Angela Proffitt:
And if you're in the creative space, especially weddings, you know that the economy over the last few years, it's not just a ceremony and a wedding party reception on a Saturday. No, no, that's not what it is anymore. It is a full production, like the bachelor party, the bachelorette party. And we don't just do one day wedding weekends anymore. We do four-day weekends where people fly in and then we have a welcome reception. And then we have a rehearsal dinner, and then we have an after party. And then everyone wakes up on the wedding day hungover, and then we do a brunch and then heaven forbid it is a freaking holiday weekend, which some people think is a good idea. And in some families it is, but heaven forbid every single holiday we're booked for some reason. And it ends up being a five weekend holiday.

Angela Proffitt:
And so what DotTrot does is helps you manage all of these details. And like it says, like organizing, making it a breeze. And so Eric, before we jump in and you tell us how you even got into A, the wedding industry and started down this path of DotTrot, what is your background? Where did you grow up? Were you around entrepreneurs all your life, or how did that journey even begin?

Speaker 1:
Welcome to Business Unveiled, the podcast designed to help you Thrive in a creative community. Here's your host, events and productivity consultant, Angela Proffitt.

Angela Proffitt:
What's up GSD leaders. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Business Unveiled, where we share tips and secrets from top creative industry professionals. You know we're going to take you behind the scenes of our experiences, share with you what we've learned from them and how it's made us stronger because no one said it's easy owning a business, right? But it's a lot more fun when you've got a strong support team around you and that's exactly what we do at GSD Creative, we're right there by your side. And I'm so excited that you've chosen this podcast to take the first step in growing a productive, profitable, and successful, wildly successful business within the hospitality and creative industry.

Angela Proffitt:
Today's episode is being brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is the global creative platform that makes it super easy for designers and clients to work together, to create designs they absolutely love. You can get creative concepts from a multitude of talented designers. You get matched with the perfect designer to help you bring your idea to life from start to finish. From logos to packaging, apps to books, 99designs is a faster, simple, and affordable way to find and work with creative talent. You can save $10 today on your first design by visiting bit.ly/ap99designs. Give it a try.

Eric McMillen:
Thank you for… I'm honored to be on the podcast and that intro. I'm going to scribble that down word for word, because that will be going in many pitch presentations. So I'm sorry for the plagiarism, but in any case, my background. So I'm originally from Nashville, Tennessee and born and raised. In terms of kind of my background, I came from a pretty unassuming background. I had some small business owners in the family, and I think that just kind of seeing them kind of planted the seed early, not so much. I'll be candid, I didn't learn a ton. It was more of just this seems doable. Now in hindsight, it looks way easier than it is. And I have an immense amount of respect for them just like all of the guests on your podcast, but that's kind of where it planted the idea, just kind of the entrepreneurial drive.

Eric McMillen:
In terms of what kind of led me to this path. I've always had kind of two facets of my personality. One is a little more technical interest in math and kind of science and all of these kind of technical outlets and the other was more creative. So growing up ahead, I had hobbies like screenwriting and attempting to do standup comedy to varying degrees of success and even try to do the singer-songwriter thing in Nashville, which in hindsight was just amazing preparation for trying to do a startup in Silicon Valley.

Angela Proffitt:
Good prerequisite.

Eric McMillen:
I mean, again, I'm going to advise that's the first one was a little meandering, but that it just kind of laid kind of a foundation there of something kind of entrepreneurial in the tech space. At the time I was in Nashville, having outlets for those kinds of pursuits of wanting to do something kind of science related, but also kind of with sprinklings of kind of creativity in there. The big draw was Silicon Valley, and so it was one of these things of, well, I'm young, my wife and I will stake our claim in the Bay Area, and just kind of rolled the dice and see how it goes. And so that's kind of what kind of propelled me to kind of beginning DotTrot.

Eric McMillen:
In terms of what really made me start thinking about DotTrot, it was becoming a little bit older, you see apps that in theory are supposed to bring people closer together. And it's a little questionable at times. And it really, I wanted to kind of create some sort of app that really captured the essence of bringing people closer together. If you kind of put that out on a whiteboard either literally or mentally, weddings start to kind of pop up. And then when, obviously when my wife and I were married, that was just a very, kind of an informative experience.

