Julie Landry Laviolette, CEO of Story Bayou, narrates the story of creating a company around story book apps. Julie leveraged her background as a writer to create a software based company despite the fact she's not a developer. She offers refreshing insight to what it's like on the other side of the table.
Links referenced in the show:
The music in the show, Have Mercy — Big Walter Horton, was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley.
Transcription
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Julie 00:00:21 My name is Julie Landry Laviolette and I am CEO and Director of Fun of Story Bayou. And what we do is create interactive book apps for kids ages 8-12, which is our tween market. And the way the books work is they are written in second person, which is your voice. And as the reader goes through the app and they go through the book, during critical points in the plot they can make choices about what happens next in the story. And so they choose this and the story goes on one way or they choose that and the story goes on another way and then eventually you’ll reach an ending. And so what happens then is you can go back and make different choices and you can reach an entirely new ending. So it’s a really interactive experience for the reader and it’s also sort of in between a paper book and an ebook because both are static experiences where you’re just reading the content. And in this way, with our apps (with Story Bayou apps) they get to have a say. And so that’s how the name came to be. It’s Story Bayou (B-A-Y-O-U) and it’s a play on the words story-by-you and it’s also Bayou; it’s a body of water, it’s mysterious, meandering, you never know where it leads. So it’s sort of a double meaning, something fun to name the company.
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Ryan 00:01:55 Yeah. The bayou speaks to your history a little bit too.
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Julie 00:01:57
Yes it does. I’m originally from New Orleans, if you can’t tell from my accent. And I lived there most of my life and I was a writer there and raised my family -- started raising my family there until Hurricane Katrina. And after we lost our house we moved to Florida to be with relatives and then we just relocated.
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Ryan 00:02:22
So what’s interesting about the story -- I say that the, you know, the tagline of the podcast is, you know, “talking to developers.” But I think it’s important to talk to people, you know, tangentially related. So you started a tech company but you’re not a developer at all. In fact, I don’t even think you call yourself all that technical, right?
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Julie 00:02:38
That’s exactly right. I am not a high-tech person at all. My kids know how to use the iPad and a smartphone much better than I will ever know how to do that. So I am not a tech person but what I am is a writer. I’ve been a writer for 20 years and a journalist. And when the journalism work started to dwindle I was looking for a way to reinvent myself anyway and an opportunity came up to get involved in the tech community. So I used my skills and my background in PR and journalism and writing to create this company. But all of the tech work is contracted out with my tech partner.
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Ryan 00:03:27
So this really speaks to the fact that, I mean, pretty much you’re hard-pressed to come up with a company these days that isn’t somehow software-driven or somehow, you know, technically-driven. I mean, you know, it’s all ball bearings these days, right?
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Julie 00:03:38
Right.
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Ryan 00:03:39
It’s funny, I was just thinking about I was visiting my family recently. And my mom describes what I do as “something with computers.” And it cracks me up because it’s like what isn’t? Like, every gig is something with computers these days. So it’s good that you didn’t necessarily find yourself intimidated by not being familiar with, you know, app development at all. But I imagine that this came with its own challenges. I mean, even just having a hard time expressing what it is that you need from someone or expectations of how long certain things take. Like, do you want to talk about some of those challenges that you’ve had as sort of an outsider dealing with developers?
