A couple of days ago I did an interview with Eric Dye on Entrepreneur Podcast Network about starting Cycle7 and creating Evergreen appointment scheduling software. Below is more-or-less the transcript. It’s a slightly expanded version…

Eric Dye: Tell me a little bit about your background, and how you got to where you are?

Mac Martine: Well, I went to the University of Oregon and got an Environmental Studies Degree which I’m pretty much not using. But during my senior year I started building websites for fun and got really into it and started wanting to make them more and more fancy, and I ended up pursuing that and I got lucky and landed a job with Adobe right off the bat. I was testing software and eventually was writing code all day to automate the testing of the applications. I ended up being there quite a long time and I loved it and got to work on all sorts of great products and get my name on desktops around the world with products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. I went in only knowing web development and 11 years later I was still there and was but basically taught myself to program in a handful of different languages while I was there.

Starting a business has for some reason always been a dream of mine. I knew that I would have to give it a shot some day but it took longer than I thought, because I loved my job with Adobe. I feel like that’s a little backwards though — I usually hear of people starting a business because they can’t stand working for someone else, they hate their current job, or they can’t find work. So, I feel like my problem was a good one to have.

And because I’ve always loved what I do, I’ve always had side projects going on at all times. I made some iPhone apps, decided I didn’t like that so much, and eventually I had an idea that I really thought I could make a business out of. And that’s the one I ended up leaving my day job for in the end. But before I did, I spent many months working on it, and reading all kinds of books and blogs about running a business, and figuring out a plan. But I still kept postponing making the leap — because that’s the easier thing to do when you have a guaranteed paycheck.

But I got married recently, and when we started talking about starting a family I knew that this was my time to strike out on my own, or else it might not happen for awhile. So, I made the leap, and founded a company called Cycle7. The first product is called Evergreen. Now my wife and I are expecting a baby in March. I guess you could say I’m getting a lot of practice with late nights and little sleep.

Eric Dye: So tell me about your product, Evergreen, and where you got the idea for it?

Mac Martine:Evergreen is a software-as-a-service application for service providers such as massage therapists, chiropractors, spas and salons to tutors. Actually the market is huge. I mean, independent music teachers can use it too. Actually, that’s where I initially got the idea for it. My sister-in-law is a professional musician and teaches on the side when she’s home. She had mentioned several times how much of a pain scheduling her students was, and how disrupting it was when a student wouldn’t show up, or they’d cancel minutes before they were supposed to show up. So, I think that’s what sparked the idea initially. But, basically, it’s for anyone that offers services to clients by appointment, really.

So Evergreen makes it really easy for them to let their clients schedule appointments online at anytime which obviously reduces scheduling hassles like games of phone tag and managing scheduling over email. But the clients love it too, because they can browse through the calendar until they find a time that is best for them, instead of just being offered one or two times over the phone that aren’t ideal.

One of the ways that it reduces no-shows is that it can also can send out automated appointment reminders to clients by email and/or text message. So you could for example have an email sent to the client 24-hours before their appointment, and then a text message reminder 2 hours before their appointment if you wanted to. I knew how important this was early on when I was getting a massage and heard the woman at the desk calling customer after customer, reminding them of their appointments. And with automated reminders you lose a bit of that personal touch, but I don’t think clients mind. And actually, I think more and more clients would prefer the reminder by text message anyway. It’s less disruptive, and I actually know a lot of people that hate talking on the phone. But this much isn’t all that revolutionary, to be honest. I mean, I feel that I’ve Evergreen is quicker to learn and easier to use than other options out there…

But my goal with Evergreen is more than just appointment scheduling and reminders. I’m a big believer in small businesses, and I try to support them over the big guys whenever I can. So, I really want to help them grow as a business but I also want to help them become ‘great’ businesses. I hate nothing more than bad service, or businesses that aren’t very friendly, or don’t treat clients with respect. I see it way too often. And you know, sometimes I don’t think they realize that unhappy customers will talk, and that alone can destroy your business. But happy customers talk too, and when they become customer evangelists for your business that’s really powerful. They are the best kind of marketers you can have. They will keep coming back, and they will tell their friends, and positive word of mouth is priceless and will get you more customers.

So, I’m constantly looking for ways to help them out both within Evergreen the application, and outside of it. For example just yesterday I started a free e-newsletter to anyone that wants to sign up, not just Evergreen clients, that’s called ‘How to Market a Small Business’. I’m sending this newsletter out weekly with easy but effective ways to promote and market your business without much of a budget. But I’m also thinking a lot about new features to incorporate into Evergreen that can help them with their business even if it’s not directly related to scheduling but still fits.

So… I guess that’s the short story about Evergreen. I think a lot of people love their work, but not the business or administrative aspects of it, so that’s where I’m trying to help out.

Eric Dye: So, you’ve been at this full time for about 6 months now. What do you find are the biggest challenges about running a business, especially doing so by yourself?

Mac Martine: It’s scarier, there’s more pressure. Financially it’s all on me. I have no-one to blame, and no-one else to help me get stuff done – except maybe my wife editing pages on my website sometimes. It’s crazy how much there is to do, and just keeping all those thoughts and ideas straight is hard, juggling so many different aspects of the business. But that’s also what I love about it. I thrive on a bit of stress and feeling a bit overwhelmed. My brain never stops — my idea of light reading while sitting on a beach in Hawaii on vacation is a 400 page book on the Ruby programming language or Jay Levinson’s book on Guerrilla Marketing or something like that. I just can’t get enough. So yeah, it’s all fun, but sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on one thing and see it through before I get distracted by something else I realize I need to do, or some other idea I have.

