Revolutionizing Retail: Ryan Williams on Entrepreneurship and the Fusion of Security and Marketing Analytics

Embark on a transformative journey with Dylan Burke and his guest, the entrepreneurial maverick Ryan Williams of AcuraMet. As we peer into Ryan's remarkable shift from the realms of sound engineering to the forefront of retail analytics innovation, prepare to uncover how the fusion of security technology and marketing data is revolutionizing the way retailers understand consumer behavior. This episode promises a treasure trove of insights for those looking to refine their customer experience and drive commerce with strategic finesse, mirroring the customization we relish in online shopping.

Join us as we navigate the tumultuous seas of entrepreneurship through Ryan's lens, where the stakes are high and the rewards, even more so. From the solitary beginnings of a founder to the triumphant partnership with a CTO, Ryan lays bare the strategic maneuvers that enabled him to sail through the challenges of funding and team building. Listeners will glean wisdom from his tales of perseverance, the significance of a robust support network, and the thrill of pursuing a venture that not only promises to enhance retail experience but also exemplifies the unyielding spirit of modern entrepreneurship. Tune in to engage with a dialogue that's not just about business growth—it's about the heart-pounding adventure of creating something remarkable.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey folks, welcome back to the growing lean podcast, sponsored by lean discovery group and award-winning software firm based out of Virginia. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Dige, and I'm happy to be here today with Ryan Williams, founder and CEO at AcuraMet. Welcome, ryan, thank you for having me, it's my pleasure. So, Ryan, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your history and what led you to where you are today?

Speaker 2: 0:36

Oh well, I don't know, had a professor in college who told me that enjoy the path along the way, you may end up where you're supposed to be. And so I graduated in sound engineering and toured with bands and, after getting sick of being on the road, somehow wound up working at a high security government contractor company. So we did a lot of government agencies, security, hard perimeter security, anti-terrorist force protection. So I was in that space for about 10 years. So I liked electronics from sound and cameras and all these other kind of high security things. After about 10 years I just decided it was time for me to kind of move on. So I went and started my own business, which I still operate now, as a security camera, access control, security integration business.

Speaker 2: 1:35

And then AcuraMet was kind of born out of it. I was meeting with networking, meeting with marketing people and local businesses and was kind of hearing similar complaints from the local businesses and hearing situations that the marketing people were talking about. And then me spending money on marketing was kind of growing frustrated with the fact that I was spending this money but didn't really know there wasn't that return. It wasn't obvious. It was like, yeah, I think somebody called or I think this happened. There wasn't that ability there.

Speaker 2: 2:07

I was getting that same thing from the business owner and I met with one marketing person and she was telling me how she could track where they acquired the customer online and then geofence the location to the fact that they actually walked in but lost what happened once they entered the store. She liked that data and that was, for me, going okay. Well, what if the cameras I'm putting in could provide that data? How do we move from the security budget to the marketing budget? And that's what kicked off this for me was going down that path of just trying to move from one to the other, and so started doing that, developed our own platform, and now we have a couple of test locations out there and are about to launch into market.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Okay, that's awesome. That's awesome. What does a KiraMet actually do? If you could say it in a couple of sentences.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Yeah, the big picture is the next evolution of commerce. We're tracking the customer demographics at the location along with the items purchased, so providing who, demographically, is purchasing which items. With that we allow the store, or the physical space, to get better data and analytics of what's going on in their store who's purchasing what item. Was there a new customer versus existing customer? It's conversion ratio. Next phases will do integration with the inventory. At that point we're looking at the trends and predictions of not only who's going to purchase what, but when are they going to purchase it. So it helped with predictive patterns in the physical space.

Speaker 2: 3:50

It started from me as how do you help having a business as hard enough as it is? So how do you give somebody that's fools to give them the shot to help them be more successful? It automatically feels that I guess because I've been through it and so going through it, you feel like you have a whole world stacked against you. It's not easy to start a business. It's all the challenges that are faced with it and if I could pull the customer behavior and the insights and take that challenge away, it makes it where they could focus on running a store as opposed to having to figure out the mindset of the customer.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Okay, 100%. And the goal with the data is that in order to get better product placement or better store locations, or what is the goal to use the data for?

