Mecca Tartt
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I am so excited because today we have Anthony Joiner, the founder of Blooksy. He also participated in one of the Startup Runway Showcases that took place last year in 2022. And so we are so excited to touch bases and see how things are going with Blooksy and what growth has happened since the Startup Runway Showcase. Anthony, welcome.
Anthony Joiner
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and to have this conversation.
Mecca Tartt
Absolutely. So, Anthony, I follow much of what you post on LinkedIn. So there have been many updates between December 2022 and now July 2023. Before we even get into that, I want to pause for a second. And for those who need to learn what Blooksy does or who Blooksy is, tell them a little about your startup.
Anthony Joiner
Thank you again. So, first of all, my name is Anthony Joiner. I’m the founder of Blooksy. Blooksy is a software platform that uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to accelerate the process of writing books for writers, research papers, dissertations for academics, and essays for kids. It also has custom templates that accelerate that process as well. I’m enjoying this process, and we’re helping many people get published in all three spaces. So universities, kids, and writers get their works published.
Mecca Tartt
And so, how did this come about?
Anthony Joiner
Well, before the pandemic, I ran a publishing company. It was a hybrid publishing model. And I worked with many, probably over 300, to help them write and publish their books. The tradition And, of course, during the pandemic, we were all at home and couldn’t do workshops, primarily my model prior to the pandemic. One night, one of my good friends’ book projects went crap. And I asked myself that night. Why can’t I build a tool to simplify and accelerate the writing process? Before this career, I spent 20 years in corporate America building software, like the CDC, Delta Airlines, and Georgia Department of Transportation. So I have done large-scale software projects but have yet to do them myself. So during the pandemic, when this happened, I asked myself that question. It led me down a path of building something writers could use because I understood all the problems writers face when trying to publish their books. Still, then I asked myself another question that guy said: if I’m going to build this, who are the other people outside of writers that can use this? Because I’m a writer myself, and writers are finicky. Right. And what I mean by that is we have users that say, well, if I can’t highlight my text, I can’t use the tool. Right. And even though that has nothing to do with finishing your book, they’ll find one thing they’re a stickler on and won’t use your tool. So I understood that I needed a bigger market, but I could do enterprise-type sales too because that could sustain the revenue model, and then I could still solve the problem for traditional writers. So, that led us to university. So that’s how we got here or why I built it in the first place.
Mecca Tartt
Awesome. No. So, okay. So move us forward, you started right before the pandemic, and your background has led to just knowing about building software and the need that was out there in the marketplace for writers. And so, what has happened since actually moving forward with your MVP and creating your startup? What are some of your biggest wins to date that you’ve had?
Anthony Joiner
Early on, I had an advantage because I was already working with writers, and when the pandemic started, I threw all of my writers into a Facebook group. So I had a captive audience of people that I was already helping. So when I decided to do this, I went live on Facebook inside my group and said, Hey guys, I’m considering building this software. I am still determining what it’s called, but here’s what it will do. And I did a PDF of everything I was thinking about. And I said, guys, listen, would you pay for it if I build this? And I just got buy-in before I made anything. So they said yes. So, I started building and shared it with the group as I created it. And it’s funny; I found a video the other day from back in 2020, where I had the first ugly version of what I built. And I, as soon as we launched that first alpha prototype, I had my first person pay me 20 a month, and my daughter was like, wait a minute, they’re paying you for the thing you drew on the wall. So from the beginning, that was my unfair advantage. But what happened very early was my first ten people used our platform to publish. Three of them were college professors. Right. Okay. One of them contacted me, and she said, look, Ajay, I know you built this for writers. But I’m using it for my dissertation, which I said is interesting because I would eventually build a dissertation template. So she showed me what she was doing, and I said, okay, well, let me, let me keep going down this rabbit hole. So I contacted the other two professors, and they were using them for different purposes. One was using it for a grant. I’m sorry, not a grant, a proposal. And so I looked at what she was doing, and she introduced me to another professor at the University of South Florida. I had a 30-minute call with her, which turned into a three-hour one. Wow. She was so excited, and she said, well, AJ, you know, give me a few months, and I’ll get some professors together. I said, okay, well listen, her name is, her name is Barbara. I said, Barbara, I will be in Tampa in two weeks. So I’ll be there if you could get three or four professors. She said I will be here in two weeks. I’ll be sure to get some people together. So I hung up the phone. I bought my plane ticket and was in Tampa two weeks later. I was blown away then because by then, six professors at the University of South Florida had bought their licenses, and they used our software platform to do a call for proposals and ended up winning the bid. Not only did they win the proposal, but they cut their production time from 13 weeks down to 10 days because of their leverage. Artificial intelligence is built on open AI, but we rolled it out back in 2021, way before all this ChatGPT craziness, right? So we were ahead of the game on that. But that’s given us another unfair advantage in the market because our university partners trust us. After all, they don’t trust ChatGPT. Still, they trust us to vet whatever we’re developing for them. That gives us an end to the university partners that we have.
