GenZ Entrepreneur Josh Cooper, Founder and CEO of Skoop Digital talks about what led him to want to spark change. Josh talks about his frustration with the education system and shares what he thinks are the next big things. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
GenZ Entrepreneur Josh Cooper, Founder and CEO of Skoop Digital talks about what led him to want to spark change.
Josh talks about his frustration with the education system and shares what he thinks are the next big things.
Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
Learn more about Josh and Skoop Digital on all socials:
Connect with Rob:
Show Produced by: Niranjan Deshpande (Nick), Broken Frames Studio, www.brokenframesstudio.com
Creative Director: Maxim Sokolov, www.maximsokolov.com
Special offer for #BearNation listeners interested in trying Brilliantly Warm (https://www.brilliantly.co/), use this 10% off discount code WELCOME10.
The 8 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Choosing a Coach (and how to avoid them!) use this link to get your FREE download: https://www.thaxa.com/p/the-bear-necessities-of-entrepreneurship
We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact company, to give back for each episode to the communities that we serve. To learn more or get involved with Phin for your company, visit:
EP 24_Josh Cooper_Repurpose_Transcript
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:27:24
Josh Cooper
One of the smallest things, and it's all filled with tiktoks YouTube, tons of information. And so I think to go back to your question, the thing that really frustrated me and really made me want to start to catalyze an entrepreneurial spirit was I disliked the system of the school system that I was in, but always had such a deep thirst for knowledge and care, for learning.
00:00:28:22 - 00:01:04:04
Rob Napoli
What up better nation we are back again for this week's episode of The Bare Necessities of entrepreneurship podcast. Today, I have an amazing guest with us, Josh Cooper, the founder and CEO of Skcop Digital. Josh is a Gen Z entrepreneur who has not only started one, but two different businesses finishing up his degree at Michigan State. He has created some amazing things and done some amazing things on his entrepreneur journey, and his passion is to use his entrepreneurial fire and innovative technology solutions to make the world a better place.
00:01:04:14 - 00:01:18:00
Rob Napoli
And one of his goals, which we're talking about in this episode, is that let's go to Mars, figure out how to be multi-planetary in the world. So I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Josh Cooper. Josh, say hi to bear nation for me.
00:01:18:14 - 00:01:21:02
Josh Cooper
Thanks for having what’s up bear nation it’s great to be on
00:01:22:11 - 00:01:49:09
Rob Napoli
Josh So I'm excited to talk about your entrepreneur journey and, and there's a lot to cover today from where you are to where you're going to your current business. So I want to start with the fact that you are still finishing up at Michigan State. Right? Mistaken. You should be graduating this year. You've lost two companies and you're about to move across the country for the next stage of the journey.
00:01:50:07 - 00:02:00:07
Rob Napoli
So I should tell us a little bit about where you are today and you're just kind of personal journey and your current situation. I'll get into the entrepreneurship piece of it.
00:02:00:13 - 00:02:26:18
Josh Cooper
In a long time coming. Many people, including myself, said it and might not be able to get done, but we've seen it. I want to give Michigan State a lot of credit. When I first got to school, they didn't really have a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. Today, they're ranked in the top 15 in the nation for entrepreneurial services, specifically for this.
00:02:26:19 - 00:02:50:04
Josh Cooper
In second or so I can confidently say the resources of Michigan State and their investment and interest in helping entrepreneurs grow has been a major asset, and I don't think we would have had the growth that we had over the last couple of years without the resources there. So huge shout out to them.
00:02:51:09 - 00:03:13:16
Rob Napoli
Love that. And so, you know, you started Skoop and 2018, but prior to that you back in 2015 as almost say you founded a mental health awareness teen led initiative. Tell me a little about that initiative in that early, you know, early journey of your entrepreneurship.
00:03:14:16 - 00:03:55:21
Josh Cooper
Yeah, right on the way that you did your homework. Yeah. So somewhere around late, late 2015 or 2016, there's kind of it's some some tragic, tragic events that occurred in my high school. There are essentially five suicides that happened in about 14 months. One of those was a teacher. And so me and one of my best friends, Ryan, we were super kind of frustrated with the school's response, more specifically the lack of response.
00:03:57:09 - 00:04:24:09
Josh Cooper
And so we kind of took matters into our own hands and we wanted to create an awareness campaign. We called that matter, and it all started with the first ever youth matter. We interviewed was designed to be a week where we absolutely attacked and addressed the mental health specifically in the public domain, which was very kind of contrary.
00:04:24:11 - 00:05:02:10
Josh Cooper
Back in 2015, it was always a topic that was kind of sheltered and put to the backburner and also one that didn't really happen publicly. And so the whole idea here, the methodology was can we bring an abundant amount of resources and speakers and kind of statistics to the public domain and talk about them openly. And that's really what we did the the first semester, which I believe happened in the fall of 2016, and it was wildly successful.
00:05:02:10 - 00:05:31:13
Josh Cooper
Dozens of individuals kind of came to us, came to our resources and said, hey, I didn't know I was alone, was kind of it's mental illnesses and mental various mental issues that many, many people were having. And we kind of worked hard to change the methodology around how we talked about it openly. And we've since gave it to numerous schools in the area.
00:05:31:13 - 00:06:10:17
Rob Napoli
And I mean, it's one that's hard, especially in high school, and that just, you, you know, many of us go by without working that kind of tragedy of want to have four can only imagine and the pain that that this school must have been running through and I'm in awe of you every time I talk to you a little bit more about your journey, I continue to just be impressed because, you know, in a place where you could have been, you could have been very hurting and, you know, reserved.
00:06:10:17 - 00:06:23:14
Rob Napoli
You decided to stand up instead and say, hey, we need to have a much more public conversation about this. Then back in 2015, I mean that you're from the Detroit area, right? Michigan.
00:06:23:23 - 00:06:26:00
Josh Cooper
Yeah.
