Dennis
Hi, everyone, welcome to Uncommon Convos. I’m your host Dennis VanDerGinst. Here, as always, with the charming Dana Watkins. And speaking of charming, we’d like to welcome our guest today, Katie Wilson. Katie Castillo-Wilson, is the founder and CEO of TapOnIt, which is an Iowa-based technology company most commonly known for TapOnIt Deals.

Dennis
Prior to launching TapOnIt, she was a digital advertising director for a local media company where she helped thousands of businesses with their digital marketing strategies, including me. And in 2014, she left her career to launch TapOnIt with a goal of helping brands connect with consumers in the most direct way possible: a text message. Katie has raised over five million dollars since inception and now TapOnIt’s technology is used all over the country to connect brands with consumers.

Dennis
On a personal level, Katie enjoy spending time with her two amazing teenagers, Taze and Lydia and her dog Ollie, which I understand is the Chief Barketing Officer. Get it? Yeah, I saw that on your website.

Dana
I love that.

Dennis
I’m, I’m happy to say I’ve known Katie for many years and I believe that we first met when she was an account rep for our law firm selling us digital advertising. And I was, in fact, so impressed by her knowledge and grasp of various marketing opportunities that I wanted to hire her, but she was far too expensive for my budget and clearly destined for much greater things. And we’ll talk about some of those greater things as we spotlight Katie as part of our series on women entrepreneurs.

Dennis
So, Katie, thank you for being here.

Katie
Well, thank you. That was a very kind introduction.

Dennis
Well, you wrote it, so. No.

Katie
I know. That’s why it was so great.

Dennis
You know. Right. Right. And speaking of, though, right out of, the out of the gate here… Your light just went off.

Dana
I know.

Dennis
Right out of the gate here. Those of you who are just listening, we’re doing video, too. And we’re having all kinds of fun with the video today. I tell you. Anyway, right out of the gate, I’m going to ask you an odd question.

Katie
All right. I’m ready.

Dennis
Which of your so many wonderful awards and akela… Accolades in the last few years are you most proud of?

Katie
Oh, man, there’s been a few big ones. It was a huge honor when we were named Business of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce here in the Quad Cities, which I think that was 2019. That was huge. You know, we have amazing companies here in the Quad City area from John Deere to Happy Joe’s Pizza, where they’re known are outside of even our area. So that was that was pretty exciting.

Katie
Most recently, I would say probably the Pepperdine Award that we got. So Pepperdine College does a Most Fundable Companies Award each year, and we were named in the top twenty. And you go through like an entire due diligence process, like you would for an investor pitch or through like an acquisition or something like that. And so it was a ton of work. My team put in, I don’t even know how many hours, putting together all of the material for it, and to make it on that list really sets us up in a great position for, you know, potential investors in the future and other brands that we’re talking to to understand that, you know, we’re, we may be from Iowa, but we’re not some tiny little tech company. We’ve got big things happening.

Dennis
And that was the point of the question is, you know, of course, I’ve known you for a long time, but in prepping for the day, I was really impressed by all the different awards, you know, industry awards for woman, Woman of the Year, forty under forty, things like that. So it’s important, I think, you know, it is important for our audience to realize that this very young, single mom, Hispanic CEO of a tech company from Iowa, really comes with a lot of credentials and someone worthy of listening to.

Dennis
So I think, you know, I wanted to get that out there right away. So people really tune in to what you have to say, because I know you have a lot of great insights that they’re going to want to not miss out on.

Katie
Thank you.

Dennis
So the, going a different direction altogether. Before we get to that, I want the audience to get to know you better. So I want to pretend, I want you to pretend that you are on a first date and you’re giving someone, you know, just the basic lowdown of who you are, where you’re from, all that type of thing.

Katie
Sure. Well, first of all, you know how I feel about dating, so this is really uncomfortable for me.

Katie
Yeah. So, Katie, Castillo-Wilson. Castillo is my maiden name. I was divorced like thirteen years ago now, but I decided recently to try and start adding that back in which interesting story I was told by a potential investor that I need to embrace the race and really make it clear that I’m Hispanic. I’ve heard many pieces of advice over the years, and that was a new one. But made sense.

Dennis
Agreed.

Katie
Yes, but I was born and raised here in the Quad Cities. I grew up in the Pleasant Valley School District all the way from kindergarten through graduation. I graduated from PV in 2001. There you go. That kind of ages me a little bit.

Katie
And when I initially left to go to school, I was at Iowa State originally and I was there on a full ride, which was super exciting. Didn’t really know what I wanted to do, which I think that a lot of people go, you know, you leave high school and you maybe have an idea. But our paths aren’t necessarily well defined that early on. But mine definitely hadn’t been. And so I ended up pregnant. I was blessed with my adorable son Taze.

Dennis
That’s quite a major. I think a lot of people major in that, but…

Katie
Yeah, yeah. It was not the major that I had expected to accomplish that early on. But yeah, I ended up coming back to the Quad Cities and I got married and had my first child at 19. But I ended up continuing on getting a degree in business management and accounting, which is also very different from what I’m doing now. And so let’s see. I graduated from Kaplan University, which is here locally, and unlike the full ride I had from Iowa State, I’m still paying for that education.

Katie
So but I started out doing business management, accounting. I was doing medical billing and coding, which I got to wear scrubs, which was awesome because it’s like wearing your pajamas to work every day. But other than that, I was in a cubicle. Right. And I’m just, I don’t know if you can tell from my personality. I’m a little, I like people. And so it wasn’t a great fit.

Katie
So in the meantime, I had my daughter, Lydia. She’s 16 now. So I’m dealing with two teenagers at home, which is awesome. But I ended up leaving the accounting side of things and exploring sales. And growing up, I had my first job was Dairy Queen at 14 and I waited tables all the way through school. And so I’ve always done some kind of sales. But it was back in 2007 that I got hired on at the Quad City Times. And I was part of Lee Enterprises. And I started out as just a very entry level digital sales rep.

Katie
I had never done marketing. I had never done anything with advertising, but I kind of fell in love with just the whole thing. And I was a sponge for information and really enjoyed working with the different businesses. And so I was managed to, kind of work my way up at the Times. And it was actually back in 2013 when I started working on the whole concept for what’s now TapOnIt. But I finally actually quit my normal person job, as I like to say, in June of 2014 to start building out the company.

Katie
And yeah, like you mentioned, two kids, my dog Ollie, who comes to work, he’s actually asleep right now behind me on the floor. If he wakes up, maybe I’ll have him join the call. But yeah, he comes to work with us just about every day. I am proud to be from the Quad Cities. And you mentioned all of the challenges that can have kind of come with starting a company here, but it never felt like it going into this.

Dennis
And we’ll we’ll get to all that. You know, you got to remember as, as a lawyer, I’m going to, I’m going to lead you a little bit. I’m going to direct you a little bit. I’m going to cut you off a little bit.

Katie
Perfect. That’s okay.

