The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Claim.co: Creating Social Experiences and Authentic Connections for College Students

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

Claim.co: Creating Social Experiences and Authentic Connections for College Students Claim.co About the Guest(s): Sam Obletz is the co-founder and CEO of Claim, a marketplace that aims to acquire and engage the next generation of shoppers. He previously worked as an investor at Goldman Sachs in New York. Sam holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA from Yale. He is passionate about creating authentic and meaningful experiences for consumers and helping brands connect with their target audience. Episode Summary: In this episode, host Chris Voss interviews Sam Obletz, the co-founder and CEO of Claim. They discuss the mission of Claim, which is to create easy and affordable memories for college students. Sam explains how Claim connects brands and marketers with college students, a demographic that is often difficult to reach. He highlights the importance of targeting college students as they play a significant role in shaping culture and can become lifelong customers for brands. Sam also shares insights into the challenges facing marketers and how Claim's unique approach can help solve them. Key topics discussed in this episode include the depersonalization of social media, the power of communal experiences, the value of authentic rewards over traditional ads, and the role of data in helping marketers acquire and retain customers. Key Takeaways: Claim aims to create easy and affordable memories for college students by connecting them with brands and marketers. College students are a valuable demographic for brands as they have significant influence over culture and can become lifelong customers. Claim's unique approach focuses on creating communal experiences and offering authentic rewards instead of traditional ads. By integrating with users' credit cards or bank accounts, Claim can provide valuable data to marketers while respecting privacy concerns. Claim's success is measured by the strong relationships it helps build between customers and brands, leading to repeat business and loyalty. Notable Quotes: "We think that there's been a depersonalization and almost kind of a disillusionment with social media and digital interaction on the consumer side." - Sam Obletz "Culture is set at the 18 to 22-year-old demographic, and those moments are created in the college student audience." - Sam Obletz "We're using rewards, not ads. And within rewards, it is almost object-based or product-based. Not math-based." - Sam Obletz Resources: Claim Website Claim on Instagram Claim on Twitter To listen to the full episode and learn more about Claim's mission to create easy and affordable memories for college students, visit The Chris Voss Show. Stay tuned for more insightful conversations with CEOs, authors, thought leaders, and visionaries.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

As always, the Chris Foss Show brings you the latest authors, the greatest minds, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the CEOs, the billionaires, all the great people on the show that we've had on over the years. Over 2,000 episodes and, what is it, 16 years that we've been doing this stuff. So make sure you tune in. Make sure you're further.

Show your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, linkedin.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the interwebs. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. We're going to be talking about her latest book that just came out, April 9th, 2024. It's called An Enchanting Case of Spirits. Melissa Holtz will be joining us on the show today. She is an amazing multi-book author and is a former publicist and marketing expert in the romance genre. She's now in an

advisory role to several best-selling authors and she consults in industry marketing trends. And actually, this is her debut novel, so I stand corrected on that. Welcome to the show, Melissa. How are you? I'm great. How how are you i am excellent this morning i mean i'm just still trying to get our stuff together here in the early mornings give us a dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs melissaholtz.com and i can be found under author melissa holtz on facebook and tiktok that's primarily where you'll find me most there There you go. Give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your debut book, An Enchanting Case of Spirits? Yeah, so An Enchanting Case of Spirits follows a woman who is a grieving widow,

and she's turning 40. And through the process of that, just aging, things that happen to a lot of women through that process, she doesn't want to celebrate. And her best friends convince her to not only go to dinner but also see a psychic medium and through that encounter she wakes up communicating and seeing ghosts and they're pesky and she just wants them gone and unfortunately for her they are actually there because they hold secrets that she needs to uncover a host of mysteries that are plaguing her town of Knox Harbor.

And until she works with them to solve these crimes, she's stuck with them. That's the gist. So it's kind of like, what was that? The mystery machine thing Scooby-Doo? Only instead they use the ghost to help them solve the mysteries? Yeah. And then from there, ship them guns. Then they're gone. Yeah. That's not really an equation chris i'm sure people in the audience are like that's not

the same show chris but basically yeah so she becomes does she become like clairvoyant would you call it or yeah clairvoyant she's a medium herself that's what she learns through the process of the book yeah clairvoyant medium and then additional powers or abilities whatever you want to call them continue throughout this series as it goes along to manifest essentially now there's there a new love romance in in this story here yeah it's a slow burn so as of right now it's her next door neighbor who is the detective who helped her you know actually make these mysteries and she can't quite go to the local police and say a ghost told me something happened yeah so

she's utilizing her next door neighbor and there is a there is a romance there you go always with the romance yeah ghosts help solve mysteries and is i don't know if you want to give this away i know we can't talk a lot about the middle and ending of the books but are the ghosts the people that were maybe adversely affected by these crimes they were they're trying to get someone to solve them for him yes i mean that's they're all tied together somehow in some way and they're the least likely like group because it's multiple ghosts they're just they're not people that you would look at and say oh this makes sense that they're connected so it's kind of like it's kind of like that kid who's who's like i see dead people but it's a mystery solving movie

