Good Day Google+ - Hot Fun in the Summertime

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and welcome to Good Day Google+. I always want to say that like Robin Williams but I'm afraid to shout it out too much. Might scare my neighbors. We're living in a senior development and we kind of get a little quiet sometimes. It might be nap time for them. But it's not nap time for us on Google+ because we're here. It's Friday, end of the week and I've got some of my friends here today and we're just going to have a great time talking about life, Google+ and anything else that might come across the screen here. And as always, if you've got any questions, any comments, anything you'd like to say, leave them in the comments section and we will be happy to get to them. And right now I'm just going to go across, introduce my panel of guests today. Start to my left, I have Maggie Uzuecha. Hey Maggie, thanks for coming back. You're, you're a regular fixture on my show now, if anyone hasn't noticed.

Hi, Seth.

Hi everyone.

I love being irregular on your show. I look forward to it every other week.

Yes, and we're having fun with you, and I know you've got something tasty for us today that we're going to be making later on, so we'll get to that. And how's the weather in Coronado?

It's humid. Can't you see my fro? I've got a fro going. It's just not— well, it's not as bad as it was a couple days ago. Oh, ooh, yeah, but it's beautiful. As normal. Hopefully when you come and visit us in San Diego, you'll see that it's usually beautiful.

I know, I hear the weather is always perfect in San Diego, so that's one of the reasons I want to come out there. And now we have a first-timer for Good Day too, Dustin Stout. How you doing, buddy?

Hello, I'm here, finally!

I know, when I first asked you earlier on when I started the show, you were working on Fridays. Now you're working from home, so it's easier.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of freedoms in working from home. I'm free to do as many Hangouts On Air as I like. I'm free to listen to my beautiful kids screaming nonstop throughout the day. And free to be independent. And it's, you know, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I'm so grateful to be able to do that, to be able to work from home and be with my family and to be with you, Chef Dennis.

Thank you very much. You know, it is— there's a lot to be said for working from home and having that freedom, and especially you get to see your kids more. That's really the important part of it, I think.

I don't like working from home at all.

No, Craig, we know that. Let's move right over to you then, Craig Pfeiffer. Craig, zärmi! We haven't seen you in a while.

I know, it's been a long time. I've been busy.

Yeah, you have, Circuloscope and all that.

Yeah, it's a lot of work, but it's out now, so here I am.

Yeah, we'll talk to you some more about that. And you're in your home in Maine right now, right?

Yeah, yeah. Taking the title of the show seriously, hot fun in the summer, so I'm on the deck at the lake with cheap beer, hanging out.

That's the best thing. You know, when you're outside, cheap beer is a wonderful thing. It's when you're inside and you're getting serious, then it's time to bring the more expensive brew out. But When you're out on the deck just enjoying the day as long as it's ice cold, that's the thing.

Absolutely.

And then next to you I have Cheryl Clements and it's so nice to see you again. We had you on a couple weeks ago when we did our special for Social Media Day and you've got a really interesting product that we're going to talk more about in a little bit. So where are you at today? You're New Yorker?

I'm in New York so if you're hearing sirens in the background it's It's all good. Nothing's happening on the inside, I promise.

That's good. That's good. So we're going to get this party started here, and the title of the show today was Hot Fun in the Summertime. You know, I like to give them little names. Sometimes they're appropriate, sometimes they're just for fun, but it is, you know, it's that time of summer when we get out and we party and we have some fun. And for those of you that might be old enough to remember the song or may have heard it, on an oldie show, it was Sly and the Family Stone who sang "Hot Fun in the Summertime," and that's going back probably to the late '60s, maybe early '70s. You know, my mind's a blur, so I'm not really sure. The years start to run together. But we're gonna start off with Maggie as usual, because Maggie's got something tasty. Are you ready for us, Maggie? First of all—

