← Built Online
Built Online
Most Businesses Are Ignoring 1 Billion Buyers — This Fix Changes Everything | ft.Michael Paciello
00:38:16
Loading summary
Transcript94 lines
- [00:00]
Mike Paciello
Start thinking accessibility because you're leaving a lot of money, a lot of potential customers out there on the table just because you haven't designed or haven't thought about ensuring that your site is keyboard accessible.
- [00:15]
Cody McGuffey
So what we're saying here is there's shoppers out there that literally want to buy from you, and they just can't even. I know there's awesome clothes in there. I've heard there's awesome clothes in there, but, like, they just won't open the door for me. As soon as they just open the door, I'll go and buy all the stuff.
- [00:31]
Mike Paciello
That's exactly right.
- [00:32]
Cody McGuffey
Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey, and this podcast is.
- [00:36]
All about one thing.
- [00:37]
Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start and scale business.
- [00:54]
Ever be, ever be ever be Ever be, ever be ever be.
- [00:58]
We now serve over 800, 000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures, the exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Everbee, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business.
- [01:23]
Mike, what's up, man? How are you?
- [01:25]
Mike Paciello
Hey, Cody. Good to hear from you. Good to see you. We've been talking about doing this session for at least a month or so now.
- [01:30]
Cody McGuffey
I know. Finally, finally made it happen. Very grateful for your time and super excited to have you on to talk about a subject that I've never talked about before, frankly. And I imagine a lot of people listening to this have never heard or talked about the subject either. And so I kind of get to play two parts. One, I get to be myself and actually ask curious questions, but also too, I get to kind of play extra, extra curious on behalf of anybody else listening to this. So very excited to have you on.
- [01:58]
Mike Paciello
Very cool. Yeah. And sorry I'm overdressed for this part, but I've got a couple of other meetings later on today, and I need to wear a tie for it. Otherwise I'd just be with my T shirt and. And probably make it a little bit more comfortable. But, yeah, this is a great conversation. This is a. An important conversation because most people don't realize that one in four adults, even the United States, has a disability, some kind of a disability.
- [02:19]
Cody McGuffey
What kind of disabilities are you talking about here? So when you say one in four, it's 25%, by the way, of the population, so it's massive. What kind of disabilities are we thinking here?
- [02:28]
Mike Paciello
Well, we're talking about the profound disabilities, for sure. People who are blind, people who are deaf, have hearing loss, people who have mobility or fine motor control loss, physical disabilities. But actually the largest portion of individuals with disabilities in the world, not just here in the US Are individuals with some form of cognitive disability. They're often referred to as hidden disabilities. Because you and myself, you know, wouldn't know if I, I would know if you were, say, for example, dyslexic, that would be a cognitive disability. So those tend to be the largest portion of individuals with, with disabilities throughout the world.
- [03:07]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, that's very interesting. Okay, so now we're already understanding, like, how big this market is. Or when I say market meaning, like, just how big is this impact? Right? It's like, how? Kind of. Because when, when I think about accessibility, first I'm thinking like, oh, that's a big corporate thing to think about. You know, that's, that's what I think about as a small business owner. I'm like, that just sounds like something that you worry about. That when you start worrying about compliance, you start worrying about like, you know, and I hate to say it that way, but it's true though, right? Because you're worried about making a dollar and being profitable.
- [03:35]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, exactly. Most of the laws, most of the standards that have been devised over the last 25, 30 years have been around or really positioned at large corporate, large organizational structures, whether it's government, education, you know, or business, but those big, huge vertical markets, if you will, a lot less so in terms of small businesses, until recently. Until recently. We could talk about that as we go.
