When Ben Barnett got a call from Walmart’s innovation team, he knew he was on to something.
It was 2014, and Barnett — a nursing school student with a hobby blog focused on business innovation — spent his days studying at Miami University and his spare time predicting inventions like the iPhone and Apple’s Force Touch trackpad. (Of the 150 trends Barnett predicted on his blog, 70 percent have been implemented, he estimates.)
While Barnett’s business savvy grew, his passion for nursing dwindled. Barnett knew what he had to do. He quit school, turned his blog into a consulting and development business, and Universally Thinking was born.
“It was a hard decision [to quit nursing school] because I had to be able to justify this move to family,” he said. “I had a lot of encouragement, though, especially after being contacted by bigger companies.”
“You can innovate the way you handle how HR works or how you handle your PR. It’s about developing a creative approach to problem solving.”
Today, Barnett’s Anderson Township-based company provides four core services: innovation consulting, IT support, brand development and digital platform development (i.e., creating a cohesive experience across a website and accompanying apps). Universally Thinking, which is currently transitioning to the name Swagger LLC, focuses mostly on nonprofits and small businesses in the greater Cincinnati area.
But a restless Barnett doesn’t stop there. Beyond helping local companies streamline technologies and innovate their services, Universally Thinking capitalizes on Barnett’s self-taught IT skills to launch (and eventually sell) platforms like the company’s first private app, Swagger Jukebox.
Ranked as a top 100 app just months after launching, Swagger Jukebox gives friends the chance to collaborate on song selection at get-togethers. Swagger Jukebox has a monthly subscription of $1.99, but the revenue potential is far greater.
“Jukebox is cash-flow positive and has shown a 400 percent return on investment in under a year’s time,” Barnett said. “There’s a merger and acquisitions group interested in helping me sell the app now, so my goal is to grow it to a certain point and sell it, then put those proceeds back into the larger business.”
Jukebox isn’t the only app on Universally Thinking’s roster; the company has several other apps currently in “stealth mode,” according to Barnett.
While development solutions are Universally Thinking’s bread and butter, Barnett is preparing to grow deeper in the innovation forecasting and consulting industries.
“You can innovate so many different things beyond just products,” he said. “You can innovate the way you handle how HR works or how you handle your PR. It’s about developing a creative approach to problem solving.”
Barnett’s business accomplishments, which include consulting with decision makers at companies like Apple and Samsung, position Universally Thinking for further growth in the innovation consulting field. He forecasted AirPods before Apple created them, and Walmart ended up streaming its online ordering process following Barnett’s call in 2014.
Barnett and his go-to team of local contractors are ready for this exciting next step.
“Our ultimate goal at Universally Thinking is to help clients take a product from ideation to successful release,” Barnett said. “We want to take a fresh idea and brand it, build it, modify it, then release it to be successful. One of the biggest things we have to offer clients is intuition, and we think it’s a great value-add for this kind of work.”