I am completely ready for you. Okay. I'm making a Mexican coffee. No, okay, so in Mexico, especially when we're on the ranch, my family owns a ranch and it's really, really cold there, especially during the summer, or summer, during the winters, summers no, during the winter it's really cold. So one of the things that they do is they make, this is agua de canela, it's just water with cinnamon, a cinnamon stick boiled, and usually just add some milk to it and you know, just sugar, and this will warm you up like nothing else. I love this stuff. So this is kind of a twist on that, and I've let this cool down a little bit. Oh, and the smell! Oh yeah, it's just like, "Whoo, cinnamon!" I mean, look at this color! This looks like beer, right? Oh, wait, before I forget, Chef, I was just gonna make a comment about you and Craig there, since you're beer lovers. San Diego is like the beer capital. For a wine blogger, wrong place. But there is a lot of beer here. OK, back to my Mexican cocktail. So what I'm doing to this is I'm adding mezcal. And it's instant coffee. I'm not adding a lot of it because it's pretty strong stuff. So I'm just going to get a little. Maybe like about a teaspoon or so. And I'm adding it to my, uh, and they do this on the ranch too, where they'll make a little coffee cinnamon deliciousness. This is good. Now that's good on its own. And since you guys know me, I'm the skinny cocktail girl at the moment. Oh, and I just finished my book. It's being processed right now. Formatted in Kindle style. This probably will not surprise you guys, this is actually Kahlua, homemade, yes, by moi, and I do this all the time. Why? Because you just need to have Kahlua on hand, you know. I can already see, "Keep it classy," says Christopher Volgeman. Of course, in San Diego, always. OK, and lastly, so I'll show you my drink. So far, so good. And lastly, I'm adding some milk. Oh wait, not lastly. Second to lastly. Some milk. And I wasn't ready for you guys. I forgot my ice. That would be great. Yeah. And this is stevia, because it's not sweet. And of course, just stir, stir, stir. And taste.

Fabulous!

Alright, I'm good.

What is that called?

I'm calling it a Mexican coffee.

Oh, well there you go.

Nice.

But this is not café de la olla, which a lot of people know of. The only thing that makes this different is because I wanted to make it skinny. Café de la olla, usually you boil it with piloncillo.

Help me, Chef, I don't know how to say this in English.

Brown sugar, but it's really hard. Translate, Google Translate, anyone?

Like a crystallized brown sugar?

Yeah, I would have to go and show it to you.

But anyways, I didn't use it.

The point is I didn't use it. I wanted to make it skinny. And that's the only reason why it's not using café de la olla. But anyways, mm, piloncillo. All right, talk amongst yourselves. Let me go find out what mi hún thío is in English.

That's good. I like it. Well, let me ask you a question while we're talking about that. Now, I'm assuming that drink's been around for a long time with the cinnamon version.

Yeah.

So that would predate Starbucks doing their little cinnamon lattes and stuff for their little drinks.

So—

Yeah, I think we predate Starbucks. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure it is. Mayans were probably drinking it. And I don't think they have Starbucks.

No, let's hope not anyway. I know they put one in, they've got them coming up in Disney now. I couldn't believe when I went into Disney World, there's actually Starbucks in the Magic Kingdom.

Oh, they have wine, they're serving wine now.

Yes.

Isn't that nuts? Crazy. Yeah, I will go and review Starbucks wine. That would be great. Can you imagine that post? Yeah, that would be fantastic.

I'm going to go to the other end of my screen now and let's talk to Sheryl for a minute. Sheryl, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do on and off the Plus.

So, well, it's so, so glad to meet all you guys and really appreciate being invited to the Hangout. So yeah, I started a crowdfunding platform for only food and beverage products. So I am like the foodie version of the Kickstarter, not to use the K word, but that's what we're doing. And so we're working really hard to build a community where everybody loves food, because that's a given, and wine and alcohol or any type of drinks, and help people that want to take it to the next level, whether they've already got an existing business or whether they're a brand new startup with a great idea and they're looking for funding. Banks aren't just going to hand you $5,000 unless you can give them something back. So crowdfunding is like phenomenal. You can reach out and people will give you a little bit of money, and then you can fund your dreams. So it's super cool, and we're super excited. It's great to be part of this platform because the big thing right now is just letting folks know that we're there and that there's options out there.

Sounds pretty cool.

You're muted.

Sorry about that. Yeah, I said that's pretty cool. Thank you. I would have gone on for a while like that. Nobody would have noticed. To have something specifically for food is really kind of interesting because, you know, a lot of foodies do use this. And so it could be for a cookbook, it could be for an event, it could be for Anything food-related or alcohol-related, right?

Absolutely. I mean, I had someone ask me, you know, could they use our platform to crowdfund a camera for their food blog. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, it's, you know, some people are like, you know, well, would a niche crowdfunding platform work? Well, we're like the Williams-Sonoma of crowdfunding. I mean, you can buy pots and pans in Target, or, you know, but they've got everything else as well. And so, you know, you get a much smaller area, but if everything is 100% food and beverage focused, then, you know, the people that come there, that's what they're going to be doing and that's what they're going to be looking for. So, you know, they're all there supporting it and it's great. So we also started a Twitter chat to help, you know, food and drink startups with, you know, neat tips and tricks. So this week was food trends and we've done social media. We— next week we're actually being sponsored by the US Food and Safety— Food Safety, and they're going to be talking about food safety and stuff like that and things to watch for and, you know, recalls and stuff. So that those food startups and drink startups, you know, they've got all the tips and tricks and tools that they can to help food startups.