- [04:03]
Cody McGuffey
I would like to. Yeah, I like to think about things as how do we align incentives? Right? So it's like one, there's, like, there's this group of individuals that have a disability, so they're underserved, but the small business isn't necessarily incentivized to, to kind of serve them right, or they don't think that they are. But if we, if we present it in a way where. No, no, when you, when you actually do serve them, it actually serves you. And as soon as you align those incentives, that's how great business happens, right? It's a win, win, win for everybody. And so the goal for this conversation is to share, like, kind of relook at this and almost reposition this thing as actually this, this, this thing that you've never really thought about is actually a big opportunity to serve, one, people who have disabilities, but two, actually serve yourself and your business and making sure which serves your family and your. In your community. So what do you think about that?
- [04:58]
Mike Paciello
It's, yeah, great, great points. I mean, so right away I'm starting to think about, well, especially from the creators, you know, small business markets, what is it that they're not thinking about that big businesses always have? So the big businesses are always dealing with compliance. They're probably dealing with legal standards and litigation and things like that, you know, related to laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act. Right. Human rights. But if I'm a small business and I'm getting myself started, what am I looking for? First of all, I come up with a great idea or I think I've come up with something cool, right? And then I'm looking for, well, who is this going to work for? And generally speaking, most individuals, doesn't matter what kind of business they're in or what it is that they're building or designing or developing, don't think of the disability market as someone that's going to use whatever it is that they've created. Right. They just don't think about it. And that's one of the strongest messages that I try to, you know, push across and in many of the podcasts, interviews, and things that I do in, when I speak, in lectures that I give at universities and in front of other companies is start thinking accessibility because you're leaving a lot of money, a lot of potential customers out there on the table just because you haven't designed or haven't thought about ensuring that your site is keyboard accessible. Most technologies used by people with disabilities use an interaction model that requires if again, and I'm thinking about this from a, from a technical standpoint, use a keyboard interaction model. Some use voice IO that's becoming more popular. But still the keyboard model, interaction model is the most popular, popular.
- [06:40]
Cody McGuffey
So what we're saying here is there's shoppers out there that literally want to buy from you and they just can't even. They. They're almost like they're outside of the store and they're like, I know there's awesome clothes in there. So, like, in a mall, I'm outside of this clothes. I know there's awesome clothes in there. I've heard there's awesome clothes in There. But, like, they just won't open the door for me.
- [07:00]
Mike Paciello
That's exactly right.
- [07:02]
Cody McGuffey
If they just open the door, I'll go and buy all this stuff. You're saying one of the most famous.
- [07:06]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, I'm sorry. One of the most famous lawsuits out there actually got started for that very reason. And it involved Target. And all it simply was is the blind user could not log in, couldn't log in to the system, so that, you know, username pass. They could not even do that. Later on, they found out they couldn't buy anything. So they had all these. Like you said, they had all these products that they wanted to buy, were, you know, very motivated buyers, which were most people with disabilities are. They're not any different than you and I from, you know, in terms of wants and needs, whether it's, you know, clothes shopping or grocery shopping or ordering a pizza, you know, from. From.
- [07:42]
Cody McGuffey
From Pizza Hut or buying gifts for their mom or their dad or their sister or brother.
- [07:46]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, exactly. So when we start thinking about designing and developing and we include that part of the usability or design perspective and thinking about users with disabilities, it's. It's not nearly as hard as it might sound. I think that's the other big thing is because we live in a digital society which kind of replicates what society was like back in the 30s and 40s, which is why things like, you know, the Section 504, the Rehab act came out when. When President Roosevelt was in a wheelchair. Right. And so they started to create these things called curb cuts and. And all that eventually evolved into the Americans with Disabilities Act. And we started to think, well, do people. Literally people would think they really have that hard of a time getting in and out of doors? Do they really have a hard time crossing streets? Do they have a hard time using the bathrooms? Yeah, that's why we have all of those modifications in the brick and mortar environment that we live in.
- [08:48]
Cody McGuffey
So now we're doing the same thing with digital.