Eric McMillen:
She had done a lot of that. She had planned a lot of that and just seeing what she went through. She did an amazing job and she worked with a coordinator, but that was just, I remember thinking like, okay, this is really an interesting space. I think it could create something that does bring a lot of people together, a wedding as a celebration. And as you noted earlier, there's a lot of events around a wedding that should be easy to coordinate. Someone shouldn't dread when they get stuck with the bachelorette party or whatever it may be. So that's kind of what maybe a long-winded way of saying kind of what put me down this path.

Angela Proffitt:
So I love that because 100% of the time when I talk to males and they are in this space of tech and wedding, it is always their experience where they're creating a tool either for their fiance or a friend or a roommate. And it's like truly personal experience of seeing how mind-blowing people are first off. I mean, we even have clients where they're not allowed to have their cell phone on their wedding day. And we publish my phone number, my assistant's phone number everywhere. We're like call, text, email, don't ask the client and we party-train them early on when they first start working with us, do not answer any questions for anyone, because if you do it 12 months out, nine months out, eight months out, six months out, they're going to continue to do it 24 hours out. And from experience, we have the type A accountability hoarders, which I get, and I'm like, that's fine, but you need to enjoy the day.

Angela Proffitt:
And the shit and excuses that people come up with about their dog died, they fell on the steps, which all could be true, but as a bride or someone getting married, you don't need to deal with that that day. Let your planner deal with it. So there's just so many different avenues of communication. And then people ask us, they'll be staying in the hotel lobby and they're like, “How do I get to this?” And it's like, well, did you get your welcome box? Because I see the popcorn, the cheese popcorn on your face. And there was an ancillary in there that had all the addresses and everything. And they're like, “Well, how do I get there?” And they're standing there with an iPhone. I'm like, let me just say, Hey, Siri, dah, dah, dah. And they're like, “Oh my God, I'm so stupid.” I'm like, “No, it's okay. You're excited. You're in an unfamiliar city. Let me make it easy for you.” But again, it's like we have to reeducate the market.

Angela Proffitt:
And so originally, did you start out just really wanting to do a group travel app? And then you started down the path when you got married. Is that what happened? Like, Oh, we should really focus on wedding and event planning?

Eric McMillen:
Yeah. I mean, it started out kind of the MVP and that's kind of a tech term or the minimum viable product of just get something out there first, right. That we started out is basically kind of just a group itinerary app. There's no shortage of those out there. And I understood that, but that's really what it started as. And I think having worked at Uber, I've worked as kind of a statistician kind of a data guy. I think their business model of having very distributed entrepreneurial teams that are kind of like autonomous and they're empowered to make decisions that really resonated with me. And I began to think like, okay, what would it be like instead of having a whole team in one building, if there was a group in say Nashville and they could interact with the app and interact with people within whether it's at a wedding ceremony or if they need to provide support or anything like that, what would that look like?

Eric McMillen:
And once I started thinking in those terms, it kind of led just to a bigger picture of weddings, of honeymoons. It seems like there's just kind of this space here of these trips, these events that they should just be more enjoyable to plan. And without a doubt, there was a personal aspect of this, my wedding was probably the busiest day of my life, aside from the birth of my daughter. And it was one of these things of like, maybe it's not like that for everyone, but there could be a different kind of experience here.

Eric McMillen:
And we're still feeling it out without a doubt. I don't want to say I'm speaking definitively on, weddings will be in the 21st century or anything like that. And we're very responsive to any feedback from users, but that's kind of what put us down this path of just thinking about kind of a different business model of kind of distributed autonomous teams. And once you have people there, what does that begin to look like? So that's kind of what got me thinking about this.

Angela Proffitt:
How do you organize it all?

Eric McMillen:
Right, right.

Angela Proffitt:
So did you guys move from Nashville to California, to just to focus on the whole aspect of this app?

Eric McMillen:
So I came out, and when I moved out to Silicon Valley, I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and that kind of predated DotTrot, and I figured there's probably no better place, at least for tech to learn just via osmosis of just learning from people who are smarter than you and learning from people who are more experienced than myself, and just experiencing that up close. And there's a lot of advantages in Silicon Valley, there's some real disadvantages, chief among them are housing, but it was one of those things that moving out here kind of predated that. But again, once I saw kind of the business model of some of these ride sharing companies, it really made me think, Nashville is an obvious spot to try this out. Other places you can think you could run down a list where it's like we're going to Nashville, but kind of step two will probably be other cities as well.

