Be Passionate About What You Do

Be Passionate About What You Do

Aaron Golbin

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

1/15/2021

Sponsored by findcourses.com and findcourses.co.uk

Also sponsored by Cereal Entrepreneur

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

in order to make a very successful company in addition to what i said before which is you know focusing on a bunch of different things marketing development all of those things you really have to have the passion for and you have to be willing to put in the work for if you're just going to say i want to make a trillion dollars on the first day it's not going to happen uh you need to put the work in it's going to be a lot of hard work but as long as you're passionate about it it will be worth it [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that has grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with your uh startup or small business feel free to reach out to us by going to strategymeeting.com now today we have a great guest on is i think he's either the second or third youngest i can't remember there's been a few younger um you younger guess but he's certainly in the the contention for the youngest um aaron and his goal bin say how you so less goldman all right so is a quick introduction to aaron so aaron started out um he is 17 now um started out his first venture at eight years old um i think in third grade and he did i think he named it uh keane's corpse or cream corporation yep ain's corpse or king's corporation and it was outside activities that you ran at your school to uh for other kids of similar age to do um activities and to be active and to learn and whatnot and then made an exit fifth grade on that um and then in seventh grade started uh coding um and did a um what was the genesis of what are some of what he's doing now with the debate island so it's been founded that founded a couple other things is now working on a few other deals on a board for a non-profit and doing a few other things and getting ready to go to college and continue his entrepreneurial journey so with that much as an introduction welcome on to the podcast erin thank you for having me so i i jumped into you or gave a brief interview of your journey but maybe let's go back to the the eight-year-old and start when you're in third grade setting up your first entrepreneur endeavor yeah sure so i was in third grade and i started my first venture which was kings corporation it basically seeked to provide indoor and outdoor activities for kids in my school it ranged from everything from uh card games to kickball and a bunch of other things i had a lot of volunteers i had a lot of uh people enjoying the services as well then i exited that in fifth grade and they started learning before you jump on to that just on the first one so was that first of all was it a charge i mean you actually had people that paid to use your revenge and had a act or it volunteers or was it a uh non for profit how did you set it up no so it was free it was free for the kids it was free you know volunteers they were just doing it out of the clients of their hearts and i was running it for free as well i did get a little bit of uh financial benefit in fifth grade uh because i got an award for what i was doing i got i was recognized by the new york state assembly as well which is pretty cool but the actual service itself was totally free for the kids okay cool so just decided hey would this would be a cool or cool to have these activities cool to be able to get something going try your hand out at entrepreneurism so you made that exit in fifth grade now now to jump back into your journey so after fifth grade then where did you go yeah so i've always really been interested in entrepreneurship technology and business so what happened was in fifth grade after a stellar report card my dad told me about this programming website where i can learn how to program codeacademy.com i strongly recommend it and there i learned how to program using a bunch of different programming languages is really a lot of fun it's all interactive and i learned i think about four or five programming languages in about a year then in seventh grade i said all right i have to start something else i want to start something new entrepreneurially using the technology background that i now have and i came up with this idea of an online debate platform that was really aimed towards casual islands debating which did not exist at the time and still does not we're actually the only in the last one it seems like casual and debate typically don't go together exactly that was the problem right because you have sites like reddit facebook and those kind of twitter there's a lot of argumentation because first of all one big problem is for example if i were to debate with a co-worker and the co-workers different political affiliation for me on facebook it's not it's not really uh anonymous they would know who they are there could be a lot of different arguments this way on debate island you can debate casually you can improve your debating skills you can also debate formally with different formats ranging from tournament style to less formal and uh you can also analyze your arguments with artificial intelligence and you can really learn from others without getting into all while being civil so you're not going to get into arguments with your co-workers for example and so i learned about artificial intelligence business plans pitch decks and a bunch of other things through debate island i'm still learning it's still growing right now it's one of the largest online debate platforms in the whole world it's been featuring forbes inc msn money and a bunch of other publications and then when i was i believe it was 2017 so i was in uh ninth grade no i think it was 10th grade i founded lostcry.com and that happened after my great-grandmother telling us last week was a holocaust survivor she's now 94. she told me about her holocaust story and i was just taken aback and i said you know there's probably so many other stories just like this and i want to share hers and i want to have other people be able to share their story of hardship as well so now lostcry.com anywhere anyone can go on they can share their answer story of hardship they can learn about others and see this story of hardship as well on the website i think it's very impactful so now i've got a couple questions because i think it's interesting so circling back and we'll go to lost cry in just a minute because that's another interesting one but going to debate island when you started it was it with the intent of hey i just think this would be a cool website i'm going to start and it'll be fun was it hey we're going to make it