"Don't give up, tenacity is huge, it's the whole thing." - Spencer Handley

About: Spencer Handley- Founder of PodClear

Overview: Spencer is a passionate entrepreneur who is out to help Podcasters achieve the greatest results with each of their interviews. He shares his background and what experiences and desires have led him to where he is today.

Click to Tweet: Ep 173: Spencer Handley - Building Crystal Clear Audi Tools

Highlights:

Spencer's Background: Spencer is from Colorado originally, lived in LA- went to UCLA where he studied Chinese- actually lived in China for a year and ran a small little language acquisition tool business where he manufactured Chinese tools. He was also a musician (received an Associates in Music Composition) so he worked as a Jazz Musician/DJ in a night club. When he came back from China he went to Draper University, which is a school for entrepreneurs, and at the end of that program he pitched his business plan to venture capitalists and ended up winning the competition. From there, Spencer ran an enterprise software company for manufacturing for a year- had pretty good traction with it, but ended up folding the company because it wasn't what Spencer really wanted to do with his life. After that, he became heavily involved in consulting and is also planning on sticking with PodClear for as long as possible- it's more up his alley of work.

What is PodClear: A software application for desktop (both Mac and PC) that allows podcast interviewers to interview guests with crystal clear audio quality. It records locally on both people's machines, and you are able to have unlimited guests. After the calls are complete, the audio files are synced to PodClear's servers, processed, and as a result you get uncompressed audio for your podcasts.

How it Came About: Spencer is not a podcaster by trade, but is an avid podcast listener. The idea was evolved because Spencer and his team were listening to podcasts and found many of these podcasts were hard to hear. Spencer and his team were determined to create a way where the podcasts were recorded on both ends, and recorded crystal clear. It took about six weeks for Spencer and his team to create the software application.

How it Works: You simply invite someone to be on the show, start a PodClear session, add your interviewee/s into the session, and then it will send them a 4-step process to follow and then are quickly added into the recorded session.

Goals: Right now, Podclear has about 1,100 users. For Spencer, this is more of a passion product and not necessarily motived by money. The intention is to have this business to support them, and to be wherever they want (location independent) and let them interact with people the way they want to. Spencer does not work on PodClear full time, he is also an independent consultant. The more they can work on PodClear, the better the product they'll be able to have. They'd like to start working on it full time in April of this year.

Biggest Challenge: Finding personal balance- working full time as a consultant and working on PodClear on the side has proven to be a hard task. Spencer shares that it can be really easy to get burned out and lose balance with life, but he also realizes that it's all part of starting a company.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: Just keep experimenting until you find what works for you. Build a solid skill set that is marketable, something that has a high hour-to-cost ratio to help you bootstrap if necessary. Premeditate about what you want to do, choose what you love, and do what will work best for you.

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Connect With Spencer:

Website | @PodclearTweets | 

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"You can't wait for perfect...you have to put something out there, and then get a response." Jared Loftus

About: Jared Loftus- COO of Mastery Prep and CEO of College District

Overview: Jared started his entrepreneurial journey 10 years ago as a college student selling t-shirts from his backpack at football games. He shares more about where that journey has led him and what he does with Mastery Prep- an ACT prep program for schools all over the nation.

Highlights:

About Mastery Prep: Mastery Prep is an ACT Mastery program that is a support structure for principals and district administrators that helps them provide best-in-class ACT preparation to the students who need it most. They go in and train teachers and students on the most important information they'll need to know to take the ACT and SAT. Mastery Prep also has an online component with work books that students can use to study at their own pace. Currently, they have about 50-60 tutors with the program, but are continuing to grow rapidly and are preparing to launch in other states.

How it Works: Since they're a new company, their sales team will go out to the schools and pitch what Mastery Prep can do for them. Mastery Prep can create a custom program for each of the schools/districts/states. Right now they are in about 6-8 states. Patrick shares that they are much more confident in the success of their program when they can control what's implemented into each workbook/program. They have seen a huge increase in Juniors' test results and are very happy with the direction of their success.

Jared's Role at Mastery Prep: As the COO there, he handles more of the business aspect of the company. He makes sure that they have the structure, employees, and delivery that they need to make sure the company runs smoothly.

Biggest Challenge: For Mastery Prep, the toughest challenge is managing such massive growth. It's growing so rapidly it can be tough to keep on top of building the team and having the right people on board in the right places. They spend a lot of their time working on this problem. Although sales aren't necessarily easy, it's the easiest aspect of their company right now.

About College District: This company was Jared's first real entrepreneurial experience. In college, he was running for student body office and needed to raise funds. He started selling t-shirts out of his backpack at football games and other college events and next thing he knew, it had turned into a little company. Through demand, Jared eventually opened a retail store next to the college campus where he could sell his t-shirts. About 6 years later, Jared sold the actual store location in 2010 and went fully online. College District also uses a crowdsource to let fans tell the company what kind of t-shirts they want.

Revenue for College District: At their peak, College District generated close to 1M, but it varies now according to the football season and success of their local schools in Louisiana.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: You have to know what your motives are- what you are doing and why you are doing it. You can't wait for perfect, you have to put something out there and then get a response. At some point, you have to make it happen. You have to decide you're going to do it, and then just do it.

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Connect With Jared:

Website | @JaredLoftus | LinkedIn | Instagram | AboutMe

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