Getting On TV For $5 | Local Small Business & Influencer Advertising | David Van Beekum

#009: Dylan Williams talks with David Van Beekum, the innovative mind behind Twiva, the world's first TV social network. Discover how Twiva is transforming local advertising by making TV channels accessible to small businesses and influencers. Dive into the intricacies of this groundbreaking platform, its impact on local communities, and the future of local advertising.

Show Notes with Timestamps:

1:00 - Twiva's Concept
3:00 - Local TV Channels
5:00 - Advertising Strategy
7:00 - Content Creation
9:00 - Influencer Role
11:00 - Small Business Impact
13:00 - Crypto Integration
15:00 - Future Plans
17:00 - VC Challenges
19:00 - Digital Signage
21:00 - Community Connection
23:00 - Marketing Strategies
25:00 - Audience Building
27:00 - Influencer Marketing
29:00 - Content Moderation
31:00 - Investment Insights
33:00 - Startup Advice
35:00 - Contact Information

David's Links:
Website: connect.tweva.com/

Dylan's Links:

• 🎙️Podcast: BusinessConfessionsPod
• 📽️YouTube: @BizConfessions
• 📷Instagram: DylanWillx
• Linked-In: /dylan-williams

Other Episodes you might like:

• 7-Figure Blueprint for Any Business | Chandler Saine
• Building a Unique Online Fitness Empire | Lee Maasen
• Land Investing & Building Multiple Streams of Income Daniel Martinez
• Hiring Top Talent Overseas | Stratton Brown

Past Guests: Chandler Saine, Daniel Martinez, Stratton Brown, Lee Maasen, Nico Lagan, Daniel Roman,Tim Branyan, David Van Beekum, Nick Hutchison, Deirdre Tshein, Sanchez Zehcnas, Christina Lopez, Keigan Carthy, Hemant Varshney, Taniela Fiefia, Jennifer Blake, Nicki Sciberras, John Chan

Transcript

Dylan: 0:00

What does your business do? So

David: 0:02

Twiva is the world's first TV social network. So it allows you to walk up to a TV screen and pull out your phone and add your business or a little bit of advertising to a TV that's located somewhere publicly. Let's say down to the pizza shop at the barber's shop or in a mall. And it really opens anyone up to advertising in a public area for less than 10, 000. So tell me how that works. So it's, it starts out with a completely proprietary network of Tweeva boxes and Tweeva TVs that are located in small businesses. That's where it really starts, right? You can't go to a big franchise like Chili's. You have to go down to the mom and pop shops. So small business. Somewhere in a small city, they have a TV that's running, right? and sometimes they're running cable channels. Sometimes they're running local TV channels. Like I'm in Orlando. People will have Orlando TV channel, but why not the city? So in a smaller city, like I'm in, in Apopka, we don't have our own TV channel, but we do have the capability of creating our own TV channel for Apopka using the Tweeva network. So the Tweeva network is like a platform, think Facebook is a platform. Twitter is a platform. Tweeva is a platform that allows small businesses to connect in and start sharing a TV channel for their city.

Dylan: 1:23

If I wanted to advertise as a small business or influencer in my local market. What's the process for that?

David: 1:29

How would I go about doing this? So you'd go on to the Tweeva site, and you'd, you register, and you'd select a certain amount of TVs that you want to be on. And then you'd upload your content, just like you would to your social media platform, you'd upload it to Tweeva, and you would then Add some money into the account and you'd bid on those commercial spaces in, let's say the pizza shop. So you'd say, Hey, you know what? I want to put 5 a week on the pizza shop. And so you could upload a small TV commercial or what we really suggest is adding some sort of content between short form content and long form content. I have that short form content. That's tick tock. It's infotainment. It's fun to watch, but it's short. And then you have this YouTube content that's educational. It's really too long. You're not going to sit and eat a piece of pizza or a meal or get a haircut and watch a 45 minute video. So it has to be somewhere between that 10 seconds and a half an hour. So we suggest three to seven minutes of content. And so what this influencer or a small business would do, let's say it's a construction person and a construction, contractor would say, Hey, every day I'm on a different job. I might be repairing steps or a patio or installing pavers a different day. All he has to do is record what he does. Add a little context to it, make it even a do it yourself kind of video and upload that video to the TV network. This is like this old house. Remember that show that used to be really popular, this old house and think about it's four contractors, right? or four really main hosts for all of America now. If you wanted to contact one of those contractors, they'd be in a different state or a different, I think it was mainly country, but a different state. How neat would that be to be able to watch a piece of content and say, that guy is literally in my city. And so that's what we wanted to do is create a platform so that either a contractor or a plumber or electrician, even another restaurant or a doctor's office could create content for a TV network that allows him to share that content, but not pay that huge bill. Oh, put me on TV for a 30 second spot. How much? 10 grand. Who's going to do that? So who do you see on TV? Now you see pharmaceuticals, right? They have millions of dollars budget. You have car companies, car dealers, local. Franchises. when's the last time you saw a small Italian pizza place on TV and you're like, Hey, that looks good. I like a brick fired, coal fired pizza. I love that. I'm going to go stop by. It's probably been. Never that you've seen one of those. So Tweeva wants to change the TV game and allow anyone to interact with that. Now it can't, it doesn't have to just be small businesses. It could be, dog walkers or it could be a local event that's happening in the city. a Christmas special, right? Or a holiday special is going on at the downtown city hall. how do we show that to the city? we can post it on Facebook. that's great. If you join and follow their Facebook group, but if we broadcast it to the whole town, that really gets everyone, knowing what's going on and a great advertising campaign.

