Heroes in Business - Angie Hicks co-founder of Angie's List is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances Heroes

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Angie Hicks co-founder of Angie's List is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances Heroes radio show amfm, iHeart radio, Podcastone. She talks about the humble beginnings of the company knocking on doors to ensure homeowners can find reputable and recommended resources for projects around the house. "Dream Big and follow your dreams; try different avenues and accept opportunities."

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. Now, back to our super host, David Kogan, founder of Alliances. Oh my, what a morning. We just had on the CEO and president of Big Lots. That's right, Fortune 500 company. Just interviewed the inventor of Dippin' Dots and we had the president of Communication Concepts.

Now, our next hero. Everyone knows Angie. Who do you think of when I say Angie? Well, her website she created with her partner in 1995 to solve the age-old homeowner's problems of how to find reliable local service. It's Angie's List. And today we have Angie Hicks, the co-founder of the company that could be reached at Angie's List dot com. So, Angie, how do you though come up with this idea? And it just grows into being nationally recognized, but what was the initial

first spark? Sure. So my co-founder was trying to rehab a house in Columbus, Ohio and was having trouble. He actually had a bad experience with a heating and cooling company. And, you know, we just really thought there should be a better way for consumers to find good local services. And there was actually a little company that started in the early 70s in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we were from, that we were familiar with. And we started looking around, and it was like, there's nothing like Unified Neighbors anywhere in the country. So we set out to start our own. Now, Angie, your platform is used now, fast forward, more than 3 million paid households, but you started it from scratch, right? And how did you start that from scratch? Well, we, you know, we had the idea of what we wanted to do, but we also had a chicken and egg problem.

So all of the information and the content was generated by the users, by the consumers. And if we roll back to 1995, this was pre-Internet days. So we were doing reviews before the Internet. So we were a call-in service and a magazine. So I spent the first probably six months of the business actually going door-to-door, selling memberships and getting lists of contractors from those new members. spent the first probably six months of the business actually going door to door, selling memberships and getting lists of contractors from those new members. And I remember one of our very first members, Patty Bowman, joined and she gave me both her list of contractors she's used her

entire life, as well as her holiday card list and said, you must call these people. And you tell them Patty said to call. Now, it's scary, though, going door to door. And, I mean, you have this thing. You don't know if people are going to sign up. So tell me now the feeling. So now Patty says, yes, I'm ready to sign up. I mean, you must have just been jumping out of your skin. I was.

I mean, you have to know I was a pretty, I'm generally a quiet, shy person. So going door to door was the farthest thing from my, my wish list of things to do, you could imagine. But we, you know, we didn't have much money to start the business and didn't have a marketing budget. So that was, that was what we tackled. So, you know, I fondly look back at that time more as a character building experience than a sales experience. Now, how come I feel like I know you so well? Well, I think probably possibly is these commercials I see all the time, all the time. In fact, how cool is it seeing yourself on TV for the first time in the commercial? It was a bit surreal, for sure. As I mentioned, I'm pretty quiet, pretty keep to myself kind of person. So doing a TV commercial, that too probably wasn't in my list of dream jobs.

But it really helped to bring to life. I mean, the most common question we would get around here is, well, who's Angie? Is there an Angie? Is there a real Angie? And, you know, the marketing team just thought it was a real opportunity to take advantage of that question and, you know, make a much more personal connection with consumers. Incredible. And they were right. Because, like I said, I feel like I know you. My family feels like they know you.

Your website's grown to $83 million in revenue. How long, though, did it take for all of the momentum to take off? You know, I mean, we did this little by little. So, I mean, Angela started 20 years ago. So, we were opening market by market. So, the first handful of years, we opened about a market a year. And then it was really probably in like 2006 that we really took off. We went from having about 30 markets to 100 markets in about 18 months. You're listening to Alliance's Heroes. We have Angie Hicks.