Mecca Tartt
No, well, that sounds amazing. I wanted to find out, too, from you, Anthony, how you have gone about finding or seeking mentors.
Anthony Joiner
So that’s been, it’s been tough because I’m juggling. I wear a development hat because I understand the development cycle. I am forced into a role in sales, although I’m not a salesman. Pause for a second, pause for one second. You were forced into the role of sales. So, I’ve been in sales for almost 20-plus years. And so I want to pause you for one. Yeah. I want to pause you for one second because. You know, we have different conversations with different founders, and I’m always interested to hear about how they can put on their sales cap or if they are someone who loves and enjoys selling, selling the product.
Mecca Tartt
So I want you to talk about how you’ve been able to hone in and cultivate your sales skills.
Anthony Joiner
Great question. Thank you for asking that. Number one, I love learning, and I love challenges, right? So I immediately started listening to sales podcasts. Okay. I bought sales books. I bought conversational books that teach you how to start conversations—small talk. I bought how to close sales. I bought how to sell to anyone. I immersed myself in the selling process, but I came up short, right? Because my default or my love language is technology. So I would get onto sales calls, Mecca, and I would talk about Blooksy and demo Blooksy for 30 minutes nonstop, and the customers couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So then one of my dear friends, a salesperson, said, AJ, I want to help you out. Let me listen to one of your calls. So, I sent her maybe three Zoom calls, and she said, AJ, I love you, but you need to shut up. I said, what do you mean? She told me that If I allowed them to tell me what their problems were and the issues they struggled with, then the conversation would be natural because right now, I’m doing a demo, and I’m not asking them what their problems are. I’m assuming that I know. So that conversation immediately changed. So I had 20 sales conversations and possibly closed one deal. When I had that conversation, I started having second and third conversations with clients now because I would ask them, what are the things you’re struggling with? And I would shut up. And I would write down whatever they were struggling with because I knew Blooksy solved all their problems. Then I would speak only to the parts that they asked about. They were a lot more interested, right? And then this is where serendipity happened. I sponsored a conference of university professors. And there was a gentleman named JW at the table next to me. He’s now a partner in the business, 20 plus years in sales. He said, listen, I need to find out what you’re selling. Well, first, he said, what company do you work for? And I said this is my company. He’s like, wait a minute. This is your company. You’re the founder. I said, yeah. And he’s like, you, you own it. And I said, yeah. And he said, well, every professor here has stopped at your table to watch your demo. He said, do you have a salesperson? I said no. And I’m horrible at sales. He said, well if you have funding, I will come to work for you because I see all the interest in your company. So that’s where I am. Lisa and George. I talked to both of them, and George said, well, AJ, why don’t you offer him 20% of your company? And Lisa said, make him an offer, Anthony or AJ. So I went back to JW, and I said, well, JW, I can offer you part ownership, but instead of offering 20%, I offered him 5%. And he said yes. Not only did he say yes, but he immediately joined the team as a co-owner and started adding value since adding JW, we’ve closed four more deals, and we have our first seven-figure deal, which we close. Hopefully, at the end of Q4 at Kennesaw State, they want campus-wide licenses. We have the Atlanta University Center Library. We just met with them last week. They’re looking at a six-figure deal as well. Since JW has been on board, he’s put together our enterprise licensing model. He’s put together our hub spot. He’s putting together a lead gen process. I’ve also contacted another sales company that has BDRs. So as soon as we close this deal, we will hire some BDR to scale our sales team. So the sales process started with me struggling and figuring it out. But even with that, Mecca, not knowing what I was doing, I could still close deals like enterprise-type deals, right? I didn’t know what I was doing. The pricing model was all wrong, but JW saw that, and he was able to fix some things, and now it’s a lot easier. One thing I learned is that you just have to understand the problem. And if you start with your customer’s problem, and you focus on that, like hyper-focus on what are the things they struggle with and how can I improve it for them? Not just better. But better, better enough is what I like to say, make it better enough so that they tell other people about your tool because that’s what has happened in the university space. Kennesaw State is now forming a coalition of other universities they want to bring to Blooksy.
