use. So what does that mean? 

[MUSIC: GLASWING “I’ve Been Feeling So Good”]

Hey, my computer has a microphone in it, why can't I watch a video and talk to it and have them talk back to me and have them choose whatever I want? You can. We have patent-pending technology now where you can literally speak to the videos and they hear you and they change. 

Why can't I open a bank account within this video? You will be able to. 

Why can't I search for the subject that I want in this video? It's a two-hour long video. I just want to get to the part where they talk about Minnesota. 

That's what we're doing is implementing software, taking software and video and merging them together, all in an easy to use platform. So you'd be very surprised at the government bodies that have... And even actually Canadian government bodies that have contacted me saying, "Hey, we want people to take their hunting or fishing license exam from home through a video." Or health organizations, we want people to do these certain physical exams from home, from a video.

Karolyn Hart I feel like it's so limitless when I think about interactive video and we're just at... I can't believe we're still at the beginning, even though you were doing this for the last decade. I just think it's so... How will that change our movie-going experiences? How will that change advertising? I've always thought that eventually advertising would become fully immersive to the human experience. So, for example, I don't know if you remember, but I don't watch Game of Thrones, but I did see that they left a Starbucks cup on one of the scenes. You know what I'm talking about?

Devo Harris I heard about this. Yeah.

Karolyn Hart Well, when I saw that, and again, I don't watch the show, which I think that makes me very much a minority in the world because it seems like everybody watches Games of Throne, but I laughed. But my first insight into that was like, "Oh my goodness, could you imagine if that was interactive?" If the show was interactive and that Starbucks cup had been left on there, what you would have been able to do, what Starbucks would have been able to do on everything. Clicking on it, putting your order in, I don't know for what the character would be drinking. It really is such a creative exercise that takes us into a whole new world.

Devo Harris That's our job as a company, as an organization to help take people into that world. I feel like when you sign up for Adventr, you're not signing up for a video editing app. That is the least exciting, least compelling thing for me personally. I think what you're signing up for is a journey. We're going to take you to the place that you're talking about, Karolyn. So yes, this makes it very easy for you to make some zones in your video that people can click on it. It's super cool. You're selling more products. The students are watching it longer because they can participate in it. Now, what if we add this voice capability to it? How does that work? Netflix? There's a phone number on a video saying to call us or contact us.

Right now you need to write it down or try to remember it. Why can't I just click on it and it calls them? Or I click on it and it texts it? I think we're going to look at YouTube and it's video as it exists now five or 10 years from now and really be like, remember when we couldn't even... You had to write down a phone number. When people said call us, I need to write it down. Or I couldn't search within a video for the part I wanted. That's crazy. So that's the journey we want to take you on. Even to where I feel like now if someone heard, "What? They want to have you take a fishing exam from home through a video? That doesn't make sense." Just like with a lot of people Telehealth didn't make sense three months ago. Now Telehealth is significant here, in the states, it's grown exponentially.

So that's what we want to do from a marketing standpoint, from a product standpoint. Again, it's not just, oh, it's a product. You could do this thing. It's literally when you sign up, you know you're always going to have the most cutting edge tools for media production. But hopefully you'll also understand thematically where we're going as people on the internet. Where we are now, where's the future and helping us get there. 

[MUSIC: Isaac Joel “Inky Caps”]

Samantha Castro When talking to Devo about Adventr it’s hard to not get excited with him. Sometimes when we hear something like this, it’s easy to be skeptical and think, ‘Ok but what’s the catch? Is this new wave of technology going to leave me in the dust? Will I, as a small business owner be able to get in on this and create stuff for my company or organisation? How easy will it be?’ Devo has our answer.

Devo Harris It needs to be so simple. I could use it. So that's what we pushed for. I have an 11-year-old daughter, she needs to be able to use it, the more that I look at, yeah, just the internet and what's popular with the internet and how it works, where it's going, internet products.

There's a shrinking line between professional and consumer. So when people are like, "Well, is this B2B, B2C? I'm like, "I think that's a dated question." And there are products that are highly technical I feel like don't tend to do as well. Products that are more aims that anyone can use, including a professional, seem to tend to do better. So what if you could take the same technology that Netflix has, but make it better, make it way better. The Netflix technology only works in Netflix app. What if you could take that, but let anyone have it for free? I think there'd be a lot of people using it.

Karolyn Hart What you're really talking about is making that technology reserved for the technologist, available for absolutely everybody everywhere. That's a huge idea. That's a big idea. That's a big idea that's going to have a huge impact on small businesses because I feel like the ability to interact and right now the small business who can find your tool goes in and is like, "I'm going to create this interactive video for people to engage with whatever the product is that I'm doing." Right?

Devo Harris Right.

Karolyn Hart Someone's selling makeup, for example, and you can go in and select what color the model's going to wear on the video. I mean there's so much potential there.

Devo Harris Pretty much everyone is a content maker now. If you're a company, you're a school, if you're not making some sort of video content, you're behind the times.

