S6 Ep33: Be Tech Smart— Leverage the Digital Market with 'No Effort Web' with Ameet Kallarackal
“We like to think of ourselves as doing the dirty work behind the scenes to make everyone else look good.” — Ameet Kallarackal
There are thousands of humble yet hardworking entrepreneurs like small restaurant owners and operators who are not that savvy technically and who are restlessly operating their in-person craft and business. Though necessary, they might not have enough funds to employ a skilled person in the field of marketing or to hire a technical team. How can entrepreneurs with limited digital experience enhance their business' online footprint?
Ameet Kallarackal, the co-founder and CEO of Fisherman together with their high-class customer support team make it possible for business owners to focus on the in-person side without having to touch anything on their gadget’s screen, and yet can see how their businesses are flourishing virtually. Fisherman is a company that brings about websites, manages social media and wields the online presence for hardworking small business owners with a focus on the restaurant industry. They have a set of tools that succor traditional small businesses become automatically fortunate online. No wonder they call their website “No effort Web,” as they say it, “No code, no drag & drop, no effort.”
Harken as Justine eagerly interviews Ameet about his journey and how his passion has helped countless entrepreneurs navigate the tricky waters of the digital world. Plus, they also delve into the importance of surrounding ourselves with experts, why entrepreneurs should have a website, how to improve UX, and how rejection leads to learning. Lastly, learn more about Fisherman's new resource to help boost social media presence.
Connect with Ameet:
Growing up, Ameet’s parents had a website, and that was his first exposure to the world of graphic designers and WordPress. So even when he was still a kid, he became an ace at using these tools. He would always find it so interesting to create something without necessarily knowing how to code and yet that thing could look great and even lead to sales.
His family were also working with some small business owners. Ameet also personally spent time working at a local restaurant of his best friend's dad, where he witnessed firsthand how busy the life of an entrepreneur is. Having also tried being the one primarily to put food on the table, he came to say then, “You're learning 100 things to make that dream a reality. And a lot of times, computers, technology and the online component is the last thing you want to have to worry about. And so, I just remember being there and seeing how busy they were, how often they were fielding conversations with salespeople who are coming in soliciting business, all sorts of things they had to deal with.”
Cut to the chase, during Ameet’s college years, he worked on a different startup with a friend of his and ended up working on that for a few years and built out an organization until they were able to eventually exit that startup. And at the end of that, he fell in love with the idea of building something from scratch. Harking back to his experience, both virtually and in-person, he wanted to get to the bottom of how they could help more small business owners ‒ not only at a certain degree of measure, but how they can buttress multitude of small business owners to become prosperous. So, that was the evolution of the Fisherman concepts. After a handful of years, that mission was effectuated.
Connect with Fisherman:
Episode Highlights:
00:03 Getting Into The Industry
04:31 The Importance of Surrounding Yourself With Experts
05:58 Infiltrating The Restaurant Industry
08:32 Showing The Final Product Before Anything Else
11:14 Interaction With Clients
15:12 What Does Social Media Look Like
17:16 AI's Standard Offering
19:08 The Passion of Being An Entrepreneur
Tweets:
Not tech-savvy? Be tech-smart! This week, @jreichman welcomes @ameetkall to talk about how non-tech savvy entrepreneurs can harness the power of tech and flourish virtually. Prick up your ears to know more! #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Fisherman #restaurant #businessowners #technology #AI #digitalmarketing #socialmedia
Inspirational Quotes:
03:59 “I fell in love with the idea of building something from scratch.” — Ameet Kallarackal
04:32 “As an entrepreneur, I always like to surround myself with experts with the skills that I don't necessarily have. I learned that you need somebody with those skills, you need somebody that can take you to the next level.” — Justine Reichman
08:39 “Our whole hypothesis was that if we just showed someone the final product… before anything else, there's a lot of people that would otherwise have said no, who would say yes, and that was this hypothesis we carried.” — Ameet Kallarackal
13:24 “There's no binary work that you do, and it's working. It certainly is a bit of experimentation, and it does take time to see the value. But as much as possible, demonstrating that value is certainly really important, especially for a business like ours.” — Ameet Kallarackal
19:24 “I will say that I'm most passionate about the people that we get to work with over the products that we're building.” — Ameet Kallarackal
19:53 “I have so much respect for the people that are not just doing that work in front of a computer like me, but are on their feet from 5:00 in the morning, sometimes till midnight, every single day they're doing this work.” — Ameet Kallarackal
21:13 “We like to think of ourselves as doing the dirty work behind the scenes to make everyone else look good” — Ameet Kallarackal
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Ameet Kallarackal, who is the CEO and Founder of Fisherman.
