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The Empire Builders Podcast

The Empire Builders Podcast

著者： Stephen Semple and David Young
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Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.The Empire Builders Podcast マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ マーケティング マーケティング・セールス リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • #279: Square – Thinking Inside The Box

    #279: Square – Thinking Inside The Box
    2026/10/28
    Jim McKelvey looks at his iPhone and thinks this is a phone, a camera, a map, a music player and a camera… Why not a credit card machine? Audio: Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Seaside Plumbing Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. I’m Dave Young and Stephen Semple is here with another fantastic story for us to intrigue us and entertain us, et cetera, et cetera. And he told me just before we started here that we’re going to be talking about Square. That wasn’t the Charlie Brown reference. He wasn’t square. No, we’re talking about the little credit card dongle. It’s a dongle company because I don’t think we’ve covered enough dongle companies. Stephen Semple: I think this is actually, have we covered anybody else who’s done something like that? I don’t think so. Dave Young: They probably didn’t… Well, I’m anxious to find out, because now the dongles are not a thing because you can tap- Stephen Semple: Right. Dave Young: For the most part. But let’s hear about Square. Stephen Semple: They were founded in 2009 by Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey. They’re both from St. Louis and Jack Dorsey, of course- Dave Young: Jack Dorsey of, yeah. Stephen Semple: Twitter. Dave Young: Twitter. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Yeah. The co-founder of Twitter. Dave Young: So before Twitter or. Stephen Semple: After Twitter. Dave Young: After Twitter. Okay. Stephen Semple: So Jim McKelvey, he’s a computer programmer, an entrepreneur, and somewhat unusually, Dave, your heart is going to sing here, a glassblower. Dave Young: Oh, good for him. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah, so- Dave Young: Well, now I’m surprised that it worked. Stephen Semple: And the interesting thing is, what we hear in the story is part of his glassblowing experience is actually what led to the birth of this idea. Dave Young: I get it. Probably selling it at art fairs and things like that where you can’t take people’s money. Stephen Semple: Right. So the original idea is, what he wanted to be able to do is allow almost anyone to accept a credit card payment using a mobile phone. And the original product was a tiny Square reader that plugged into the headphone jack of the iPhone that you would then swipe your credit card through. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: Right? Dave Young: We had one for some reason. Stephen Semple: Oh, did you really? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: Okay. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So 2009, pretty radical idea, and it’s growing far beyond being a little reader. Today, Square has got payment processing, and point of sale, and invoicing, and payroll, and banking, and lending, and online commerce. It trades on the stock exchange under Block, is the company it trades under. They got 36 products, eight countries, and generated $3.9 billion in gross profit. That’s not just top line sales- Dave Young: Wow. Okay. Stephen Semple: Yeah, from Square. And this is where things get confusing because people will think because it’s under the company name Block. Block did not buy Square. Square went public in 2015 and in 2021, Square Inc. changed its corporate name to Block because the company had become bigger than Square because it had- Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: A Cash App and Bitcoin related businesses and all those other things. Dave Young: It’s now cubed. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So Block is the parent company and Square is a business with inside that ecosystem. To me, I always found that, oh, did Block buy them? And it’s like, no, they just changed the name. Dave Young: No, they became Block. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So it’s this enormous financial technology company, but it didn’t actually begin with somebody saying, “Hey, let’s disrupt global payments.” It started with a guy who couldn’t sell an ugly glass faucet. Dave Young: Glass faucet? Stephen Semple: Yeah, so- Dave Young: He ...
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    24 分
  • #278: Down Dating – Part 2 – Doubling Down and Getting Focused