Dylan: 4:38

Man, my mind's spinning now with different ideas for just become that local authority. I'm thinking babysitters, getting testimonies, from your, Past clients putting them up there and I'm thinking also to like what is being pushed on social media as well Like a small reel or clip the local realtor go through interview like a public figure that they're gonna notice they're gonna Recognize whenever they see that small piece of commercial I'm thinking as a house flipper a contractor somebody to create like a Before and after mini series, two to three minutes of a flip or renovation that they did a bathroom remodel and talk about it and do it like they would like a tick talk. And that'd be great advertisement and then show that, Hey, this is here in. X city, we're right on the road. Come stop by

David: 5:22

something like that. Exactly. Exactly what it is. The home restoration is the latest shows, right? how to flip the patio outside or do this. But to me, I want, I watch those videos probably because, I jokingly say me and my wife, we watch like the travel to Ireland shows. I'm like, honey, are we like 80 already? Why are we watching this at night? Yeah. But it's calming, at the end of the day, there's nothing that's showing me somebody that's doing it local. If it was, you're going to get a certain amount of people that just watched to do it yourself. And a large majority of people are just going to be like, Oh, that's really cool. That's how you hang a door or that's how you put a fence post in. But then there's that other section of customers that are going, Oh my word. That looks like way too much work. I would never do that. Wait, is this guy he's right here in Orlando. Oh, cool. Okay. Scan the QR code, put my name and information in lead shoots out to the contractor. A 1. 50 for that advertising, that was, yeah, that was pretty good, I think, right? So if we run TV commercials for 5 cents a pop or 10 cents a pop, you can select exactly, hey, I want to be in the bar at night between 9 o'clock and 12 o'clock. That's my customers, right? And there's a gift shop down the street that sells baby clothes. Are they really going to advertise that time? Eh, probably not, right? They're probably going to advertise in the coffee shop from 8 o'clock in the morning till 12, maybe? kids start to hang out at maybe three. So we're not gonna advertise baby clothes at three. We'll start to advertise a hangout there or a different kind of thing. So it's a little bit different than a TV network because the TV network is showing some sort of content. Let's say in a half an hour, they're showing 26 minutes of created content and then four minutes left, two minutes, every 15 minutes of advertising. And so because they only have those two minutes, they can raise the price of that advertising. But if we have all of the 26 minutes available, we have more spaces for you and me to create content. Even bloggers, video bloggers, they can start adding pieces of content to local TVs to gain that audience group that they wouldn't have had. Every barber shop. I'm not big into sports, so my eye tends to look away. My, my wife loves football. We grew up in, New Jersey, so it's the Jets, for me, I look away. I'm like, okay, is there anything else playing? Now, if I saw me and you talking, maybe some subtitles. And an interesting title, I might say, Hey, what are we talking about here? And my eye would tend to focus on the Tweeva TV. That's only a three or four minute clip, right? So I might scan the QR code and say, Hey, maybe these guys are local. Maybe they're talking business. Might be something I need, right? And so can you find followers or an audience out there by connecting into the Tweeva network? So that's really, we want, what we want is to open up all those TVs that are out there to not just the huge companies, but to anyone, everyone's a content creator today. So can we be the facilitator of the technological pieces that allow us to share our content and, get out there? Do you have those

Dylan: 8:22

analytics for the customer? Cause I'm thinking if Joe, the plumber comes up, he's not thinking about his avatar. You know what I mean?

David: 8:30

Yeah.

Dylan: 8:30

So do you have those, are you pushing or letting them know of, Hey, you might not want to grab a time of 9 a. m. in the morning whenever you're selling, I don't know, something, a nighttime product,

David: 8:40

Working on it. Gotcha. There are, there's so many different business categories that you would think. You say restaurants. I think. There are 17 types of restaurants, right? You think contractor, there's 11 different types of contractors. So there's actually 170 different categories that we can play with. there's a pool builder, then there's a pool screen repair. There's a screen installer, then there's a paver. And then there's a driveway resurfacer. So there's so many different pieces. What we're doing is we're collecting that data and then the AI will be suggesting the best times for those customers. I like that. I can see, you do need a bigger data set. you gotta, we really rely on influencers right now to give that best idea. So we're the platform, but we really want influencers in there because, okay. A contractor can jump in and say, Oh, Hey, I have a 4k camera. I can do this. It's not five years ago, 10 years ago, you had the shoulder camera. Okay. Action. And you, and then, okay. Download the DV tape into my Firewire and then edit it in Adobe premiere. And it's completely different today, but it doesn't necessarily mean that he really knows how to not shoot into the sun. Because we, he's focused on is the concrete setting, what's the temperature, is it going to rain tomorrow? So what we really want to do is rely on local influencers. They know what they're doing already. They're sitting at the shops, they're taking pictures of themselves, because it's the first, they don't have a really good platform. So that's why they're taking pictures of themselves drinking the coffee with the croissant. Okay, they're trying to promote them. If we can give them a platform that they walk in, shoot incredible photos and video of the business, and then be able to broadcast that to maybe this city and other cities around them, now they become small producers. And regional influencers for a TV network. So completely changes the game. Eventually we'll hit that AI piece where, we'll be suggesting just like Facebook, Hey, these are your audiences. This is how many millions of eyes we have on each one. But when we're just starting out everything, it's we're relying a little bit on that human connection there. So you'll

Dylan: 10:49

be able to plug in a local influencer. With a local business to push that record something and push that on that commercial.

