5 Questions with Tom Eakin of startup BoomLife
Jefferson resident Tom Eakin recently started the company BoomLife, and on Oct. 1 rolled the beta launch of his GPS Theory app. Here are 5 questions for Eakin.
What is Boomlife, and why did you create it?
BoomLife provides personal, professional and organizational success engineering services. We created BoomLife with a simple but audacious mission: To help people achieve Life-Long Success. Life-Long Success, a concept we apply at both the individual and organizational level, happens when we get what we want and we are the person/organization we want to be.
We deliver our coaching and consulting services based on GPS Theory, a values-based model we designed to help individuals live Inspired lives and to help leaders create values-driven cultures where people are Inspired to do what it takes to achieve the organizational mission.
• Identify personal/organizational Core Values. Core Values represent success criteria standards based on what is most important to the individual or organization. Core Values represent their purpose.
• Share their Core Values with the people in their world.
• Ask the people in their world to rate them, based on observations of observed behaviors in relation to stated Core Values. In this step, users can become socially powerful- by using the power of their social network to help them identify opportunities for improvement in areas that are important to them.
• Respondents can become powerfully social by influencing the decisions, actions and behaviors of the people and organizations that ask for their help in identifying opportunities for improvement in areas that are important to them.
The GPS Theory App creates a safe and secure environment within which respondents can provide honest and accurate feedback because their responses are kept confidential within the app’s back-end processes and the user only receives data that cannot be translated back to any individual respondent.
In short, we created tools to help people understand the concepts behind Inspiration and how to apply them practically to achieve Life-Long Success in any situation.
Who do you see as the target market for your app/service and how do you plan to market it?
We are focused on two target markets:
Individuals who are not satisfied with maintaining the status quo and recognize the need to change but do not know exactly what they need to do different to live the life they truly want.
Leaders (businesses, non-profits, teams, clubs, etc.) who want to build high-performing cultures full of people who are inspired to do what it takes to achieve success across the entire organizational lifetime.
We currently market through these channels:
Our website at: www.goboomlife.com
On-line we’re currently using: www.liveninja.com (thomaseakin2870)
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoBoomLife
On Twitter: @goboomlife
The BoomLife Newsletter provides subscribers with updates on events, workshops and promotions.
How did you come up with this concept, and how did you go about bringing it to fruition?
I’ve searched for over two decades for the reasons why there have been times when I’ve experienced wild professional success and deep personal failures, and vice versa, simultaneously. One day, I recognized the root cause of the problem… and the solution! It all begins and ends with understanding the Core Values that drive our behaviors. This realization caused me to ask myself what success looked like and I realized the answers to this powerful question were the keys to Life-Long Success: What words do you want other people to use to describe you and the life you’ve lived?
The more I explored the answers to that “What words…?” question and how to practically apply them to my own life, the more simple but practical tools I came up with and I knew there was a universal human nature to what I was doing. As I developed GPS Theory I knew I needed to share it with the people in my world.
The GPS Theory App was an idea I really wanted to try to make a reality. I worked hundreds of late-nights and weekends for over a year, while working full-time, developing the content and processes I think BoomLife needed to create a product and market it effectively. As of today, I haven’t proven anything yet. It’s time to go to market and test my hypotheses!
What hurdles did you face along the way? How did you overcome them?
I don’t know how to code and I didn’t know anyone who did. I had this great idea for the GPS Theory App, but until I could find someone who was willing to help me create it, I couldn’t do anything with it. I began to share my idea with people I trusted in my social network. One friend referred me to a programmer. Unfortunately, it took two months for me to figure out that person wasn’t going to work out. It wasn’t until another two months, when I attended Sioux City Growth Organization’s Innovation Market that I ran into an acquaintance I met a few months earlier when I spoke with his Business Honors group at Morningside College. He mentioned he had a double-major in marketing and computer science. I asked him, “Do you know how to code?” As a matter of fact, he did, and he and his business partner were starting up a technology service business, RXA Technology.
What advice do you have for other creative people who have ideas they want to develop – be they a product or a service?
Take the time to understand these two things before you take your business idea to the market:
• Why is it important to you? What net-positive value do you want to realize?
• Why is it important to your prospective customer? What net-positive extrinsic value do you want to create?
The answer to the first set of questions will help create the conviction to follow-through and do what it takes. This is so important. There will be things you don’t know, you will need to learn. There will be obstacles you didn’t see coming you will need to change your plan to get around. Everything will be harder, take longer and cost more than you think it will. You will need conviction, the belief in what you are doing, to drive on and do everything it takes. You will need your Core Values to find it.
The answer to the second set of questions will help you develop your product. More importantly, when your target market doesn’t react to your marketing efforts in the way you expect them to, the second set of questions will help you understand whether and how to improve your product and your content. Remembering who you’re trying to create value for will also help you choose which voice you need to listen to: the one in your head that is tired of working on improving your product and just wants to reap the rewards, or the one that holds the key to your success and is telling you what they are willing to pay for. The first voice could lead you to miss something essential, the second will show you the way.