Find What You Love And Do It

Find What You Love And Do it

Josh Baker

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

12/16/2020

Sponsored by findcourses.com

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

you never know when your time's up like so spend every moment of your time with something you love just find what you love and do it like i've found so many kids that are just like i don't like school i'm like dude find something that you can do after school that you just love even if it's a sport just like because you never know like i could go to school tomorrow be driving then boom car hits me i'm gone like you never know 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 built several uh startups into 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 just go to strategymeeting.com and are always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast josh baker and josh he is taking the he almost was the youngest person on the podcast but he's actually the second so if you go back or quite a few episodes i think it's like episode 30 or 40 somewhere in that range we had someone i think was a freshman in high school that was doing quantum computing so he doesn't quite get the title of his youngest uh guest on the podcast but almost but jake or josh is still um in high school and uh he had a kind of an entrepreneurial been since he was at a young age or a younger age i'll still say high school as a young age but uh and then he had some it started out everything from he had a neighborhood where they uh had the the classic lemonade stand and they did that to buy some candy and then they did a different or they built a shed and sold candy and then they had a couple other things that they started to get going friends went off did other things including religious missions and then that and he also was doing a few other things and then it brings him to today where he is now selling our smaller miniature christmas trees and doing that as a business is getting started and just launched i think last or in beginning of november so with that and is that as much as an introduction welcome on the podcast josh yeah thanks for having me devin um so i gave kind of a brief introduction kind of walk through every walk people through a quick version of your journey but let's dive in talk a little bit more about your journey so take us back to your younger years even though i say you're still in your younger years uh when you started out as an entrepreneur at young age and how you did your lemonade stand and candy stand and everything else yeah so it was from a young age i was i want to say i was five when i first started like kindergarten went to the store with my friends one time and we asked my mom we're like hey you think we can like get some candy she's like no uh i don't have enough money for it you know classic response like well how do we get money and she's like well figure it out so we're sitting there it's like i i don't even remember how the idea came this one let's open a lemonade stand some next thing you know we're like we're sitting on the road we have kool-aid packed 25 cents kool-aid packets and like made our own lemonade next thing you know we're on the side of the road and like lemonade 25 cents and we made pretty good money doing that gotta buy our candy and then as the years went on like you said uh we always just kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit in us since then and uh so i think the next thing so you did the first of all i always i never did the problem with me i always wanted to do that growing up but i we lived on a we lived kind of far away but it was kind of on farmland so the nearest road was more like a highway and so nobody could ever stop or pull over and we didn't have enough place to put it so i never actually did that so does a lemonade stand do they work fairly well or do you get it as a kid did you raise a lot of money for it oh yeah we were definitely for five-year-olds we were the richest kids on the blocks like we were making more than some of the fourth graders like oh we're we're doing great but yeah we had a we live in a double cul-de-sac so we could just go out and then we have two main roads on the side it's like there was a lot of traffic going in between our neighborhoods so we had an ideal location so that was perfect but awesome so so you did the lemonade stand five years old got as much candy as you could probably buy or probably handle and probably more than your parents ever wanted you to have and so then you did that now you the next i think little or a little entrepreneur that you mentioned was you built an actual shed or a shack you sold candy out of is that right yeah so after we made some money we did little side things like snow removal and stuff and then kind of got bored of that like that was hard labor like man there's got to be a better way and we had this money and we bought all the trading cards candy we could handle it would do with all this extra money i don't think any kids built a shed so we built ourselves a shed and next thing you know we're like well now we have our shed and stuff and we had a neighbor help us out like one of his dads like helped us build the shed and it was a great learning experience as well and built him like now what do we do with this like it's nice we can hang out in it but we're sitting there like let's sell some candy out of it like we made good money now we have an actual place and when it's raining we can still sell out of this like this is great and we're like man let's do that and so we went to the store we bought candy soda treats like that and uh the joke is because there's three of us the joke is is that one is the marketer because the other one he hated going door-to-door with signs just would be a classroom papers were like and we called it bosco because we're like co would stand for cooperation like we cooperated and we were all the bosses so that's kind of how we came up with it and uh so we're like bosco's opening and slamming it the other one's