Angela Proffitt:
Got you. So take us through the whole user experience, because I really think that the opportunities for this app is really, you've got the planner who can plan the travel and also utilize this as a tool to stay sane. So that they're not micromanaging all these details because it's difficult the way that people send us information these days, like as much as I love automation, and as much as I'm psycho about processes and procedures and everything going my way, it doesn't always work that way. And people it's like, they just don't follow the rules. It's like, they're paying you money, but they're not going to fill out your stupid forms online. And so how to overcome that. And so take us down the user experience, like if you are a planner versus if you are a couple and would they use it the same way?

Eric McMillen:
That's a great question. That's a great question. So starting kind of with the planner, one thing we found out speaking with planners is that the vast majority of planning they do tends to be on a laptop or a desktop. Often the data is in a spreadsheet or maybe it's in another app. And so from a planner point of view, they have a desktop app, it's drag and drop. It's very, you can plan out the wedding weekend in a very streamlined way. You can import events, you can import the guest list, just copy and paste it from a spreadsheet. So from that point of view, it would be the planning aspect on the desktop would be kind of a traditional planning app.

Eric McMillen:
Where maybe it's a little different is once we incorporate the mobile app, the day of a planner can, if they choose to, they can use that to send out, put notifications, send updates and plans. Hopefully not respond to too many text messages or anything like that. But from a planner's point of view, it would really start on the web app. It seems like that's where a lot of them are working when they're planning an event and then the guests could consume whatever those plans are on a mobile app, and again, get any updates to changes if they need directions to say the rehearsal dinner or anything like that. They have those kinds of at their fingertips.

Eric McMillen:
From a kind of a couple planning, some couples may plan on their desktop. What we found is a lot of users, they just tend to stick on their mobile phone. And so that's probably going to, that's going to be a much more of a mobile phone-based experience a lot of texting going back and forth of, Hey, what do you think of this place? What do you think of this recommendation for the top 40 cities in the US? We have recommendations of places to check out that are maybe a little more maybe non-touristy, for lack of a better. I mean, we assume everyone knows where the Golden Gate Bridge is, and if they want to see it, we don't need to make that the focus of the app.

Eric McMillen:
And so that will be much more geared around kind of places to see in the city. What are the big Instagram spots, what are the murals and that it would just be much more of a mobile-based experience where they can just kind of go back and forth and kind of figure things out and also have directions and everything else they would need to kind of enjoy their trips, such as lodging information, et cetera. So one, obviously for a planner, it would be a little bit more of a formal experience of a traditional business software, but for someone planning out of trip to Nashville or anywhere else, it would just be a much more casual, a consumer-based travel app, so.

Angela Proffitt:
Got you. Do you all partner with any type of hotels or transportation companies, or have you gotten into that yet? Just like from a vendor perspective that involves travel in different places?

Eric McMillen:
Sure, sure. That's not something we're currently doing, but it is on our roadmap. I don't want to lay out the entire product roadmap for the world to hear, but that's definitely something that, I'm sure there's some very intelligent competitors out there that are much more intelligent than myself, that could really beat us up. But that's something we're looking at. We're looking at particularly obviously working with planners to kind of really get to that, to where it's a great experience for them. We're looking at local vendors, but that's a pretty crowded space. I mean, there's a lot of apps working with local vendors, but it's something that if there's a demand for it, we're definitely considering it. So.

Angela Proffitt:
So right now, I mean, how did you all arrive at deciding like, okay, most couples are on their phone and their guests are on their phone versus the planners. Like, was that just interviewing people or testing data through different websites? I mean, it seems like such a silly question, we were like I used to use Google Analytics, but I can't believe how many people don't use free Google Analytics. So I'm just, I mean, when people contact me and they're like, Hey, can you help me spend money here? And I'm like, well, why would you focus on mobile when 89% of your traffic is from a desktop? Like what? How do you know that?

