← Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Earn While You Scroll: Inside Mode Mobile’s Business Model with Dan Novaes
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- [00:00]
Dan Novias
You're a professional web creator who needs a platform that works as hard as you do. Wix Studio is built for you whether you're a designer, developer or marketer ready to amplify your impact. Build intuitively with advanced design features and AI powered tools. Manage your clients and projects efficiently from one workspace scale with dynamic systems and fully managed infrastructure. Create exceptional websites with hyper efficiency. Go to wixstudio.com the most valuable thing that we have as humans is our attention. There's nothing more that's more important. And it's the new oil. It is the data. Your data. And your attention isn't. But what people are really shocked and surprised is that the data is actually by itself not that valuable because companies like Facebook and so much have so much of it and then you're basically if the product's free, you're the product. They're not incentivized. But why are those companies worth trillions of dollars? Because of your data. But when you actually put it out, it's not worth more than $100 a year. But when you mix data plus attention like action that worth a lot. This is Right about Now with Ryan Alford A Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
- [01:22]
Ryan Alford
Hello and welcome to right about now. We're always talking about how you could stay right and what is happening now. We could talk about last week. We could, we talked yesterday. We talked next year. No, it's now. Today. Everything's moving quick but you got to take advantage of the here and the now because you live in the moment, people. That's why we're here. That's why we're number one. Because you made us that way. And you know why we're number one? Because our guests, they're kick ass. They're badass. They are Dan Novias. He is a co founder and CEO of Mode Mobile Topic. I love to talk about mobile cell phones. They are the 2023, Deloitte's number one fastest growing north American software firm. I got that all in. What's up Dan?
- [01:59]
Dan Novias
What's up Ryan? Thanks for having me.
- [02:01]
Ryan Alford
He man I'm ready. Ready to talk mobile. How I make money carrying this thing around. I like this topic a lot, Dan. It goes down a lot of avenues. Number one, mobile. Number two, breakthrough technology. Number three, teaching people how the Markets work and how we are in the attention economy. We're going to get some more mobile customers and better yet, maybe some smart people that will recognize that own businesses that need attention, that need to be partnering with you. That's where I'd say the bigger opportunity is for them and for you. But talk to me. But what else is happening in Naples?
- [02:32]
Dan Novias
Naples is very hot right now. It's always a. It's a good time. Naples or Miami, always a good time. Used to be based in Chicago. That's where we started the company. And we were sick of the winter, moved our way to south Florida and hang out all about these areas. I definitely trade the 110 degree heat with the humidity from the negative 30 that we were getting in Chicago.
- [02:49]
Ryan Alford
You know, back in the day, I spent one winter in Chicago. That's all this Southern boy needed. That was it.
- [02:54]
Dan Novias
It's pretty miserable in the winter, but it is a great city. But the cost of living and the taxes, man, I mean, at the end of the day, that's also a difficult thing to swallow. Just by moving to Florida, you see your paycheck go up because you don't have those state taxes to deal.
- [03:05]
Ryan Alford
I can't complain.
- [03:06]
Dan Novias
Nice.
- [03:06]
Ryan Alford
No complaint. You're obviously a hustler in the most respectful way. We've made hustling a bad term somehow in America, but it's not a bad word in my book. I saw this story flipping $1,000 in birthday cash into a $2 million business by age 20. That was the first thing that got my attention. The first thing I want to ask Dan, is it nature or nurture for guys like you? You just born that guy or did something mold you into it?
