Digital Chatter Episode #010: Michael Cowherd

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to Digital Chatter Live. And we've got a special edition going on today. Here is my guest Michael Cowherd

Michael: What's going on everyone. Happy to be here. Thanks Eric for having me. Finally linked up and I was on time this go around and I was a.. I made you pick me up so...

Eric: This is true. Yeah, I picked up Michael to make sure he'd show up with this one. So Michael is an entrepreneur. Of course. He's the host of a podcast called Cowherds Corner and he's also a community organizer. And Michael you and met because of a mutual friend of ours actually the first interviewe that I had, Andy Cabistan.

Michael: He was my first too on my podcast!

Eric: There you go! He's obviously a great connector as well. So Michael tell everyone on this show today. Tell a little bit about how you got started.

Michael: So I think it got to start with recognizing my parents. So they're not entrepreneurs but I think that their hustle and the work ethic I attained somewhat and why do I think I just transition into this millennial lifestyle being an entrepreneur getting your own, you know. Where my parents are more you know get a steady paycheck and..

Eric: Which is always nice, there's nothing wrong with a steady paycheck of course.

Michael: But you know I'm so so I didn't start as an entrepreneur. Graduate from Morehouse College in 2013. After that I went to work for World of Technology and I got fired. I got terminated. So I kind of stumbled into being an entrepreneur in the sense of I'm a Capricorn I'm from the north east. So to put those things together, stubborn, single-minded. You know it's hard for me to do things without having an explanation or not having an understanding. And when you work in corporate America you're not going to get to meet too many people who explain things to you, why you need to do something. So ultimately after my termination I linked up with a buddy of mine Jeff Charein a Lebanese native and he was working on a fintech application called MOULAH.

Michael: Essentially it was like a location based Venmo. So if you were having a house party, or you were a vendor at a flea market you could pull up the app click on you know "Eric's orange juice" and right from the app pay cashless and your listing would pop up because you are in the vicinity of that listing. So I ran operations near through social media, hired our first three or four part time employees. Did a lot of business development outreach not only in Somerville, Massachusetts but with different investors overseas and things like that. I was bootstrapped so it was different to see a guy you know, Jad made a good investment in Facebook. You know of some years back, be able to kind of leverage that to help keep the startup afloat for the time that it was afloat.

Eric: That's awesome. You you've done I think what a lot of people have done or want to do in life which is you know, you had a corporate job and in your case you ended up not fitting in. It wasn't that you didn't necessarily like it. I mean maybe maybe you didn't like getting or showing it a certain way but it wasn't a good fit for you. Is it working out so that automatically deposited you into this role. I mean tell me a little bit about what it was like your day to day wise. You know, your first case of being entrepreneur.

Michael: Oh man. So this is going to be an open book and so I might get a little emotional. No man, being an entrepreneur was tough, right. I mean I didn't consider myself an entrepreneur I was unemployed like you know I was I was I was unemployed collecting unemployment and you know still applying for jobs and I would think from the time I got terminated in 2015 you know...