Raise Capital Slowly
Joe Kleman
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/26/2021
Raise Capital Slowly
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.
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raise capital but raise capital in a way that you can build on it slowly so I build on I started my entire company using square law. I got my first one for 800 bucks worth it, they paid it off based on my credit card sales and stuff like that offer me another one for 16 $100 reallocated the money to what I needed in the moment and just kept building on it. So I stayed away from raising big capital and raised what I needed. In the moment or or where I thought it was at and where my recent or wise short term. Everyone this is Devin Miller here with another episode of the investment journey, I'm your host Devin Miller, the serial startup with seven and eight figure businesses, as well as the founder and CEO of Vince's strategy meeting.com Grab some time with us for chat. Another great guest on the podcast right now actually claiming so you weren't. Joseph Clayman so this was a quick introduction and Joseph started working in an entrepreneurial family. Six years ago, and went to high school and the military and did logistics and then as a 26 year old. That got a good job but wasn't told everything in the dining room around for a bit, and then went into massage school and did that for a period of time in the car, got that home and selling yourself 13 are also working to get accepted in the medical health never reduce costs in the medical industry and that much in the introduction, welcome. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to it. So I just gave a quick run through of a much longer journey so maybe take us back in time a bit growing hair growing up. Six years starting your entrepreneurial journey at six years old and your family. Yeah, so what happened, my aunt, my uncle had built like multiple businesses, and so I was always watching him, he's always buying something building something selling it. When I do that quite a bit, and then he bought a table and chair rental company, and that was his thing for quite a long time for over a decade. And so when I was, I was helping him because in our family it was if you're big enough to carry a thing, you're big enough to work, so we were carrying a chair at a time or like, you know as you got bigger you like to have the boys and girls and carry a table at a time or whatever and then you kind of build up from there and so it was like, You're old enough to start doing this you're gonna do it with us. And then when I was eight, my parents bought a tech company, and my uncle kind of pushed them into that we're like well I got the tables the chairs you guys grab the tents, we'll work together we'll have business it'd be great. So that went on until I was. I stopped doing when I was 18 Cuz I went to military, and then they stopped doing it for a couple years after I left, but all of my friends worked for my parents. So that was the great part about high school was like all of my friends just worked with me so we all hung out and we worked all the time. But my brother wasn't the same so his buddies deleted like, do all the work. So after a couple years, my dad was like, I can't find any help anymore so I'm just gonna let this thing go. So yeah, so it was really fascinating to be involved that early watching everybody kind of like work and build and hustle and like my dad was kind of a jack of all trades so you're cleaning houses out for realtors and doing repairs for inspections and everything like that so it was always seeing the call like fireworks thinking where you're kind of like you see all these opportunities and you just keep building upon them and you keep learning to sing I play to this thing. And then I've done that my entire life and that's how you know, get a jumping ahead a little bit and playing back and how I brought medicine and logistics together, because I don't really stay in my lane very well. I like all the lanes. Now before we dive into what we do today with the you know, your friends and sounds like you know hey that's. Work with your friends be around each other, hang out and also. So we, sorry we ended up like we were 1416 hour days, like all day long and then we'd come home and mom. My mom would make us food we go downstairs and like, hang out in the basement or whatever we pass out and then we wake up the next morning go back to work again and every just kind of lived in my parents basement, So that was like my whole summer. And then, yeah, so I left there and when the military. It was kind of like the idea of getting out of your small town I grew up in a town in Ohio with about 1300 people in it. So there's more cattle in our county than there are people who is your chance of getting out so I was in the military for a couple of years getting discharged medically. So I've gotten VA benefits, and a little bit of disability since, almost 20 years now we're over 20 years, which helped my entrepreneurial journey tremendously was having those two things. Now you can see going through the military and voluntary things and medical for medical reason. So you're coming back state's going to find that out and to kind of figure out what you're going to do next after we got me started in the military. Take some time to rehab, and we got into massage or did odd jobs are