Digital  Chatter Episode #003: Alan Smithson

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to the Digital Chatter Series. Today my guest is Alan Smithson. Go ahead and say hi.

Alan: Hey what's going on everybody.

Eric: So Alan, if you couldn't tell already, he's a futurist, he's an entrepreneur and he's a proud father. Alan is a DJ and an inventor. And we're going to hear a little bit about what he has accomplished today and what he is going to be doing this year. So Alan tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Alan: Certainly! So thank you very much, first of all, for having me on. I'm going to take this off for now for the show. This is a really cool stage prop - it is functional and I'll explain it later. But thank you so much for having me. A little bit about myself - I've been an entrepreneur since I was 18. I won't say how old I am but it's been a while.

Alan: I started off making mix tapes in my basement when I was a kid recording the radio and making mix tapes for my friends at school and I would spend hours making these mix tapes and then I'd replicate them and I'd sell them for ten bucks at school. And so I never even thought of that as a business it was just something that you know I did and then I ended up in University working for a guy.

Alan: I was a bouncer and the night club and it was really cool because the DJ didn't show up one night and he said does anybody know how to use that stuff, and I was like yes yes! And I ended up doing a really good job and you know I went from being a bouncer to the DJ which is, trust me, a much much better job. And from there I had my own DJ business. And that kind of took off and I did that. I graduated university back a while ago. And I graduated with a degree in molecular biology which my mom wanted me to go to med school and it really wasn't for me but I ended up becoming a pharmaceutical rep which is really cool and you know I would recommend that job to anybody because it's really pretty bad ass job. You get to drive around and they give you a car and a computer and a credit card and say, go!

Alan: So I did that job for a few years and I was really good at it. And then I realized that there has to be more to this. You know there has to be more. I just wasn't fulfilled. I hit my targets by June in my third year. My targets for the year and they wouldn't reset them and I was like OK what's the point. You know what's the point of doing this. And so I started my first real company and that was the Canadian prepaid medical plan. And from there I learned about business about automating things and stuff like that and that business wasn't the most successful business. I didn't really know what it was doing and while it made money it was making me miserable so I ended up going, I realized one day - I was in a doctor's office and I was pitching these guys and it was like the third time I'd been there and I got a phone call while they were kind of deliberating and I took a phone call and it was a woman she wanted me to DJ her daughter's wedding or something and I was like OK I know it's going to be $3000 dollars.

Alan: They booked me on the spot. And I thought oh my God I'm only going to make probably less than three thousand dollars these two doctors, I've been here three times, they're hemming and hawing about everything, and I just made a three thousand dollar sale in five minutes on the phone. What am I doing? And I'm going to have fun

Eric: You had that aha moment.

Alan: Yeah it was just like why am I doing this. So I literally you know wrapped that company up and I went full time with my DJ business and that DJ business took off. You know obviously I was passionate about it. I joined all the different associations and all that stuff and blew that up. And in 2010 I started a number of different businesses in between there I owned a hostel at Blue Mountain, a ski resort.