I'm going to chime in here because Cheryl, you're my new favorite person.

I love your blog, Maggie. I'm a closet— I love your blog.

You do?

Yeah, I'm so excited. You know, when I saw who was on the panel, I was like super excited to meet all you guys. So yeah.

Oh, thank you.

You're so sweet.

You're my new favorite person, as I said. Yeah, no, that is just, that's great. That is excellent. I know so many people who could benefit from this. Me, I can tell you, I could think of like a million things I would need help with, but there are so many food bloggers out there who, you know, I don't have enough money for a camera or, you know, yeah, dishes and, you know, the newest thing, cameras. Gadgets.

It's so cool. The way— the big difference for us too is that we're only 4%, you know, Kickstarter is 5%, but we're also not keep it all. So it's all— you know, we're not the all or nothing model of Kickstarter. We're keep it all. So whatever you make, you can keep, because, you know, if you come just a little bit shy of your goal, I mean, who's to say that really won't help you? So we let you do that. We're not like Indiegogo, that if you don't make your goal, we more than double your percentage. They charge 9% if you don't make your goal. I don't know, it just seems mean to me. It's like, you know, you've worked so hard, because I know how hard it is. I crowdfunded to start this business, and it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, and it's a lot of work. And the big, big benefit that we give folks is that we'll consult with them, because we need them and we want them to be successful. If they're not successful, we're not successful, they don't get their dreams fulfilled, filled and then we can't help them. So we'll step them through all the entire way because people— I'll give you an example, I'll tell you what happened yesterday, it's hilarious. This girl reached out and said, oh, you know, I'm going to start a campaign and she's like, great, I want to publish it and share it, like an hour later. And I'm thinking, to start a campaign and do it properly, it's a minimum 2-month process. Some people take up a 6 months to get their campaigns ready because there's a lot of work. You're asking for money from people, there's a lot to do. And so I politely said, you know, it's going to take you a couple months to get it ready. And she said to me, and you guys have probably heard about this campaign, she's like, well, I don't think the potato salad guy took 2 months to get his ready. And I don't know if you guys have heard about the potato salad Kickstarter campaign. Have you guys heard of that one?

No.

Well, this guy, as a joke, put a campaign up on Kickstarter. He asked for $10, and he said, "I'm going to make a potato salad." And he made $70,000 in a little over a week. He's got 21 days left on his campaign. And so the crowdfunding community is totally up in arms. They're all aghast. They're like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. Making a mockery of it. You know, now people think it's super easy. You know, I'm a little bit of a glass is half full kind of girl, and so I'm looking at it the other way. This guy epitomized what crowdfunding is and what it can do. He was very clear on what he wanted to do, he put a beautiful picture, he took social media and ran with it, his campaign went viral, and he totally blew it. He was very clear on his budget, He was clear on his risks. He said the risk is it might not be very good. I've never made potato salad before. I mean, it's hilarious. But the thing is that he absolutely took what crowdfunding can be and put it out there. And one of our biggest challenges is so many people don't even know what crowdfunding is. And so the more media this gets, even though it was kind of set up as a joke campaign, it's kind of like there's no bad media or advertising. It lets people know what crowdfunding is and how it can work. Totally can go viral and you can take an idea and blow it out of the water, or make your goal, whatever. But it's actually, I think if we look at it and use it as a positive spin, it's kind of a good example of what to do to get a great campaign. But it's pretty funny, it's in all the media, everybody's freaking out. 30,000 of it's disappeared, so I think maybe people have taken their donations back, but he's still over $40,000 and he's going to make a potato salad.

Wow.

But yeah, we're here so we'll consult folks and let them know that it's not quite that easy to make $40,000. But we'll talk them through, help them get their networks up and running, we copyright, copy edit everything, we'll spell check everything. I saw one campaign where they were asking for $40,000 for a food tuck. Like, I think you mean truck. You know, if you're going to spend that kind of money, you got to— it needs to look professional and be serious, but it's also food. It's all about love and sharing and having fun and wine. You know, you don't— sitting and having a glass by yourself, it's good, but you know, it's better when you can share it. You know, I bet you wish we could all have one of those Mexican coffees.

