August 8, 2025 • 33 mins
Tobin Brogunier, Founder and CEO of Virtual Storefronts, shares his insights on how brick-and-mortar businesses can successfully navigate the digital landscape. Learn how to achieve a strong online presence without the need for a full-fledged e-commerce operation. Discover actionable strategies tailored for local entrepreneurs looking to attract more customers and grow their businesses in today’s competitive environment.
Listen on Podbean:
https://brainworkframework.podbean.com/
Connect with Tobin Borgunier:
Company Website: https://www.virtualstorefronts.com
Company Website: https://virtualstorefronts.co
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/USpaceOfficial
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/virtualstorefronts
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@Virtualstorefronts
Instagram: https://instagram.com/storefront.love
Twitter Feed: https://www.twitter.com/UspaceOfficial
Follow Tobin’s Public Profile: https://www.facebook.com/tobinatuspace
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #entrepreneur #digital #online #strategies
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
People walk out of their house andinstead of just going on autopilot
(00:03):
to the big box store or autopilot toAmazon, we are disrupting those search
results to let people know, Hey, there'sa local business here and you could go
check them out, and you could go spendthat money at that local business.
Business owners are like sovereignentities unto themselves.
When you walk into a business, you'rewalking into someone else's kingdom.
(00:24):
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the founder and CEOof Virtual Storefronts by Uspace.
Tobin Brogunier.
Virtual Storefronts is a digitalplatform designed to help
small businesses, independent,retailers and local entrepreneurs
(00:46):
gain better visibility online.
So excited to have 'em on.
Tobin, how you doing today?
I'm doing great and thank youfor having me on this show.
Absolutely.
And we always love to get in the minds ofentrepreneurs, both with the SEL Organic
Leads Marketing Space but we like to ask,what were you doing before that kinda
led you into what you're doing today?
So my background is in commercialphotography and editorial photography.
I worked in Manhattanfor about seven years.
(01:07):
I worked in Minneapolis for seven years.
My work was with major companies asa contractor running my own business.
I would hire my own crews, myown teams and we would do day
contracts, for major corporationsand just shoot commercial stuff.
My career spans from the tailend of film into digital.
(01:27):
You as a photographer, you can'tbe behind the curve in technology.
You have to know what's comingdown the pipe and I had a lot of
experience both working with all ofthese major corporations and working
with enterprise level technologybut also running my own business.
So having to learn all of theseconstantly evolving platforms, formats,
digital techniques was just a naturalpart of my job for two decades.
(01:51):
Eventually what happened was, I gottathe point where I was like, well,
first of all, these businesses need thebusinesses that I was working for, the
major corporations, they had a hand up.
So in terms of marketing, theyhave scale, they have the budgets.
if they need some money, they havedeep pockets or they can get it
from wherever and then you hadthe little mom and pop businesses.
(02:13):
So when I moved to Georgia forpersonal reasons, like a relationship.
I didn't have my network of professionalwork that I had in the north.
I grew up in the north.
I grew up actually in Maine.
So I'm here in Georgia and Ineeded to work with smaller
clients in a smaller market.
I started organizing these localbusinesses and I was like, wow, these
local businesses need a lot more,they needed better quality stuff.
(02:38):
They needed better ways to reach people.
They needed better imagery creation.
They needed better marketing, likefocused, higher level marketing.
So I worked with those businesses andput them all together on a Instagram
feed and it was a shared audienceand they cycled, we cycled through
each one had a day on a 14 day cycle.
that worked pretty well.
so it allowed a lot ofbusinesses to get much better.
(03:00):
As a photographer, I was able to delivera higher quality product and they
were able to access a larger audience.
And that then turned into what I'm doingtoday, which is Virtual Storefronts.
Virtual Storefronts is kind of a mashupof my experience, having my own business
and also trying to solve the problemsof those small business owners that
(03:24):
are trying to reach their local marketsbecause there's so many problems.
I mean, to unpack all of themwould take a long time but just
on a very basic level, to give youan overview on a personal level.
As a photographer, I was in charge ofeither contracting and I contracted many
people to build a portfolio presentationfor my work that cost thousands of dollars
(03:46):
and had to be re-upped every three years.
it was very time consuming, veryfrustrating, making sure the
SSL certificates are registered.
All this kind of reinventing the wheelto create a website . You know the drill.
You know you're sending in thecertifications to Podbean and making sure
all of this busy work that we have to doas business owners and a website is just
this huge pile of extra busy work thatI had to deal with as a business owner.
(04:10):
And I'm pretty tech savvy guy, so Ican do it but would I rather not do it?
The answer is yes.
I would prefer not to build a website.
And as I like to say, does anyoneget up in the morning and say,
Hey, I wanna register a domain.
Find a host, build a website, decideon the aesthetics, figure out the con.
No one gets up in the morning andsays, oh, that's what I want do today.
(04:32):
It's 2025.
And Google is telling these local businessowners, Hey, if you wanna be found, if
you wanna be discovered in local search.
No problem.
All you gotta do is build a websiteand compete with walmart.com and
lowe's.com and zales jewelers.com ifyou're a jewelry store and show up
(04:56):
in local search results, no problem.
Nice and easy, right?
And at the end of the day, notvery reasonable for Google to say.
Hey, all you gotta do is build a website.
There's no such thing as justbuilding a website anymore.
especially since in these local searchresults, which is something people
don't realize, Google has two modes.
It has the global mode and thenit has the local search mode
(05:17):
where it's like, I'm looking for alawnmower repair shop right here.
Enter.
I'm not looking for the globalhole of lawnmower repair knowledge.
So there's two modes for Google and weare entirely focused on that local mode
and the issue that people have and peopledon't realize this because when you
(05:38):
type in, I'm looking for a lawnmower inAndrew's, North Carolina, you don't think
about it because it's what's missing.
That's the problem.
What you see is, you see Walmart, yousee Lowe's, you see all of the major
chain stores in this area will showup for those items but who's missing?
(05:58):
It's the local stores that have thoseitems are missing in local search results
because Home Depot, Lowe's, walmart, theyhave the ability, they have the money, the
time and they have the incentive to makesure that local search results are flooded
with their corporate search results.
(06:21):
And so that displaces allof the local businesses.
They just don't show up.
They're invisible where everyoneis looking in these search results.
So that's a huge problem andGoogle hasn't figured out how
to solve that problem for the.
Local business owner except tosay, Hey, Chris, listen, if you've
(06:42):
got a lawnmower place, no problem.
Just build a website, optimize itto the point where it can compete
in local search with Home Depot.
That's why two outta three businesseswe're in a rural area have opted
out of having a website at all.
They've been through it.
They've had bad designers, they've hadpeople that are not fully honest or
(07:03):
just disappear after the job is done.
hold their credentials hostage.
All kinds of terrible stuff happenswith website design and building.
it's this really intimate relationshipyou have usually with a stranger or
someone ideally, who's been referredto you that costs a lot of money.
You want the picture with a toilet init to be removed, that's an extra $500.
Some of our biggest fans are intheir twenties 'cause they're
(07:24):
like, I don't wanna deal with this.
Absolutely.
And it's resonating with myself andour audience because it's so true.
I didn't wake up wanting tobuild a website but it was a
necessity that I felt I had to do.
And I see other peoplestruggle with it as well.
Both building a website butshowing up in local search results.
And this is where the warmest mostorganic interested buyers hang out.
This is where they findsolutions to their problems.