Dennis
So we can so we can readdress some of the stuff. And by the way, I’m sure both you know, I’m sure Dana agrees with your your feelings about wearing pajamas to work. She usually does as well. In fact, I think she probably is right now. You can’t see, you know, what she’s got on below her head.

Katie
That’s the joy this zoom world we live in.

Dennis
If there’s anything good that’s come of all this craziness, that’s probably the one thing. Nobody knows what you’re wearing, nor do they care because they’re wearing the same thing. So.

Katie
Exactly.

Dennis
Anyway, I think, obviously I think it’s very particularly impressive as a single mom to have done all that you’ve done. And we’re going to get to talk a little bit about how you’ve managed to juggle it all. But I want to discuss a little bit more about the evolution of, of where you were and how you’ve gotten to where you are now. So speaking of, you talked about being a major in business management and accounting. So no tech, right?

Katie
No.

Dennis
No, no marketing,

Katie
No.

Dennis
Yet the company you founded and run is a tech company that does marketing.

Katie
Yes.

Dennis
So tell us the, first of all, tell us about TapOnIt. Exactly what it is, what it does. How it works for those people who are not familiar.

Katie
Yeah, sure. So I guess kind of to lead into that, I’ll kind of give you a little bit of background on where it came from. And, you know, when I was at the Times and working with businesses on their marketing, it just, it really surprised me and got me thinking, like I said back in 2013, that we weren’t using text messaging as well as we could be.

Katie
When you think about it, we all have our cell phones with us pretty much all the time. Mine’s my alarm clock. So I actually sleep with my cell phone. I’m sure that’s not good for you or something. Whatever. Text messages. 99% are opened, 90% within three minutes of being received. But when you look at the text messages that you get from brands, you think about Express or American Eagle or Bed Bath & Beyond or grocery stores.

Katie
For the most part, they’re still just those black and white bubbles. Right? And so it, which doesn’t make sense. People are visual. Our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than it does words.

Dennis
You’re just making this up, aren’t ya?

Katie
Yeah, I just spew stats. Luckily I say the same ones over and over again and as long as they haven’t changed in the past five years, we should be good.

Dana
I believe you.

Katie
Thank you. That’s the key is as long as you believe me. There you go. Please don’t ask me to source them. I could probably figure it out, but it’s been a while. But no, I mean, we’re all visual. We know that a picture is worth a thousand words or whatever.

Katie
And so for a brand to actually be able to send an image in the text or potentially multiple images into a text message to the people who signed up to receive it, it just made more sense that they would see better engagement. So TapOnIt is, we’re a technology company. I know that many people know us as TapOnIt Deals. That coupon company. They send out great offers, which I love that side of our business. I’m incredibly proud of our team for what we’ve built there.

Katie
And it’s really how much traffic we drive for the businesses that are advertising on tap, and TapOnIt and also the money that we help people save while they’re getting out and about in the communities. But more than anything, it’s the technology that we built that powers TapOnIt and, you know, one of the things that makes us unique is that we’ve built the ability to include up to nine images within a single MMS message. So an SMS is just the black and white text, MMS you have images and a link.

Katie
And in a lot of cases, you may see a brand sending one image or maybe an animated gif. Right? Those are the funny ones. Haha. But for us, we give brands the ability to put multiple pieces of content into that one text thread. And then from there you click on the link and it opens up into these micro sites that we’ve built that helps to truly drive conversion. And…

Dennis
Can I interrupt? I’m sorry.

Katie
Please, yes, sorry. I could ramble all day.

Dennis
No, no. That’s okay. It just prompted some questions I had because I’m familiar obviously with TapOnIt and TapOnIt Deals. The, the link, or the the way it works, though, it’s it’s not it’s not really an app, though, correct?

Katie
No, it’s not an app.

Dennis
How do you define or, the platform, what exactly is it?

Katie
So we’re text and browser based. And, you know, being an app, and it’s funny like when if you go back to my original pitch deck and raising money in the very first year, pretty much everyone I talked to was like, well, when are you going to have an app? Are you going to have an app? So it’s an app?

Katie
And it’s like, no, we, while apps are great, people don’t necessarily want more apps. When you look at the apps that are on your phone, chances are that you use the same ones over and over and over again and then those other ones you may use here and there.

Katie
And I saw a statistic the other day, and this might not be completely accurate, but it was something along the lines of like 25% of apps downloaded are only used once. And so when, well, and there’s features now, especially on the iPhone, where if you don’t use an app within 90 days, it’ll actually remove itself from your home screen. Well, if you think about the brands who work so hard to get you to download their app. That sucks, right?

Katie
You know, you got to start all over and so to be text and browser based gave us the ability to, first of all, we’re building an opt-in permission based first party database. Right? The information that we know about the people who are in these databases is because they gave us that information. We don’t rely on third party tracking, which is one of the main benefits from an app, but more so there’s no download needed. So it doesn’t feel like it’s as big of a commitment.

Katie
And if somebody doesn’t want to get the messages, all they have to do is reply STOP. So we make it very simple for people to opt-in, but also to opt-out. And so, you know, for the brands that use our tech, it’s all about the content and making sure that you’re not obnoxious. I always joke like you can’t tell somebody more than their mom does. You need to make sure that it’s interesting, and that you do what you say you’re going to do. You send them what they’re signing up for.

Dennis
So as a subscriber, is that what you would call the folks that…

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
…are using it? As a subscriber, how many texts would you be getting per day?

Katie
Not even per day. So like for TapOnIt Deals, for example, which again, TapOnIt Deals we send offers and promotions from a wide variety of businesses via text to people who signed up to receive them. Our database is almost 400,000 people across the country, but we have larger communities that we’re focused in. So like the Quad Cities, for example, we reach about a little over 72,000 people. So that’s 72,000 people who have signed up to be texted ads, which if you think about it, oftentimes we pay to avoid advertising.

Katie
With TapOnIt Deals, we send out up to three campaigns a week. So you’re talking about three text messages from us a week that would include new offers. If you get other texts, it may be because you shared an offer and you earned a bonus. Like there’s just not a whole lot of back and forth. We have other brands that use our technology. You know, in retail, they may send out once a week or even a couple of times a month.

Katie
Oftentimes, brands will follow a similar pattern to what they do with their email newsletter. It’s just that when you compare email to text, you’re talking a 21% open rate on average for email compared to 99%. And like, I was joke like looking at my own phone right now I have 27,000 unread emails…

Dennis
Right, yeah.

Katie
And one unread text message. Yeah, you don’t want to be obnoxious.

Dennis
No, but and I get that. But when you talk about 98, 99% read rate or whatever for text versus email that, I’m, I presume that’s not the clickthrough rate right?

Katie
Correct. No.

Dennis
So for the audience to understand, because everybody, and when you get a text, if you want it to go away, you’ve got to look at it. So that’s what’s probably accounting for such a high read rate…

Katie
Open rate. Yup. Exactly. So we look at the open rate, which is exactly what you said. So I’ll often say, you know, even just to get that little red one to go away, people will at least open the text. But if you think about it, I have to at least click into it to get that to go away. So here I mean, this is a marketing text. And this example here, that was my red dot.

