IT’S TIME TO GET QUOLLIFIED
It’s no exaggeration to say that social sharing app TikTok has changed pop culture in the last few years with its bite-sized video format and advanced recommendations algorithm.
Now, a British-made app that is already drawing positive comparisons with TikTok, but which is aimed squarely at businesses, looks set to usher in another digital revolution, this time in the field of human capital.
And with “entrepreneurs’ entrepreneur” and “uber-mentor” Ron G Holland in the driving seat, the app—Quollify—has the real potential to become an international, multi-billion pound sensation, totally transforming the way that business owners, executives and professionals at all levels and in all sectors connect in the future.
By Timothy Arden
Are you “quollified”? At the moment, this might not make much sense to you but this time next year it certainly will.
It’s funny how certain digital services have become so popular, so commercially rampant on a global scale, that they have entered the common lexicon. Not so long back the word ‘tweeple’, for those who use Twitter, was all the rage while, at present—and if you are of a certain (young) age—you’ll know exactly what it means when someone asks if you enjoy “Toking”.
For TikTok is, right now, the undisputed king of social media. The 30-second video sharing site, which launched in 2016, has more than one billion monthly active users and a market value a staggering 250 times greater.
While it’s aimed at the youth market, aged 13-24, the app quickly caught the attention of seasoned British entrepreneur and global business mentor Ron G Holland. Being in his early 70s, he wasn’t particularly interested in the throw-away content but the concept immediately got him thinking.
“I thought to myself, how amazing would it be if company owners and entrepreneurs had something similar to TikTok, where they could upload 30-second videos and get instantaneous business matches,” he says.
That was two years ago and since then Holland, now 72, has been working quietly in the background to launch the new business-orientated app.
Called ‘Quollify’, it promises to connect business owners with talent, and vice versa, in the space of just a few clicks, and to do so for free.
According to Holland—who is no stranger to digital entrepreneurship, being noted as the first person to raise over £1million in the City for an internet company, right back at the dawn of the World Wide Web in 1994—it’s launch will “disrupt the disruptors” by providing a powerful new solution to an age-old problem: sourcing human capital.
Human capital is defined as the value that having the rightperson for the job will bring to a business in terms of their skills, knowledge, and experience.
Holland, who has variously been dubbed the “entrepreneurs’ entrepreneur”, “king millionaire maker”, and “uber-mentor” across his five-decade business career, says that human capital matching has long been a major thorn in the sides of companies, from the one-man start-up to the established corporates.
“Human capital is now, arguably, more valuable to entrepreneurs and businesses than financial capital,” he says.
“In this era of the global village, and as the commercial playing field is becoming ever more crowded and competitive, having the right talent on board is now more important than ever.
“Despite this, the actual process and mechanics of human capital matching hasn’t really progressed in the last few decades, still being entirely reliant on outdated 20th century technology.
“As a business mentor to entrepreneurs across the world, I have heard time and again how frustrating it can be to find the people they need to take flight and hit the stratosphere.”
While the internet has undoubtedly had an impact on business matching, Holland still sees this as a deeply flawed and unreliable model.
It can also be incredible costly, with companies routinely paying upwards of £40,000 upfront to recruitment agencies to secure them a top executive.
Holland—who is also a bestselling business self-help authorand whose works such as DEBT FREE With Financial Kung Fu, Talk & Grow Rich, Turbo Success, and The Millionaire Within are now viewed as classics of the genre—continued: “You’re essentially paying a human resources agency to put out a profile on LinkedIn or similar platform and then filter through hundreds of responses to present you will the top three or so candidates for final selection.
“It’s time-consuming, it’s grossly inefficient, and it’s outrageously expensive, especially when you remember that many entrepreneurs are building up a company by the bootstraps and simply don’t have the finances to afford such services.
“Of course, you can try your luck directly on recruitment platforms but they are heavily monetised and designed to place barriers between you and those you are seeking, not to remove them.
“Either way, you’ll find more static than signal, more wheat than chaff, during your search. I knew that there had to be a better way, so I set out to find it.”
As part of his initial research Holland joined up with multiple dating sites to get a better feel of the user experience (UX) and to learn what made for a good app, and its opposite.