(07:46):
And if businesses, the smaller businessesaren't showing up, that's a big problem
and here you come to save the day withyour new offering that helps 'em do all
these things without all that friction.
All of that work.
Exactly.
Because you as a business owner,all of your audiences, business
owners, we all know the pain.
And me as a business owner, we allviscerally understand the pain it takes
(08:07):
and the time and the opportunity cost.
So the idea is, wouldn't it be greatif there was just a service that gave
me the results of a website where Ididn't have to do all of the work.
I didn't have to build all of this stuff.
I didn't have to register domains.
I don't have to update the WordPress,backend software to fit the internet.
That's a constantly shiftingsands of the internet.
(08:29):
If you look at a lot of theseabandoned domains, essentially
effectively abandoned.
if a website is not constantlymaintained in the current ecosystem,
it's not updated every six months.
It starts falling apart and you'llsee with people that when we
ask them, do you have a currentwebsite that we can look up?
they won't even give us their ownweb address because they don't want
us to see how it's fallen apart.
(08:50):
No one has a Main street business becausethey wanna spend time behind a computer.
They want to talk to people and theyhave other management stuff to do.
So our premise is basically like.
I have an idea, how about one companybuilds all of that stuff for you and then
you just order it and it's a subscriptionthat's very low price and annual and we
(09:14):
simply, you don't even have to build it.
my background's entirely marketing.
Everyone who works herethinks like a marketer.
If it's not good, it's not in.
if it's a unique value prop,it is front and center.
Why not have a marketing place likecreate a very Chef Ramsey style
one pager that like delivers allof the information that you need.
(09:35):
Boom, like a silver bulletand then here's the best part.
We just send you a linkand you approve it, right?
Like you ask for changes.
It's just you're just editing a profilebasically inside of a social network.
It's like Twitter or something.
It's just each storefront is a profileinside of a network and they're
all working together to provide allof that data to Google together.
(09:58):
So there's like thousands of keywords.
This is the best described ruralcounty in the United States.
There's over 10,000 keywords justhovering right around over my head
in a county of 1700 people currently.
So there's more keywords than people inthe town that I'm in probably right now.
So it's a lot of data.
That Google doesn't haveaccess to right now.
(10:19):
So the way that I describe it is thatGoogle goes by these businesses and
it says, okay, I want your breweryto be in Google My Business, so when
people search for a brewery, they seethe local brewery and Google's pretty
good about getting those categories.
But does Google know thatthe brewery has hummus?
Does Google know thatthe brewery has a patio?
Do they know that they have karaokenight and all of this stuff?
(10:41):
Well, Google does know that if youactually have a website and document all
that information and give it to Google.
But that sounds like a pain in the butt.
That sounds like a 20 page website.
And if you're doing it right as a smallbusiness owner and this is the smartest
people I know who are in your demographic.
You're in your late twenties.
People in your demographic arethinking the smart ones do the one
(11:04):
pager website and essentially it'swhat we're doing where you don't have
to maintain too much and it's fairlysimple or use a link tree or something
that where there's a bunch of links.
we also include 1212 customizable linkson a virtual storefront so you can
link to every profile that you're onjust push a button to text or whatever.
So the idea essentially is to removethat burden and say like, Hey, we
(11:26):
specialize in delivering this andin solving this problem for you.
It's literally 22 million businesses thatcan benefit from this because of that, our
prices can be absolutely unbelievably lowand people are in disbelief of our pricing
but our pricing model is not fictitious.
it does make sense.
Once you're doing a few thousand of these,the numbers really do start to add up.
(11:50):
It's the promise of thenineties, when the internet was
actually working for everyone.
Right.
And that was something I wanted tomention and highlight within your
journey here is, it was interestinghearing that you are in more of a
higher ticket, higher end workingfor subcontracting in corporations.
And then to go into more of a ruralspace and say, okay, I wanna work with
the mom and pop with a much lower budgetand arguably you would have to be doing
(12:14):
a lot more work but within that, youstumbled upon your million dollar idea.
You realize, okay, here's a hugeproblem that needs to be solved.
Here's how I can solve this at scalewith some automation and a team.
And if we can do this theright way within a process.
Look at the entire marketthat's available to us.
Boom.
Yeah.
That's your million dollar.
There it is.
(12:34):
Because we were using the current piecesthat were available to us, which was
an Instagram feed and Instagram hasadvantages and disadvantages but at the
end of the day, it's a limited systemthat's built for a global perspective and
so this is part of the trick of everythingthat this is part of the paradigm that
we live in that people don't really see'cause they just take it for granted.
(12:57):
Everything that you and I use dayto day in technology is configured
for a global perspective becauseit has an operating assumption
that when I am on my technology.
The first thing that I want is the bestthat ever existed in the entire world.
The most viral content on Facebook, themost compelling recipe for cornbread
(13:21):
when I'm looking for cornbread on Google.
The smartest answer in Chat gpt and thathas a place, and that's definitely part
of the most viral conversation on X orthe hottest topics across the globe.
these are generally speaking, thefounding principles of the technology
that we use from Silicon Valley everysingle day and that's not wrong.
(13:44):
It's just missing a part of human lifeand a part of human life is everything
that's just around you having some levelof precedence because what's around
you immediately impacts your life ina way that whether or not, there's a
conspiracy for seeding the clouds inthe Gulf of Mexico affects your life.
(14:06):
there's abstractions and bigthings going on but then there's
very specific stuff that happensin your immediate surroundings.
the problem is, that stuff'skind of just thrown into Google.
It's thrown into facebook.
So Google just kind of keepslocal business listings.
It doesn't solve the problem offinding what these businesses have.
Google could just revoke all of thoselocal listings overnight if they want.
(14:29):
They could monetize everythingthat they're currently showing.
There's nothing mandating that theyhave to do it and then with Facebook,
Facebook kind of is the revok of thoserights because every Facebook page has
this issue of deprioritization, right?
So when people are saying, I justconsulted a guy who's opening
a new business and he said, oh,I need to get my Facebook page,
(14:51):
my business page up and running.
And he's like, I use it some.
You might just stick with your personalpage for a little while 'cause like
you have about 20 times as muchtraction when you post as a person.
Facebook is demoting,essentially Facebook because it's
configured for the whole world.
It has this viral content that you'recompeting against and it's highly demoting
the local, the Facebook business pagesbecause Facebook essentially is saying,
(15:15):
we will promote you if you pay us.
back in the day, you have to pay adollar per like and people got 10,000
like and then Facebook was showing,turned out like one to 2% of the people
that liked your page that you just paid$10,000 to get to like your page and if
you want us to show it to more than 1%of the people who like your page, then
you're gonna need to boost the post.
And so this is just a classicmisapplication of business principles
(15:40):
that are scaled business principles.
Facebook is using an idea for businessthat's applicable to global businesses
but it's applying it to the little guy sothat the little guy would then have to go
into the back end to an enterprise whitecollar, I know every ads and that little
guy is lost and what also happened is thatthe Facebook pages would pay the money.
(16:03):
They wouldn't get any ROI and then theywere told they just needed to create
the most viral content on the planet.
It's just one trap after another.
Because the whole configuration of all ofthese platforms is inherently, Configured
to undermine localization of information.
That's just what it comes downto because localized information
(16:23):
is the least important and whatwe've done is we've completely
inverted that with our platform.
We only local is the most importantpart of only local information.
