Robert Leonard  03:20

I think some of the companies that you’ve worked for, like the NBA, are companies that a lot of people listening to the show would probably want to work for. How were you able to get in with a company like the NBA?

Chris Buetti  03:34

Yeah, it’s funny. When I was working at NBC, another company that I was thinking I was going to love working for, being in the entertainment industry. I was doing data engineering there. If you’re familiar with the subjects, it’s actually very different than data science. I came from a math background, which is more data science, and that’s what I really wanted to do. I want to do machine-learning, AI, and things like that.

Unfortunately, everywhere I went to for an interview just assumed I wasn’t competent enough because I didn’t have a master’s degree nor a Ph.D. That was kind of the first thing they looked for. They would look at me, and say, “Do you know that you’re going up against PhDs? Why should we even talk to you?” I was really pigeon-holed into a lower tier before I even walked in the door. I said to myself, “Hey, I actually really need to do something that’s going to boost my resume,” and that’s actually how that article was born, the article we were talking about before. I said, “I’m going to do a data science project, and I’m going to write all about it. I’m going to show everyone how I’m actually benefiting from this,” and things like that.

I gave my pitch to companies. I said, “Look at this project I did. It’s more than your normal data science project, and I’m actually going out to dinner for free in New York City tonight.” I sent it as an email to someone at the league, and they reached back out to me, and said, “Wow! This is awesome! We should definitely get you in for an interview.” That’s how I landed there. So really, the article where we connected over was the reason I ended up at the NBA because it was actually something I did to boost my resume. I had no idea it was going to lead to something completely different in my career.

Robert Leonard  05:04

Yeah, that’s really cool to hear that one of your side hustles led to a career opportunity. I think that’s an important thing to talk about because a lot of people just do side hustles on the side, because it’s either they’re passionate about it, or maybe it gives them a little extra income. But a side hustle could actually help benefit them in their corporate career, even if they don’t ever plan on leaving their corporate career. 

Despite having worked in some of those high profile jobs that a lot of people would consider their dream job, you still decided to leave the corporate world and go out to start your own business, which is now called Digital Prezence. First off, what does your company do? And how hard was it for you to make that decision?

Chris Buetti  05:38

It was my dream job, just like you said, from the time I was a little kid. I dreamed that I was going to do something with the NBA, or maybe something related to basketball, so I really did end up in my dream position. But while I was there, I was basically staring at the clock, waiting for the day to be over so I could go home and work on my side hustle. That’s what was on my mind all day. I wasn’t focusing completely on it. And I said, “I don’t understand why this still has to be a side gig? Why can’t this be my full-time job?” I basically decided to take the leap and start the company that I’m operating now.

So my company, Digital Prezence has a number of different services, but really what we do is a little unique. We started off with just helping people grow their Instagram following. I did that by deploying a code on someone’s account that did things like go around, follow people, unfollow people, like things, comment on things, nothing new when there are plenty of bots out there that do that. I tried to add a little bit of a machine-learning AI twist to it, but it was kind of similar to what was out there, and we had some success with that. We pivoted a couple of months ago to something I think is a little more unique, something that not a lot of other companies are doing. We are basically doing a lot of web-scraping, machine-learning, email-marketing when it comes to social media.

For example, if a brand client like Nike will come to us one day, and say, “Hey, we’re about to launch a new shoe line, and we want to get people interested.” So what we’ll do is we’ll do a ton of market research on Instagram, a ton of web-scraping to find people that are interested in this thing. If they have their contact information publicly available, we’ll take that, and we’ll basically give a nice report to Nike with all this information, and say, “These are the people that are following your competitors. These are the trends they’re looking at. This is how you can contact them.” Things like that.