gonna walk us through how you kind of what you did at the military. Yeah, so in the back home and it wasn't. I was kind of like thinking I went to stay there for a little bit and I end up staying for a couple of years but then, unfortunately, like where I'm from, the drinking is very prevalent, because there's nothing else to do there so I like to kind of share this piece because it's very validating for other people that are going through this that I was like a very functioning alcoholic for many years of my life, probably close to a decade of my life. So I went back home immediately instantly. Back home I went right back into drinking I was like, hanging out with the only time you saw your friends was at the bar, so it was like I need out of here, so I wanted to find a corporate job. Why do you get into a corporate job. So, I started applying for different places I found this job. That was actually checking in and out of a guard shack at Procter and Gamble. And so I went in for the interview. I actually went through three phone interviews and they scheduled each follow up interview before they ended the first interview. So we have going through definitely through it asked me for in person interview, and I went there in talking like she I was all dressed up, I was gonna suit and tie and she was nobody told you come in casually and I was like, No, I was like, I would have dressed up anyways. So, then it's that meeting and three weeks had gone by your word from anybody, I was like yeah whatever like I'm just try something else you know I thought it was going really well. This woman calls me up and she was like Hey, so we were wondering. The job I applied for was sitting in a guard shack from 7pm to 7am, just by myself checking trucks out in the middle of the night. She goes, we want to see if you want a different job that's in a different city and they're both 20 miles from where I'm from. Well the other job was a manager for a $9 million. Logistics account records department stores with 40 people underneath. And I was like, How do they go from being someone in a guard stack overnight to being a manager over 40 people and basically taking the lead over and hire logistics account. So it was like this giant promotion before even like even got the job, so everything went really really well. Well the military, so that's, I was a, I have my Eagle Scout. And then, no theory background so it's like you don't have any experience. I want to give you a shot and see me figure it out. So that's what that was started my logistics world. So we got into logistics in the background. As you were playing golf was better to get into operation logistics for a period of time. Now, once you get into that, how long did you stay in what needs to decide to kind of transition or go toward more precise therapy. So I spent almost seven years, six and seven years in logistics, and when I was with Kohl's department stores I was dedicated just to that account so I was about three and a half years there, but that's working 12 810 to 12 hours a day in the office and you're on call 24 Seven. So when they hired me for that job they told me they literally use the word USB married to your job. So, it was literally working, I would get two to three calls a night from 10 o'clock at night six in the morning, like, almost every single night. So sleep became a non existent thing. And then I left Kohl's and moved to Seattle. Seattle area where corporate offices that I worked with Coke and Pepsi through an important kind of like help figure all that stuff out, it all the border stuff for every all everything that came from the ICC Canada back out, out of British Columbia, I was doing all that stuff. And then, I was 26, and had really intense chest pains. I was sitting at my desk and I walked into my boss's office holding my chest and I was like I don't really feel very good. And he already had a heart attack before so he like stops, he goes, sit down. Don't call the paramedics I'm going to show you how to work in an ambulance. It was my first dose of Nytro ever had, which will give you one crazy headache. And about a year later I was like, Well, that was my wake up call was like what am I doing, I was like, it was all about the emotions, it was all about the money it was all about how much do how high the company and I was just getting promotion after promotion after promotion. And then I went to go get asked for a raise, and you're a bullet point where you do all day long, so I did that. I handed it to them, and the phrase I got was, well, we're not going to give you a raise. And I was like, What the hell's my age have to do with how much money I make. So that was the second thing of going, what am I doing, like, why am I doing this. On top of that, all the money I made nobody taught me how to pull money. My parents didn't understand it, my mom's like, I don't know that stuff, whatever. So I never knew how to handle money, and so I blew all of it. I have anything when I was making 70k a year and I had nothing to show for it and yeah, I just spent it all. And I realized I was very unhappy. And have I had all this stuff. When I was like watching other people live this decadent life, live this like traveling and like doing all these things and like, did you really own anything, and it just hit me one day and every time I like lost my mind. I sent a two page type email to the owner of the company. Which