no i'm just kidding yeah it's a match of all of it so there you go so tell us a little about yourself. How long have you known you were an author? You've probably been doing some writing and stuff. How did you grow up? What were some

of your influences with books and romance novels? And then what made you finally, you know, turn the key? So I think, you know, my love of reading

started probably back in fifth grade when I stumbled across R.L. Stine. I'm kind of more of a horror junkie. Honestly, that's really where my love was. So it was, you know, getting yelled at every night by my mom to put the book down so I could go to sleep. But then, you know, life gets in the way. And it wasn't until 2009 when I had my first child that I was finding myself reading again, because I was at home. And

that's what I chose to do. So I actually stumbled across romance. So Twilight actually kind of like brought me back into the reading gig. And I was working corporate America decided why am I doing this, there has to be a way to make this a career. So I started looking into various ways. I went to school for marketing and communications and decided, you know what, let's start looking at the process. And the thing about publishing is there are two different paths. You have traditional and then you have what we call now indie, so independent publishing. And it had just started really back in that time in 2009. And so I really got interested in that and it snowballed. I mean, I started a blog and the

blog led to me opening a PR and marketing company. And it just, I got more involved and more involved. And so I spent a number of years publishing other or helping authors publish their books. And I would say, you know, since 2015, really, I've published thousands of books for authors. And I was finally like, it's my turn. So 2019, I did the independent publishing and I do have eight books published independently. This is my first traditionally published book. So I did have it right. You're a multi-book author. I could have seen that somewhere in the research.

I'm considered a debut under mystery and what I wrote with an enchanted case of spirits, but under a different name, I do have additional books. There you go. Are they going to let you convert those to your name or are you going to leave them in their stand? I'm still trying to decide that. They're a little bit different. They're more heavy romance where this is really

mystery with a side of romance. Sometimes it's good to keep the separation. There you go. The heavy kind of romance where I have to say, so they had sex on the beach again in chapter two and three and four. Mine might not be quite that, but hey, that's what's selling.

I mean, right now, I think this morning I looked at the top 100. Number one is romance. The top 10, there were four romances. In the top 100, there were 68. So more than half of the books today on Amazon are romance. Yeah. Oh, the world needs more romance and love. It's happy.

We've got too many wars and angry people and we need more love. Sounds like I should start seeing John Lennon or all you need is love or something. When you wrote this book, what gave you the ideas for doing the ghost thing and the medium? And what were some of the proponents that made you build the structure of the plot and story? Twofold. Number one, I am a chicken. I like horror, but I'm scared of everything. So every house I've ever lived in, I have thought it's haunted.

And finally, a couple of years ago, I had a medium tell me, no, it's not the houses, it's you. You're haunted. And I'm like, oh, what does that mean? And kind of went down a rabbit hole of like just being interested in what exactly she was trying to tell me. So that was one. And two, being involved in publishing for as many years as I have, there's so much data out there that just shows you what the readers want. And when you look at even TikTok, which right now is honestly selling so many books, I mean, that's the platform, the medium that is really moving the

needle for a lot of authors. And yeah, if you look at the hashtag like witch talk, or if you look at which, you know, the hashtag like witch talk, or if you look at Oracle and manifestation and all of these things, it's a booming, people are interested in manifestation and being able to, you know, feel like they have some level of control, you know, with the universe's help of their life. And so it was interesting to me that people want this, that there were not a lot of mainstream books that covered those topics. So it was a little bit of data, a little bit of, you know, personal interest and, and in any case with spirits was born. Plus it gives you probably a pretty fertile ground where you can use your imagination to build out just about whatever you want. Yeah. And there you go. I'm so jealous of people write novels because I write nonfiction and it's like so limited, you know, you can't,

you have to stay on the ground basically. But fiction, you can, you can, you can use your imagination, create whatever world you want and stuff. It's so awesome. And I love it because you have so much to play around.

In business nonfiction, you're just like, well, there's a widget and we sold it. That's basically it. I'm helping a business author publish a book right now, so I see where you're coming from. Yeah. It's really plain.

I suppose you can make stuff up if you want. I think someone did that in 1986. The art of the what but that was a work of fiction but yeah so there you go so do you are you writing any more is this going to be a series coming from this book in the future or what's the future look like for you yes so actually in publishers marketplace where they announced this it was announced that this is a two book they purchased two books so it's the same series this book ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger you have you know the story is wrapped up with the current mysteries but it definitely opens another another loose end essentially at the end so that story is in

in the works probably can't i don't really have much more to say than that at the time. But this story has the potential. I mean, there are a lot of characters in it, so it could go on. I mean, I love the Janet Ivanovich, like, you know, path. Like, just keep letting me write and I will. There you go. So the characters will go through at least the second book and maybe on to the future? Let's hope.