Yeah, yeah, I'm totally loving everything you're telling me. If you need my help with something, please let me know because I can—

Oh, I mean, that would be great. Phenomenal. The biggest thing we need is to let folks know we're there and that they have options. That they don't have to go to some— because so many people think those big platforms are going to bring the people to you, and the proof in the pudding is that 80% of the money comes from your own network, the rest comes from the platform, and 60% of crowdfunding campaigns fail. And we are going— at Fundafest, we are going to drop that number drastically because our entire network that will support you is going to be foodies. You're not competing with fancy movies, you're not competing with wrinkle-free pants, you're not competing with video games, which those are phenomenal in their own right, but this way we're going to be able to really help people focus the attention and focus the donations that people help you. And also we're going to be a fantastic site to find that fancy new blog that's coming, or people will be able to find out about the new food that's coming. I've got a phenomenal— someone's going to be launching a kitchen campaign in about a month and a half. We're working together with her. It's a great new food product that's going to be coming out of the LA area. There's just so many cool things, and to think that we can help them is just super exciting for us.

Sounds like a really good plan there. It is exciting, and some people have an advantage by getting on board with this when it's first starting too, because you know it's going to grow, it's going to grow, it's going to keep getting bigger. Here's a comment from Christopher Vogelman: $70,000 for potato salad, you can probably get $100K for that skinny cocktail, Maggion. Actually, I was thinking, Craig, maybe you and I should try and fund some Belgian beer or something.

Oh, that sounds like a plan. I'm in.

So Craig, since I got you here, let's talk a little— let's talk to you sitting out here by the lake in the summertime in Maine. And tell us a little bit. You've been busy with Circuloscope. Anything else you've been doing?

No, it's mostly been Circuloscope taking up my time. Now that that's launched though, I'm relaxing a little bit, but still putting out some little fires behind the scenes, doing lots of different Hangouts like the Hangout, the drink Hangout with, or the tool Hangout with Dustin yesterday. We got a little underhand over there. It was a good time. But just one—

Every time you said tool, did you have to do a drink?

Yeah, absolutely. And most of the guys were cheating. I took it serious like it was a real drinking game. I actually had vodka yesterday. Everyone else had coffee and water. Like, what the hell? I've never played a drinking game like that. I think it's actually dangerous to drink too much water.

To be fair, the effects of too much vodka are in some way equivalent to the effects of too much coffee. You start acting very funny. Um, kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum though. Vodka, you get a little relaxed. Coffee, you get a little hyperactive.

Yep.

That's about where I was at the end of the show yesterday.

You should mix the two together then. That's a good thing.

Yeah.

So how's Circuloscoping going then? It's all done. It's out.

Yeah, and it's— I'm really shocked at the support from the community, I guess, is one of the coolest things. It's really— people have been almost tripping over themselves to support Christine and I and Essin, and just loving the product. I expected a little bit of pushback, but— and I guess maybe that's coming from Microsoft, you know, not everyone loves Microsoft products. So when we would release, you know, there was always some sort of negativity that went with it. And here on the Plus, I don't know if it's from the relationships we've built or it's just the nature of the Plus in general, it's just been incredible. Like, people just going out of their way to support us. It makes it— even if Circlescope was to die tomorrow, it was worth it just for this experience. So it's been really cool.

I don't think it's gonna die anytime soon. I think it's just gonna keep getting stronger and stronger. And here's a note from somebody from Circlescope: Is Craig Fifield on vacation again?

Yep, yep. I actually sat just like this to rub it in your face, Jeff, because you're always talking about the weather down there while I'm up here freezing my nuts off. So check it out. This is why— can you see it back there?

I see it. It's beautiful.

That's why I don't mind getting cold in the winter.

I know, you know, the Northeast is gorgeous in the summer, and it is really special. You know, you have a nice change of seasons, and I do miss that a little. But you know, when I can go to the beach in December and January, and then I don't mind. But it's, it's getting progressively gotten hotter and it's going to keep getting hotter and it's going to get ugly in a little while. It's close to ugly right now. Dustin, what have you been up to? What you got going good? Anything?