David: 10:58

Yes, so we want a business to put the TV in and then have immediate access to five local influencers. Ah, he's too expensive. I don't like her. Oh, this person's perfect. Okay, have her invite her in. What does she work for? Oh, and she works for free food. Perfect way to start. Get a little, build up a couple of things, what I like, what I don't like. And then when we get to this point where I want to sponsor somebody, I can do it through the Tweeva network. I can sponsor them a weekly, monthly, and build out that person to keep coming back. Because once you start to understand, I don't even need to call them anymore. They know, hey, I got to stop by this place, shoot an hour of content or a half an hour of content. that, that week could be filled out with 10 different restaurants that they go shoot content at. So it just, it opens up a lot of options. That's

Dylan: 11:44

for the owner of the Tweeva network at that point, that's the TV owner. I was even thinking of as I'm sitting in a restaurant right now, they have Tweeva playing and they have some plumber on the commercial. I'm sitting here, I'm a contractor. I'd love to get on there. I don't know how to shoot video. I don't know any of this stuff, but then I see an influencer post a commercial for somebody else. How could I look up my local influencer and get them to come shoot something with me? And that'd be my commercial,

David: 12:12

even, that's part of the onboarding process. So if you jump into the app and you say, Hey, what am I here for? Do I want to scan a QR code or get points for scanning receipts or something, or my retail or my. small business. Great. Do you need content? Yes. Do you need a local influencer? Yes. And so then we can find them and then connect them with somebody locally to then say, Hey, I'm so and so this is my Instagram. This is my tech doc. And these are the same commercials I made for Tweeva. And then we connect them together because ultimately every business is doing very similar things. It's more about that story that you have. Oh, my business is, my grandfather was a plumber, right? And he used to work in this day. And then he did the city hall. And these are the same stories that we repeat every single time you find a new client or a new customer. But it is the story behind it. Why can't we integrate that into the commercial? into the business, into the different advertising pieces. And now once you find them through Tweeva, that influencer may have some really good social media skills that they can share with that contractor. But that's not what that contractor is going to think. I think when me and you grew up with computers and TVs, we think of. Like a cheesy local ad, some contractor or a plumber or a used sales guy, a sales car guy, like standing there with a cape on saying, come visit the best used cars in Orlando, right? That's what we think when we think local ad and it needs to be changed to that infotainment between short form and long term long form. So it has to be, this is what to look for when you're getting a used car. There's this wear on the inside of your tire and if you look underneath it, you can see or look for rocks in the radiator to see if it was ever drove, driven off road. So and so in used cars. Oh, that guy's really giving me some good information. I'll stop by him next time. And we, cause we want to educate the person. We don't want an uninformed buyer. We want an educated person, not just I'm the best. that's scammy, right? So we're more about getting that information. And the second part of that is how are you going to gain that eyeball when they are either drinking a beer or having wings or eating pizza or getting their haircut? What are you going to try? You're competing with their phone, so their phone is, yeah, it may not be looking for used cars. It might not be looking for a chiropractor, but if there's a chiropractor up there and he's saying, Hey, do you have back problems? Do you sit like this in your car? You sit like this in your car? Is your neck bent? Make sure that when you're sitting up straight, put your hands attended to and make sure your body straight. This will really help you not have to visit me more. Okay. Wait, why did that, why would that guy say that it's education? We're helping people. We're, and it's not just like this broad nationwide cheesy commercial. This could be something about you and your city. So it's a different way of looking at TV. It's a different way of looking at influencing. and it's, shot horizontal too. It's not vertical. So it's a completely way, different way of doing things. And because of technology, it's changing what we would think TV advertising is. It's changing it into social network TV, right? We want to make you that community expert in your field.

Dylan: 15:31

Yeah, they need to see the authority figure that they've seen that person they've walked in the store They've seen that face before

David: 15:37

right and that's the other neat thing is you know right now somebody advertises on TV Most likely is not going to be eating a piece of pizza or drinking a beer next to you I mean this increases the chances of connecting with those locals So much higher, Bob, is that you, I just saw a commercial with you. You're just replacing a fence post. Oh, that's so cool, man. I got something broke from the hurricane last year and I still haven't fixed it right because it opens up advertise. You don't need a 10, 000 budget anymore. It could be done for a couple, couple hundred bucks could be done for five or 10 depends on what they want. So

Dylan: 16:12

I've looked into advertising before with other companies. We were quoted 20, 000 minimum a month to run commercials. What's the cost for a small

David: 16:21

business? As little as 5, you've got to just load something in the account. So it's on a per bid basis. So if we start a commercial at 5 cents, you are just able to say, Hey, I want to be on this TV, right on this location and, just start playing it maybe once an hour or twice an hour. And it will just take that money out of your account as it runs and confirms that those ads are run at those different locations now, because. It's new, it's cheap, just like Google ads was many years ago. It was a penny to advertise. And so we took the same effect, the same idea and said, okay, let's make it available for everyone. And as that bid grows, we have to have a lot of growth because we don't have the 26 minutes of content per half an hour, right? We have the full one half, we have the full half an hour. So we have to fill every minute of the spot, unless you want to bid on nine o'clock and Nine o'clock, 9 0 1 or 9 53, right? You'd have every, everybody bidding at 9 53. But if you want to bid at 9 52, 9 51, 9 59, right? 9 49, or just say, Hey, anytime in the hour is cool. Anybody at the bar, I want them to see these motorcycle gloves that I'm selling on Amazon. I just want them to see it. Or I'm a local motorcycle repair shop and I just want to be in them, in their eyes. as a sense of. you have those two different types of advertising. One is you're looking for it, and then you have passive advertising, which is a billboard, right? So that's the kind of advertising you can have with Tweeva TV is, yeah, I know that they exist. I wasn't specifically searching for a motorcycle repair shop, but now I know they exist. And he's only playing from nine o'clock to 12 o'clock at the bars on Friday night. So he doesn't have to come in with a 000 budget. He can come in with 20 bucks and start to churn through that audience that is at that bar. You only need one to pop, right? One to really work. And you're like, Hey, that's awesome. I saw you on TV. He doesn't necessarily know it's its own private network of small businesses. He thinks it's TV. We're showing local weather. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really beneficial to the small business. So