- [03:27]
Dan Novias
I would say my first business I started was reselling items and stuff on ebay. And I ended up becoming like a titanium power seller, which at the time that you were doing over, I think a million a year on it. And that was before drop shipping stuff. I mean, drop. I mean, there's been so many courses, like in the last 20 years. I see these people doing. I was like, dude, I was doing this stuff 20 years ago. But even before then, I didn't know what entrepreneurship was as a word. I don't know, like these, like Pokemon cards. That was a big opportunity that everyone really loved. And I definitely fell into the Pokemon ideology of collecting them. But then I was always looking at how do I get better opportunities. And then I was always really into Japanese snacks. And there was a Japanese grocery store in town in Indiana that I grew up in and my mom brought me there. And I saw these, like, Japanese Pokemon cards. And they were totally different than any Pokemon I had ever seen, but they had these different holographics. And then I would buy them, and then I take them to school. And then I would tell these narratives about what this Pokemon card did. Even it was all in Japanese. And all you could see was a number that that was the only thing in English writing. And I was able to get these kids to trade me their best cards, their charizards, effectively. Then I take the charizards and I'd sell them at the card store for 60 bucks. And I did that for a while until some kid in my neighborhood told his mom and said I was taking advantage of them and had to refund him the money because my parents were pissed. I wasn't, like, trying to scam. Here's a trade. You want to do it? That's kind of how my brain think. Another situation where it kind of got in trouble. So I think that the entrepreneurship sometimes turns into mischievousness is how it's viewed in society. But it wasn't. I wasn't purposely trying to do these things. I'm from Brazil originally, but I grew up in southern Indiana. And my whole life I would go between these two countries. Very different places for sure, because, you.
- [04:52]
Ryan Alford
Know, yeah, Indiana and Brazil.
- [04:54]
Dan Novias
And I'm from Sao Paulo, Brazil, top 10 biggest cities in the world type stuff. Brazil, it's kind of. It's more chill, more chill culture. So you can go, for example, this is like the late 90s. I'm 10 to 12, you know, kind of like in New York City, they have those little, like, stores on the street corners that you can buy magazine, kind of a newsstand, and they have layboys there. And as long as you have the money, you can just buy it in the US that would never have. I didn't even know where you could get it back then. A friend of mine's dad had a subscription at that time. I was like, wow, this is insane that I have access to this. So I bought three of them at the time. And then I would sell the pages to kids at my school for 20 bucks each. I mean, 20 bucks in 1990, that's like 100 bucks. Like, you know what I mean?
- [05:29]
Ryan Alford
Howard Hughes at middle school, right?
- [05:32]
Dan Novias
And then finally, when I got caught and got in trouble was this kid traded me for all of them. And he basically gave me a tennis racket plus 300 bucks and a pair of Kobe's. And I remember thinking, like, wow, that Was like, such a great trade. And then he got caught because he stole the 300 bucks from his parents, you know, so it's similar situation. And again, I got so much trouble because then my mom's like, everyone's gonna think it's your dad's porn. I didn't. You don't even think about that. That wasn't even in my brain. So then I kind of just took a pause, I guess. I didn't like, purposely, but that's how I make money up until I was 12. And then I found out about working, the concept of working. When I started working at Polo store, I was about 15, 16 years old. I just got in a car, and my dad, he was cool because he financed the car for me, but I had to pay the payments. And then any upgrades I wanted to do, then I had to pay for that, which is reasonable. And then I was like, okay, I'm gon The Polo store. He had a factory outlet mall by my house and worked there for two weeks. And it was the worst thing I had ever done. It was a lot of work. I got my first paycheck, and it was 75 bucks. And I was literally so shocked that it was so hard to make $75. I had completely blacked out and forgotten all about the Pokemons and the Playboys and all that stuff. But after that first week, I was like, that's insane. Anyways, but I kept there for another week. Fortunately, I was dating a girl there at the time, so that was another incentive, you know? So I was like, okay, it's