Man, what have I not been up to? Of course, steady demand is keeping me busy, helping people to manage their Google+ business pages and profiles. So that's been a lot of fun, keeping me plenty busy. I've got several other irons in the fire, so to speak. My blog, which, you know, has slowed down a bit. I've kind of gone back from, you know, publishing 3 times a week on the blog to about 1 time a week, just because, you know, other things are taking priority. And I'm kind of amping up to do something really new and really interesting for Dustin.tv and the evolution of the whole, the whole blog and the brand itself. Something very unique, something very, what I believe to be innovative, and it's all gonna take place here on Google+ and YouTube. So I got a brand new YouTube channel for Dustin.tv, and I've been making a lot of connections, talking to a lot of very cool people to set all this up, because it's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of help. To make this big idea happen, but it's super exciting. It's just, you know, it's one of those ideas that I've had for a long time, but I never really took action on it. And, you know, like most creatives, we have ideas all day long, and they just kind of sit in our Evernote or in our journal, or, you know, in our field notebooks. You know, we just never give the attention they deserve because we're too busy in the daily grind. And so I I just decided this was the one idea that I wanted to focus on going into the end of 2014. And, you know, I just started planning, and, you know, by the grace of God, things just started falling into place and made some really big connections. And can't say too much yet because it's just not in place enough, but I will say this: if you're a fan of anything creativity and social media, then definitely subscribe to Dustin.tv on YouTube, follow it on Google+ because this is going to be massive. So that's really exciting. Awesome. I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of, okay, now I gotta do this, oh, what about this, oh, I need to call her. So, very exciting. Also working on a project with a couple friends of mine, Jason Weiser and Nicholas Cardotte. We're building a WordPress plugin just for social sharing buttons for WordPress blogs or any website for that matter. Because, you know, there's a lot of social sharing buttons out there and they all have their strengths and weaknesses and most of them are not insanely pretty. To look at. Some of them functionally are just lacking, and so we realized that, you know, between the three of us, we can come up with something really cool and really helpful for ourselves, you know, functionality that we've been wanting to find, you know, a Pinterest integration to where it would automatically pull a Pinterest image that you've designated without having to put it on the page. It can be actually hidden in the page and it'll pull it out. You know, Twitter functionality, click-to-tweet functionality, click-to-Google+ functionality, and just a really beautiful set of icons that look great on different screen sizes. So that's also been taking up just a little bit of my time.

You've been very busy then between steady demand and all that. It's keeping you—

keeping you working.

Yeah, oh, and by the way, I have 2 kids and a beautiful wife who deserve the most of my time. So I stay busy, Chef, as we all should. I think it's good for the soul.

Absolutely.

Well, let me pull up a few comments here since we've got some wonderful people watching us. Mia Voss is in the house. She's saying hi to everyone. Kim Boltman is—

Hi, Mia.

Hi, Mia. And where else we got? Cheryl Deuce was saying, I noticed the boys just sitting back and letting the girls run with it. That's when you guys were just enjoying the conversation.

I know my place.

Every good woman is a good man.

There we go. And Dustin Stout has a new idea brewing. What does Craig Fifield have brewing?

Kim wants to know if you have anything There is something new, and I can't tell you about it though. It's a big secret for a while.

Okay, I think I'm the only one that doesn't have a secret then right now. Oh well, what am I going to do? I'll have to come up with something. I did— well, it's not a secret, but I did actually log into MySpace because they had some kind of new thing going on, and I thought I would check it out just to see if anything— anybody was alive over there, and it was pretty quiet. Talk about a ghost town.

But pretty to look at though now, at least.

Yeah, it was. It was very, very interesting.

Throwback Thursday: you use your AOL account to log into MySpace.

Those are the days.

I'm telling you, my first computer, I would turn it on, go start the laundry, do some more, come back, and I still hadn't hooked up yet. Go do some other things. Come back, and 10 minutes later, it had finally engaged. Then you'd get the dial-up modem. Yeah, and I didn't even start when it first started. That was in the— when was that? In the '90s, the late '90s. Oh my god. Back when computers were a little different. Now it's so functional. Well, we've been having a good chat here. If anybody else has any questions for us, please put them in the comments section and we'll get to them. And if not, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions for each other, now's the time to ask too. Please feel free to engage with each other and ask questions.

Matt?

I'm curious, Cheryl, you know, where— maybe I missed it in the beginning, but where did this idea start that you're working on? How did you— where did it come out that you were like, I need to do this.

Yeah, I was interested when did it actually launch too.