- [08:50]
Mike Paciello
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [08:52]
Cody McGuffey
I want to talk about, like, the opportunity. Keep kind of drilling down on the opportunity for. For our audience, which is. We talked about our audience a lot before, but essentially it's. I think of them as people who are creators first. Like, they're creative people, but they're. They. They're. They're trying to build a business for themselves, or they're already building a business and they're trying to scale their business for themselves. And these people typically sell apparel or they sell supplements or they sell products online on the Internet. Right. And Sometimes these, these things can be digital products too, templates and all this stuff. And sometimes this could be subscription service and all this stuff too. What are the, some of the things that are like the low hanging fruit for them to just be like they're not even thinking about and it's actually not that hard to do. You're seeing this stuff all the time. What are some of those low hanging fruits?
- [09:38]
Mike Paciello
If you, especially if you're building some sort of online business, regardless of what it is that you're selling, service, subscription, product, what have you, one of the easiest things to do is to make sure that every image you put up of that product that you're showing has what's called an alternative text description. So this is a very common thing to do within a, with a winnow, within a web environment. You may excuse maybe you're working with some of the, you know, more common hosted services that are out there that for your platform and they provide that functionality. So every image, every picture you put up, make sure it has a text description associated with it.
- [10:17]
Cody McGuffey
All text, yeah. And people probably are familiar with this but like for example, ever be right which people have their store host their stores with us.
- [10:26]
Mike Paciello
Right.
- [10:26]
Cody McGuffey
For example, we have the option to. Where you can modify the, the alt text. Yeah. So basic stuff. I agree. Okay, cool.
- [10:32]
Mike Paciello
Exactly. Alternative text doesn't have to be a long parenthetical thing. We're just looking for a short description that tells the person what this thing is on the screen or maybe what its purpose is. Right.
- [10:43]
Cody McGuffey
What is the why behind that? What is the why? Sorry to cut you off, but what is the why? Like what, what is that actually going to do? Can you give me a use case where.
- [10:50]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, yeah, sure. A block blind people use, typically what's called a screen reader. So in short form that's something that takes what's on the screen and reads it back to the blind user because they obviously can't see it. Right. So if you have just an image up there, just a picture of you or picture of me, all they'll hear is, you know, image, you know, in the, in their, in their screen reader what's, what's, what's voiced back to them as opposed to saying it's a picture of Mike Paciello and that's a picture of Cody from, from Everbee. So that's really what it is. Those, those are the individuals who really get the most out of it.
- [11:26]
Cody McGuffey
In that case, I haven't forgive like if maybe these are dumb questions, but I just haven't thought about this a whole lot, admittedly. Um, how does, how does for example, in this case, that blind person actually even get to know about John johnshoes.com like what do you think? What's the use case to? Where is it a friend sending them this? And it's like, hey, this person has the, or this, this, this company has the best shoes for you. And what does like typically.
- [11:53]
Mike Paciello
Yeah. So you mean use case in terms of a person with a disability. It's really no different than anyone else. How do you get, you know, how do you get. I get my stuff, you know, through text messages. I get them through, you know, through, through links, referrals I may get. Someone call me up and say, hey look, I just. Over at this site, here's the URL, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Right? Yeah. That the, from, from a, strictly from the standpoint of a browser. Right. So you know what, what we engage with the web. Not everybody knows that you've got a browser that's sitting in front of you. That's the same way that all people with disabilities interact with.
- [12:29]
Cody McGuffey
They just have. If they can't see it, for example, then they have a screen reader, you're saying. So it's kind of the same thing.
- [12:36]
Mike Paciello
Exactly. Their technology actually interacts with the browser and the browser does everything that it does on the web. So they're still typing in URLs, you're still cutting and pasting all those features and functions that as a user without a disability can do. They can do. They just use technologies to do it. A person, say for example, in a wheelchair, you don't see them as often as much anymore, but they used to use something called a mouth stick and they would just literally or mouth pointer and it would be in their mouth and they would, you know, use the keyboard to interact with a browser. Today they use infrared, they use eye tracking systems that allow them. But all that is is just a piece of specialized technology that compensates for the disability, whatever that disability is, and allows them to then interact with the browser and the web and their computer systems.