So that said, Marc Jacobs is one of our early users, but what they've done is taken their traditional marketing content, which is in this case, it's content with dogs in it. The previous version of that content had dogs running around and there's purses and sweaters and cool clothing from Marc Jacobs in that video. Then, at the end, there's Marc Jacobs. It's cool. There's no engagement. There's no discovery. There's no identification of the items. There's no calls to action. There's no commerce. It's just a piece of video. That's how 99.9% of marketing content is. It's just some stuff that hopefully people like. Hopefully, it comes to your mind the next time you think about buying sneakers, hopefully, you think of that name.

I think that's not what the internet is for. So what Marc Jacobs has done is taken that same content and made it a bit more engaging. Now, the dog's in it, you can pick which dog or pick what they're going to do. Are they going to go to the dance floor and dance with the person? Are they going to go... Picking those things. But also you like that sweater? Yeah. Go click on it and learn more, click on it and buy it. Those shoes are cool, right? Now you can buy it right now. 

It's on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, ad networks. It can be distributed anywhere. So if you're making video right now that has zero opportunities to convert, at a minimum, what you can do is take those videos and give them an opportunity to convert.

Do you like what I'm sharing with you? If so, click here to sign up for a meeting, for a phone call. Click here, right here in this video to download more information. Do this fun thing with me. 

The same way we made our music video years ago, that was crappy and people were like, "Yeah, I don't know this song was whatever." Then we just added a few choices to it and people were like, "I love this song. This is a hit song." That's how much even minor personalization adds to someone's experience and their likelihood to purchase. 

What if I told you in your marketing content, people are going to go watch it a second and third time. When people use our videos, we found there's a 34% increase in purchase intent, over 200% increase in view time, 13 times click-through rate of people going to your page to learn more about whatever it is.

So that's why Netflix and Walmart and YouTube and all these companies are investing in this format because there's a real lift to it. It's a real business difference. So that's what we're doing is allowing that at scale and then what's next. Yeah, Netflix, shouldn't be the only guys having fun and getting this lift.

So I think what I was saying 10 years ago is finally coming to fruition. The facts remain true today. The same thing we saw with our music video, it was like night and day. I promise you all people literally are like, "This sounds better to me. This is more interesting to me. I'm more likely to buy this, to tune into this TV show, to try this on, to set up a consulting meeting." We’ve seen it at small scale then at big scale and it's really something that I think is going to be in the next 10 years you're going to be at a disadvantage if you're not employing more personalized experiences.

Karolyn Hart Now sitting on the other side of a global pandemic, really, if you are not digital, you are not going to survive. You need to survive now in order to thrive and those businesses that are surviving the game just got raised. 

So, let's just say it six months ago, if you were a small business and maybe you had a website, you thinking to yourself, "Oh, I should really get to do something more with what I am." You know, how many small businesses weren't even doing e-commerce? They weren't even enabled to take orders online. Now they had no choice. Really, there was literally no way for anybody to buy from them unless they were online. So guess what happens. Immediately not just one or two businesses, but we're talking millions of businesses around the world, slamming into position e-commerce, understanding that they have to get digital and so now the competition is greater. 

Now the question will be, how are you going to set yourself apart digitally as you're looking to grow your small business? It's not something high in the sky. It's here. It's right now, I'm already excited for the various small businesses that we work with. We have a number of different clients that I'll be saying, "Let's go and do interactive video." My opinion is that it's going to be a difference-maker for not the large... You're going to see the large guys do it up, but it's going to be, I think, a huge difference-maker for the small businesses that get on board early.

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Samantha Castro You can get on board early by signing up for the beta version of this interactive technology. Go to Adventr.io that’s Adventr, A-D-V-E-N-T-R dot I-O. Make sure you let them know you heard about them on the Big On Small podcast. 

Before we wrap up today’s episode, here’s Devo’s advice to small business owners. 

Devo Harris Follow your hunches. Don't be afraid to try new things. Sometimes that's where the breakthroughs come from. Just do it. Don't wait for permission or internship. You want to start your small business, you want to start a big business. Just start it. There's no shortcuts. 

I’m glad 10 years ago when I graduated from Columbia I had my friends spend a couple of hours teaching me how to code Flash. I never became good at it but I said, "I'm just going to do this." We're still growing and we're still learning but all these things, we're launching with one of the biggest fashion houses in the world. We've just got a patent for controlling videos by speaking to it and that started from just simple, small first steps.

So that's what I would encourage. Small business owners and those that want to be small business owners to just start.

CREDITS

Samantha Castro We hope you enjoyed our first episode of Big On Small, and if you did, be sure to subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode. 

Samantha Castro Is there something you want us to discuss on the podcast? Do you want to rant to us about what your business has been facing in the past few months? Whatever you may need, please call and leave us a message at 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428. 

We listen to each and every message. 

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @Bigonsmall

The Big on Small podcast is powered by InspireHUB - creators of the award winning IHUBApp Digital Experience Platform.

Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro

Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro. 

For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode. 

Thanks for listening!