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Uncharted Entrepreneurship - hosted by Brent Peterson out of the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization – brings you daring stories straight from the trailblazing entrepreneurs who are unmapping business frontiers across every industry. Settle in around our virtual campfire as Brent sits down to pick the brains of startup pioneers, visionary founders, and intrepid CEOs whose origin stories - marked by unexpected twists, lessons, and stumbles along unpaved paths - will inspire your own trek in launching a boundary-pushing venture. Trading war stories, strategies, and even warnings, these audacious guests invite fellow founders and future leaders into their confidential circles in a uniquely transparent, wise, and motivational way. So join us off the beaten business trails to light your entrepreneurial fire!
Brent Peterson (00:02.586)
Welcome to this episode. Today I have Sol Nasisi Sol is the founder of Booksi Sol, go ahead, do an introduction. Tell us your day -to -day role and maybe one of your passions in life.
Sol (00:14.828)
Sure, Brent, thanks for having me on. It's great to be here. So my day -to -day job is running, well, one of my day -to -day jobs is running booksy .com, which is a website for writers. And I am a jack of all trades in the company, as people are in small companies. I do everything from the marketing, helping to determine the marketing strategy,
Where we should market, who we should market to, how much we should spend on marketing, how do we find and acquire customers and do it in a profitable way. I also do a lot of product development. What types of new products do we want to roll out? What are customers asking for? Working with the tech group to spec out what those products should look like and what the requirements are and then kind of following and testing and rolling out the products.
I handle the accounting, I handle the finance, and so a lot of different areas which keeps me busy and gives me exposure to a lot of the different pieces that are required to run a business. So.
Brent Peterson (01:25.434)
Yeah, so a typical entrepreneur.
Sol (01:28.586)
I think so. I think so. I mean, you know, if you don't do it yourself, you have to pay someone. And I do have other people who work for me. So there are things that I can't do. I cannot code. And so I have developers who code for me. I'm not great on social media. I'm average. So I have people who are really good at it. I'm not a great designer. And so I have designers who come in. But I try to handle most of the things that I can do, at least for now.
Daniella Colletti (01:33.63)
you
Sol (01:55.82)
conserve my cash and use that money to help grow the business. So that's kind of the model, I think, of a bootstrapped business. But you also asked me what I'm passionate about. And I think it kind of dovetails with Booksi because Booksi really was sort of a passion project at the beginning. And that is I love to read and write. And so I have stacks of books beside my bed that I...
work my way through. And I haven't done as much writing lately as I would like to do because I just haven't had the time. But when I do have the time, I like to sit down and write a short story. I've written several books. And I hope to I've written a musical actually, which probably will never see the light of day, but it was a fun COVID project. So I love to sort of express myself through the written word.
Brent Peterson (02:45.594)
That's awesome. I should hire, I think I, well, this is gonna lead into the next thing and you have volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project and now I should say, well, I should probably hire a professional comedian since I'm not very good at the jokes. And then for the musical, the first one I thought about was The Producers, which I think is one of the funniest musicals of all time. And...
Sol (03:02.636)
You
Sol (03:10.348)
Oh yeah.
Brent Peterson (03:12.666)
Anyways, so let's move on to the free joke project because we could get sidetracked on all kinds of stuff.
Sol (03:16.46)
Yeah, the musical prod thing could be a whole conversation in and of itself. So yeah, free joke.
Daniella Colletti (03:20.554)
you
Brent Peterson (03:25.73)
Alright, well you're gonna appreciate this one. I needed a password eight characters long, so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Sol (03:34.988)
Hahaha.
Brent Peterson (03:38.17)
Yeah, yeah, all right, I get it. Yeah, you gotta think about it for a minute and then you're like, that's really not that funny.
Sol (03:38.304)
Yeah, it's good. I like it.
I get it. I think, well, there's a certain cleverness to it that I like, right? Which is true of a lot of good jokes. So it's the question, should someone pay for it or not? I think if they like fairy tales, yes. All right.