Welcome, Ameet.
Ameet Kallarackal: Thank you so much for having me, Justine.
Justine Reichman: It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. I'm so looking forward to just getting to know you, and getting to know a little bit about Fisherman, what inspired you as a founder? Before we get going, when we get too far into it, I'd love for you to explain to our listeners a little bit about what Fisherman is. And then later, I'll ask you questions about your background and all those things. So for the moment, just a short 32nd pitch on Fisherman.
Ameet Kallarackal: 100%. So fishermen are here to serve these restaurant owners, small business operators in general, who are not the most technically savvy and who are super busy operating their in person business. There's a lot of folks out there who are owners, operators, busy behind the booth or in the kitchen and working on their in person operations, but they don't have the budget to necessarily hire a marketing person or a technical person. Maybe they don't have the skills to manage this stuff themselves and they can't wade through the noise to find an agency. And for those people, that's why fishermen exist. We have products that make websites and run social media and handle the entire online presence for busy small business owners with a focus on the restaurant industry. And we do that with our tools that have automated a lot of that process with a world class customer support team so that the business owners don't have to touch anything technology wise, and they can just see how their businesses succeed online while they focus on the in person side.
Justine Reichman: Sounds like a dream. First, thank you for sharing that. And second, my question for you is, how did you come up with this idea?
“I fell in love with the idea of building something from scratch.” — Ameet Kallarackal
Ameet Kallarackal: Great question. I think when we look back, there's definitely a lot of elements of my background that led me here. Growing up, my parents actually had a website agency that they ran for a little bit. And while they did that, it was my first exposure to the world of graphic designers and WordPress. So even when I was in middle school and high school, I certainly got my hands wet with these tools, and it was just so interesting that you could create something without necessarily knowing how to code. You could create something that looked great and led to sales. And they were working with some small business owners at the time. I also personally spent time working at a local restaurant, and really got to understand, I mean, my best friend's dad was the restaurant owner. And seeing that restaurant growing up and working there for a little bit of time, just really seeing how busy the life of an entrepreneur is. And especially, you're there primarily to put food on the table. You're learning 100 things to make that dream a reality. And a lot of times, computers, technology and the online component is the last thing you want to have to worry about. And so I just remember being there and seeing how busy they were, how often they were fielding conversations with salespeople who are coming in soliciting business, all sorts of things they had to deal with. And so fast forward a bit, when I got to college, I worked on a different startup and kind of fell into that with a friend of mine. We ended up working on that for a few years and built out a big team, and built an organization. Eventually, we're able to exit that startup. And at the end of that, I really fell in love with the idea of building something from scratch. Looking back at my experience doing some freelance web design development, working in that restaurant, I wanted to get back into figuring out how we could help more small business owners? How could we do that at scale, not just one or two at a time, but how can we help thousands of small business owners become successful? So that was really the genesis of the Fisherman concepts. And yeah, a few years later, we're well on our way to accomplishing that mission.
