Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. It's guest time and I'm in Austin, Texas at the headquarters of Simply Interactive and my guests are the cofounders of Simply Interactive, Ben Lamm, Chief Operating Officer and Dr. Jim Moshinskie, Chief Learning Officer. Guys, welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.

Ben: Thanks for having us.

Dr. Mo: Hey, thanks Russ. Hey, when I came to Texas, my students had trouble saying the last name Moshinskie. Seemed like anything in Texas that had more than two syllables, they stumbled over. So everybody just calls me Dr. Mo.

Russ: Okay. So you're gonna be Dr. Mo on this show, all right?

Dr. Mo: You will make an A.

Russ: All right, fantastic. Good. Well we definitely wanna get into that teaching background but before we do that, Ben, why don't you describe Simply Interactive?

Ben: Well, Simply Interactive is a full service interactive agency that was founded by myself and Dr. James Moshinskie formally in 2004 but I guess informally in 2001, 2002, when we originally met and today we service everything from startups to Fortune 100s, providing e-learning services all the way to full service interactive marketing and full campaign development for some of the world's largest brands and ad agencies out there.

Russ: Okay, that sounds interesting. We've already mentioned this teaching arrangement, so Dr. Mo, how did you and Ben meet?

Dr. Mo: Well, I was sitting' in my office one day grading papers with a bunch of students and here comes this young man in with blue jeans and sandals and a t-shirt and raven hair and he threw down his computer on my desktop and he said, "I'm gonna be the best friend you ever had" –

Ben: And I am.

Dr. Mo: - I said – now you are and I said, "Well what's your name?" So from there, we developed a friendship and we both enjoyed technology and learning online and since sent him on an internship and that was the very first internship, he came back with, like, $100,000.00 worth of projects. So I said, that's good.

Russ: As an intern. Now this was all taking place at Baylor University, correct?

Ben: Yes.

Dr. Mo: That's right.

Russ: Okay, and so Ben, you were there as a student?

Ben: Yeah, I was actually a finance and accounting major, so –

Russ: Oh my goodness.

Ben: - I had nothing to do with e-learning or interactive marketing. I didn't even know what performance improvement meant. I probably wrote it on, like an essay to try and get an A in something but before meeting Dr. Mo, I really didn't know. I had a big passion for technology. One of my good friends at college actually introduced us and since then I guess I started to change my major and focus with Dr. Mo.

Russ: Okay and Dr. Mo, you were there teaching what?

Dr. Mo: The classes I teach are in areas of performance improvement and it's not on the corporation as a whole but on how you let each employee progress to their own degree of excellence. So what resources, content and knowledge systems do they need to know to really be accountable and perform for a company and that's always been my big interest is on the individual.

Russ: Okay and this is in the business school?

Dr. Mo: That's right.

Russ: Okay. How long have you been doing that?

Dr. Mo: Twenty-two years.

Russ: All right. Well how did you develop this expertise in performance enhancement?

Dr. Mo: That's very interesting. Before I was a professor, I owned an ambulance service in Waco, Texas and I kept having to train all my paramedics on map skills because they kept getting lost on ambulance calls. And so I said –

Russ: Not good.

Dr. Mo: - and I said there's gotta be a better way for them to learn this than to me having to repeat this all the time. And this was 1984. The first couple primitive computers had come out, so I taught myself Basic and immediately started building training courses for the paramedics.

Ben: I was three at the time, so –

Russ: Okay.

Ben: - I had no affiliation.

Russ: Okay, well we have a young entrepreneur and an entrepreneur that's from my generation right here together. And both of you end up together in this happening interactive space.

Ben: It is very interesting because Baylor has a pretty small, I guess, teacher-to-student ratio which was great and so some of my friends got to know Dr. Mo and just said, "Hey, y'all would hit it off great," and so once we started talking, you know Dr. Mo saw an opportunity and saw kinda that eagerness in what I knew and then Dr. Mo had this great expertise in instructional design, so we just said, "Hey, let's go to some conferences and let's pitch some clients," and we did and you know, like Dr. Mo said, I had this internship and came back and said, "Well, I just told Genentech that we could do all this work and we could do it by Christmas. They're gonna give us $100,000.00, so what's next?" So at that point, you know, that's when we kinda got more serious and said, "Maybe we should look at, you know, writing up some docs and start working on this."

Russ: Right.

Dr. Mo: Well, see what's made our company successful is that we uniquely are specialists in the technology. Ben stays on the cutting edge but yet he realizes the importance of the cognitive psychology side. You know, technology teaches only when presented in the right method. And so my interest is technology-based training; that's what my Ph.D. is in, and so he very early realized that the skills I had and the skills he had made a perfect unit.

Russ: Okay. Before we go any further, our audience that just thinks this is another one of those Texas stories – let me share with you a few of the customers of Simply Interactive today. We have Exxon Mobil. We have Dell. We have Disney, Accenture, Michelin, Travelocity and the list goes on and on and on. So you guys are doing okay, right?