Dylan: 18:30

what about the brick and mortar owner? How do they get this set up? What's in it for them? How much are they paying for it? Tell me about that.

David: 18:37

So the brick and mortar business is just paying for the box And he is actually being rewarded for some of the ads that are shown. So he's going to use this TV as a couple of different things. So if you've ever been to a restaurant or, and they had maybe a special and it was showing on a digital screen and they call that digital signage. So we're a mix of a digital signage, a TV channel, and then also that influencing piece. so what we expect the business owner to do is to walk around and take pictures of. His desserts, his food, maybe shoot a funny picture of someone throwing, the pizza dough in the air, spinning it, making the pizza dough, and he's creating a little bit of content for his business. So when people walk in, they're like, Hey, that's funny. I didn't know he, Bob was in the back of the kitchen cooking all day. Oh, that's funny. maybe give a little information about what Bob does on the weekends, Bob drives a Harley. Are you serious? Oh my goodness. He rides a Harley. That's so cool. I didn't know that. You wouldn't know cause he doesn't come out and talk to people. So we want information about the business. We want them to use it as a digital signage screen. but then also it's going to show weather on it and then, it'll add a little bit of his socials on there. So let's say he. Adds a picture, says Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. That will be automatically downloaded to the Tweeba box and spun through some of the content for maybe a week or so. Maybe a week, two weeks. So he's really using this as a combination of things for his business. But in addition to that content, which doesn't really change every day, we're having other influencers create that content, which creates that dynamic. Information. There's something new every day or every hour, right? So that business owner is buying the box or he's being rewarded the box. If a business owner has a lot of traffic, we'll just send him a box for free and say, Hey, let's join the TV network, right? We want you because you have a lot of customers. But then on the reward side, what we're doing is we're giving them a form of crypto coin. And it's not exactly crypto because it's not decentralized. It's more centralized tweva coin. But the idea is that those coins are being used to advertise. So every time an ad comes in, we reward them with a certain amount of coins and he can turn around and use those, or they can turn around and use those. To advertise on the network or reward them back to business owners. or I'm sorry, back to retail customers, Hey, come in and second scoop by ice cream for a hundred tokens. And a customer can give them back, or he can take them and reward them. Buy it, buy two slices of pizza and we'll give you 10 coins. the customer can take those 10 coins and try advertising for free. Take a local landscaper, right? There's no risk for him to come in and buy his lunch at that establishment because he's being rewarded. Every time he buys, he gets a little bit of coins. Hey, where are we going to go to eat tomorrow? I put my advertisement on that place. So let's go there and get the pizza, right? So it's incentivizing people to go to Tweeva locations. Does the coin,

Dylan: 21:40

add in value as, Tweeva network grows? Or is it just,

21:43

that's

David: 21:44

the crypto part? Yes. So depending on how many locations, how many seconds are available on the network, what is being advertised, that coin will rise in value. It's an investment. It's an investment for the business owner and yeah, retail too, but the business owners is essentially mining those ads that are coming through. He's being rewarded for showing those ads. And if he chooses to just keep them, it could turn. it's never going to be Bitcoin. It's not going to be 70, 000 one day. But if I go from 0. 0028 to 14 cents, it's a 5, 000 percent increase. So a dollar becomes 5, 000, half of that 2, 500 bucks puts a little money in the business owner's account. And that's what we're looking to do is it scales. Hey, I never really got to advertise. good. You have 5, 000 worth of advertising in there.

Dylan: 22:30

you've thought this through because not only is it, there's a different, there's a lot of different components here. You've got the small business owner. Her influencer is able to become an authority figure that they once couldn't afford or do also a local component with it. Also an investment component with it, with the crypto and a no cost, sometimes no cost for the small business that is advertising with the TV. So there's a lot of components there. I really that's smart. That's good. I like that.

David: 22:59

I like that a lot. it's very complex. it's fun. You can get in very deep into it, but at the same time, you're trying to create it simple. Steve Jobs said, the best technology people believe is magic. Just, it just works. So I'm explaining a lot of these pieces, but in the end, it really needs, someone to walk into a place and say, Hey, I want to spend my Tuva coins or walk into the TV and say, I have 500, I'll put a hundred on this location and they get spent down, right? Super easy, simple.

Dylan: 23:28

So it's better to honestly start now versus later on it as well, because you need to buy.

David: 23:33

So yeah, if you went in and bought a thousand dollars worth of tokens, it would be worth that. it would, you probably buy a lifetime worth of ads by the time it grows. They would be worth plenty for you to advertise forever. Absolutely.