Yeah, definitely the second. There you go. There you go. Well, that should be fun to flesh out. And a burgeoning novelist. Of course, you've got already quite a few under your belt. So you've got the operations down. What do you hope readers come away with from the book?

While I was writing this, I was turning 40 as well. And I was experiencing a lot of things that, like I said, a lot of women experience with the aging process. And there are a lot of physical and emotional changes that happen. And women are not, we're getting better at it, but we're not great at actually discussing those things and getting advice and talking. And I put a lot of myself into my main character and the things that she was experiencing. So it was pretty cathartic in that. And I'm hoping that other women who are reading this book

that are in their late 30s, early 40s and beyond can feel empowered because at the start, our female character is struggling with those things. And by the end, she's completely owned being 40 and has really found that it wasn't the end of a chapter or a life it was literally the beginning and she's actually in a much better place than she was prior to as we're always constantly learning growing as we always say stories are the owner's manual to life and whether it's fiction or non-fiction we learn through stories and and the stories that are told them we see reflections of ourselves and it gives us different paradigm i think it's a paradigm shift that helps us

because we see the paradigm in the story that's different maybe than our outlook like you know i remember one time i complained on facebook about how horrible it was to turn 50. And I was being semi-comedic, tongue-in-cheek like I do. But I was like, oh, what was me? And someone wrote me and said, you know, Chris, there's a whole lot of people that aren't here anymore that would have loved to have been 50. So maybe you should just shut up a bit. And I was like, yeah, I think I just got checked.

Okay, yeah. I think I better just have some gratitude. And, you know, paradigm shifts like that make all the difference in the world. When you build out your characters, I mean, so technically you have nine books or eight books under your belt? Well, this would be, I believe I have eight books, seven books. This will be eight. This will be eight. So when you flesh out your characters, when you build out your plot, are there some techniques you use in writing?

Or do you do daily writing? Or what are some of the ways that you use to flush out a book and keep on track? Because that seems to be the hardest part for most people is writing every day or keep writing. Well, in a perfect world, you aim for a certain word count every day. I mean, truly, based on the length of my books, I should be writing somewhere between 2000 and 2500 words a day. I'm not very good. I'm not very good at that. I'm a mom of three kids, and I they're all athletic. So I'm bouncing from one field to the next on any given day. So I find that a lot of times I'm waiting until the last minute and I'm pushing out 80,000 words in three weeks.

Wow. Why I haven't slept. That's the plan. I honestly feel, though, that over time my stories develop more than anything. I have a good idea of what I think, but it always ends up taking a turn somewhere. It's like the longer I stew on the plot, the better it becomes. So yeah,

I do. I have to let it do. And I have to meet people. I mean, my characters are largely based on people I meet in everyday life. So it depends on how it went that day. Are we, are you going to be a villain in my story?

Are you going to be one of the friends? How are we doing this? Note to self, be nice to Melissa when you meet her in person. You may end up in her books. It's all good. I think we've got a few authors that are like that. They use books as a revenge. I know one prolific author we've had on about four or five times.

I think she has 70 books now. And she will use her books for revenge. It's a safe way, especially when it's fiction. Yeah, yeah. She gets back at you, and she's funny to have on. But she's been writing for a long time, very prolific. I think she's on about every five months or six months it seems um but you know so yeah be careful authors have a lot of leeway you may end up semi-famous so there you go so it's been fun to have you on anything anything you want to tease

out about the book before we go really i think it's just i want people to go into this knowing that it was written to be an easy read. It was written to be something that you could laugh and have fun with while also having those, you know, serious components with it being a mystery. So it's not all romance. It's not all mystery. It's just kind of a blend of all of those things. And I think it's really important for a lot of readers to know that, you know, there's not one way that a 40 year old should act. And, you know, there's always this like misconception that, oh, she's 40, she should be mature. I don't act like that when I'm with my friends. I still feel 19 years old half the time. So my characters reflect that. So just go in with an open mind and knowing when they need to be serious, they're serious.

And when they can let loose and have fun with their core group of people, as they should be able to, they do. And that's really what an enchanting case of spirits is. It's supposed to be something that you can literally pour a glass of wine or gin or whatever your choice, water, and just hang with your friends and read and laugh and be like, that just happened. And we did that last week. There you go. Those are the best things. I know beach reads are really big for women, too. They love to go on vacation with their beach reads.

That's what this is meant to be. I mean, very safe cover. You can take it out there and no one's going to question what's going on. Might be Fifty Shades of Grey. Might be. It might be. These new illustrated covers. There you go.

Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yep, MelissaHoltz.com. And it will be like author Melissa Holtz for Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. There you go. Thank you very much, Melissa, for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.

Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrispFoss, ChrisFoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.