Angie as in Angie's List dot com. Go to her Entrepreneur's Line. This is David Kogan. Be part of the community. E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S dot com. Now, Angie, are you the CEO of the company? I'm the Chief Marketing Officer. So as a founding entrepreneur, what would be the best advice, though, that you can give

to other entrepreneurs that perhaps are thinking about starting, building, running a company. And yet, you know, and again, part of that magic is that what I'm looking for is, is that you were doing things that you were not so much particularly thinking you were going to do or comfortable, especially like going door to door. How do you share that with others that may not be comfortable, but yet have something that they know that everybody needs? Yeah, I mean, like in the early days, when you're trying to bootstrap things and kind of get them off the ground, you'll end up doing everything. And there are certainly things that you might not enjoy doing.

And, you know, I used to always just prioritize my day. So like my little personal kind of how I got through things like that, I would do the things I didn't like first. So if I knew I had to, you know, make some cold calls or, you know, do things like that, I would do that first and then save the things that I enjoyed doing for later in the day. Now, you also went to Harvard Business School for your MBA. Can we talk a little bit about how you feel your education there brought and helped create and make you successful of what you're doing now? Yeah, I think, you know, I went to Harvard at like three and a half years after I started the business. And for me, it was a great time to really, you know, synthesize what I'd been exposed to. I, you know, I started this business when I was 22.

So I was managing people, we did an acquisition, you know, I was being exposed to a lot of things that I really, you know, I was just drinking out of the fire hose, right? I didn't, I wasn't kind of really understanding everything we were going on. It was a great time to step away and really understand and put that, put things into perspective as well as pick up some much needed skills. I mean, it just, it's such a phenomenal story. I mean, and when you go places, do like people recognize you and say, wait a minute, I think that's, I think I know her and I don't know how. Yeah. Yeah. They do. They do. And advice that you have perhaps for students or maybe parents of students, parents regarding education and helping them be successful in business. I mean,

here you got your MBA after you mentioned you started it. What advice would you have for parents that are working with their children, encouraging them and how education played a role? Yeah, I mean, I think, yes, I, you know, I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. You know, my dad was a UPS driver. My mom was a bank teller, you know, and my parents were always incredibly supportive. But I was certainly kind of chartering a path that wasn't familiar to historically for us. So, you know, part of it is like getting a school that's great for your kids. You know, I was like, you know, I went to a small liberal arts college, which was perfect for me because it was, you know, an easy way for me to kind of take that first step of being away from home. And that's really what kind of led then to, you know, an internship opportunity, which then led to Angie's

List. And I think, you know, a lot of times, you know, young people end up getting very set in their ways. I've got my five-year plan. Here's where I'm going to be. This is what I'm going to do. And can get frustrated when things don't go right at plan. I mean, you know, for young people, I just encourage them, like, when opportunities present themselves, jump. You know, I, you know, when I had the opportunity to start Angie's List with my co-founder, you know, he called me and said, hey, your parents are probably going to hate this idea. You know, I'm going to raise a little bit of money and we can start this. You know, it was certainly, you know, it was, you know, I didn't define myself as an entrepreneur. But, you know, look at it, you know, here 20 years later, you know, it was that kind of taking a leap of faith that early on. And, you know, especially for, you know, young people kind of being entrepreneurial early on is, well, harder because you don't know as much, easier because you don't have as much to risk.

Angie, you had a need. You created a new platform for the masses to solve a problem. You built Angie's List from scratch, going door to door with a partner. You've grown it to a multi-million dollar company. That's a hero. Angie Hicks. Go to Angie's List dot com. You'll see her all the time on TV and the incredible commercials that draw you in.

This is David Kogan with the Alliances that draw you in this is david cogan with the alliances thank you again you have been listening to alliances heroes where heroes in business align alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs investors ceos CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups. To present your superpower, visit www.alliances.com. To unmask Alliance's heroes' secret identities, be sure to tune in every Thursday at 9 a.m. right here on Money Radio 1510 and 99.3 FM.