On the other side of the business, we do influencer marketing. We find people that would be willing to represent a brand and connect them to the brand. We can do that in a very automated way. Someone can come to me and say, “Hey, I want someone to wear my new headphones.” I can enter some specific criteria say, former athlete. *inaudible*, my process, will go out and scrape all of social media and find all the people that fit into the criteria, and then I run some modeling on top of that thing. “Hey, you want to use this person to represent you?” and, “Not that person *inaudible*.” Based on historical data, it’s going to bring you a better return. Amongst all of those things, I basically list them to a brand, I’ll list to the client, hear their needs, and come up with a proposal that involves a little bit of all these solutions that I made and help them grow their following that way, instead of the older follow-unfollow spammy type stuff.

Robert Leonard  08:16

Was there a tipping point where you decided that you just had to make a leap? What was that point like? Did you hit a certain revenue figure? Did you just believe in the idea? What really made you decide to jump?

Chris Buetti  08:31

I actually started this business with two buddies from college. We all had full-time jobs when we started it as a little side hustle. One of them was working for a startup in Florida, and that startup folded. He said to me, “Hey, I’ll make you a deal. I’m not going to go find another corporate job. I’m going to take this, and I’m going to see if I can land up some big clients. If I can, you have to quit your job and join me.” And I said, “Alright, you have a deal.” Within a month or two, he had some really big names willing to give us some money to send us in for some projects. I thought about it, and I said, “If I don’t do this now, I’m never going to do it. I’m just going to say that if I work a little bit harder, I’ll get promoted from data engineer to associate data engineer and all these things.” Convinced, I said, “I’m at the NBA. I’m at my dream job, yet this is what’s occupying my mind now. This is what I need to do, and if I don’t do it now, I’m not going to do it. I’ll give it a go. I’m going to uphold my end of this promise.” I joined my co-founder, leaving our jobs, and doing this full time.

Robert Leonard  09:31

So let’s talk a bit more in-depth about the Medium article that went viral that I mentioned at the beginning of the show. How did this lead to what has ultimately become Digital Prezence?

Chris Buetti  09:42

I have always been doing things on social media. I haven’t necessarily been super successful in my life, but I step back and look at all these people that were making money on social media, getting free things and free dinners, and I said, “I want to be part of that.”

I don’t think I’m that interesting, so I had to come up with a little niche that I could portray myself as, and I said, “Okay, who doesn’t like beautiful pictures in New York City?” I started building up the account without really having a goal in mind. I said, “Maybe some restaurant will allow me to eat for free if I write all about the restaurant.” I reached out to one place, and I said, “Hey, if you let me eat for free, I’ll write all about your restaurant and give a nice review.” They replied, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” I did it, and I wondered, “How often I could do this?” I tried reaching out to museums, tours, shows, and things like that, and everyone seemed pretty interested.

Like I mentioned, I’m a self-taught programmer. This was a lot of high motivation to learn how to code these projects. I really didn’t know much, and I said, “I’m doing a lot of these things manually, but I don’t need to do.” So I started Googling, “How can I automate this?” I got to the point where I could automate the whole thing. In doing so, I basically created a self-sustaining robotic Instagram account that was smart enough to do all the things I learned; what data I can get back from the social media, things I could use that data to predict, what would be interesting to some people, what I could get away with, and what the social media platforms are restrictive of. I had all this information and I would just talk to people about it, and they would say, “Wow! I can really use that.” And I would reply, “Okay, well, I’m going to make some sense out of it. I’m going to make some products out of it, and see if it’d be interesting.” I tested the market and it was very well received, so I said, “Okay, I better jump on this train before it leaves the station and I’m not on it.” I’ve been very happy with the results.

Robert Leonard  11:31

Had you always known you wanted to become an entrepreneur, at some point, and you were just waiting for the right time or for the right idea?

Chris Buetti  11:37

Yeah, I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was a kid. I’ve always had these little projects that I’ve been doing, little gigs, and everyone knew that. There’s a story that my dad likes to tell about me that really shows that I was going to do something entrepreneurial.