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Julie 00:04:18
Yes. Well, my background -- I started as an advertising copywriter, moved into the journalism field, and have written for newspapers and magazines for the past twenty years. So in my journalism side of writing, you know, I have encountered a little bit of that tech side. I write for the Miami Herald as a freelancer and they have a parenting Website called MomsMiami.com. I write a blog for them. So, you know, that’s been really the extent of my tech experience. So when it came to app development, you know, I was way in over my head. I knew that my responsibilities would be writing the children’s book, when it came time to promoting it, writing the press releases and the promotional material, and contacting the news outlets to try to get some coverage. But as far as the tech side, I left that totally up to my tech partner. I don’t know anything about writing code or how long things take or the debugging process. My tech partner is Linxter. Jason Milgram and I have kids who are in sixth grade together and we kind of met through them and started talking one day and that’s how this idea all came up for doing this app and creating Story Bayou and so forth. But I think Jason did a good job of sheltering me from things I don’t understand. I mean, he walks me through and even in terms of submitting the apps to the marketplace. Some of the marketplaces were easier than others and it was never anything I could have done on my own. So I think we did a good job of partnering; I handle this side of things, you handle that side of things. But I think for me probably the most difficult part of the process was the debugging process because I found one, we were trying to create this product and we were sort of creating it in the process. So it wasn’t like, you know, we came up with an idea and said, “This is it. This is the final version.” We sort of tweaked things along the way when it came to the interactive nature of the app and how we were going to indicate to readers, okay, you’ve read this portion of the app and you still have these parts of the app you haven’t explored yet, this part you’ve already explored all the endings. So in the process of developing all of that, you know, we would say, “Okay, we want it to work this way.” And we would try it out and then it wouldn’t work exactly as we wanted so we would start over. And then the whole debugging -- you know, the computer code. And sometimes it would make the illustration do funny things or weird spacing and working out all those kinks. That was not something I was used to working with. But, I mean, it’s a fun process. It’s all new and I was looking for something new so it all worked out.
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Ryan 00:07:20
Yeah. I’m not sure how commonplace it is in writing, but a lot of developers talk about, you know, like, the 80/20 rule. Where it’s, like, you know, 20% of your project (what seems like 20% of your project) basically will take 80% of the effort. And that’s where that debugging comes in. It’s like…
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Julie 00:07:37
Right.
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Ryan 00:07:37
It’s so hard to bid and it’s so frustrating because you think, you know, it’s a tip of the iceberg type situation. Like, “Wow, we’ve built this whole thing, right? So we’re done.” It’s like, well…
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Julie 00:07:48
I know and that’s what I thought. I mean, I thought once I gave him the story and they put together the code, okay, well we just need to make sure it works like we want it to work and then we move on. And the debugging was the largest part of the process. So, you know, it was a learning experience, but now we have it down. We have one down so I think the idea is to create a series of book apps. So I think the next time it will be easier.
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Ryan 00:08:20
Yeah. And that’s where you start really getting the benefits, right. Because once you sort of amortize the learning the pains that you had from this one across, you know, a series of books, all of a sudden it really starts making sense.
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Julie 00:08:30
Right. Exactly.
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Ryan 00:08:31
So speaking of making sense, so you’re a writer. There’s easier ways to get books out there, right? Like, you know, we’re living in a time of digital distribution. You could have made epubs or, you know, went through Kindle. Why an app? Why was that important to you? And it seems like definitely not the path of least resistance, right?
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Julie 00:08:49
Right. You’re exactly right. And it really all came down to timing because I had been really busy with my freelance journalism work. I write for a couple of different newspapers, I write for regional parenting magazines around the United States and Canada, and I was really busy. I specialize in parenting issues, I do some personal finance writing. There was just a lot of work coming in. And what had happened was the Miami Herald had cut its freelance budget and it was going to take away a big chunk of my writing jobs, what I was doing every week, week to week. And so that had just happened and four weeks had gone by and I was looking for a way to reinvent myself anyway. And so what happened was is when Jason and I started talking and he knew I was a writer and I knew he was an app developer. And so we just started brainstorming. And at first, you know, he was talking about, “Oh, I was looking for a writer for press releases,” and that type of thing; we were talking about that. And then we just started talking about apps and kid’s books and the interactive nature of mobile phones and mobile devices and it was really the right place at the right time. So I went away from that meeting thinking, “I’m going to write a children’s book. That’s what I’ll do. I have the time now.” And so later that day I went up to his house, our kids got together and played, and, you know, we started talking about ideas. And so then I came up with the idea for the first book app which is called Brush of Truth. It’s about a magical paintbrush that whatever you draw with it comes to life. And so in a couple of days I had come up with that idea. So it wasn’t really any long, thought-out process. It wasn’t something I had been planning to do. It just sort of happened. And so we created it and the more I looked into it and started to research the process, that’s how I decided to target the age group that I did (the 8-12 year olds) and to write the kind of book I did. And so it wasn’t like I was looking at ebooks and, “Oh, I’ll, you know, write some fiction and try to develop it as an ebook.” It wasn’t like that at all. I was looking for new opportunities to channel my writing. My opportunities in journalism seemed to be drying up. So the app market was there and I had a tech partner who was willing to work with me. So it just all worked out.