- [13:31]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. Okay, so alt text, like low hanging fruit. Easy to do if it's a shirt with mother. You know, this says like I love my mom or something like this.
- [13:41]
Mike Paciello
Right.
- [13:42]
Cody McGuffey
Alt text needs to describe shirts, whatever the alt text would be. I love my mom shirt. Something like this.
- [13:47]
Mike Paciello
Yeah. So that's, that's one piece of low hanging fruit, the next piece of low hanging fruit that I would say a little bit more complicated to do, but it's important because most of our, most of the webs, especially if you're building a site where you're, where a person has to buy something or subscribe something, requires, has some notion of a form, you know, a form fill, right? So when you sign up to a site, you put in your username and your password. That's a couple of form fields that you have to fill out. If you're buying, buying something. Usually they list. There's a counter in there, right? So you've got a, the counter is a, is a type of form field on the web. So my next recommendation is focus on making sure those form fields are accessible and usable. Now I said that's a little bit easier said than done because if you're the average person who's, you know, subscribed to Everbee and you're in your hosted site, likely you're not doing a whole lot in terms of your own coding, right? So you're relying on a platform to.
- [14:46]
Cody McGuffey
Take care of that.
- [14:47]
Mike Paciello
You got it. You're relying on the platform. That by the way, is why the company that I work for is so popular. And again, I'm not here to make a commercial for AudioEye, but this is exactly where they excel at. We complement the platforms that manage host systems, provide with the accessibility that they need so that the users really don't even have to think about it. It's done. And where it needs to get remediated and it's monitored on a constant 24 by 7365 basis. It gets done for them. That's, that's the easiest way to approach accessibility, especially for, for small businesses and creators like, like your.
- [15:28]
Cody McGuffey
I could see that too. I think about the platonic ideal of this would be that they use like our creators, our business owners, the people that use ever be. They don't actually have to think about all this. Like the platform already thinks about all this. That's the platonic ideal. And so that's, that's where it's like interesting for me to like talk to you about this because I'm like, oh yeah, we could build that into ever beat. We could build that into ever be. That's, that's the goal.
- [15:53]
Mike Paciello
And it's a value proposition that works for your, all your clients, all your clientele. You put it on the platform, you build it in. And again they there. It's great because we want them to think about accessibility. We want them to think about expanding their customers to people, to include people with disabilities, but knowing that they don't have to worry about it because your hosted service provides that for them, that, that feature and those functions there for them. Yeah, that's, that's a value proposition for a host of manage host system in that and your, in your subscribers that.
- [16:22]
Cody McGuffey
You can't beat for that form that you're talking about. For example, let's say the counter, right? Like, let's say they're, they're in the cart. Let's just go through it and like they're in the cart. So they want to buy this shirt and they also want to buy these pants, right? So there's one and one. What would the accessible. Like what would be the ideal scenario there?
- [16:43]
Mike Paciello
Well, if you're thinking about redesigning it, don't. That's another thing that's really important about accessibility. The World Wide Web Consortium, which I'm sure you're familiar with, had launched in 1997. In fact, I launched it, I created that office for them, the Web Accessibility Initiative. And out of that office, that program office, came guidelines that are called the WCAG guidelines or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Those guidelines provide all of the programmatic code, the way to write HTML, the way to write css. This is the style, the stuff like that. Again, the average user probably doesn't even pay attention to this. But that's where all the guidelines for making something usable and accessible are. My point being this. Just because you create, it's less important about how you create a counter or a form field because if you follow the, the content excellent guidelines, you'll be able to code them correctly. It's less about that. It's what's. What's probably more important that you have to pay attention. Which would have been the third year that I would have said is the overall navigation of the site. Now that is something that has to be done, has to be done correctly. So when you think about an average website, it's got a whole bunch of stuff on it, but it also has generally a layout, right? A navigational scheme to it. So you've got, you think most sites have, you know, a menu bar, navigational bar on the bottom. There's a, you know, there, there, there's the foot, the footer of the page and then you've got the middle section, generally whatever kind of content doesn't really matter what that content is in the middle. It can be made accessible. Even if it's video. You could put built in captioning into, excuse me, into the video, descriptive video for, for the blind. Even if it's, you know, some sort of moving Characters and things like that, you know, animation, all of that can be made accessible by coding it according to those guidelines that are being produced by the, by the World Wide Web Consortium.