So it's literally we have livefeeds on this platform that are
only within five miles of thestorefront towns that we have each.
when storefronts take over or comeinto a town, we open up a feed and
(16:46):
it becomes a storefront town andthen that feed literally excludes.
what's interesting is we excludeeverything outside of that.
So that gives priority to what'shappening to you in your personal
space, like first priority and sowe're really engineering technology
that's very counterintuitive to people.
it takes a learning curve with it.
(17:07):
it takes time for people to acclimateto it but I think as people acclimate
to it, as they get used to theidea that information doesn't have
to be this global competition.
It doesn't have to be an argumentyou're having about politics or
whatever on Facebook and that it canactually just be localized information.
I think people will really warm up to it.
You don't need the largest audience.
(17:29):
You just need the right audience.
That's why there's podcasts and YouTubechannels with one to 200 subscribers
if you have the right audience.
That is still worth something.
So these localized results and we'veseen it time and time again with these
other platforms, they encourage businessowners, Hey, it's a free profile.
We're gonna show you this and as soonas you're hooked on it and provide all
the information then it's a pay to use.
we've seen that with Facebook, we'veseen that with Google, for local
(17:51):
map pack results and even for SEO.
They're not gonna return thefavor, which is unfortunate.
But if we have good guys like you outthere providing services that won't
do that, we have something great outhere that can help local people, local
businesses right within their community.
I'm glad that you get it.
Not everyone fully gets it.
And I always love the people that get it.
'cause you're like right there.
We see it, we're a part of it, bothbusiness owners and helping clients.
(18:14):
These are the struggles we runwith and it's something that we
kind of see down the pipeline.
I called this with Google backin the day with schema markup.
And they said, why don't youoptimize your website to be in
this certain format to do this?
And I was like, well, that's greatbut what's gonna happen after?
They're like, don't worry about, it'sjust for SEO and then suddenly AI overview
comes through and featured snippets.
And now, sure there's ways you can getfound and get in front of the right
(18:35):
people but it's harder on those platforms.
Now it's literally a payto use, pay to place.
It really is.
And we do have an upfront feethat actually works in a really
good way because there's anupfront fee which isn't expensive.
It does verify that every singleperson who's on the platform is the
actual verified business because weare verifying that it's a trusted
(18:58):
local source of information.
Interestingly enough, It's not trulya social network where people could
just create a profile and let it go.
We publish these profiles.
We control the publishing of theprofiles, we have the Clay County Sheriff
on there and the sheriff can publishinformation on there and we know that
it's from the Clay County Sheriff.
their Facebook page can't do that becausethere's a duplicate Facebook page that
(19:18):
meadow won't take down for the sheriff.
You should get a court order for that.
I don't even know if that would help.
What you're talking about with Google,will send out new requirements every
three to six months that they'reabsolutely laborious and it's not
reasonable for Google to expect thatpeople would be able to do that or
understand that or figure it out.
Why not just create a service thatchecks the boxes that you need to
(19:40):
check and makes it easy for you todo your job, which is what we want.
At the end of the day, we like to saytechnology without the work, we're
removing those extra digital chores.
You're gonna put a bumper on an intro andyou're gonna be posting it on to no one
needs extra digital chores in this time.
And so that's what we aim to dois just check that that website
(20:01):
box and give you the freedom to dowhatever else that you wanna do but
also to just nail that local search.
Be found locally, just check thatbox of making sure that people in
your area know that you're here.
Marketing at the end of the day isreminding people that you exist.
The most important thing that youcan't do anything more in marketing
(20:23):
if people don't know that you exist.
So creating a pleasant, repeatedreminder of your existence and
that you have what people offer.
So when someone Googles iron skillet inAndrew's, North Carolina and they hit
enter, Nancy's treasures is gonna comeup because they have an iron skillet.
it tells me.
(20:44):
Hey, I don't even knowwhat Nancy's treasures is.
Is there a store called Nancy's Treasuresin Town that sounds kind of cool?
Wait, they have iron skillets.
I don't even have to click on that result.
I'm being made aware because peopleover 50% of people in the United States
as a whole want to shop more locallyand we just need more tools to do it.
Just a tool for that.
(21:05):
Absolutely.
And I think now there'seven a shift in perception.
There's this momentum now where peoplehave a mission to support more locally.
they're moving away from theselarger corporations and these
brands who aren't serving theirbest interests and supporting more
locally which is great to see.
So it's a great opportunity for youcoming into one to save the day but
even at a bigger time where they'renow more aware of this issue that
(21:29):
they're having, Hey, are you tryingto get out of the death grips of
large meta group, Facebook, Amazon,Google at what point do they become a
conglomerate, Disney, Amazon, google.
Do they all become one?
hopefully we can have a smaller businesseshere because that's what runs the economy.
It's the mom and pop.
It's the small solo businessowners that are out there.
They're putting in the work.
(21:49):
They just don't have access to thosetools and resources that they did before.
We hope so.
The idea is to open up the channels,we need to open the channels to those
businesses and allow Google to see it.
So Google looks at thesebusinesses and it says.
I know what the category is but Idon't know anything inside of it to
really itemize with the keywords,gives Google high resolution data about
(22:10):
those businesses so that Google has theopportunity we feed Google that data.
Google has the opportunity nowto tell people who are searching.
That you can get an Afghan throw blanketright here in Andrews instead of down at
Walmart, where you're gonna get somethingthat's far less quality and actually it's
gonna take you 15 minutes to get there.
(22:31):
That's about opening up the door of thosebusinesses digitally and letting Google
see in 'cause otherwise it's just beenthis dark, undocumented space because
of the website barrier, the hurdle, thewebsite hurdle, I guess we could call it.
One of the things that people reallyforget about local businesses and we
were just talking about getting thosechannels open so that we can get more.
(22:52):
Local businesses have a unique thingto offer that you cannot get online.
there's certain levels of expertise,local knowing the territory,
knowing the products intimately,being accountable for the product.
If the toaster is really a bad toasteron Amazon, you gotta pack it back up
and ship it back to Amazon and they'regonna make you pay for that anyway.
(23:13):
It's like you just take it back to thestore and you say, you sold me a bad
toaster, nine out of 10 times because thisis a public business, , they're gonna deal
with it because they're in the businessof solving problems for local people every
single day, which is a totally differentmission than just a distribution of stuff
from a massive warehouse and I think thatthat local expertise that you get people
(23:38):
are warming up to that because we haveplenty of screen time and plenty of making
judgements ourself based on reviews andall of this stuff, kind of this isolated.
Non socialized transactional stuff that wedo in order when we're consuming in 2025.
But also when you go to that store,you have that conversation and
(23:59):
it opens up ideas, it opens upneural pathways in your head about.
Things that you may not have thoughtof that person that you're talking
to who you often knows things aboutyou and your needs that are unique,
that they might be able to suggest.
And AI is seeking to become like a local,what a to offer, what a local business
(24:19):
owner can offer you with an in-personexperience right here and you don't pay
any ex, you may pay a little bit more.
it might cost a little bit more to buysomething from a local business owner
but at the end of the day, the valuethat you get with that relationship
and that understanding with a localbusiness owner is a unique value.
You simply cannot get at a big box store.
You can't get it on Amazon.
(24:40):
You really just don't get it elsewhereand I think that's important to remember.
Absolutely.
Think a lot of these consumers, somethingimportant for them to realize is that a
smaller business has more to lose, moreto risk by having an unhappy customer.
They're more likely to tell someone versuswhen they had a positive experience.
