Anthony Joiner With Blooksy

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get into it, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Anthony Joiner and he is the founder of Blooksy. Welcome, AJ.

Anthony Joiner: [00:00:57] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:58] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Biloxi. How are you serving folks?

Anthony Joiner: [00:01:05] Okay. So I have helped over 230 people write and published books. And I saw a gap in the marketplace. And the gap was. There are tons of book writing tools out there, but there’s nothing that manages the process from start to finish. So I started initially by Googling like, is there software to manage the book writing process? It wasn’t there, so I built it. And that’s the story of Biloxi to end to end book writing, publishing and distribution tool. And we have right now we’re about 300 people in, but we’ve made a small pivot and we can talk about that a little bit as our conversation goes on.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:39] So how did you get involved in publishing books at the very beginning? Was this something you did for yourself?

Anthony Joiner: [00:01:45] Total coincidence. So I took actually a book writing course, and the first book that I published was called Instagram Marketing on Fire, and it was totally coincidental, but I published it right around the time that Facebook purchased Instagram. So when I published it, I think I sold two or 3000 copies like in the first couple of days. Again, total coincidence. And when I saw that happen, I thought to myself, okay, well. Let me take advantage of this opportunity. So I published a second book called Instagram Marketing for Restaurants. Then I published a third book called Instagram Marketing for Barbershops and Beauty Salons. And when I did that, more and more people started asking me, AJ, how are you publishing all these books? And my secret was I had a process, but then I hired ghostwriters to do all the heavy lifting after my first one, which I did myself. But the second and third I hired ghostwriters, and I put a system in place so that I could very quickly and easily get books out of my head and publish.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:44] Now, you mentioned early that the first book sold a few thousand copies. That number is an unusually large number, and I don’t think our listeners understand that. Can you share a little bit about some of the stats of a typical book? There are so many books on Amazon and out there, but the numbers that actually get sold is very few per book, right?

Anthony Joiner: [00:03:07] Absolutely. So most books never hit. 200 sales people go into the publishing process thinking that if they build it, they will come. And it doesn’t work like that for books. And if you think about your purchasing habits, most of the books that you purchase probably come from a few different ways. Number one, someone refers you to the book. Number two, there’s something that you’re trying to figure out. So you go and buy a book, a book for that specific problem. But most of the time, and most of the books that I see people write are more books about their life story. And most people, we are interesting, but more so to our friends and family. And most people don’t have more than 200 friends and family that will purchase their books. So, yes, you’re absolutely right. 2000 books is is a large number.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:54] And then you said that a lot of folks want to tell that kind of story, that personal story about their journey. And what types of books are you typically working with the nonfiction business books, or are you doing those kind of personal stories or fiction books?

Anthony Joiner: [00:04:11] I do. I do mostly nonfiction, right? So I work with a lot of experts who are have achieved a certain level of success in a particular field. And they want to share that success and show other people how they can sort of shortcut that success. Those are typically the most successful if you can take your life experience and you can wrap it into sort of a how to or a step by step guide or a shortcut to do what I have done. Those are really successful because everyone wants a shortcut to success.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:42] And then do you find that this is it becomes almost a must have if you’re an entrepreneur or business owner to have some sort of book as you’re calling card, as your kind of credibility and authority as an expert in your space in today’s world.

Anthony Joiner: [00:04:59] Absolutely. So. And here’s the example that I use. So if you’re moving to a new city, would you rather purchase a home from a real estate agent who has billboards all over the city? Or would you purchase a real estate agent who says, Here are the top ten neighborhoods of our city? And these are the things you should look for in each neighborhood, right? It immediately positions you as an expert. And again, you nailed it. It’s the calling card or it’s the business card that will open doors for you. Because once you write a book, it’s solidified your expertize because so much work goes into understanding your area of expertize. Then you have to do the research and you have to structure it and you have to do all the things to publish it. And most people don’t do that. So when you step out and do that, especially if it’s about your expertize, it’s sets you up in a class of your own.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:46] Now in your system, is this something that I don’t have to have my idea fully fleshed out? I just know that, hey, I’m an expert in X and if I kind of plug into your world, I can you can kind of tease out that that secret sauce, that thing that’s going to make my book special and maybe stand out.