not that bad. But then this big tour bus of Japanese tourists came because there was a Toyota plant that was being built in my town, and they bought literally 60k wor worth of stuff on a random Sunday. No one was there. The store's about to close. Me and one other dude were closing up, and we handled the entire sale. And I'm thinking, okay, we just ripped 60k for the store. They're for sure going to give us a commission or something. That's a lot. And they gave us a $5 Arby's gift card. And I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. The 40% discount that I got, which was a good perk to get. I was like, if I gave them half, I could have ripped 20 or 12K. And then that's when I had the aha moment. And then I was like, oh, my gosh, you were in smartphones. So you knew. Like, back then, I had a Palm Trio. It was one of those Palm Pilots. That you could write and all this stuff. It was the co thing at my school because very few kids had that. And I was taking pictures of everything and I cross reference on ebay. And then I found the perfect item. It was like this leather jacket. They'd sell it at the LM Mall for like 180 bucks after my discounts. 140, 150. And I was selling on their store for 380. You can make 200 bucks a jacket. So I just bought three on my dad's emergency credit card that he had given me in case I ever run into an emergency. But I kept the receipt because I knew we had a 30 day return policy. No questions asked as long as the tags were on. And then I listed him that day and dude, all three sold in one night. And I made 650 bucks. And I was like wow, that's insane. And so then I just rinse and repeated that for three or four months. I had everyone in the store buying those jackets for me. I'd pay them 25 bucks. And some managers were cool with it, some were not. And I left. And before I did I made like 35k in four or five months. And that was my seed capital to get started. And found this opportunity of arbitraging high end electronic products. IPods, MacBooks, other stuff in other countries. Started selling them in Brazil, started selling them in the uk, Australia. And you play with the currency and things are more expensive. It's like $1,000 phone here, thousand pounds in the UK but if you add the currency value it's 1600 buc. And there's usually a lack of when it comes out. So that's kind of what I was doing. I started all through high school and by my freshman year I was doing about 2 million a year in revenue and all bootstrapped. My mom was shipping all these packages. One of the post office knew my mom FedEx people stuff. And that's how it all started.
- [08:33]
Ryan Alford
I love this amazing story. Number one, I like you. I liked you before we started. Now I really like you. I just like very resourceful people. And if I'm in a bunker somewhere, I want the most resourceful people with me. So Dan Navias is invited to my bunker. If we're ever in a bunker. Hopefully never because I have a feeling two of us do some damage. The reason I sort of this nature nurture. I'm curious because I have four boys and all smart kids and a couple of them are definitely have that sort of entrepreneur side to them. They Kind of figured out they're resourceful and, you know, they have a good life. We don't give them everything they want, but they don't need anything. And I'm not saying I don't know this. I'm not saying whether you did or doesn't matter if you grew up with money or even having anything, but your parents were giving you a decent life, it sounds like, regardless of you. So where does the want to come from? This is like a common theme for me lately. I like to get under this nature of versus nurture thing. Like, can it be taught or. Yeah, I think you know where I'm going with this. So.
- [09:28]
Dan Novias
Yeah, I never had to like scrounge for food. There was always a meal at my table. I would say I grew up in a middle class, probably middle class to that upper threshold.
- [09:38]
Ryan Alford
You weren't the rich kid, but you weren't a poor kid.
- [09:40]
Dan Novias
And that's a luxury. And that's an extreme luxury to have that. Because I only had to focus on myself and I have to focus on them. My parents, they weren't entrepreneurs. My dad worked for a company. I was just like always very curious as a kid. I'd ask weird questions to people. Not in like a weird, awkward way. For example, I was playing baseball. I would ask, one of the dads was driving the whole team. And I was noticed that because we were fan shopping and I wanted to get the best value. And so I was like, hey, I noticed this is the luxury Windstar, like the fourth Windstar. How much just set you back? Did you get this used?