So by supporting local, you're gonnaget better customer service because
(25:01):
they wanna support each other.
so I think that's something consumers canrealize and if businesses start to realize
they can start to capitalize more on theselocal search results where people are
searching for solutions to their problems.
Absolutely.
And I think there's a tendency becauseof shop local, initiatives, there's
a tendency to feel like it's somekind of altruism or that what you're
doing, you're doing it to help, thepoor little business or whatever.
(25:23):
And I really think that we should dispensewith that notion because these are local
leaders who have expertise, who areactually very, savvy people they have
a lot to offer it's not just for them.
It's really for our benefit.
When we go to a local business and havea conversation with that person, we
are getting more value for our lives.
Purely.
And I think that's just importantto keep that in mind that this works
(25:45):
on it's what's called in capitalisma mutually beneficial relationship.
And those store owners are in aposition to create to they have
that unique benefit waiting for us.
We just need to walk out of our doorsand go there and that's what we're
designed to do is to show up in thesesearch results to show up in feeds.
Not to do an eCommerce transaction butin order to preview the business so that.
(26:08):
People walk out of their house andinstead of just going on autopilot
to the big box store or autopilot toAmazon, we are disrupting those search
results to let people know, Hey, there'sa local business here and you could go
check them out and you could go spendthat money at that local business.
I love it.
It's a much needed service andat a perfect time where people,
(26:28):
there's a shift in momentum herewithin the market for those who are
interested, where can people find youonline and get connected with you?
Okay, so the best place to get informationabout us is virtual storefronts.com
that's the service and sales websiteand it gives all the information that
you need about a virtual storefront.
We also have a web app.
(26:49):
there's three apps soyou can download the VS.
Shopping app.
If you're in Kentucky, it's notgonna help you do local shopping
at the moment.
That's gonna happen if you're inMichigan that's the future as we expand.
you will get a flavor for whatit is, when you download the app.
You can actually follow businessesand get instant alerts whenever they
post which is a new feature thatjust came out which is really cool.
(27:10):
Virtual storefronts.com is the web appand you can kind of just see, how the
live feeds on virtual storefronts.com.
It's very easy.
If you want to find out more about virtualstorefronts, you can Google virtual
storefronts and we are the number onesearch results, so we're winning on that
I love it.
That's wonderful.
And we also have those linksavailable down in the description
and the show notes for everybody.
(27:30):
Now, Tobin, we're aquarter into 2025 here.
But I wanted to ask, what are youlooking forward to most in 2025?
Are you changing any of your strategy?
Are you pushing further or are youjust kind of keeping up with the same
thing that's been working for you?
That's a great question.
We've been doing this pilot fora few years now and we've had to
iterate our product to make it.
Business owners are like sovereignentities unto themselves.
(27:54):
when you walk into a business, you'rewalking into someone else's kingdom.
That's part of the distaste they havefor big tech 'cause big tech just
dictates the rules and no one likes tobe dictated to, least of all our local
business owners in order to createthe product that these business owners
wanted, we had to iterate it four times.
we recreated it over a period of about twoand a half years and added new features
(28:15):
that we felt that they needed reconfiguredthings to make it easier for the shoppers.
So we have the right productmarket fit right now.
we just onboarded two executives, so wehave Fortune 500 executives working at
this company which I'm happy to report.
it's a first for me, for my career asa contractor and as someone running
the company, it's a welcome additionto have people that are really sharp
(28:39):
working here the plan is To expandmarket by market from this area.
we're currently doing a raise.
So if there are an investors out therethat are looking for an investment,
we could talk about that we're talkingmostly to VCs and home offices and
those types but to give you a littlebackstory on that, we've done mostly
angel raises up to now and now weactually have someone in charge of that.
So now we're hitting,we're going to scale.
(29:01):
An entire business.
I won't go into details but we havea market by market strategy that
works with nonprofit distributionin the beginning to seed the market.
In other words, providing our channelsto local leaders, in an emergency
situation because we now have a way foremergency responders to instantly message.
(29:22):
Anyone in their area who's following them.
so this is a huge innovation that we have.
that's actually becoming the underpinningof where we're going to expand.
That emergency responder network.
we realized that there was anapplication for virtual storefronts,
everyone has a pinned location likea sheriff could post live information
(29:42):
that anyone in the entire world canfollow about the current situation
instantly on the ground anywhere.
so that's a huge emergency applicationthat we're looking into and that we're
expanding currently we're testing sothat's part of our expansion strategy.
Aside from that, it's a veryuseful tool for local leaders to
instantly, send out information aboutemergencies to the local population.
(30:05):
Which town are you in, in Michigan?
so I'm across the lake.
I'm on the other side of that one.
Oh, you're in Wisconsin.
No, I'm in Milwaukee
Oh.
I did not realize you werein the Milwaukee market.
Okay.
So you're in the nerve center right?
Center of Milwaukee, closeto Chicago and then our state
capital, Madison to our west.
Absolutely.
Big market here.
And then we have Appleton to the north.
that's an emerging market now.
(30:25):
I love the nonprofit approach and thefact that you were listening to user
feedback throughout the years of building.
I've seen so many businesses failbecause they spend so much time
building a product and never asking theaudience about what they want from it.
So the fact that you took feedbackand improved on the software
already is a huge testament anda lot of things coming in 2025.
Very exciting.
It's very exciting and we arelooking forward to expanding.
(30:46):
Appleton would be a good exampleof a market where we would begin
because we want to begin in smallermarkets where it's easier to adopt.
what you need to do is createa critical mass in an area.
We're at the very tip of WesternNorth Carolina but we're two hours
from Atlanta, Knoxville, Chattanooga,Asheville and Greenville, South Carolina.
(31:06):
So within a hundred miles,there's probably about 25 million
people but there's literally 1700people in the town that I'm in.
It's an odd spot but our expansionreally will be in this area first.
Very nice.
And I've been to a few cities like that.
the one to 2000 populations,both for visiting vacation.
so I'm familiar with thosemarkets and great salt to
the other people and I agree.
(31:27):
It's great to kind of introduce thatinto the market and I love that you're
starting with nonprofits as well.
I'll be speaking on AI and technology fornonprofits at a virtual summit, in April.
Well, one of the things I love aboutpodcasting is that the people that I
meet in podcasting are always doingthings that are interesting and this
is my theory about podcasters, right?
My theory about podcasters ispodcasters tend to be people who
will get the production done.
(31:49):
They will put their back into it.
and so they tend to be areliable crew of people.
So I'm happy to add you into mypodcaster crew because that's
great.
Yeah.
I agree.
It's funny you mentioned that I havea nonprofit I'm helping right now,
potentially, might be a part of theboard but they were talking about, I
wanna start three podcasts and I said.
Wow.
Sounds like a lot of work.
(32:09):
I said, let's start with one.
If we do one really well for a year, thenwe can look to a second one but hey, let's
focus our energy on what's gonna work andthat's the beauty of being on the board.
You can provide direction tothem and give 'em better ideas.
So I love your approach, how you'rehelping people and just the strategic
approach you're taking to marketing.
I love it.
Cool.
thanks for having me on.
You are very blessed tohave Chris on your board.
(32:31):
You're awesome.
Thank you.
The guy who tells you notto do three podcasts is the
guy you want on your board.
Who would've thought my biggest ahamoment would, don't do three podcasts
that's an insight in what as businessowners, what we choose not to put
our effort into is because everyone'sliving on a linear timeline.
