In this episode of Entrepreneur’s Enigma, Seth interviews David Van Beekam, an entrepreneur who founded Tweva TV. Tweva TV is a local TV channel tailored to small businesses who can’t afford traditional TV advertising.

The episode discusses the birth of Tweva TV, the reason behind its creation, and how it evolved into a local TV channel. David shares some insights on how their team marketed Tweva TV, including creating a module for social media posting to target small businesses.

David also emphasizes the importance of carrying optimism for the future, while acknowledging the need to be grounded in reality and seek advice to accelerate progress.

Later in the episode, David talks about the fears that entrepreneurs face and how that motivates him to build something big on his own.

Finally, the episode touches on David’s fascination with audio equipment and his love for creating things that imitates a little radio station.

Key Moments:

[00:02:14] Tweva: local TV for small businesses.

[00:04:19] Connecting small business people through restaurants.

[00:06:22] Social media platform for influencers and businesses.

[00:11:26] The Garage Treasures: An Electrical Contractor Father and David’s Connection To Research And Development

[00:13:49] Connect Tweva.com for small biz tutorials.

Find David Online

https://tweva.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-van-beekum/

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. With the wins and the fails that we all face be entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started.

David [00:00:24]:

You.

Seth [00:00:30]:

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I am your host. As always, Seth, today I have David Van Beekham of Tweva. Now, we’re going to explain what Tweva is in a second, but David is from down south, and we’re not going to hold that against him. He’s from Florida. But it’s a good thing. But I think you said around Orlando, right, buddy?

David [00:00:55]:

Yes. Thanks, Seth, for having me on. I’m actually from New Jersey, actually.

Seth [00:01:00]:

Oh, you redeemed yourself?

David [00:01:02]:

Yes, I am from North Jersey.

Seth [00:01:04]:

Oh, then what do you sound like me? A little bit?

David [00:01:07]:

Yeah. Just a little bit. Yeah. What you talking about? I am from Jersey. How are you doing from Jersey?

Seth [00:01:12]:

Exactly?

David [00:01:13]:

Jersey. But this is like almost 17 years ago, so that’s not really part of me.

Seth [00:01:17]:

South Middle, Florida. What brought you in the middle of Florida?

David [00:01:20]:

Oh, my girlfriend at the time now wife, she said, I’m leaving you. I’m going to go work with the dolphins in SeaWorld. So I was like, Wait, after how many JetBlue rides back and forth, you’re like, okay, I can’t afford New Jersey, so let’s start this thing out in Florida and see what we can buy.

Seth [00:01:37]:

I like that. That’s a good idea. You’ve been in Florida for 17 years, and you have a really cool product here. I’m not even trying to explain it because why? I’m going to try and explain it for the sake of making a fool out of myself. Tweeba is essentially TVs for local businesses, but with a twist. And we’re going to go I’m going to have you explain the twist. What is the twist with Tweva twist? Tweva mathwell twist with twist.

David [00:02:07]:

Oh, the Tweva twist. I like that. I should use that. The Tweva twist. Let’s do the Tweva twist. I like this.

Seth [00:02:14]:

There you go.

David [00:02:14]:

All right. So Tweva is a local TV channel for your city. Think about it. If you’re in a small city and you don’t have a TV channel, Tweva is your TV channel for the city. And it’s for all small businesses because small businesses, they can’t afford TV advertising. I mean, as far as I couldn’t, other small businesses couldn’t when they were small. And when it’s a commercials, three thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars. Most people are not like, oh, I’ll put away my emergency fund. Let me just blow this on a TV commercial to see if it works. I said, let’s create our own. Yeah, and do it once. So I said, let’s create our own. So that’s the gist of it. But it’s a lot more than that too.

Seth [00:02:54]:

Yeah, there is more to that. When we first talked, you said influencers can go into a pizza shop and somehow get up on the screen and say, hey, that’s me. I’m live streaming. Oh, my God. I’m on Tweva. Oh, my God. And then they talk about not only the pizza shop, they talk about Tweva. And it’s another twist.