Brent Peterson (03:49.306)
Right, right.
Brent Peterson (03:57.082)
Yeah, yeah.
Brent Peterson (04:01.708)
All right, perfect. Yeah, good. Thank you. That's great. Good. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about Booksi. Tell us a little bit how you got started. I know in our green room you said that this has been a long -term bootstrapped project that you've been working on. Tell us a little bit of how you got started in it.
Sol (04:20.652)
Yeah, so I was working at a really big bank. I mean, I guess to even go back further, I've always enjoyed writing, as I kind of mentioned before. You know, when I was in fifth grade, I would write these long, elaborate stories that my poor teachers had to read. And I would ask my parents to read and my siblings. And I think they would sort of read them. I don't even know for sure, but they'd give me a pat on the back and say, oh, this is really good. And I continue to like doing that as I got older.
But I realized that it's really difficult to find an audience. And then the internet came along and sort of changed everything. It changed the way you were able to publish. It changed the audiences you were able to get. And I noticed that there were some of these interesting projects bubbling around about how to connect authors using digital technology with readers. And at the time I was working at a really large bank, one of the largest banks in the country.
And I said to myself, I was working in their internet group. So I've always sort of done digital technology. And I said to myself, do I want to continue working at a really large company? I've always been entrepreneurial. You know, why don't I take the plunge and start something? And so I left the bank and I actually started two companies. One was in the financial space. And then I also started Booksi. It actually started as a different company called the next big writer .com, which is an online workshop for writers.
And then the Booksi concept spun out of that. And the idea is, once again, going back to the challenges I had as a burgeoning writer, a place where writers can post their work, where they can meet other writers, where they can get feedback on their writing, where they could develop an audience. And so that was sort of the genesis of Booksi. And I put it out there and people started to come. They started posting their work. It started to grow. And.
over the last, because it's been, I think, 18 years since I started the company, we've continued to develop the platform. Writers love to write about what they like and don't like. And so they're a great audience in terms of getting feedback and figuring out what features I should build. And so I've listened to that and I've built, continuously built new features, evolved the platform. And I think Booksi's gotten to the point where it's...
Sol (06:45.1)
a pretty robust platform for writers. And we're now starting to add some really, I think, cool technologies, including AI and blockchain, that will really kind of redefine and even revolutionize the way that writers can publish and profit from their work. So it's an exciting time. There's a lot of change in the technology space and soon to be a lot of change in the publishing space.
Brent Peterson (07:11.738)
That's awesome. I want to first, let's touch on AI a little bit. I don't want to spend the whole time talking about AI, but I was just at ShopDoc and one of the meetings I had was with a professional writer who writes as a ghostwriter for other professionals. And I asked him, are you afraid of AI? And he said, absolutely not. He uses it himself just for some research or from little pieces that he can help.
work on, but not for the general writing. And he doesn't feel as though AI is going to encroach on him as a busy executives are still going to need somebody to talk to. And he does his writing through interview formats and then turns it into a book that's ghostwritten for somebody else. Tell us how you're using AI in Booksi.
Daniella Colletti (07:48.63)
you
Sol (08:06.86)
Yeah, sure. So we see AI as a tool sort of along the lines of what you were saying to help writers and to really serve as another tool. I personally think that people still want to read, especially fiction, but even nonfiction content that comes from a real human being, because part of reading is connecting with the person who's written the story and the humanity and the experiences that that
Daniella Colletti (08:23.637)
you
Sol (08:36.652)
that that person has gone through. So for us, like I said, it's a tool. And one of the ways that we've started to use it, as I mentioned that writers look for feedback. I was looking for feedback as a young writer. It's very difficult for them to get it. And especially objective feedback that really gives them tips and tricks on how they can get better. And so one of the things that we found that AI is really good at actually is going through and reading even fiction content.
poems, novels, doesn't have to be fiction though, it can be essays, it can be articles, and analyzing it and telling a writer what works and what doesn't work and what they can do to improve it and it can even provide very specific comments about that. So that's the first tool that we actually rolled out and we found that writers are really benefiting from it. We have a survey that writers can fill out after they get their feedback.