What you decide to do has to have maximumimpact and if you do three podcasts,
then it's hard to get that one podcastto really knock it out of the park.
(32:54):
Well said Tobin.
I agree.
Cool, Tobin, I appreciate youcoming on the show and sharing
all your wisdom and insight.
You have a lot on your plate for 2025but it sounds like you have the right
team in place now for the growth andscaling phase, which is so exciting.
So congratulations to you.
Thank you so much Tobin.
Appreciate it.
Thanks Chris.
People walk out of their house andinstead of just going on autopilot
(00:03):
to the big box store or autopilot toAmazon, we are disrupting those search
results to let people know, Hey, there'sa local business here and you could go
check them out, and you could go spendthat money at that local business.
Business owners are like sovereignentities unto themselves.
When you walk into a business, you'rewalking into someone else's kingdom.
(00:24):
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the founder and CEOof Virtual Storefronts by Uspace.
Tobin Brogunier.
Virtual Storefronts is a digitalplatform designed to help
small businesses, independent,retailers and local entrepreneurs
(00:46):
gain better visibility online.
So excited to have 'em on.
Tobin, how you doing today?
I'm doing great and thank youfor having me on this show.
Absolutely.
And we always love to get in the minds ofentrepreneurs, both with the SEL Organic
Leads Marketing Space but we like to ask,what were you doing before that kinda
led you into what you're doing today?
So my background is in commercialphotography and editorial photography.
I worked in Manhattanfor about seven years.
(01:07):
I worked in Minneapolis for seven years.
My work was with major companies asa contractor running my own business.
I would hire my own crews, myown teams and we would do day
contracts, for major corporationsand just shoot commercial stuff.
My career spans from the tailend of film into digital.
(01:27):
You as a photographer, you can'tbe behind the curve in technology.
You have to know what's comingdown the pipe and I had a lot of
experience both working with all ofthese major corporations and working
with enterprise level technologybut also running my own business.
So having to learn all of theseconstantly evolving platforms, formats,
digital techniques was just a naturalpart of my job for two decades.
(01:51):
Eventually what happened was, I gottathe point where I was like, well,
first of all, these businesses need thebusinesses that I was working for, the
major corporations, they had a hand up.
So in terms of marketing, theyhave scale, they have the budgets.
if they need some money, they havedeep pockets or they can get it
from wherever and then you hadthe little mom and pop businesses.
(02:13):
So when I moved to Georgia forpersonal reasons, like a relationship.
I didn't have my network of professionalwork that I had in the north.
I grew up in the north.
I grew up actually in Maine.
So I'm here in Georgia and Ineeded to work with smaller
clients in a smaller market.
I started organizing these localbusinesses and I was like, wow, these
local businesses need a lot more,they needed better quality stuff.
(02:38):
They needed better ways to reach people.
They needed better imagery creation.
They needed better marketing, likefocused, higher level marketing.
So I worked with those businesses andput them all together on a Instagram
feed and it was a shared audienceand they cycled, we cycled through
each one had a day on a 14 day cycle.
that worked pretty well.
so it allowed a lot ofbusinesses to get much better.
(03:00):
As a photographer, I was able to delivera higher quality product and they
were able to access a larger audience.
And that then turned into what I'm doingtoday, which is Virtual Storefronts.
Virtual Storefronts is kind of a mashupof my experience, having my own business
and also trying to solve the problemsof those small business owners that
(03:24):
are trying to reach their local marketsbecause there's so many problems.
I mean, to unpack all of themwould take a long time but just
on a very basic level, to give youan overview on a personal level.
As a photographer, I was in charge ofeither contracting and I contracted many
people to build a portfolio presentationfor my work that cost thousands of dollars
(03:46):
and had to be re-upped every three years.
it was very time consuming, veryfrustrating, making sure the
SSL certificates are registered.
All this kind of reinventing the wheelto create a website . You know the drill.
You know you're sending in thecertifications to Podbean and making sure
all of this busy work that we have to doas business owners and a website is just
this huge pile of extra busy work thatI had to deal with as a business owner.
(04:10):
And I'm pretty tech savvy guy, so Ican do it but would I rather not do it?
The answer is yes.
I would prefer not to build a website.
And as I like to say, does anyoneget up in the morning and say,
Hey, I wanna register a domain.
Find a host, build a website, decideon the aesthetics, figure out the con.
No one gets up in the morning andsays, oh, that's what I want do today.
(04:32):
It's 2025.
And Google is telling these local businessowners, Hey, if you wanna be found, if
you wanna be discovered in local search.
No problem.
All you gotta do is build a websiteand compete with walmart.com and
lowe's.com and zales jewelers.com ifyou're a jewelry store and show up
(04:56):
in local search results, no problem.
Nice and easy, right?
And at the end of the day, notvery reasonable for Google to say.
Hey, all you gotta do is build a website.
There's no such thing as justbuilding a website anymore.
especially since in these local searchresults, which is something people
don't realize, Google has two modes.
It has the global mode and thenit has the local search mode
(05:17):
where it's like, I'm looking for alawnmower repair shop right here.
Enter.
I'm not looking for the globalhole of lawnmower repair knowledge.
So there's two modes for Google and weare entirely focused on that local mode
and the issue that people have and peopledon't realize this because when you
(05:38):
type in, I'm looking for a lawnmower inAndrew's, North Carolina, you don't think
about it because it's what's missing.
That's the problem.
What you see is, you see Walmart, yousee Lowe's, you see all of the major
chain stores in this area will showup for those items but who's missing?
(05:58):
It's the local stores that have thoseitems are missing in local search results
because Home Depot, Lowe's, walmart, theyhave the ability, they have the money, the
time and they have the incentive to makesure that local search results are flooded
with their corporate search results.
(06:21):
And so that displaces allof the local businesses.
They just don't show up.
They're invisible where everyoneis looking in these search results.
So that's a huge problem andGoogle hasn't figured out how
to solve that problem for the.
Local business owner except tosay, Hey, Chris, listen, if you've
(06:42):
got a lawnmower place, no problem.
Just build a website, optimize itto the point where it can compete
in local search with Home Depot.
That's why two outta three businesseswe're in a rural area have opted
out of having a website at all.
They've been through it.
They've had bad designers, they've hadpeople that are not fully honest or
(07:03):
just disappear after the job is done.
hold their credentials hostage.
All kinds of terrible stuff happenswith website design and building.
it's this really intimate relationshipyou have usually with a stranger or
someone ideally, who's been referredto you that costs a lot of money.
You want the picture with a toilet init to be removed, that's an extra $500.
Some of our biggest fans are intheir twenties 'cause they're
(07:24):
like, I don't wanna deal with this.
Absolutely.
And it's resonating with myself andour audience because it's so true.
I didn't wake up wanting tobuild a website but it was a
necessity that I felt I had to do.
And I see other peoplestruggle with it as well.
Both building a website butshowing up in local search results.
And this is where the warmest mostorganic interested buyers hang out.
This is where they findsolutions to their problems.
(07:46):
And if businesses, the smaller businessesaren't showing up, that's a big problem
and here you come to save the day withyour new offering that helps 'em do all
these things without all that friction.
All of that work.
Exactly.
Because you as a business owner,all of your audiences, business
owners, we all know the pain.
And me as a business owner, we allviscerally understand the pain it takes
(08:07):
and the time and the opportunity cost.
So the idea is, wouldn't it be greatif there was just a service that gave
me the results of a website where Ididn't have to do all of the work.