David [00:03:13]:

Yeah. So think about it like a digital TV screen TV channel, but it’s also a community display. So you know those bulletin boards you kind of go into for a little coffee shop and you put up your little business card there physical paper business card, which is going away.

Seth [00:03:28]:

Or the place mats at diamond.

David [00:03:30]:

Yeah. Or placemats. Right. So this is a digital version of that, but it has to be good content, something for people to watch, something interesting. There’s a lot of influencers out there. Hey, I can take a picture of a croissant and a coffee ten times better than the average person. Well, let’s get them to be popular in the community. They have a great skill. So this allows anybody to create TV content and share it, but not in a 30 minutes, but a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes between a short form and a long form content.

Seth [00:04:01]:

Love that. And so what was the impetus for this? How did the heck did you come up with something like this? I mean, I guess maybe sitting at a diner and eating your Pepsi, as you said before the show started, your Pepsi with your breakfast.

David [00:04:15]:

Oh, yes. Didn’t start that far back.

Seth [00:04:18]:

Okay.

David [00:04:19]:

But no, I was actually working with a co founder, and he had a bunch of restaurants, and he wanted to help the small business guy. So if he saw, let’s say, a plumber, a plumber would be eating over at this table, and maybe somebody would be complaining about a leak in their home at the other table. He would just love to connect those people, like, oh, hey, there’s a plumber over here. He always comes in every Thursday and eats chicken parmesan. I got to have you meet him. So, I mean, that works when he’s there, but what about when he’s not? So he would tell the plumber, hey, go put your business card up at the front. And I’m sure you’ve seen that, right? A little diner everywhere.

Seth [00:04:52]:

It still happens.

David [00:04:53]:

Yeah, but there’s a limited amount, and it’s like, okay, you’re not always looking. So we just joked about this idea of, like, put them up on the TV, and he had a couple of TVs. So that was where the idea was born. It was really just to help local businesses. But he wanted to put up a business card. He wanted to just put in, like, a funny business card. I said, it’s got a little bit more than a business card. We got to make it fun, put the weather, put some fun stuff about the community, and it kind of just morphed into this local TV channel.

Seth [00:05:26]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show. And are you just in Orlando, or you’re all over the place now. Aren’t you branching?

David [00:05:34]:

Yeah, I have somebody out of North Carolina. Their team starting up. They’re in Raleigh. He said Raleigh is growing so much.

Seth [00:05:42]:

Oh, Raleigh is insane right now.

David [00:05:43]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:05:43]:

The Research Triangle.

David [00:05:45]:

Yes, that’s what he said. We got to start in a triangle. I just let that go, like, thinking maybe it’s something to do with the map.

Seth [00:05:51]:

But supposedly it’s Raleigh Durham. Raleigh Durham. I don’t know. It’s a triangle of cities that all the biotechs are down there in that area.

David [00:06:03]:

Yeah. So he’s getting started right in there. He knows a ton of people. Tommy, he’s going to be a big Tweva guy in the area. Then he knows somebody else in Tampa. And then we got Tommy’s going, Tweeva. Tommy twisted.

Seth [00:06:17]:

Tommy, tommy, you have to have all teams.

David [00:06:22]:

Hey, I got to do that old song again. Let’s do the twist. I just get it like Redone remixed somewhere. Let’s do the Tweeva twist. Let’s do the Tweva twist. Yeah, so it’s a little bit of that, and then also it’s a little bit more in the community base. It’s for the influencers. It’s for the small business. And then when we talked with the co founder, he was also struggling a little bit with posting on social media. So we added in another module to, let’s add some content to your TV, and then let’s share this on all of your social media. So we have APIs pushed out to Facebook, Twitter, the top ten. Facebook. Twitter, LinkedIn. Google my business, reddit all of the top ten. Because even if you post something on Facebook, a small business is not like, okay, let me log into my Reddit account and make sure I post my special today. Because remember, all these backlinks from all these different social sites are more important. And it’s not about being the number one in the country, but it’s about being number one in your city. So we try to give them all the tools to do that.

Seth [00:07:28]:

Oh, I love this. This is awesome. This is fantastic. And so before Tweva, what did you do? How did you find your way into Tweva? You met your co founder. Are you a software developer by trade?