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Ryan 00:11:36
I like that one of the things that you keep kind of coming back to is the idea of, you know, having partnerships and kind of separating concerns. I think, all too often, when you hear these similar kinds of success stories it’s, “Well, I was a writer and business dried up so I figured I’m going to sit down and learn how to develop.” And that’s a great story. It’s a good hero’s tale for people, but it’s not always practical for everyone, right? Like, and not everyone wants to do that. You continue to just leverage the strengths that you already had and you found someone to kind of fill in the gaps to make this product work.
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Julie 00:12:11
That’s exactly right. You know, I think there are others out there like me because when I tell people, “Oh, I’ve, you know, developed this app (this book app) for tweens,” you know, sometimes if they’re writers (of course I have a lot of writer friends -- you know, I run in those circles with other journalists) they say, “Oh, wow. Well, how’d you do it? You know, I’ve been thinking about an app for this or for that.” So I think that that’s the big unknown among people who like apps and may be interested in creating their own and they’re very intimidated by the process. And what do you do besides Google “app developer.” So I think that there’s probably people out there who are interested and have great ideas and they just don’t know how to go about it.
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Ryan 00:13:00
Yeah. It is tricky. Well, it’s early days, right? I mean, the whole idea of selling apps in the marketplace is only, what? Four years old now at this point? So I could see how maybe people are still wrapping their head around it. It’s a little bit magic, especially if it’s not your world.
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Julie 00:13:14
Right. And I think it’s very intimidating. And even for some computer people who haven’t jumped into the whole app development world, I think it’s like you said; it’s a new and can be a very intimidating process. And I don’t think people know where to look or how to go about it or how much it costs or what the process is. You know, I think that there’s definitely a whole new world out there.
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Ryan 00:13:44
Well, it’s interesting because like you said, even lots of developers don’t know how to get started with these things because a lot of times businesses that spring up around apps are kind of like these microcosms. So they’re kind of used to doing a small piece of a big project. I mean, a lot of times, if you’re starting a company around an app, I mean, you’ve got to do the marketing, you’ve got to do the development, you’ve got to do the, you know, the sales of it. It’s kind of all bundled up together. And it’s easy to look at, you know, these different marketplaces and app stores and say, “Oh, well, they get rid of the whole sales and marketing side, right? Because you can just search for an app and, you know, step three profit, right?”
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Julie 00:14:21
Oh, and it’s not like that at all. It’s like imagine creating a book and then you go into a library with half a million books and then you put yours on the shelf. People have to know where to look. So you really do have to spend some time thinking about how are you going to market your app, who are you really targeting, and how do you reach these people? I think maybe at the beginning, you could just create your app and stick it in the marketplace and hope it goes viral. Maybe somebody’ll, you know, attach themselves to it and then it’ll just, you know, sell itself, but I don’t think that’s the reality. The marketplace is getting just more and more crowded. And if you’re targeting, you know, children’s books and, you know, you want parents to look for these types of book apps and you want kids to be looking for them, you have to figure out how to reach them. So it’s just not enough to create your app and put it in the marketplace and hope, you know, it will get discovered because that’s not going to happen. And I think that’s one of the advantages that I bring to the table is because I did work in advertising and public relations and marketing and then I have worked as a journalist for a long time so I know how to find news outlets and I know what I think is a good story and how to pitch it to get their interest. And so, you know, I think I come out with a little bit of advantage in that part. And I think app developers, they need to start thinking in those terms even down to when they write the copy for their homepage on the marketplace. You need to figure out what you want to say, how to best reach your audience and not just throw a bunch of stuff on there. You know, I see people throwing reviews and, you know, exclamation points and just whatever they think will sell. And I think you need to find somebody who knows how to do that. I think that’s an important part of it.