I didn't have to build all of this stuff.
I didn't have to register domains.
I don't have to update the WordPress,backend software to fit the internet.
That's a constantly shiftingsands of the internet.
(08:29):
If you look at a lot of theseabandoned domains, essentially
effectively abandoned.
if a website is not constantlymaintained in the current ecosystem,
it's not updated every six months.
It starts falling apart and you'llsee with people that when we
ask them, do you have a currentwebsite that we can look up?
they won't even give us their ownweb address because they don't want
us to see how it's fallen apart.
(08:50):
No one has a Main street business becausethey wanna spend time behind a computer.
They want to talk to people and theyhave other management stuff to do.
So our premise is basically like.
I have an idea, how about one companybuilds all of that stuff for you and then
you just order it and it's a subscriptionthat's very low price and annual and we
(09:14):
simply, you don't even have to build it.
my background's entirely marketing.
Everyone who works herethinks like a marketer.
If it's not good, it's not in.
if it's a unique value prop,it is front and center.
Why not have a marketing place likecreate a very Chef Ramsey style
one pager that like delivers allof the information that you need.
(09:35):
Boom, like a silver bulletand then here's the best part.
We just send you a linkand you approve it, right?
Like you ask for changes.
It's just you're just editing a profilebasically inside of a social network.
It's like Twitter or something.
It's just each storefront is a profileinside of a network and they're
all working together to provide allof that data to Google together.
(09:58):
So there's like thousands of keywords.
This is the best described ruralcounty in the United States.
There's over 10,000 keywords justhovering right around over my head
in a county of 1700 people currently.
So there's more keywords than people inthe town that I'm in probably right now.
So it's a lot of data.
That Google doesn't haveaccess to right now.
(10:19):
So the way that I describe it is thatGoogle goes by these businesses and
it says, okay, I want your breweryto be in Google My Business, so when
people search for a brewery, they seethe local brewery and Google's pretty
good about getting those categories.
But does Google know thatthe brewery has hummus?
Does Google know thatthe brewery has a patio?
Do they know that they have karaokenight and all of this stuff?
(10:41):
Well, Google does know that if youactually have a website and document all
that information and give it to Google.
But that sounds like a pain in the butt.
That sounds like a 20 page website.
And if you're doing it right as a smallbusiness owner and this is the smartest
people I know who are in your demographic.
You're in your late twenties.
People in your demographic arethinking the smart ones do the one
(11:04):
pager website and essentially it'swhat we're doing where you don't have
to maintain too much and it's fairlysimple or use a link tree or something
that where there's a bunch of links.
we also include 1212 customizable linkson a virtual storefront so you can
link to every profile that you're onjust push a button to text or whatever.
So the idea essentially is to removethat burden and say like, Hey, we
(11:26):
specialize in delivering this andin solving this problem for you.
It's literally 22 million businesses thatcan benefit from this because of that, our
prices can be absolutely unbelievably lowand people are in disbelief of our pricing
but our pricing model is not fictitious.
it does make sense.
Once you're doing a few thousand of these,the numbers really do start to add up.
(11:50):
It's the promise of thenineties, when the internet was
actually working for everyone.
Right.
And that was something I wanted tomention and highlight within your
journey here is, it was interestinghearing that you are in more of a
higher ticket, higher end workingfor subcontracting in corporations.
And then to go into more of a ruralspace and say, okay, I wanna work with
the mom and pop with a much lower budgetand arguably you would have to be doing
(12:14):
a lot more work but within that, youstumbled upon your million dollar idea.
You realize, okay, here's a hugeproblem that needs to be solved.
Here's how I can solve this at scalewith some automation and a team.
And if we can do this theright way within a process.
Look at the entire marketthat's available to us.
Boom.
Yeah.
That's your million dollar.
There it is.
(12:34):
Because we were using the current piecesthat were available to us, which was
an Instagram feed and Instagram hasadvantages and disadvantages but at the
end of the day, it's a limited systemthat's built for a global perspective and
so this is part of the trick of everythingthat this is part of the paradigm that
we live in that people don't really see'cause they just take it for granted.
(12:57):
Everything that you and I use dayto day in technology is configured
for a global perspective becauseit has an operating assumption
that when I am on my technology.
The first thing that I want is the bestthat ever existed in the entire world.
The most viral content on Facebook, themost compelling recipe for cornbread
(13:21):
when I'm looking for cornbread on Google.
The smartest answer in Chat gpt and thathas a place, and that's definitely part
of the most viral conversation on X orthe hottest topics across the globe.
these are generally speaking, thefounding principles of the technology
that we use from Silicon Valley everysingle day and that's not wrong.
(13:44):
It's just missing a part of human lifeand a part of human life is everything
that's just around you having some levelof precedence because what's around
you immediately impacts your life ina way that whether or not, there's a
conspiracy for seeding the clouds inthe Gulf of Mexico affects your life.
(14:06):
there's abstractions and bigthings going on but then there's
very specific stuff that happensin your immediate surroundings.
the problem is, that stuff'skind of just thrown into Google.
It's thrown into facebook.
So Google just kind of keepslocal business listings.
It doesn't solve the problem offinding what these businesses have.
Google could just revoke all of thoselocal listings overnight if they want.
(14:29):
They could monetize everythingthat they're currently showing.
There's nothing mandating that theyhave to do it and then with Facebook,
Facebook kind of is the revok of thoserights because every Facebook page has
this issue of deprioritization, right?
So when people are saying, I justconsulted a guy who's opening
a new business and he said, oh,I need to get my Facebook page,
(14:51):
my business page up and running.
And he's like, I use it some.
You might just stick with your personalpage for a little while 'cause like
you have about 20 times as muchtraction when you post as a person.
Facebook is demoting,essentially Facebook because it's
configured for the whole world.
It has this viral content that you'recompeting against and it's highly demoting
the local, the Facebook business pagesbecause Facebook essentially is saying,
(15:15):
we will promote you if you pay us.
back in the day, you have to pay adollar per like and people got 10,000
like and then Facebook was showing,turned out like one to 2% of the people
that liked your page that you just paid$10,000 to get to like your page and if
you want us to show it to more than 1%of the people who like your page, then
you're gonna need to boost the post.
And so this is just a classicmisapplication of business principles
(15:40):
that are scaled business principles.
Facebook is using an idea for businessthat's applicable to global businesses
but it's applying it to the little guy sothat the little guy would then have to go
into the back end to an enterprise whitecollar, I know every ads and that little
guy is lost and what also happened is thatthe Facebook pages would pay the money.
(16:03):
They wouldn't get any ROI and then theywere told they just needed to create
the most viral content on the planet.
It's just one trap after another.
Because the whole configuration of all ofthese platforms is inherently, Configured
to undermine localization of information.
That's just what it comes downto because localized information
(16:23):
is the least important and whatwe've done is we've completely
inverted that with our platform.
We only local is the most importantpart of only local information.
So it's literally we have livefeeds on this platform that are
only within five miles of thestorefront towns that we have each.
when storefronts take over or comeinto a town, we open up a feed and
(16:46):
it becomes a storefront town andthen that feed literally excludes.
what's interesting is we excludeeverything outside of that.
So that gives priority to what'shappening to you in your personal
space, like first priority and sowe're really engineering technology
that's very counterintuitive to people.
it takes a learning curve with it.
(17:07):
it takes time for people to acclimateto it but I think as people acclimate
to it, as they get used to theidea that information doesn't have
to be this global competition.