Katie
If they had an image of what they were trying to get across in that text, even if I didn’t go any further, even if I didn’t take the time to, like, really read what they were saying, just that image, seeing the logo, things like that, create an impression for your end user, which gives you a higher chance that they’re going to continue and engage.

Dennis
Do you know what the click through rate would actually be then?

Katie
It totally depends. You know, we see on average, I think with TapOnIt Deals, it’s about 20 percent, or around 20 percent, last time I looked for some brands, for some of our clients who have extremely active followings, they may see as high as 30 or 40 percent, which is crazy.

Katie
But then there’s is also somewhere, you know, the click through rate is going to be a lot lower because really what they’re trying to do is get that image to be seen.

Dennis
So it’s just kind of like a display ad. Then that’s all they want. Now, are some of those advertisers, okay, and we’re, just again, so the audience is clear, there’s a distinction between the advertisers, who are your customers and the subscribers who want this service so they can see the advertising that your clients are having posted through this non app.

Katie
Right. Yes. Sure.

Dennis
OK, so, so when when the advertisers are are agreeing to have an image out there on this digital format, is that, is that also, are their coupons? Is there a redemption portion to all this?

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
How does all that work?

Katie
Well and again, it really just kind of depends. So, like TapOnIt Deals, let’s focus on that for a second, because that is all offers and promotions, right? It’s almost all coupons. I don’t like that term. We go with offers. It’s classier.

Dennis
I’m not classy, so I’m sorry.

Katie
Yeah, that’s okay. That’s alright. We’ll work on that, too.

Dennis
Yeah.

Katie
No, I mean, it’s, we never send out a campaign without something food or beverage related. People eat three times a day or more when I have an opportunity. And so we know that those are the offers that they really want to see. But because they’re excited to see what food and beverage offers, and they don’t necessarily know what’s coming next, we really can position just about any type of ad around it and give them guaranteed visibility and they will see engagement from it.

Katie
Now, the way that it would work for TapOnIt deals, you know, you see that text come through. You click on the link. It opens up just into your web browser. From there, you can click into one of the offers. You’ll see a main offer. So right now, Jersey Mike’s, for example, in the Quad Cities. So it’s March right now where I think they’ve got an offer for a buy one, get one free sandwich at Jersey Mike’s, which is a heck of a deal, and delicious.

Katie
And you can share to earn either like a free drink or a bag of chips or something like that. And so, you know, when it comes to redemption, all you have to do is you go into Jersey Mike’s and while you’re placing your order, you let them know that you have a TapOnIt offer. And when you get to the cash register, they tell you to hit redeem. There’s a couple of steps that go along with that that allow for us to track the redemption and also for them to track the redemption as well.

Katie
But then they’re going to apply that discount there. And so, yeah, we’ve seen redemption rates for businesses as high as like, I mean, we had a Papa Murphy’s Pizza in Oklahoma City that advertised, I think last summer, and they had about an 18 percent redemption rate, which is just crazy. In the Quad Cities at Jersey Mike’s. I think they tend to see like around 4% or 5%, which when you consider out of 72,000 people, that’s a lot of people through your doors every few weeks.

Dennis
Sure. Now and you said 72,000. That’s the Quad Cities area. You said, I think, 400,000 or so were subscribers nationwide. And then how many advertisers, or clients do you have?

Katie
It just, again I hate saying it depends, but it ranges from anywhere, like in the Quad Cities, there’s usually 30 that are active at a time. Some of our newer markets, they may not have quite as many. We, you know, last year I think we featured like seven hundred different businesses, but yeah, and we work with anybody from restaurants to retail to entertainment and then on like the SaaS, the white label side of the business, we even have a couple of large companies that are using us for employee communication because text is more direct than email.

Dennis
So, you know, I know I’ve been spending a lot of time and focus talking about the, the, the one aspect of TapOnIt, the TapOnIt Deals versus anything and everything else you do. I want to give you a chance to talk more about that. But with respect to that, how many markets are you in right now and where where do you see things going?

Katie
Yeah. So, you know, when we first started the company, we started out here in the Quad Cities back. It was actually April 6, 2015 that we launched in the Quad City market for TapOnIt Deals. So our sixth birthday is our golden birthday coming up next month.

Dennis
Happy birthday.

Katie
Thank you. You can send me presents. But, you know, it’s from there, we started out kind of slowly adding new markets. So we’re in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. And then we started partnering. We have resellers of our products. So they are partners who are, have basically purchased like a license to be able to sell TapOnIt Deals and their market. I believe we’re in about 40 markets now. And like I said, we have some markets where we have huge databases like the Quad Cities and then other markets where we’re still relatively new.

Katie
We just got started in Lincoln, Nebraska, a couple of months ago and their database has a few thousand people in it. Our databases grow every single day. We grow because of marketing that we do, sweepstakes that we do. But one of the most effective ways that we actually grow the databases is from people sharing offers with other people. And so we have an organic growth model that is extremely effective.

Katie
When it comes to where we continue to see that and how we’ll continue to grow that we’re really working on just a national database. We definitely want to continue to feature, you know, your local businesses. We are super passionate about getting people out and about in the communities, shopping local, spending their money local. That’s what helps our communities to be unique and our economies to thrive. So we really push heavy on that.

Katie
But we also know that there’s a lot of brands that have, you know, locations across the entire country where if we can reach consumers across the entire country, we can help them and all of those areas. So that’s where like, of the almost 400,000 people in our database, about three fourths of them fall into our active markets. And then the other hundred thousand or so are actually spread across the entire country and zip codes that we are not yet included in an active community if that makes.

Dennis
Sure.

Dana
Yeah.

Dennis
So in, whatever it was 2014, 2015, single mom had a work history with digital ad sales and in digital ad strategy. And you have a dream. Right. So where’d that dream come from. What was that dream and how did you go about developing it?

Katie
You know, so like I said, it kind of just came out of it just makes sense, you know, like a lot of ideas. You think about it and you’re like, well, that’s not exactly rocket science. We put pictures into text messages for brands. It was back in 2013 where I did start kind of working on this whole idea, and I said well that just makes more sense. And as we looked around for potential vendors that we could use to do this, because at that time at the Times I was like, well, could we do this for other brands?

Katie
And it just really didn’t exist in the way that we wanted it to. You know, I, I had no idea how to start a company. I had never raised money before. I watch Shark Tank a lot, which is, I’m not even joking, I learned a ton from Shark Tank. And, you know, after raising money the first time and getting started, I, me and the kids would watch Shark Tank and there would be times where we would pause it and they’d be like, okay, how would you answer that question?