I have an older brother who’s very hard working, but he started by the book. He’s a CPA. When I was about four years old, my dad told to me, “I need you to help me rake the leaves.” I didn’t want to do it, so he said, “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. When I get home and all these leaves are raked out, I’ll give you $5.” I was a little four-year-old kid, and I went, “Oh my god! Yeah, sounds great. $5!” My dad went to the store and gets home, and sees me laying on the couch and my older brother’s raking the leaves. He walked into the back, and asked my brother, “What’s going on? Why are you raking the leaves? Christopher was supposed to do that.” My older brother goes, “Well, Christopher gave me $3 to rake the leaves.” And so, as a four-year-old, I was able to lay on the couch with two extra dollars in my pocket, without having to do the job.

I always had these little business ideas. I started a little company in college called Workbench, but that didn’t work out. I was an Entrepreneurship minor in college, so it was only a matter of time where I finally let an idea take off and pursue it full-time.

Robert Leonard  12:56

That’s such a great little story. It’s like a funny twist on the classic lemonade stand story.

Chris Buetti  13:02

Exactly! Yeah.

Robert Leonard  13:03

I know from previous conversations that we’ve had before the show, and then also some of the things you’ve mentioned throughout the show, that you have started this business with a partner or multiple partners. Starting a business with partners can be difficult not just because you’re starting a new business, which is hard enough in and of itself, but because you’re working with other people that are in different positions. They have different opinions, expectations, and even work ethics. How did you find the right people to start your business with?

Chris Buetti  13:31

It’s funny. Actually, one of my business partners was my suitemate from college during freshman year. He didn’t know I thought this, but that since the day I met him, I said, “If I ever start a business, it’s going to be with this person.” Because I would always come out with these crazy ideas and tell people, and everyone would laugh or shrug me off, but he would always respond, “Okay, when do we start? When are we going to do this?” He was always very interested.

My team works very well because we all do different things. It’s not like I found another engineer or data scientist, and said, “Let’s do this.” We all separated ourselves and decided, “You’re doing sales. You’re doing front-end work. I’m doing back end work.” So we’re all responsible for our own tasks, and we know who to blame when something goes wrong. That’s really how we’ve made it work.

My team works very well because I’m a back-end developer data scientist, one of my business partners is a front-end developer and UX and UI guy, and then the other one is extremely good at sales, in organization and management. And we all kind of have business acumen. We’re not afraid to get up in front of someone, so we work very well. We have a back-end guy, a front-end guy, and a sales guy. Luckily, we’ve worked together very closely. One of them, the one I work closely with, is in Florida, so we do everything digitally. Even though he’s my best friend, if he were here, we probably would have killed each other already. So it’s good that there’s a monitor between us too.

I think we lucked out on that. We all have these unique skill sets, and we’re not fighting for the same projects. When something comes through the pipeline, we know who it’s going to. We can delegate that very easily rather than like saying, “Oh, I want to get on the sales call!” If a sales call has to happen, it will go through one of my other co-founders. If something happens on the front-end, it goes through the other one. If a model needs to be fine-tuned, it goes through me. I think that’s allowed us to work very actively and very efficiently together. Actually, that we’re so different has really helped us.

Robert Leonard  15:31

How are you guys able to structure the business? Do you all own one-third of the business? How did that work out with you, having come up with the idea and then pitched it to other people?

Chris Buetti  15:41

Yes, so we all own one third. They helped me come up with a lot of the business. I can’t take all the credit. I did approach them about the business, and said, “Okay, I have an idea. We’ll split it one third each, but I have a guy that I know who would do all of our accounting for us. If we can offer him maybe a percentage point or two, it comes from you instead of me. I know someone who is willing to be our lawyer, and instead of paying him every time we need a contract, we can offer him a percentage point, and it’ll come from the other one of you.” Everyone was on board with that. And, as I mentioned before, my brother is a CPA. He’s very intelligent, very experienced. We said to him, “If you do our books, our finances, and our taxes, and make sure we’re not going to have the IRS knocking on our door, we’ll give you a percentage point.” And he was all for that, so we gave him a couple of percentage points and it came from my business partners. And then one of my business partners’ dad is a business layer, and we made the same deal with him. So, we did own one third each, but I own a percent or two more than the other guys. That’s how we really decided to do it, and everyone was happy with that deal.