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Ryan 00:16:46
Yeah. I think that’s a great thing to bring up. It’s not necessarily intuitive to everyone but you don’t just want a feature list, right, like, if you’re trying to sell an app. You want to create the narrative. You want to engage with your potential users and explain to them how this fits into their life, right?
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Julie 00:17:02
Right. It’s moving into advertising copy and so it’s, you know, it’s a sales pitch. That’s your elevator pitch right there in the, you know, few seconds that somebody maybe clicks on your app and, you know, whether it’s an impulse buy or not. So it’s different. I mean, especially if, you know, you come from this tech background and maybe your app is not about writing. You don’t have a lot of writing experience and then you try to put that copy together. You have to think about it in those terms, that it really is a sales pitch.
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Ryan 00:17:41
It’s interesting. There’s been this common thread through a lot of these interviews where people say, you know, the technology barriers aren’t really what bothers them because that’s what they do, right. Oftentimes the things that really get them hung up on things is the communication barrier. And it’s interesting to now talk to you about this from the other side and say, “Well, no. Communication’s my thing.” Like that’s…
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Julie 00:18:04
Right.
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Ryan 00:18:05
And it’s good because I’m sure there’s lots of people that are, you know, envious isn’t quite the right word, but I think they look at your situation and say, “Oh, wow. There’s someone doing it the other way.” And I’m sure it’s very interesting at least for them to think about it in those terms.
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Julie 00:18:20
Right. And I think, on the other side of the coin, my limitations. I’m frustrated that I don’t understand more of the tech issues. And even though I have learned a few basic ways to change the copy on the Website, for example, when you sign up to be an app developer they give you all these tech tools. You have all these things at your fingertips and I don’t know how to make heads or tails of them. And so there’s probably resources that I’m overlooking, but I just don’t know how to access them because I just don’t have that base of knowledge, that tech base of knowledge.
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Ryan 00:19:03
Well, it seems like you’re doing pretty good. You know, kind of compensating with partnerships. So would you say that this is, you know, going pretty well? I think you just submitted, like, a week ago, right?
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Julie 00:19:14
Right. We just submitted last week and so it’s in the Windows and Android marketplaces. And we submitted to the iPad/iPhone. You know, we’re waiting for the review of that and the acceptance of those apps. So it is very, very new.
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Ryan 00:19:33
Cool. Well, I’ll definitely have a link to the different marketplaces in the show notes so everybody can kind of check that out if that’s their thing.
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Julie 00:19:40
Yeah. Thank you. But I think it’s going really well. I mean, I think that, you know, Jason and I both jumped into it thinking let’s see where this goes. You know, we think that this is a market that, you know, it’s a niche that I think we found a product to fill it.
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Ryan 00:20:01
Circling back to what you had said a while ago, I think it’s interesting that it’s not a very uncommon tale; the part where, you know, newspaper money’s drying up for you so you had to find something a little bit more in the tech field. Seems like that’s, like, lots of people, right? More often you hear about bloggers or something along that line. You want to talk about that journey a little bit?