“As an entrepreneur, I always like to surround myself with experts with the skills that I don't necessarily have. I learned that you need somebody with those skills, you need somebody that can take you to the next level.” — Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: Well, congratulations on that. And as an entrepreneur, fellow entrepreneur, to me, I always like to surround myself with experts with the skills that I don't necessarily have. Because I have a vision, and I can execute on that vision, but I don't necessarily know how to do every little step. I don't know how to code. I put together the Squarespace site when we first launched, because it was a startup. You learn, that's what entrepreneurs do. We figured it out. You do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. You do them before you can pay people for them. But what you learn, or what I learned as we grew was that you need somebody with those skills, you need somebody that can take you to the next level. Because while you got your page up there to tell people what you're doing, there's a lot more to that page than just throwing it out there. There's a lot more that goes into it. So I think it's a great solution for people. And it's all encompassing. I got to ask, why food for you? I mean, I know you mentioned that you worked in a restaurant business, and you saw these voids. Was there anything else that really brought you to focus on the restaurant industry?
Ameet Kallarackal: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think growing up, it's still the case. When I go home, the first thing is my mom will have a meal ready for me. She loves to be able to prepare that my dad. I mean, my whole family loves to cook, and so much happens over a meal. And that's what a lot of these restaurant tours are trying to create is that type of experience for people. So I think growing up just seeing how much community is built around food. I think it's the reason a lot of people try to get into restaurant technology because they have really positive experiences with food. I love the small business restaurant owner operator type person. Because a lot of times, they do come from that type of culture. It's a family owned business, or a lot of immigrant owned businesses. And so a lot of people who, this is what they know, this is what they love, and maybe they're not the best business operator and they're gonna learn those skills along the way, but this is something they really know. This is something they really love. And I do too. I'd love to help them to be able to make this a reality for more people. So I think just that, food has just always been a huge part of my life, and certainly working in the industry a bit and seeing it firsthand. And then of course, there's more of the market dynamics, I guess. You could say that it's a huge industry. Restaurants are always going to be around. There's this massive need still for a lot of those restaurants to have a great web presence. And then also just seeing how much interaction between consumers and restaurants happens online. There's some businesses where at the end of the day, you're only going to hear about this business by word of mouth. You're not going to Google search to find a certain type of business, but you're always going to do that for food, for restaurants. So a lot of activity happens online. And if you're not optimized for it, you're gonna miss out on a lot of upside. So it felt like something where we could deliver a ton of value. And we honestly tested a lot of industries, and we do service other industries too. But food seemed to be an area that made a ton of sense to focus on, and we could help out a lot of people on the way.
Justine Reichman: So as a seer entrepreneur, because you exited your first business, and now this is your second business, or maybe there were others in between. But either way, I know that you felt like there was a need and you took the skills that you had learned growing up with your family. And that's how you came up with this idea. But was there some moment that you're like, oh, my God, I got it. This is what I need to build. This is the solution.
“Our whole hypothesis was that if we just showed someone the final product… before anything else, there's a lot of people that would otherwise have said no, who would say yes, and that was this hypothesis we carried.” — Ameet Kallarackal
Ameet Kallarackal: Good question. Fisherman really started from this hypothesis that if you give someone something, especially with a website, a website is our core initial first product. And there's so many tools to build something. Like you were saying, you were able to build your first one on Squarespace. There's a lot of tools like that out there. There's just a lot of people who are scared to use them, don't know how to use them, and don't have the time to use them because it can require some effort. And our whole hypothesis was that if we just showed someone the final product, instead of saying, hey, here's a tool to do the thing yourself. Or, hey, pay a lot of money, and then we'll do it for you. If we could just show them before anything else, there's a lot of people that would otherwise have said no, who would say yes, and that was this hypothesis we carried. So in the early days, we actually built websites using Wix and Squarespace, and we would just build them before walking into a restaurant and showing them, hey, we went ahead and built your website. What do you think? And those early days where we did that, a business owner was like, well, I'd see you've built this for me. I didn't even know you're doing this. This looks great. Anytime we had that experience, that's when the light bulb went off and it became clear that there's a lot of value if we can take this perceived pressure point and take it away. Because a lot of times, these people have dreamed of having one or thought about having one. Maybe they've already had one in the past and something went wrong. But us showing them that. they know that this can be a really easy thing to open the door for a lot more. So I think that testing that hypothesis in that way was really the first time where we felt that it makes sense for us to build our entire product so that they can do all this.
