Rethinking Reviews: How Sircles Is Redefining Trust and Recommendations with John Worthington

Today, we're sitting down with a true visionary, John Worthington. With over two decades of experience under his belt, John co founded the thriving tech repair company Tech2u. But his latest venture is tackling a frustration many of us share the often toxic world of online reviews.

John is the founder of Circles, Spelled with an S, a groundbreaking app built on the power of friend powered, positive only recommendations. Forget sifting through manipulated ratings and negativity. Circles offers refreshing antidote, connecting you with trusted suggestions from your personal network.

In this conversation, John pulls back the curtain on the inspiration behind Circles, the bold decision to fuel its growth through community crowdfunding, for which he raised an incredible $7 million, and the unique challenges of building a platform that's centered on Positiv. He also shares invaluable lessons from his entrepreneurial path, emphasizing the role of a clear mission and authentic community engagement.

Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a small business owner, or simply tired of online review drama, you're in for a treat. Get ready to explore a new horizon of trusted recommendations. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.

All right, John Worthington, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. We appreciate you taking the time to be here, John. All right, so let's get right into it. So, John, what specific frustration or observation, and perhaps it was even stemming from your previous experience with tech2, you what frustration ignited the initial idea for Circles, and it's, it's focused on trusted recommendations, right? Yeah, you know, it was a combination of things.

We. Tech to you is a computer repair business. I started with a good friend of mine from college, started just the two of us. We have multiple locations now, over a hundred employees. And you know, we, we have Yelp reviews just like any other small business. And we found over time that Yelp was not really pro business. They act like they are, they say they are, they promote themselves that way, but the reality is they're kind of a bully.

And you know, if you have a fake review, you know, maybe a competitor trying to attack you, whatever the case may be, it's just really hard to even get anybody to do anything at Yelp besides just send you to their sales funnel. And so it was really frustrating. You know, we, you get a one star reviews for something silly like your lobby is too cold, you know, and there's no recourse, but it makes your overall score look bad.

Not to mention the fact we stopped paying them at one time and they filtered, quote, filtered out hundreds of five star reviews and Then when we paid them again, they magically showed up. So we're like, there's got to be a better way. And we had this idea of, why isn't there a place where I can just see recommendations from people we know and trust? I don't know of any app or website where I can go just see my friends recommendations.

Because I'd much rather hear a recommendation from someone I trust than read reviews from strangers. Attention, Shopify sellers. Are you tired of slow sales? Do you want to skyrocket your revenue? Well, you'll want to join this free masterclass from my friends, the Traffic Ninjas. Learn how to optimize your store, boost conversions and dominate your niche. Sign up with the link in the show notes and take your Shopify business to the next level.

Wow. Okay. And you know, like, you just touched on the, the established nature of Vue platforms. We all, you know, know what it's like to, to at least use them. I mean, what was the single biggest leap of faith you took when deciding to, to pursue the, the friend powered model of Circles? Well, you know, we're still a small business at the end of the day, so allocating resources is always a tough decision. It's got to take a lot of planning and foresight and risk.

So that initial investment, you know, once, once you start down that road, pretty soon there's no turning back. So hiring some staff, you know, putting together a plan, developing a concept and all that, you know, it's going to take financial resources, going to take our human resources and our creative capacity and all those things. So making that decision and going forward with that, it's a really tough decision.

It's a big, a big decision and kind of a life changing decision if you decide to pursue something like that. Because it's not going to succeed if you don't put your life into it. If you're not obsessed, don't bother. Okay, and why did you choose crowdfunding through platforms like Kickstarter and we Funder as the primary funding method for Circles in the early stages? Yeah, and looking back, it seems like an obvious decision, but at first it was a lot of debate. Should we do crowdfunding?

Was that good, a good idea? For us, it was kind of a new concept at the time. A few years ago, looking back, it was, it was perfect because for us, especially the app that we're developing, Circles, it's spelled Circles with an S, S, I, R, C, L, E, S. It's really all about sharing things with your circle. And I trust recommendations from My friends, I don't ask them about five places they don't like. I just want to know, hey, what's a really good restaurant?

Or what's a good movie you've seen lately? So going into that, we, we decided that we're going to make this app all about positivity, just because there's no, there's no reviews in this concept. This is all about recommendations. So when we, when we first launched on this idea, the idea started developing first to just like kind of an anti Yelp kind of platform of how we can.

What can we do to disrupt them. But then real soon, we realized this is all about community. And because it's your circle. And so where Yelp, you don't have friends. On Yelp, it's not social. But other social media platforms, you know, obviously have friends. And with Circles, it's all about your circle of friends. So community and crowdfunding really go hand in glove because crowdfunding is about community. If you don't build your community in crowdfunding, you're not going to make it.

You really. It's all about. Because it's small investors, lots and lots of small investors. It's not like a couple big institutional investors like the traditional way. So building that community with crowdfunding really good. Went hand in hand with what we're trying to do because all those small investors become loyal users because they're invested. Of course, they tell their friends and family, so there's. It's more sticky.