- [10:08]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [10:08]
Dan Novias
I feel like he's like, you don't ask that question to adults. He actually said that to me, kind of scolded me. I'm just trying to figure out how much the monthly payment is on this car. That's just how my brain operated. And one thing I started realizing, it definitely started to creep me up much more through later high school years, is that if I were to rely on my parents, I have limitations of what I can do. And then when you start that first job, even though it was like not a long period of time, that one week or two weeks at polo really put a shock into me where I was like, dude, like, that was so hard. That was so hard for me to fold clothes, do all that stuff. And it was backbreaking work. And there's a lot of that and there has to be a better way of doing that. And then in college, I then had another realization of that. I went to business school and all My friends were getting internships and it was the hype thing to get an internship. Goldman Sachs, these like name brand consulting things. And I got all of those because I had very good grades and I had a business. And everyone's like, why are you even applying? It's like, well, I just want to make sure that this isn't for me. And had a nice interview and all that stuff. And I got it the first week where they wind and dynue excellent. But then when you like go in and actually do the work, I was like, dude, this is horrible. I'm just sitting around doing PowerPoints all day and I'm just getting hazed because I'm just intern sucks. Then I really came to that realization. It's like, hey, I think I'm an entrepreneur. Like, I think that's what I need to do with my life. And I came to that realization really, as I would say coming into my senior year, junior to senior year of college, where I really fundamentally do it in my soul. That's what was my destiny and that's what I enjoy doing. Because like where I get my most energy is kind of like idea and creativity. Mark Cuban says us like, you know, he likes the sport of business. Some people are really passionate about certain things. They really like to play music or they like to paint or whatever. And my passion is I really like entrepreneurship. I like creating. That's my version of art. And so I think that that nature and then there are things that you nurture. I think the downside of my personality of people that are innately entrepreneurial is they have to learn the lesson of thinking long term and scaling. And you will make a lot of mistakes. Like you might have all these ideas on stuff, but then those people tend to be solopreneurs. They have limitations. I think they know everything. They don't think they have short term gains. There's a lot of hustlers that kind of can't get out of that. I call it 0 to 0.1. You know, it's like, fine, you're doing okay. And that's. And it depends what you want. And then I also learned wasn't just about money for me. I thought like up until I was 25, I was very focused on that. I like to have money, but that's not like what motivates me on a grander scale. And I think you learn these lessons.
- [12:21]
Ryan Alford
I like it. I think that's important. Now let's talk Mode Mobile. And I see security, token sales, I see all this stuff around tokenization raising capital. Right around Covid time. I'd be curious, number one, what formed the idea for Mode Mobile and then enlighten the audience with a little bit of that story of building that company.
- [12:42]
Dan Novias
Most people think that, you know, you're going to come up with some grand idea and you're just going to scale it and everything so that you're going to fly off into the sunset and rocket to Mars. And I'm not saying it's not possible. It happens, but not in my experience, for myself at least, but I've definitely seen that happen to others. Mode was born out of a series of pivots, I would say. And I think that's my number one skill in life, is constantly pivoting. The better I've gotten at pivoting, the better I can dial in what actually complements my business and is able to kind of scale Mode. We kind of really came out this idea we had launched. I got into software after college. One of my warehouse got robbed and then later almost took me down. But then I got into software and I was like, wow, you can really scale this much better way without all that cash that you need to basically have these items. Met my co founder at the time, he was in high school and I was in college and five, six years apart. Started building a bunch of apps and never had a major exit, I would say had a lot of small, like little 500k kind of app sales. And then we had this big idea, Media and Mode. This is where it was kind of born. We had a user's product that basically were aggregating a bunch of music services into one place. Did not get any traction, but we had one type of person using it and it was lower income people that had a lot of time, not necessarily money and they liked the fact that we were aggregating all these music services in one place and didn't have to pay for it. We had interviewed them, she always talked to your customers. And then effectively we were like, well, what if we paid you to listen to music? I guess how interested would you be? Would you do tasks for that? And they were like, yeah, for sure. And so we threw up like a banner, get paid to play music and had like 300,000 people a month to sign that up. We launched it and then we noticed it was really hard to make money off of paying people to listen to music. And so we moved into other stuff, playing games, shopping, charging and the business started scaling from there. And then as you mentioned, 2019 was the first year we generated revenue under that business model is maybe slightly under a hundred K in total revenue or something in that range. And by 2022, we had done just over $25 million. And that's where that 32,481% growth rate comes. And throughout that time is when that really kind of development of this idea came to fruition. We started seeing. It's like, hey, what we're really building is an earn OS is what we call it an operating system. For everything you do on the phone, people are spending a third of their waking life, and in younger generations, a half of their waking life, there's 168 hours a week. If you're sleeping eight hours a day, there's 112 left. And then if you look at your screen time, it's about 30 to 40 hours that people are spending on average on their phone, and then younger generations, 50 to 60. So if you add this up, it is insane. And the cost, these devices are going down. The service is getting better and faster. And the first screen is now the phone screen. It's not the desktop screen anymore. It kind of just made sense from a standpoint of the business. And then we basically launched that app where you can take your smartphone, turn it into your phone. Then I had this idea, hey, we're gonna launch a phone. And everyone's like, don't launch your phone. That is a very bad business to get into. How do you even do that? And so I just flew to Hong Kong. I just didn't even have an appointment. I just hit a couple people up.