Dylan: 23:48

My head's just spinning here with different ideas and stuff like that. let's, so we know what the business does now. Let's talk more about the actual business itself. let's talk about marketing it and growing it on your side. how are you marketing Twigo right

David: 23:59

now? So marketing is between, a couple of different platforms. So we working a little bit on Facebook ads, a little bit on TikTok ads, just getting started in some AI email marketing. So we are. Figuring out how to send, this is because it's such a big project, you can show ads for TV advertising. That doesn't mean anything to most people. Look how long we've talked about it and you're now understanding, okay, it's a good idea. It's a great concept. Does it work right? If I haven't seen one of my local business. So we've gone to the form of. We go into local restaurants and talk to them. They still don't understand what it is. Depending on age, you might have to say it's a TV network. Oh, it's a TV network. Okay. Or if it's a young person, I can say it's a social TV. What's that? I know what social is. I know what TV is, but I haven't heard the both combined. So it's a little, I call it an educational gap. It's really a gap in, I don't understand what it is. So going business to business seems to be beneficial, but time consuming. So we're looking to speed that up with. A couple of components. One would be the direct contact with the business. The second would be some sort of AI piece that creates that, Hey, you are in this city, you're at this local place, or a city event that's happening or a city location that's happening. Let's talk, right? Let's help you start. If I have to talk to every brick and mortar. With foot traffic, and then after that's done, I have to talk to every plumber a certain way, and I have to talk to an electrician a certain way, and a pool builder a certain way. It becomes this huge project. So we're looking at different components of how to build and scale something. That's works on a small scale, but then when you dump a million dollars into it, it also works at that level. Yeah, this is

Dylan: 25:45

big. This is, I even did my research on it beforehand. and I thought it was a really good idea, especially with the crypto, component and the owner being able to profit, do a profit share essentially on that with the advertisement because that's self generating. The issue though, I can see your issue now with explaining this and it becoming the household thing. and once it does, it'll take off like wildfire, but it just has to get going first.

David: 26:10

Man, it's educational. It's, I've been to 200 different businesses and it's a different response every time of how does it work? why it's same questions. What's a benefit, what's a benefit for me? Why bring influences into your business? Oh, okay. If I tried that three years ago, So it's almost you're growing and scaling with the technological changes and marketing changes. But you can't go too fast, too far too fast, because then you just lose them in the gap of information. So

Dylan: 26:39

I'm thinking here right now, how can you get the influencers to go to the store, the local, their local stores, and push that for you? hey, So I'm thinking when an influencer comes in and that influencer has 10, 000 followers, local followers, whatever they want to say, Hey, I had this many followers. I would love to advertise in your establishment, but you don't have this. You could do this and make money from the advertisements you spread and that'd be your push. So have you thought about the influencer, not influencer, but, affiliate marketing essentially with this some kind of component of rewarding the. Influencer that pushes the location.

David: 27:19

Yes. Yeah. So we would refer to them as local reps, right? And because things need to be caught, moderated for content, the content needs to be moderated on a small scale, you can do it, but on a large scale, even Facebook with all their AI and all their money, they still have human. Moderators when things hit the filter. And so you're going to need these in every city and every town. somebody who's trying to spam the network, even though it passes through our AI filter, it's still the person's not here or the business doesn't exist. So the best piece, even in TV networking today, you have local representatives for the TV company. It's going to probably work the same way. Those influencers will. Own or be profit sharing in part of the network in their city or two cities region, something like that. And they would help build out and moderate and sit down with people and help them understand what's going on. until I would imagine until it catches fire, you're even gonna need more people at that point. Because you still, this is about local businesses. So you can't, I always jokingly say, I don't want somebody in a vegan in California to be helping someone create a commercial for brisket in Texas. They're just not going to know how to say those words or to sell their product. You want somebody that lives in that town, that speaks that language, it says smoke brisky, come here and get it today. And they understand how to sell it to that town. The best person is going to be somebody that's doing influencing in that town. So there will be a reward. There will be some sort of connection. and that person, it's not, I imagine it has to be more than one or two, especially city type. But yeah, they will be part of the network and then having to moderate some of the content that comes through. so the pieces of moderation that they would moderate, the content they would moderate is, let's say there's a local parade going through. It's 4th of July, people are taking pictures. They're taking short clips. They want to share the parade. They can share it to the Tweeva network. So now we have five clips, ten clips. One of them, there's a guy's head in the way. I don't want to put that on the TV. I want the best clip, the front clip, that's the best piece that we can share to all the TVs on the network. Because I'm a, I might be a business owner. I'm sitting there, I'm serving pizza, or I'm serving whatever kind of food. I keep referring to Italian pizza, Italian food, but, because one of the co founders is Italian. And if I can't be at the parade, I want to be able to see what was going on in the city that day. And so that would be that day, but there might be another event going on at the city and another event the next day or the next week might be a football game happening in the city. We can show these clips, but they have to be moderated, so that has to be a human element in there. And because they ha it can't just be spam, it has to be something that's happening in the city. Yes. Did it happen Friday night at the game? Yes, he did catch the winning touchdown over here, da. That did happen. Okay, great. Let's post it and share it. That creates more of a personal community TV network. So it's not all about AI. It's not all about the technology. It's really about bringing people together and giving them the platform to use, to share publicly.