00:06:26:00 - 00:06:50:07
Rob Napoli
Yeah, it was you know, I my I had a family. I have a brother who had some mental health issues as a kid and at a young age, and we didn't know how to handle it and we didn't talk about it much. And, you know, being in the Midwest as well, you know, seeing a therapist to talk about mental health wasn't very widely done.
00:06:51:24 - 00:07:16:10
Rob Napoli
You know, even now I was thinking the 2020 Olympics with Simone Biles stepping up with Naomi Osaka, talking about it publicly, that these athletes who have a lot going on. I think it's such a big piece. And, you know, one of the things that I thought was kind of interesting when I moved to New York is everybody has a therapist out here and everybody's like, I talk to my therapist about this.
00:07:16:10 - 00:07:37:24
Rob Napoli
It's it's normalized and it's healthy in a way that I know I love being from the Midwest. I still love that. But like people I associate back home, you don't talk about that. And, you know, for us growing up, it was a very different I think it's healthy that we have that outlet and we can we can express that.
00:07:37:24 - 00:08:02:07
Rob Napoli
I think that's amazing that a high school like the fuck that I was doing in high school, you know, like to start something like this in high school is amazing. So I just want to say kudos. I was at a long walk for a drink of water, but what I'm sorry that you had to go through that. But to I am very impressed with how you were able to step up and speak out into a public domain and showing that entrepreneurial spirit early.
00:08:03:06 - 00:08:05:19
Rob Napoli
And so after high school. Go ahead. Just that.
00:08:06:01 - 00:08:35:15
Josh Cooper
No, I was just going to say, I think it in hindsight, it certainly didn't realize it at the time. But in hindsight, it really kind of shaped the entrepreneurial bonds within me. There is so much there's so much mud that we had to much through. There was so much that got in our way. And so many people who didn't want us to to do these initiatives.
00:08:36:00 - 00:09:09:04
Josh Cooper
And and that really riled me up. And I really it at the time, it wasn't designed to be entrepreneurial at all. It was really genuine, genuinely out of pure frustration. And I think that's kind of shaped a lot of my in the way that I think about entrepreneurship in general. It's a lot of the things that I have done and planned to do are simply done out of pure frustration that they're not already happening.
00:09:09:22 - 00:09:35:03
Josh Cooper
And in a really, really grinds me here is a few. Well, when I see kind of how I feel things should be and when they're not that way in it. Kind of like you mentioned in the beginning here sparks and entrepreneur and then they're firing me and I just have to put life on hold. I have to make I can't sleep.
00:09:35:03 - 00:09:50:02
Josh Cooper
I can't think about anything else other than attacking that. So it's a super, super, um, like fire furnace that burns is kind of the way that I would describe it. Well, and.
00:09:50:16 - 00:10:17:11
Rob Napoli
I think that a lot of entrepreneurship is that it's, you see a problem. I have a frustration that others aren't taking into account and you're like, wait, there is a solution for this. And we need to figure that out. And then, you know, one of the things that you brought up and I recorded an episode with Greg Larkin, who entrepreneur and entrepreneur, and he was saying, you know, in order to be successful and know that you are like, you're going forward, you need to be looking.
00:10:17:22 - 00:10:36:18
Rob Napoli
You're not like going out for a conflict, right? But you want opposition, not validation. But people are telling you, Oh, it's great, it's great, it's great. They're not helping you. Sure. You know, it's like when you have a sales call and they give you an objection and they push back on you, It's like, hey, they're interested because they're asking me a question to push back on it versus like, Hey, it sounds great, but not interested.
00:10:37:00 - 00:11:03:09
Rob Napoli
Like they'll buy you off really easy. But if they start asking questions back and there's opposition, it means you're actually validating that this is a conversation that needs to be had. It's a problem that needs to be fixed, that people don't realize they have and not think it's a problem that we need to educate them into fixing. So I like how you said that that shaped your journey because after that you went to DECA, which is a program for preparing emerging leaders and entrepreneurship.
00:11:03:23 - 00:11:30:17
Rob Napoli
Right? So here you are going into the Emerging Leaders program and then you go to Michigan State and start a business. So did you know before high school you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Did you know you want to be entrepreneur when he joined DECA? Or is it after high school? That was a pivotal moment. Like when did you decide, like, I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to create big change and to create big change that has to be like, where did this mentality come from for you?
00:11:31:14 - 00:11:59:04
Josh Cooper
The the, the like the terminology entrepreneur, like, never really came into the whole that was that word didn't wasn't really a vibrant part of my vocabulary into college. I was I always knew I wanted to spark change, specifically change for the better of the vast majority of people. That was always kind of instilled in me from a really young age.
00:11:59:04 - 00:12:31:08
Josh Cooper
And I used to think public policy would be a good way to do that. And so there are a lot of years of middle school and high school where I thought about pursuing a career in public policy, being like an elected official that kind of thought that that that whole route. And then very quickly into high school, somewhere around probably 2013, 2014, I started thinking to myself, you know, there's there's a lot more that I could do in the private sector.
00:12:31:14 - 00:12:57:04
Josh Cooper
And that's when my my focus shifted. There's less legal red tape that you have to go through. There's less hoops that you have to jump through and I think can have more of a direct, more of a macro impact in the in the private sector. And so from that point on, I kind of looked away from public policy, have never looked back and move more towards the public sector I'm sorry, the private sector.
00:12:57:04 - 00:13:08:24
Josh Cooper
And then like the actual term entrepreneur came into my vocabulary when it actually came time to kind of monetize some of those projects that I was working on.
00:13:09:12 - 00:13:25:12
Rob Napoli
Um, you grew up with a phone in your hand and it's duration. So like, what was that inspiration? Was it your parents? Was it somebody, was it the access to information? What inspired you at 13, 14, 15 to want to create change.
00:13:26:08 - 00:13:32:10
Rob Napoli
And spark change for the good? Like what was that? Was there a catalyst or was this just.