Katie
And it really did help me prepare for some of those pitches and stuff later. But, you know, being in a larger corporation, and I have a lot of respect for Lee Enterprises, I’m incredibly grateful for the career that I had there, because they gave me the learning, the tools to learn, the confidence to continue to grow in a position. And so, you know, I don’t think that without the experience I had gained there, I would even be doing this. But, you know, when I started working on the idea, I realized that I wanted to be able to build something that I could call my own.

Katie
And, you know, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs start businesses because they don’t necessarily want to live within the same confines and rules as larger corporations do. And that’s part of what I wanted, was to have an atmosphere and a culture that was different, and I always had a very strong work ethic, and I just really wanted to be able to use that towards something that I can build on my own with an awesome team on my own.

Dennis
And by the way, I do this with Dana quite, quite frequently when, when we’re talking to somebody I already know, I don’t give her a chance to get a word in edgewise. So, Dana, jump in whenever you like.

Dana
It’s fine.

Katie
You’re just sitting here looking pretty, cute glasses.

Dennis
Yeah. You mentioned you wanted to develop that culture on your own in your own work environment. And I know that your sister, Sarah Castillo, is also part of this, a co-founder. And I guess her title is President. How does that fit? First of all, how did she get brought into this? What’s, what’s the division of responsibilities and how does that add to the work culture? And, and I mean, if it were my brothers and I, we’d probably, the work culture would just be fighting all the time probably. I mean, I love them.

Katie
I mean, well of course. Of course. You know, and I’m not going to say that we have, like, this perfect relationship that thrives by running a business together. We definitely have our moments. We’ve learned how much time we can and should spend together and then when it’s too much. Right? So we had to figure out those boundaries. But Sarah was living in Nashville back in 2013 and she graduated from high school, went to University of Iowa, has a degree in marketing and communications.

Katie
And then she moved straight out to New York City and lived in New York for 4 years before deciding to relocate to Nashville. I had visited Sarah a couple of different times down there and she moved, I want to say a couple of years, like maybe 2011 or so, I fell in love with the area. I wasn’t in a position that I could relocate. And I loved my job at the Times at that point.

Katie
And so when we started, when I started working on this whole concept and I went to Sarah and I’m like, I have an idea. I think I want to start a company. I’m not ready to quit my job. Right? And that’s kind of where I was at. And I’m like, I can’t start this here because I would never want to compete with The Times. And so, you know, and obviously that mindset changed, but…

Dennis
You got past that.

Katie
I kind of got over that. Sorry, Times. Sorry, Lee Enterprises. But, you know, again, they were very helpful in all of this, they just don’t even know it. But Sarah and I, you know, I went to her and I’m like, I, I believe that your experience in marketing communications and she had done a lot of promotional marketing. Sarah has a really great energy that, she just is good at getting people to be excited about a product, whether it was Red Bull back in the day or now with TapOnIt. And so I’m like with you, I think that you can help us figure out the consumer side of this.

Katie
What do people want? How do we get them to opt in? What kind of user experience are we looking for? And then how do we train and continue to onboard and spread that energy even further?

Katie
And so initially I asked her, I’m like, hey, you want to start a company? And she’s like, uhh, sure.

Dennis
Why not?

Katie
But we were going to start, yeah, exactly. I’m not doing much. We are going to start Nashville at that point. And initially we had talked to a couple of people about possibly investing. Again, I really didn’t know what I was doing then, but then we got busy with life and it really wasn’t until January of ’14 that we started getting a little more serious and that I decided I was ready for a change.

Katie
And it was June of 2014 that I left my job. And at that point we were able to start talking about building out the plan. I met our first investor, Jim Thompson, who’s a local Quadcitizen, that he was the first investor in the company in October. And we really just you know, there was no, this wasn’t going to be a side hustle. It wasn’t a part time gig. We decided at that point that we were going to put everything into it and we started building and growing from there.

Dennis
So you mentioned Jim Thompson and you, as your first investor. I you know, having been a businessman myself, I know what it’s like getting started. How did you get the interest of someone to invest to begin with? And how is it that that propelled you? Talk a little bit maybe about your first year in business, because not just tech companies, but certainly tech companies and any business really have a huge fail rate the first year or two. And you’re now year five or so, is that right?

Katie
It’s almost six.

Dennis
Almost six years.

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
So, so obviously you had to deal with some hurdles that first year or two. Talk, talk to us a little bit about that.

Katie
Yeah. So starting now with the first part of your question there, how did I even get the interest of Jim, in this case, to invest? And a very roundabout way. So, you know, for local people here, you probably might know Steve Grubbs, who is another local entrepreneur, and he had started a company called Chalk Bites. And him and I had talked and he was looking to see if he could bring me on to the team. And he was very interested in that.

Katie
And I thought it was cool. And he asked me to meet with his partner at that point, which is Jim Thompson. And so I met Jim for the very first time back in October of ’14 at a coffee shop in downtown Davenport. And it was just a couple of days after I met with Steve and he asked me some questions about myself and asked me if I was interested. And I politely declined and said, well, I think it’s really cool what they’re doing, it’s just not necessarily my passion, and I have a couple of ideas.

Katie
And he’s like, well, what is it that you want to do? And I had no intention of pitching him at that point, but I started talking to him about what is now TapOnIt. And for some of you, you probably know that the company was originally called JumpOnIt. So it was JumpOnIt back then when I talked to him and I learned a very expensive lesson in trademarking in my first year of business. So there’s another challenge for ya, that I overcame. I learned the hard way and the expensive way, but it only takes once.

Dennis
TapOnIt is a better name anyways.

Katie
It makes more sense, right? Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I started talking to Jim about the whole idea around JumpOnIt and it was literally like, OK, let’s do that. And I’m like, oh, all right.

Dennis
So what’s Jim’s number? I have some ideas.

Katie
Exactly right. And, you know, again, I had no clue what I was doing. I had a PowerPoint, right, that I had put together and I had ideas on the business model and how we’re going to generate revenue. And I had put together projections, but it wasn’t a complete proforma. Jim, helped me learn a lot of that stuff. And the other way that I learned was Googling and reading and looking at pitch decks from other startups and just really figuring stuff out as, as I went along.

Katie
And so, yeah, Jim was our first investor and he provided introductions to a couple of other people over the next year that ended up investing as well. So I believe in like the first year and a half, we raised about a million and a half or so, which is a great starting point, but not enough when you want to build a tech company. And so I started working on raising additional funds initially in 2017 and I, I wish I had kept track of how many pitches I did, especially in the Midwest.

Katie
I went to people in Chicago, all over Iowa, all over Illinois, and mainly through introductions. And I was told no in every which way you could possibly imagine, which is super disheartening and hard. And when you have an idea, it’s this is your baby, right? And so they would tell you your baby’s ugly and then they’d kick your dog on the way out the door. So it was it was rough.

Katie
If you were to ask, some of the people have known me a long time, I don’t do well with no. So, yeah.

Dennis
I can’t imagine that.