like i'm not doing that like that's too much walking for me like whatever but he was the salesman by far like he would be like look this is a little soda a dollar or whatever you can buy this two liter for five bucks that's more than five little sodas right here like i mean less money now oh yeah we were making way more off those two leaders he was he's just connie i was like oh my gosh like and i was kind of the guy was like let's buy candy in bulk like um we can sell it cheaper like i started to recognize opportunities where we could hey let's capitalize on this like more people are liking this let's stop buying the or like hot chocolate or like that's not doing anything i was more of the more manager type of so to speak but they were the ones that had most of the hard work so how long how long did you do your candy shack or how long did you guys uh do that for a a business i want to say it was around two to three years like it was a it was a great thing like i also recognized like let's make it limited edition to like let's only be open on friday so people are excited coming in like it was just a blast like then we got to our teenage years and who knows what we did but so you did that as a kid and that's cool i i always encourage my kids and some of the businesses i have i always i hire my kids to come and clean the office not because they do an amazing job but because it kind of gives them that same now you would associate if i want to earn something or i need money go out and earn it don't just go to your parents and ask for the money but actually figure out a way to generate that income so i think that's awesome that you did the lemonade stand and took it to the next level and did the candy shop and i said i think that you mentioned you know you kind of did things off and on with businesses with friends for a period of time and then as your friends are now gone out and started religious missions um you're kind of stuck with you know you didn't want to work what for minimum wage you didn't want to work for someone else and so you're trying to kind of figure out what to do so kind of maybe help us understand what did you do as you were trying to figure out the next evolution of your entrepreneurial journey well like you said i didn't want to get a minimum wage so i went and got a job because like before those like those two friends they were in high school they graduated last year so we had a job and man it sucked like let's just i can't think of any other way to put like we're just like man this this is not fun minimum wage it was oh it was awful and i i ended up being the first one last one to join and the first one to quit like i was like guys this i don't know what you're thinking and uh eventually those guys leave or whatever and then the pandemic hit of course and now i have a lot of spare time i'm like well i don't really know what to do with like i feel like i can do something more productive because one thing i hate like my biggest pet peeve is just sitting there i hate just being there like in a classroom setting too i just hate sitting there like absorbing not to say useless but some of it's useless information it's just like that's odd it bugs me to death so i get going or whatever there's this one class i took it was an internship class my mom has a guy he owns his own he started his own business entrepreneur and he highly successful and stuff and she's like you should just do an internship with him like yeah that would be cool like i want to fall i i want to be an entrepreneur i knew about that point like i had more fun doing that but i just didn't really know what to do so i went and did an internship like i just met with him and like we talked and i'm like this is what i want like i just knew that once i started talking like these guys just think like i do like i finally found what i want to do and i'm sitting there and he's like you know he's like well you're young or whatever like you don't have the capital or whatever i'm like yeah so how how do you think i could raise like we'll just start something little start small gave me a couple ideas like the snow removal again and i was like i've already done that i'm he's like you could also like watch dogs all this other things i'm like all right i my first idea was like i should just make like a clothes cleaning like app type thing like program my own app and make that and get going where start learning a little bit and i'm like i don't have a mac and i'm like that's like a thousand dollars i'm like well how do i get the capital for that like i almost got changed my mindset in a way like well how do i get like how do i start business to get what i want for this whatever and uh that's where little trees was born cause like a year prior or whatever i made this decoration for my parents and i was like yeah this is pretty cool and like they knew i wasn't like talented at art or anything but then they're like this this is actually good like thank you like and they're like this is really good and then like other people that stopped by like oh who made this like this is really good forgot about it the whole year happens then christmas season's upon us and like i should i should sell these like this is a great idea and that's where i am now and i'm selling them out of my room so now you have the so you and i like that kind of the evolution that well i could do this but i don't have enough startup capital so it's almost that hey i'm going to build a smaller business that i'm going to take the proceeds and build a bigger business and then a bigger business but you got to start somewhere with the funds that you do have in order to build that business that you then kind of baby step it up so you had the idea and i'm okay you know i built the mini or the little trees before you know before it was pretty well received and so now i'm going to take that and turn it into business and what's interesting is even you know even me today and i've done several startups one of the ones a couple of them actually have been where i did it as a