Dylan: 30:32

Yeah, that's good. I was. My mind goes straight to how can I push this and what can I benefit from it too? Because I want to be on that TV, right? that's, I think any influencer or any small business owner online, even online business owner. Would want to promote themselves essentially, right? So I'm just that's my big thing and I can see how that could catch on pretty quickly as well

David: 30:54

Where about when I started thinking about, you know Promoting locally think about how many people are in your town like I have 50, 000 people in my town If I were if everybody knew me could I handle even one town? No So we always think, I'm going national, I'm going this, I'm doing, okay, hey buddy, if everybody knew you in your town, like if you were doing a good job in your marketing, just marketing, you'd be busy, right? But it's that 80, 20 rule. 20 percent of the businesses are busy and they're eating up the other 80 and the other 80 are struggling. So what are we doing to, and I go back to that community expert. Are you known in your community as the expert for what you do? If you're an electrician, are you the community expert? If you, oh yeah, call him. Are you one of the 80 percent that are struggling to get that next person? You're going to have to get

Dylan: 31:40

creative too, with your ads, because you're going to want to gain that attention. It's going to catch on Joe. Who's not working with an influencer over here, but this plumbing company is not going to outbeat the one who is over here. Catching those attentions, creating those hooks, I can see it right now, somebody interviewing somebody and then them telling their story and the influencers interviewing them out on the street, and they're getting the story out of it. I can just see everything that is scrolling through social media right now, just being something that's more local. And somebody was seeing her familiar face that they've seen before on that. Oh, I'm going to see that. I'm gonna listen to that now. Yes.

David: 32:12

Yeah. I can see your social media is awesome. It's that first iteration. If you were sitting in a coffee shop next to somebody that had 500, 000 followers. But you never followed them? Truthfully, would you know who they are? Absolutely not. See? Isn't that weird though? Yeah. Is this and this happened through one of the conversations of, In my city, I was putting in City Hall, I was putting it in a city building, Betweeva TV, and the lady had said, Oh yeah, my daughter has 500, 000 followers on Instagram. I said, You, I didn't know that. Oh yeah, it's health and wellness. And, they shipped her, these 12, 000 doors or something for her house, because these influencer people wanted to be part of her. wait, what happened here? I don't know this and I'm a couple of miles away. So there's a missing piece where you don't even know people in your own community yet. Now, if you were to do that through building it through your own community, it would be maybe not nationwide, but it would. Grow really quick because people know people and then it would grow locally. And you could do them both at the same time. But for a local business, as a contractor, you might not be saying, Oh, I want to get business over in a state over you're more looking to grow locally. If you're a restaurant, you're looking to grow locally. I

Dylan: 33:22

was actually at the gym and somebody I'd conversated with multiple times ended up. Was famous. And I didn't even know it essentially had 5 million followers on social. And, I'm just talking to him about working out and stuff. And it's just. It's crazy to think, they're just people too, but yeah, knowing

David: 33:40

that. And I think you find out, did you find out later? Yeah. I found

Dylan: 33:43

out later. Yeah. I didn't know it. Somebody else just mentioned it to me and I was like, Oh, I think he looks familiar. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I think I do know.

David: 33:50

Yeah. So that would change if you had the TV in there and he was interacting with it. Yeah, or he was sharing his content like he's going to shoot his vertical content, but then he's going to flip that phone sideways and say, all right, I'm going to create something for TV now, and he can build followers in a local area. But he also can share that video clip to other TVs anywhere. if he has an Instagram or he has a course that he wants to sell, he could share that to a local. Bar or anywhere else like we talked about the point is you would see him first probably there, right? Oh, yeah, you're the guy on the TV over there. Okay, I've seen your socials whatever but it's that brand Awareness or he would be what I would call the community expert. He would be the expert.

Dylan: 34:34

How is your strategy? starting out with this and then Is it still the same or has it changed

David: 34:39

over time? the strategy for the business actually did not start with, it was more, I think the very beginning we were just looking to get rid of competitors on the TVs. So we were sat down with our co founders. We were like, how dare Pizza Hut. Be in your pizza shop. I was thinking that earlier. Can you believe that, right? And okay, let's add some of your own pizza slices and stuff. and, oh, no, we'd need a TV network. Nah, let's just put some small businesses on there. yeah, but nobody wants to look at those. So can we put some weather on there? Yeah, I'll put some weather and we tested different pieces of technology and little mini computers to run right and then an actual computer to run that content and shrunk down and changed a little bit as we went along, we didn't, it didn't take too long to get to the, I want to add my own content because. You can't fill eight hours of content without putting what you've got a soap opera in the Morning and then you have your news and what do you do with the rest of the six hours? So we quickly got to this idea of how do we have other people interact with that TV to add content? So we got there pretty quick, but it did change a little bit over time it did I think all businesses pivot just a little bit. we did add a piece for social media management because as I was building it, I let go. so you're gonna, you're gonna take a picture of the pizza and you're gonna put it on the TV, or you're gonna take a video. All right, so you just did that. Okay, why don't you go post that on Facebook? And so they would post it on Facebook. And I'm like, yeah, and Twitter. And so they put it on Twitter. oh yeah, do it on LinkedIn too. I don't know how to do LinkedIn. I go, okay, this would be a really great piece. Could we give them access to all of their social media accounts through Tweeva so that they could post it to the TV network and then all of their top 10 social media accounts would just blast out that content? Because the business owner, he's running around, right? He's trying to deal with the employees and the food trucks coming in, and all these things are happening. 10 different accounts. Oh, I need a small picture. I need a square picture. I need this. I need that. So we added a little bit of piece of a social media management functionality into it to allow them to have access to more networks because now they can post. Much easier. it gives them pretty much the marketing platform that a lot of small businesses don't, they don't have the time to do it once in a while. You'll get merry Christmas, happy Thanksgiving, because they're off that day, right? But you gotta be interactive with the community. Where is grandma's 90th birthday party? And I saw them cleaning up the tables. When I left, I saw all those four tables, they were all put together. There was chairs everywhere. And they said there was a balloon. But I didn't see what happened. Now, if V had broadcast that on the TV. I'd be like, Oh, maybe I should take my grandma out for, I should take my mom, I should take my aunt, uncle out. That would be great at this place. It includes the whole community, but you have to take a picture and then share that piece of content. And they have so much going on during the day, but it's just, you know what it is, it's just like a lot of work to get there.