Robert Leonard  16:47

I think that’s a good way to do it. I think a lot of times new startup founders or even just people working on a project together that’s a small business, people get really hooked on the 1% or 2% here and there. They really spend a lot of time focusing on that, while they should really be out there trying to get market validation and really pushing the product or service before even worrying about that. It’s good to hear that you guys kind of took a brushstroke and just said one third each. Let’s get to work and start building this business.

Chris Buetti  17:14

Yeah, before you brought that up, I hadn’t even thought about that in a long time. We went through the thought processes of raising money and talking to investors, and even then, I never thought to bring it up. We’re all just so excited about the results. Like, I’m not even bothered by that. I mean, maybe one day I will be, but it doesn’t matter to me now. I just want to make sure the business is doing well. We’re all excited. I haven’t even thought of a couple of percentage points. I don’t think my co-founders have either. We’re just happy to be working together.

Robert Leonard  17:52

Yeah, and I think that’s really important. I think that probably has helped you guys reach success. I don’t know if you’ve spent any time on any of the entrepreneurship-type networking sites that connect potential co-founders. If you ever talk to anybody from those sites, they seem to want a nickel and dime over half a percent or quarter of a percent. This was for another project I worked on in the past, and I went, “I don’t care to that degree. We don’t even know if this is going to work. Let’s get out there and get validation, and then we’ll worry about it.” It sounds like you guys did that. I think that that’s been really successful for you guys.

Chris Buetti  18:27

Yeah, I mean, we’re all very much on the same page. We’re still in the early stages, and maybe this will be different at the end of the day, but we’re not as focused on money as we are about making something out of this business.

At the end of the day, to me, it’s not as much about the money as it is about the fact that I can work on my own terms. No one can be mad at me for being late to work besides myself. I love the entrepreneur lifestyle. I love the fact that I’m not just slaving away. I thought this would be cliche until a client would say, “You made this so much easier for me! Thank you! You made my life so much easier.” You kind of forget about the money when you find meaning in your work, rather than slaving away at your to-do list that your boss put on your desk. If you do a good job and your clients are happy, and say, “I don’t care that I just paid you X amount of dollars. You just saved me three weeks’ worth of work.” It’s cliche, but it’s more meaningful than maybe $100 more or $1,000 more than I would have made working for a big corporation where I’m begging my boss for a half-day off one day. So, I don’t think any of us are super concerned about who is getting more of the dollar right now. We’re just making sure that we can make this a brand and make this a business because we’re all very happy, and we don’t want that to go away.

Robert Leonard  19:56

When you think of it that way and you’re not focused solely on the money, that’s when the money will come, right

Chris Buetti  20:01

Exactly.

Robert Leonard  20:02

One of the biggest hurdles that I get from new entrepreneurs or new side hustlers or just people working on side projects is that they have a hard time coming up with initial capital needed to start a business. How were you able to fund your startup at the beginning, while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

Chris Buetti  20:20

We’re 100% bootstrapped. I lucked out in being that I wanted to start a business and I was an engineer. I think that if you’re an engineer and you want to be an entrepreneur, you have no excuse, you have the right tools to build things, so I built a program. I worked with my co-founders and we came up with a program I coded. Yeah, there were server costs and things like that, but nothing that we couldn’t fund easily. Then I went out, and I said, “Hey, let me run your Instagram account on my program, and pay me X amount of dollars per month.” And someone said yes.

