Sircles – The Social Recommendations App Designed to take out Yelp with John Worthington: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:02Who's ready to rock today Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down Circles, the social recommendations app designed to take you out of Yelp. To drop these value bombs, I have brought John Worthington into EO Fire Studios. John is the founder and CEO of Circles app, the social recommendations app designed to take you out of Yelp. And today we talk about gamification, equaling, progression, having a good product, telling your story the right way, and solving a problem for your consumers will give you a good chance of raising funds to get you started and oh so much more and a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to john and our sponsors are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs marketers coaches and agencies build funnels automate follow-ups manage clients and even white label your own software say hello to our featured partner high level and visit That's highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

1:08John, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is up, Fire Nation? And I'm happy to be here. That's a great question. You know, this might come as a shock, but, you know, I've been told my whole life that you got to get up at the crack of dawn and start your day early. But I've actually not set an alarm in probably 20 years, unless I'm catching an airplane or showing up for jury duty. But for the most part, I feel like it's very important to get your full night's rest. This isn't probably true for everybody.

1:43But certain people, just not a morning person, don't force it. And if you have a clear mind and if you're in a business, an industry where you can give yourself that extra hour or two and you have a fresh start to your day, it's fine to work a little later. especially if you have the actions, the activities going on towards the end of the day. I've had great success getting up when I feel like my clock is ready. And a lot of people might not agree with that. Well, Fire Nation, today we're talking about Circles, the social recommendations app designed to take out Yelp. And I want to talk about the moment, John, that you knew you had to create Circles.

2:25Take us there. Yeah, that goes back a few years ago. My good friend and business partner in a company we started in California came to me with this idea. Why is there not a place where I can get recommendations from people I know? Why do I have to go on Yelp or read online reviews? I trust my friends, and we all trust each other. I trust their recommendations. And as he's describing this to me, I'm like, that makes a lot of sense. Why is there not a place like that? you know we have a really tight circle you know maybe we should start something let's call it circles he's like that's a great idea and so that was where the idea got born and um and of course we've uh been in a small business for a while now we have several locations now started from nothing just the two of us but with our 12 locations um over 100 employees you know we've had to deal with with yelp and online reviews and uh we have not had good experience so it just really solidified that there should be a much better alternative.

3:20Well, one thing that I love about your app when I was doing some deep diving into it is that you specifically engineered this app to avoid negativity and to promote positive interactions. Let's get specific. How have you accomplished this? Because we decided this should be strictly recommendations from people you know, we don't need reviews. These are people you trust. If you ask me for a recommendation for a really good restaurant, You're not asking me how many stars it is. So we're not giving reviews. There's no need for getting into all that. So there's nothing negative. It's just recommendations.

4:00So the way we built it is you simply favorite the places you go to and you enjoy every day. You don't have to type in anything. The app tracks you if you allow the locations. Or you can simply hit the check-in button, and it'll show you where you are and say, I'm getting my hair cut. I want to get this place my favorite. And as soon as you're favoriting it, you're now instantly broadcasting that to everybody you know. So we've made it to where it's strictly positive. Everything in the app has been carefully engineered to make sure there's not that back and forth political conversation. It's all about the recommendations.

4:33And you really can't comment on anything anyway until you've favored it. So it's kind of a safeguard. So once you've favored it, you're broadcasting, I love this place. So at that point, you can now leave a trust tip is what we call it. But it would be counterintuitive to say something negative at that point because you're saying, I love this place. And then if you try to say something negative, it just wouldn't even fit. And there's other people that are also leaving trust tips. And then, of course, we give the power back to the businesses, whereas Yelp does not. The business can edit their profile.

5:01They can delete trust tips if they don't like them or rearrange them and sort them for the ones they like the best. And all those things are all part of that formula to make sure it's strictly about positivity. Now, one thing that I do love about companies is the naming story. And I think circles with an S, by the way, Fire Nation, is a pretty interesting name. So without going too far down a rabbit hole, because we have a lot to cover today, tell us the story of the name circles. Yeah, and I touched on it. It was really just as simple as this idea that my business partner came up with. He's my really good friend from back in college days.

5:36And I was like, I feel so confident in our circle why don't we just call it circles because and then we'll kind of make it a circle's theme and so we're doing something we're going to do the same thing that everyone else is doing we want to do something a little bit different and so we did design the the front end the user interface to be uh kind of a circle a wheel with circles on it with categories you pick from almost like the uh the original ipod that had that wheel on it so uh it all just kind of clicked. Now, let's talk about where you are today. Specifically, what have you been up to since you raised money via crowdfunding?

6:13We're going to be diving into the whole crowdfunding side of things, but where are you today? What have you been up to since you raised all that money? We've had some great success with the crowdfunding campaign. We can get into how that works in a minute. We were lucky enough and worked hard enough to raise over$3 million through crowdfunding, a couple very successful campaigns. And from there, we launched what we call a soft launch of our original version 1.0 of Circles. It's missing some key features because it takes time to build an app like this. We want to have a reward system built into it.