David [00:07:43]:

Yeah, I’m a nerd. It starts way back, like seven or eight. My dad go back there, built out the first well, let me see. So he built out the first audio system in church, right? So he put in the cameras, the lights, back. Seventy s. Eighty s. And so when he would have an old piece of equipment, he’d take it home, and it’d sit in the basement for a while until I just was like, what is that 16 channel mackie board doing, like, there’s a freaking knobs on that thing. So I brought it into my room. I was seven or eight, nine, and I had to have an old tape recorder and a VCR. And then he got a video mixer. Yeah. So I had put it all together, and it’s funny that I think about this. It just kind of went away in my memory, but I had this little FM broadcaster, and I’d put it to the output, and I was playing a little radio station, like, nine or ten, hey, sister, go turn on 92.3. That’s over the Rock station 92.6. And it’s funny, but it’s like, that’s where it all started.

Seth [00:08:45]:

Don’t tell the FCC that.

David [00:08:49]:

And my 286 33 MHz computer sitting next to me, so that’s before they connected. I was doing this stuff.

Seth [00:08:58]:

That is wild, my friend. That is wild. So you’ve always been tinkering. So this idea came in. You found the perfect co founder who was kind of the business, found the need, felt the need.

David [00:09:13]:

Yes. We were actually working on another project when that came up. When this came up, because they were in the restaurant industry, we were building out a 150 page mobile app and huge database of all the products that small businesses could buy through smaller distributors, not through Cisco. There’s a ton of small distributors out there. And so we were working on this and said, okay, let’s for marketing. How do we market? So this kind of came into, hey, if we could be on the TV, let’s build a marketing company. And so that’s kind of I mean, it’s been a multi year process to build it, but we came into it and started thinking, like, hey, this is a really great thing. Let’s put a patent on the Tweeva. So we wrote out a patent. It’s at the office and kind of waiting. Patent pending? Yes.

Seth [00:10:01]:

Well, that’s because that’s the thing. If it says patent pending, it scares away enough people that won’t go rip you off.

David [00:10:07]:

Yeah, hopefully.

Seth [00:10:11]:

That’s exciting.

David [00:10:12]:

Yeah, it is.

Seth [00:10:14]:

It’s complex, but what’s the scariest thing about being an entrepreneur, in your mind? The scariest thing we’ll go back to we’ll do this backwards today.

David [00:10:21]:

What’s the scariest the scariest thing about being entrepreneur? What keeps you I don’t know. My brain is literally going all the time, so I don’t know what the scariest thing is. Tomorrow? The next day, three days from now? No, it’s like, as an entrepreneur, everything is scary, but having things finally moving, and it’s like, things are grease, the wheels are moving. It’s awesome. But I guess as an entrepreneur, you’re always worried about the next couple of years of what you’re going to do. What I didn’t like as a beginning, before I had, like, a major project, you’re always like, I hate doing the same thing every single day for 20 to 50 different people. And then I wanted to build something on my own. I wanted to build something big. So you partner with people, and you partner with a couple of people, and this works. This doesn’t work. But the scariest thing, I don’t know. There’s a lot of scary things for entrepreneurs.

Seth [00:11:20]:

We’ll leave it at that. So what’s the best thing, man, we’ll put it on its head. What’s the best thing?

David [00:11:26]:

I’m an extreme optimist, so dreaming. I love dreaming. I love creating things, building things. My dad also, I credit to him, too. He was electrical contractor, so he would take home, and I asked my brother this the other day. I go, Why did we have all those things in the garage? Like, we had a pneumatic pump over here. We had a three phase 220 volts motor over here. We had a clean room switch with a grommet on it for something over here. And he goes, oh, well, that company that dad used to work at, and we would help him. They were in research and development, so they would just get all this stuff, test what they needed to scrap it all and start over again. I was like, oh, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah. He might have seen a switch that was more valuable than the garbage, and he put it on a metal shelf in the garage. Had everything organized out. Well, not all organized, but enough.

Seth [00:12:20]:

When I walked in, the truth comes out.