We started slowly that way. We really bootstrapped it and scaled that way, and then when we had made enough money, we were able to quit our jobs and focus on this. We actually haven’t raised a dime. We have zero dollars in debt. Two out of the three of us are working full-time on Digital Prezence. One is still at his full-time job. We’re trying to get him off to do full-time on Digital Prezence. That may be something we need to raise money for, but if we don’t, we’re still in the clear. We’re completely bootstrapped and without debt.

Now that we have the revenue to prove that we know what we’re doing, we definitely have a proof of concept. We have over 100 clients right now, raising money shouldn’t be as big of an issue as it would be for someone who doesn’t have anything to prove for it.

I found that our biggest hurdle has been that it’s a little bit harder to raise money in the tech world because you don’t have physical assets. If my business goes under, you can’t come and take machinery away from me or something like that. It’s software that may, unfortunately, become obsolete one day or something like that. So, the biggest hurdle for me is not being able to operate without startup capital, we’ve been able to bootstrap that. It’s raising money proving that this tech will be worth it. Because at the end of the day, everyone can stop using Instagram tomorrow, and I’ll have nothing as collateral to provide an investor. So that’s been more of a hurdle for me than getting that initial startup funding.

Robert Leonard  22:18

What has your process looked like so far? You mentioned earlier in the show that you guys are starting to look at potentially raising capital, what does that journey look like so far?

Chris Buetti  22:26

We’re actually looking to do a friends and family raise first. We don’t know what that’s going to look like. I would say that one of our few disagreements between the founders is over what that’s going to look like. But before getting a Series A or anything like that, we want to do a friends and families raise first. We’ve had a couple of investors approach us looking to invest and get a chunk of equity out of us, but we just aren’t ready yet. We’re not willing to give up part of our business yet, and things like that. But we are kind of hitting a wall.

We’re building up a whole website, a whole portal with front-end and back-end that can do a lot of these things automatically. Right now, the way we’re operating is we listen to a client, we kind of act as a consultant where people tell us their needs and struggles, we take that, and we go to the back-end, and we do all these things. That’s good, but it’s not scalable, right? Ideally, we need to be able to give someone like a portal, and say, “Do what you need to do. Let me know if you have any questions.” That’s where I may need to hire some help, pay for some expensive software, and things like that. But the good news is, the proof of concept is there. I need to do that to service my already existing clients, not people that I think I may have one day.

So, the idea would be to raise money and have friends and family around; to build a stable product, maybe a beta version; to get some more proof of concept; to go to maybe an angel investor or something like that, and to raise Series A.

Robert Leonard  23:52

Given that your business is in the social media space. I want to talk a bit about social media strategies when starting a business. How important is it for a new business to have a good presence across various social media platforms?

Chris Buetti  24:05

It’s super important nowadays. I would say that not just because I’m in the social media space, but I think a lot of people my age automatically turn to social media for a kind of validation. I can say to someone, “Hey, I was just on this TV show.” And one of the first things we’ll do is look up that TV show on social media and see how many followers they have, see how many people are commenting on their posts, and talking about them using their hashtag and things like that.

If you have absolutely no social media presence, I think you’re putting yourself in a bit of a disadvantage because people my age do use that as a validation, which is why I think a lot of these restaurants are so willing to let me eat there if I post about it. Because then, they can turn around and say, “Look at this huge social media presence eating at my restaurant!” When, at the end of the day, I’m no different than the next person. I just happen to have a social media account with a lot of followers to it.

I think businesses, especially if they’re born in the last few years, are making a big mistake if they don’t make sure they have a social media presence. Forget the traffic that you can drive to your website. Forget about the number of people you can have talking about your product for a second. Just a pure validation, I think, is the biggest thing people need to get their minds around. Because automatically, I look at something on social media, and if they have millions of followers, I’d assume there must be a good product.