Mecca Tartt
Wow, that’s amazing. Congratulations.
Anthony Joiner
Thank you. It’s been awesome. And I was so at one point. I looked around, trying to find funding because money was running out. But now I said, listen, I’m just going to struggle and bootstrap. Until we get this first deal done, I have enough money in the bank to last until the deal closes. And once we finish that deal, I won’t look for any more capital. I’m tired of begging for money. I’m tired of meeting with venture capitalists for them to say, well, you have growth, but you need more growth. You need to grow faster and on and on and on and on. So I’m like, you know what? Screw it. I’ll get a bank loan, which I need to do. I’ll maintain ownership, and I’ll grow it that way. So the sales conversation started with my passion for helping people. And then it evolved, and luck happened when I met salespeople. But now we have a JW, and I have another friend with 20-plus years of sales doing our sort of enterprise sales. JW is doing university sales, and another person is doing strategic partnerships. So it’s a grind, but we will make it happen. The good part is I still own over 80% of it now, whereas if I had done venture money, I probably would have had to give up another 10 or 15%.
Mecca Tartt
No, I love that you are presenting another option to the founders who are listening in about, you know, how to position their startup and what opportunities they have out there for funding. What has been your biggest kind of learning lesson or the biggest challenge that you’ve had along the way?
Anthony Joiner
Let’s see. The biggest problem for me was in the beginning. I was so focused on the tool that I forgot the customer’s needs, right? If I had just made that shift earlier, who knows how much further I could have been or how many more deals I closed. I went about four months with no deals completed because I focused on adding this new feature. If we add another feature, then the customers will buy it. We could build this one component. But I needed to understand that I needed the customer’s confidence that I had their best interest in mind. And now they’re buying, even though we still need to build the tool they want the most. Right. Here’s an example. Kennesaw State wants a grant template. So we will build that for you if you pay for it. Right. But because we focused on the problems that they have already, and we have their confidence, they’re paying us in advance of what we’re building. Right? Right. So the biggest lesson is to focus on the customer and understand me. I was learning, right? You have to stay curious about how you can become a better founder. I’m not the best. As a matter of fact, in the beginning, I said I didn’t want to be a CEO. I wanted to be the chief product officer. That’s the thing. Okay. But now I’m understanding more. As long as I continue learning, I can become a Fortune 500 CEO, you know, I will grow to that point. Those are the two biggest takeaways if you focus on continuous learning and solving the customer’s problem. Absolutely. And so how did you find it? You mentioned that you had the first person you brought on, but then you mentioned that you now have someone who works on strategic partnerships. And there is a, there is a, it’s really important rather. The people you bring to your team are truly invested in the company and are the right fit. So how did you find the second person, the strategic partnerships person you brought into your team? So this is, this goes back to relationships. So the second person, her name is Akita Light. I’ve known her for 20-plus years. Back in the nineties, I was aging myself, but I worked at Georgia Tech. I managed the IT department there, and she was an intern at Spelman. She was in, she was in radio sales while was in radio sales for a time, but I’ve known her for 20 years, and I watched how successful she was in sales. She was the first person I went to, but I didn’t understand how to create the partnership, so it was a win for her because in sort of media sales and technology sales, it was a different thing. But then, once I worked with JW, I understood more about how that could be beneficial. So I returned to her, making her a different offer and part ownership. Now I understand how to leverage her experience, and we have a 20-year relationship. So I trust her as a person. I’ve seen how successful she was as a salesperson. So that’s how that came together. And she’s also done a great job with some other strategic partnerships.
