Our story
Why I built this
The short version: I grew up watching my dad run his own business, and then spent my whole career at the companies building for people like him.
I grew up in a big family, watching my dad leave a corporate food-service job to start his own company. He was good at the work. The harder half was everything around it: getting the word out, and being sure he was doing it right. Nobody starts a business because they love that part.
That harder half is the one I've spent my career on.
Apple taught me the counter
I spent four years at Apple running Genius Bar operations. The whole job was sitting across from somebody who was stuck, working out what they actually needed, which was rarely what they came in asking for, and getting them out the door fixed. Nobody at that bar cared how the thing worked. They cared that it worked, and that a person was going to stay with them until it did.
Mailchimp was the point
That's what took me to Mailchimp. Not software in general, but that company specifically, because it was the one building for people like my dad. Small businesses were the customer, not a segment.
I was employee #80, and I stayed twelve years, through the $12 billion acquisition. The company went from a few dozen people to thousands around me. The customer never changed once.
I started on support, answering the questions people wrote in with when they were stuck. Then I spent a stretch keeping spammers and bad actors out, which is its own education in how small businesses actually get treated online.
After that I helped build Mailchimp & Co, the worldwide program for the freelancers and small agencies who set Mailchimp up for other businesses. For my last four years I ran how that program worked everywhere it operated.
Half of that job was building the machinery behind it. The other half was sitting down with the people in the program, one at a time, and asking what they actually needed to do right by their own customers. Then going and building that.
Everything I know about small business, I learned from small businesses.
That second half is this job, and it's why the interviews came first. I have been asking small business people about their work for years. Pointing a camera at the answer is the only part that's new.
After that, a run of other technology companies. Good products, sharp people. But the further I got from the counter, the more obvious the gap became: all of it assumed you already knew how to use it.
Where I've worked
A career spent close to small businesses
These are the places that taught me this job. Yes, I kept the badges.
Every company I've worked for
The publication
We run HeyABQ
HeyABQ is ours: a local title about Albuquerque, its shops, its food, its markets, and the people behind the counter. It's where these videos go, and it's the reason we can put a business in front of this city without buying advertising to do it.
So most of my weeks are spent inside small businesses around here, with a camera and a lot of questions, asking owners how the work is actually going. Twenty so far. Eleven of those are up on HeyABQ now, and the rest are being edited.
That's where all of this came from: a lot of afternoons in other people's shops, listening to what actually makes a week hard.
So this is the counter, rebuilt
Crestworthy does two things. We make a real feature video about your business and put it in front of thousands of people in Albuquerque. Then we give you somewhere to keep the customers it brings you: your video, your photos, your customer list, and a way to write to them, with everything you don't need taken out.
And there's a button that says ask us anything. A person reads every one of those. That part isn't a feature, it's the whole idea.
It comes back to my dad. He was good at the work. The harder half was getting the word out, and being sure he was doing it right. That's the half we do.
Let's get your business in front of Albuquerque
We'll come to you, film for twenty minutes, and put it in front of thousands of locals. It's free, and your page on HeyABQ stays yours either way.
Start with a free 15-minute callNo contract. Nothing to cancel.