I was considering going to two museums in New York City a couple of weeks ago with my girlfriend. I looked at their social media pages, and I went to the one that had more followers and that had a nice curated feed. I said, “These people have something to show for it. I’m going to go to this one because I don’t know if this other one is good. At least this one from a high level looks like it’s good. People are going to it. People are following it.” That really made my decision. I think that’s the same case for a lot of people, so I think it’s very important.

Robert Leonard  25:54

What do you think is the best way to build an effective social media strategy?

Chris Buetti  25:59

I think there’s a lot of ways to go about it. I used to be pretty averse to big social media personalities or influencers, or wearing your brand or establishing your place. I used to be pretty averse to that, saying that was not as important as it is. But I’ve kind of changed on that. I’ve kind of flip-flopped on that seeing the results firsthand. I used to think that was artificial and that no one really cared for it until I actually was plugged into it where tracked people. I said, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to have someone post about this and see where it spreads. I’m going to track all the traction this person is bringing.” It’s very effective. Someone who has a big following can say, “Hey, I just went on vacation to Hawaii and I stayed at this resort. If you go, I recommend you go there.” I actually did the math. I tracked the data and saw how many of that person’s followers went to that new hotel, following that note on Instagram, and things like that.

So if you’re a no-name, a lot of these big personalities out there are non-monetizing *inaudible* especially as much as they want to be. You can say, “Hey, do you want to stay at my resort? Why don’t you use my product? If you post about it, you don’t have to pay me.” More than you think are willing to do that. It brings a lot of traction, so I definitely think that’s a good place to start. But, once you’re there, once you have at least some bit of a presence, I think you can do some other cool things like maybe do a giveaway.

I’m working with a brand right now. We brought it up from nothing, zero followers. We did some influencer marketing for them. We got people talking about their brand, and now they’re doing a giveaway. They said, “Okay, we’re going to give away $750 worth of product.” They posted about it, and we had other people posting about it, and that’s another way to get people aware of the brand. You can also start doing all these other things. Now, we do email marketing. We scrape users on social media, get their emails and email them directly, and tell them about this giveaway they’re doing.

I think a good place to start is to see if you can partner with someone and have them represent your brand. It’s actually surprising how much influence these people have just by having a large social media following.

Robert Leonard  28:06

So how would you recommend someone listening to the show go about starting a business or a side hustle? Would you recommend that they do something related to social media as well?

Chris Buetti  28:16

Anyone with a social media account can make money. I’ll give you an example of that. Not too long ago, I said, “I want to test the market. I want to make some money on social media. Let’s see what I can do.” I found a New York City YouTuber by the YouTube channel Here.Be.Barr. He goes and checks out restaurants and things of that nature, and makes videos about it. I wasn’t doing any automation or programming or data science conversation. I just found his email on YouTube, and I reached out to him, and said, “Hey, I work for a digital marketing company that I started. Just curious, are you monetizing? How much would you charge me to insert something into one of your videos? What’s the next video you’re doing?” And he said, “I’m going to go review a lot of rooftop bars. I’m going to make a rooftop bar guide for the summer,” and I said, “Okay, how much would it cost if I said I want you to put my client as one of the rooftop bars there? I want you to inject this bar into your video.”

He was a little thrown off. He went, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe X amount of dollars,” and couldn’t say the price. I said, “Okay, sounds great!” I turned around to a rooftop bar. Again, I just found their email on social media, and I said, “Hey, I manage a YouTuber. He’s doing this video. Some of the rooftop bars he’s including are PHD, 235th, and Mr. Purple, which are the biggest names in New York City. He has 100,000 subscribers. If you want, I can make you part of the video. It’s going to cost you,” and I connect his number. He was very aware. He was okay with me doing that as long as I brought him his number, he was okay. I went to these rooftop bars and I connect his number. Every single one I reached out to said yes. If you go and watch this video, a lot of these rooftop bars he has in there are because of me. So he had two or three he was planning to go to, I paid him to put in the rest, and every single one was willing to pay for that promotion.