Katie
I know, right? But I started thinking a little bit bigger and thinking outside the box and in December of 2017, my sister and I went out to New York. I had scheduled meetings with a couple of different people. One of them was Gatehouse Media, who at that time was owned by New Media Ventures. They are now Gannett, the whole group of them. So they’re the largest newspaper company in the United States.

Katie
And I was able to pitch them 1) initially on becoming a partner with TapOnIt Deals. Like let’s work together to spread TapOnIt Deals across the country. But what was really amazing is, first of all, when I showed up there, I thought I was just meeting with a couple of people from Gatehouse, but I walked into this boardroom where I think there were eight or nine people around the table and me and I felt like this big, right? About an inch.

Katie
And then another group of people that were called in. At that point, it was just, they were called in, and wasn’t Zoom, but, and I they asked to hear about the investment side. They asked a lot of great questions. And I went to lunch with one of the guys. Afterwards, he asked more questions. And the next day before we even left New York, I had an offer in my email that they wanted to invest. And so they ended up investing $2 million in January of ’18 and, for ownership in the company.

Katie
And that is really what helped to propel our growth, over the past few years. It had helped us grow into new markets, hire more people, continue to develop our product. And yeah, and they’ve been a great partner. They’re incredibly supportive and they’ve provided a lot of introductions to other people.

Dennis
That’s great. And I assume that in addition to the investment money that has been generated, you’ve also generated revenue from sales, right?

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
Now now you had to have some kind of start up money to do some marketing in order to, you know, even get salespeople on board, and obviously, your customers. How did you manage that? Was that all just the money that you raised from, from Jim?

Katie
Partially, yeah.

Dennis
Yeah.

Katie
Yeah, but it was it was the money that we raised from Jim that also helped us get the initial build out, like the phase one of our technology going. And, you know, we weren’t totally ready to jump into hiring people we didn’t know yet. We felt like we needed to validate the model and figure things out a little. And so, our first employee, Rachel Bowling, who is still a team member here, we started out at my kitchen table and it was kind of all hands on deck.

Katie
We all were working on sales. We all were working on onboarding and reporting. And at that point, nothing was automated. And we went to a lot of the local businesses here in the Quad Cities to start and said, hey, we’re trying something new. We’ll give you a free month or a couple of months if you do a great offer. And that kind of seeded the calendar to get things started.

Katie
And if you were to look at my original projections, or pro forma for the business, my goal have kind of been to get to a point where we had ten thousand people in the database. If we had ten thousand people in the database, the numbers all worked, a market would be profitable and we could go on to the next one. Well, by the end of the first year, we had eighteen thousand people in our database and I thought it was going to take a couple of years to get there.

Katie
And so things ended up growing actually faster than we thought it would. And the redemption rate for these businesses, like I mentioned, was just, it was great. And so they were happy to continue advertising with us even after a free month. And so, yeah, we started generating revenue. We continued to double our revenue year over year until 2020.

Dennis
Right. We’ll talk about that.

Katie
Yeah, but yeah. So that was kind of how we got started and we didn’t spend a ton of money on marketing because we didn’t really have a ton of money to spend.

Dennis
That’s always a good reason.

Katie
So yeah, it’s tough to spend money you don’t have. I mean I figured it out before, but, the kids, my kids were flyering cars. We had booths at the River Bandits games. We did partnerships with as many people as we could. I remember having a booth at the Mississippi Valley Fair where if you signed up, you would get a koozie. We had cheerleaders from Pleasant Valley helping to work the booth. I mean, we really were doing some grassroots marketing to get out and about and, which was exhausting. If I never work another booth, promo booth again, it will be too soon. But it worked.

Dennis
Yeah. For sure.

Katie
And so, I mean, and I think that there’s a lot of companies that do that you scratch your way to the top, right?

Dennis
Where, where did you get your tech? I mean, where do you have developers that work for you? Is this something that you contract with someone or how did that all come about?

Katie
Yes, all of the above.

Dennis
Okay.

Katie
So initially when we started, we had partnered with a company that already had, like some of the pieces of what we wanted to build. And so we contracted with them to do the additional dev work in order to create what we wanted in a platform. And that was fine for a while. But to be honest, like within the first few months, we realized that speed-wise they weren’t necessarily going to be able to keep up with us and what we wanted for development and also that the rates that we were paying, we would save a whole lot of money if we cut out a middleman, right?

Katie
So we ended up hiring some people and contracting with a team to build our own proprietary platform. And so we’ve been working on that and continuing to build upon that over the past five years. We have developers in-house here in the Quad Cities and then we also have a team in Greece that we contract with. And so we literally…

Dennis
Which you have to visit them every, every so often, I assume. Right?

Katie
Yeah. Covid really screwed that up.

Katie
So yes. Yeah, I did go visit summer of ’19 and it was amazing. But they first of all, it allows for us to really have people working on the project at all times because we’ve got our team here working, you know, however long and then their team keeps going and we’re working to continue to grow our team in-house and ship some of those resources back here. But it’s been a great way to keep things moving. And we just try and build more cool shit all the time.

Dennis
Sure.

Katie
Oh, sorry.

Dennis
Hey, this isn’t television. You can say what you want. Damn it.

Katie
Fantastic.

Dennis
Yeah.

Katie
Okay, thanks.

Dennis
So you touched on 2020 and obviously the pandemic has adversely impacted the economy across the board. But I would say, I’d argue in particular, bars, restaurants, folks like that, other retailers, many of whom I’m sure are your target customers. And I know we’ve talked about how that has impacted you. I mean, obviously, if they don’t have money, if they’re closed down, they can’t spend it on on advertising or marketing efforts. So how how has that impacted you and what have you done to deal with it?

Katie
Yeah, 2020 was a mess. And we’re still, it’s not over, right? I mean, as we all know, people have not returned to just living their lives as they did pre-Covid, it’ll be a long time, I think, before we really see that. Yeah, we took a super hard hit. Our revenue from January or February to May dropped about 80%, which is a big number. And it’s scary. You know, luckily, we had raised the money we could make things through.

Katie
We were incredibly thankful for the PPP money that we got. It really helped. But it also kind of forced us to think about things a bit differently. And so, first of all, TapOnIt Deals is really, they’re a client of our technology and advertising revenue is a scary role to be in and to rely on just ad sales because they are fickle. You can have an advertiser who one year loves you and spends a million bucks and then the next year they spend nothing at all and there’s not anything you can do about it.

Katie
They want to try something different. And so one of the things that 2020 really made me think about is what we could do to be more stable. And part of that is our SaaS platform so that we’re not just relying on ad sales and that we have more like monthly recurring revenue that we can rely upon. And so…

Dennis
Would you explain that a little bit more so everyone understands what you’re talking about?

Katie
Sure.

Dennis
Including me.

Katie
So, yeah. Sorry. Kind of a nerd, right? OK, so TapOnIt Deals. It’s an advertising model, right? We’re free to consumers. Message and data rates may apply. If you want to sign up, you text the word TapOnIt to the number 82928. We ask for your zip code, send back your zip code, you get opted in. Businesses pay to advertise to those people and they pay on a cost per person basis, ranging from three cents up to fifteen cents per person. And so that had been our major revenue stream.