Dylan: 37:40

Oh yeah. That's a really smart component, though, to have the social media management side of it, because it's just another click of the button at that point for that, whoever's managing that side or for the small business owner who doesn't have time to do that. I didn't even think about that.

David: 37:52

that's genius. Yeah. It gives them the tools to do it. We use a little bit of AI in there so we can ask some certain questions about the business and, Hey, it's, we can give them a post for Monday to Friday based upon either menu items or. Birthday parties or, hey, take a picture. We got the greatest staff on earth. Take a picture of your staff today. You take a selfie, send, catches your hashtags, your posts, sends it out to the network. And so it's trying to help that business owner get more exposure. it's not perfect. You, the best is going to be you shooting content, becoming that community expert, but it just creates that little visibility when you're scrolling through your socials. Hey, there they are again. Hey, there they are again. There they post every single day. They must be good. And you're like, okay, fine. I'll go there and try their food. Did you go VC

Dylan: 38:36

with this route?

David: 38:37

Did you raise money? We are currently going to VC. So we have, you had the foundation. Yeah, we actually ran into a little bit of a hiccup because one of our co founders passed away. So we were, he had more of the VC money. and so we were going to build it on our own, but then we went to a business accelerator, after he passed away, went to a business accelerator. Everybody loved the idea, but then the economy. started crumbling at that point. And the VCs just tightened up their grips with money. And what they're doing now is saying and if your business doesn't have 20, 000 users and you're not pushing through a million dollars a year in advertising, they're not even looking at you because they would go running to these big AI companies or a pharmaceutical companies where they know that's, no, they don't know, but it's higher risk, but higher reward. And VCs are looking for a hundred times their investment. It's really crazy. Yeah.

Dylan: 39:30

VCs now, it's

David: 39:31

crazy. Yeah. So we're, we've had several, yes, I'll jump in, but I don't want to be the lead investor. We're still looking for a lead investor. but it's just a matter of time. our patent was just, approved about a week ago. So we were working on that for the past four years. So that's finally done. that might be another reason we have to go back to the VCs and talk, have another conversation, but right now we're just building it out from the local side and, building everything from the ground. My mind's

Dylan: 39:58

spinning here to, how much money would you need

David: 40:00

to raise? one of the accelerators, we drew out a plan and they were saying you can, you could raise 5 million, 2 million, 1 million. And so you can build a business plan around anything. When you have a startup, you can say, Oh, I want to put a million dollars in marketing in a business plan and, push it out for 18 months. Oh, that's 18 million. But is it really what you need? And then you have to find somebody to fund that. So it's a variable when you get into this startup world and you're talking to VCs. It's almost like nonchalant, like how much you're looking to raise? how much you want to give me? you can't have that conversation. You have to have a solidified business plan based upon what you believe the market will. Buy pretty much from you. So if you want to put a million into advertising, you want to make sure that's going to come back. So we had a bigger number and then we lowered it because of the way the economy crashed and things happened in the economy. But it just depends on what you're looking to do in the startup world. You could start with a couple hundred thousand dollars, or you could start with 2 million. It just depends on that business plan. How long, how many people you're going to hire, what kind of kickbacks you're going to give. Bonuses, et cetera, but it all has to be written out for that VC and that it becomes almost so many variables to the VC that you're like, what do I put here? I can show a really good idea with good capital, or I can show, just skim by and certain VCs will like the just skim by and other Cs will say, you're not pouring enough money onto it. And because I've had both conversations with people, 20 million, this thing would be a billion dollars in a year for you. Yeah. With the right people, right? you, an engine runs with very little gas, a gas can explodes. So you don't need all that money to do the right thing. You just need to have it in a combustible chamber with oil, with a cooler, right? With a rod that spins the transmission and you get the best efficiency out of that. And that's all pieces of how would you contact every business owner in America? Would you do it through Facebook? is that really the best idea? So it just starts all these longer conversations, which you don't end up thinking when you're like, okay, let me write a patent for this. Okay. Let me build out a, an API that talks to Google to check their account to see, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're in the development mode and now you're in this completely different VC world, trying to talk to them. To see how we're going to raise capital to get to the next level. And sometimes they don't even understand crypto. I hate crypto, right? I saw Bitcoin. I hate crypto. Okay, then we can't talk about crypto. Let's talk about the TV side. And then that guy will be different than another VC that you talk to. So it is a confusing, world out there when you're trying to. Get money from them, but that's because they're only going to pick the winners and they're really good at it. That's why they get family offices to give them a hundred million. And they've turned that a hundred million into a billion. It may take them five, 10 years, but they do it. And then the family gives them more money. Next year, right? Next five years, they need

Dylan: 42:59

a, entry level VC, or I guess you call that angel investing or something along those lines would