Anthony Joiner: [00:06:09] Absolutely. So let me share with you my thought process. When we built this, prior to launching my publishing company, I traveled around the country doing something called Books Across America, where I would travel to different cities and I would help people structure their stories. Then I would have people tell their stories based on their experience, and I would record them telling their stories. I sent it away to a transcription company, and that would become the dirty first draft of that particular chapter. So when I built the software, I duplicated the exact same process. So when you log in, you can structure your book in an outline very quickly. And again, when you log in, it’s very user friendly. So you literally add chapters by clicking at chapter, right? Then when you add a chapter, you can click on the record button and you can speak your story directly into the book. Another thing that we did was we built artificial intelligence into the software. So if you’re writing a book about a specific thing and it’s a nonfiction, it’s factual information or a process, you can type into the AI a few sentences about what you want it to create, and it will automatically create original content for you. Right now, the goal is not for you to copy and paste that content into your book.

Anthony Joiner: [00:07:22] The goal is for you to use that content as a baseline because the thing that people struggle with most when writing a book is the blank page and Google Docs, Microsoft Word. They’re built for desktop publishing, not necessarily writing books, right? My user experience, when you log in, it feels like you’re in a book, right? The front matter is all there. The copyright page is already done. Your acknowledgment page, your dedication page, your introduction. They all have instructions on exactly what to write in those sections. And when you get to your chapters, you can outline them very quickly. Add chapter, you click record, you say This chapter is going to be about X, Y, Z. Here’s a story that I experienced when I was doing this in my professional career. You just tell the story, it’ll record it for you. And if you run out of ideas, you can say, What are four different ways that people can accomplish X, Y, Z based on these three or four facts, and it will write it for you. Then you can take that content and you can rewrite it in your own language so that it fits the voice that you want to communicate to your your customer or your client.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:24] Now, at the end of that, is there something that kind of professionally edits it to make it sound cohesive?

Anthony Joiner: [00:08:32] Okay, so here’s where we’re going with it. We’re building out a marketplace so that you can hire an editor from inside the platform. We’re not there yet. Most of the people that are writing right now, they’re probably anywhere from 10 to 80% done. But when they finish and we’ve had several people finish, we take them through the rest of the process manually. We introduce them to editors and we give them several to choose from. Those editors then edit their book by logging in because it’s collaborative. So you just give them, they give you their email address, they can log in without creating their own account and do their edits inside the software. When you’re done, you can export it. It’s already pre formatted to the right size. So if you want five by eight, five and a half by eight and a half, six by nine, you choose the size that you want. Then you can actually hire a designer for your book cover and then you publish. So we again, we’re bringing everything under one roof.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:24] And so this is a turnkey process. So what would be the length of time if I have an idea of a book and I’m like, okay, I’m going to check out Booksy to see if that’s the way for me to execute this. What would be the length of time, you know, maybe personal, best length of time from idea to, you know, it’s on Amazon.

Anthony Joiner: [00:09:43] Okay, so here’s what I tell people. If you can dedicate 30 minutes three times a week, you can finish your book in about 10 to 12 weeks. So 60 to 90 days, that’s typically the time that we see people specifically if it’s a book on your expertize, because once you have your outline done now it’s a matter of going back and sharing a story or two about each specific thing that you want to communicate. Then you summarize that by saying, Okay, so here are the actionable things that you can do for this particular chapter. Then you move on to the next chapter. So 10 to 12 weeks from idea to book.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:20] And then is there an area that folks typically struggle? Is it the actual writing part or is it like I’ve written it and I’m never think it’s good enough, so I’m afraid to pull the trigger and like put it out there to the world or is it the distribution of it? Where is usually the the hurdle that keeps people from following all the way through?

Anthony Joiner: [00:10:39] The biggest hurdle is the writing of the book, right? Because sitting down to a blank pages, you know, it’s scary. Right, because you’re in your head, you’re writing, and then you’re deleting and you’re like, That’s not good enough. That’s why we built the transcription. So you don’t have this. You don’t have to sit there and look at a blank page. You can start to articulate your thoughts out loud and it will transcribe it. Now you have something to work with. Then you can take what you articulated out loud, add it to the AI and it will create something else for you. So the biggest hurdle is sitting in front of the blank page. We eliminate that in our software.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:14] Now, what was it like kind of in your career to go from the entrepreneur to the founder of a company that’s helping other entrepreneurs? Was that a difficult transition?