- [15:20]
Ryan Alford
I would have told you not to do that too.
- [15:22]
Dan Novias
Yeah, yeah, everyone told me not to do.
- [15:24]
Ryan Alford
If you still think you did the right thing, I don't know, but I would have told you not to. I think it was necessary to get where you wanted to go. Even if it wasn't perfect, then fine.
- [15:33]
Dan Novias
But the way I thought about it at the time was we were living in a very low interest rate environment, effectively, like zero interest rate. The biggest issue with hardware is just putting up the capital to do subsidized. The market's very, very much changed over the last five years. I was like, look, we could run a test and we get our users to buy this service. And the thesis I had was like, people will use a phone that will pay them more than downloading an app. I use this example quite often. When you're at a restaurant and a waiter brings you a water versus you ordering an aquapona or a Pellegrino, you're more committed to The Pellegrino and the Aquaponic because you spent four bucks on it. And it's like a token amount but people will drink more of it than they will the tap water. And so the thought process I had is if you buy a phone whose premise, cuz all phones at about $100 price point are the same, it's like you can't really differentiate. They're all one phone pays you, one phone doesn't pay you. Which phone are you going to choose? The one that pays you. Especially if you're budget constrained. If you're dropping a $2,000 on a phone like you don't really care, but most people aren't. There's like 1 billion iPhones out there. There's like 5 to 6 billion of everything else. So was able to figure out how to launch only 5,000 phones. We sold out of that first batch, did another one and then I was like okay, yeah maybe we're going to do these phones. And I was like, well actually it's really hard to make a phone and you didn't get it perfected and all that stuff. And all of our money is made on the software. But what I really needed to do is I need to prove out that the model was possible and that the numbers made and we were able to prove that out like the retention was much better. People earn way more. And so now we're kind of in this business of starting to license this technology to the Motorola's and the Samsungs and the Verizon's of the world so that they can launch earned phones and launch basically the world's first free phone plans. That's where we're going. All signals point to like free and it's possible. We're the closest company to making it possible. And so would I do it again? I probably just would have launched one phone, I wouldn't have launched two and I would have partnered with someone on the second one. Moving going back in retrospect, you learn live and learn these lessons because it's like totally different than the core business. Our core business is a software, software business. And then you have to think about logistics and shipping stuff and just all the support that comes with it. But ultimately it still brought us to where we are today. And so I'm happy that it went down that path. But as markets change, you have to pivot as a business as well. And that's why in 2022 our growth was insane. It's because it was this idea of growth at all costs that was what the market was rewarding, everyone was ipoing and everything was booming. And then now the market's really focused on profitability and so we're focused much more on profitability. So you kind of learn these lessons as you go and they ultimately bring you into the right place. Like everything I think is meant to be the way it's supposed to be, you know, and there's not any good or it is what it is. And you'll find the bigger picture if you keep looking.
- [17:52]
Ryan Alford
It's a fascinating story and I want to focus on the business model for a moment. You think about how much money over the years people have spent for cable TV and DirecTV and all these things for the right to watch commercials that get sold. And you spend $100, $200 a month. What you're doing is the equivalent of people didn't pay cable and they got paid to watch cable. I'm saying the right analogy essentially that because attention has gotten so valuable and so scattered that this is what people will. They want people doing these things. So there wasn't a question there as much. Dan is making sure, validating that I'm explaining to our audience to understand this correctly. But here's where the question lies and it's this, where's the arbitrage here? Because whether it's music or games and they're willing to pay for people to listen or to play, if it's motivated for them to pay or play, it doesn't mean that they were naturally interested in it to begin with. They get paid, you get paid. Why did those publishers or games makers want monetary motivated audiences to play the games? And where's the arbitrage lives? Is it because eventually they'll get addicted to it and they'll stick with it and they'll spend money?
- [19:01]
Dan Novias
That's the idea. And it's not necessarily they have to spend money. It's like, look, just because people don't have any money or have some money doesn't mean they don't have any money. There's a big difference on the two.