So that whole community concept of crowdfunding, it just, it made perfect sense as we started really thinking it through. And then from there it has. It's really been just an outstanding decision. Probably. I don't know where we'd be if we didn't do it. We ended up raising over $7 million in equity crowdfunding, one of the highest of all time, actually. So it turned out for us particularly, like, just a perfect fit.

Okay. Yeah. And, you know, like you said, you've done very well in terms of the amount raised. And being that it was, you know, you weren't sure about that at first. Like, was there any specific strategy that you, you used to. To raise so much? A few things, yeah. Really building that community is a big part.

You know, start with your friends and family and start with, you know, we have customers and such and close friends and partnerships and things around our community that we've already built with our small business. You start there. And then we teamed up with a really, really powerful local influencer, someone that has been on the air for many years in our community. So, you know, he's got a pretty trusted brand and reputation.

So partnering with somebody like that early on, at least for us, was a really good decision because, you know, we're nobody. Nobody has ever heard of us. But if you have a partner that has a bigger audience and also believes in you, you're obviously going to be able to amplify your message a lot faster. So that kind of strategy for, at least for us, again, it worked really well.

Now we're trying to get out of our local area, but we think we can probably scale that with influencers that have more of a national audience or internationally, so say. So we're actually just now in that phase of talking to people and interviewing and all that. Okay, and did you encounter any skepticism or resistance when like, introducing the concept of and shift shifting from anonymous reviews to like personal recommendations? Well, if anything, it's.

It's such a new concept that people are like. One of the number one things I hear is, oh, what if I want to leave a negative review? And we're like, well, you know, there are apps for that, but we're about recommendations. Again, I don't ask my friend, tell me five places you dislike. It's, you know, I'm just trying to get to the spots that, that are good recommendations. So we just, we don't do that.

So we built the app from the ground up, deliver very deliberately, very intentionally to be only positive. Like a lot of guardrails in there so that it stays. Stays positive, which of course is very refreshing right now. We. We get a ton of positive feedback from our. Our community. You know, it always helps to have a mission that people believe in, which of course, circles does. So that's helped us gain a lot of support just because of how negative and toxic and how much drama there is in.

In regular social media. Even Yelp has. Majority of their reviews are negative. So being able to have a community that is looking for something new and positive, that. That's a big, big force multiplier for us that really helps our network effect. Yeah. And you know, like you said, social media in general can be very negative. And I'm the. There's an old adage, something about like, like a negative review. I don't, I don't know what it is exactly, but, you know, it'll.

It'll travel much faster in terms of talking about what you don't like versus. What you do like, but it's like 10 to 1. Yeah. For a negative comment. Word of Mouth than positive word of mouth. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, was that, was that a hurdle you had to overcome in terms of people just adapting to this concept of, oh, wait, like it's, it's only, it's only something positive. That's a great question.

And yeah, I would say kind of indirectly just because not so much that direct situation, but more parallel to that, which is the social media platforms that got popular exist today and grew into huge companies. They thrived on the drama. They, it's that, that fear and anger emotion is so much more powerful than the feel good one because same reason the word of mouth, the negative word of mouth is 10 times more powerful than the positive word of mouth. So same with us.

So we, our challenge more than anything is just keeping people's attention because it's not, there is no drama and it, you know, there's not that, that trigger that makes you come back and want to argue. So it's a little, it's just a harder challenge to press the feel good button for us. But we're finding the formula. Like there's a lot of really cool things we're doing. But yeah, it actually has been a challenge.

Like sometimes we joke like, oh, it'd be nice if we could just open up, you know, wild, like comments and like have people say whatever, but, you know, it's just not in the spirit what we're doing. Okay. And so given that it's, it's like a departure from the norm and it's a new idea and then, you know, it's, it's a community app with, with no negativity. I mean, what was your niche initial approach to like building the community and generating enthusiasm like among the early, early adopters?

We had to start slow. You know, app development is, is really challenging. It's, it's much harder than like building a website, for instance. It's software development and people expect the app to be on par with the best apps out there in the world. And so that's a high bar. So we really, we just started slow with, you know, basic proof of concept. You know, obviously had a real small audience.

You know, friends and family start with and they're very forgiving of bugs and, you know, things are going to be wonky all over the place. And that's, that's normal for any app developing, especially when you're first getting started. So, you know, they say, you know, if you're, if your basketball team's behind 20 points in the game, there's no 20 point shot. You just have to keep hitting layups, just keep hitting a layup, keep hitting a layup.

And so we just went step by step, hit milestones, made some promises like we're going to try and get to this milestone and then we do. And then, okay, let's raise a little bit more money and then let's hit this milestone. And you have to just have to be patient, really patient and methodical. There is no 20 point shot. Okay. And you know, as you mentioned, you're working right now on expanding outside of your local area. I mean, for, for your next level of expansion.

What, what do you see as a critical milestone that, that Circles would need to achieve? Well, I'd like to see real growth and retention outside of the communities that we focus on more exclusively. That's going to be the real test. So we've passed a few tests already showing that we can scale and retain people and stay positive. So that's been really good. We have, we have a chat with over 10,000 people in it and there.