Ben: Yeah. I would say we've done pretty well. You're actually, Russ, in our newest office space. We actually had to step it up because some of our clients are more engaged with – in security and so we're actually now in this bank building so we're sharing office with the bank and then it also adds to some of the security measures that we're taking internally for some of our clients. I'd say in 2009 we tripled and in 2008 we doubled from – over 2007 and that's pretty good, considering, you know, what we hear is the worst state of the world right now. So – and 2010 looks just even better.

Russ: All right. I'm talking with Ben Lamm, Chief Operating Officer and Dr. Mo, Chief Learning Officer, both cofounders of Simply Interactive. And we'll be back with more with both of them after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.

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Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with the two cofounders of Simply Interactive, Dr. Mo, Chief Learning Officer and Ben Lamm, Chief Operating Officer. Well guys, I thought it's real unique and fascinating that this company came together in this professor/student relationship and involved an internship. Tell me about that a little bit more, Dr. Mo.

Dr. Mo: We found summer jobs for students and we had one in California, so Ben jumped at that and he went and worked for a biotech company there and not only was he excellent in his skills but he also was really good at selling himself and what he could offer for companies. And so pretty soon, he moved from just being a lowlife intern to actually landing major projects with this company and so this is an example of instead of corporations that have huge structures and go after clients, here was a young man with enough confidence to go after clients and then build a structure.

Russ: Okay. Well Ben, what was the name of this company?

Ben: This is Genentech.

Russ: And are they still a client of Simply Interactive?

Ben: They're still a client of Simply Interactive's. They were our first client and it's happy to know that they're still a client today.

Russ: That's cool. Well so when you went out there, did it ever cross your mind, "Hey, I'm just supposed to be an intern and help them out?

Ben: Well, I guess my other internships I was looking at were, you know, some of the big corporate banks –

Russ: Right.

Ben: - and so this was a lot more appealing, being in California and being close to Silicon Valley and working with Flash and interactivity.

Russ: Yeah.

Ben: I didn't have to actually wear anything besides jeans and flip-flops.

Russ: Right.

Ben: So it was a really good fit for me.

Russ: Right.

Ben: And I would say that, you know, I went out there and I only had a two month internship but it was paid, which was great –

Russ: Yeah.

Ben: - but then, I guess over time I realized, you know, a lot of the stuff they had just wasn't good –

Russ: Yeah.

Ben: - and I hope none of them are listening but it was really bad.

Russ: Okay.

Ben: And so I decided that if I could just produce it that much better and produce it my way –

Russ: Right.

Ben: - and it was interesting because I got a little bit of push back at first with the way I was doing things.

Russ: Right.

Ben: But I was an intern, so I knew I wasn't going to be at Genentech my whole life –

Russ: Right, you didn't have anything to risk. Right? Right.

Ben: - so I still – I know. So I, I still did it my way -

Russ: Right.

Ben: - and then I presented and my second project that I presented that I completed while I was there, the Director of Environmental Health and Safety came up to me and just offered me a contract for the rest of the year, saying, "I think I'm gonna call my current vendor and fire them and just give you the rest of this year's budget, if you can deliver."

Russ: Good story. So you come back to Waco, Texas and sit down with Dr. Mo and say, "Look at this," and that's what started Simply Interactive?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Mo: And actually the company's first corporate office – the new one's very pretty and I love it but our first corporate office was in my university office.

Russ: Okay.

Dr. Mo: It had two slots in there. One was for me and one was for Ben.

Russ: Right.

Dr. Mo: And so if a student came in there with a personal problem, I had to get Ben to step out so that I could solve the student's problems.

Russ: Great story!

Ben: Yeah, I actually worked in the hall, some.

Russ: Okay. So obviously at some point in time, you moved the headquarters to Austin, Texas. When did that happen?

Ben: Right, that was at the end of 2006.

Russ: Okay.

Ben: We actually had a small group come in and acquire majority interest of it. They liked what we were doing. They wanted to funnel some additional funds into it and help take it to the next level; help add additional sales structure; and so that happened at the end of 2006. We weren't looking to sell. We definitely wanted to be fully involved.

Russ: Right.

Ben: And so we put some conditions upon the sale and kept rather large interest in the company.

Russ: Okay.

Ben: But we also did get a paycheck, so that was nice, right?

Russ: Yeah, sure, yeah. How long did that happen after the start?

Ben: That was actually, I guess, officially two years.

Russ: Okay.

Dr. Mo: They were a good match for us because they had already done online business before, so they understood the technology.

Russ: Cool, cool. Now obviously, you're doing something very well because as I listed out the customers and clients that you're doing business with today – try to explain maybe what you do differently that enables you to capture these types of major corporate accounts.

Ben: Well, I'd say – and I'm sure Dr. Mo has thoughts on this too – but, you know, the biggest thing is people come to our stuff and they look at Simply Interactive and they see all this really pretty work and they're always like, "Your stuff looks really cool –

Russ: Right.

