Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Scott Bair. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Scott, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

As an 80-year Harvard study shows, the greatest indication of whether or not someone will live a happy and healthy life comes down to one thing, and it isn’t your diet–they found it was determined by your close relationships.

Because of this, I’ve committed to helping multi-generational families to grow closer with each other.

And the way I do this is simple–by prompting them to talk and share more about their experiences and perspectives with each other.

With TimeWell, a software company I’ve founded, we’ve made it stupid simple to record stories and share them with others.

One example is to attach rich stories to photos.

Think about the box of old family photos in your parents’ house. If they don’t have anything written on the back, or if someone isn’t there to tell you about the context, the photos are pretty much meaningless.

We don’t believe it should be that way.

With TimeWell, all you need to do is upload your favorite photos and press just one button to record your voice recalling the special memory behind the photo. The recordings are automatically saved and you can share them with anyone.

While there are a number of competitors focused on documenting people’s life stories with written text, TimeWell is all about voice. We believe it would be much more powerful to hear the laughter, tears and range of emotions from your grandpa’s voice instead of just reading his words.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I grew up in a very loving and supportive family. From an early age, I was always tinkering and had a strong entrepreneurial bent. I started a screen-printing businesses in high school, and always had some sort of side job.

I went to school for design, and through some connections, ended up working at an incredible creative studio. Here, while at times I felt I was drinking from a firehose, I began the journey of designing high quality and memorable experiences.

I’ve also worked at Apple as a trainer, helping hundreds of people learning to make the most of their computers and phones. This gave me incredibly valuable insights for how everyday people use products and how they care about and organize content, like family photos.

Interweaved through the years was a strong focus on family. While not perfect, my parents were the best balance for me. My mom was very nurturing and wanted to process through any and every thought and experiment I was exploring at the time. And when my dad and I weren’t building something or on a bike ride, he was teaching me priceless life lessons like being self-reliant, resourceful and to live with honesty and integrity. I was also close with my older sister who throughout various seasons was one of my best friends.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I’m currently the owner of the boutique branding and design studio, Brand Atlas. We help clients uncover their unique position and work with them to design powerful experiences to make them untouchable.

The flexibility of the agency schedule has enabled me to launch my startup, TimeWell.

Believing that outside money should be a carefully weighed option, I’ve self-funded the development of the TimeWell platform through the work I’ve done through my agency.

Since then, I was one of the few founders who was selected from Jason Calacanis’ (Investor in Uber and many others) program, Founder University to receive seed funding.

While I’ve since learned more about the reality of the Venture Capital world and highly trust Jason and the LAUNCH team, I still strongly believe the best sort of funding should come directly from happy customers.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I’ll tell you a story about why I currently do not have a cofounder and why I will be just as considerate as I was when pursuing my wife.

A few years ago I stumbled upon an acquaintance in a coffee shop. He was always talking about various business ideas and shared he had just left an investor meeting where they made it seem he had an idea worth investing in.

Through a few more conversations at coffee shops, we decided to build the idea together. I had learned the idea was limited to a couple pages in a notebook, so we decided to go 50/50 in ownership.

Without spending more than a few hours together, we were signing legal documents to set up our brand new corporation with the hopes of building the next big thing.

Fast forward a few months, and leaving out a number of details to respect him, it was decided it would be best to part ways. While our first couple meetings showed our skillsets could’ve complimented each other, the product wasn’t growing at the rate I needed it to be. As I was still running my own agency, I needed to make sure this project would pick up momentum. I learned a lot about characteristics of a good partner that will run at the same goal and with the same energy.

The lessons from this season will stay with me forever.

When considering a cofounder or partner, I highly recommend dating before getting married. If I were to do it again, I’d write up a handshake agreement saying after a certain time, if everything is going well, we’d backdate our start date for equity considerations. However, if it didn’t work out, we’d part ways any time with our own contributions.

I learned that trust is the most important part of a partner. If you can’t trust someone to keep their word and if they don’t have a good reputation from friends, they probably aren’t the right partner for you.

You should partner with someone you genuinely enjoy being around. Looking back through the years, the individuals I most enjoyed being around as a person and who gained my respect for their quality of work were always the ones I produced the best work with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.timewell.io/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timewell.io/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmbair/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/scott_bair
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH3JvTwrwFJTQb0BMFBMATw

Image Credits
Roy Culver https://www.roy3films.com/portfolio