side project just to do it as a gift or for someone that was a family member and one of the ones that you know was one that i started was for religious items it's called custom lds custom custom lds.com and it really started out of i started engraving because we have some laser engravers for my own com or some of my companies i run and i we wanted to give a gift for my one of my son when he was turning eight and he was getting baptized into the church and so i said you know wouldn't it be cool if you could do you know scriptures which is as a as a customary gift a lot of times that you'll give within our church and so we gave i said well you know scriptures are cool but you know they're all pretty the same you know there is anything really unique and it's not as memorable and so it went on and actually engraved you know a saying for him and made it memorable and custom unique and then it got well enough received and we did a couple other things like that for guests they're saying there's a business in here that people like the gifts and that is actually well received let's do a bigger business around it and that you know spurred what's one of my companies now so i like the idea of hey this is well received we do you know even if it starts out for a gift or a small project we're now going to start making a business around it so now with that as my side note just because it was kind of similar to what i've done before so you have the idea let's do little trees you start to you know build them you start to figure out what the product actually is how you're going to make these and how you're going to sell these started on november 6. so you've had about a month of that month you know how's it gone is it have you sold any if you sold one have you sold 10 how how's the selling gone have you got a website is it all for friends and family words of mouth or how to just get that launched well i started with a website it's the littletrees.com and uh at first my mom will always be my first like she's like i can't give you like capital to start but i will always be your first customer i'm like thank you like i owe everything to that but uh i started getting sales at the beginning that slowed down that's when i was like maybe i should try facebook advertising like i heard that does some things and i tried that got a little more and it was mostly just family and friends and i was like i'm still trying to figure out how to get it more out than like i always put in the box like if you like your tree then tag us on instagram and twitter and all that and like just trying to get it out you know because that ultimately is what brings you in cells the more people know you about your company and it's kind of where i'm at now and yeah so now you so now you're a crossover so you're building the the little tree and it was littletrees.com or what was the url again uh the littletrees.com all right thelittletrees.com so you know you're building that out do you see this as a business you're gonna keep building here because i mean it's gonna be a seasonal business right in the sense that once christmas is over people aren't gonna start thinking about it again till october november of next year um so you know how are you going are you going to take the money and reinvest it in your next idea are you going to try and take the time and build it out further or offer additional products or kind of what's the plan going forward after christmas well i am going to take some of the money and put towards my next business venture whatever but i'm i'm thinking i'm going to keep this almost more as like something that means more to me individually just because and it's a seasonal too so like it's that time of year as well i have been trying to expand it like the original idea i wanted to do live trees but dealing with the government's not always the best it took me like six calls to at least get an answer that i wanted but uh i'm gonna hopefully and be more prepared for that the following year because i started a little late in the season for live trees like people were already on top of that and i was like i want to introduce that next year and then keep the tinsel trees and then maybe expand a bit and then i mean eventually i wouldn't mind selling it but i don't know it just kind of i want to do it every year just almost to remind me where i started no that's cool and i think that's a you know i think that reinvesting part of it to build businesses that aren't so seasonal and also looking at you know learning each year as you hit the seasonal be able to kind of keep improving the product keep growing it and continue to have that base i think is it makes the perfect sense well as we you know so now you got through your journey as we wind up or as we wind towards the end of your journey we i always have two questions i ask at the end of the podcast so we'll go ahead and ask those now um so within your journey what has been the worst business decision you've ever made and what did you learn from it uh it's it's gotta be back we had bosco our little shed all right so we were making pretty good money for that age of how old we were and uh there's two other kids in the neighborhood down the road and they're like hey we want in on some of this like and so we like sure you know we're pals or whatever and uh he had a shed already so it's not like we had to build another one or anything we're like all right let's buy more stock and we're like two locations that's perfect we're sitting there like we were just more excited that we were expanding type of thing and uh so the deal we made with them was like because there's five of us now like all the profits we make we split between us five but not reality is the original one that was pulling in all the way like we were pulling all the profits the other one was pulling just enough that they were still hanging in there like like why are we sharing the profits with these guys like we're making way more than and i think that was our biggest mistake and i think what i can learn from that is