Mark Jeffrey
Author of the Max Quick Trilogy; Founder & CEO Guardian Circle
Discussion
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
Hi I'm Mark Jeffrey, author of seven books, including the bestselling Max Quick trilogy, and Founder of Guardian Circle. Max Quick #1 was originally a serialized podcast in 2005 that got 2.5 million downloads. I'm also a founder / entrepreneur with two exits, and I've worked directly with Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) and Jason Calacanis (LAUNCH, Inside.com). I've also been a dead broke failure and had to live on a friend's boat after the dotcom meltdown of 2000.
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Scott D. Reinhart
@sdreinhart1975
@markjeffrey How do you see Guardian Circle fitting into the daily lives of its users?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@sdreinhart1975 First of all, for those who don't know: Guardian Circle (www.guardiancircle.com) is an app we will be releasing *very* soon. It is a Personal Safety Network app -- mobile messaging for safety.
When in trouble, a button is pressed to send an alert — along with the type of alert and a description if you are able to — to your pre-arranged circle of guardians. When your guardians are notified, they will open the app to see your GPS location as well as all of the other guardians’ locations. The guardians can then chat with one another as well as the person needing assistance in your own personal Alert Room.
Beyond just emergencies, our hope is that people will use it for 'low level emergencies' -- you're stuck across town and you need someone to feed your dog. Stuff you would never think of calling 911 for, but stuff that's important anyway, an 'emergency' in your world.
Especially in the developing world, where public services are non-existent or not reliable, peer to peer protection like this could turn out to be a really big deal. This is essentially a public access emergency network and communications grid -- it'll be interesting to see what people do with it.
Nicki Friis
@nickifriisw · Ideanote
Hi Mark! What advice do you give to larger corporations about staying competitive against startups?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@nickifriisw I've done some consulting for companies that have interfaced to large companies, and they always seem like a mess to me. The people in them, they're so concerned with not being shamed or not appearing to lose, that they actually forget to win. Having as your goal "Don't fuck up or look like you fucked up" is very different "Make something huge and win big". The latter is doomed to fail MOST of the time, so if your goal is the former, you're screwed from the get go. You have to be tolerant of failure -- and indeed, embrace it and learn from it. No one is as awesome as someone who is fresh off a failure. It is then that they FEEL it most, and have learned the most -- and really want a win really fucking bad. They're hungry.
Big ideas are crazy and most of them fail. Shouldn't matter. Don't let it.
Scott D. Reinhart
@sdreinhart1975
@markjeffrey Tell us about your greatest success as an entrepreneur.
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@sdreinhart1975 In terms of popular success, that would be a tie between The Palace with ten million users in 1998 and the Max Quick podcast in 2005 with 2.5 million downloads. Neither were great businesses but both were immensely popular in their day.
But in terms of an exit, that would be the business network / LinkedIN competitor ZeroDegrees. I cofounded that company in 2002 and we sold to Barry Diller / IAC in 2004 with a million registered users. I was the idea guy behind the product (which, to be fair, was a mash-up Ryze, Plaxo and Friendster, basically) and the acquisition of the company happened specifically because of a pitch I did to someone I knew at IAC. (And -- we were later told that Reid Hoffman could not raise money for LinkedIN for an entire year because IAC had obviously 'won' the space now :) ) So that was both a business idea / product design and biz dev win for me personally.
But even after the acquisition was complete, when Diller asked us to figure out our business model, I came up with the correct answer: Jobs / Employment -- which was not at all obvious at the time. But IAC thought that chasing the Jobs market meant spending $100M on ads like Monster.com, so we weren't able to follow that vision.
Still -- I'm quite proud of how much we got right, despite the fact that it wasn't even near a LinkedIn-level of success, the exit was a great success financially for me.
