John Newbury from Gopher

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Episode Transcript

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iHeartMedia Ralli presents CEOs you should knowwhere we shine a spotlight on decision makers
from all corners of the triangle,showcasing the leaders and companies that drive our
local economy. Welcome to iHeartMedia CEOsyou should know. I'm your host,
Michael Berger, and today we arejoined by a CEO of a brand new

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company that's doing some things in areally different way. The company is Gopher
Website. Correct me if I'm wrong, John Newberry, Gopher go dot io.
That's the website, right, that'scorrect. Fantastic Available on Apple,
Available on Android. Yep, WellI'm one hundred percent now I'm killing it.
Killing it tagline whatever you need wheneveryou need it. Yeah, okay.

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And the cool thing about this app, guys, it will do food
delivery, junk removal, errands,TV mounting, yardwork, pet sitting,
dog walking, ride sharing, handyman, house painting, grocery delivery, holiday
decoration, furniture assembly, moving service. This is house cleaning, tobacco and
alcohol delivery. Did I miss anything? You forgot to say everything? I

(01:04):
forgot? It does say whatever youneed whenever you need it. So and
I think that's the cool part becauseyou guys are obviously playing a space where
with food delivery you have a coupleentrenched companies that have been doing it for
a long time. You guys aretaking not only that model. Let's say
we can do everything else because halfthis stuff is on my to do list
with my wife right now. Sowe'll just get on the app and we'll

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make sure they come and take careof all that. So John, first
question, you were born, nowyou're here, what's happened in between?
Well, early childhood had a reallyunique experience with racing BMX. I think
that was probably the thing that stoodout to me the most. During my

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childhood, I played all of thecity sports football, soccer, baseball,
but being able to travel across thecountry factory sponsored was just an unbelievable experience.
Okay, and it's not BMX,it's BMX racing. Okay, writers,
ready to watch the lights. Yourace them for about thirty seconds,
try to get to the finish linefirst. It's not today. What you
know. It was a lot offreestyle, so it's it still is there.

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And honestly, right before I wentto school, it became an Olympic
sport and I had stopped which wasyou know, were you good enough that
you could have compete in the Olympics. I was absolutely good enough to where
I could have at least tried out. Okay, and then at that point,
you know, anything goes. ButI have one. I was never
national number one, but I've racedagainst everybody that was and beat them respectively.
And then we actually owned a trackwhere we hosted the US Nationals in

(02:36):
Leemore, California, and I wonthat national almost every single time. And
that's everybody that's in the network,in the circuit. So now your kids,
how many kids you have? Ihave one? Okay, does he
or she ride BMX? She ryannegative? Negative? Now you haven't tried,
of course I have. Yeah.So all girl there played soccer fan

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has a good athlete up until acouple of years ago. But now it's
she's got a job, she's aserver, she's sixteen, just got the
license, living her best life.Great kids. So I can only influence
so much. But it was notgoing to be athletics. You know,
I've talked to a lot of people. No one's ever told me their history
started with BMX. That's cool,that's cool. I actually listened to one

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of the podcasts you had. Ohmy gosh, of course his name is
not going to come up. Adrianmaybe soul Guard. It looked like he
had some experience racing as well,and I don't remember crossing paths with him.
I'm probably older because you were infront of him. Oh well,
there you go. And they don'thave reverview mirrors. So yeah, that's

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a great point. I don't knowanybody who's behind me. All right.
So your previous background outside of BMXwas in the fitness industry. Yes,
as a NASA certified personal trainer.What's your favorite and least favorite lift or
exercise? Least favor for it?Probably back Okay, it's just so boring.

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You're like, that's a back dayand favorite of course it's got to
be bench. So you were goingin like Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
Sunday and doing chest, Well,no, when I was really into it,
I kind of once you get intothe business, you really just aren't
lifting all the time. When Iwas a personal trainer, of course,
I was doing it all the time, and I was much more regimented,

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and then it became just try tosneak in twenty thirty minutes. However,
you can one. Let's not talkabout today. By the way, my
wife was a personal trainer and assome certified, and she two months before
a honeymoon, she was doing burpieswith somebody showing them how to do it.
She was just dropping down into apush up position, blew out her
entire shoulder. So our entire honeymoon, she's got a sling on and so

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yeah, she did. She didthe whole thing for a while. So
all right, so you win thepower Baltimorrow, we're gonna say, five
hundred and fifty million dollars. Whatare you doing with the rest of your
life all launching your BMX company?Yeah right, Uh, first, family's
gonna get taken care of as bestI possibly can. Friends are gonna get

(05:10):
taken care of. And I'll investwhatever I need to back into the business
to get us, you know,beyond Raleigh and everywhere we possibly can give
you the best experience you can.That's kind of to me. What's really
important right now is this family andyou know, being able to deliver this