And 80 % of the users have said that the feedback has been really helpful in them fine -tuning and developing their writing. The 20 % it wasn't that the feedback wasn't helpful, it's just that there was a bug in the tool because we're still kind of working on it. And sometimes, especially with very long content, it kind of hangs up and doesn't provide all of the feedback that it should. So that's where we've sort of started. And our goal is to really continue to provide writers
with more tools like that. So I'll give you another example. One of the tools that we're working on will allow a writer to put in their first two chapters, and then they'll press the button and the AI will go through, read the chapters and provide an outline of the next 40 chapters for the writer. And the idea is not necessarily that that will be the ultimate outline that the writer pursues, but it gives them a starting point. And a lot of times that blank white page is the biggest...
that writers have to get over, and AI can be a really good way to break that ice and get the process started. So that's another area that we think is pretty exciting. One other area that we're working on is generative voice AI. So the idea that you, as an author, have written your book, if you want to go and get recorded into an audio book, that's a very difficult, tedious, and expensive process. But with voice generative AI, you could literally have the AI read your book.
Daniella Colletti (10:43.615)
you
Sol (11:01.196)
and do a recording, an audio recording for you in your voice or in the voice of someone else in a matter of minutes. And so that's another, we think, interesting opportunity. And you could even go a step further. You you've probably seen the clips with Sora, the video clips that look really great. And this basically based on a prompt. So a writer could at some time in the near future have the first chapter of their book.
feed it into a prompt and create like a video, almost a movie of that first chapter. And so I think that what we want to do, our goal of Booksi is to help writers tell their story. And so we think that this is going to be a really exciting way to facilitate that process and to help writers better tell their story. And that's why we're excited about AI.
Brent Peterson (11:53.05)
Yeah, I think there's so much more to AI than just generating content. And I think I agree that like the white page, and I wouldn't call myself a proficient writer, but when I write, I like to write and I find it very enjoyable. But the hardest part is starting. And then for me too, the hardest part is how do you, you put a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper or of course on the computer, and then how do you make that into something that's cohesive? I think that.
AI also helps you to organize some of your thoughts in a way that other people would actually want to read it. And I've been accused of being a little bit too terse in my emails. In your electronic communications, some of those short, succinct communications can come across as not so warm and fuzzy. And I found that using AI has helped me in my business communications.
I want to just put in a little warning that if you don't, as a writer, go back and read what it's written, that you are now suddenly in a jeopardy of losing your voice. And I guess that's kind of the next thing I wanted to go into is how much of the AI is writing and how much is it editing? And I know you talked about an outline, which I think you kind of fill in the blanks, but a lot of times people now are just depending on the AI generating the entire...
bit of content and not going back.
Sol (13:24.492)
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's not something that we would support on Booksi. I mean, clearly people are going to do it. And I think there was a company that just raised raised a bunch of money to create, you know, full books using generative AI. But that's not really Booksi's mission. Our goal was to help humans tell their story, because we think that, you know, at the heart of every story has to be something that revolves around humanity. And that's once again,
we think what makes it interesting for people. I was having a discussion with my son about this, because he's in his 20s and dealing with a lot of AI at work. And I think one of the metaphors or ways that I've come to be thinking about AI came out from this conversation is with the Industrial Revolution, you're able to take a lot of work that people had done with their hands and automate it. And so cars, clothing,
almost any good that people used to do manually can be automated. And when you go to the department store, you'll find racks of clothes that are manufactured by machine. But the really expensive stuff is still handmade, right? People still pay a premium for things that are human produced. And I think that's what you're going to find with content. There's going to be a lot of...
mass produced content out there, but the stuff that really stands out that people are willing to pay for will be the ones that are human produced. And that's what we want to help people do.