He then began recruiting a global crew to make his vision a reality, bringing in a crack team of developers to build and then iterate upon the Quollify design.
The result is a platform that is streamlined, intuitive to use and which, thanks to powerhouse, state-of-the-art algorithms, delivers tailored matches fast.
Getting started on Quollify couldn’t be easier. You create a 30-second elevator pitch video in which you briefly state who you are, what you do, and what you are seeking, and then let the app’s sophisticated mechanics do the rest.
“You’ll find a wealth of talent ready and waiting to support your business journey, such as co-founders, executives, website coders and designers, salespeople, accountants, legal experts, marketers, non-executives, angel investors, advisors, mentors, and coaches, to name but a few,” says Holland, proudly.
“As soon as the video is uploaded, the app immediately begins the quollification process.
“You’ll quickly receive a shortlist of suitable matches, with their own 30-second videos to browse through.
“You can begin to ‘quollify’ each other, asking targeted questions to identify the right person to meet your needs, such as have they got a business plan, a pitch deck, C.V., testimonials and references.
“Like any app, the more information you can provide in your profile area, the better the matching algorithms can work and the better the result.”
Remarkably, work has been able continue apace despite the global Covid lockdown and, as Holland, reveals, despite his own serious health issues.
In 2019, the revered business guru was shocked to discover that he had advanced mouth and throat cancer.
“It was so serious that my doctors were, at one point, considering palliative care only,” he confides.
“For 18 months I had a gruelling battle against the cancer, receiving intensive chemotherapy and radiation. As a result of the treatment I lost my voice for two months and I would often be found developing the Quollify idea from a hospital bed.
“Then the pandemic hit, though I used this time wisely to continue building the Quollify concept, preparing for the fundraising phase, and planning for its launch further down the line.”
Thankfully, Holland is now in full remission and has even used his experiences as inspiration for his forthcoming self-help book, Dead Man Talking—A Simple Road Map to: Wealth, Health & Happiness in the 21st Century.
Quollify—which guarantees users “Qualified matches FAST”—is currently in its pre-launch phase, with its MPV(minimum viable product) now accessible to an early-access user base.
It is now going through back-to-back funding rounds for circa £3million, £10million and £100million, alongside seeking strategic alliance partners—including technologists, coders, and managers—as well as potential acquisitions and contributors to the planned customer magazine, Human Capital.
And Holland firmly believes that with Quollify he has “the bull by the horns”, projecting a customer base of 500,000 users worldwide within the first 12 months of operation alone.
In the longer term, his goal is to build that up to 500million users and to turn the app into a billion-dollar company.
“For the early bird investors, this is a golden investment opportunity,” says Holland.
“The app is free to use but we will, over time, bring in a monetisation model. Unlike other services, this won’t put up barriers to use. Instead, it will allow users to benefit from additional services such as mastermind mind groups, training, and educational resources on how to maximise the potential of human capital.”
With a worldwide market of entrepreneurs, corporates, and company owners crying out for a better way to connect, Quollify looks set to be a match made in heaven.
For more information, visit www.quollify.com and register your interest in the app while, at the same time, grabbing a free copy of one of Holland’s many classic business guides, Turbo Success - How to Re-Program the Human Biocomputer.
Q&A INTERVIEW WITH QUOLLIFY FOUNDER, RON G HOLLAND
We speak with “entrepreneur’s entrepreneur” Ron G Holland about his revolutionary new business matching app, Quollify, to find out more about its genesis, development, and what users can expect from it when it makes its hard launch.
Q. Your new human capital matching app, Quollify, promises to ‘disrupt the disruptors’. Can you explain why such disruption is urgently required?
A. Things happen in the internet and app space very quickly. The problem with current business matching apps is they are clunky dinosaurs driven by last-century technologies and ideas as well as by outdated monetisation methodologies, which may be fine until you get competition. Instead of making the search for human capital intuitive, rewarding, and instantaneous, it has now become a laborious and costly task.
Since we announced that our magic was a novel 30-second video, there are now adverts popping up all over the dinosaurs, inviting you to put up a 30-second video and, I have to say, the team had a darn good belly laugh. They have missed the point entirely and have mounted a 30-second video on the back of a dinosaur. I am minded of the story of the guy who owned a dirty, ugly pig. He dressed it in a pink tutu, put a dazzling jewelled tiara on its head, and painted its toenails bright red. Everyone laughed and jeered, and one guy shouted out, “No matter what you do, it’s still a pig! A fat-bellied one at that!”.