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vision that we have where the appson everybody's phone and for a good reason,
because we've earned it. And soof course that takes money. And
if you're going to just create acreate a scenario where I got five hundred
million, it's definitely gonna happen.Nice way to double down on yourself.
That's good, all right. Sowhat is your first concert or sporting event
you remember going to and what doyou remember about it? So the first

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let's call it a festival. Itwas back when Sugar Ray was brand new,
Fiona Apple and everybody kind of inthat time frame. It was outdoor.
It was in Fresno, California,and I went there with all my
best friends. It was just afantastic time. And I don't know how

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if on Apple, I know,is still around and I see what's his
name, Mark On Yeah, MarkMcGrath, Yeah, doing his thing.
But I don't know about the bands. But back then, man, it
was just awesome. So that waslike right after like the boy band TRL
stuff, like when it started evolvingto more like not punkish, But it
was after like Corn and some ofthem came out and they were kind of

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like the anti anti boy bands.Yeah. Corn is from Bakersfield, and
uh that's kind of where that's alittle bit. It's about an hour from
where I grew up. Okay,Yeah, how are you holding up after
the Super Bowl? As a bigforty nine I'm a big cheese fan.
I'm from Missouri. I'm a bigcheese fan. I saw all your pictures.

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You know, you win some,you lose some. It's I'm already
over it, ready for next year. But it was a, you know,
an interesting season. I feel reallybad for the quarterback and he probably
you know, maybe I shouldn't becausehe's probably not getting all caught up in
the social media and hey, youknow, you're irrelevant whatever. I think
he did a fantastic job. Heis just so young, and to play

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in a system like that, youprobably grow up really quick. So I'm
looking forward to next year. Ihope we're you know, competitive. Well,
you can take some solace in thefact that you guys probably got the
better end of the Christian McCaffrey deal. That seemed to work out okay for
the forty nine ers and not sowell for the Panthers. Yes, most
definitely all right. Favorite Triangle restaurant. Raise Wow, yeah, wow,

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big raise fan. Oh. Ilove Ray. I mean you saw the
shoes. I mean they're similar towhat he kind of wears sometimes over there.
But yeah, he's he's been great. We've had a lot of meetings
there, taking every family member friendyou know by there, just the atmosphere,
you know you're gonna meet him ifyou go there. Well, it
raises one of my favorite restaurants too. We were there a couple weekends ago

(08:05):
when we were there with some clientsand some friends, and it was probably
ten thirty at night and Ray comesdown and sits down and pushes us over
in our booth and sits down andgoes give me an old fashion and he
sat down for forty five minutes andjust talk to us. And so,
yeah, you've been there, youknow Ray, he's probably made your bananas
foster at some point, lighting iton fire. Cherry's jubilee. We closed
New Year's down over there with him. Yeah, it was great. All

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right, So you go to aconference, I walk up to you.
I've never met you before. It'sthe post conference. Everybody's at the bar.
Two parter, How do you giveme a ninety second explanation of what
gopher is? And what drink areyou holding in your hand at the time?
All right, Well, while Ihave a pernicious in hand, I'll
tell you that gopher is the ultimateget it now app. You can literally

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request any service you want or needfor the price that you think is fair.
And if it's something in which youdon't really have an idea of how
much you would pay for. Let'ssay you want somebody to install a couple
of ceiling fans, you can askthe Gopher for a bid. And so
now you receive all the information backwho's interested, look at their ratings,
reviews, job history, make theselection that you know works for everybody,

(09:13):
and the job is done, Yourate them, they rate you, and
they're paid immediately afterwards, and theycan go on to, you know,
the next job, and then theuser can go on to the next thing
they need to do. Okay,so what does the future of Gopher look
like? Hopefully we're on every singleapp, tablet, laptop. We'll give
you the option to where you don'tjust have to use a mobile device in

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order to make a request. Andthen, you know, along the way,
just again earn your phone real estateor your you know, app real
estate. We want to make surethat along this way, along the way,
we're asking you what would make thisan experience worth using again? And
I feel like I have taken everysingle bit of feedback that's come through and

(09:58):
been able to implement it in away to where you know, we're better
than we were yesterday. Okay,So I want to you know, if
we're talking ten years and we cancontinue the best practices of giving people on
both sides of the platform what theywant, we might have a really really
good product available for you. Now. Is that a domestic? Is that
looking international? What is the whatis the what is the ceiling? There
isn't one, okay, so youknow, maybe I don't know about regulatory

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like if some places want to havetheir own version of it and we're not
available there, but you know whatever, we'll cross that bridge when we get
there. But there is absolutely youknow, opportunity there in Europe and to
function the same exact way. Soif I, as you mentioned, ten
years your number not mine, butyou say ten years, how many app
downloads do you guys think you haveat that point? One hundred million?