00:13:34:17 - 00:14:04:08
Josh Cooper
I mean, there there probably a lot of catalysts, one of which I had a real frustration with with the school system. I mean, one of the things that was really frustrating for me growing up is very early on school and I didn't really get along. And I want to be really careful with how I've seen this because I just want to kind of set the record straight for for a second here.
00:14:04:18 - 00:14:42:03
Josh Cooper
I am a proponent of going college. I am a proponent of getting an education. And one of the things that was really frustrating for me was I did not like the system. I didn't like kind of lazy teaching. I was the kind of kid who said, okay, if you're going to reuse material that you've been using for the past ten years, then I'm going to go to the same websites that you use to print off your worksheet from and go to the answer section because you took a loop or out and I'm going to take you out.
00:14:42:09 - 00:15:21:14
Josh Cooper
And so very quickly into the school, I was like ten, 11, 12. I started getting really stabbed with kind of the curriculum component at school. And one of the things that really, really sparked a fire in me was my objection to the school system was always interpreted by both my parents and my teachers as we got another classic case of a kid who doesn't care to learn and a kid who doesn't care to, like, develop his skill sets.
00:15:21:14 - 00:15:50:12
Josh Cooper
And that was never the case. And I always knew that was never the case. I have only expected it my my thirst for knowledge. And it's gotten to the point where in the past year or so it's hard for me to say this because I love music so much. But your music has honestly gone from like that. The most common thing that I do in my past to like one of the smallest things and it's all filled with tik toks.
00:15:50:12 - 00:16:14:11
Josh Cooper
YouTube, tons of information. And so I think to go back to your question, the thing that really frustrated me and really made me want to start to like catalyze an entrepreneurial spirit was I didn't like the system of the school system that I was in, but always had such a deep thirst for knowledge and care for learning.
00:16:15:12 - 00:16:24:10
Josh Cooper
And so I figured that one of the best ways that I could kind of spark change and do the things that I wanted to do is kind of be your own boss and take the entrepreneurial route.
00:16:25:05 - 00:17:01:17
Rob Napoli
And I love that so much. And the fact that, you know, I went to school and I was a decent student, sure, But I didn't study. I didn't need to. I could retain information. I didn't actually feel I'm a procrastinator. And in fact, I needed to because I knew I could pass based off just my wits. And the professors that I really loved were the ones that I kind of the challenged me that were hands on learning, that were not, you know, and this is not a shot at professors out there because they don't give me a professor that's always been a teacher.
00:17:01:17 - 00:17:19:19
Rob Napoli
And like I looked at a teaching degree, I have a lot of friends of teachers and especially middle school grad school teachers, like what they do is like amazing. And I can never do that. But when I got to especially high school and in college looking at I need somebody to teach me why that's important, that theory, give me the one that's a millennial mindset.
00:17:20:13 - 00:17:40:11
Rob Napoli
But you saw that really early. And so I have that same feeling with you. And it's you know, many people know this, you and I. So we're contacts. Josh I met Joshua one through went through one of my bootcamp programs is half day group which is how I got to know him and I've just kind of been following along and we've had a couple of conversations since then after the show and learning a lot about him.
00:17:40:11 - 00:17:59:17
Rob Napoli
One of things that I want to do is be a traveling adjunct professor of entrepreneurship and do like a 3 to 5 because the kind of rank this is a little bit like when I hear what they're teaching at some these schools and entrepreneurship, it's so much theory and it's still using Uber and Starbucks and all these things, which is great.
00:17:59:17 - 00:18:17:24
Rob Napoli
But like, yo, Uber's story is not relevant. You're not going to have a great idea with a shitty deck and get funding and then think that someone's going to give you 5 million dollars for business like it's a fucking grind. But there's like, I know if you read this book, have you read this book before called Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal.
00:18:18:16 - 00:18:44:02
Rob Napoli
Now you should read it. It's about why videogames make us better and how they can change the world. Like I've always been a fan of videogames, and the reason why is like, my brain works so fast and the process is creating repeatable patterns. And it's a really interesting book about, I think, where the future of society can go through other alternative ways of learning and how our education system needs to adapt to that.
00:18:44:02 - 00:19:03:18
Rob Napoli
Because I agree, going to college is not for everyone. But what I learned in college was structure like. I learned how to share my own. I learned how to overcome adversity. I learned that I didn't have a safety net to volunteer, that I had to be accountable for my actions. So I think that there's a lot there. But anyways, Reality Is Broken is a great book that I think you should love based on that mindset.
00:19:04:06 - 00:19:23:24
Rob Napoli
So you're featuring this mindset and this mindset for you started early and it really had to do more with just frustrations of life before I even knew what entrepreneurship was. Right? And so we get into so then we get into Michigan State. And I want to you know, you said at the beginning of the show, Michigan State did a great job creating an entrepreneurial space.
00:19:24:15 - 00:19:55:23
Rob Napoli
And you had shared with me previously that you were going to school and you had some frustrations with the curriculum. And at that time you didn't like getting your own campus. And so you started an interesting company that was the initial start to school. And then you worked at Michigan State to do something really cool. So I walked that journey because this is another amazing, just like mindset shift of like you taking a little bit of your own education in the school system, listening to you and creating a program around it.
00:19:55:23 - 00:19:58:22
Rob Napoli
So as you share that story that you share earlier.
00:19:59:13 - 00:20:23:15
Josh Cooper
Sure. So back in high school, I started doing a lot of digital advertising for local businesses, specifically local retail stores. So kind of the whole Shopify world, the e-commerce world came in high school and some back back backtracked a little bit. So I actually started an e-commerce store like my junior year of high school where I was telling people.
00:20:23:16 - 00:20:42:04
Rob Napoli
I was listening, This guy is impressive. Like you starting school, like he started businesses in high, junior high high school initiatives, programs. I mean, every time I talk to you, Josh, I just sorry for interrupting. I just keep noticing. Impressed with your entrepreneurial mindset. Just not even it's name felt. Just your attitude of like, let's go create and build.