The human capital arena is screaming to be opened up, to become more efficient, and to be organised, instead of putting up more and more barriers. The whole human capital arena is highly fragmented and disorganised. Quollify is an acquisitive vehicle and will consolidate the industry.
Q. Where is the app now in the development cycle, and what can we expect to happen next?
A. We are in beta test mode with selected folk who are giving us ultra-critical feedback to allow to develop the user journey, matching engines, AI and overall aesthetics, all of which are crucial to get right prior to full launch. When we launch and are moving forward, we will
rely on early adopters to keep giving us feedback to enable us to increase our performance. Obviously, the more users on the app, the more matches are made. We are currently creating great matches, with relatively low numbers and aim to keep on improving that.
What we expected to happen next is already happening, only bigger and better that we possibly dreamed. We have been overwhelmed by folk going to the Quollify site and logging their interest in the app.
This bodes well for launch day. Obviously, our PR campaign, known as ‘Perfect Storm’, is reaching the places other media can’t reach and we are attracting serious enquires from funders, IT folk, journalists, business leaders, HR departments, AI scientists and others who just want to be part of what we at Quollify are doing.
Q. The Quollify app will be designed with many powerful features, including the ability for users to form mastermind groups with peers. Why is this important, and can you tell us more about how this will work?
A. Our raison d’etre is to organise human capital and, in doing so, the app will ultimately include many powerful features including the ability to form mastermind groups. Through powerful algorithms and AI, you will be linked with folk who can really help you and you, them. Many times these folk will surprise you and may not be those that you may normally seek out. Harnessing the unconscious minds of others is an extremely powerful principle and many folk have tried to set up masterminds groups of their own. Invariably, they come together for a few weeks or perhaps even a few months beforeeventually drifting apart because everyone thought they were putting too much in and getting too little out. The Quollify app is all about organising human capital and within the app there will be tutorials on best practice when it comes to setting up a mastermind group that actually works and benefits each of its members.
Q. Your app has been described as “TikTok but for business”. Do you think this is a fair comparison, and why?
A. I think it’s a great comparison and I personally love TikTok so I take that as a great compliment. It is highly addictive and, although used primarily for entertainment only, it serves as a great model for us to use, but we are business only. Our bag is business, through and through, and our combined team totals hundreds of years’ experience and billions of dollars in sales and growth. We learn not just from TikTok and many other video-based channels but also from all apps that have learned and used the secrets of stickiness, gamification, and delivering real value. We can already see from the 30-second videos that we have flooding in for our beta test that they are all strikingly different and eminently viewable, in their own right.
We envisage that viewing 10 or 20 30-second videos, to track down your perfect C-level board member, angel investors, co-founder, mentor and so forth, will be equally addictive for business folk as those seeking entertainment on TikTok.
Q. Quollify is your brainchild. How did you first come up with the idea for the app?
A. For a number of years I was intrigued with dating apps, and came across Tinder with a market cap of $4billion. I loved the idea of how boy meets girl very quickly, and could see the popularity of the apps. I started serious research into the app business and was downloading over 100 apps a week, playing around to see if I could first get into them and if they could deliver value, instantaneously. The majority failed to perform, at least to my satisfaction, and I would start the process again and download another 100. I came to the conclusion that 20 clicks to get into an app and get it delivering value was far too many clicks. Then I came across TikTok and fell in love with 30-second videos and I had my eureka moment: wouldn’t it be great if business folk and entrepreneurs could instantaneously find who they are looking for, free. But that’s not all. To me a ‘eureka!’ is when you get the complete idea all in one, just like famous composer getting the idea for complete symphony in a fraction of a second and then taking months to write the music. That is what happened with the Quollify app. I came up with the complete idea; the name, based on how you qualify folk in the real world; the IT team—which include three software companies and AI specialist; the marketing; the user journey; the funding. I pulled my team together, some from folk I goback with many years and other using methodologies my teamand I have developed on how and where to find and attract talent. The marketing is a mammoth task and includes high-level PR, viral teams in three countries, social media, and over 500 strategic alliances, many of whom I have existing relationships with, who will help promote the app. I then approached City contacts at the highest level and started to explore exactly what was needed to raise £100million and that was the starting point. Now we are working backwards. We needed to know an end goal to allow us to align the planets and get all the ducks in row, rather than just bumble along. We don’t need to do that, we now have an elegant plan and its already clicking into place like a cosmic jigsaw puzzle.