David [00:12:22]:

Yeah, there was definitely boxes of stuff. Yeah. And then I’m like, Why did we grow up like that? He’s like, oh, they were in research about, okay, that makes more sense now. I didn’t understand before, but that led that into building and thinking and creating. I think that’s what that’s credited to.

Seth [00:12:42]:

Yeah. Thanks, dad.

David [00:12:43]:

Yeah, that’s right.

Seth [00:12:45]:

Seriously, you bring all this random crap home because it’s something that me to play with. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

David [00:12:55]:

Most important thing to carry? Well, it’s different for different people, so I think mine would be I have that optimism for the future, but then I have to bring my back pocket reality. That is definitely something, and that differs per person. So if you’re more of, like, that negative side, you have to bring a little optimism to that as the entrepreneur. But you always have to bring something that you’re not, and you have to know what that is. I can count so many mistakes in our journey of building Tweva that did somebody just knock on my door and tell me, hey, if you did this, in six months, you’d be this much further, right?

Seth [00:13:36]:

Oh, shocks. Yeah, exactly.

David [00:13:38]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:13:39]:

That’s wild, my friend. That’s wild. So where can people find if they’re interested in Tweva and they want to learn more about Tweva? Where can they find more about Tweva and do the Tweva twist?

David [00:13:49]:

Yeah, for the Tweva twist, well, you can go to I have a little subdomain set up, connect Tweva.com. And that’s where you can say, hey, I’m a business owner, or, I’m an influencer. I want to get connected. And then you can find us on social media and any social media. Tweva. TW E-V-A And if you’re a small business and you have a TV, we’d love to get you into the network. Because what we’re trying to do is build out in every city, in every state, a small TV network that business owners can kind of show what they do. I wouldn’t say sketchy, but not an old time commercial, right? Not like, look who I am, how great I am. I want these little tutorials of how to do things better. If you’re replacing a roof, this is what’s wrong with your shingles. This is where to look for a leak. Think this old house for small businesses in your town, right? This is what we want to create for people to watch. It’s much better than a soap opera.

Seth [00:14:54]:

Yeah, very much better than a soap opera.

David [00:14:57]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:14:59]:

Dave, this has been so much fun. Before we go, where do you hang out most online? Where’s your watering hall?

David [00:15:07]:

Well, it has to be now in all the social media accounts. So being that person in the background yeah, I used to not be on a lot, so I don’t have that much. But when we started going to venture capital there, we got guys, you got to start adding stuff to your social media accounts. It’s like, yeah. But personally, I just never did. I was the tech guy behind the Mackey board, but it’s everywhere now. I’m looking at TikTok for new trends. I’m looking at Facebook for connections. I’m looking at LinkedIn for the investors. Anywhere. Anywhere.

Seth [00:15:36]:

It keeps you busier than busy, right?

David [00:15:39]:

A little too much. Yeah.

Seth [00:15:41]:

Well, have your kids hire your kid. Hire your kids to do it.

David [00:15:44]:

That is a good idea. They’re just about of age to do that.

Seth [00:15:48]:

Yeah, that’s a freebie. You can use that one for free. There you go.

David [00:15:51]:

Yeah, I told them. I said, hey, we’re building this so that you can have this for the future you can help manage.

Seth [00:15:57]:

There you go.

David [00:15:58]:

I love it, too. Yeah, that’s right. It’s good stuff.

Seth [00:16:03]:

Dave, this has been so much fun. Everyone go check out tweva.com. Right?

David [00:16:10]:

Yes. You got it. You got it. It’s a nice, simple five letter domain. Fits in there. Facebook, Twitter, Tweva. Right? Uber. It’s very easy. Hey, mom, can you put my soccer game up on Tweva tv? That’s what we wanted. We were originally zip code TV. I was like zip code TV. Does that really work in another language? No. So we had to find something cool. Yeah.

Seth [00:16:36]:

I like it. I like it. So this is great. And guess what? We’ll see everyone next week. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcast.net.

David [00:17:04]:

You.

Seth [00:17:26]:

Gold Theme hopes you have enjoyed this episode. Episode this podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.