Brent Peterson (15:02.842)
Yeah, I think even in my own community and my little software community that I'm in, people will definitely point out or know when that content was generated by an AI engine. And for me, a lot of times, it's just a tweet. But it could be something longer that you write. And it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of being a little bit lazy and moving past that.
Sol (15:26.668)
Oh yeah. Yeah. And there's certain things that it's probably okay to have an AI right. Totally. You know, um, some marketing copy. If an AI can do it better than a human, maybe that's all right. I mean, I still think that we're at a point where humans have to review it. Will it be like that forever? I don't know. I mean, AI is getting better and better. And at some point it may be very difficult to determine if it's AI produced or human produced.
But I still think it comes back to who's producing it because once again, when you read something, especially something that you care about, the provenance of it, the creator is an important thing. When people read a book, they want to know who the author is, right? The author is an important component of reading the story because you know that their experiences go into the story. So.
Brent Peterson (16:15.962)
Yeah, so you also mentioned blockchain. So tell us how that is also working into this.
Sol (16:24.236)
Yeah, so we're pretty excited about that. We're getting ready to launch that probably around April 1st, but maybe not exactly on April 1st. And the concept is that when you purchase a book nowadays online, a digital book, you don't really own that book. You're borrowing it from Amazon. You're leasing it from them, for instance, if you're buying it from a Kindle version or from any other online bookstore.
And what we want to do is really bring ownership back into the content and digital content and book space. And so we're producing something called the limited edition. And it's basically a copy that you own. And by ownership, we mean that you buy it, you collect it, you pay the author, and then you can take that copy and you can resell it to someone else. You can take it off the platform. You can do whatever you want with it. It's not bound to us.
It's your copy to do with as you will, just like a hard copy book, right? So right now, the rights that you have for a hard copy and a digital copy are totally different. And we want to bring them closer together and allow people to own a digital content like they would a digital book. And we think that that's pretty significant. People like to collect. The collector's market for books alone is over a $1 .5 billion market. And so people who are buying digital books right now are missing out.
on any of that collectability. And we think that it's a way for readers to support the authors that they really care about. And it's a way for authors to reward their fans and supporters. So that's kind of the first step. We also have other things that we're rolling out using blockchain. Oh, and it's all the ownership is secured by the blockchain. So that's where the blockchain comes in. And then we have other blockchain -based services that would allow authors to protect their work.
to basically take a snapshot of it and prove that they've written it and own it. And then we have another service that we'll be rolling out after that that will allow authors to embed rewards for readers inside their book. And those rewards are also tied to the blockchain. So we're trying to really think about what the blockchain does well and how it can create new products and services that change the relationship between writers.
Sol (18:46.44)
and readers and publishers. And so that's the goal of what we're doing. And we're pretty excited about it. We think it's going to be a pretty fundamental shift in the experience.
Brent Peterson (18:57.018)
Do you think at some point that digitally signed book, number one, do you think there's a way authors are gonna be able to be uniquely digitally sign a book for a reader? And at some point it will be as valuable as that actually signed book that an 18th century author or 19th century author would have signed?
Sol (19:18.444)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it can go even further. So one of the other things we're working on is stamping the ownership of that book. So, you know, let's say you release a book and someone prominent or a celebrity buys it. All right. That ownership gets stamped on it. And so then if the book gets resold, you know that not only is it a well -known, potentially famous book, but it was owned by someone famous. And so hopefully that also
you know, tells part of the story of the book and increases the value of it. So there are a lot of kind of interesting ways of thinking about ownership and who owns it and embedding that into the value and the story of the book. So, yeah, we think signatures could be a part of it also, whether it's a digital signature or a real signature. So and part of it, too, is that we're making it so that authors can.
decide that they want to limit the number of editions or the number of copies that they let out there. So we're calling them limited editions. And so an author can say, I just want 100 of these limited editions to be produced. And that creates the concept of scarcity, just like a limited edition print. It hopefully provides more of a reward for the people who buy the copy.