- [19:09]
Ryan Alford
But the game makers want them playing in hopes that they keep playing.
- [19:12]
Dan Novias
Exactly. It's the same thing that like why free samples were send someone some lotion.
- [19:17]
Ryan Alford
And then they might have never bought that lotion, but once they tried it. Right, right.
- [19:22]
Dan Novias
It's the same, same component. We're like, why you get a three month free to Apple Music? What do they want? They want you to keep paying after that three months. That's the thing. Like we're optimizing to some sort of target that that advertiser has that aligns value in some capacity. So, like a Robinhood is an example. Robinhood, what do they want? They want you to deposit $5 into a brokerage account thing. That's their minimum deposit to open up an account that's worth a hundred bucks to them. And because they have some sort of calculation on their end what the LTV of a user is and some sort of payback period that they know. And so basically it's okay if you're willing to pay a hundred bucks for someone to deposit five into an account, might give like 50 to that user, and then now that person deposits five, they get 50. Robinhood also will give him another, like 25 or 30 bucks in free stock. So now this Person has an $85 stock portfolio, but Robinhood hit their goal in the 100 bucks. And now you're incentivized to buy stocks and see your portfolio grow and get involved in that. That's kind of like the idea is why the incentive mechanism works. It's not going to work for every brand. Not going to see Louis Vuitton run a campaign inside of our product. I would be really shocked. But it'll work for most things, most everyday things. And then what's happening is that we're also seeing more of an affluent audience because we now opened up this, like, crowdfunding concept where anyone can invest in the company, but the people that are investing, they're more fluent. They're not necessarily my target market. We have a lot of older individuals, 50 and 60 plus, especially that 60 to 70 demographic, like those boomers, like my parents age. They're not using my product. They are not my target customer. It's not like my biggest age distribution. But they're actually my biggest investor base. And why? Why is that? Because they've seen what the smartphone has done for their kids, their grandk. It resonates with that audience and they see the opportunity and the potential. Because the world has completely changed over the last 20 years since smartphones were introduced. We've started thinking about it like, okay, well, what is our core business? If you really distill down, what's my business? My business is I'm in the business of helping people who are going to save money. I'm not in the business of just like the smartphones. I was like, sure, yeah, that's what we do. That's the vehicle of which we use to make that happen. And so we started thinking like, okay, could we create products that are Interesting to more fluid individuals because everyone wants to earn to save money. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or not. And so we started kind of really think other opportunities to offer solutions for them. They don't have to do it through our phone, maybe that's through email and through other mechanisms that we do that. And so that's how the business has started to scale in other ideas and how we're also getting other advertisers that are much higher end, I would say interested in our audiences and how we're expanding our business line. But that's not something that we had even two years ago. That's something that's kind of new. Over the course of this last six.
- [21:50]
Ryan Alford
To 12 months, I'd say for brands is this. It's a marketing channel in a way. Very easy, unique one. I don't even know if marketing's the right word. It's a trial channel in a way. Trial. Should they think of this as a way to grow existing audience or as a way to tap into new audience, I. E. Demos, things like that. Obviously.
- [22:10]
Dan Novias
Yeah, yeah. I would say probably new. It's like the campaigns are just. You need to kind of structure them a little bit differently. Like we buy a lot of campaigns look like. Yeah, might look like it might be something along the lines of like if it's a game, for example, it's going to be top apply to a certain amount of level you get to. Or it might be the reward. We don't pay you to install an app because what would happen you'd install and then you stop using, never play. So we might pay you over the course of a week to play a game like a Candy Crush. We get every day some sort of amount. And so you want to basically give them enough like a little bought in and then they might find an interesting product. But we also get a lot of information on what people are doing on their phone. So we know, hey, this person has bank of America installed. Chime has a $400 offer if you open up. I'm just making this up but $400 checking account offer. I'm pretty interest. I'm banking with bank of America and I can open up a free checking account, get a 400 bonus. That's pretty interesting to me. Even me as this person right now. And I know a ton of those opportunities available. So the idea here is how can you take. You're directing that attention and that's what you were saying. The most valuable thing that we have as humans is our attention. There's nothing more that's more important. And it's the new oil. It is the data, your data. And your attention isn't. But what people are really shocked and surprised is that the data is actually by itself not that valuable because companies like Facebook and so much have so much of it. And then your basically if the product's free, you're the product. They're not incentivized. But why are those companies worth trillions of dollars? Because of your data. But when you actually put it out, it's not worth more than a hundred dollars a year. But when you mix data plus attention like action, that's worth a lot because now you are taking an action to get involved in that. And that's what we've gotten really good at is mixing those two, knowing what are you interested in, what do you do? And then here's an action that you could take if this product's interesting to you based on the things that you're already buying or doing or seeing. And then that's worth a lot to brands. And that's how. How you can make thousands of dollars a year without necessarily having to spend money, you know, to do so.