Speaker 2: 4:42

Well for them is to use the data where they understand what their customers purchase and for the fact that, like this, they spend a lot of the money and time and effort to get a customer to walk into the store and yet people still leave empty handed. So, having that understanding of what the customer is looking for, what's going on, whether they look into purchase and making sure it's there, so when they show up, what the item that they want is there, and not to mention the other items, if we could look at trends across upselling and cross selling, if you look at patterns of, hey, this demographic is purchasing this item, but we're also seeing that this demographic is purchasing this other item. Maybe here's an opportunity to offer that. It's kind of trying to blend the commerce of what you see online, where you add something to a cart and it's like, hey, maybe you like this too, maybe you should check this item out, or we could do that all in the physical space. Give them that ability to do that.

Speaker 2: 5:43

And so there's a lot of it where, for instance, there's a store in my area that has been around for 25 years and I didn't go into it for the first time until two weeks ago.

Speaker 2: 5:54

It didn't realize that they sold items there that I would have been shopping at regularly had I known it was there. It was a store that their name has been around for 25 years. Their items have evolved in the store but I just knew 25 years ago wasn't what I was into at the time, and now it had other things that I mentioned. Just didn't even know it was there. So because of that you could track and know where the purchase is. It allows them to start doing targeted marketing better instead of just going like hey, come to XYZ store, maybe they could do targeted ads that reached out to somebody and go hey, come to this store because you like this item, we have this item. So that item may drive me into the store as opposed to just the store itself. So we get some ability with that to kind of increase revenue on that side of it.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Okay, awesome, I love that and watch your overall business strategy for the next couple of years.

Speaker 2: 6:55

We just built out our team. So we've added a technical co-founder and a CMO, so hitting the ground running. Right now we're doing outreach to larger brands as well as some smaller writing, some integrations with Point of Sale and then, yeah, just expanding Next couple of years. We actually have a kind of a phase two. It came up during our market viability research. We had some questions pop up talking about credit card fraud and charge backs, and so we were asked if we could verify the card holder before the transaction occurred. So we kind of ran through the system and realized we could do that. So that's kind of our phase two Next couple of years. We're trying to get that launched. We need a tighter integration with Point of Sale. We need two-way communication. We need to be able to accept our match non-match authorization. So it just takes building some of that relationship up. So that's kind of phase two of it all. So hope to launch that next year too.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Okay, awesome, awesome, and I see on LinkedIn that you founded Acuramet almost three years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about the challenges and obstacles that have been in your way that you've overcome to get to the point now where you're ready to go to markets?

Speaker 2: 8:21

Yeah, that's been fun. So it's fun to start a software company whenever you're not a programmer. So that's a fun challenge. Yeah, and it's. You know I come from.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I consider it more of a construction-based background. So you know it was during security integration like we put projects together and designed it for specific needs. But we, you know you'd expect whenever you're turning it over to a customer, like, hey, here's the final product, as opposed to getting ahead around in the software world, it's like, hey, here's kind of good enough and we'll keep evolving it and making changes and everything else. So work through and putting together. I guess with the construction background I looked at it like, okay, if I can't do it, just subcontract it out, find people. So I put it together. You know people I've worked with to help with development and things. I needed to put things together in order to get it to where I had that MVP and then started reaching out to, you know, investment groups and they're like, well, it's just you, and so that was its own separate challenge. They're like, well, you know, nobody's gonna invest in a single person company or a solo founder company, and so that was a challenge. And then, understanding you know the investment world and part of that side of it was learning it a little bit. And then you know, sometimes luck works out in your favor that the person that you hired to develop the project for you initially, you know is actually interested in coming on. You know it helps. We had a working relationship at that point. We kind of knew how each other, you know, the mindset was and we got introduced through a mutual friend, so that part kind of helps. It kind of helped land through the you know, the team that way. So now we kind of have that going on. But yeah, there's just I mean it's a fun challenge I mean through, you know currently so I'm self-funding it, so everything kind of goes through. Whenever I can, I'd pay for this or, you know, try to cover the cost, and so that's its own separate thing.

