In this Ask Evan episode, host Evan Carmichael reviews a viewer’s prototype called Focalize, a platform that lets users locate local professionals—such as accountants—by filtering criteria like location, experience, language, industry focus, certifications, and client size. Evan walks through the PowerPoint demo, acknowledges the concept’s potential to solve the problem of finding qualified service providers, but highlights two major hurdles: (1) convincing busy professionals (e.g., accountants) to create and maintain online profiles, and (2) motivating entrepreneurs to leave feedback after using the service. He notes the lack of a clear marketing plan and questions the revenue model. To address these issues, Evan recommends starting with a narrow niche and geographic market—mirroring the early strategies of MySpace and Facebook—so the product can prove value before scaling. He also suggests clarifying the monetization approach (e.g., search fees, paid listings, or subscription upgrades). Overall, he finds the idea promising but stresses that user acquisition and retention for both professionals and entrepreneurs are the critical challenges.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Jed, who's a forum member, who wrote in asking me to review his business concept. And instead of creating a video with my face on it, I thought it'd be easier if I did this quick screen capture so we can look at the PowerPoint together and break down the concept. So he wrote in here, "Hi Evan, thanks for your feedback in advance. Here's my prototype. Let me know what you think, what you like, what you don't like. More importantly, would you use this?" So let me load up his presentation here. So the company's called Focalize, and what it allows you to do is find professionals in your area. So if I'm in Canada and I'm looking for an accountant, I can find one, you know, in my city of Toronto. And basically it allows you to put in different criteria, so country, area, how many years of experience, that person has, what language I want them to speak, what areas of practice, what industry focus they have, certifications, the size of the clients that they work with, and then you search. And basically what will come back is different people who have, you know, different sets of experience, different names, and, you know, gives you those search results. And then I can click in on each one and see their profile and I guess end up contacting them if I want. So my thoughts: on the surface it looks very interesting, you know, it solves a need finding the right professionals if it's accountants or otherwise is super helpful for entrepreneurs. The challenge that I see here is not so much the technology but the marketing. You know, a lot of these people are not the most tech savvy if you're looking at accountants. They often don't need extra marketing or promotion of themselves because they're busy with all of their current clients, they're getting lots of referrals. And most of the accountants that I've found have been through referrals, and that's how I know most of the entrepreneur friends of mine find their accountants is through referrals. And I don't see too many accountants out there, you know, actively marketing themselves because they're so busy with their current clients. So how do you convince these super busy people to go online and fill out these profiles? And that's going to be a big challenge, I think. On the flip side is how do you get the entrepreneurs to then leave feedback for these professionals? So entrepreneurs are super busy as well and how do you convince them that once they even use the service, assuming you do get the accountants on board, how do you convince the entrepreneurs to go in and want to leave this feedback? So it is nice to help people, but a lot of times people won't take the time to do it. So that's the biggest challenge and you may have figured some of that out. I don't really see the marketing plan on here. But I think that's going to be your biggest challenge. So I would probably look at it, I would use it, I would also still talk to my friends, but I would only use it here if there were people who serve my market, right? I wouldn't want somebody who's in my city who had all the experience that I was looking for and had some good reviews. And finding that might be a big challenge. So my recommendations, I would first start with a niche. So if you look at every major successful web-based business, if you look at Facebook, you look at even before that MySpace, you want to start with a niche. So MySpace started with musicians, right? They started targeting bands and made the entire website around promoting your band. And that worked for them and they were able to expand. Facebook started with university students, college university students, and they made something really good for them and then it was able to expand to hit everybody else. Same thing for you, I try to focus in on one area and even a geographic market as well. So target a certain state or target a certain province and just start around that and then slowly expand out from there. Focus your efforts because you want people to get good results and have a good experience. So target a smaller market, make sure it works for them and then slowly expand. I also don't know what your revenue model is, presumably there's going to be some kind of fee for either doing the search or for the accountants to be listed on here, or maybe there's a free listing and there's an upgrade to paid membership. Lots of different opportunities for business models. Again, not included on this slide so I can't really give my comments on that. But overall again, I like the concept. It's about can you get the people on board, you know, can I find my Sean Roberts here who fits all the criteria that I'm looking for. and I want to then go out and hire. So Jed, I hope that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment below this video. And stay tuned to next episode.