00:20:42:08 - 00:21:04:15
Josh Cooper
Oh, absolutely. I think you have to. You have to. And so for me, in high school, going through kind of the whole e-commerce world, that was a super new concept. Today it's super mainstream and cocoa and really pushed a lot of these retail stores to move to the ecommerce world. But back in 2014, 2015, this is still a really the infrastructure wasn't fully set up.
00:21:04:15 - 00:21:33:18
Josh Cooper
I mean, today you can literally start a T-shirt company from your apartment, never touch the product fulfillment centers across the country handles distribution and digital advertising. The drive traffic to it and so forth. The whole infrastructure was built set up. You could start that business overnight. That wasn't the case back, back five, six years ago. And so I was responsible for specifically driving traffic to these local retail stores, online stores on their websites.
00:21:33:18 - 00:22:00:08
Josh Cooper
And so some time around when I was like 16, 17, I was deploying a lot of budget to Facebook and Google ad campaigns and I started to learn the algorithms and systems really well. How do you digitally target people online based off their behaviors, their interests, and specifically drive them towards products that they desire? And so when I started to get to college, mobility was a big frustration point for me.
00:22:00:19 - 00:22:28:05
Josh Cooper
Michigan State University is a beautiful campus, but a massive campus. It's really, really big. It's very wide, very, very long. You could have two, three, four mile walk to class, depending on where you are on campus or way where you need to go. And so this is the first time in my life I grew up in suburbia. And so I was lucky enough to have a car at the tail end of high school.
00:22:28:05 - 00:22:54:21
Josh Cooper
And so I always knew how to get myself where I needed to go. And so this was my first city living situation and it was very new to me. The need to figure out transportation really got a lot of viable options. I did get to school. I know we're talking about a young man, but I got to school before ubers where absolutely everywhere I'm going around there.
00:22:54:22 - 00:22:59:07
Josh Cooper
They're talking about bird scooter, lime scooter. None of that stuff existed yet.
00:22:59:16 - 00:23:02:13
Rob Napoli
And so that's that's all going to last two years on.
00:23:03:12 - 00:23:04:10
Josh Cooper
I mean, it's super.
00:23:04:13 - 00:23:15:00
Rob Napoli
Duper still new. And Uber was big for the last four, four years or so, but in smaller, smaller cities, you didn't have that many options.
00:23:16:02 - 00:23:40:15
Josh Cooper
It's exactly right. So for me, I started to think to myself, well, I'm kind of like a bro college student here. I don't have a car and I need to get around campus. And yet somehow it is multi, multi, national, multibillion dollar corporations are able to offset the cost of access to their platforms. Google, Facebook, YouTube, the Weather Channel, Dictionary.com.
00:23:40:15 - 00:24:04:20
Josh Cooper
The list goes on and on and on. Somehow they're able to provide a really amazing service to their end users. They don't charge access to the platform. So those end users and the other some of the most profitable businesses in the world. And so my thought process here was could we leverage the same digital ad business model but do it in the physical world and specifically apply the business model to mobility?
00:24:05:05 - 00:24:30:09
Josh Cooper
And so in 2017 and early 2018, that's mobility getting to fruition. And we became the first micro-mobility short distance transportation company to offset the cost of access to our transportation because we monetize them on the back end using digital advertising. So we took a screen similar to the one that's behind me right now, which is a 43 inch screen.
00:24:30:17 - 00:24:51:00
Josh Cooper
We were the first to figure out how to weatherproof it, how to weatherize it, and how to secure it to a bike taxi. I heard of a pedicab workshop for you guys over in Austin, Texas, near Santa monica or New York City Times Square. I know you know what I'm talking about for everybody, kind of with the central regions of the country, you I have no idea what I'm talking about.
00:24:51:09 - 00:25:14:04
Josh Cooper
It just threw me out the rickshaw by taxi vehicle the second you see it and you'll be like, Oh, I know exactly what that is. So these are bikes. They're both taxis with a cab attached to them. And so we hired a bunch of student drivers, pretty much just my friends. And I said to them, Guys, we need people to hop on these bikes.
00:25:14:10 - 00:25:40:14
Josh Cooper
They've got a flat screen TV strapped to the back of them. We figured out how to rig up power to it, so right, we ended up just kind of hustling around town, going door to door to apartment complexes, pizza shops, bars, everything in between and we sold them some ad space and they're going to do something like 55, $60,000 of that sales in the first year were two bike taxis and took all that cash.
00:25:40:14 - 00:26:03:14
Josh Cooper
We invested in like seven more bikes. And so, you know, the biggest free and password to buy for 12-14 months in. And then here we are, we scan the two cities, we're operating fleets in two cities, we're giving like 10,000 rides, 100,000 and ad sales and the businesses are scaling. This is one bird and lime scooters come to the market.
00:26:04:06 - 00:26:31:16
Josh Cooper
These guys are raising like $700 million, three or $4 billion valuations. I just cannot wrap my head around these numbers and I'm like, It's up. We got to scale. And so we ended up getting our fleet up to three or four cities. We had fleets all the way from the campus that we saw on the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, and that's when things got really tricky.
00:26:32:11 - 00:27:04:20
Josh Cooper
We didn't have a software system to remotely control extreme weather on the roads and we didn't have an on the ground sales team to sell our ad space for it. The whole business was dependent on our ability to get local sponsorships so we could do a system that was local sponsorships, see all of that. And we used to kind of analogy here, it's going to be a transportation service for the people by the people funded and promoted by local businesses.
00:27:06:08 - 00:27:25:23
Josh Cooper
Long story short, we realized we didn't have adequate software to remotely control our screens. We didn't have an adequate software to sell our ad space online. That's how we completely coveted the business. And I said to myself, If we're going to be the next burden on the globe with our fleet, we need a better tech stack, something that's scalable and something that would be sustainable.