- [19:03]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting. I could see this getting so much better for as a market just in general with AI and just automatic transcribing and like all this stuff. I imagine this is just amplifying and actually accelerating this whole initiative.
- [19:15]
Mike Paciello
That's exactly right. Yeah. Automatic automated captioning is going out. It's become very, very popular right now. There's a number of things where AI has been really, really helpful at that level. Now again, to be fair, like everybody else, you can't just rely on automation. A lot of work is highly personalized. So the people who are developing, you know, the software and the platforms need to really understand what they're doing. So in, in terms of AudioEye, we give you a, a great platform to work with and it does an awful lot in helping you through automation in artificial intelligence to make your website accessible. But there's an awful lot there that still needs to be done manually at the source code level, particularly wherever possible. And that takes expertise. It is a specialty from that standpoint.
- [20:09]
Cody McGuffey
Absolutely. But the, but the market size is large. When it comes to like, it's important to understand like, well, things are hard and things are. This is a specialty, this is a niche. But if you understand like, well, yeah, it's hard. It's worth it though. Usually it's like all of a sudden like, well, it doesn't really matter if it's hard or not because it's just, it's just worth it. And so that's why I want to understand, I want to understand it and I also want to share with people listening to this of like, it may be a little bit extra effort to do that with your alt text and do these other things like with you putting the description of your video inside of it. But if you do it like you're also now appealing to 25% of people that you wouldn't normally have appealed to. And I think we were talking about this. There's like a billion people that.
- [20:54]
Mike Paciello
Over a billion people right now worldwide.
- [20:57]
Cody McGuffey
Worldwide. And this is people that are probably want to shop a site but maybe can't. Maybe they can, but most of the time they probably can't. This is like, this is not like 10 million people across the world. This is a billion people that have money in their pocket just like everybody else. They have a, they have a problem that they need to need to solve with a product and but they just aren't able to because just your site isn't built for it.
- [21:21]
Mike Paciello
Let me tell you something else that's also very important that I've learned over the years. When people with disabilities find something that works for them, they are loyal. They are brand loyal. So that's another real good motivation for the creators or for the folks that are building their businesses out there. If you start appealing to that population segment of people with disabilities, you're going to find that you have very, very loyal buyers that come back in droves. And they very, they kind of remind me of my grandparents. They always went to the same grocery store. They didn't care what else is building around. This is where we always go to Luigi. So I'm Italian, right? So you always go down to Luigi, go down there. That's what we do. They're very, very loyal to that. And they rarely will ever break off.
- [22:09]
Cody McGuffey
You know what? I could totally see that my, my, my cousin has, has CP cerebral palsy. And I totally see that with her. And she's like, she's, she's so amazing in so many ways. But the fact that she, I, I totally see that. I'm just like. And I also make sense. Why would you break off when it's like, you know what you're going to get, you know what to expect from this, this, this company or this service. You know what you're going to get, you know, they're built for you. Because everything else is kind of challenging, right? So it's like, why would you even risk it, you know, to like, go.