It launched, that one's an easier one, it launched about February, we put it out in beta and we had a bunch of campaigns out there and probably raised almost close to $50,000 on the site but unfortunately no one's reached their goal so the successful campaign, we don't have one of those yet but we're working hard. But it started, I've been involved with food my entire life, my mom owned a tea room, and prior to that she used to make pies in the basement of our house, and I would help her as a teenager, and we had, you know, she made about 10,000 pies in the basement of our house. My grandmother used to cater weddings. You know, it's just food was how, you know, we're not Italian, but food was how we said we love you too. You know, we'd have breakfast, talk about lunch, have lunch, talk about dinner. So, you know, it's just always sort of been there, and I actually entertained the thought of setting up a crowdfunding to maybe launch my mom's salad dressing. She passed away and everyone still asks us for this recipe and she loves it. And I went out and I looked at Kickstarter, of course, because everyone knows that site, and it just didn't feel comfortable. It didn't feel like it was for a foodie. It didn't feel like it was the right place. And then I looked at some other sites and then I was like, okay, that doesn't feel like it fits either. And so then I searched for a food-specific site because I assumed there was one there, and there wasn't.. And so I just was really surprised. There was one out there that's been there for a little bit that speaks pretty much exclusively to restaurants and food trucks, but there wasn't one for the food market and the beverage market. And I thought, I mean, with all the TV shows geared 100% to wine and food and magazines and social media and the top chefs that are out there, I'm like, all the restaurants are local. I'm one of those, if it's not there, you know, I was— you want to do something right, do it yourself. So last August I came up with this concept and launched it in February. But I just thought, I couldn't believe there was nothing there to support the foodies of the world. I mean, it just didn't make any sense to me. So I did it. So yeah, we put it out there in February. So yeah. Cool.

Very cool.

Yeah, so it's great. So the biggest thing now, like I said, you know, we got really lucky. I went to the fancy food, you know, the fancy food show here in New York, and I mean, the feedback from folks about the fact that we're there, they're just so excited, and that's just super invigorating to know that, you know, I'm not crazy and it's not just me who thinks it's a good idea, because obviously, you know, as entrepreneurs, you obviously think it's the best thing in the world. It's the only thing that gets you up every day to keep doing it. So it's great to get the feedback. The biggest thing that we need is just letting folks know we're there, letting folks know that they have an opportunity to get into it. And as Chef Dennis said, it's really new and you can be part of making it happen, which is super cool. I talked to a guy yesterday who's probably going to launch a subscription coffee campaign with us, and he's like, "I like it because you're so new and fresh, you're still scrappy." And I took that as a huge compliment, you know, because I said to him, try and get the founder of Kickstarter on the phone to help you out. We absolutely are going to fight the good fight to make sure everyone is as successful as they can possibly be. I'm not pretending that I do the lion's share of the work. The campaign guys who set it up, they do 80% of that hard labor. We just want to help them know what all that stuff is so that they can be as successful as they want to be.

Excellent idea, and I think a lot of people are going to start taking advantage of it, hopefully, because, you know, we see a lot of food-related things on Kickstarter, and it doesn't make any sense to do it there if you could do it in a platform that's more aimed towards food. So, right. And I would think, could you make short films about food too, or could you do films about the food industry, and would they be considered still—

Absolutely. Absolutely. I've been talking to a guy who's doing a documentary about food different cultures, and some of them have already crowdfunded, so they are a little past that. But one of the big things we want to do is, you know, I'm a firm believer of, you know, this might, you might not need to crowdfund today, you might not ever have that, but we are going to support you no matter what. So if you are in the food thing and you want, you just want people to know you are out there, tweet us, connect with us, you know, we will share everything we can because it's about loving the food community. Absolutely, we're talking to folks who want to do cookbooks. If you want to do a novel, fiction, but it's about food-related and traveling France and eating your way through, it needs to be 80-90% food-related and we'll go from there. I've got someone speaking to me about food walking tours in New York City. What a great idea! It's really anything nichey, so it's really food or wine. So yeah, documentaries, movies, like Chef, wouldn't that have been nice if that movie had funded on Fund-A-Feast? I'm going to talk to John and see if he can come over here next time. You bet.

There's a question from Christopher Vogelman for you. He wants to know if you'd be able to raise capital for food trucks.

Absolutely, Christopher, absolutely. We'd be huge. We're a huge sponsor stuff like that too. So absolutely, we're here to help.

Very good. Okay, I have another message from Mia, my sister. Tool equals drink, basic math. Okay, she was talking about your little tool game the other day. So Maggie, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your cookbook that you have coming up?

Oh, the cookbook. It's not a— well, I have— you guys already probably know this, hopefully. I have 3.

Then they're ebooks.