Mecca Tartt
What is the most significant need that you have right now? Like, what are you in this stage in this space? We’re halfway through the year. What’s the most significant need that you want that you have for Blooksy?
Anthony Joiner
The biggest need is, right now, I’m just in a phase where I’m drinking water through a fire hose, right? Okay, now we have partnerships with the city of Atlanta. That’s huge, and it’s a fantastic partnership. We’re rolling out into eight schools, and that’s K-12. The beautiful thing, though, is the K-12 partnerships, they’re buying licenses, and their teachers are creating curriculum and using Blixi to deliver the lessons to the students. So we’re only selling licenses, and then they’re creating a curriculum they use in their schools. One of the schools is using it to teach during the school day. Seven other schools are using it as part of after-school programming. So, the biggest. I need someone to operationalize what we’re doing. I have an operations person, but she’s more. I need someone who understands SAS and how to operationalize SAS. Because I’m doing the best I can, but because, as a founder, you’re pulled in so many different directions. I know that I need to do a better job. Some things that should be procedural need to be revised. It requires me to be involved. I should be focused on bigger problems and not necessarily dealing with customer issues and things like that. So if I had a person who understood how to operationalize an SaaS tool, that would be willing to come on as a percentage sort of owner or partner in that capacity. That would be a huge help.
Mecca Tartt
Absolutely. What do you see in the startup Atlanta community, which is growing? The startup ecosystem is large, and there’s a lot of just support and resources. What has been an excellent resource for you in creating Blooksy? Like where, where do you go from, like the resources that are, that are there in the city of Atlanta? What do you, what have you utilized to help with your growth?
Anthony Joiner
So, Tech Village, the community has been awesome. I was also part of a cohort at Atlanta Tech Village. Oh, Jesus. I am trying to remember the name, but it’s an incubator at Atlanta Tech Village. It was an eight-week incubator. I’m sorry, it was a 12-week incubator, and we had mentors every week. We met in person a few days a week. That was a tremendous, huge resource there because they had mentors that would help answer some of the questions you had as a founder. That was huge. And then, George and Lisa are both from Valor, right? George is the least wary, but he’s a Valor and a partner or something like that.
Mecca Tartt
You’re Referring to Lisa Calhoun with, Valor, the General Partner there, and she has led one of the first women to create a venture capital firm in Georgia.
Anthony Joiner
I cannot tell you how valuable she’s been, and I know she’s super busy, so I try not to bother her. Whenever I talk to her, or every time I’ve met her, it’s almost like she’s. The word ninja is overused and outdated at this point. But during a five-minute conversation, she can point out something that seems so obvious, but I overlook, like, every time I talk to her, it’s like, have you thought about this? And I slap myself, literally slap myself, because I’m like, why didn’t I think of that, right? She can look at a problem and diagnose it in seconds. So she’s been extremely helpful in that capacity, and then George has been helpful at high-level thinking through some of the bigger problems. But mostly, though, I try to limit the podcasts that are not necessarily related to what I need to do, cut out the noise, but I think it’s finding those people that are, can just, you know, you can talk to for five minutes so you can listen to something that they’ve written, or you can sort of let them mentor you from afar. Let those people be your guide—also the Goody Nation community. Joey has been awesome. Like, a week goes by with him sending an email to AJ. Here’s somebody you should meet. Right. He’s been a great resource because of the community he’s built and the Slack channel I’m in all the time.
Mecca Tartt
And you and that’s the thing. It’s like, you can’t. What I find with talking to different founders is you can’t operate in this silo or just focus on your business. You have to reach out to those in the startup community. You have to seek out mentors, and you have to, like you said, I mean, you, you started reading all these different sales books because you wanted to learn the sales process. And so it is about knowing that you don’t know everything and applying yourself accordingly. What advice do you have? To give to the founders that are listening in that are just starting.