00:27:25:24 - 00:27:53:17
Josh Cooper
And allow us to support fleets around the globe. We ultimately got out of the business of operating the taxi services ourselves. We got into the business of building software that we wished we had and that's where we've been ever since. And today we have a software system called signage. Our software is can remotely controlled digital screens and all shapes and sizes from small tablets to the screens on our bike taxis all the way up to highway billboards, Jumbotron TV.
00:27:54:02 - 00:28:10:01
Josh Cooper
And then we have an e-commerce component that allows local and national advertisers to go into a specific venues website, put the advertising out tab, look at the digital inventory, the digital screens available and like. And so it's.
00:28:10:02 - 00:28:26:04
Rob Napoli
Pretty much programmatic and the fact that you don't actually have to be selling them ad space and picking up the phone, they can go and buy what they want when they want. And it gives a cost at that time, right? Like up and down based on traffic and time of day, etc..
00:28:26:11 - 00:28:49:02
Josh Cooper
It's all the infrastructure that you would need to to monetize their empty walls or their monetized digital screens. And then it's it's a really easy interface for passionate business owners who just simply want to share their their important branding messages in the places where their consumers work less and less.
00:28:49:17 - 00:29:16:09
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I think that's amazing. And you know, we're doing all this through college and understanding kind of this this world. I've been running a business and so that also affected kind of school. And this is where Michigan State really stepped in and provided a lot of support. So I want to give you a chance to kind of share a little bit about how they supported you quickly, what they did to kind of step up and how, you know, for those they're are out there listening.
00:29:16:09 - 00:29:27:04
Rob Napoli
And Josh talked about Michigan State, that internship program, like he was a big catalyst in helping pull something together, at least from my view in So how do they step up the call and like, hey, we're going to support your business?
00:29:27:04 - 00:29:57:09
Josh Cooper
Well, it certainly, you know, they definitely didn't seek me out and make it clear their systems are great and they and their services are phenomenal and some of the best in the world. And it took a lot of development to get it all to come to fruition. And so when I started to lay down my capital to scale businesses, there's a lot of investor pressure to drop out of school and focus full time on the business and I get it.
00:29:57:09 - 00:30:16:22
Josh Cooper
I get it. You work hard for your money as an investor. It's taken you an entire career to amass that capital in. Suddenly you're going to entrust 18, 19 year olds with your cash. You want to know that they're going to put it to good use and you want to know they're going to put 120% of their time into deploying their capital efficiently.
00:30:17:04 - 00:30:39:09
Josh Cooper
So I understand it. And school to many of them was was a big barrier. And so many of them said, you know, listen, if you're going to take my investment, I need you full time on this. And that was really tricky and that was really hard. There is a real inflection point there somewhere. I'm going into sophomore year where I just couldn't bring myself to go into the classroom.
00:30:40:23 - 00:31:04:02
Josh Cooper
I remember calling my dad and saying to him, You know, I, I don't know if I can do this. I can't do both at the same time. I don't have enough bandwidth. It's eating me alive. And can small sidenote Sorry. He said, okay, you should take your coffee shop. I'm going to be up in East Lansing. I'm going to come to campus tomorrow morning.
00:31:04:02 - 00:31:27:02
Josh Cooper
We're going to talk. But he came to me with that notepad. We sat down the next day and he line item every single thing that that my life depends on my my phone bill, my electricity, utilities bill, my apartment, rent my car, every single thing. And he said, right now we share some of your responsible for paying for some of them today.
00:31:27:09 - 00:31:52:24
Josh Cooper
I've taken on some of these. You know that you're going to have to take on 100% of these expenses. The second impulse, if you drop out and if you don't pursue a degree, you totally fine. I will love you. I'm your father. I will support you. All I need is for you to write me a check for all of these line items that I'm currently paying for.
00:31:52:24 - 00:32:12:16
Josh Cooper
And so he's going to put in perspective for me here that it's important to me that you go to college and get a degree and I will support you all the way through. I are incredibly blessed and lucky to have had a family that was able to put me through college and support me through. But they made it very clear you're going to get this degree.
00:32:12:16 - 00:32:40:09
Josh Cooper
They're not going to get the degree and you're going to sacrifice all financial support from us. And so together, me and him carved out a way for me, figure out an avenue for me to go part time. I worked with the university and I figure out a road to the degrees going part time. And I also worked with my college, which is the communication school, to figure out a way to get internship credit for working on the business outside.
00:32:40:09 - 00:33:07:02
Josh Cooper
And so together, my my advisors helped me create a path that forced me to go to school year round, taking summer classes 12 months of the year. I was in school, I was only taking about 6 to 7%. After we were together, we figured it out. I think where Michigan State deserves a lot of credit. Is there something wrong about Every student can be a business student, but every student can be a student with a business.
00:33:07:02 - 00:33:40:12
Josh Cooper
If we provide them with an ecosystem that surrounds them with other like minded students. And then we specifically bring resources to them that can help them expand their businesses. And so I think they deserve the most credit is they just understand the mindset. Unlike many other schools across the world, they said, okay, if you want to be great for our business school, then they've specifically allocated capital and resources to building these systems and places online where students can go for other businesses.
00:33:40:12 - 00:33:41:20
Josh Cooper
And they deserve a lot of credit for that.
00:33:41:22 - 00:33:56:16
Rob Napoli
And I love that. But what I love for that story even more is just your your reasoning and rationale. The fact that you wouldn't go made that happen for yourself. The wisest thing that they did, you had to go make that happen. And, you know, we glorify, you know, Zuckerberg and these people that dropped out of college to start a business and that's viable.
00:33:56:16 - 00:34:16:11
Rob Napoli
You could be a millionaire or a billionaire, etc.. But also there is value in what you believe in and in why you went to go finish a degree for those whatever reason that may be. And, you know, we we saying you live in a world where it has to be one or the other and instead you sat down with dad first and then you sat out the school and said, I want to do both.
00:34:17:01 - 00:34:36:20
Rob Napoli
How do we make this happen? How do you support me and the things I do? Because. Right, everyone can have a business. Everyone would be a business student doesn't mean everyone should, right? It takes something special, not only to have a business but to have a business that you scale in to multiple cities, to have a business that you scale, you know, doing 55k revenue in a year.