Katie
But like I mentioned, we never send out a campaign without food or beverage offers in it. Which when Covid first hit it, everyone was afraid. Unless you were already set up for delivery or drive through or carry out, which you think about the industries that did that well. It was pizza and Chinese food and things like that, whereas every other business, they had to recreate their entire business model and learn how to do that. And then they also had to teach their customers that they don’t only have to order pizza, that they could order from them, too.

Katie
So, I mean, it was a whole new world, not just for us, but for them as well. So for the first couple, through March and April, our sales team, we tried to continue to operate the same way that we had calling on restaurants, trying to get them to advertise.

Katie
But the stories were heartbreaking. These businesses were afraid how they were going to keep their lights on and how they were going to keep people employed. And so it really did it change things. We ended up giving away over $1 million in advertising in May because it felt like the right thing to do. Did it make it hard on us? Yeah, but we also formed new relationships and we know that we really did make a difference for the businesses.

Dennis
So you didn’t just give that to your existing clients? You actually were able to generate new ,new relationships.

Katie
Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis
That’s smart, too, for you.

Katie
Right, right. And it has there are many things that have come back to us since then. I’m a big believer and, you know, let’s put good energy out in the world because it usually does come back. Yeah. Karma, you know, it’s powerful. So, you know, we have we built new relationships and it’s open new doors. But that revenue where somebody says they’re going to advertise maybe once a month or quarterly, you really have to resell it every time, every year, right?

Katie
And the next year, they may decide that they’re going to put those advertising dollars, their budget, because there’s only so many dollars to go around, into a different advertising medium. And so that’s where that risky revenue kind of lays. Whereas when you have monthly recurring revenue, something that’s contracted that you can count on, that the clients are going to continue to want and need, even if there are changes in the economy, it just makes your business model a little bit safer.

Katie
And so our solution for that is our white label or our SAS, which is Software as a Service, platform. And so that’s where we help brands use our technology to build their own database, to engage with them, to push marketing messages, communication, whatever that message is that they want to get out to their database and then to track and analyze. And really, the end goal is to, you know, convert and drive a return.

Dennis
So are you are you basically leasing your technology to allow them to do their own text messaging campaigns, for instance?

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
OK, alright. That’s easy enough.

Katie
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you think about it like MailChimp or Survey Monkey, right? Those all software as a service where you can use it for, to accomplish whatever goals you want. And we’re here with best practices and ideas and an awesome strategy team that will make sure that these brands are able to do what they want it to do. But yeah, no that’s exactly right.

Dennis
Well, you know, obviously you’ve come a long way in a relatively short period of time. And I know that there are a lot of people who would love to take whatever their idea is for a business and, and bring it to to the market and take it to the next level. So I want to pick your brain about some of the things that you would encourage people to think about.

Dennis
So, for instance, do you have for you do you have any industry heroes or mentors that you would like to emulate? And how important is it to someone just getting started, getting started to kind of hitch their wagon to a star that’s already out there?

Katie
Yeah, I love Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. A couple of podcasts that I listen to that I learn a lot from, How I Built This, and Masters of Scale. And there are episodes with her in both of them and her story and how she started the idea for Spanx and everything she did to actually get women into that product is just, it’s inspirational.

Katie
She she did it herself. She didn’t, hasn’t raised money. She is self-funded, which is absolutely insane. She’s also hilarious, so follow her on Instagram too. Her journeys are always entertaining, but I love listening to her speak. I read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of books, actually, I should say I don’t have time to sit down and read them. So audio books.

Dennis
What books would you recommend?

Katie
Well, right now I’m listening to the most recent book from Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix. It’s No Rules Rules. And it talks a lot about culture and creating a culture of innovation and freedom with responsibility. And I’m really enjoying that. Masters of Scale. Reid Hoffman, he is the founder. He was one of the original founders of LinkedIn. He has a book called Blitzscaling. If you are someone who has an idea, especially in the tech space, that you really could see from going to not just a startup, but, you know, grow up and scaling from there, scale up, that Blitzscaling book can really help to give ideas on setting a path forward.

Katie
I’m trying to think what else? I could send you a whole list, of course, I can’t think of them right now.

Dennis
Well, that’s OK now, obviously, you know, we talked about the kids and being a single mom who’s getting a business going and maintaining that business. Talk a little bit about family and how it is that you make time for the kids and and carve out that that obviously important part of your life to make sure that all is well on the family front.

Katie
Yeah, well, first of all, you know, it’s certainly not perfect. And we have had to figure out a balance between this. People talk about like work life balance. And I don’t really think about such a real thing. It’s more like a work life integration, you know, and that’s OK as long as you accept it and know that you need to work with that. So my kids have been extremely involved and in the know about everything I’ve been doing really since the beginning.

Katie
I’m incredibly blessed that my mom and my stepdad Kevin are within a block of where I live. Without them, I would not be able to do any of this. When it came to me traveling, my mom will stay at the house with my kids, well she doesn’t need to anymore because my son is 18, which is crazy. But whenever I needed to travel, she was there. And you know, I know that single mom, which I often feel like that title almost has a negative connotation, like it’s your life is so much harder and you’re working two jobs to make ends meet.

Katie
And I never felt like I was doing this on my own. Like, you know, I know that, yes, I am a single mom. I because I am not married, therefore I am single, but I’m not alone. I, you know, like people talk about how it takes a village to raise a kid. And like I have a whole village around me that have helped me be a mom.

Dennis
You know, I think you are downplaying. I know it to be true what you’re saying about having that support group around you. There are a lot of folks, single moms, single dads even, who don’t have that. And they probably find it daunting to start, or they would, find it daunting and intimidating to start a business. So I think you shouldn’t downplay your own accomplishments in doing that. Is there anything specific that you would recommend to a person in that position as far as taking it to the next level?

Katie
You know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be family that is your your village or your network or your support system. Your friends, other entrepreneurs in the area, other people in business in general who have experience that they’re willing to share. I think it’s important to build a network in general for, you know, a sounding board and, you know, just people who have your back. I hate to say cheerleaders, because it sounds very feminine and it doesn’t need to just be women, but your cheerleaders, the people who are helping to push you forward and stay positive and motivated.

Katie
I, for me, one of the most important things that I think has really led to us continuing to grow is how I network. I think networking is incredibly important. We all meet lots of different people throughout our lives. And you just never know when somebody that you met in your past can really help you to propel your future. And so knowing how to follow up with an email or a text message or a connection on LinkedIn, where then years later you can be like, hey, remember when we talked, I was wondering if… Because a number of times that people will say, let me know if you need anything or, hey, if I can help, let me know.