- [22:42]
Mike Paciello
That's exactly right. That, that is exactly right. Again, if you think about any. I was saying earlier, what the web and what the Internet have done for people with disabilities at large is created in a. Something which is what they really want is to be a little bit more on an equal basis with everybody else, right? So I don't have to go in my wheelchair now and get, you know, get into a car, drive to the bank, you know, find a teller that, you know, could get, you know, that, that may or may not be accessible to me in a wheelchair, right. Unless I've. I've got one of the wheelchairs that, you know, elevates automatically the Dean Cayman type wheelchairs that, that he made all terrain wheelchairs, but rather I could just stay at home. Not that we're trying to keep you at home, but I could do things easier. I could do my banking, I can do my shopping. You know, I could do my registering, my, pay my taxes, any kind of government service. You know, I could do online education or all of those things now that are out there that have become norms in a digital society. And digital economy have made it much easier for people with disabilities at large as long as we do our part. And that says we've got to make it, we've got to make it useful and accessible to them. I like approach to the digital economy. I don't know if you know Rob Sharon. He's a, you know, well known pundit. He was Jack Welch's right right hand man for years at ge. At ge. But Rob Schron has recently written a book about competing competitive advantage in the digital economy. And the thing that resonated with me most, as he said, we're living in an age of personalization. This is the age of personalization and that's one great way to look at accessibility is the personalized user experience. Eventually. Now this is where I get into the tech side of this in the field that I work in. Eventually we're going to create a web in a digital society where the user won't have to use assistive technology. The system and the interface will adapt to the user. Well, no, that's the, that's the ultimate vision.
- [25:07]
Cody McGuffey
You know, I, I agree with that. And that's kind of, it's part of our vision too at Everbee is we've kind of said the same thing. Now it take, there's some things that needs to happen, you know, sequentially I guess, for that to happen. But that's the ideal scenario, right? It's like, how does this person already. How does, how, when you come to my store, how do you, how does my store already know everything about you, Mike? It knows. And, and I'm talking about secure wise. Right. We're not talking about security here, but like, let's just assume that like everybody has good intent and it's secure. It also understands like what your fears are, what your uncertainties are. Maybe your kids, your wife, like your, your, your, your dog that, your size, your kind of classes you wear.
- [25:46]
Mike Paciello
Sure.
- [25:46]
Cody McGuffey
And not assuming again, all this is protected. That is the ideal. And also if you have a disability, it understands your disability. And it, it could actually just cater exactly. To you. And that's, that's the ideal.
- [26:00]
Mike Paciello
Until then, you know, until then, the big question is, well, how do I know really what these people, people with disabilities need? How do I, how do I make, how do I, how do I, you know, become a maker and a creator and build it? So go to the World Wide Web Consortium look for the Web Accessibility Initiative and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are international, so you don't have to worry about anything you build according to those guidelines is, makes it usable and accessible and compliant with everywhere else in the entire world. These are the guidelines worldwide guidelines. Okay. The second thing I would recommend is contact your local disability constituency organization. Usually there's a constituency organization who services the blind, services the deaf, services individuals. Like the VA is a huge one, right? The Paralyzed Veterans of America activity there. There's a lot of those constituencies who are, get in touch with them, talk to them, ask them how do they use it, what do they need? What do I need to do to get you, it's like, it's like doing your own little market survey. How do I get you to come to my site? What do you need? What can I do to make sure that you could buy shoes or you could subscribe to my, you know, to my, to my podcast. What do I need to do? And they'll, they will be more than happy to help you do that.
- [27:19]
Cody McGuffey
I bet. There were some other benefits too that I was looking up be a couple days ago before, before our call today was how does this stuff kind of help a brand? Also like, what's the, what's the point of doing this? Obviously we have the impact of the people we have, you know, more revenue, I guess you could say. What are some other like soft benefits, I would say. And a couple things that I wanted to run by you was we talked about the reach already 1 billion people globally to the legal risk. There's like, there's, there is legal actually risk for not being compliant to this stuff, which isn't really the fun stuff to talk about. So we'll stay away from that for now. The, the SEO, like the SEO benefits actually like when Google and like all this stuff, they actually reward sites. They do and they perform like your site will actually perform better in search when you have a cleaner, more intuitive experience for all users, including people with disabilities.
- [28:11]
Mike Paciello
And Google's algorithms look for accessibility. They're trained to look for accessibility. I know that for, know that for a fact. So there's another advantage to what that will do in terms of right your SEO and, and, and building your, your search results at that level where you, where you, where you are in that continuum. Yep.