00:34:36:24 - 00:34:56:10
Rob Napoli
That's not those are things that are really impressive. And so the fact that you are able to work with an organization and work with people to create an ecosystem, that to me is what I find super impressive and it also kind of goes into what Skoop is all about from a business model and the way that you're creating that the software.
00:34:56:19 - 00:35:15:05
Rob Napoli
And you know, I know we're getting close times that I want to kind of switch gears for this, but one of the things I want to say that I find really impressive about Skoop and the story of how you grew this business where it is today is in that vein. Over the last two years, Skoop won the 2019 South by Southwest.
00:35:15:05 - 00:35:48:13
Rob Napoli
Was it top top student Startup in North America Award? You're a top, top ten finalist, if I'm not mistaken, there are 2019 tech TechCrunch Disrupt. I had a straight disrupt pitch and then they won the 2024 21 challenge, the 2020 Las Vegas. They were part of the Michigan Celebrate Small Business Awards, and they also won the AWS Amazon for Science Challenge and that's super impressive.
00:35:48:13 - 00:36:10:20
Rob Napoli
And so those are out there listening. You know, you can you can hear about like these awards about what Josh and his team has done. But as you're hearing Josh, his story and what I what I really love about your journey is that while you have all this passion and energy and desire, it's the fact that you haven't you've always been able to create an ecosystem around you to support that, right?
00:36:10:20 - 00:36:32:02
Rob Napoli
Skoop is nothing without your friends jumping on pedicabs without the you have currently without your dad coming to college, helping with that Michigan State, stepping in without, you know, partnering up their friend and looking at the school and where it needs to without working with local businesses. And for those out there listening, entrepreneurship is two things. It's a business and a mindset, right?
00:36:32:02 - 00:36:59:01
Rob Napoli
And if you want to be entrepreneur, mind if you want to be an entrepreneur, if want to, both those things in your life, you need to have the right ecosystem allows you to understand that it's not a nice to have to build a community. It is necessary to have a community around you, an ecosystem around you of support to lean on when things get tough, where that people time, energy efforts, products, services, scale, etc..
00:36:59:01 - 00:37:22:02
Rob Napoli
And so I love that. I think that's a big takeaway. It's allowed you from Junior high today to create a large amount of your success because you're able to bring those things together and to move on from this. Right? So still you're building you've got an amazing platform, you've raised some small funding or I think you've gotten some small funding early on.
00:37:22:12 - 00:37:43:07
Rob Napoli
You're hoping to steer this thing to the moon. Yeah, but pun intended. There you have bigger goals. So let's talk about your passion as a Gen Z entrepreneur that started initiatives and businesses, where do you see Skoop going and what what are the things that you're passionate about moving forward that you want to see the manifested in your journey of life?
00:37:44:10 - 00:38:10:22
Josh Cooper
Sure. It's just so service. It. We have less than 10% of of billboards in the country. There's about 25 million words, and I'm using that term loosely. I'm not just talking about billboards, talking about the signs that you see all throughout the place that you got. Less than 10% of those are digital. It's much more efficient. It's much more cost effective and much more impactful to have those be digitized assets.
00:38:10:22 - 00:38:53:19
Josh Cooper
And so maybe a long way to go with our adoption and transformation to digital and then once we do have a huge network of digital screens around the world, we need a lot of plans to kind of reimagine and reinvent the way that humans interface with digital billboards and how they interact with screens around them. So more to come on that I think for me personally and way of future businesses and what kind of technologies that I want to work on, there's kind of three key areas that I am paying very close attention to can kind of sum them up to just very generally speaking, artificial general intelligence in the way that it can be
00:38:53:19 - 00:39:18:03
Josh Cooper
used specifically for biotech analogy, I'm very fascinated by kind of the the the pre predicting of of of diagnosis before symptoms even occur I think is incredibly important. We can save billions of lives. So doing that I would definitely love to play a role in that technology climate is so so it's so important we all have to play a role in that.
00:39:19:00 - 00:39:44:16
Josh Cooper
It's about mitigation and it's also about adaptation. So I want to play a role and that helping the globe mitigate their energy consumption, making sure that we're using as many renewables streams of energy as humanly possible. But unfortunately we're past the point where that's going to make enough of an impact. And so we have to go to the adaptation route and to carbon capture, cloud seeding.
00:39:44:16 - 00:40:11:00
Josh Cooper
There's a lot of technologies that I'm starting to study to figure out how we can avoid a climate disaster. And then the last one is I've been super, super passionate about this one post middle school since I was about 1112 years old. It's making life multiplanetary. I think that Yuan says it best a future where humans are living on multiple planets is just simply more exciting than one where everything we know and everybody that we've ever known is limited to one planet.
00:40:11:00 - 00:40:35:06
Josh Cooper
I can make. I can go on and on and on. We probably do a 50 hours podcast and all the reasons why it's so important that be multiplanetary. But kind of three categories artificial intelligence, climate and making life Multi-Planetary. I think if I could look back to when when, when my, my, my dying days tomahawk live there well, in the future.
00:40:35:06 - 00:40:43:08
Josh Cooper
But if I could look back and know that I played some type of role in the advancement of those three categories, I think it be a very.
00:40:46:03 - 00:41:15:00
Rob Napoli
I think it's wildly impressive. And for anyone that ever thinks that the world, if you don't understand and look at look at the youth of this world and just not be impressed with the autumn information that we have now, there's a dangerous thing with having too much information and sifting through what's real with with the amount of information we have and the amount of tools in this digital age that we have, we have the knowledge, the skills, especially at a younger age, to make real change.
00:41:15:01 - 00:41:36:10
Rob Napoli
I think it's really important and it's something that I feel really passionate about and why I do a lot of work with Millennial and Gen Z astronauts and really love to work with these younger business owners is because change happens there. And and, you know, you make a good point. Multi-Planetary I think would be really interesting. You know, everyone's like, why do we go multi-planetary if we're not saving our planet?