Eric McMillen:
Yeah, that's a great question. And maybe it's something that some of your listeners could maybe learn from my mistake on this. Initially we talked to a lot of users kind of, non-planner users, just traditional travelers. And all of the tools they said they were using to plan these trips, it was all obviously on a desktop, such as creating PDFs, working with a Google spreadsheet. I mean, no one really does that on a smartphone. And so we really focused on building out a web app, a really polished web app. And as it turns out, no one used it. The minute we had a mobile app, it was just, people went directly to the mobile app. We even, we would have ads because we were really convinced about this hypothesis that, people just want to play it on there on a desktop.

Eric McMillen:
And so we would even have ads to the desktop. People would go to the desktop then go download the app. And so it was one of those things that it's just the power of getting something out there and quickly testing it, just to kind of vet the hypothesis. That it was basically looking at the data and saying, all right, everyone's going to mobile and intuitively it makes sense anyway, but it's just one of those things of talking to people. But at the end of the day, the data about the usage kind of determines the direction we go.

Angela Proffitt:
Yeah. And so I feel like the main feature that is focused for DotTrot is it's easy and it's drag and drop because let's be honest, all this shit is not easy to use when you're planning and it's like one rabbit hole lead you down another rabbit hole that leads you down to another city in another zip code and something that's out of your budget. And then it's like, how the hell did I even get here? So making it easy for people to use it and then share it. And then how does the function work for the real-time updates? Because I felt like if you ask pain points from the planners or even couples, it's like people change their mind constantly. And so how does the real-time updates work in everyone's favor?

Eric McMillen:
Sure. So there are kind of be two ways. The first is if you're a planner and you have kind of edit access to a trip, any change that you make will be immediately evident to the people who are looking at the app. So there's really no lag there. So for example, one feature we offer is the ability to group various attendees, because there may be some things that the bridesmaids need to go to, or the close family needs to go to for a photo, get some photos taken. So if a family member were added to a group, they would immediately see the events that are associated with that group.

Eric McMillen:
So it's one of those things where there's just no delay. So hopefully there's a delay could possibly lead to confusion. It's just one of those things where it doesn't matter if you're editing it on your computer or on your smartphone, people are seeing kind of the updated itinerary. There's also the aspect of send out push notifications, which we'll be rolling out this week of basically saying, all right, okay everyone, the cake cutting is now, if you have push notifications enabled, make it to the cake cutting. So it's those things. Again, and that may not be for everyone, but it's that communication of that ability to communicate kind of real time, we want to make that a focus, not so buzzers or phones are going off during the wedding ceremony, but just day of, if there's a change of plans, people have access to it immediately.

Angela Proffitt:
Well, yeah. And just from a transportation perspective, I mean, you know this with Nashville, I don't know. When's the last time that you have been back here?

Eric McMillen:
I want to say two months ago-

Angela Proffitt:
Okay so pretty recently.

Eric McMillen:
… but it grows so quickly that it could be totally different right now.

Angela Proffitt:
It's like five days goes by. So I'm out of Nashville more than I'm in Nashville because I'm traveling so much. And so it's like, I'll be out of town for a few days or a week or two. And then I come back and I'm like, holy shit. They just put up an entire condo building. Like what? I'm like, where did that parking garage go? And so it's just like, what people don't understand, especially in large cities is as a planner and that's one of the reasons like, I will never, I don't care who you are, how much money you have, what you want, I will never plan any type of an event or wedding in the middle of downtown during certain things. So like CMA Fest, like there's things that you just don't do with traffic.

Eric McMillen:
Sure.

Angela Proffitt:
And it's like, the roads closed down and then there's wrecks and then there's traffic. And so the transportation company that we use from the airport, and then to shuttle all these people around, I mean, I don't even know how those drivers do it. It's like ways used to be our little secret, but now everybody uses it and everybody's taken the back roads. And so it's really not that helpful anymore. It's still helpful, but not that helpful, not like it used to be. And so it's just like, if you had something with real-time updates that everyone subscribed to it, but you said the key thing is you got to have your location services on, you have to have your notifications on in order to get these updates.