Speaker 2: 10:35

My biggest challenge has been facing time-wise. You know I do have another business that I run day to day. That's like the security integration company, so it's smaller in a regional location. But you know it's having a balance. At that time, which is what I realized that was kind of the and this was recent, within like last month kind of my I had a moment with it is that having a team helps. You know you go out and start a business on your own. I, in my case the company has with the four there were. You know there were Two brothers and you know there's challenges with that and so when I went out of my own I'm like I don't want to deal with that, I just want it to be me, and then that's it. But you realize that you know that help I mean just bringing on. You know that CTO was like it's like this big weight was lifted off. I was like, oh, I don't have to worry about that anymore, I don't have to focus through it, I don't have to deal with it. I just call him and say, hey, can I do this? Can I say this, can I? And he's like, yep, that's not a big deal, and then just kind of run with it. And so, and even day to day, I've started working with Some other security integration companies within my area, kind of planning for those next steps of me not being involved every day with that, and ran across Similar people to me who you know have struggled by themselves.

Speaker 2: 12:00

You know they have employees, but it's just them and it started with just being the sound of board going like, hey, as a small business owner, you're stuck, it's you. There's not necessarily body to talk to. You know you have a problem. You can't like talk with your technician or one of your employees and be like, hey, I had a bad day today. I kind of work through it. So having that sound in board and just he and I talking and, you know, going through issues that's kind of a thing I realized the last six months or so is like Building a network of people that are in the same position you are and then bouncing stuff off of each other and just kind of being there to have that. Well, if it is just you, gives you that extra. You know that little something extra. If you calling a prom boy, let's talk about it, so that's something that you know. It's really been a big benefit here lately.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Okay, amazing. And what is your plan Going forward? Is this a product that's going to be for small, small stores, or you even looking to get into the larger chain stores?

Speaker 2: 13:05

When I initially started it, my intent was to gear it towards small stores. I assumed when I got started this that you know, every big store was doing this already. And so there are some systems that can run some analytics in retail. They run the analytics on the camera themselves. So it's a bigger, more costly install and so and I've talked to a couple of business that had looked at it and the price was just, it was just too out of reach for, and so that that was my main focus is going how do we do it in a way where it's cost effective? There it, you know, mom and pop, it can go in, it could be affordable, and then kind of during the research, I kept getting introduced to like larger and larger companies, and that's when I realized they weren't doing it either.

Speaker 2: 13:50

So the approach has been right now. The approaches were actually looking at both. So you know we've had talks with larger companies. Larger company it's a longer lead time. You have to go through More management with that, but we're also talking. So the our test markets now have been, have been smaller stores. They may have, you know, mom and pop may have three or four locations. So a couple other ones that were looking at that. Have, you know, 10 or 20, so just in that range where it's easier, because I could talk with the business owner, we could have a conversation and they could say yes in a week and we could get started, as opposed to going through the management on the larger ones. And it gives us the chance to, you know, clean up some things right. Integration so you know we're writing integration now with For light speed, which you know they have a large customer base, so it gives us a better, you know, in the next step is like what we just go target those customers. So in building that relationship, those point of sale companies, there's been turnover.

Speaker 2: 14:53

So there's that challenge of you get started and you get down the pathway and that person leaves and you kind of got to start all over again. So we're looking at what's kind of the easy path to entry right now. Small regional is easier to get in with 100 percent.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Can you tell me a little bit about the technology that you're using? Are you making use of any artificial intelligence for the data analytics, or how does it work without going too much into your proprietary technology? Can you tell me a bit about how it works?

Speaker 2: 15:30

Yeah, so we're using a modified version of facial recognition. We are not identifying anybody, we're just pulling demographics off. So we're using a point of sale or we're using a camera built into the point of sale so we're capturing the information. When you're checking out, you're looking down or pay with your credit card, there's a camera built in or we have options where we can put a camera. Then we're doing it that way where we capture demographics and the receipt at that point in time.