But I have a skinny cocktail drink recipe book coming out, and I just finished. Let me tell you, you think, you know, it's easy. Oh yeah, let's put some drinks together. But the point is I'm trying to make them skinny so they won't be loaded with calories and we could be in swimsuits longer. I mean, well, Considering the weather, of course. Anyway, so I finally, finally finished it, and I videoed a lot of me doing the cocktails, kind of like what I'm doing here, but I'm standing up. And yeah, I'm out there shaking and doing my little thing. But yeah, anyway, so I finally finished filming. I feel so just like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I gave it In the process right now, it's being formatted for Kindle. Gave it off to some guy, and then I'm submitting it, and hopefully, God willing, it will publish. And this was supposed to be— this is like a month— seriously, I'm a month late from when I originally wanted to launch it. I wanted to launch it a month ago and have it ready and out and just good, but okay, things happen, right? But I have so much I mean, there's just a lot going on that would come in and take me away from my drinking.

When life interrupts drinking.

Yeah, but let me tell you, I'm a wine blogger. In fact, I think I was mentioning before in the green room, I'm supposed to be at a wine— there's a wine bloggers conference going on right now. It's huge. It's huge. Like everybody's there except for me. I'm here drinking cocktails. No, I'm just kidding. There's a wedding tomorrow. My friend's getting married tomorrow, so I couldn't go to the bloggers conference.

And of course everyone's pinging me, hey Maggie, where are you?

I'm like, Coronado. Sorry. But yeah, so I'm just excited to stop drinking cocktails and go back to my wine. I've missed you, my wine. Anyways, all right.

I'm exactly like that with beer. I'll get carried away with drinks, and then it's like, why am I doing this? I just want beer. Just beer.

I can't do— you know what it is with beer? It's just so heavy.

You know?

It's just, ah.

If you guys ever tried mead, I had a guy reach out to me about a campaign for mead. He's based out of Florida.

No, I haven't had mead.

Oh, it's like from, you know, it's probably as old as that Mexican coffee drink. It's made from, it's derived from honey. I'm like, I've never heard of it. What a great idea.

Yeah. I was just learning about gruit, which was like a precursor to beer.

Yeah.

Which I think it sounds a lot like mead.

Yeah, yeah. Similar backgrounds, I think, yeah.

Hey, Craig, have you ever been to San Diego?

Uh, no, not San Diego.

It is, like I said, the beer capital. You walk into a restaurant and they'll just have all these craft beers on tap. It's great. Nice. Yeah, in fact, okay, Wine Blogger lives around the corner from the Coronado Brewing Company. And yeah, they serve you, they give you these big old, they call them growlers, like big jug. Yeah, I have two jugs. You go in there and you can get this thing filled up for cheap, really, really, really cheap, and they know you. You know, it's like everybody around here just knows everyone else. Yeah, I love it. So that's really good to me. That's really cool beer. In fact, I think I saw that they're in Maine now.

Oh really?

Yeah, yeah.

We do have a lot of breweries around here. You know, Shipyard is nearby. Samuel Adams is nearby. We have the Budweiser plant nearby, so I'm in good company. The only problem is I'm a wicked hermit, so the only reason I leave my house is to go to the gym or to go to my other house.

Wait a minute, don't tell me that Amazon is shipping you beer in then?

No, my wife does the shopping.

Okay. That's a good woman.

See, I told you, I know my place.

Coke managed to deliver Coca-Cola via drone, so I don't see why beer companies can't do it.

Hey, that could be on Fund-A-Feast.

Absolutely, drone delivery.

I get cases of wine sent to me, like almost every— I hate to say that, but almost every week. But hey, I'm a wine blogger.

Second, I thought you were going to say every day.

Every day.

How can you imagine?

Sounds like my wife needs to be a wine blogger.

They're going to change the fees for the site on Fund a Feast and say it's 4% and a sample.

Here's Christopher Vogelman, perhaps a Coronado Brewing Company can be convinced to set aside some space for winemaking, Maggie.

That would be cool.

Maybe we can do a show from there, maybe we can get them involved.

Oh yeah, they have great Wi-Fi too, I wish I lived a little bit closer. And you know, everybody around here, they know each other, so you'll see one of the owners kind of walking around, you know, he'll be out there watering his plants, it's fun.

Gotta love it.

Everybody knows your name.

Yeah, you know, I think there's more craft beer, every city I talk to is almost, oh, you have to come for the craft beer. It's like they're popping up everywhere. I keep hearing more. I don't see as much down here in Orlando, although there are quite a few. In fact, when we first moved here, we went to a craft beer walk, and there were 11 bars involved, and you had to walk from one to the other, and they gave you a little glass of beer. Well, after about 6, I was done.

I saw that show that you did with Mia, your wine taster. 2 hours! And I thought, whoa, and they're still standing.