Q. You are noted as the first person to raise £1million in the City for an internet company. What would you say qualifies you for launching a new app in 2021?
A. My forte is raising money, strategy, cost-effective marketing, and pulling teams together and driving things forward to conclusion. At the age of 72 I really do have the grey hairs, grey suit, and experience to make this thing happen in a big way. I am now mobilising my global contacts and the team is fully on board and driven. When my team and I introduced the City to the internet, one stockbroker said, “Ron, we love you, love your team, but tell us what the internet is?”. I explained that you get a telephone cable and stuff it into the back of a computer. He quipped that, “they didn’t have computers”, which was only a joke, but it shows how early into the game we were. We did raise over a million but, because we were in so early, we really didn’t have too much of a clue what to do and we failed to raise further money. However, we did open the City doors and eyes for the likes of Boo and LastMinute.
However, this time around, it is all very different and my team and I now have over 25 years of coal-face experience to draw upon, and we have all created digital successes within our own right.
As Founder, Chairman and CEO, I am like a ringmaster, pulling together many IT folk and huge marketing teams, all in a spirit of harmony. The one thing I love about being the ringmaster is that it that it’s the role where you never have to put your own head into the lion’s mouth!
Q. You are been dubbed as the ‘entrepreneur’s entrepreneur’ and the ‘King Millionaire Maker’. What are you bringing to the table to make the app a global success?
A. My biggest forte has always been to be able to connect the dots; to see what others do not. But there’s more—much more. I am the product of some incredible mentors and one of them, Bruce Snyder, was a scientist, physicist, mathematician, heavyweight IT professional, and multi-millionaire entrepreneur. Bruce worked on some awesome projects during his career such as the Exocet missile, Skylab, Stingray torpedoes, and the communication systems at Whitehall, to mention a few. We used to have incredible discussions about how he would be working on weapon systems that would only see the light of day in 20 or 30 years’ time when they were introduced into the real world. Bruce and I became business partners for 32 years but, unfortunately, he died of cancer just as I announced the Quollify app. I also been diagnosed with aserious cancer of my own. His last words to me before he died were profound: “Don’t lose your vision.”.
Without a doubt, Bruce taught me how to think big—really big—looking into the future 10, 20, or even 30 years. One of Bruce’s tenets was always to use the end goal as your starting point. He mentioned that it’s no good building a missile system that’s takes off really fast and accurately from the get go, only to realise that it won’t punch through the its target’sfour feet of solid reinforced steel. You start at the point of the missile tearing through steel and diligently work your way back to the firing sequence. In Quollify, we worked out, day one, what the end-goal was: to build an app with 500 million potential customers, organise human capital, and build a billion-dollar app and organisation. That allowed us to articulate step one. I would like to think that I am not only bringing to the party my own 50 years of business acumen, writing, people management and leadership skills, but also bringing along Bruce’s spirit, intellect, and vision.
Q. You believe that the app, which will be free, has the potential to have a £1billion market worth. How will you monetise the app in the future?
A. Since its inception the search aspect of the app has always been free and instantaneous, taking away all the barriers that impede that search. Our overall mission is to organise human capital and, to the end, we have a vast amount to bring to the party and to add value in many other ways where our model allows us to charge, and our customers—because of the value they receive—will be happy to pay.
Market worth and monetisation are two very different subjects, especially in the world of the internet and app business.
Market worth, otherwise known as ‘mkt cap’ is easy to work out but not so simple to get your mind around. The market capitalisation of any company is always the number of shares in existence multiplied by the price of the last shares sold. By far the best way to create that value is to get that last tranche of money from a recognised financial institution.