6:50And there's other things that go around a subscription model that we don't have in there right now. But what we did was in our first round, we took us to the next milestone where we got it out in the app store. It's kind of a beta. It's a little buggy. It's not perfect. We got the original version that we expected to get, but we all went into it the whole time knowing once we get the product out there, we're going to get user feedback. We're going to do some behavioral analysis. We're going to find out where the friction points are, where there's confusion, and work those out. So this last year, since our last campaign started, we've actually been completely rewriting the Circles app.

7:28We got all that information. We took the user's feedback, and we've really simplified certain things and made it very intuitive. And, of course, we're adding this reward system, and the reward system is key. That's really going to help drive that network effect where there's kind of this positive feedback loop between the consumers who use the app and then the businesses who are being recommended, and then they offer the reward. So this creates this positive feedback loop between the businesses and the users. The users level up and they earn rewards. And we have actually hundreds of businesses right now waiting just to sign up when we go live with the subscription model.

8:07Gamification is something I think you're talking about when you are mentioning this rewards thing. And that's something that I really want to do a deep dive into. And it's also the fact of this rabid community that you've been able to build over this process you've been going through, which is so hard to get. When you get it, man, so much opportunity can be there. And we'll be talking about these two topics plus more Fire Nation when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business. And they are also our featured partner, High Level.

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10:31But what sets Public apart? AI isn't just a feature. It's woven into the entire experience from portfolio insights to earnings call recaps. Public gives you smarter context at every touch point. Plus, you can earn up to$10 ,000 when you transfer your existing investment portfolio over to Public. Go to public.com slash fire to fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. So, John, you talked about the reward system you guys are working on. And, I mean, gamification, it's huge these days. I mean, we're seeing it in so many different areas with cryptocurrency and NFTs and, you know, of course, different products and services that are out there as well.

11:14Let's get specific in how you've used gamification in circles to get people excited. Yeah, and that's absolutely a very important element to certain types of apps and certain types of products where you want to keep the engagement high. Maybe there's a learning curve. duolingo did this masterfully they they've really gamified what can be a very difficult endeavor learning a foreign language so that's an app where you learn a second language but they made it fun and they did it with cute animations and progression and leveling up and those kinds of things and if you do that right and a lot of really successful companies have done that even peloton in a more of a real world environment has levels and and gamifying your system creates that progression and that reward.

12:03And we have spent a lot of time over this last year perfecting that, including the businesses into the system so they can offer local rewards and have the users level up as they go. You start out at level one, you're a circle somebody, and then you level up pretty quick. You become a circle scout and a circle surveyor, and eventually you become a circle superstar. There's 10 levels as you progress. And each way along the way, You're earning points and you're getting cool little animations to encourage you. But you're also earning local rewards and some merchandise discounts, even free merchandise.

12:40As the rewards get better and better, they actually get really, really good by the time you get to level 10. I don't want to give too much away. But that whole progression and having legit rewards that are attainable is very important to us. I've seen apps where they try and gamify it and the reward is completely out of reach. like you have to do something ridiculous like walk a thousand miles to get a gift card and you know no one's going to do that in a month and so you know we made it to where it's actually a reward that any user can get and it just has to be part of your your user and not even a daily activity but just a regular user engaged and so it's a it's a win-win for our users and of course for us to keep the app engagement high.

13:26That's critical with an app like this. You want to have good retention and you want to have good engagement. And then, of course, the network effect, which provides the growth and the reward system does all those things. Now, we've talked a little bit about the importance of community and how to get your people involved. And of course, gamification is doing all these different type of things, having reward tiers built in, having people leveling up. I love the word quest. Who doesn't want to go on a quest? Yeah, exactly. Love that phrase. What are some other things that you've done with Circles to really build an engaged community?

14:02We've started at the ground floor in our local community, for one thing. We have a fantastic partnership with a radio station here, Rad Radio. And Rob Williams, the host, has been on for 20 years or so. He's an amazing performer. He's got a very loyal fan base. He's a really smart guy. And he has one of the top morning shows in the nation. So we have this great partnership. He's actually invested in Circles. So we started at the very bottom with the grassroots just telling our story, and especially with Rob's help, we've been able to get thousands and thousands and thousands of people behind us because everybody loves our mission.

14:42And obviously, we're all about positivity. Social media and those platforms that promised that they were going to connect everybody and everything was going to be perfect and friendly, they kind of turned their back on the toxicity and all that negativity and bullying and drama and everything that's gone in. We're making a stand and we're making sure that we stick to our values and we keep it about positivity. we authenticate every user through their phone number so we can ban a user for life if they violate terms if they're if they're toxic or trolling and so you know we have that built-in trust and some i think from the grassroots level and being able to tell our story you know starting with rob and his his show and then taking it to we funder which is more of a national audience and we also have partnered with other celebrity influencers and been able to tell our story on a larger scale, I think that it resonates.