Brent Peterson (20:37.306)
Talk a little bit about the reasoning why an entrepreneur would want to write a book and maybe go into how Booksi helps them to get that book from out of their head into print.
Sol (20:52.876)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that there are two reasons why, at least that I can think of, there are probably more, but two main reasons why an entrepreneur would want to write a book. And the first one is if they have an area of expertise that they want to display and put into that book. I think writing a book is still considered a mark of knowledge and provides credentials.
And so that's one reason why you might want to do it. People who it just builds credibility for the person. And so if you're in an area where credibility is important, where being known as a thought leader is important, then a book is a great way of doing that. The second reason that I think it's good is that writing is just for a lot of people kind of like running for some. It's just a therapeutic way of collecting your thoughts, of relaxing.
of working through problems, of taking things that are stressful and putting them into your story and relaxing and kind of providing therapy to yourself in a free way that actually has an outcome that might be valuable in and of itself, whether to you, to your family, or to the general public. And so I think a lot of people might find that it really benefits them. I think there were all kinds of studies that were done that people who write,
in general are more psychologically resilient, are able to kind of analyze themselves and analyze problems better because they're looking at it from multiple perspectives and the multiple perspectives come from the writing. So those are two reasons. And so with Booksi, what we do is we provide a platform to help these writers tell that story. And we do it in a bunch of different ways. One,
We help them perfect their writing. And so once a writer puts their work up on Booksi, they can get feedback from the community. They can now get feedback from AI. They can get motivation from the community. There's nothing like getting a comment on your work that says, oh, hey, I really like what you're doing. Keep writing to spur you to move forward. It's really hard to be a solitary writer. And I think one of the things that the internet and communities like Booksi do is they bring writers together.
Sol (23:20.044)
and provide that motivation and support. And so we allow them to perfect, we allow them to publish their work. You know, once you put your work out on Booksi, just like putting it out on YouTube or any of these platforms, it has a global audience and people from around the world can read it. It's basically out there. And we have stories that have gotten, you know, millions and millions of reads from all over the world. Some have been picked up and published.
So it's really an opportunity to show what you're doing to a wide audience. We also allow people to profit from their work. So the blockchain example is one thing, but you can also put little donation buttons up and people can donate if they like what you're doing and help to support your cause.
We help to promote your work and so there are ways that we tie into social media to make it easy for you to take your writing and put it up on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or any other social media channel that you think is important and that you want to use to spread the word And then lastly with the blockchain. We're also going to help you protect your work So those are those are the ways that we try to help an author get out there and get their word out there
and meet the audience and then also provide the tools to help them grow that audience.
Brent Peterson (24:46.298)
Yeah, I think I read somewhere that there's some there's three pillars that any any person should have when they're trying to promote their thought, thought leadership. And one of them is a book. One of them is maybe a podcast or a blog. And one of them is public speaking. So I can see how all of those are relevant and how all of those tie into each other. Do you think now that the digital realm now has just really made it more democratic for people to get published and
I'm assuming that Booksi allows you to go digital and then print after a while. If it's popular enough, you could put it into print.
Sol (25:26.06)
Yeah, we don't really have a print. Well, we kind of have a print feature, but it's not it's not kind of the traditional print feature. You can print something, but it's really more of a proof that you would use. And we don't do that because there are plenty of services out there that will take your work and go ahead and put it into print for you that would do it better than we do. We try to stick to what we're good at. But certainly we have a lot of writers who come to us who have already published the book and want to use it to promote.
Or like you were saying, have seen that they're getting a readership and want to go ahead and take that book and put it into print. And so we provide advice on the site about where you can go to do that.
Brent Peterson (26:08.132)
If you had some advice, if something to say to a burgeoning writer, how would you get them, how would you tell them to start?
Sol (26:19.372)
Yeah, I mean, once again, it comes back to, you know, just kind of think about what you want to say, make sure you feel strongly about it, because you're going to need a lot of energy to keep going. And then I would say, you know, I subscribe to sort of the Stephen King approach. So Stephen King's thing is that he writes a thousand words a day religiously, no matter what.