    #278: Down Dating – Part 2 – Doubling Down and Getting Focused
    2026/10/21
    Colin understood that being an entrepreneur meant developing muscles you don’t have as an “employee”. Focus, commitment, resilience… Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those. [Kooler Garage Doors Ad] Gary: Told you, Brian. Brian: Told me what? Gary: This is part two of last week’s episode. Brian: Oh yeah, and it was getting good. Gary: If you missed it, go back and listen to part one first. Take it away, fellas. Stephen Semple: Journaling is something that I will self-confess here. It’s something I’m trying to become better at. And often, I struggle with what should you do in the journaling. So I really like the tip that you gave there about, literally, writing down how are you feeling, why do you feel this way. And again, journaling, I do recognize as pen to paper, not typing. There’s something about writing things down in your own handwriting. And the fact is there’s a value to that slowing things down. It’s that forced slowdown, because we can only write so fast. But the other part I though that was really interesting was this whole idea of in that storm talking to people, and purposely talking to people who are not business people or who are not in your industry. I don’t know about you, but this is what I found, is when I talk to people who have that little bit of distance, sometimes that whole forcing me to explain it to them actually helps me build clarity. And I’ve even found sometimes, “Okay. Yeah, I am thinking about this all wrong,” because now that I’m trying to explain it and I’ve seen the glassy eyes, I realize, “Yeah, I’m being a little nuts here.” Colin Hodge: Yeah, exactly. That’s a great addition, because so many times it’s in our head and it’s swirling around, and we think we have complete clarity about it. We understand this problem. And you try to explain it to somebody who has much less context on it, it absolutely uncovers that logical error you’re making or the emotional side that you’re not really acknowledging. It helps so much. So, I love that as well of just even if the person knows about it, explain it to them again. Explain it like they’re five years old even, and break it down on that simple level. Stephen Semple: And if you can’t explain it, you haven’t got it clear in your own mind. Colin Hodge: Yes, exactly. Stephen Semple: But what I love is the journaling and whatnot, think our challenge is in those moments of the world is crumbling around us, there’s all these challenges happening, the whole idea of giving ourselves permission to step away, stop. As you said, it goes, “I’m a firm believer that really great thinking comes from changing your environment.” Going to a different environment and actually taking time with all this stuff, I think, is hard for a lot of people to do because I think our natural thing is, “Oh no, there’s all these things happening. I’ve got to double down on effort.” I think that’s our natural tendency is to do that. Colin Hodge: It is. And I think part of that is building this as a muscle, just like you need to build your faith and your own resilience. As an entrepreneur, you also need to build your faith in this process, in giving your brain the right environment and the right space to work through the problem. And so, a simple way to look at it is if you’ve ever had a big decision, felt overwhelming, and then you slept on it and the next day it was so simple, much easier to just make that call, that’s what you’re doing, but on a bit of a longer scale. You’re giving your brain time to process it, and new inputs and things to shake it out of whatever the rut that it’s in. Stephen Semple: It’s really interesting about that time thing. And then we’re going to come back and talk a little bit more about down. But it’s funny, we ...
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    23 分
  • #277: Down Dating – Part 1 – Created, Sold and Bought Back Again

    #277: Down Dating – Part 1 – Created, Sold and Bought Back Again
    2026/10/07
    Colin Hodge created a dating app the took off and got a lot of attention. He just did expect to buy it back after he sold it. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Travis Crawford HVAC Ad] Stephen Semple: Hey, it’s Stephen Semple here and I have with us, we’ve given Dave Young a bit of a break, and I have with us Colin Hodge, who is the founder of… It’s such an interesting story. So he’s a founder of a dating app. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that dating app. He grew it, sold it, bought it back. Again, one of those really crazy stories. And I actually remember, we talked quite a while ago and I remember that we squeezed in this call, literally, I was traveling into downtown Toronto and I pulled off off the road at one spot to do this telephone call. And it was literally one of those ones where I think three or four minutes into the call, I was like, “Oh, this is such a good story. We have to talk about this.” And Colin, you’re also a bestselling author, so you’ve got a book out. Let’s explore what happened because it’s, again, one of those build it, sell it, buy it back stories, which I always love. Colin Hodge: I’m so happy to hear that, Stephen. Thank you for having me, and I hope your listeners enjoy it as much as you did in our initial call. It was an absolutely crazy journey starting this company, getting international attention, what felt like overnight and being on the front of every webpage, getting on national TV in the US, and then eventually selling the company and buying it back. So I’m happy to walk through all that stuff and hopefully there’s some good lessons in here for other builders out there. Stephen Semple: I’m sure there will be. So tell me about the starting of the dating app, how you got this started and what was the inspiration for starting that? That’s not something that everybody wakes up in the morning going, “I’m going to do a dating app.” Colin Hodge: Like most founders, I had the problem myself first and I went on a few bad dates and one was just incredibly insufferably bad. I won’t go into that, but suffice it to say that it endangered my physical health. Let’s just put it that way. Stephen Semple: Wow. Colin Hodge: After that, I knew I could do better, right? I knew I could do better. I was always very curious about sociology and psychology. Why are we attracted to the people we are? How do dating rules work? How do you learn how to date? How do you even make friends? All these things about social dynamics that I was curious from a young age. I really, during my early 20s, started to look into it more. And then by my mid to late 20s and I had these dating issues, it all came together and it became clear to me, this is what I should start. I should try this because I could tell you right that back then, nothing else, nobody else was doing a good job at it. So I figured why not me? Why can’t I do better? Stephen Semple: And the dating app that you built again was called…? Colin Hodge: So my first one, and it completely failed the first one that I made, I called it Heard About You. And the idea was I thought, okay, one of the best ways to meet people is if you have a mutual friend in common, so you have some shared interest potentially, you have people you can vet them with. And while that might work as a way to meet people, it was not a motivating enough factor for all the parties that you need to be involved. And so I pretty quickly, within about a year, year and a half, figured out that model wasn’t going to work. And what I realized, frankly, during a very drunken night when I was confessing and just blurting out all my fears about my startup failing and all that stuff, was that the key element that everybody was dancing around in the ...
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    24 分
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