And everyone's been positive and really supportive of everybody in the community. So that's cool. But getting into a city that we really have no presence in, you know, that's going to take some more strategy and that's where we're going to really earn our paychecks. That's where the rubber meets the road. Can we, can we do that at scale in communities that have never heard of us?

Okay. And you know, based on your, your successful crowdfunding experience with Circles, I mean, what do you see as one, one important piece of advice you'd offer to others that are, that are early stage startups and that are trying to get investments on, on platforms like we funder. Well, I would have a couple things going for you mission that connects with people besides just the, the money, the return on the investment. Obviously everybody wants a return. That's the whole point of investing.

So a clear plan of how you're going to exit, but also why you're doing what you're doing. The why is so much more important than the how it really is. And if you can start with that and then build your community based on that, that philosophy, then you have a shock. Okay. Yeah. And we hear that so much. Right. I mean, it's almost become a little cliche.

I was actually just at a conference and they were bringing up the find your why from Simon Sinek repeatedly in terms of, you know, the different brands and whatnot that were there. So I mean, in, in your experience, particularly on these, these funding platforms, do you see A lot of people where maybe the. Why it doesn't feel like, like it's obvious in terms of the, the founders or the, the brands communicating that. I do see that a lot.

Yeah. And, and I see a half hearted effort, you know, to educate and inform and enlighten their potential investor. You know, if you go to a profile and you don't grasp the concept, then why would you expect them to invest? So that really does need to be communicated through your, through your profile. You know, you have a little video you can, you can post and then, and then descriptions.

And that's where your, your inner soul, that's where the spirit of you and your company should shine through. And that needs to connect. Ah, okay. And how is your personal perspective on risk versus reward evolved? I mean, throughout your entrepreneurial journey? Being that this, you know, you're, you've been through numerous ventures already. Well, I don't know that I would have tried this if I knew how hard it was going to be.

So I'm kind of glad I didn't know it was going to be this difficult. The risk is tremendous. As soon as you start taking money from people you don't know, the, the stakes are so much dramatic, more dramatically higher. I mean, these are members of my community and the last thing I ever want to do is let them down. So reputational risk to me is really far greater than the financial risk. I mean, sure, we'll lose a lot of money if this fails.

But reputationally, I don't even know how I would be able to show my face in the community. I mean, there's thousands of small investors in our community and they're all counting on us and they're very supportive and it's been great. So that's why I work as hard as I do. But if you're going to, to, if you're going to take money from investors, you know, be prepared to change your life and be accountable and be transparent to them.

Because for me, at least for me, the reputational risk is, is, is very, very significant. It's something I take very seriously. Okay. And you know, reflecting on your early days with Tech two, you. I mean, what's, what's one key insight about it? Building a successful company that maybe you wish you knew sooner. Don't spread yourself too thin. You know, you have a good concept, get traction. You feel like you can take over the whole world. Slow it down. What's that expression?

Slow down so you can speed up. I should have listened to that. You know, it's 20 something years ago, I was younger and thought I would conquer the world in five years, but, you know, I ended up spreading ourselves a little, opening too many locations too fast, and, and it ended up working out, but it was 10 times harder than it needs to. And, you know, and putting us at the brink of bankruptcy more than once. And so don't do that.

Take your time and focus on where you're strong, and then when you're really strong, then move to another one and then do it again and again. Don't just plant your flag all over the place. Ah, okay. So just balancing that natural ambition that, that entrepreneurs have with, with maybe some, some realism in terms of scaling, you know, at a moderate pace. Exactly. Okay.

And you know, John, given that you've been an entrepreneur for, for 20 plus years and, you know, been through numerous companies, you know, and what, you know now, what's one piece of advice that you would, you would give your younger self? Well, the last statement, for one. And then let's see, let's see. I, you know, I'm really, I don't have really any regrets, let's put it that way. I, I love the team that we've assembled.

Besides trying to scale too fast, I, I don't know that I change much other than that. I'd have to really think about that. I think I've been fortunate to have really great partners, and that's probably something I learned from a very early age, just from smaller endeavors. But you want to team up with people you can trust. If you can't trust, there's plenty to worry about. Starting a new business, tons and tons of things that can take you down.

The last thing you want is work with somebody you don't trust. I can't even imagine that was also a challenge. So having really strong, reliable partners is super important. I would just probably reinforce some of those messages. Okay. All right. And if people want to learn more about circles and see if it's potentially, you know, available in their area or coming soon, I mean, what, what's the best way people can, can find you and reach out to learn more about the app? Sure, sure.

Yeah, we're discoverable in the App Store. Just search circles with an S S I R C L E S. We do actually have a crowdfunding campaign open. You can check it out, get some ideas for yourself. We use the We Funder platform. So if you want to check us out there, we're we funder.com circles and there's a campaign there with lots of history, lots of really valuable nuggets I'm sure you could glean from it, and, of course, our website. So any of those sources.

Okay. And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone. All right. Well, John, thank you so much for taking the time to be here, sharing this wisdom from your journey and the exciting stuff that you're doing with circles. We greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate you. All right. And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.