I don't write a thousand words usually or when I'm in my writing what I don't write a thousand words, but I would say, you know, think about chunking it out, maybe 200 words a day even. And go ahead and write and don't really be worried about what you're writing. Don't worry about the quality. A big mistake that a lot of novice writers make is they write their first chapter and then they don't think it's a hundred percent. So they go back and they start editing the first chapter and they tweak it.
And before you know it, a year has gone by and they're still on their first chapter and they've kind of lost interest and they've lost energy. And so the biggest advice that I can give is start small, write 200 words a day and just keep writing and keep going until you reach the end. And don't worry if it's not exactly where you want it to be, because one of the key things about writing is the editing process. And you can always go back and edit, but first you have to kind of get your, your ideas out and get that first draft down.
Brent Peterson (27:43.524)
Last question, how about coming up with a topic? How do you advise people if they have a bunch of topics in their head, pick their topic and then pick the subject of that topic or the title of that topic.
Sol (27:59.468)
Yeah, I would say pick the one that you feel most strongly about that you think, you know, you really have something that you want to say and that you're passionate about because that will come through in your writing. And once again, writing, it's, it's, it's like running a marathon or doing a triathlon. You have to have the desire to do it and you have to feel strongly about the topic to want to see it through to the end. And so I think having that, um, that passion for it, having that desire to.
Take your thoughts and get them out there is is a big motivator and we'll see you through so You know, obviously you want to feel passionate But you also want to be something that the market will be interested in ideally, you know, you think about a Venn diagram It's that intersection of those two things and so that's how I think about it a little bit There are a lot of ideas that I'm like, oh, that's really interesting I'd love to write about it. And then I talked to my wife and she's like, yeah, no one will want to read that so
I kind of say forget it. Yeah, it's always good to have someone that you can bounce ideas off. And that's where also our site like Booksi comes in handy because if your wife isn't interested or you're not married or you don't have a significant other that's willing to talk about it, you can always put your work out there, put your idea out there and someone will give you some feedback. So.
Brent Peterson (29:00.506)
are our ultimate checkpoints, right?
Brent Peterson (29:06.488)
Yeah, yeah.
Brent Peterson (29:21.05)
Yeah, I just want to comment on the importance of community. And again, I mentioned I'm in the Magento community, which is robust. And they also, you know, they're there to support you normally. And I think that having a community like that is so important to get other people to read it and not be in a little silo and get some perspective from other people.
Sol (29:46.316)
Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about the internet and, you know, social media. They talk about all the negatives, but being able to bring people together around topics and energize them and, you know, support one another is a really powerful, is a really powerful benefit. So.
Brent Peterson (30:06.586)
Good solid, we have a few minutes left. As I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today?
Sol (30:16.044)
Well, I'm gonna just to stay on topic, I'm going to plug Booksi. If you're a writer and you have a story that you wanna tell, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, whether it's something that you've been thinking about since you were younger or something that came to you recently, whether it's for work or just for your personal enjoyment, then I encourage you to come and visit our site. It's a robust platform, it's growing. We have hundreds of thousands of writers.
who are exploring their own writing path, everyone from beginners to experts, and we will help you get where you want to go. So we'd love to have you. We have a variety of features. We've rolled out AI. We'll be rolling out more AI tools to help you. We'll be rolling out blockchain tools to help you better monetize your writing. So we're there for you. We are writers ourselves, and so we understand.
the opportunity, the desire, and the goals that writers have, and we'd love to have you. So, Booksi, and let me just say it's booksy .com, B -O, like my hat, B -O -O -K -S -I -E .com.
Brent Peterson (31:21.786)
That's awesome and I'll make sure I get...
Brent Peterson (31:29.754)
Yeah, and I'll make sure I put those in the show notes. So it's been such a great talk today. Thank you so much for being here.
Sol (31:38.028)
Yeah, Brent, thank you for having me. So it was great. I really enjoyed it.