- [28:27]
Cody McGuffey
Love it. And then the one that I, I, I think is you already covered was kind of your reputation, your brand reputation, right? As soon as you kind of, as soon as you have a reputation of being accessible to that certain type of audience. You just have a, you're building a great brand and people always come back and obviously that increases you, your lifetime value, increases your word of mouth, your virality, all that good stuff.
- [28:49]
Mike Paciello
Right? Yeah. Take a, take a page out of Apple and Microsoft's a book about, you know, marketing 101 when it comes to disabilities and people with disabilities. You look at some of the most amazing infomercials and commercials and stuff that's on the web right now. They very often include people with disabilities in all of their, all of their ads that are out there. So that's something. And one of the reasons why they do that, like it or not, they get the sympathy, sympathy buyer to go in there if Apple or Microsoft are doing this or that to ensure that games are accessible for kids, you know, and I'm building a game that I think or an educational, you know, platform for it. If they're doing it, why shouldn't I? Right. And then, and then, then do a podcast, do a, do a, you know, an ad about it. Show it. People want to know. That's the, that, you know, marketing is, Marketing and PR are, are two of the, the biggest ways of driving business and creating new business. Put someone in with a disability in your ad or tell about how you make your site usable and accessible to people with disabilities. I think you will immediately gain certainly this, the disability market. But you're going to get the non disabled, the population of individuals who are just buyers just because of that natural, empathic, sympathetic feeling that most humans have for one another.
- [30:26]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting. I think this is markets totally. I mean I just look at the time, it's already 30 minutes. But I want to get to the rapid fire questions. Are you ready for rapid fire?
- [30:36]
Mike Paciello
Sure, go ahead.
- [30:37]
Cody McGuffey
What's your favorite business book?
- [30:40]
Mike Paciello
It's the one that I just, just referred to. Rethinking Competitive Advantage by Ram Shrin. Beautiful.
- [30:46]
Cody McGuffey
What's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your businesses in the past, which we didn't talk about, but I know you've, you're a serial entrepreneur as well.
- [30:55]
Mike Paciello
You know, my, my background has always been in technology. I really didn't understand and know business. I wish I had taken the time to learn it, but fortunately I got involved with Motorola Ventures right early on and they surrounded me with an entire team of business executives and legal people all around me. And so I was able to be successful and I've, you know, created three or four businesses as a result.
- [31:18]
Cody McGuffey
What was the one thing that you wish that you knew before start by kind of being involved with those things.
- [31:25]
Mike Paciello
How much work it took. Time and dedication. Time and dedication.
- [31:30]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting. What's the worst advice that you've ever received about business?
- [31:36]
Mike Paciello
I've gotten a lot of bad advice. The worst advice, ironically that I've ever received is you should get involved with this or that person. And I knew that person's biography to an extent and they had somewhat of a checkered pass. And I still went and did it. And every time I did it was I. I lost. It was. It was a losing value proposition either lost money, lost what I was trying to accomplish in terms of a technology or business. I lost a bit. I've lost at least two businesses because of that partnership.
- [32:14]
Cody McGuffey
And this is mostly because you had a gut feeling and you're saying like, and somebody gave you advice, you kind of put their advice above your gut feeling.
- [32:22]
Mike Paciello
Exactly. Interesting.
- [32:24]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation there. I'd be curious to have. But yeah, that's interesting. How many hours do you think that you work per week nowadays?
- [32:37]
Mike Paciello
Probably someone in the neighborhood of 80.
- [32:40]
Cody McGuffey
Oh, you're still, you're still very, very active.
- [32:42]
Mike Paciello
I'm supposed to be retired. I did retire for about five or six years and then I. I got looped back into it last year. So yeah, it probably 80s probably. Probably fair.
- [32:53]
Cody McGuffey
I heard that. I've heard this and I've heard it from a lot of people now at this point that retirement is where you go to die. I'm not sure if that's fully true.