Eric Dye: With so many hats to wear, how do you keep it all straight and know what you should be doing? Are you one of those people that wrote out a business plan that you’re following, or do you just have it planned out in your head, or what?

Mac Martine:You know, there are different views on this out there, but I don’t see the benefit in looking too far ahead, and I know 37Signals talks about this stuff a lot, about how business plans are a waste of time.. Actually, I don’t even know that you can look very far ahead, at least in this kind of business. I mean, I have a vision of the product as a whole as I described earlier, and where I see it going, but I’m letting my clients guide this product. I almost view it as theirs, not mine. So, I can’t tell you what they’re going to need in a year, or how their needs change over time, and I’m just counting on being able to understand their problems and finding the best way to solve them. So I’m wasting my time if I make a big business plan or even a feature list and prioritize it now for the next 5 years, or even the next 6 months for that matter.

And I know that I want Cycle7 to be a business that I would want to work with, one that helps people and small businesses, and one that gives back when it can. But other than that, I’m not going to say that in 5 years Evergreen will look like this, and Cycle7 should have 3 employees or 175. I don’t really look more than 1 day ahead at this point. That might sound bad, but I think if there’s something bigger I need to plan for it’ll hit me in the face and I’ll know, and I’ll plan for it. It’s not like I don’t have long term ideas or goals, but they change every day.

And the same goes with marketing. My marketing plan changes every day. I have a bunch of various lists, and every morning I re-prioritize, and move to the top what looks the most important. I get new ideas every day, so at the end of the day my lists looks different, and I realize some things are working and some things aren’t, so it’s a constant cycle.

Otherwise I might end up sticking to some plan that I wrote a year ago that doesn’t work.

And that’s how I manage my time too. If I have a new idea, the question isn’t “do I have time to do it?”. Because I don’t. I have lists of work to do that would take me 10 years to complete on my own. The question is, does this take priority over everything else at the moment. It’s always a question of ‘what’s the top priority?’. It’s a juggling act where you’re jugging as many pins as you can, but someone keeps throwing more at you. So you have to decide to ignore the pin coming or if it looks better than one you already have then you can swap it out.

This is the only way I would know how to do it.

But that’s all in the beauty of being small and agile, and not taking funding. I don’t have anyone I have to get approval or permission from. If I see an opportunity I can jump on it 30 seconds from now. If a marketing idea isn’t working, I can stop now without letting anyone down or having to re-allocate the funding or something like that. Bu also, if I see that I could tweak my application slightly and make it available to an entirely different market I can do that too. I love that about what I’m doing now.

Eric Dye: You mentioned 37signals, are there other entrepreneurs or businesses that you’re inspired by?

Mac Martine:There are a few people that have really inspired me along the way, and continue to. Guys like Tony Hsieh of Zappos, and Jason Fried of 37signals — both almost household names these days. And guys like Jason Cohen of the great A Smart Bear blog, Ian Landsman of Helpspot, and Peldi, the guy behind Balsamiq Mockups which by the way, is a great overnight success story and I highly recommend reading his blog from the beginning. I really admire how these guys run their businesses and they’ve been a great inspiration, among others. At various times I’ve emailed Jason, and Ian, and Peldi with questions and they’ve all engaged in thoughtful email threads with me. And that alone says a lot. These guys are really busy, and they have no idea who I am, yet they still gave me their time. To me that gives great insight into why they’re successful at what they do.

Eric Dye:In conclusion in less than 60 seconds, what advice could you lend the entrepreneur that’s desiring to start a business or to initiate a creation kind of like yours of their own by putting it on the map in the marketplace?

Mac Martine:Hmm, I don’t know if this is much of a tip. But there are a lot of things that can be scary about starting a business, I mean, unless you are sitting on a pile of money, which most of us aren’t. Quitting a job can be scary, failure can be scary, the unknown can be scary. But honestly, what I’ve realized, and what has really helped me a lot it to take those scary thoughts and twist them around until they become a positive or exciting thing.

For example, instead of focusing on what would happen if you fail, you could think about how crappy it would feel to wake up at 60 and realize you have had a dream all your life that you never went after. And that if your business did fail, or you realize it’s not for you, then it’s still an awesome resume item. Starting a business, even if it doesn’t succeed, takes motivation and thought and care, and you can’t help but learn a ton of skills along the way.

Ya know, I’ve had to design the website, write the website copy, learn about marketing writing; I’ve developed the application in Ruby on Rails, I’m learning a ton about marketing a product, and SEO, and all sorts of stuff. So if I were to hire someone and saw something like that on a resume I’d call them in a heartbeat. The point is just that before I thought about it that way it was a scary distracting thought to fail, but with a positive spin on it I’m much more comfortable. Otherwise you’ll just freak out and give up, or you won’t even take the risk in the first place. So yeah, I guess my tip is to go for it and don’t look back. And find a positive spin on what you might otherwise worry about and be distracted by.