Just like that, I had made myself a bunch of money just by doing that basic work. That’s only one application of this. I found another podcast that interviewed entrepreneurs, actually. Coincidentally, a couple of months ago, I said, “What if I aggregate a list of entrepreneurs on social media? Would you pay me to do that? You won’t have to do the work and sitting there and finding them all.” And he replied, “Absolutely!” I went out to social media, and, in this one, I used my programming for. I wrote a script that looked to Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, found entrepreneurs that were successful, aggregated all this information as metadata; follower counts for every account, phone number, email, and I gave him that data set. He was super happy, and offered, “In the next one, how about I pay you a little bit less, but for everyone that books with me, I’ll give you x percentage of that?” And I said, “Deal.” I had made myself a couple of little side hustles without that much effort right there. I was making lives easy.

On one end, I was getting a brand promotion. On the other end, everyone seemed to be happy about it. So those are just a couple of ideas I came up with and very easily executed on. I own a business. I have to drive sales. If someone approached me and said, “Hey, can I be your salesperson and take X amount of money off the top? I’d be like, “Absolutely! Go for it! I need business. Absolutely!” If that person can go and find me a bunch of clients and wants a little bit of a founder’s fee, all power to them! I’d be very happy with that. I’m now further succeeding as a company. This college kid could be making more money than he was before, and we could have done all of our work through social media.

So, if you’re looking for a side hustle, I think there’re so many opportunities on social media. You can just reach out to a brand and say, “How can I help you?” If you can make it work, there’s plenty of money to be made. That’s basically how my business was born. I took all these little side hustles, made a production of it, and automated it. That’s how I came up with my company.

Robert Leonard  32:10

So are these opportunities still available today? Or have they been kind of erased with so many people doing it?

Chris Buetti  32:16

Oh, no. The opportunities are everywhere! I could say where you can find some successes. If you reach out to a brand and said, “Hey, let’s run an influencer campaign for your brand.” I’m sure they’ve been reached out to before, but a lot of what they’ve encountered are the massive influencer marketing companies that have a minimum of a $50,000 budget. But an XYZ or small brand in New York City will say, “I can’t pay $50,000 to have some cool influencers running by, wearing my stuff. But I can pay $5,000.” That’s where you can step in. There’s definitely an untapped market of people who can’t pay those high numbers to have some social media personality wear their clothing and things like that. Where my company started was actually wanting to be like the MetroPCS of this stuff, reaching out to people and saying, “I’m not going to have Tiger Woods wearing your shirt, but I have this former Ohio State basketball player who was in the conversation for MVP who still has a following. He’s only going to charge you $200, rather than the $2 million Tiger Woods would say.” And people are all about it. So I think that’s a good place to start. Don’t try to go after these huge brands and huge companies. They’re taken care of. Find people who have a startup that have some marketing money to part ways with. I think there’s a lot of synergies there.

Robert Leonard  33:39

What has been the biggest thing you’ve learned since becoming an entrepreneur?

Chris Buetti  33:43

I would say that the biggest thing I learned is that you can no longer afford to slack off. There are days where I’m sure anyone with a typical job can say, “I wasn’t that productive today. I had a lot on my mind. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” Or, “This week wasn’t a good week for me. I’ll pick it up next week.” If I have something bothering me that’s going to be an obstacle for me, I need to get that covered. If I don’t do my best, I’m not going to be able to put food on the table. I think that’s going to really help me determine whether this entrepreneurial venture of mine works out, or I’d have to go back to a standard job. I’ve gotten really good at separating these external issues from my work because if I don’t perform, at least to the best of my capability, I have no one to blame it for myself. Whereas in the past, I could have had a bad day, but at the end of two weeks, my paychecks coming in. So one of the biggest things I’ve learned is to separate the outside world from my work. Nowadays, when I go to the gym, I put my phone in airplane mode. I never used to do that. But I know that if I don’t get some exercise in without any distractions, I’m going to be all pent up the rest of the day. I’ve gotten really good at separating all these things and making sure they don’t interfere with my work because I have no one to blame but myself when I can’t pay my rent. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned.