(10:46):
Okay, all right, okay,so that'd be twenty five percent of America
probably has that app on their phone. That's that's a that's a great audacious.
It's audacious is good. Nobody hasCEOs who have easy to chief goals.
Hey guys, listen, if wecould just get five app downloads,
I think we'd be in a goodplace. What successors are you and your

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team most impressed with so far?The way that the customer is able to
tell us what they're looking for.When we first started, it was typically
more delivery based focused, and weallowed you to title your request. That
ended up being a blessing and acurse, as you can obviously tell I

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can imagine, and so by thembeing able to do that as well as
set the price, we started developingcategories with consistency, and this is about
how much people are wanting to payfor this type of delivery, this type
of home service, this type ofand actually categories were created that we didn't
even think about. You know,like junk removal was super simple, but

(11:52):
right out of the gate, wedidn't really think about that. Now,
if you like that one in particular, if you just got a little bit
of your garage that's clutter and youjust like somebody just get it out of
there, you don't care if you'regoing to go the Google route, tell
you right now, you're probably goingto pay one hundred and seventy five to
two point fifty because they have topay the fees to get that cube truck
filled up, and et cetera,where really all you care about is somebody

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with a truck, come pick itup and take it haul it off,
and here's forty bucks or fifty bucksor whatever it is. So that type
of thing allowed us to create categoriesfor you in subcategories within that. And
so we're continuing to learn from ourusers on how they want the app to
operate, and hopefully we can stayup keep pace with them or even outpace
them in offering new things to userson the app that they maybe they hadn't

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thought of. Okay, what challengeshave presented themselves? How long do we
have? So technology, especially comingfrom not having a technology background, have
been very dependent. Our team hason third party development and getting the app

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to function the way that we wantedto without bugs. And I mean I
have never had a more of adislike for bugs than I do now.
But it's just part of the process. And so you know, obviously fundraising
is a challenge. It's a beastin and of itself. Being able to

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identify areas like for example, whenrequests go out, our number one goal
is to make sure that it's completedand so being able to provide, you
know, both sides of the marketplacein full, so that there's always somebody
available and not just somebody available,but somebody qualified and relevant for whatever that
particular request is. And you know, just the typical challenges of you know,

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running a business, starting a business, getting the word out and hoping
that people like your product, andthen again if they don't, you got
to quickly figure out why, whatyou can do to change and then change
it. Well, you work sohard to get a download. If somebody
has an experience that is not apositive one, they're not going to use
that. Again, I guess theone of the hardest parts for me looking
through your shoes is you're trying toensure a product for people who do not

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work for you necessarily, right,So it's hard to have consistency, and
the best you can do at thatpoint is try to make anything good.
But again, you're bringing in somebodywho maybe you haven't met before. You're
connecting to people, but the assumptionis that's under Gopher's brand, which could
be a negative affiliation for you guysif it doesn't go perfectly absolutely so our
Gophers are not actually employees of Gopher. You're hiring them, we're linking you

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together. But rest assured. Anytimesomething doesn't go as planned, then we
are assuming the responsibility. And howcan we, you know, avoid that
in the future. You know there'salways going to be human air in every
aspect, but you know, ifwe can provide a platform that operates relatively
flawlessly, then it's really about thepeople. And that's one of the greatest

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things that's happened so far. Atthe end of every experience, you rate
each other, and after several thousandsof transactions, the rating is four point
nine to eight, and so that'sjust basically saying, you know, these
people are enjoying and respecting each otherfor what they're doing, and it's great
to see good. What is yourleadership philosophy? Lead from the front.

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It's been a one man show andin some aspects early on, so I
only myself to blame for any ofour progress or lack of Are you not
following your own lead? Right?But I would never hire somebody, and
we are hired and hired a COO. Last year Dave Krueger's Fantastic Guys it's
helping them, you know, definitelygonna be a part of taking this to

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the next level. I would neverask somebody to do something that I wasn't
very confident that I could explain youhow to do it. You know,
I'm going to set a clear expectation, here's what we want. I'm going
to demonstrate that expectation for you upuntil the point to where I know that
you can do it, and thenaccountability is easy because it's like, hey,
you know how to do that?Yeah, yeah, So until I

(16:07):
can get to that, then Iwill stick at that demonstrating by example.
One. I think one of thehardest parts in your role as you continue
to grow is learning and being comfortablewith delegation and trusting somebody else to do
something that historically has fallen on yourshoulders. This can sometimes be a difficult.
Are you anticipating that Do you thinkthat'll be the easy part for you?
There have already been multiple examples ofhow I've had to do exactly that,

