Heroes in Business - Dave Erickson founder FreeConferenceCall dot com

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Dave Erickson founder of FreeConferenceCall dot com is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances Heroes radio show. They discuss the middle-of-the-night inspiration for FreeConferenceCall and how he's able to keep the service free for customers.

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, what an incredible morning. I mean, we just had the NHRA Funny Car Race Car Driver, daughter of John Paul DeGioia, Alexis DeGioia. Later on the

show, we've got the youngest of the Osman Brothers, Jimmy Osman from the Osman family. And later on, we're wrapping up the show with a special guest who's ranked number one in this franchise category. So just incredible. But I'll tell you, let me start off with a special guest who's ranked number one in this franchise category. So just incredible. But I'll tell you, let me start off with our next guest, our next hero.

Anyone remember the old days when you wanted to do a conference call? You either had, one, go through the hassle of paying big bucks to get what I call maybe a chat line, or two, get three-way calling, connect with someone else that had three-way calling and so on and so on. And then by the time you did all that too, nobody could hear anybody because you were too far off. I mean, our next hero though, my first thought is, why didn't I think of that?

As everyone I know in business uses what he's created. Yep, our next hero is Dave Erickson, he's created yep our next hero is Dave Erickson founder and CEO of free conference call.com so Dave at what exact moment did this idea come to you uh it was October uh 26 at 3 a.m in the morning 3 a.m in the morning and you thought a.m. in the morning, and you thought, what just popped in your head, or what? Popped in my head. It was 2001, and I had put two different pieces of information together that kind of got me started on the idea,

and it was at that point in time I thought of the domain name freeconferencecall.com. And it was available, which is just amazing. Yeah, it was available. At the time, I didn't have a computer at home. I just had the one computer at the office. And so I was going crazy there on the end of the bed thinking like, gosh, is that available or not available? Now, this must have taken a ton of money to create Build. Most startups always say, if I had more money, I could do more, right? What was your secret, though, with funding?

Well, so the company is completely bootstrapped. I used the offer and the ingress of people coming into the company to sell other services and was able to support it with that until ultimately I was able to monetize it. But in some ways, not having the money, I think, was helpful. I didn't know it at the time, but I had a guy that was doing a very similar thing, had a lot of money, and built a much more complex system than FreeConferenceCall.com, and you don't hear about that one as much. Now, some think the success comes from the idea versus the work that you do.

I mean, it's important for people to know, our listeners, you spent 918 days answering your customer service line without a break, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Very few would do that, let alone be able to do it and hold up for so long. But what else does it take to start, build, and grow an idea into a company that becomes a legacy like yours, freeconferencecall.com? Well, I don't want to take anything away from ideas. I think great ideas are the catalyst of good things. Although hard work in itself is – I don't see how you do it without the hard work. And ultimately, what led to all of those days strung together and doing what I did for freeconferencecall.com was an absolute love and just desire to do that. I wanted to see blinking lights and computer equipment really bad. You've changed the whole industry, though.

You've made it easy. You've solved a problem for businesses. You've given many speeches. And in the speeches, you've mentioned the word heart. And in this speech, as you've mentioned, the word heart. So is it possible to describe what it means and how one knows they really have their heart in it versus just saying it? Well, so I'm kind of fortunate in the line of business I'm in that, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And the idea of owning a company like Free Conference Call, if it was one-tenth the size, I would be absolutely tickled pink.

But what's better about it is that the people that are using Free Conference Call, we serve all of the fortune, you name it, the World Bank, governments. But what's really important is we serve a lot of entrepreneurs that are just like me, people that are looking to get their businesses up. And it's amazing how much a company can do with a free conference call account and getting on the road and getting something going and just kind of the basics of pulling together an idea. And so the companies that have gotten launched on free conference call,

I have that same heart. I have that same desire. I mean, this is a huge task, something you've solved and there are so many businesses using it. I mean, do you, do you feel, is it mainly small businesses, medium, large businesses that use free conference call.com? So one guy came up with the statistics once, and he said it was 1% of humanity was the number of unique callers that we had had into freeconferencecall.com. It's all over the map. And we serve the large companies really well. But I think that my designs and my thoughts surround kind of the smaller user,

and we've been able to do something very, very special there. And we have Dave Erickson live in our studio. He is the founder of FreeConferenceCall.com. You're listening to Alliance's Heroes. Be a hero with David Kogan. Go to where entrepreneurs align. Be part of the community. Alliance's.com.

That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Now, Dave, I'm scratching my head because you don't believe in business plans. Yet, we were taught in school that we need one. We've got to build one. It's got to be X amount of pages long. It's got to have all the complexity of it. Help us understand your thought process on that. of it. Help us understand your thought process on that. So far, it's worked well for me. I just feel that, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, I started mowing lawns as a little kid. And from there, I kept morphing and morphing and morphing. And ultimately, if I didn't change my plan, I'd probably still be mowing lawns, wouldn't I? But as you go through and you develop different businesses and, you know, you can stay on what you thought how it was going to work in

the beginning, or you can make adjustments or perhaps even go down an entirely different path. I think if you were in the lawn mowing business, though, you would have revolutionized that and figured out and everybody would have been somehow using your services. Why don't you like to raise money? I mean, you started with a $10 domain name, freeconferencecall.com, which was incredible that it was even available, and you ran it from there. So raising money is, you know, I think that some business models, some of the things people embark on do need, you do need a money raise. But if you don't need to raise money, there's really something to doing it at the right pace,

seeing the organic growth come out of the company, and just being an entrepreneur, not having to answer to anybody. I don't answer to anybody. I don't answer to a board. I don't answer to investors. I do what I want to do, and I basically have to tap the customer to get that knowledge. And that's just a real healthy process. So that's why I don't like raising money.

Again, I think some companies need to, and that's just kind of the way that works. But if you don't have to, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I would be all about the bootstrap. What are two to three maybe of the most important secrets that you can share with kids who dream of building a company, leaving their mark in business like you have done? Who may wake up at three o'clock in the morning and go, I got an idea. Yeah. So I would say dream, dream big, right? Um, don't, don't try and right size your dreams to, to, you know, what you think they should be. Just, just dream big. I think when you get into your company and your, your, your, you start your work, do, do what you're good at, find out what you're good at and do that. And don't worry about whether or not someone else

successful does something else better. You find the part that you do well in the company and you do it well and the third thing I would say is is is is be yourself because because everyone else is taken and looking at what other people do only when it's motivating never when it's when it's you know makes you feel less than or something like that. Stick with what you're good at. I'm getting a ton of texts now from our listeners, and they want to know. And we've got a little less than a minute here. Okay, so you've got freeconferencecall.com, so how do you make money with it?

The magic question. I mean, all these things are coming in. Yes, it is. So in the telecom network, there's charges for going through the network. And based on those charges, we're able to get a portion of those for owning network and controlling the ingressing traffic. So we serve the voice community by actually transporting the voice and make money doing that and then make the application the attractive thing that they go there for. Dave Erickson, you could reach him at freeconferencecall.com. He's the founder. We're excited to have you. You built your company literally from a domain name. A hero sees a better way to do business, drives the path towards

success without stopping you created free conference to call.com and have run other companies in different industries and have employed others with that when we return we're going to have the younger of the osman brothers jimmy osman of the osman family david kogan with alliances