It doesn't have to be an argumentyou're having about politics or
whatever on Facebook and that it canactually just be localized information.
I think people will really warm up to it.
You don't need the largest audience.
(17:29):
You just need the right audience.
That's why there's podcasts and YouTubechannels with one to 200 subscribers
if you have the right audience.
That is still worth something.
So these localized results and we'veseen it time and time again with these
other platforms, they encourage businessowners, Hey, it's a free profile.
We're gonna show you this and as soonas you're hooked on it and provide all
the information then it's a pay to use.
we've seen that with Facebook, we'veseen that with Google, for local
(17:51):
map pack results and even for SEO.
They're not gonna return thefavor, which is unfortunate.
But if we have good guys like you outthere providing services that won't
do that, we have something great outhere that can help local people, local
businesses right within their community.
I'm glad that you get it.
Not everyone fully gets it.
And I always love the people that get it.
'cause you're like right there.
We see it, we're a part of it, bothbusiness owners and helping clients.
(18:14):
These are the struggles we runwith and it's something that we
kind of see down the pipeline.
I called this with Google backin the day with schema markup.
And they said, why don't youoptimize your website to be in
this certain format to do this?
And I was like, well, that's greatbut what's gonna happen after?
They're like, don't worry about, it'sjust for SEO and then suddenly AI overview
comes through and featured snippets.
And now, sure there's ways you can getfound and get in front of the right
(18:35):
people but it's harder on those platforms.
Now it's literally a payto use, pay to place.
It really is.
And we do have an upfront feethat actually works in a really
good way because there's anupfront fee which isn't expensive.
It does verify that every singleperson who's on the platform is the
actual verified business because weare verifying that it's a trusted
(18:58):
local source of information.
Interestingly enough, It's not trulya social network where people could
just create a profile and let it go.
We publish these profiles.
We control the publishing of theprofiles, we have the Clay County Sheriff
on there and the sheriff can publishinformation on there and we know that
it's from the Clay County Sheriff.
their Facebook page can't do that becausethere's a duplicate Facebook page that
(19:18):
meadow won't take down for the sheriff.
You should get a court order for that.
I don't even know if that would help.
What you're talking about with Google,will send out new requirements every
three to six months that they'reabsolutely laborious and it's not
reasonable for Google to expect thatpeople would be able to do that or
understand that or figure it out.
Why not just create a service thatchecks the boxes that you need to
(19:40):
check and makes it easy for you todo your job, which is what we want.
At the end of the day, we like to saytechnology without the work, we're
removing those extra digital chores.
You're gonna put a bumper on an intro andyou're gonna be posting it on to no one
needs extra digital chores in this time.
And so that's what we aim to dois just check that that website
(20:01):
box and give you the freedom to dowhatever else that you wanna do but
also to just nail that local search.
Be found locally, just check thatbox of making sure that people in
your area know that you're here.
Marketing at the end of the day isreminding people that you exist.
The most important thing that youcan't do anything more in marketing
(20:23):
if people don't know that you exist.
So creating a pleasant, repeatedreminder of your existence and
that you have what people offer.
So when someone Googles iron skillet inAndrew's, North Carolina and they hit
enter, Nancy's treasures is gonna comeup because they have an iron skillet.
it tells me.
(20:44):
Hey, I don't even knowwhat Nancy's treasures is.
Is there a store called Nancy's Treasuresin Town that sounds kind of cool?
Wait, they have iron skillets.
I don't even have to click on that result.
I'm being made aware because peopleover 50% of people in the United States
as a whole want to shop more locallyand we just need more tools to do it.
Just a tool for that.
(21:05):
Absolutely.
And I think now there'seven a shift in perception.
There's this momentum now where peoplehave a mission to support more locally.
they're moving away from theselarger corporations and these
brands who aren't serving theirbest interests and supporting more
locally which is great to see.
So it's a great opportunity for youcoming into one to save the day but
even at a bigger time where they'renow more aware of this issue that
(21:29):
they're having, Hey, are you tryingto get out of the death grips of
large meta group, Facebook, Amazon,Google at what point do they become a
conglomerate, Disney, Amazon, google.
Do they all become one?
hopefully we can have a smaller businesseshere because that's what runs the economy.
It's the mom and pop.
It's the small solo businessowners that are out there.
They're putting in the work.
(21:49):
They just don't have access to thosetools and resources that they did before.
We hope so.
The idea is to open up the channels,we need to open the channels to those
businesses and allow Google to see it.
So Google looks at thesebusinesses and it says.
I know what the category is but Idon't know anything inside of it to
really itemize with the keywords,gives Google high resolution data about
(22:10):
those businesses so that Google has theopportunity we feed Google that data.
Google has the opportunity nowto tell people who are searching.
That you can get an Afghan throw blanketright here in Andrews instead of down at
Walmart, where you're gonna get somethingthat's far less quality and actually it's
gonna take you 15 minutes to get there.
(22:31):
That's about opening up the door of thosebusinesses digitally and letting Google
see in 'cause otherwise it's just beenthis dark, undocumented space because
of the website barrier, the hurdle, thewebsite hurdle, I guess we could call it.
One of the things that people reallyforget about local businesses and we
were just talking about getting thosechannels open so that we can get more.
(22:52):
Local businesses have a unique thingto offer that you cannot get online.
there's certain levels of expertise,local knowing the territory,
knowing the products intimately,being accountable for the product.
If the toaster is really a bad toasteron Amazon, you gotta pack it back up
and ship it back to Amazon and they'regonna make you pay for that anyway.
(23:13):
It's like you just take it back to thestore and you say, you sold me a bad
toaster, nine out of 10 times because thisis a public business, , they're gonna deal
with it because they're in the businessof solving problems for local people every
single day, which is a totally differentmission than just a distribution of stuff
from a massive warehouse and I think thatthat local expertise that you get people
(23:38):
are warming up to that because we haveplenty of screen time and plenty of making
judgements ourself based on reviews andall of this stuff, kind of this isolated.
Non socialized transactional stuff that wedo in order when we're consuming in 2025.
But also when you go to that store,you have that conversation and
(23:59):
it opens up ideas, it opens upneural pathways in your head about.
Things that you may not have thoughtof that person that you're talking
to who you often knows things aboutyou and your needs that are unique,
that they might be able to suggest.
And AI is seeking to become like a local,what a to offer, what a local business
(24:19):
owner can offer you with an in-personexperience right here and you don't pay
any ex, you may pay a little bit more.
it might cost a little bit more to buysomething from a local business owner
but at the end of the day, the valuethat you get with that relationship
and that understanding with a localbusiness owner is a unique value.
You simply cannot get at a big box store.
You can't get it on Amazon.
(24:40):
You really just don't get it elsewhereand I think that's important to remember.
Absolutely.
Think a lot of these consumers, somethingimportant for them to realize is that a
smaller business has more to lose, moreto risk by having an unhappy customer.
They're more likely to tell someone versuswhen they had a positive experience.
So by supporting local, you're gonnaget better customer service because
(25:01):
they wanna support each other.
so I think that's something consumers canrealize and if businesses start to realize
they can start to capitalize more on theselocal search results where people are
searching for solutions to their problems.
Absolutely.
And I think there's a tendency becauseof shop local, initiatives, there's
a tendency to feel like it's somekind of altruism or that what you're
doing, you're doing it to help, thepoor little business or whatever.