Justine Reichman: I appreciate you sharing that. So when you did that, how often did they say, I'm in.
Ameet Kallarackal: Most of the time, they shut the door before we even had a chance to chat. But yeah, a lot of it in the early days was truly going door to door in dense urban areas where there's a lot of restaurants and going one at a time just trying to chat with an owner. And people do this all the time. In the restaurant technology world, there are so many businesses that are trying to make it work in that space. And so these business owners are constantly warding off people that are trying to sell them something. It's tough. I think the hardest part is just having that conversation, and had to overcome a lot of fear of rejection to get to that point. But once we sat someone down, once we had a conversation, I think it was almost always a value. If they didn't, right out of the gate say, yes, we want to do this. At the very least, they tell us why or why not. And that would teach us so much about what made sense to focus on. Maybe it was 20, 30% of people who were absolutely in to try it, which is not the majority. Maybe it was even less, but every single one of those conversations we did have had a huge impact on what we ended up focusing on.
Justine Reichman: To build on that, you also do social for them as well. You offer these other services. I'm wondering, because building social is not easy. They're always changing the algorithms, what they're looking for, and all these different things. And it's a skill that, oftentimes, I think people take for granted. That's a real skill that you need to know. I'm wondering, when you've talked to your clients, how much interaction do you have with them after you've set everything up? And as you're doing this work to really understand the impact you're having for them versus before when they were just trying to do everything themselves without that expertise?
“There's no binary work that you do, and it's working. It certainly is a bit of experimentation, and it does take time to see the value. But as much as possible, demonstrating that value is certainly really important, especially for a business like ours.” — Ameet Kallarackal
Ameet Kallarackal: Yeah, it's a great question. We're a subscription service. We don't charge anything for the most part unless there's really specific circumstances. We don't charge anything upfront. In fact, we actually have a free trial. So it's totally free to start. But we do charge on a monthly basis, or an annual basis. And so what that means is, it's easy to get started. But every single month, somebody sees a receipt for a payment. They're gonna ask themselves, what am I paying for? Is this worth it? Am I seeing value? The flip side of being able to make a bunch of money up front for doing work for someone is you have to constantly prove value. Something that's really top of mind is, how do we deliver value? And how do we demonstrate value? And the first part of that is, of course, getting their website set up, and making sure they're happy with it. There's value in having a website no matter what. But on an ongoing basis, we do, especially with products like social media or other kinds of brand related work we might do. There's ongoing clear input. You'll see a new post, you'll see the comments there, you'll see new followers, but we do need to do some work regularly to show how much website traffic month over month is actually coming here. How quickly are you rising up the rankings on Google for your website showing up for best tacos near me as opposed to your competitors. And so there's certainly work that we tried to do to make sure those things are happening, and then show the customer, hey, here's how it's going. The numbers are showing that the work is paying off, but it's tricky. There's no binary work that you do, and it's working. It certainly is a bit of experimentation, and it does take time to see the value. But as much as possible, demonstrating that value is certainly really important, especially for a business like ours.
Justine Reichman: I think what I'm most curious about, because I love this idea, how accessible is it to the entrepreneur in terms of price point?