Angela Proffitt:
And so that's where the education line of teaching people, especially at conferences, that's the number one complaint where we get these awesome apps and it's going to be amazing. And then three days goes by and I'm sitting in a wrap meeting with the chair and the co chair and the marketing. And they're like, “I didn't get any of those notifications. I didn't get anything asking me to fill out a survey.” I'm like, “Let me see your phone.” And then I go to the settings notifications and they have everything off or on silent or on do not disturb. And they don't even know, because no one gets up there and teaches, they don't take five minutes at the beginning of an event or a conference to teach people or just shot, make a video and send it to people. And then also put it in writing because some people like to read and some people like to watch to learn. So you've got to create the content all the different ways to make everybody happy.

Angela Proffitt:
Now, if they don't read it or watch it, it's on them because you gave them information. So it's just, it's crazy. So this app, obviously you can import, you can export. So, you said your guest list, you can import names and emails, RSVPs, and all of that into this app?

Eric McMillen:
That's correct. Yes. Yeah. And those, that RSVP information, that's all real time. That's real.

Angela Proffitt:
How does that work?

Eric McMillen:
Basically, if you have say 100 people that you want to, if you want to send the invites out to you'll basically and presumably that would be in a spreadsheet or something like that. After the trip is planned, you would basically import those. And we would just send those out automatically. If you want to send out reminders, you can do that as well. And leading up to any sort of event, they'll get reminders as well. So it's one of those things that we're… That's a pretty standard feature that we want to, but it needs to be part of the app as well. And the part of the experience.

Eric McMillen:
We're looking to kind of customize that a little bit more, one in terms of kind of the style. So you know every wedding may have a slightly different style and also some people simply wants to, they'll simply want kind of a paper copy to kind of have for their own consumption. So they'll have that as well in terms of maybe just a PDF. So if someone wants to kind of read that by themselves, they can do that as well.

Angela Proffitt:
Yeah. I love on the website it says in-app storage, no need to worry about having all the details memorize. So my favorite is when people ask me questions, it is feedback to me that I did not do my job. And so we build our timeline/itinerary, whatever you want to call it, idiot-proof, because I don't do this for my health. Like I know where I need to be, but it's accountability for everybody that's involved because on any given event, especially weddings, we have roughly 45 vendors involved in every single event we do, which also is usually 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 people who by the way, are all from out of town because destination weddings in Nashville are a thing.

Angela Proffitt:
And so my vendors, and then even the wedding party, because we do a separate VIP itinerary for them. And they're like calling and texting. I'm like, it's on the timeline. It's on the timeline. Is that even my best friends who, and to what time should we bring the cake? I'm like, which wedding? We got multiple things going. I'm like that it's on the timeline. So then not answering people's questions, forces them and party-trains them to go and look at what is the information and where can I find this? And so I'm like, Hey guys, there's this thing on your computer if you're at your computer, command F on a Mac that you can just type in the word baker and type in the word photographer. But the key is to be very consistent.

Eric McMillen:
Sure.

Angela Proffitt:
And so that's just feedback that I get from vendors where they're like, this thing is 50 pages long. I'm like, why would you print it out? Why would you not just run it off of your iPhone? I never built these things to be printable, that too much paper and ink, but it just… Do you guys have any studies where you have pulled people of like, okay, we've saved X amount of time by utilizing this app and by sending out messages to everybody at once. Has anybody tracked that yet? Or is it, it's still super new?

Eric McMillen:
I mean, right now I mean, we're primarily focused on one, getting the high level experience right. And just making it so it's either it's if you're for planner or for kind of just someone orchestrating a trip, it's just a seamless experience. That level of optimization of saving time without a doubt. I mean, it's at least if someone's using the web app, I don't want to speculate and say, Oh, two to three hours, but it will save you time if nothing else. It's condensing three to four apps down into one. But right now we're really just focused on, like you said, really perfecting the experience, because like you said, if someone is asking a question, it's kind of a sign like, all right, from a UX experience, we need to own that and make that, that's a sign, from a UX experience, we could have done a better job.

Eric McMillen:
And so it's really trying to we're really right now just covering all the bases of just the UX experience and just getting it really streamlined for planners or for just a more casual user. So point beings we're not quite there yet in terms of kind of tracking time.

Angela Proffitt:
Yeah. So for people who don't know what UX is, it's just basically designing and coding the app and the information now. Right?

Eric McMillen:
Right. Yeah. Again, I can go into kind of Silicon Valley nerd mode with some of the stuff. It's user experience. So it's making the experience just accessible to the user.