Scott D. Reinhart
@sdreinhart1975
@markjeffrey Do you have people you look up to? Who are they? Why do you look up to them?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@sdreinhart1975 Yes I have many -- but I'll name Nikola Tesla. I know, it's all hip to like Tesla nowadays, but I was a Tesla fan in the 80's (and I don't mean the hair band). But Tesla was a horrible businessman. So my admiration goes to a point :) Edison, on the other hand, was a fiend. I'm glad to see that Tesla's rightful place in history has been steadily displacing Edison's -- and that the latter is being viewed as the patent troll he was.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hi Mark, what has been your proudest moment?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@ems_hodge Proudest moment ... Probably seeing my novel Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant in hardcover for the very first time. :) Companies are not as personal as novels ... novels are YOU, your emotions, that sort of thing. I had spoken in public on many occasions, even at Harvard in front of Gates and Vint Cerf (!!!) and a thousand or so others -- but the first time I read aloud from 'Pocket' in front of probably eight people, my knees were knocking. So -- yeah :) That.
Melissa Joy Kong
@melissajoykong · Content, Product Hunt
Can you tell us more about your writing process? I am traditionally a blogger/journalist, so that style of content is easy for me to write. But, I'm writing my first book right now and it's entirely different. I'm running into mental blocks, difficulty thinking about structure, and having a harder time getting into a consistent writing habit.
Any advice for structuring my book writing more effectively and getting unstuck?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@melissajoykong Yes. For me, I copy structures. And there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. I didn't realize I was doing it at first. If you look at The Pocket and the Pendant, the story goes like this: Time stops all over the world, except for one character -- who then goes on a journey to survive and understand it, picking up other time-stop-free characters along the way. By the end of 'act 2', they meet a seemingly wise god-like character who explains their plight and what's special about them -- and act 3 is these characters no longer just surviving and reacting, but now on the attack, reversing the time stop (or 'pocket').
It was after I wrote this that I realized that the structure is Wizard of Oz.
Or Star Wars, which has the same essential structure.
So when it came time for Max Quick 2, now that I understood what I was doing, I intentionally copied the structure of The Empire Strikes Back: A crisis splits the main characters into two storylines. The ending brings them all back together and the main character actually loses -- but gains great insight (I am your father, Luke).
Of course my details are VERY different :) But having that structure map helped immensely.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@markjeffrey Thanks for your previous answer ;)
What would the you of 5 years ago think of the you of today? What would be your biggest shock?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@bentossell At how fat I've gotten! Dear lord, get back in the gym!!! :) I think 5 year ago me would be surprised -- pleasantly so -- that I was so into Guardian Circle and what I'm doing there. It's been a really long time since I've had an idea that I personally thought was absolutely killer -- so old-me would be all like, Damn dude!! Nice! :)
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@markjeffrey @bentossell haha awesome!
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What would you say 2.5m downloads in 2005 is equivalent to in today's podcast filled world?
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@andrewmettinger I am not actually up on 'what's huge' in today's podcast world, but I'm going to guess 100M downloads is pretty big now? At the time, 2.5M was fairly large, enough to chart in iTunes. I was never #1 or anything, but #30 or #40 for awhile for sure.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What's the single best advice you've received? Don't mean to be vague, but there's gotta be just 1 mantra that you always repeat to yourself. Aside from, "please no black soled shoes on my boat, man".
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Mark Jeffrey
@markjeffrey · Author
@andrewmettinger "Always fight up." -- Jason Calacanis. When you fight up -- that is, when you attack or argue with someone bigger than you, and they respond, they automatically confer equals status upon you. This raises your esteem in everyone else's eyes. Eyeballs matter :) When you fight down, you lower your perceived status. If you're a new kind of rideshare thing, attack Uber, not Lyft or some other me-too. JCal has a number of great pithy little things like this that have stuck with me -- this one comes to mind because I was just thinking about it last night watching the debates and how the 'red shirts' -- that is, anyone other than Bernie or Hillary -- were squabbling with each other. Each one of the red shirts should have been attacking either Bernie or Hillary and not wasted any time on each other.