(25:23):
And I really think that we should dispensewith that notion because these are local
leaders who have expertise, who areactually very, savvy people they have
a lot to offer it's not just for them.
It's really for our benefit.
When we go to a local business and havea conversation with that person, we
are getting more value for our lives.
Purely.
And I think that's just importantto keep that in mind that this works
(25:45):
on it's what's called in capitalisma mutually beneficial relationship.
And those store owners are in aposition to create to they have
that unique benefit waiting for us.
We just need to walk out of our doorsand go there and that's what we're
designed to do is to show up in thesesearch results to show up in feeds.
Not to do an eCommerce transaction butin order to preview the business so that.
(26:08):
People walk out of their house andinstead of just going on autopilot
to the big box store or autopilot toAmazon, we are disrupting those search
results to let people know, Hey, there'sa local business here and you could go
check them out and you could go spendthat money at that local business.
I love it.
It's a much needed service andat a perfect time where people,
(26:28):
there's a shift in momentum herewithin the market for those who are
interested, where can people find youonline and get connected with you?
Okay, so the best place to get informationabout us is virtual storefronts.com
that's the service and sales websiteand it gives all the information that
you need about a virtual storefront.
We also have a web app.
(26:49):
there's three apps soyou can download the VS.
Shopping app.
If you're in Kentucky, it's notgonna help you do local shopping
at the moment.
That's gonna happen if you're inMichigan that's the future as we expand.
you will get a flavor for whatit is, when you download the app.
You can actually follow businessesand get instant alerts whenever they
post which is a new feature thatjust came out which is really cool.
(27:10):
Virtual storefronts.com is the web appand you can kind of just see, how the
live feeds on virtual storefronts.com.
It's very easy.
If you want to find out more about virtualstorefronts, you can Google virtual
storefronts and we are the number onesearch results, so we're winning on that
I love it.
That's wonderful.
And we also have those linksavailable down in the description
and the show notes for everybody.
(27:30):
Now, Tobin, we're aquarter into 2025 here.
But I wanted to ask, what are youlooking forward to most in 2025?
Are you changing any of your strategy?
Are you pushing further or are youjust kind of keeping up with the same
thing that's been working for you?
That's a great question.
We've been doing this pilot fora few years now and we've had to
iterate our product to make it.
Business owners are like sovereignentities unto themselves.
(27:54):
when you walk into a business, you'rewalking into someone else's kingdom.
That's part of the distaste they havefor big tech 'cause big tech just
dictates the rules and no one likes tobe dictated to, least of all our local
business owners in order to createthe product that these business owners
wanted, we had to iterate it four times.
we recreated it over a period of about twoand a half years and added new features
(28:15):
that we felt that they needed reconfiguredthings to make it easier for the shoppers.
So we have the right productmarket fit right now.
we just onboarded two executives, so wehave Fortune 500 executives working at
this company which I'm happy to report.
it's a first for me, for my career asa contractor and as someone running
the company, it's a welcome additionto have people that are really sharp
(28:39):
working here the plan is To expandmarket by market from this area.
we're currently doing a raise.
So if there are an investors out therethat are looking for an investment,
we could talk about that we're talkingmostly to VCs and home offices and
those types but to give you a littlebackstory on that, we've done mostly
angel raises up to now and now weactually have someone in charge of that.
So now we're hitting,we're going to scale.
(29:01):
An entire business.
I won't go into details but we havea market by market strategy that
works with nonprofit distributionin the beginning to seed the market.
In other words, providing our channelsto local leaders, in an emergency
situation because we now have a way foremergency responders to instantly message.
(29:22):
Anyone in their area who's following them.
so this is a huge innovation that we have.
that's actually becoming the underpinningof where we're going to expand.
That emergency responder network.
we realized that there was anapplication for virtual storefronts,
everyone has a pinned location likea sheriff could post live information
(29:42):
that anyone in the entire world canfollow about the current situation
instantly on the ground anywhere.
so that's a huge emergency applicationthat we're looking into and that we're
expanding currently we're testing sothat's part of our expansion strategy.
Aside from that, it's a veryuseful tool for local leaders to
instantly, send out information aboutemergencies to the local population.
(30:05):
Which town are you in, in Michigan?
so I'm across the lake.
I'm on the other side of that one.
Oh, you're in Wisconsin.
No, I'm in Milwaukee
Oh.
I did not realize you werein the Milwaukee market.
Okay.
So you're in the nerve center right?
Center of Milwaukee, closeto Chicago and then our state
capital, Madison to our west.
Absolutely.
Big market here.
And then we have Appleton to the north.
that's an emerging market now.
(30:25):
I love the nonprofit approach and thefact that you were listening to user
feedback throughout the years of building.
I've seen so many businesses failbecause they spend so much time
building a product and never asking theaudience about what they want from it.
So the fact that you took feedbackand improved on the software
already is a huge testament anda lot of things coming in 2025.
Very exciting.
It's very exciting and we arelooking forward to expanding.
(30:46):
Appleton would be a good exampleof a market where we would begin
because we want to begin in smallermarkets where it's easier to adopt.
what you need to do is createa critical mass in an area.
We're at the very tip of WesternNorth Carolina but we're two hours
from Atlanta, Knoxville, Chattanooga,Asheville and Greenville, South Carolina.
(31:06):
So within a hundred miles,there's probably about 25 million
people but there's literally 1700people in the town that I'm in.
It's an odd spot but our expansionreally will be in this area first.
Very nice.
And I've been to a few cities like that.
the one to 2000 populations,both for visiting vacation.
so I'm familiar with thosemarkets and great salt to
the other people and I agree.
(31:27):
It's great to kind of introduce thatinto the market and I love that you're
starting with nonprofits as well.
I'll be speaking on AI and technology fornonprofits at a virtual summit, in April.
Well, one of the things I love aboutpodcasting is that the people that I
meet in podcasting are always doingthings that are interesting and this
is my theory about podcasters, right?
My theory about podcasters ispodcasters tend to be people who
will get the production done.
(31:49):
They will put their back into it.
and so they tend to be areliable crew of people.
So I'm happy to add you into mypodcaster crew because that's
great.
Yeah.
I agree.
It's funny you mentioned that I havea nonprofit I'm helping right now,
potentially, might be a part of theboard but they were talking about, I
wanna start three podcasts and I said.
Wow.
Sounds like a lot of work.
(32:09):
I said, let's start with one.
If we do one really well for a year, thenwe can look to a second one but hey, let's
focus our energy on what's gonna work andthat's the beauty of being on the board.
You can provide direction tothem and give 'em better ideas.
So I love your approach, how you'rehelping people and just the strategic
approach you're taking to marketing.
I love it.
Cool.
thanks for having me on.
You are very blessed tohave Chris on your board.
(32:31):
You're awesome.
Thank you.
The guy who tells you notto do three podcasts is the
guy you want on your board.
Who would've thought my biggest ahamoment would, don't do three podcasts
that's an insight in what as businessowners, what we choose not to put
our effort into is because everyone'sliving on a linear timeline.
What you decide to do has to have maximumimpact and if you do three podcasts,
then it's hard to get that one podcastto really knock it out of the park.
(32:54):
Well said Tobin.
I agree.
Cool, Tobin, I appreciate youcoming on the show and sharing
all your wisdom and insight.
You have a lot on your plate for 2025but it sounds like you have the right
team in place now for the growth andscaling phase, which is so exciting.
So congratulations to you.
Thank you so much Tobin.
Appreciate it.
Thanks Chris.
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