Anthony Joiner
This is probably talked about at nauseum, but you must embrace failure. Because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve got to the, it’s time for payroll, and I’m looking at my bank account, and I’m looking at how much money I have, and it’s barely, you know, barely meeting. So you have to understand that that’s just part of the process. You have to understand that, you know, it’s the same birds, fly, birds, fly deals fall through, right? Fish swim, birds fly deals, and fall through a deal. It’sn’t deontic; it’s closed, and you have the check. Right, right. So, focus on failure and understand that. If there’s an opportunity to shore something up, you want to shore it up, but everything will happen slower than you want. If you think you’ll be successful in two years, I would double that and say four. Because I thought by now I would have a million-dollar-a-year business. And I’m in my second year. Right. It takes much longer, even after talking to Joe George and explaining what he went through. Embrace failure. Network and collaborate because that’s huge. We just talked about Lisa and George, and Joey. So you have to build a network of people that you trust. Then you also have to prioritize continuously learning for yourself and your team. So I took my team, who could be more technical, and I walked them through how we can leverage ChatGPT to accelerate some of the things we’re doing, for example. And we have our own AI, right? Focus on learning as a founder yourself, But make sure that your team is invested in being a great teammate or a team member and learning so that you can all grow together. Let’s see what else. You have to persevere, right? There’s a saying. And that sounds great, right? That sounds great. It sounds nice, like persevere, be passionate about it, but when you’re up late at night, or there was a deal you were expecting to close a major contract, you thought you would get. And it doesn’t happen. How do you build yourself back up? How do you say, you know what, I’m not going to give up? I will press through, like, what is that called for you? And how do you do it? I’m from a small country town. I get out in nature. I’ll go for a run. I tell myself that I have today. I’m going to be upset, I’m going to be mad, I’m going to be angry, but when this run is over, I’m not going to focus on what happened anymore, I’m going to figure out what are the things that I can control, and I’m going to move forward. And I know that sounds like woo-woo and all those things, but that’s how I deal with it. I’m able to compartmentalize. The things that didn’t work and just move forward with what I can control. So I get out in nature and clear my mind. What is the thing that you can do to sort of center yourself, figure out what that is for you and do that and give yourself a grace period for how much you’re going to be sad or mad or upset, but then you have to figure out how to move forward. Absolutely. I always say that you should never allow grace to become your crutch, right? Because there’s this timeline where people say, Oh no, give yourself grace, give yourself grace. And what ends up happening is you can get stagnant, where it becomes a crutch. And you’ll hold on to that as opposed to moving forward. And so I love that you shared that you apply a timeline to, okay, I’m going to feel these emotions right now. I’m going to do this, but then after this is done after this run is finished, we’re moving forward. Bingo. 100%.
Mecca Tartt
This episode has been great, Anthony. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you can tell the listeners how they can stay connected to you for those founders that would love to connect with you, or even investors that are interested and just learning a little bit more about Blooksy, can you share your information?
Anthony Joiner
Yes. So I’m more active on my personal Instagram than anything, and now threads, but follow me on Instagram. I’m AJ Joiner on LinkedIn. Then you can just look up Anthony Joiner of Blooksy. You can email me personally. If you have any questions, Blooksy.com and Mecca, I want to say this. I wish I knew you had 20 years of sales experience, but I want to come to you and make some kind of offer like, please help me. And I love sales. It’s a rush and a high for me. And it’s because I also grew up in a sales household. My mother was a real estate agent, and she still is. And so we, you know, I would always see her in the sales process. I always heard her on the phone, you know, with her deals, and had a front-row seat. And so, for me, it’s really exciting, and I love making those relationships. And so it’s something that’s, it honestly is innate. For me, I love the fact that you became an avid learner and a student of the craft.
Mecca Tartt
Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us, guys. This has been another episode of the Startup Atlanta podcast. We look forward to seeing you soon
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