Katie
And we never ask, right? You just never ask for the help. And most of the time they actually mean it. You know, people are willing to help and they, they want to because, you know, it’s our general nature that we do want to see other people to be successful and to be happy. And if we can help give them a leg up on that, I think that most people will do it. So knowing when to ask for help, knowing how to stay connected and not being afraid to, to just take that step and put yourself out there is, it’s tough, but it’s rewarding, and it can be done.

Dennis
You know Katie, there’s a million more questions I would have for you. I know your time is short today. I want, I want to play the game that, that I talked about.

Katie
Oh, yeah. Okay.

Dennis
Would You Rather? And I know Dana has some other questions for you, too, so I want her to chime in right now. Go ahead, Dana, and ask any questions that you have.

Dana
Any questions? Well, I had a lot of questions while you were talking, but that’s OK. So let’s see. What was your favorite thing to pretend when you were a child?

Katie
I played school a lot.

Dana
You played school?

Katie
Yes, I did. I played school a lot. And I was always the teacher and I was always very bossy. You can ask my sister. That was definitely, I played with Barbies a ton, which is kind of funny. Yesterday I was cleaning out my basement and I still have like my Barbie doll house that my grandpa made and all the furniture and stuff. And for some reason, I’m still going to continue to save that even though my kids never play with it, it’s just taking up space. But it made me think back to, it was you, you almost play house and then it’s your career. And but no I’ve definitely always been extremely bossy and the leader in that space.

Dana
So I feel like I know what this answer is going to be. But I’ll ask it anyway. Which punctuation mark would describe your personality the best?

Katie
There’s two. So exclamation point is definitely a big one. I love that question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. But then also semicolon. You know, it’s the story is not over. The sentence doesn’t need to end. We just keep going. And so even when things are hard, it doesn’t need to be the end. And so that’s where the semicolon comes in. But, yeah, even if you read emails from me and and it’s never just one exclamation point I usually sprinkle several, which I’ve been like constructive criticism that I should not do that, but whatever. I do whatever I want, so it’s fine.

Dana
Ahh, who cares? I love that I can see both of those, especially when you’re talking about how many times you heard no. And then you end up in New York. I, I have so many questions about that. But there’s no time.

Katie
Oh, my gosh. Well, you and I can talk any time. Next time over a beer for sure. Or wine or whatever. Yes. Or several.

Katie
But yeah, no, that was one of the most intimidating experiences. But then walking out and you know, I’m in New York, I was on Fifth Avenue and like leaving the meeting and walking away from the building. Like it just felt right, like I felt, like I called my sister and I was like, I nailed that, like that was awesome. Yeah, it was crazy though.

Dana
I love that. That’s great. OK, Dennis, you can start your game.

Dennis
Oh, well, I know you got some game. Alright, but we’re going to do, Would You Rather? You know this game, right?

Katie
I do. I do.

Dennis
All right.

Katie
Nervous.

Now these, these I made up because…

Katie
Oh good god.

Dennis
So would you rather be forced to listen to that song MMMBop every waking moment, but see TapOnIt, blossom into a billion dollar business or have just a living wage, but be able to call up any music you like just by thinking of it?

Katie
MMMBop! I mean, it’s a bop.

Dana
Oh god. I though that was the worst question ever.

Katie
It’s a billion dollars!

Dennis
It’s a billion dollars. Ok, I guess for a billion dollars. All right. All right.

Dennis
What would you rather have, just one eyebrow or just one ear?

Katie
Man, it makes me sound like super superficial, but I’m going to have to go with one ear.

Dennis
You can cover it, right?

Dana
Mm hmm.

Katie
Yeah, like, look, you can’t even see my ears other than my Airpods right now.

Dana
Yeah. That makes sense.

Katie
The eyebrow thing. Oh, well, but I mean, you could go like micro blade or whatever. I mean, I could draw them on.

Dana
Tattoo.

Katie
I don’t. That’s tough. I will say that I use the saying very frequently that God gave us two ears and one mouth. So we should listen twice as much as we talk, which today I don’t think I’ve done that.

Dennis
But you’re the guest.

Katie
Yeah, yeah. Thanks. OK, that’s fine.

Dennis
Alright. Would you read rather audibly burp whenever you speak or audibly fart whenever you laugh?

Katie
Definitely, whenever I laugh or whenever I speak? So like I open my mouth I burp. Yes.

Dana
All of those pitches, all of those pitches you’ve done.

Katie
I think I’m going to have to go with burping. That’s hilarious. I don’t want either of those.

Dennis
Well, do you have more, Dana?

Dana
Yeah, I do.

Dennis
Go ahead.

Dana
OK, so would you rather have to wear wet socks for the rest of your life or only be allowed to brush your teeth once a year?

Katie
Oh no, no, definitely wet socks. I brush my teeth like three times a day. Seriously. Yeah. Definitely the wet socks, although I don’t even like socks in general, so that sounds terrible. Yeah.

Dana
Wet socks.

Katie
Yeah, but the teeth. What would you pick.

Dana
I don’t know. I really don’t know. I have to be honest. Wet socks. I mean then you get, you could lose your foot!

Katie
Well and I know and I was thinking like fungus but the teeth, once a year?

Dana
I mean it’s gross but, I know.

Katie
Can I use like mouth wash? I mean I feel like we really have to put…

Dennis
We’re changing the hypothetical here. Building in too much. Yeah.

Katie
Alright, alright.

Dennis
Do you have another one, Dana.

Dana
Yeah. Yeah. OK, so would, this is just very mild, would you rather talk like Master Yoda or breathe like Darth Vader?

Dennis
And then you have to do either of them.

Katie
(Breathing loudly). Breathing loudly, am I?

Dennis
There you go.

Dana
Now I’m picturing you in New York doing pitches.

Dennis
Yeah, right.

Dana
Like Master Yoda, or breathing.

Katie
I think I’m going to go with Yoda.

Dennis
TapOnIt, is it?

Katie
You just keep. Yeah, yeah. I feel like people would really have to listen and pay attention. And so and they all, I mean Yoda is wise.

Dennis
That’s true.

Katie
All right. I’m going to sound like Yoda.

Dennis
Very good. I think you should do some more. Do some more Yoda for us.

Katie
No. Now I’m embarrassed.

Dennis
Speaking of embarrassing, what’s, what’s the most embarrassing blunder you made while developing TapOnIt and getting to the point where you’re at right now?

Katie
Oh, shi…

Dennis
She almost said shit again! Did you hear?

Katie
The fact that I, I’ve been pretty well behaved, really. Usually the F word. My mom would be so mad at me if I said that right now. My most embarrassing blunder? I don’t know, there’s, like of course, I’m sure that there’s tons and tons, but none of them really stand out horribly, which is good.

Dennis
You did it all perfect then.

Katie
No, no, no. I’m sure that there are millions. But I think that that actually holds a good lesson, because in the moment when you do something embarrassing, it’s like the end of the world, right? And you feel like your life is over and it’s going to impact everything going forward.