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Julie 00:20:22
Well, you know, since the Internet came into play I think newspapers have been struggling to reinvent themselves and to give news to people in a format that they are interested in using. And newspapers are sort of becoming a hybrid of providing news in a paper content and providing news in a digital content. And they’re doing that by creating their own Websites and having their own bloggers and inviting the community to share in the news gathering process. So they’re trying to figure out how to give news to people in this new digital way and they’re trying to figure out how to make money at it. And so you see newspapers and there’s been tons of layoffs and cuts and budget cuts and in the process, journalists like me, we’re trying to roll with the, you know, roll with the tide and try to figure out, okay, how do we fit into this process? And so a lot of people have left the journalism field and they’ve reinvented themselves as public relations professionals because they are familiar with the media and what makes a good story. So you see that and you see people going off and maybe doing their own blog sites where they blog about something that they feel that they’re an expert on and they make money off of it through their advertising. And as a freelancer, you know, I take work from the newspapers, I take work from Websites, from the parenting magazines, and I’m just trying to make do as best I can. But what I find is, you know, with the Internet, because anyone can become a writer everyone is becoming a writer. So it’s harder to find work and to distinguish yourself as a professional provider of content and as a professional writer. So we’re all trying to make our way and figure out, you know, what comes next, how it’s supposed to work, and how we’re supposed to make money at it. So I think moving to creating apps, I think that, you know, I think that’s a way that I can still be a writer and make money and move into these newer fields of technology and reinvent myself and still be happy and writing (which is what I like to do) and provide content to people in a format that they like.
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Ryan 00:23:09
It’s interesting, gosh, just to hear you tell the story. A lot of semantic quibbles that people say, you kind of show how they’re wrong, right? Like, a lot of times people talk about newspapers versus blogs, right? And you bring up the fact that newspapers have blogs. But the problem is we kind of define the medium by the technology that drives it. Like, it’s not what people mean when they say “blogs,” right? Like, it’s basically, when a newspaper has a blog it’s an extension of what they do on paper. They hire you as a writer to write some things with anticipation of how much money they’ll bring from ads. It’s not that same -- I don’t want to say entrepreneurial because you are, you know, a freelance writer so that’s entrepreneurial in some right. I guess less speculative, right? Like, you don’t start your own blog in hopes that you can win, you know, kind of by your own right, sell your own ad space and things like that.
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Julie 00:24:04
You’re right. It really is an extension of the professional news-gathering that a newspaper, you know, that’s what it’s known for. So by creating their own blogs they’re getting in with the digital generation, but still they’re giving people a writer who is from a reliable source. And I think that’s the difference with the independent blogs. You don’t know how reliable the source is, whether they’re just making stuff up or picking things up off of other blogs or things they see, you know, when they Google it.
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Ryan 00:24:45
There’s a lot of onus on the reader to kind of vet nowadays more than there ever was.
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Julie 00:24:50
Exactly. For example, my kids in school, when they do research for a paper they go Google it. And so I tell them that you have to look at the Website, you have to look at the source, and you want to go to a reliable source. You want to go to a bona fide news gathering operation rather than, you know, a blog site that maybe some of their data is unsubstantiated. It’s just things maybe they picked up from wherever and it can’t be proven. So, you know, I think that’s the thing that because there are so many blog sites and Web sites where you can find content, I think that’s, you know, the big struggle with determining what’s true and what’s not. And the reader has to determine that for themselves.
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Ryan 00:25:50
Well, a lot of times when you don’t have someone sort of, you know, anointing the writer it means, you know, the reader has to curate, you know, validate, check sources and all that. And, effectively, a big part of what journalism is, right? Because it’s not just the writing part. It’s all the fact checking and…
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Julie 00:26:06
Right. You go to sources and you quote real people who say things and if you don’t quote them accurately, I mean, there’s a corrections section in the newspaper where, you know, if you don’t quote somebody accurately they’re going to call you on it. They’re going to call you and say, “Hey, I didn’t say this,” or, you know, “My sales are this amount, not that amount. You put the wrong number in,” or whatever. I mean, you know, real journalists, that’s what they do. They fact-check their stories, they make sure what they’re saying is true and accurate. I mean, that’s what -- when you become a journalist, that’s what you want to do. You want to share real, accurate information with people. It’s not just, “Oh, I’m making this stuff up to entertain and try to make some money.” You know, you’re really trying to do a service to the community.