Ameet Kallarackal: Great question. For us, we really started out being at the same price as a Squarespace or Wix, but with a completely different value proposition where it's done for you. I think that was great for getting a lot of signups. But we realized pretty quickly, it's not a very sustainable business model in the long run, and so we've had to increase our prices a bit there. But the value is much greater than it was in the past. And so we have a bunch of different offerings, and it ranges from $50 a month, which is pretty comparable to some of these do it yourself platforms, all the way up to 300 bucks a month if someone's trying to do everything with us, and have us really be more or less a marketing specialist on their team. So even at the high end, it's pretty affordable. For most businesses, we're really targeting these ambitious business owners that are still maybe single locations. Maybe a couple locations, but they really do want to have a very successful business. They want to be proactive and growing. So as we add new products, those would be add ons. But generally our core packages live within this pretty wide range, so depending on what they want, what they're willing to spend. Hopefully, we can meet them where they're at.
Justine Reichman: I think that that sounds amazing. I'm curious, when you say that you do the cert, you provide the services, and that's at the higher end. Obviously, a few $100. Are you creating the content? Are you writing the content? Are you producing it for both the website and various social media outlets? Or is there a limit to it? If it's one business, it's one website, one Instagram, one LinkedIn, can you walk me through what that looks like?
Ameet Kallarackal: Definitely. And social media is a relatively new service for us. I bet you in three months, or in six months, it's gonna look different from what it looks like now. But yeah, we do Instagram, Facebook, we do blogging. And of course, there's the website. We have platforms where people can come in. No matter what plan they're on, they can come in, and they can manage this work on their own. They can schedule posts, they can create the posts, they can see the analytics. But for the most part, our customers are looking for us to do that.
Justine Reichman: That's what I was asking. So you're actually doing the social. You're creating the posts, you're creating the copy, you're creating the images, you're working within a brand that exists using their colors, their aesthetic and their voice.
Ameet Kallarackal: And if they don't have that, we (inaudible) service. And it's super cheap. It's a fraction of the cost of any agency out there that will create their logo, will create their color palette, their typography, give them an entire overall digital brand. And if they're a customer of ours, it's really inexpensive. Because for us, that enables everything else to look and feel better. So it makes the website look better if you have a really great brand, and of course, makes the social media better. Our first step is we take that brand, and we'll create social post templates that that business owner can use themselves. We will literally create that content for them, we'll schedule it out. They have the option to approve or say no to it. And we'll do that multiple times per week. There's posts that are going out on Facebook and Instagram, we even do engagement with followers and reactions to try to grow that follower base. So again, down the road, we probably will tear out different options for something like social media, because there really is an infinite amount of work you can do there. And so for now, we're bucketing it all into a standard offering. But I'm sure along the way, we'll have different tiers. Just like we've done with the website product, we're going to be automating a lot of this work. Some of the cool advancements in AI that we can leverage and we've been building ourselves enable us to do this stuff much better and much faster than a typical agency. So it means that we can turn this stuff around really quickly without limiting any quality there.
Justine Reichman: So are you able to tailor things with code, etcetera? Or are you using the basic WordPress or SquareSpace?
Ameet Kallarackal: No, we built everything from scratch. It's our own platform. Maybe we shouldn't have, but we did. And it gives us a lot more control for things like this.
Justine Reichman: Does it give the Founder or the marketing team of that company the ability to go in there and make easy changes without having to contact you? Or is that something that they have to do is to go through you?
Ameet Kallarackal: No, 100%. Every single planning includes direct access to our dashboard, so they can manage content themselves. And because we built this for business owners that the reason they would come in is to change their hours of operation if there's something that's changed all of a sudden, or update the photos, change information that's just wrong, that's more time sensitive. So we've made it really, really easy to use. It's way simpler than a dashboard in Squarespace or Wix. Because those platforms have a ton of flexibility. And there's a lot of things you can do. But that also makes the user experience more complicated. It's a bit more streamline, because we're handling the design decisions for the most part to make sure it looks good and is operating well for that type of business, but they have full control over anything content related and branding related on the site.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Well, I think that sounds like an amazing resource, and love how you got started. And it sounds like this is a passion of yours. Are you just passionate about being an entrepreneur?