- [33:03]
Mike Paciello
But I think my wife would probably agree with that. Probably agree with that where it comes to me. But I've made a promise. I'm committed to being retired by the time I'm 60, 69, which just is a mathematical equation I worked out with my fa and so I mean I could really do it by 67 or 68, but 69. My wife will be re ready for it by then. So good. Two more years. You're and a half.
- [33:27]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, awesome. If your family and your friends would kind of get together and write an honest article about you and you're not allowed to be involved in this process, what are some of the characteristics that they would use to describe you? Good and bad?
- [33:45]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, so good. I think empathetic. Certainly someone who is very generous. Those are probably in honest truth is a very, very strong characteristic for me. I've written a number of articles of blogs. You'll see them out there on that. It's one of the big problems I've had with marketing the last Five or six years, especially in my own industry, being truthful, being transparent. I think people would say that that was in, you know, that I'm, that I'm a friendly and amiable, amiable person. My bad qualities. I am a workaholic. I am somewhat of a geek. So sometimes you're talking to me and I'm not really listening because my head is off in the clouds somewhere else thinking about something else that I'm, I'm going to do. And I think even though I'm a very people oriented and people centered individual, there are times when I just ignore everybody else and I'm just focused on what makes me feel good. So a little bit of selfish. Selfishness.
- [34:52]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. Thank you for that. I appreciate you being vulnerable there. How would you define a creator? Who is a creator to you?
- [35:03]
Mike Paciello
A creator to me is an inventor, but actually even more than that. And, and I say that only because I've been using that word creator a little bit more because of where I live. I live in an area in North Carolina where there are a lot of artists, you know, artists in terms of art and painting and things along that line. They're, they're all over the place. And a lot of friends that I have and I watch these people do something I literally cannot do. So I, I see, you know, creator, I see imagination, I see, I see vision in ways that I just could never imagine. So that's, that's what I think about when I think about a creator. Someone who's got vision, someone who is truly innovative, someone who is truly creative and, and has. Uses their imagination in ways that I, I just don't, I just don't have that capacity.
- [35:54]
Cody McGuffey
Love it. Do you think or who do you think should be a business owner?
- [35:59]
Mike Paciello
Anyone that's got an entrepreneurial, you know, character like, like myself, certainly those are people. That's a typical standard question for anyone that's in business. But I think an entrepreneur can be anyone who comes up with an idea that they think will make a contribution to anything. In terms of society particularly, that's my, you know, my focus is making a contribution. Right. And just talked about art. Art is a contribution. Right. Just the way as the next, you know, microchip and what it does and its features and functionalities are our contributions that make things better. Facts are performance wise at that level. So, you know, it's probably not the greatest answer in the world.
- [36:45]
Cody McGuffey
No, it's a great answer. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. Mike, where can people find you and connect with you more and learn more about you.
- [36:51]
Mike Paciello
You. Yeah. So a couple of ways to, to, to find me. I am at Audioeye so my, my company is audioeye.com that's the easy way to find there. I think I'm up on the web page and in there somewhere you'll find me. My email address is michael.pasiellodioi.com or you could send me to, you can send email to me to another little startup company. It's kind of a hobby that I have. It's called webable.com and my email there is M. Pasiello webable.com those a couple ways to get in touch with me. LinkedIn, all, all the social networks you can, you'll, you'll find me, do a quick, quick search usually come up with me. They're not too many Pasiello out there.
- [37:33]
Cody McGuffey
And we will link for anybody listening and watching. We'll link to all Mike's, all of us, all of his links below in the show notes or in the description below depending on where you're, you're watching this. But Mike, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you coming on adding value to all of us here, myself included. So thank you.
- [37:51]
Mike Paciello
Yeah, Cody, thanks very much. Thanks for having me. And again, I hope this gets out to the masses, to all the folks that are thinking about who am I going to reach, who am I going to get to really think about those billion plus people internationally with disabilities that are out there just waiting for you to launch your next project.
- [38:08]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. Thanks Mike. Talk to you soon.
- [38:10]
Mike Paciello
Thank you. Take care.