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and and that one of Dave's Iguess biggest strength so far has been
finding out how to do that towhere I don't literally have to do everything,
and then I can focus on thethings that you know make the biggest
moves. I'm not spending any lesstime working, but I'm spending more time
focused on the things that matter themost. What's the craziest Gopher request you've

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seen so far? So I've beenon several guests an asset, and I
literally have to go back to thisone because it's just so interesting. Big
dog puppy birthday party gets into arabbit hole and pulls out. I think
he's probably just trying to play withthe rabbit, but bangs it up like
bad, to the point to wherethe dad is going to have to stop

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the party and send all the nineyear old girls home or figure out how
I can take care of this rabbit. So used Gopher to have somebody come
pick it up and take it toRaleigh Animal Shelter. And then they got
there, quickly took it to theshelter, and the rabbit was fine,
reported back to the user because theywanted to know. So, I mean,
I thought it was cool. I'msure there's been some ones that are

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probably not built for radio, butyou can tell me those after the podcast.
Well, so, how literal wouldhave been if the dog would have
gotten in a hole and got agopher out. Oh wow, you guys
should have worked that one out.That'd have been marketing right there. We've
we actually at home, my girlfriendHeidi and I have a gopher that we
are literally actively trying to buy fromwhoever's posting this video. It's literally like

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a foot tall. It's got alittle chubby belly and they're washing it and
it's just the calmest thing. Andit's like, I have got to find
that it's probably like a twenty poundgopher. I love it. I'm stopping
at nothing until we find that badwork for the mascot. Well, when
I said it's the future gopher,you should have included that we're trying to
purchase a huge gopher right now.That's gonna be soon. Storytelling in our

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world is incredibly important. How doesthat play into your corporate strategy when you're
trying to share what you guys areand what you want to be. I
think that giving examples of how peoplecan use the app to help with their
everyday life or in some cases ina pinch that you had never really thought
of. So what we want toencourage people to do is when they're on

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the app, of course you're goingto have your everyday needs for errands,
chores, tasks, services, etcetera. But let it always be an
option to where if you have Ihaven't thought of how you can get one
of your unique needs done. Givego for a shot, open it up.
Let's see if any of the categorieskind of prompt you to, you

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know, even if it's the othercategory, and then just see, like
if I'm communicating what this need isand how much I I want to pay
for it, you know, giveit a shot. And I think people
will find that if you've came onthe platform because you heard about us for
unique deliveries, you know, likefood trucks. Food trucks are difficult to
then a lot not all of themhave online ordering. So if you go

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and say, hey, my normalorders ten bucks, here's ten bucks for
the cost of goods, here's tenbucks to go do it? Please pick
up my favorite food truck. Right, So if you came in that route,
think about all the other possibilities youcan use to What we want to
try to get people to do isunderstand that it's to your benefit when you
need something, your condition to goto Google and you might end up paying

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more for the advertised placement that youknow the first three people are showcasing,
or you go on to next doorto Facebook and say, hey, does
anybody recommend a handyman? Well,if you put your if you post a
request for what you need, thenall the handymen are gonna come to you
and you can set your price oryou can ask for a bid. So
it just makes the work a loteasier for you because now, let's say

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you get twenty referrals, then areyou going to call them all? And
you know, how are you gonnalook for testimonies of their work previously and
all that kind of stuff. Sowe're really trying to simplize, simplify the
process in finding the help you need. Do you guys have any or in
the past, I'm sure you haveboth personally and through your organizations. Do

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you have any charitable partnerships or whatis of a value to you guys from
that? So we'll establish our philanthropicstructure here soon. Right now, it's
you know, really kind of gotime growth mode. And so we we
absolutely have partnered with different local charitiesand sponsored multiple golf tournaments and stuff like

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that, but really with my personalexperience in the past working for larger companies
too. I think that if wecan identify one in particular that we feel
aligned with, you know, thevision, mission, values, et cetera,
then we'll probably just go all inwith that. But we'll absolutely have
that as a part of our lineupeventually. All right, John, what

(21:22):
did we miss? What did youwant to hit on and you thought it
was really important to discuss and wejust haven't got to it yet. Anything,
What do we miss? I hadto miss something? Well, No,
I think you did a good jobof asking questions that allow us to
showcase what Gopher does. What Ihope that everybody that's listening to this,
no matter where you are, isgive the app a shot and let us

(21:45):
prove to you that you know wecan earn your business. And then also,
we're very humble in the way thatwe take feedback to so if we
let you down, let us knowhow we did, and we won't do
it twice. John Newberry, CEOof Gopher, thanks for spending some time
with us. Thank you, Michael, appreciate it. Did CEOs You should
know is a production of iHeartMedia,Raleigh. Thanks for listening.