Katie
But, and I know that I have done stupid shit. Let’s be real. You know, wrong word. I don’t know, just making mistakes in general. But they do not define you. And right now, I can’t even think of what any of them are.

Dennis
Well, obviously, whatever you’ve done, you’ve gotten past and you’ve attained this level of success, so that’s great.

Katie
I would guess the name, the name thing was a big one. That was not only an expensive lesson, but I was embarrassed that I didn’t know better and didn’t do the right research myself to figure out if JumpOnIt was a name that was free and open. I thought that I had. I thought that I had done all of the research. I thought I had ask the right questions. I thought I had all the right information.

Katie
But let’s be real, I didn’t know what I was doing. And so when it came time where we had to change the name, I was actually super embarrassed about having to do that. First of all, we loved our logo. We loved our name. People already knew it. They would sing the jump on it, you know jump on it, like whenever you talked about it. And so to make that change, it was hard and sad and we had to throw away a ton of koozies and pens and everything else.

Katie
But I remember talking to somebody like totally random, like I don’t even know how much longer after we had actually pushed the name TapOnIt out to the public. And somebody was like, well, I don’t care if you call it crap on it, as long as you keep sending me great offers. And I’m like, I think I lost too much sleep over that.

Dennis
That’s right. Yeah.

Katie
Yeah.

Dennis
Again, I don’t want to take up too much more of your time. But Dana, do you have any, any closing questions or thoughts?

Dana
No, I just, I think it’s great. I’m tired just hearing everything that you’ve done. I don’t know how you have enough time in the day.

Dennis
That’s why she was yawning. It was nothing else. Nothing personal.

Dana
I did not yawn.

Katie
No, it’s, it’s hard. Some days are harder than others. I went to bed at nine o’clock last night. I’m not going to lie. I did because my brain, especially on Mondays, I’m just like, OK, I think I’m done.

Dana
Yeah.

Katie
But you know, you got to learn how to make time for yourself and, you know, work hard, play hard, right? So I’m working my ass off right now, so hopefully I don’t have to work at all at some point.

Dennis
Yeah. I just got a couple more quick questions for you, Katie. It seems to me that anyone, you know who’s attained any real level of success, either in business or or even personal success comes to a crossroads, a turning point in their life where it could be something random that happens, that really changes the trajectory of things.

Dennis
Have you experienced that? Is there something that you can point to where you just go, wow, if this hadn’t occurred, I probably would not be where I’m at or I probably would have gone a different direction?

Katie
I mean, I think there’s been a couple of things, and sometimes it’s, you know, it’s immediately like, oh, that just makes sense and it’s the right choice. And then there’s others where it’s like, OK, that was a really hard lesson to learn. Clearly, when we got the investment from Gate House, Gannett back in the day, that was something that completely changed the course and our speed of growth and the trajectory of the company. And so that was huge.

Katie
You know, gosh, the 2020 changed a lot and, during the year, like going through some of the stuff where, you know, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to make payroll and we had to make hard decisions. We did pay cuts and furloughs and things like that where, you know, the last thing that I want to do is make my employees lives, my teammates lives, harder.

Katie
And I mean, it’s a lot of responsibility to have, I think we’re at 24 people now, that are relying on, their family is relying on this paycheck, right? Like that’s it. This changes not only our lives, but theirs too, and I think, though, that the lessons we learned in 2020 about being flexible, you know, I used to always be all about like people work in the office because. But what you need to have a team that you can trust and if you don’t trust them, then they’re probably not the right people for your team.

Dennis
Right.

Katie
And so we, I look around at the people in our office now or from home or wherever they’re working, and we have a badass team that worked their butts off to make the company what it is. And so I think that that was a big change in mindset was to, you know, just really find the right people and put trust in them because it helps us grow.

Katie
That also allowed for me to let go. I don’t know if you can tell but, I’m a little bit of a control freak. I mentioned being bossy. I don’t do well with the word no. And so I’ve had to learn how to let go of things and not even just delegate, but let people take the lead, right? And I mean, in the past year, being able to do that and letting people run with their sides of the business, which once you trust people and you know you have the right people in the position, there’s no reason not to do that.

Katie
But doing that has allowed for me to work on other things. And those people are thriving. And I don’t question, you know, their level of dedication, which has been big.

Dennis
So we’re putting 2020 aside. And my last question to you then is what is it that you’re looking, what are your hopes and your goals for the coming year, both personally and with respect to TapOnIt?

Katie
Oh, personally. So my son got accepted to NYU, which is incredibly exciting. He will be going there in the fall, which kind of makes me want to cry a little bit. But this has been his plan forever, and I’m incredibly excited for him to be able to do that. I’m also excited for that opportunity then where me and my daughter will, we have a couple of years, right? Where it’s just the two of us. And she’s amazing. And I’m excited for that time that we have.

Katie
For this year, we have some goals technology-wise, like there’s some cool stuff that we’re working on that we want to get rolled out. We obviously have goals for revenue. We have goals for onboarding new clients, hiring. But what we’re looking to do right now is to really show growth. From 2020 into 2021 and set ourselves up for that continued growth, I mean, like I mentioned, we had been doubling our revenue year over year and then 2020 hit, and that didn’t happen.

Katie
So, I don’t like steps backwards. I like big leaps forward. And so we need to, we need to come back from that. I’m raising money, again, which seems like a never ending task. So, if you know anybody let me know. But the plan would be then that most likely next year we would raise a series A, and so a much larger investment, that hopefully will be our last round of funding and will also allow for us to hit those milestones that we really want to get to going forward.

Katie
You know, long term goals. You know, like I said, I work really hard right now, so hopefully I don’t have to work at all later. And, you know, whether it’s a merger or an acquisition or whatever those next steps are, I’ve had a number in my head of what that should look like. And we’re doing everything we can.

Dennis
Tens of Gillion dollars.

Katie
That’s exactly what it is. I don’t even know how many zeros, but I want all the zeros. No, but, you know, we’re, we’re hoping that, you know, within the next five years that, that happens.

Dennis
Well, great. Well, I’m sure we could go on and on, but I know again that your time is short. So I just want to thank you for joining us today. Hopefully we can have you back in the future and…

Katie
I would love that!

Dennis
…see how much closer you are to all that and do some more of the Would You Rathers.

Katie
You guys are clever. Those were funny. Those were super funny. And now I have to like go and think about and I might email you and be like I changed my mind. I gunna not brush my teeth. I found alternatives.

Dennis
Call us back up. I’d rather wear the wet socks! I’ve thought about it.

Katie
This was super fun. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on your podcast show and yeah.

Dennis
Oh it’s our pleasure, loved it.

Katie
Alright.

Dennis
And I will definitely thank everyone who tuned in and ask that you like and subscribe to Uncommon Convos. If you’d like to watch this video, and of course you will simply go to vlaw.com and follow the prompts.

Dennis
Also, be sure to check out our other podcast, Legal Squeaks.

Dennis
We hope you’ll all join us next week. In the meantime, stay safe. And I love you all.