I was sitting the whole time, so no, I wasn't standing. But I'm such a lightweight, it was pretty bad. And I was hungover for about 3 days afterwards, not being quite a drinker anymore, you know. And that coming after the conference really kind of did me in. But well, we're on a new format now of just about 40 minutes or more, and we are actually near the end of that, so I'm going to go through everyone. Yeah, it's kind of close. If you have anything else you'd like to share with us, now's the time. And I'm gonna pop right in and start with Dustin because he looks anxious.

That's just because I've had too much coffee. I've been searching through all the— everyone's sites. I was really checking out Cheryl's site, just kind of seeing what's going on over there. Really cool stuff. But I guess I'll just leave everybody with this. I mean, we're all on this panel here, we're all doers and creators and ideators, and I think there's no better time than now to start acting on some of your dreams, start acting on your aspirations, or some of these wild and crazy ideas that you think are not possible, because Hey, if it's possible to make $70,000 making a potato salad, anything's possible. I think it's a great time that we live in. I'm really happy to be a part of this movement of collaboration and entrepreneurs. Google+ has really fostered a lot of that. Take advantage. Take advantage of the relationships. Build each other up. And just shoot for the freaking moon.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Bravo, I love that. Thank you, Dustin.

Cheryl, that will kind of lead into what you're doing. So any last words of wisdom or advice you'd like to leave us with, or where we can find you and all that?

Yeah, well, you can definitely find me at fundafuse.com, and, you know, don't hesitate to join the Twitter Chat Wednesdays. 7 PM Eastern for Foodpreneurs where we're sharing startup tips and tricks. But I mean, to echo Dustin, I mean, one of the— you know, when I dipped my toe into this pond and found out that the startup entrepreneurial pond was warm, it was literally one of the most amazing experiences. A lot of my background, if folks grab me on LinkedIn, they'll see that it's kind of corporate-y, and it's just so incredibly refreshing to figure out that I can help you and you can help me and we can both win. The definition of winning does not equal someone losing anymore. And the mindset out there of entrepreneurs that we can really help one another and help us get where we all want to go. Because one of the things I say about crowdfunding is anybody that puts it out there, whether you think it's a great idea or not, whether you want to support them or not, at the end of the day, that's their dream. That's their absolute dire dream, they put it out there on the internet and they dare dream it. How many people don't even give it a shot? So just keep in mind that folks are out there and they are absolutely daring to dream the dream. We can help them, $5, $10, I mean it's a coffee, give up one beer to help someone else. It's that kind of a thing. We are here to help one another and the fact that it's— that's the thing I love the most about crowdfunding. People are really, you know, they're like, "Hey, I like what you're doing, and I support you, and I want to help you." And it's just so amazing to think that we can all help one another, you know. So I think we love the most, and thanks so much for this forum and being able to meet folks. And Chef Dennis, I know you and I have connected recently, and you and Mia, and the love's been overwhelming, and I can't thank you guys enough.

Well, I'm really happy you could come by today and we could talk to you more about this. And I think you'll have a— you'll see a lot of good stuff here on Google+ about it once we get the word out a little more too. My friend Craig, good to see you again lounging by the pool. I know you're going to just relax a little since you've got your Circuloscope done for now and enjoy your time. If there's anything you'd like to leave us with, any words for the Craig Bifield army?

Well, thanks for having me. It was good to be here again. I just would say thanks to the audience for showing up. Thanks for supporting us through the Circlescope launch, and, uh, you know, that was just amazing. And, um, if you haven't tried Circlescope yet, it is the most powerful way to manage your circles. It will also increase your engagement like you wouldn't believe, and it's completely free to try at Circlescope.com/free.

Sounds like a plan, and we'll have to do a hangout for my food bloggers so we can get them all bored on board.

Definitely. Sounds good.

And Maggie, thank you so much for stopping by and making us a wonderful cocktail today, another coffee drink, which, uh, coffee and alcohol, wonderful thing. Drunk without any hope of passing out, right?

Exactly.

So we're going to be looking for your ebook coming up. Anything you'd like to leave us with?

Just look for the ebook, it's going to be coming out pretty soon. Very excited, so excited it's over, or close to it at least, right? Then I have to show it to people, introduce it to people, and yeah.

It would be a good coffee, cocktail table book to have. We need to print it out too, I think, get one in print. Alright, well thank you all for stopping by. Good day Google+ today, and like I always say, it's always a great day when you get to spend time with your friends on Google+. Enjoy your weekend that's coming up, and we'll see you all soon. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.