The value placed on companies is frequently based on potential for the future and, in the case of many apps, assessing how many users it has got and if it is growing exponentially. An app that has one million, 100 million, or even 500 million users, but with no revenue whatsoever, will certainly have a value, to someone, especially if those users are attached to a lot of personal data. Even before wemonetise Quollify I envisage attracting very substantial offers from competitors and private equity houses.
Monetisation is simple the cash flow generated from all sorts of different sources. It comes about by knowing your customers and your market place, and offering products and services for money. Our market place is human capital, on two levels—corporate and entrepreneurial—and we know our customers extremely well, knowing what they need, what they like, what will bring them demonstrable value and, of course, what they will pay for and how.
Although we do not intend to monetise until we have built a substantial user base, our team is already beavering away developing really cool products for a hungry market place that will bring true value to users.
Q. You are now in your 70s. How do you think Quollify would have altered your business empire if it had been in existence when you first started out?
A. Without a doubt, the internet has proved to be the biggest change that business has ever seen, and I believe, like many others, it is still embryonic. If the Quollify app had been around 50 years ago, when I first started, it would have transformed the business in so far as we would have had access to a global pool of talent that we would have been able to tap into instantaneously. Just having access to those seeking C-level roles and run-of-the-mill jobs can be very empowering, knowing that you have an instant solution to your human capital needs.
Q. Quollify will have its own magazine, Human Capital Magazine. Can you tell us more about this, and what readers can expect?
A. Firstly, at Quollify we believe the marketing of the app is equally as important as the app itself and its development. To that end, we pride ourselves with being able to get out powerful message that engage our users and, indeed, attract, assist ,and even-up users—globally.
Initially, the magazine will be digital format but very quickly we will attract a major magazine promotor/publisher that has global distribution so that it will be in newsagents across the UK, US, and other English-speaking countries.
The digital version with have three click buttons, allowing the reader to select ‘Corporate’, ‘Entrepreneurial’, or ‘Show All’, and the printed version will probably have a carefully blended selection of everything to do with human capital, how to attract it, organise it, and capitalise upon it. The magazine will have a combination of features, articles, and insights and we are already attracting great writers and editors from industry, business, and universities across the globe.
We have set out to be the de facto standard and definitive word when it come to the subject of human capital. We will aim to deliver real value, month after month, that will reflect in the bottom line.
Most business folk are aware, even if only vaguely, of the financial reset that has happened under the cover of darkness, in stealth mode, over the past 20 years: cryptocurrency; zero bank rates; many businesses not accepting cash, leading to cashless societies, e-wallets, challenger banks, four-trillion-dollar business being done on the internet. What they are not aware of is the equally massive reset in the human capital arena, being driven by many factors but starting with the dramatic switch from left-brain thinking to right-brain thinking in the past 20 years. The impact and consequences of this are truly massive and far reaching. Our goal in organising human capital is to inform business folk, and alert them to ways they can be ahead of the curve and capitalise on this massive change in human behaviour.
Covid has brought about a different way that people interact and have meetings, which are usually time consuming, because of commuting, and inefficient because of small chat. It’s been a wake-up call to most executives that meeting on Zoom, even with the video on, is not too difficult at all; and because there are no coffees and small chat to get in the way, most folk find that they can get to the salient points very quickly, get a lot of business done in a short space of time, and move onto the next meeting. The magazine will act as a conduit for uncovering and passing on such useful insights.
Famed as the “Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur”, Ron G Holland is a serial entrepreneur and business mentor, specialising in fund raising, cost effective marketing, and growth and strategy. He is also one of the UK’s most popular self-help authors. He released his first business book, Debt Free with Financial Kung Fu, in 1977 and has since published more than 20 titles which have sold millions of copies worldwide and which have been translated into more than 10 languages. He is now pre-launching his new book Dead Man Talking – A Simple Road Map to: Wealth, Health and Happiness in the 21st Century.
Holland is also the founder of new human capital matching app Quollify, which has just launched back-to-back funding rounds for circa £3million, £10million and £100million, alongside seeking strategic alliance partners, potential acquisitions, and contributors to the forthcoming Quollify app magazine, Human Capital. Visit www.quollify.comto register your interest in the app and—at the same time—pick up a free copy of one of Holland’s many classic business guides, Turbo Success - How to Re-Program the Human Biocomputer.