Anthony Joiner: [00:11:27] So the only thing that was difficult was in the beginning I coached people through the writing process. Once I started a publishing company, I hated it from day one, literally hated it from day one because there were so many moving pieces in parts. But once I decided to build the software to solve that problem, it wasn’t hard because I’ve spent 15 or 16 years managing software projects for the CDC and Department of Transportation for in Georgia. So I had experience building software. And the hardest part, I think, has been maybe bootstrapping it before I ended up winning a panoramic pitch competition. But I think that was the struggle in the beginning. I already had a market of people who were interested in the software, and before I started building it, I asked the people that I was working with, Hey, if I built this thing, would it make your life easier and would you pay for it? And I said in the beginning, I didn’t know what to charge, right? I looked at all the other tools and I said, okay, it’s going to be 20 bucks a month. And I had people sign up and I was like, okay, well, I’m on to something.

Anthony Joiner: [00:12:31] Then I had the fortunate opportunity to meet Seth Godin, who’s like the God of marketing in my eyes. And he actually reached out. I saw an email and I was like, Wait a minute, is that Seth Godin or is that spam? So when I met with him, he said, AJ, I think you’re really onto something. You should charge $100 a month and you shouldn’t look backwards. Right now. I don’t have the confidence to charge $100 a month yet because there’s so much more that I want to add to the software. But once we build it and we built it in a way to where publishers can manage their authors, and we already have that. We’re publishing companies, they’re sending their authors to Booksy, and they can actually see the progress of the author. But there is so much more functionality that I want to add. So right now it’s 39 bucks a month, but eventually it will get to 100 bucks a month. So the hardest part was, you know, having the confidence to go out and build it with the nervousness of thinking, well, someone paid for it. So once I saw that I was in I was in business.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:29] And then once you started getting sales, that obviously gives you confidence to continue on the project. What gave you the confidence to say to, I’m going to go and start pursuing outside investment and not just rely on the sales that I’m getting to fund the venture.

Anthony Joiner: [00:13:47] Through different things. So when I built it, I thought, okay, if I’m going to build this, what are the other edge cases that we can solve with the same software? And I thought, Well, writing a dissertation is a lot like writing a book. So we built dissertation templates and then I thought, Hmm, what about a cookbook? So we built cookbook templates and we’re building different templates that solve different problems. And once I realized that this is actually publishing as a system or publishing as a software, it’s more than just books. You can write dissertations, white papers. Then I thought, okay, this is a lot bigger, or it has the potential to be a lot bigger. So let me at least give it a shot and see what venture capitalists would think about it. And I’ve had an amazing response, even talking to different VCs, they all they all say, AJ, this is a seven figure business. I’m sorry, this is a nine figure business in 5 to 7 years. Right. The real question is, are you going to take it there or are you going to exit early? So once I saw that and I realized it was a bigger it’s more than just publishing books. That’s when I thought about outside money.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:53] And then what kind of led you to startup shutdown?

Anthony Joiner: [00:14:58] So I had a friend. His name is Joey. He’s Over Goody Nation. He’s actually based in Atlanta. He told me about the competition, along with a few other people. So I applied and luckily I was accepted. It was intense, right? Because the feedback that they give you is very honest and it’s sometimes brutally honest. And my pitch, the deck that I presented to them, it was it wasn’t good in the beginning. Right. But based on their feedback, I made the changes and the deck from the beginning to end was totally different and I ended up winning the competition. So I was introduced to it by Joey. I took the feedback from all the different judges and coaches and I ended up winning it. So it’s been great.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:44] And what has been kind? The biggest benefit of having gone through that process and actually winning.

Anthony Joiner: [00:15:52] One of the big benefits that I see right away is the credibility that it lends, because now it’s it’s this amazing company. They see what you’ve built. They believe in what you’ve built. And they’re willing to introduce you to other people to help move you further down the train tracks, if you will. So it’s the confidence and the credibility that they lend and then the the network that they provide. So it’s when I say that I’ve been invested in by panoramic, it turns heads immediately. Right. So that’s been that’s been huge for me, the confidence and the credibility.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:30] Now, you mentioned Seth Godin as somebody that was inspirational, if not maybe a mentor in some ways on this journey. Has there been other mentors that have helped you get to this level?