Angela Proffitt:
User experience. Got you.

Eric McMillen:
Right. And as you can probably attest, someone can-

Angela Proffitt:
I mean, I know what it is. Like someone [inaudible 00:33:26] tech terms who are like, wait, what's that mean?

Eric McMillen:
Right. Right. And this world, I mean, it is a challenge just if, for no other reason, if you look at the variety of guests that can be attending it's potentially anyone 22 and younger up until the aunt who is maybe in her golden years. And so capturing the user experience for all of those groups, it is a challenge. And it's something that wherever DotTrot goes will be something we have to focus on for the foreseeable future and longer.

Angela Proffitt:
Got you. So if people want to check it out and connect with you, and I know you guys are really wanting people to use it, provide feedback. No feedback is bad, you guys. This is how they make these tools better for those of us who are trying to get organized in our life. And so you can actually try it for free if you go dottrot.com. And it is D as in dog, O-T-T, double T as in Tom, R-O-T as in tom.com. I've said like double F double T for my last name, like 50 times a day. And they're like, Crawford? Profit? I'm like, no profit like you make money, but with two Fs and two Ts. They're like, Oh, like, how's that not clear? Anyway. So go to the website and you can invite up to 20 people for free and just check it out. And then what is the best way Eric, for them, if they have feedback, what's the best way for them to get feedback to you?

Eric McMillen:
Sure. So probably two kind of outlets. The first is if you're using the website, there'll be a chat widget there that we would love to hear if there's features that people want. Put it this way, people are getting kind of developers for free, so to speak. So if there's something that enough people want, that will be built. So just through the website, they can just send us a message. Also, we're pretty active. We're increasingly very active on Instagram, dot_trot. The wonders of getting the business name in all of the social media networks. And so that's another great place.

Eric McMillen:
We're always kind of, we're starting to run a lot of promotions. We're going to be very active in Nashville in the coming weeks. And so if someone just wants to reach out, follow us on Instagram, we're very responsive. And if there's something that you don't like, if there's something that you do like, if you think this destination should be added or this feature should be added, Instagram is another great way just to chat with us very personally.

Angela Proffitt:
Awesome. Well, this is super helpful. Thank you so much for your time. And I'm super excited to see the app grow and see where it goes. We'll have to talk in a year. Talk to you later because [inaudible 00:36:35] fun part.

Eric McMillen:
Yeah. That will be a fascinating conversation in a year, so. But yeah, we're very excited. Like I said, we're a distributed team between Nashville, Silicon Valley, and LA, and we're looking to hire a Nashville for both full time and part time, full time would be kind of like both roles would be, there'd be a lot of fun. You get out to checkout kind of hotspots in the city and just have a good time. And we're also always looking to chat with wedding planners, event planners, et cetera, because we do think there is a big win-win in terms of working with these event planners and empowering them, as opposed to kind of just creating an app that does their job or something like that, because we can't do that. That's not in our wheelhouse and it's really not feasible. So yeah, we're excited about where it's going. We're a young team and you'll probably be seeing us in Nashville quite a bit. And hopefully many more cities after that.

Angela Proffitt:
That sounds awesome. Well guys, thank you so much for listening today. And if you're traveling around, even for personal travel, and you've got a bunch of friends going or family, just check it out, give us some feedback and we would so appreciate it. So check it out dottrot.com. You all have a great day. Be sure to tune in next week for more business tips on Business Unveiled. Have a great day. Bye.

Angela Proffitt:
Now that you have all the tools you need to conquer the world in GSD, just share this with your friends and your fellow GSD leaders, and be sure you're a subscriber so you never miss the juicy details of Business Unveiled. And you can ask Siri to listen to the latest episode, but you got to be a subscriber. Before I go, I have a huge favor to ask, and it would mean the world to me, while you're listening snap a quick screenshot, post it to your Instagram story, tag me at gsdleader_ and share with me your top takeaway from this episode and how it relates to you. Until next time, remember stay productive and profitable.

Speaker 1:
You've been listening to Business Unveiled with Angela Proffitt. Join us next time as we share our experiences to help you be more productive and profitable in your creative business. For more great resources, visit angelaproffitt.com.