15:41And I think that everybody can get behind the same mission of cleaning up the mess that's been left by these social media platforms and doing something positive and creating something for young people and old people to enjoy and not get anxiety when they're going and scrolling through their feed and worrying about the next thing they're going to see. That's very important to us and that's served us really well. And I think that's why we have so many supporters behind us. Well, let's talk more about your WeFunder crowdfunding campaign. I mean, you guys did multiple seven figures and counting. It's actually going on right now, Fire Nation.

16:24So talk to us about your relationship with WeFunder, why you decided to go with that platform, your experience, any successes you've had, any struggles you've had, any tips you may have. Talk to us about this whole process. Sure. Yeah. WeFunder and crowdfunding in general is a really great tool. It's somewhat new, new-ish. It's definitely a newer approach to raising money for a startup company. And it really levels the playing field in a lot of ways. A lot of companies aren't ready to go talk to the VCs, and the VCs, they're turning away 99 % or more of everybody that knocks on their door. And so you're not – unless you have some kind of anti-gravity, you have the next perfect invention, you're going to have a real hard time breaking in at that level.

17:11So crowdfunding is a wonderful, fantastic way to start early on a smaller level, but with a lot more aggregate support from the retail investors, smaller retail investors. And we've been fortunate with the WeFunder relationship and some of our media partners to get a lot of attention. And of course, you have to have the right story, the right values and the right team behind it. But if you can tell your story the right way and you do have a good product and you are filling a void or solving a problem, if you will, then you have a very, very good shot of raising a good amount to get you started, at least to get you to that next milestone.

17:55And so with WeFunder, you actually could find us at WeFunder.com slash circles. And again, that's circles, S-I-R-C-L-E-S. We've had our campaign running for a few months. And the first one we had to close right away. We raised a million dollars within a week. And that was the limit. And then the SEC just recently raised the cap. And now it's a$5 million cap. So we opened one again recently. And we raised another million dollars pretty quick. And again, we went back to just let's focus on the product now. But as we get closer to closing it out here in the next couple weeks, decided to get back out in the media and make some more noise again.

18:35and go ahead and close out that WeFunderStrong. If a retail investor is interested, they can get in. Sometimes it's as low as$100. Ours is a minimum of$250 investment. But obviously, you don't have to bet the farm. You bet what you're comfortable with. You do the research. Of course, you can lose the investment. There's no guarantees in this. But if you feel strongly about the product and the mission and the team behind it, And it's a great way to put a little bit of money to work and get potentially massive rewards because obviously you're getting in at a company way, way, way before Wall Street, something that could blow up to something in the billions of dollars potentially.

19:14But of course, many of them are going to go to zero. So that's why everyone should do their research. But it's just a great vehicle for startups like us. And I do encourage founders that have a great idea and have that ambition and that drive and know that they can make it if they just have a little bit of that financial support. But not every big investor out there is going to listen to them. Take it to the smaller investors. Take it to a platform like WeFunder. Tell your story. And it's a great tool. It's worked really well for us. So I do encourage entrepreneurs and startup founders out there to do that.

19:51And so through WeFunder, our listeners would actually own a bit of equity in circles? That's exactly right. Yeah. And there's a few different ways. Sometimes it's straight equity. Ours is a safe, which provides some protection based on valuation. If we ever have a lower round valuation, your shares vest at a lower value. So there's actually a little more protection in some cases. But yeah, at the end of the day, you are buying some equity in the company, simply put. and so it's a great way to participate and hopefully get in on the next Netflix or Amazon before they make it big. Well, John, tell us where we can find out more about this.

20:30Give us a URL, any other call to action you may have to check out Circles and everything you have going on and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, we have a website at circles.com and again, that's S-I-R-C-L-E-S and the WeFunder campaign that's running right now is live at wefunder.com slash circles and there's a video there. There's lots of information, all of our financials. We have audited financials and our whole business plan, not to mention lots of testimonials, a lot of Q &A that took place. And so you can really do a deep dive into the business and make a decision from there. Now, was circles.com available when you looked for it?

21:08No, it wasn't. But I was kind of hell-bent on naming it circles. So we were able to buy it. And so now we own it. Did the guy want a lot for it? Give us a range. Was it three figures, five figures, six figures, seven figures? I feel like we got lucky. It was under 10K. Ooh, that is nice. Yeah, yeah. So one of those things, right place, right time. Totally. Well, Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with J-Dubs and JLD today, so keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type John, J-O-H-N, in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about.

21:47And John, one more time, that URL of Fire Nation wants to learn more about what you have going on at the WeFunder campaign. WeFunder, just like it sounds, WeFunder.com slash circles, S-I-R-C-L-E-S. John, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, thank you so much, John. You have a good day. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by John. And Fire Nation, if you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your very own, The Podcast Journal is for you. It is a gorgeous full-leather journal that will guide you step-by-step in the creation and launch of your podcast in 50 days.

22:29Visit thepodcastjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.