like even though your friends like there's friends out there and you want to help them out you know you want to be in business with them sometimes it's best to keep friends and family set like family and friends from business separate just because like then there's more of an emotional time like we got in a fight too it's just i mean we're still friends to this day and strengthen our friendship but um no i think i think that's a good lesson to learn is kind of you know there's a difference between friends and even as you get older you get further in business there you know sometimes you'll hire friends or family sometimes it works out great and sometimes it makes it more difficult because now you're dealing not only with an employee that you can hire fire and move on with but you're also dealing with someone that you have a personal relationship or a friend relationship that you you know as an additional layer of complexity so i think it's a good lesson to learn that think about who you're bringing on as a business partner and also how the or you know how that arrangement is made but as you're bringing them on so to make sure to avoid those pitfalls so awesome second question i always ask is so now you're talking to and we'll change it slightly the question is you're talking to someone that's in high school and wants to get started with the business you know start as a small or a little startup or a business you know let's say you're there in high school or maybe even middle school or down to five years old a lemonade stand what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i don't know i i guess because i was thinking also i'd have to give advice for older people when they were when i was gonna be on this podcast and i don't know what i came up with is like you never know when your time's up like so spend every moment of your time with something you love just find what you love and do it like i've found so many kids that are just like i don't like school i'm like dude find something that you can do after school that you just love even if it's a sport just like because you never know like i could go to school tomorrow be driving and boom car hits me i'm gone like you never know like what how much time i'm young like it i hope it not yeah i hope not but like it's it's a reality like we don't know how much time like the analogy i use is uh everyone has a starting balance in their bank account and they don't know that starting balance and every day uh 24 is taken out but you don't know your starting balance but it doesn't matter how wealthy you are how poor you are your status and or whatever everyone's time every single day is the same so that means you spend it how you want like not not in the sense of part but have your priorities straight so then you spend it where it matters most to you yeah i like that i think it's applicable to whether it's uh people adults kids anybody that's getting any sort of a business i think that you know spending your time wisely and appropriately because you just to your point if you almost look at it as every day you only have so much money to spend and so you got to spend it wisely gives you kind of a new context to it well people want to now check out you know and you mentioned it already but any you know if they want to be your customer they want to buy little trees they want to be a sales person for you they're in high school and they want to reach out and pick your brain about you know business idea they have any all the above what's the best way to connect up with you uh the best would be i personally like text and email i know call is the best but i feel like i've been told i'm not that good on the phone like sometimes i'll call my friends like dude you sound like just weird on the phone like in person you're different like in person you're way different than on the phone i'm like so text and email would be the best then if we could meet in person i know there's restrictions it would be best because then you actually get more of a lively person apparently i've been trying to work on my phone calling souls but that works as well and yeah that's the best ways to reach me all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out to you whether it's phone text website or any or all of the above um check out uh thelittletrees.com and all or make sure to support the um the business and uh if there's anything else that we can do to support you just let us know now for all of you that are listeners and if you have your own journey to tell whether you're middle school high school or uh or graduated we always love to have you on as a guest so feel free to go to the inventive journey guest.com or sorry inventive journey not the inventivejourneyguest.com feel free to sign up and apply to be on the podcast if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you can get notifications as all the new awesome episodes come out and last but not least if you ever need help with patents and trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller i p law by going to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help well thank you again it's been fun to have you on have fun to hear a bit of your journey and i hope the rest of the christmas season goes well for you and you're able to sell a few few more little trees yeah thanks for having me devon hey if you enjoyed this episode of the inventive journey make sure to go and check out startups magazine they're an awesome magazine and podcast centered over in the uk and if the magazine is a digital and print magazine where they focus on tech startups and entrepreneurs and they also have a focus on female founders and women in tech so if you want to check out their magazine neither digital or print it's startups magazine startups with an s magazine.co.uk and you can also look up their podcast which is called the serial entrepreneur so go check them out they're awesome and definitely if you like this episode you'll like them [Music] English (auto-generated) All Related From Miller IP Law Recently uploaded