00:41:36:10 - 00:42:01:05
Rob Napoli
Well, there's kind of two sides to that. You can save our planet by releasing some of that burden as well. Yeah, there's, there's just so much things that I think need to meet and could be a super intriguing thing. And I know we could go on for hours and maybe do like a part two podcast. I feel like we need to do like a Joe Rogan experience and talk space and space and entrepreneurship.
00:42:01:05 - 00:42:27:18
Rob Napoli
And we'll definitely do that because it's something that I find really intriguing. Having worked with so many different entrepreneurs and startups in a number of different spaces. But I'm excited for you and those that are listening. If you're not following Josh and don't know what he's building, you need to be following him and pay attention. And so you're actually about to make a big life move, right?
00:42:27:18 - 00:42:39:08
Rob Napoli
And this episode will be airing in October. So when you're filming it, it's like it's going to be on October. You know, we're filming coordinates of it early, but you're about to by the time that you this episode plays, you'll have made a big life move to Where.
00:42:40:23 - 00:42:42:18
Josh Cooper
To Last in California.
00:42:43:18 - 00:42:50:23
Rob Napoli
And why in a L.A. What about L.A. is drawing you to take to next take the next step of your journey, both personally and professionally.
00:42:51:17 - 00:43:18:22
Josh Cooper
You hit it, you hit it earlier. Ecosystem is everything. And that's been one of the really challenging parts about COVID. I think all the many just people in general and specifically the entrepreneurs of the world. I'm a kid from the Midwest. I'm from Detroit originally just outside the city of Detroit. I've watched the city of Detroit go through a complete Detroit crumble all the way back to a rebirth and revitalization.
00:43:18:22 - 00:43:45:18
Josh Cooper
I'm coming. I'd love to come back to Detroit and play a role in the in the growth in this ecosystem. But I think in order to do that, very impactful. Yeah, I need to step outside of my bubble. And I do I need to sit around myself by other young entrepreneurs in the Midwest. It's been kind of challenging for me to find kind of those abundant ecosystems of young entrepreneurs who work like me and think like me.
00:43:45:22 - 00:44:08:13
Josh Cooper
And so I think over the next couple of years, I, I, I intend. On making the leap to a couple of ecosystems across the country, if not the world, to surround myself by others who are in a similar position, young entrepreneurs who want to change the world with innovative technologies. So L.A. is just kind of starting number one and stepping outside of this ecosystem.
00:44:08:13 - 00:44:18:07
Josh Cooper
And I certainly have my eye on a couple of other bubbles that are seeing entrepreneurial growth. Before I make my way back here to the wonderful city of Detroit.
00:44:19:05 - 00:44:29:16
Rob Napoli
You know, I mean, I here in New York's a pretty cool fucking place to be for advertising, I'm just saying. But I'd love to have you out in New York. You meet your person, but maybe, maybe one day in the future. I love that. I mean it
00:44:30:03 - 00:44:51:20
Rob Napoli
Certainly in the Midwest. Good, good. I mean, I grew up in Midwest by myself, grew up in Kansas, in Missouri. I have a lot of pride for it. Ended up in Des Moines for five years at a college there. And I always felt that I had a fire to leave. I didn't know what that looked like. And it wasn't until I met the beautiful man that I became my wife until May A through much of the dating, I've gone to Europe to get a master's.
00:44:51:20 - 00:45:06:06
Rob Napoli
I don't do long distance either. And this before it gets tougher you come with. And I was like, Fuck it, let's go and move to Milan, Italy lived in Italy for two years. I'd never been to New York. I never been outside the U.S. to Italy, I'd never been to New York. I moved here in year, five years and love it.
00:45:06:13 - 00:45:23:12
Rob Napoli
You know, at some point, I think going back to the Midwest and making an impact somewhere, you know, what am I? In fact, I really want to have a scholarship in my name and high school in my college to be able to help somebody like open some dreams. So I'm with you. I think that there's a lot to be said about going out, experiencing the world.
00:45:23:12 - 00:45:47:21
Rob Napoli
It's a big place for sure. It's not a new thing, but it's a big place. And to have those different experiences really help come back and create innovative change. And I love that you're taking that personal professional growth to go out to L.A. and take that next step. The journey and, you know, scale scandal in a business. But your entrepreneurial passions to potentially help make big change in the world some.
00:45:48:02 - 00:46:12:10
Rob Napoli
Josh, we've got just a couple of minutes left. I want to ask I always ask everyone on my show these these these last few questions. So we're going to go into it. What do you think your superpower is.
00:46:12:10 - 00:46:51:06
Josh Cooper
The work you and I really believe that I allow work because I'll either collapse and and die before I beat you or I will put everything on pause to make sure that I'm pushing forward. And it's not always about competition. Sometimes it's about just doing whatever it takes to get the innovations to come to the market that we need to to make kind of what we're attempting to do possible or make life changing technologies come to fruition.
00:46:51:06 - 00:47:21:03
Josh Cooper
And so I am I'm wired. It's a choice, too. I think a lot of people is laziness or procrastination as a excuse. I'm lazy and a procrastinator at my core too. I really, really am. And but sometimes you just have to kick yourself in the face and say, Get up, get to work. And so that's why one of my biggest fear is people have got a chip on their shoulder.
00:47:21:09 - 00:47:30:16
Josh Cooper
These are some of our graduates. They're dangerous people because they'll outwork anybody. And I think my superpower is my work ethic.
00:47:31:03 - 00:47:59:06
Rob Napoli
I love that. I think work ethic and endurance, that last place is key. And I had a great episode of John Glenn. We talk about living with a chip on your shoulder, and that's something that I've always felt in my life as well. And I think it does. It's it's what drives me. What is what does one book or resource show a piece of content that you would recommend right now for entrepreneurs?