or make this one we're going to make a business out of or make money do you monetize it now is it still for free or how did you set up that initial business yeah sure so again i was really passionate of you know i wanted to make another business i knew that i had this new skills and technology and i want to leverage that so i said okay what is a great idea night i've always loved debating i've always been an avid debater and i said okay wait a second there's a synergy here why don't i make an online platform the only one of its kind that people can go online debate casually and then eventually we had artificial intelligence we have now the ai we call it deborah ai it can analyze arguments for insightful things that can help people improve their debating skills it can actually predict the winners of debates online it can also predict someone's political affiliation and their recommended presidential candidate that they support so that's pretty cool uh but the mission was a business and it is a business now obviously uh so that's really the core of it but i think it started with a great idea and now obviously it's really expanded i'm very happy about that and it continues to grow so now how did you make it into a business is the advertising was an email list was it affiliates or you know how did you or was it a premium you know freemium and a premium or how did you start to monetize debating because to your point you have other platforms now maybe they're not cordial or congenial but you do have reddit you do have facebook and so you know a platform that's just uh focused on debating how do you start to build that into a business right so in addition to casual debating we also have formal debating formless debating persuade me debating uh lincoln douglas debating which is very useful for debate clubs for example we also have an educational solution called debatedown.com education which is seeking to incorporate online debate and artificial intelligence in the classroom so for example a social studies teacher um if they're learning about the civil war they're teaching the students about civil war they can hop on zubaid island during the class afterwards after the class and then everyone can debate on this topic so it increases information retention as well as debating critical thinking skills in the children which i think is very very useful and it's also very engaging so that's obviously monetizable in addition there is advertising premium membership sponsored debates so there's a lot of you know um abilities there no it makes perfect sense so now you're doing that so first of all you know you're in seventh you started that i think at least to genesis seven seventh grade it's still up and going today people can still debate and then you started lost cries you mentioned to still tell the stories of what would be holocaust survivors and other tragic events and how that played so you know how did you get you had the idea now is that one again i'll ask the same probably about the same question which is you know how do you monetize people's you know is that a platform that you monetize is it a free service or how did you kind of how are you developing each of these different platforms as a business going forward yeah lost cries more of a free platform i mean they're both free debate island's free as well but debatable does have some sort of you know there's some modernization going on with lost christ it's really just donations you know this is really much more for social impact minded so for that one there's not a lot of channels that i'm really willing right now to to push there okay so now how do so how do you go and get donations is it people that are using donate it do you actually actively have a place that people can donate it or people or listeners want to donate how do they go about donating or how how do they go about ever doing something of that nature i mean people can just go and donate on losscry.com there's a little button donate now and same thing for debate island although actually now we have premium membership it's a bit out no more donation there but lost cry just donate now and they can go to our paypal link and they're gonna be able to donate all right so now you so you take these and you now by the time you're and you're 17 now is that right yeah that's right so 17 now you've got these two different businesses you've got lost cry you've got debate island and then i think you've also started working on bestdeals.com is that right you shut that down for a period of time best deal wins i was able to shut down actually just a few months ago because it's just time management i have a lot of stuff going on obviously between all the different vendors i'm involved in and so i'm trying to focus right now on even more things and between school and that it's just very difficult to keep up with best deal wins as well and what it was it was basically seeking to gamify saving money online so it made gam it really made saving money like a monopoly type of thing it's not monopoly but just very gamified and fun for people to do so that was now as with most entrepreneurs i know does it ever really die or is it just put on the back burner and at some point you hope to bring it back to life exactly so so now you've done that you've done a few different ones and you're looking at 17 so are you a junior senior i'm a senior now so getting ready to graduate i think when we chatted a bit before future looks like it's college entrepreneurialism and so how do you what is the where do you see that balance because you've got now lost cry you've got debate island you'll go off to school i is it you know 50 50 you're going to try and run these as you go to school it's like hey i'm going to take a whole year break off before i go to school and really get these on you know revved up and uses income for tuition or how do you see kind of all of your entrepreneur entrepreneurial endeavors meshing with going to school yeah i mean entrepreneurship it's really a passion of mine it's not gonna stop um through whatever you know whatever business i do it through which is gonna keep going so it's it's 50 50. there's 50 50. you know half of that is school and half of that is just my out of outside of school businesses entrepreneurial activities you know whatever it may be um so you so you go to school so help me understand so is the if you had to choose and obviously you don't have to choose is if you let's say you could you got kind of the same time management thing where you could either these businesses whether it's lost cry took off and he decided hey it's going to be monetizable it's donations non-profit or you have debate island it was just a huge source of income would you you know and you get into