Ben: - it's flashy and animated." But that's really not, I guess, the core of what we do. The core is really the content and the instructional design and kinda the cognitive science behind what we do. And then, you know, people say our interactions and interfaces and flashy stuff, that's why they come to us – but really that's kinda the gravy – but at the end of the day, kinda the meat and potatoes is the content and Dr. Mo, you wanna tell them a little bit about how we kinda differentiate ourselves from a content perspective?

Dr. Mo: Yeah, learning. Learning, Russ, doesn't happen by magic and a lotta people think if they – if it looks sexy and good on line, that it's gonna teach –

Russ: Right.

Dr. Mo: And it's really not – that's the opposite of the case. You gotta have undergirding it a very strong methodology to teach people in the right step, the right pace and the right time and the right structure. Where we spend time with our clients a lot is we do a lotta hand-holding and making sure that they know their content and we help them structure that so it's presented in the correct order and the correct format.

Russ: Okay, then just cognitive psychology background that you have plays a role there?

Dr. Mo: That's right. That's right.

Russ: Okay.

Dr. Mo: I was really interested in staying in the medical field but I found out the concepts roll over to the business world just as easily and I, I've just really enjoyed that.

Russ: Okay. Now I listed out this all-star group, once again, of clients – Exxon Mobil, Dell, Disney, Accenture, Michelin – is that the only type of businesses that you do business with or would you, would you look at an early stage company?

Ben: Oh, we do. You know, right now we're actually working with two early stage companies. We work with everyone – like I said earlier – from startups to, you know, Fortune 100s. Yes, we advertise the Fortune 100s, because that's what people have heard of –

Russ: Right.

Ben: - but you know, there's a lot of times that people come to us and say, you know, "Here's this idea we have and we have this level of venture funding or angel funding and we understand that this may not get us all the way. Would you also take an equity position?" We do pass on a lot of those, just because we see a lot of them, but we do take a couple here and there and you know, at the end of the day, we have a couple interests in some smaller companies that it had been based on our development skills.

Russ: Okay, we're talking with Dr. Mo and Ben Lamm, cofounders of Simply Interactive and you're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.

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Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with the very interesting duet cofounders of Simply Interactive, Dr. Mo and Ben Lamm. Ben, tell us about the company. How many employees do you have today and what kind of people work here?

Ben: Well, today, we're actually structured very differently. We have kind of a hybrid model between a traditional company and a truly virtual company. We have 15 full-time employees, ranging from sales to general business to graphic designers and instructional designers and then past that, we have 7 what we call retainer-based employees and then underneath that, we have 36 active subcontractors. And that's not just subcontractors we have on pool, that's 36 active subcontractors. So we feel, you know, we didn't want to go through, kinda, the ups and downs of a traditional ad agency.

Russ: Right.

Ben: And so what we wanted to do is, you know, we don't wanna land Wal-Mart, hire 300 people, lose Wal-Mart, fire 350 people.

Russ: Right.

Ben: Because you know, that's bad for morale and that's just not good to do to people. So what we wanted to do is we basically have a kind of a python that can expand when it eats a pig and then it contracts and then, you know, when it gets rid of the pig.

Russ: Right.

Ben: And so it's, it's a good setup because it truly allows us to hire the right people, be slow to hire and funnel everyone up through our process so that by the time they're a full-time employee, we've really had a good experience of getting to know them because they worked as a subcontractor and then a retainer-based employee and then a full-time employee.

Russ: Okay. Are any of them offshore in other countries?

Ben: We actually now have – and we don't really count this in there – but we have an offshore team in Mexico –

Russ: Okay.

Ben: - that we've been working with. We have tried some traditional India, Russia, Pakistan –

Russ: Right.

Ben: - and we've gotten very mixed reviews.

Russ: Okay.

Ben: Due to the nature of our content, we keep most of it pretty close here in the United States but some of our contractors are on the West and East Coast.

Russ: Okay, cool. Well before I let you guys go, just imagine that we have some aspiring entrepreneurs out there in our audience. I'd love to know what general advice that you might give them. Let's start with you, Dr. Mo.

Dr. Mo: Oh, I'd give the same advice that I give my students there at Baylor. It's find the one thing in life that really excites you and really work to learn all that you can about that and then go after it and don't let anything stop you and just become the expert in that field and you'll find that the world will knock on your door instead of you knocking on the world's door.

Russ: Cool advice. Ben, how about you?

Ben: I'd say in my experience, having some minor success at my age, a lot of people have come to me with ideas and my one advice is that everybody's got ideas. Like, every single person in the world's got an idea. It's the ability to execute on that idea – whether it's a good idea or a bad idea – just the ability to execute and actually deliver on your promises is, I'd say, a major key to success.

Russ: Cool. Guys, I really appreciate you sharing those pieces of wisdom with us and thank you for telling us the story about Simply Interactive.

Ben: Thanks, Russ.

Dr. Mo: Thanks Russ.

Russ: You bet. We've been talking with Dr. Jim Moshinskie and Ben Lamm of Simply Interactive. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.