00:47:59:06 - 00:48:27:12
Josh Cooper
I know you said one, but I'm going to give you two, so I think everybody should be reading the new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Just just this is an issue that is honest, capable. If you feel like you're kind of at the tail end of your life and you're maybe in the Q4 of your life and you won't be around to see some of these climate impacts hit you, you are wrong because you're seeing them today.
00:48:27:17 - 00:48:56:08
Josh Cooper
So please get educated on what you can do to make your life more sustainable. Every little bit will help the next one. I'd recommend this book I recently read called The High Frontier by a guy named Gerard O'Neil, and this guy is fascinating. He makes the case for why the best living arrangement for an exponential species such as humanity is actually off the planet on these orbiting space stations.
00:48:56:14 - 00:49:10:15
Josh Cooper
He talks about how we would build them, why we would build them, how they would be funded, how they would be sustainable. And Mars is a mind blowing. So those would be the two.
00:49:10:15 - 00:49:18:22
Rob Napoli
I've never read the high frontier. I want to have to, but it makes me think of a lot of different movies, like not only Wall-E, a lot.
00:49:18:22 - 00:49:20:01
Josh Cooper
Of movies that based on it.
00:49:21:05 - 00:49:49:17
Rob Napoli
But I think that's going to be really interesting. So I'll definitely put that on my list. As you know, I'm a consumer of books and content. So the final question as we hit time here is what advice or lasting message I would give to Gen Z is millennial age, but anyone that's entrepreneur or wanting to be an astronaut there, if you're looking at starting an entrepreneur journey, what would that kind of piece of advice be to those listening in bear nation?
00:49:49:17 - 00:50:27:09
Josh Cooper
I'm taking some of the grants off and going south, and I never know if that's so perfect. The complexity of issues in the world is is growing exponentially, and the adverse impacts of these issues are compounded. And that is I don't know that if you're if you're a young person today and you're in middle school and you're going to be starting your career in the 2030s, maybe only 2020s or 2040s or whatever, there are going to be massive issues that we need to solve.
00:50:28:14 - 00:51:03:09
Josh Cooper
Start your e commerce t shirt companies like like I did really early on so that you can just simply learn the ins and outs of running a company, the stuff that you shouldn't be spending time on years from now. Learn how to do cash flow. Learn how to track money in money out, learn the basics so that when you are more mature and have kind of expanded your knowledge base, you can really, really, really focus on innovative technologies that will simply make the world a better place.
00:51:03:09 - 00:51:27:09
Josh Cooper
I really mean that we have a ton of issues that are that we're facing currently today, and that's those are only going to compound. So my advice to young entrepreneurs today would be find an area where really need solutions. Don't just try to be another company that's just here to make profits. If somebody is doing a really good job in solving a problem, don't try and copy them.
00:51:27:14 - 00:51:47:14
Josh Cooper
Go to another problem because I mean, we need a lot of brains working on a lot of really hard problems. And if you can do that, it'll make the endurance factor a lot easier. It's going to be blood, sweat and tears. You're not going to want to get up in the morning. But if you know that the team that you're working on is bigger than you and bigger than humanity as a whole, it makes getting up every day a hell of a lot easier.
00:51:48:16 - 00:52:16:02
Rob Napoli
I, I love that I've answered some really good advice. I would say that competition is a good thing because competition increases innovation. But I love where your brand, your thought with that is so that's so important that we need. Look, profit making money can be done anywhere and that's why you become an entrepreneur. But you really kind of like real entrepreneurs that scale business.
00:52:16:04 - 00:52:39:15
Rob Napoli
You become passionate for solving a real problem and you looking at problem solution first. Money is not out there. Don't start a business like I'm going to start this business because I'm gonna make a lot of money. I've been there, I've done that. It burns you out. It's not a business unless you're like, you know, these multiple, you know, multiple founders, entrepreneurs will start a business with the idea of selling it to make money.
00:52:39:15 - 00:52:58:22
Rob Napoli
I get that. But because they see problems, they're doing it to still solve a problem. But when you build that first company, your business can be built it because you're solving a problem that you're frustrated with something that you know the world needs because you build something from money. I promise you, you will use the passion and motivation very fucking quickly and you will burn out.
00:52:58:22 - 00:53:21:00
Rob Napoli
So I love that message and it's why I went deep into your archives to really talk about your journey, because this shit can happen at an early stage. It's not like you're born as an entrepreneur. Like I always know when to start business. No, I want to spark fucking change. And in my journey of sparking change, I've grown into an entrepreneur and I think we have this term of like, Oh, I'm not sure.
00:53:21:00 - 00:53:41:24
Rob Napoli
I'm not, not sure. Does it matter live life to create impacts. Live life with passion. Live life by being a good human to the better of all humans. And through that you can create some really cool shit. And that's like a big key takeaway I have from you, Josh, and your energy. And I want to thank you for being a part of Bear Nation.
00:53:42:19 - 00:53:53:04
Rob Napoli
Before I let you go, where could bear nation find you? How can I get involved? How can I learn more about Josh Cooper and his journey and Skoop Digital and its journey?
00:53:53:04 - 00:54:24:06
Josh Cooper
Honestly, email my email is. joshskoop.digital. I'm a I am. I'm findable on all the socials. Check out our website skoop.digital. But if it's these kind of conversations insightful and you want to have more of them and reach out, I'm always open to talking to young entrepreneurs and talking about new innovative technologies and how they can change the world.
00:54:25:02 - 00:54:48:22
Rob Napoli
Josh I'll make sure to have your email, your socials, the website, all in the show notes. They can click it really easily and find you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, man. It was an amazing day here and I'm always impressed every time I see with you. You have a fan in me for life and being able to support all the initiatives that you have and in any way that my self and bear nation can help, please let me know.
00:54:49:04 - 00:54:50:24
Rob Napoli
Thank you for being a part of it today.
00:54:51:08 - 00:54:53:16
Josh Cooper
And thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.
00:54:54:07 - 00:54:57:15
Rob Napoli
Absolutely. Bear Nation. It's our next episode. Stay well.