well you know the mark zuckerberg type thing where i can either finish school or i can go do my business which one would you choose where does your heart ultimately lie yeah i mean right now it's a bit alan's already really it's already pretty big and it's growing rapidly so i have a situation right now uh i would say that it can be balanced uh it's really again just 50 50. you have to do time management i'm working my time management skills every single day and i think they're improving rapidly and i'm very excited to really balance that and work on all my entrepreneurial ventures and as well as school in a 50-50 capacity all right no makes perfect sense so you do that so now last question or one of the last questions so you're going off to school what do you what do you anticipate or what do you or hope to study or what kind of where do you see meshing all of your interests together with the with the degree yeah so i just applied to colleges a few days ago and i'm looking to have a degree that combines my passions for business technology entrepreneurship all into one program all right no perfect so maybe an entrepreneurial business degree of some sort yeah something like that so now the last or no and i said that was the last question i'll ask another one we always have our two last questions i'll ask at the end but you know so you look at you have you know you've obviously done several different businesses started when you're in third grade up till now you know if it is most good entrepreneurs or most entrepreneurs i don't know good or bad have is you always have the next idea the next thing you want to chase off after the next thing that you think is going to be the big thing do you have that next idea or and are you willing to share it i do have i'm not willing to share it right now unfortunately all right fair enough so maybe someday uh when it goes big we'll have to have you come back on you can share it at that point so all right well as we as we've now gone over your journey i always have two questions i asked towards the end of the podcast so we'll go ahead and jump to those now so first question i always ask is along your entrepreneurial journey what has been the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah so early on in debate islands which is just my second venture uh the the works of that i was really too focused on just development of it like programming uh the actual functionality of it and not so much on marketing and the other departments and i think that i learned pretty rapidly that you have to focus on all of those departments marketing development technology finance and it really you have to focus on all these things to make a successful business you can't just have one you can't be overly focused on the product because if you are no one's able to find out about your product it's very important to have marketing as well um no and i think that's a good and it happens i see a lot with programmers software engineers and that you get very enamored with the product is awesome it's really great and a lot of times it really is but if you never get the word out you never market people never know about it you can have the world's best product that you're still not able to um get out there because nobody knows about it nobody will support it or buy it so i think that's a good good an easy mistake to learn to make and a good one to learn from now the second question if you're talking maybe we'll we'll slightly adjust my question that i normally ask if you're talking to someone that's in high school that wants to be an entrepreneur wants to do a business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them yeah i mean in order to make a very successful company in addition to what i said before which is you know focusing on a bunch of different things marketing development all of those things you really have to have the passion for and you have to be willing to put in the work for if you're just going to say i want to make a trillion dollars on the first day it's not going to happen uh you need to put the work in it's going to be a lot of hard work but as long as you're passionate about it it will be worth it all right no i i completely agree and i think that you know the the thing that happens too often when you watch the movies watch the tv shows or anything else is everything or you read the book is everything looks like it's an overnight success right overnight success when most the time it's you know years in the making takes a lot of time and effort and work whether it's to build that specific business or get the skills in order to build a business and however you do it it's usually years in the works in order to really make that business a success and so i think you have to have that passion that drive find something that is really that you're willing to stick in and willing to build in order to make it a success well as we wrap up we hit on it just a little bit but if people are wanting to get in contact with you they want to find out more about debate island or lost cry they want to reach out to you find out more about what your next ideas that you don't want to share um keep it a secret anything or all the above what's the best way to connect up with your reach out to you yeah sure uh you can just obviously if you want to check out the website just go to debatealans.com lostcar.com if you want to speak with me personally just email me at aaron.goldman hotmail.com or reach out to me on linkedin uh aaron goldman on linkedin as well or twitter on twitter all right well all sorts of ways to reach out to and i definitely uh encourage everybody whether it's you love to debate if you're an attorney you always love to debate but if you like to debate you want to get your skills even better if you have a story to tell that's you know of a tragic nature or something that you want to memorialize go check out lost cry in any or all the above reach out to aaron as well well thank you aaron for coming on it's been fun to have you on it's uh fun to hear your journey now if you're a guest if you're a listener and you want to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the podcast love to have you on share your journey uh for your entrepreneurial journey and if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe to get notifications as all our new ops and episodes come out and last but not least if you ever need help with patents or trademarks or anything else for your business feel free to reach out to us at miller ip law by going to strategymeeting.com well thank you again aaron for coming on it's been fun to hear your journey and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you thank you for having me English (auto-generated) All Recently uploaded