- [24:00]
Ryan Alford
I keep coming back, is this thumbtack or is this a little bit of like my head gets in these weird. A little few different spaces. I think you know what I mean by that because it's thumbtack Is the marketplace where you get paid for your services or whatever service here is giving away as attention and or data. Is it a marketplace for that? I had get scrambled a bit on all that.
- [24:19]
Dan Novias
I think it's micro gigs.
- [24:20]
Ryan Alford
We compare a lot to micro gig.
- [24:21]
Dan Novias
Uber did this for cars. Airbnb did this for home. But not everyone owns either of those two assets. But everyone owns a SmartPH effectively giving people opportunities. These aren't full time jobs. It's on that like I have to be a handyman to be able to qualify for that. Not everyone's a handyman, you know, not everyone's willing to lug up.
- [24:35]
Ryan Alford
You have to actually have a skill.
- [24:36]
Dan Novias
Yeah, you have to have a skill. And here's the thing, there's a lot of people that free time Also there's people that are kind of in situations where down on the rock something's happening at the time. And then here's an easy win. Momentum is everything. A small win transforms to a bigger win, but transforms something bigger. We create those opportunities. Is mode going to fully supplement missing income? If you just lost your job, but is it capable of paying for your Phone bill? Is it capable of paying for gas for you to get to work? Is it capable of being able to be a meaningful addition, especially given that we are at the highest amount of credit card debt this country's ever seen. It's no better overseas. For many of these countries, inflation is really hitting that lower middle class and lower and people don't have a thousand bucks in their savings account. This is a stat from 2022 and the economy was good in 2022 for the first half where 22% of people or 56% of Americans don't have a thousand bucks in their savings accounts. It's even worse now. It's not better because we had just all that Covid stimulus money. In a world like that, you need solutions like this. And so that, that's like, you know, the thesis of kind of like where the business is going and what we're able to provide and always kind of going up in the sense of attracting more fluent customers with other types of solutions. And also we're starting to acquire a lot of assets internally and kind of building them into our ecosystem where instead of us sending them to a candy crush game, maybe we send them to solitaire game that we own. And then now we're able to capture revenue there as well and the lifetime value that comes with that. And so that that model really works really well. It's kind of the PE playbook and that's something that we're applying to our business and it's going quite well for us.
- [26:00]
Ryan Alford
Is the future OS or is your future an app or is it as an os?
- [26:06]
Dan Novias
We built the ecosystem on top of Android. It's almost like a UI on top of Android, I would say. But I think the Fiverr component is always going to be into it because like how do you generate the rewards? There has to be an action that has to be taken. I think it's not one or the other. I think that it's more. What we'll see more of is us using distribution through partnerships in various different countries, through phone brands and carriers around the world. That'll be much more of a focus. Yeah, more as like in an OS like, you know, you see a Verizon earned phone is what we would love to see. We're powering that for those brands in multiple countries. And then you have our own kind of direct consumer solutions. And then we have a suite of portfolio of products that we own mostly in the mobile space, but some in other mediums as well as like newsletters and web properties that make Sense with our broader model. And that's kind of like where the future of the business really heading. It's kind of a mixture between the PE playbook and like the venture capital growth and LTV to CAC model. But we want to build a profitable business. We're really focused on profitable growth and not growth at all costs. That's more my one takeaway from running a business up until 2022 because it almost killed our business by kind of growth at all cost. That'll be a big focus as we still continue building the business into the future and ultimately for a potential IPO that we have our eyes set on.
