Description

Hattie tells us how Steve Hoffman grew a digital company out of his analog experience.

Transcript

This is an excerpt from Small Business School. Steve Hoffman: Well first of all we need a pack nut to every re post cards. Hattie: Who’s we? Steve Hoffman: Jim Toya-Brown, my vice president, my wife. Hattie: She worked for the company then? Steve Hoffman: She was actually one of our real estate photographers. Hattie: Oh. Steve Hoffman: And we are driving up to go skiing and I said you know, we’re just talking about business and I said, ‘you know, I think that we could probably do postcards just by taking a sheet of paper and cutting it into four sheets of paper basically’ and they said ‘no’ absolutely not, I don’t want to have anything to do with something that inexpensive and they basically promised me to drop the whole subject of postcards. Hattie: They thought it was demeaning. Steve Hoffman: Well we were heading more towards larger brochures and more quality and cling the other direction; I kept trying to bring it down to what people could afford. Hattie: Right. Steve Hoffman: If we apply the technology that of the day towards that, we could actually produce something that the market would respond to. Jim Toya-Brown came to work with Steve in 1986. He is senior vice-president, part owner, friend and confidant. Jim Toya-Brown: I mean, I’ve always been driven to work hard, you know and whether it’s mine or someone else’s company, I mean I’ve always put a 110%. I mean that sounds kind of cliché but you know, it just, I’ve always put that effort into it and let me tell you something, it’s not a pretty sight in the first couple of years, I mean. Hattie: [Laugh] Steve Hoffman: The company business started to one bedroom apartment. Hattie: And this is your one bedroom apartment? Steve Hoffman: Yes. Hattie: In January 1976. Steve Hoffman: 1976 and all I was, I was a photographer and my claim to fame was that I was photographing, doing something that normally caught $60.00 do take a photograph of, over there, very nice architectural photograph of our real estate building and I would do it for $10.00 as opposed to $60.00. Hattie: Wow. Steve Hoffman: In doing that, I was very, it was easy for me to capture as much market share as possible and as I captured more market share, I found out that you could build any efficiency within your system. Hattie: Are you telling me that in this one bedroom apartment, you were actually thinking market share? Steve Hoffman: I was actually thinking market share.