Robert Leonard  35:00

If you’re able to go back and do certain things over again, what would you do differently?

Chris Buetti  35:05

When I started my career, I envisioned that I would be some sort of liaison between the technical world and the non-technical world because I like to sit behind a computer and code. I was a math major, but I also like getting up in front of people and speaking. You could put me in front of a crowd of a million people. I’m not saying I would kill it, but I wouldn’t be scared. I felt like that was a unique skill set I had and I really tried to exploit it, but what I really should have done is step back and focus on the things I wasn’t good at. I should have stepped back a little bit more instead. I kind of don’t love sitting behind a computer 24/7, but if I really, really, really learned how to program right now, then I’d be able to extrapolate that in the future.

I think I passed up on some opportunities to learn some cool machine-learning concepts and do some cool AI things. I wanted to be on that sales pitch. Instead, I wanted to do both. I should have just put my foot down and suffered through the hard things, the tough things that I didn’t want to do a little bit more. Because then, when I did want to do my own thing, I would have that knowledge I have to figure out a lot. I had those opportunities. I didn’t want to be that stereotypical software engineer who never saw the light of day, but I kind of should have just forced myself to suffer through it a little bit more because now I’m not that software engineer who doesn’t see the light of day, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not only coding, but I’m also getting up in front of people and selling things. I’m pitching things. I’m talking to people, and it’s taking me longer to program something than it would have if I just really learned that skill and perfected it. So, that’s one thing I would change if I could go back.

Robert Leonard  36:40

What is the number one piece of advice you’d give to someone who is interested in starting their own business or side hustle similar to like what you’ve done?

Chris Buetti  36:48

I’m sure every entrepreneur says this and you’ve heard this 100 times before, but you really don’t get it until you’re in that position. I’m sure you’ve heard it, “Don’t do it for the money.” Don’t do it because you think you’re going to cash out and end up a Silicon Valley tycoon. Don’t do it, so you can have a ball. Do it because it brings meaning to you. Because that’s when you really start enjoying your work and not begging for the weekend to come around. I know that I built a process that did that, and it’s very meaningful for me. The money isn’t at the top of my mind. My number one advice is, “Forget about the money. Forget about the glory that you think is going to come with it. It’s actually very tough. You don’t know what your next paycheck is going to look like. Lose that pre-conceived notion that it’s glorious and awesome. You’re an entrepreneur. Find something you’re passionate about. Find something that’s going to make you smile. That’s what’s going to keep you going. It’s not all about those other things you always hear. It’s about the things that you enjoy doing.” That would be my number one piece of advice.

Robert Leonard  37:48

It’s about all those things that you don’t get to see on social media. It’s all those things you don’t see behind the Instagram post.

Chris Buetti  37:53

Exactly! Yes.

Robert Leonard  37:55

Chris, thanks so much for your time. I think this conversation is going to provide a lot of insight into a lot of different things that we talked about that I know the audience is going to be interested in. I know it did for me. Where can the people listening to the show today go to connect with you and learn more about Digital Prezence?

Chris Buetti  38:11

I encourage everyone to go check out that website, digitalprezence.com. There’s an About Me page with links to all my social media, my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium for people who want to read some more; and my other founders’, as well. Definitely, to anyone that happens to listen to this, feel free to reach out.

Robert Leonard  38:32

I’ll be sure to put links to Chris’s resources in the show notes so you guys can go check it out. I’ll also put links to various different things that we talked about throughout the show, as well as some books that relate to the topics that we talked about. You guys can go check those out as well.

Chris, thanks so much for your time.

Chris Buetti  38:48

Yeah, thank you!

Robert Leonard  38:49

Alright, guys! That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’ll see you again next week!

Outro  38:56

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