Ameet Kallarackal: It's sometimes hard to separate the two. And I will say that I'm most passionate about the people that we get to work with over the products that we're building. It's fun to build products. I really like doing that. And I really love building a team and seeing how that changes over time. So I definitely love entrepreneurship. I love small business owners so much. I really love the grit. It's really hard. All the people on their podcast, right? We it's a hard thing to do, as you know, and I really have so much respect for the people that are not just doing that work in front of a computer like me, but are on their feet from 5:00 in the morning, sometimes till midnight, every single day they're doing this work. And I don't know, I just really have a respect for that grit. And I have an admiration for it. So it's very fun to be able to work really closely with them, and just keep that really close to our mission, regardless of if it's a restaurant or a barber shop. Whatever it might be, that type of person, I love working with.
Justine Reichman: You're there to support these entrepreneurs, to be a resource, as I understand it, and to make it a little bit more accessible and easier for them to grow, and have access to an expert that otherwise might be very, prohibitively expensive.
“We like to think of ourselves as doing the dirty work behind the scenes to make everyone else look good” — Ameet Kallarackal
Ameet Kallarackal: 100%. In fact, that's kind of why we're named Fisherman. Well, there's one part of the story, which is the quote, give someone a fish they eat for a day, teach them to fish they eat for a lifetime. And so a big part of it is education and empowerment. But also, if you think about going to a nice seafood restaurant and you have this dish on your plate, you might think about the waiter that brought it out, or the chef in the kitchen that prepared it. But very rarely do you think about the fishermen who actually caught that fish. So we like to think of ourselves as doing the dirty work behind the scenes to make everyone else look good. And yeah, so I think that's a big part of what we want to do is support these folks.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you sharing your story, your inspiration. I'm just curious, what's next for Fisherman? Do you have some new products coming out, or new additions that people can look out for?
Ameet Kallarackal: Absolutely. We really did start out as a website company. And I think the big learning is, yes, websites are so important. It's really the gate to the rest of your online experience. But we're really morphing into not just a website company, but this all in one marketing solution for small business owners. And probably very specifically brick and mortar business owners. We want to be that resource for them where they don't have to go and necessarily hire a full team, they can work with us. And so a lot of stuff we're launching now, social media is the first in that new set. We've always done a lot of SEO work, Search Engine Optimization, because it's tied to the website. But there's a lot of new marketing related work that we're going to be doing, things like paid advertising, or email marketing, and really rounding out this full set from discovery in lead gen to transaction. We've got an E-commerce product that we've been building to help people actually sell products directly online, all the way to loyalty and retention so that everything in this marketing world can be covered. So that's more of where we're heading.
Justine Reichman: Cool. Does gamification play a role in that?
Ameet Kallarackal: That's a good question. I think it could. Especially on the loyalty side, I think it certainly could. I'll have to do more research around that, I think. Education side for our customers too, there could be a really cool way to incorporate that.
Justine Reichman: It was so great to meet you. I think you're an amazing resource and something that the Founders that are listening and part of the community can really take advantage of. So I appreciate you sharing your information. I can't wait to continue to watch you grow, both you and the company. Let's see how it progresses, and see what this agency becomes down the road.
Ameet Kallarackal: Thank you so much. Likewise, I really love what you're doing. I think you're contributing so much to the ecosystem. So yeah, excited to stay in touch. And thanks again for having me.
Justine Reichman: Just before we wrap up, for those listeners and viewers that are tuned in today, and as excited as I am about your product, and that listen to the whole podcast, of course, is there a discount code we can offer them?
Ameet Kallarackal: Yes. We'll have a code at checkout that can be used for NextGen Purpose, and we'll give 10% off for anybody who signs up on any package with us, You can chat with someone on our team before, of course, and we'll set them up with a discount as well as a 30 day free trial. So truly no risk to get going. And yeah, we'd love to work with folks in your community.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much. We will continue to watch you, and keep us posted as things progress.
Ameet Kallarackal: Sounds great.