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Ryan 00:26:59
Yeah. Well, and I would say, you know, to be fair, kind of devil’s advocate as well, many bloggers are doing that too and they take it very seriously. They may not have the credentials, but it’s hard because they’re kind of in this big group that’s a mixed bag, right. Some people are working really hard to make sure that they’re doing the truth and some of them are, you know, they went to j-school and they just want to be independently published, you know, things like that. But, yeah. It’s tough, right. It’s hard to have the conversation right now. It’s kind of -- it’s hard to scope it. Again, just like all those things I listed before, it’s complicated.
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Julie 00:27:33
Yes it is. Very complicated.
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Ryan 00:27:35
Well, it’s great to see this story that you have where, you know, just because you come from the newspapers doesn’t make you an enemy of technology. Whenever the newspaper money kind of dried up, instead of digging your heels and kind of having this banner of entitlement, you go and you start a tech company which is very interesting. And I think that’s just a really good story that you have. Like, this idea, this mother of two that starts a tech company, you know, because you wanted to write a story.
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Julie 00:28:05
And that’s it, Ryan. The bottom line is, you know, I’m a mom of two. I have a nine-year old and an eleven-year old. And I love to read and I love to get them to read. And as they were growing up and learning to read, I did anything I could to get them to read; comic books, cereal boxes, whatever. And so now this is really just an extension of that. I mean, this whole idea is you can hand your smartphone to your kid when you’re waiting in a doctor’s office. And, you know, there’s lots of video games, little apps that will entertain them. But with something like this, with the Story Bayou app, they can actually be reading and having a good time. And, you know, of my two kids, my son, he loves to read. He always has a book in his hands. But my daughter, she’s a great reader and she reads really quickly, but it’s just not her thing. You know, she’d rather play in her room with her toys or paint or whatever. And so it was such a thrill for me when we were first, you know, writing the story and I had it on my laptop. It wasn’t even to the app stage yet. And so, you know, I’m testing the story out on my kids. And so to have her read the story and make the choices and then come back to me the next day and say, “Mom, I didn’t get to make those choices that other way. So I want to go back and see what happens that other way.” That was such a thrill for me as a mom because that’s the whole idea is to get kids interested in reading and reading more because the technology is such a big part of their lives. I mean, they can sit down and be playing Angry Birds and, you know, whatever all day. But to get them to use that technology, to employ it to enhance their literacy skills. I mean, that’s really what it’s all about. That’s what it’s about for me anyway.
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Ryan 00:30:14
Yeah. It’s good that you bring that up, right. Like, you don’t have to go -- just because someone’s on their phone doesn’t mean they’re playing games. And just because there’s a game aspect to the reading doesn’t mean it’s any less reading, right? Sometimes you’ve got to sprinkle a little cheese on the vegetables.
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Julie 00:30:27
That’s right. That’s it. And, you know, the technology is a part of their lives whether, you know, parents like it or not. And, you know, truth be told, you are going to hand your iPhone or your smartphone or your iPad to your kid at some point and say, “Just play with this. You know, we’re waiting for dinner to come. Here. Just occupy yourselves a few minutes.” And so that way, hopefully, they can do something that is fun but is educational in a way. But it’s not going to be tedious for them, you know? And this, this format for reading; it’s good for a group they call the reluctant readers because you read a short passage and you make a choice, you read a short passage and you make a choice. And then you go back and you choose something different and it’s an entirely new story. So it’s engaging for them. So maybe if a kid, you know, they can’t pick up a book, it’s overwhelming, “All these pages, oh my God, it’s too much” . And with this they can read a little bit and maybe get engaged enough that they continue reading. The more you read, the better reader you’ll be and the better writer you’ll be and, you know, it makes all these other good things happen in your life. So that’s what we hope to happen with this that, you know, kids will pick it up and, you know, maybe it has classroom applications or, you know, maybe the libraries will pick it up. And it’s a way to get kids reading in a format that they like and they want to use.
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Ryan 00:32:07
Well, I definitely wish you luck and I thank you for taking the time and speaking with me today.
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Julie 00:32:12
Well, thank you, Ryan. I appreciate the opportunity.