David: 43:04

be an angel investor. Yep. Angel investors are great places to start. Yeah. Though, as long as they're an accredited investor and they're, have, I think it's like 250 liquid cash and they have to make more than 150 or 200 a year. Then you can go to them and say, Hey, I'll give you a, this percentage of the company and give me 50, 000, give me a hundred thousand. And then what we'll do is build out a small KPIs and we'll make sure that we get this many users with that, or we'll grow to this many cities. And if you can do that successfully and bring that report to a VC, you greatly increase your chances of getting more money. But really the VCs are looking for people to manage money. That's what they're looking to do. it's not about building a system, even though that's a piece. It's not about talking to people, though. That's a piece or building the audience or creating a system or scalability. That's all variables in it. But that VC, all he wants to see is. More dollars at the end,

Dylan: 43:58

they have a system built out and they just want it to fit in that box. And if it doesn't, they on to the next one, they can pass over another Google, but it's not ready yet,

David: 44:06

right, And they can go buy them later if they want, so I was looking at the beginnings of Uber and they were a team of programmers. They got a million dollars in October. September, and then they got 8 million in January. So in a few months, they had, maybe they were working on it before, I don't know. but anyway, their first investment was like a million bucks, and then 4 or 5 months later, it was 8. either it was a proof of concept that they built, or they went into a city. And just flourished with the idea or they spent a lot of, I don't know exactly what happened, but being connected and having that trusting relationship with somebody that has capital is like the oxygen to that startup. Because that's the difference between staying in that one little city and then blooming out and creating a whole entire team, buying a building and having your own name on the side of it. And Hey, now we're Uber, right? So a lot of startups, I believe, are probably like that, where somebody has a good relationship, where they understand and they trust with people and, they have access to that capital to grow the business.

Dylan: 45:10

tell me how you would do it all over again. I didn't know you, you were going VC route and all that stuff. so somebody that's. Looking to go that route or has a good idea or has that business that could go to the next level. how would you do it over again?

David: 45:23

It's hard. I immediately know what I'm going to say, but I'll say it like it's hard to know that your business is as big as it is in the first week or the first month. because when we started talking about it, it was a slideshow, it's a slideshow that you could show in your business of different things the first week. And then you start talking the next week and it becomes, then could we add movies? Does the computer play the movies? So when you are building your idea. I would take a solid month and just sit at coffee shops, go out and get your favorite food and build out the main concepts or ideas of what it could be. And if it is big enough that you can go to a venture capital or angel investor, I would immediately go try and meet individuals in that industry. Because that's one thing I, we didn't do, right? Because we didn't know the patent wasn't approved. The trademark wasn't, nothing was there. We didn't know if there was any other competitors. So the best thing to do in today's world, and this is different today than it is from 10 years ago or 20 years ago, Facebook, right? They just started building and growing. Today, you have to have your audience. To have the audience, you have to be out there. to be out there, you need capital or some sort of publication. So the two things that I would do differently would be to go meet the money people right in the beginning and start sharing the idea, the concept with non disclosures, NDA agreements, and then start publicizing and building those followers. Those people that are saying, yeah, I want this when it comes out. Because those two are hand in hand to VCs right now. They're looking for the audience. And they're looking for the technology and if they can have a match of saying, okay, there's 10, 000 people that want this. It's much easier for them to apply capital to an audience that wants something versus a new concept, a new product, a new technology that nobody knows exists or understands why it has to exist. So those are the two things that I think. If you want to go back, if you just want to be a web designer or if you just want to build databases or contractor, you don't need to go there. But if you have a incredibly great idea and you think it doesn't exist, I would start fostering those relationships in levels that are four or five, six levels above you. To start. Hey, I'm working on this. I know you probably don't know anybody in this industry. Nobody's talking about this thing, but I am. And here's my name. Here's my number. I want to buy you coffee. I want to buy you a steak dinner somewhere, right? And start to build those relationships because in that later future, when you have the product, you have your audience and you need to go get capital. Hey, remember me? I'm not just hitting you up now. I was thinking about this years ago and you become that smart person who was fostering those individual relationships in between. you probably should do that in any business, but specifically startup businesses. It's really about networking. It's really about building relationships and networking and then the publicizing of that data.

Dylan: 48:13

David, where can people go to find out more about Twiva and then also yourself if they want to get in touch with you?

David: 48:19

So we are on all the social media platforms. So you can go to twiva. com. It's T W E V a. com or just go to any, Facebook or, X, Twitter, LinkedIn, any of the socials that were on there too, as Twiva, my email, my personal email is Dave. At tweva. com. and if you have a question or if you're an influencer, we'd love to have you in the network. You can go download our app from the store. if you're a small business, you have a, we call it foot traffic, like a foot traffic type of business, a restaurant or a doctor's office, we'd love to have you join the tweva network too, and get paid and rewarded for locals. sharing their ads on your TV and then you also advertising on others. but we'd love to have you be part of the network. It's going to be the next big thing. That's good, David. I appreciate you being on today. Thanks for having me. It was, I love telling the story. I love talking about it. So thank you so much.

Dylan: 49:15

Hey, if you're still listening, hopefully you got some value out of this or amusement. Either way, I really appreciate you for listening. My goal with this podcast is to build something of value while also showing others that it's possible to do the same. And what I mean by that is, I'm not perfect at this. I fumble, I stutter, and I just want to show that it's okay. If you've been putting something off. This is me telling you to go for it. So I need your help in growing this and there's two main ways a podcast grows. One is through ratings and reviews and two is through word of mouth. So I can only do it with your help. If you can leave me a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well as post this to your social and it doesn't grow without you. Thank you. Talk to you all next week.