Anthony Joiner: [00:16:42] Absolutely. So I’m to Atlanta Tech Village and a pre incubator called It Takes a Village. And I’ve met with so many different people, Paul Gomes, James Summer and he’s he’s over at Ernst and Young. He’s been extremely beneficial from day one. He reached out, introduced himself to me, and he’s offered some of the most amazing advice that I’ve ever had. Paul Gomes, he’s at Atlantic Village as well. He helped me sort of focus and go from I’m going to serve all these different audiences to choosing a specific audience to focus on. And he calls it so small. I think he’s actually been on your podcast, but he’s been incredible. James Summer, Paul Gomes, Brandon over at Atlantic Village and the entire Atlantic Village family.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:31] Now, any advice for other startup founders out there, whether it’s being, you know, participate in this type of startup showdown or just kind of get talked to some people to just kind of vet out your idea and poke holes at it. It sounds like you spent a lot of time in that kind of mindset of just trying to really make this as good as it can be. As you’ve you know, you’ve been very coachable. You haven’t just said, this is my thing and I’m going this, you know, I’m not listen to anybody. It sounds like you’ve been getting a lot of input and been able to translate that input to incremental, you know, achievements that have been helping you grow.

Anthony Joiner: [00:18:11] Yes. So I think the the most beneficial thing for anybody who wants to start a company is to get it in front of potential buyers early because everyone thinks that their idea is solid. But if you don’t get market validation early, you can spend and actually waste a lot of time building something that no one is actually interested in. So I would say as early as possible, you know, build, build, build a prototype. And actually I wouldn’t even say build a prototype, but I would say is build a landing page with some mock ups that you can get done somewhere like fiber and show people that and say, would you be interested if I build this right? So spend less than $100, go to fiber, get get the mockup done. And then if people are willing and they say not only do they say they will buy it, but if they’re willing to swipe their card, then I think that’s the opportunity for you to go ahead and go forward. So as early as possible, get market validation.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:10] Yeah, I see how many. I’m sure this happens to you a lot since you’ve been involved in business for a minute. People with all these great ideas that are just afraid to take that first step, it’s always kind of, yeah, I’m doing more research or I’m thinking about this more. I’m planning to plan instead of just put something out there to see if somebody will pay a dollar, you know, to see if this is something that’s going to work or not.

Anthony Joiner: [00:19:35] Absolutely. And again, people will say they will buy something, but will they actually swipe their card? Right. Because there’s a huge difference in the two. So, yeah, early on, get validation.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:47] Yeah. And I think that that goes hand in hand with what Biloxi’s about. You’re making it as easy as possible for someone to make that dream of being a published author come true if they just put a little effort in skin in the game.

Anthony Joiner: [00:20:01] Absolutely. So, again, if you have an idea, you can very quickly and very easily take it from idea to book using the either you can leverage our voice, the text which is 90% accurate, or you can leverage the AI. And actually, our AI doesn’t roll out to next Monday to the public, but we’ve been using it a lot in staging. And I have some people that are using it and staging and they’re getting amazing results.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:25] So now what’s next? What what’s kind of on your roadmap for the next, you know, maybe the rest of the year, the next 12 months?

Anthony Joiner: [00:20:33] Yeah. So we have seen we’ve made a small pivot, right? We went after being in the market a bit. We saw an opportunity to get this in front of universities for academic articles and they are absolutely loving it because they write lots of academic articles and when they talk. I did a demo last Monday for University of South Florida with three professors in the room, and I literally they started clapping when they put their the lady, the one professor in particular, she spoke her abstract into Lucy. Then she copied her abstract and pasted it into our artificial intelligence. And it created 12 I’m sorry, 12 paragraphs based on a two paragraph abstract copy and paste it and said, Oh my God, you just made my research. You took it down from 6 to 8 weeks to a few seconds, right? So in under 60 seconds it provided so much content for her and she’s off and running, right? So we made a pivot and focused on universities. They start their testing or pilot program in a week. We have a few other universities in the pipeline. We talked to UGA, we talked to Auburn, we’ve talked to Mercer. So there are other universities that are interested. So that’s the pivot we made. So yes, we’re still serving authors, but our university use cases seem to be sort of because they really, really want it. So that’s the pivot we made from specific authors to entire universities. Sorry, could you say this again?

Lee Kantor: [00:22:07] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about Biloxi, maybe explore the software and or just talk to you or somebody on your team. What is the website?

Anthony Joiner: [00:22:17] Yes, they can go to Biloxi. That’s a block Viacom sign up. And if they type in half off forever, just like that lowercase, they can actually pay 50% of the $39 that it is a month. So if you type in half off forever, you get a discount for $19 and change a month and you’ll pay that forever. So it’s Biloxi at Lipscomb, and if you type the code half off forever, no spaces, you’ll get a 50% discount code.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:47] Well, AJ, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Anthony Joiner: [00:22:52] All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:54] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Startup Showdown.

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