- [27:19]
Ryan Alford
I know a few people at Verizon probably already talking to a few. They, you know, they always had indirect channel and also that of their mainstream line. They had the pay as you go for like credit challenge. Then hey, the earn as you go phone. Earn.
- [27:30]
Dan Novias
We own the trademark for that by the way. So funny that you say that.
- [27:33]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:34]
Dan Novias
I basically own every trademark for anything you could think of like earning or a ph that makes money or anything like that. Like money.
- [27:40]
Ryan Alford
Why Earn versus save.
- [27:42]
Dan Novias
Did that get weighed?
- [27:43]
Ryan Alford
Did it get weighed at all? Save as you go Save phone.
- [27:47]
Dan Novias
Yeah, we. It didn't sound as good. We do say earnings and savings, but yeah, it's just like kind of a mouthful, you know, I mean we, we might own something around that. To be honest. I think we own like 12 different marks associated to that.
- [28:01]
Ryan Alford
You could do a spin off that's exactly the same thing. Some kind of bank. Like it'd be your IP or anything like that. They just want it to be all about like kids growing up. Hey, not the earned phone. It's the same phone for younger adults.
- [28:13]
Dan Novias
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean we have actually a lot of people that get the phones and then they give it to their kids to earn a little bit extra change, you know. So that's smart. It makes sense.
- [28:25]
Ryan Alford
I see a million. This is so brilliant and so smart with where things are at. Where attention is the currency of today and away to give back to people for taking actions and putting a little money in their pocket. Man. Kudos to all your growth and success so far, man.
- [28:43]
Dan Novias
Yeah, man, I appreciate it. Thank you for coming.
- [28:45]
Ryan Alford
Everybody keep up with everything that's going on. New advancements where they can get themselves earnings and savings. Phone.
- [28:51]
Dan Novias
They can check out our apps, obviously. You know, it's called Earn app in the Play Store. If they put EarnPhone into Google, they can check out our website and it's in Best Buy and stores like that as well. If they're interested in deeper in the more of the business side of the company and becoming a shareholder, joining the 50,000 or so shareholders that we have, they can check out invest.modemobile.com we have a lot of information on the company and what's possible there. And you even have some programs where we give out 15 in free shares in the company. Have a very unique model that we got qualified where people can become shareholders with their points, even that they earn. So maybe they don't want to invest. That's where they can learn. But they do want to invest. Those are the opportunities. Our era is just under about $60 million through crowdfunding, one of the largest crowdfunders in America. That's the best place to keep up with the news and our webinars. We have a lot of interesting guests. We had Steve Wozniak month and so it was cool to talk to the co founder of the world's largest tech and phone company.
- [29:41]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, made a little company.
- [29:42]
Dan Novias
Yeah. And so it was pretty awesome to chat with him and learn all about like you know, some of the Steve Jobs like early days and kind of how we thought about Apple and some of the perks that we give to our shareholders.
- [29:52]
Ryan Alford
We'll have all the links of that in the show notes and on the website. Dan, it's been a pleasure, man. Let's do a V2 down the road. We could get underneath a few more topics but I really appreciate your time.
- [30:03]
Dan Novias
For sure. Thanks for having me Ryan. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed it.
- [30:06]
Ryan Alford
Hey guys. You know to find us Ryan and is right.com you'll find highlight clips from today, the full episode, the YouTube link and of course links to EarnPhone. We appreciate Dan for coming on the show. We appreciate you for making us number one. We'll see you next time.
- [30:19]
Dan Novias
Right about now this has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening. As a designer, you know clients want it all. A stunning site that runs their business and scales with their success. But tight deadlines shouldn't mean compromising your vision. WIX Studio is built for designers like you. Plan sites in seconds with AI powered site mapping. Then design starting in Figma or in the WIX Studio editor with precise layout tools. Then bring your video vision to life with no code, animations, AI tools and one click responsive design. Design smoother and deliver sooner. Go to wixstudio.com.