Speaker 2: 16:05

We're also about to launch a test at a drive-thru, so we'll actually capture the demographic at the drive-thru because they never enter the location. So we could pull it there Then. Yeah, so the next step of that is, once we pull the data in of who, demographically, you're purchasing what that's part of it is we're going to run through and use AI to look at the trends and predictive modeling at that point in time. So that's the next step with it is to look for not only who is purchasing what, like I said, who's going to purchase what. So we find those trends and patterns at that point in time.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Okay, amazing. And if we were to sit down in 12 months time and everything that could have possibly gone right has for your business, what would the business look like then and what has changed?

Speaker 2: 17:02

That's a fun question, I mean. I imagine it would be changed to be really hectic, a lot of lack of sleep, the opportunity to grow and improve. At that point we'd have a lot of data. We would also have the ability to really show how we're benefiting the customer. And so, man, I don't know. It's one of those things that deciding to start a software company when you're not a software developer it seems like a pipe drain, let alone in and of itself. But to go like all right, it's running now, and a year from now, what's this going to feel like? I honestly don't know what it's going to be Like. I said, a crazy ride? I'm sure I don't know, but I'm not sure. On that one, it seems like a far time away to this point.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Awesome, you're just riding the roller coaster and seeing where it takes you Just riding the roller coaster yeah, at this point yeah, amazing. So we are coming to the end of the interview, but before we go I wanted to ask if you could give one piece of advice to other business owners looking to start a business in today's world. What would that advice be?

Speaker 2: 18:33

To just gotta do it. It's hard and it's not gonna be easy and it's gonna be stressful, but at the end of the day I decided to do this because if I didn't I would always regret it. So I've listened to podcasts and read books and do these things and you know what? You try it and it doesn't work and you fail. You learn something from that and you move on to the next thing, and so you just kinda have to go for it. And the other thing is to build out a network.

Speaker 2: 19:07

We are in the age now I'm into the world and it's not really the ideal world for software, software technology startups, but with the age we live in now, you could kind of meet people and connect with people from all over, and so that's a benefit that does help. So that's something I would do is just go like, just jump. I actually had somebody tell me that I was putting all this stuff together and I met with somebody at the local development district, the Small Business Development Council. They're a lot of them and that's another thing. Look into that.

Speaker 2: 19:46

The universities, they offer it's free coaching. They'll assist whichever way they can. And one of the guys told me he's like look, sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and just build the parachute on the way down, and that's when you kind of really like, yeah, you can think about it forever and never do it, or you just kind of jump and figure it out as you go, and so that's kind of my advice is just you just figure it out and go for it. So that's what I'd probably recommend 100%.

Speaker 1: 20:15

I love that analogy. It reminds me of the roller coaster analogy, which it can be scary at times, the ups and the downs, but once you get off it you had a good time at the end and you want to do it again.

Speaker 2: 20:28

So you just got to ride. Yeah, you want to do it again, exactly so.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Ryan, thanks for being on the show. I have really enjoyed learning more about this and I'm super excited to see what the future holds for you. What's the best way for our listeners to reach out to you, if you have any offers for them or if they're looking to follow your journey?

Speaker 2: 20:51

The sales at accuremetcom is kind of our. I mean the email address. The website is. I built it. It needs work. It's like I said it's not there yet but it's wwwaccuremetcom.

Speaker 2: 21:08

I don't do social media, but somebody is there so Acuremet's around on, I think, twitter and Instagram and all the other ones, so I look forward to talking to somebody. So it's great to just hear other people's struggles and what they go through, and that's been. The benefit of this is that you hear them talk about their customer problems and what they're dealing with, and so it's interesting conversations to have 100%, 100%.

Speaker 1: 21:37

Well, thanks again for your time today, ryan, and I wish you all the best. I'm looking forward to seeing everything. I appreciate it, thank you.