am I on a first name basis, said everything I needed to say. And my resignation and when they, when you resign, they're like most companies now they just walk you out. That same day, there's no like two week notice there's going to tell you to leave. So I left. I didn't have any plans hadn't hadn't thought through anything I was just, I know they say like nothing changes so you can say I've had it. Like, that's where I was at, I was like, this is stupid, I can't do this anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore doesn't get wiped out. And I think when we chatted before you kind of saw well you're a professional speaker and became a better man. Is that right, yeah I sold, I had two ounces a new car and anything and everything from home theater systems like every, everything goes furnished. And when I was finished I had my car in about 12 boxes the first employees. Out of everything I had. And I was sleeping on people's floors, couches, slept in my car a lot. Just took odd jobs here they're trying to start a business dealing. What I learned from my dad like building houses and like things like that so I was getting older Realtors trying to do pre inspection or post inspection repairs, things like that, like staging and that kind of didn't really, really jive, like really wasn't my thing. so I kind of let that fall off and we're back to getting just random jobs to like support myself. But what allowed me to do that, and this is kind of what I was mentioned the beginning without having veteran healthcare, and a little bit of disability was that I had safety, because I had enough money every month for my disability to rent a room somewhere that covered my rent and utilities and I had healthcare. So it allowed me to just go around and like, figure out who I wasn't what I wanted to do. So, they hit me I was like my one goal was to move to the Caribbean, move to St. Thomas, or move somewhere in the Caribbean. So I picked a US territory. Because I figured was easiest way to get my massage license down there. So I went to massage school for a year in Washington state and then graduated in December, or September, and then moved to St Thomas A few weeks later, and then decided qriocity So what made you decide to go into the military, and logistics those kind of go together to kind of make any you know kind of went the other direction is knowing, you know all your connections going around time jobs and this kind of removing yourself from that world, so to speak. What made you decide. So I just thought like right out of high school that, like maybe I go into massage therapy, and then I went the military instead. And then, after all I was done I was sitting there I was like, how do you move to the Caribbean, how do you like go down there and actually making money because bartending isn't gonna make you a ton of money to be able to like afford rent down there. So I was like how do I make enough money to live down there and I was like, I'll do massage down. That makes pretty good money and I'm sure like you'd like to work on a resort I can work on a yacht or whatever down there and I'll do that. So I set my goal up for a year schools 11 and a half months, and I was like this is all the reason I'm doing this and I just like put everything into it and figured it out I was doing tons of research on all different boards online, like people that live down there, and how what I needed to know and where I needed to live at and all that stuff we just prepared it over the year and then just just made it happen. So then I was down there to like December and then I got the irony was one of the things they tell you when to move to the islands is that the island will tell you when it's time to leave. And it was December, I was going down there a few months, and I was on a motorcycle that someone I met online before the down there let me borrow for transportation. And I was riding the motorcycle to work, to pick up my paycheck to buy a car. When I got hit by a car and broke my left leg. So, it was time to leave. I guess the I let you know today so yeah. So now you know you're planning to go to the island and the gate and massage therapy will be great. I'll be there to get my license and all the other lifestyle we were hoping to set up and then Ireland told you to leave and you come back, states now. How did you figure out what you're going to do and then going back to the kind of well rounded kind of lifestyle that a lot of professions are going to go back to where I was before I go to logistics or I'm going to go, where did you how did you kind of figure out what was. So I went I moved back home, obviously because I was on crutches for four months so I really can't do anything. Besides didn't do anything I end up moving to Raleigh where I'm at now with a broken leg, but I met someone down here, I had friends that I knew down here so I came down this way. And when I actually started kind of didn't really do anything down here either. And then I got working at a spa down here just doing massage at a spa but I was clearing for 100 bucks a week to just do a massage so I was like let's do this for a while. Well then I was like, Well, my relationship fell apart so I was like well screw this I'm gonna move to Florida to try something different I try to get a different job in Florida, and then move down there and then realized that I couldn't get my license down there, sport, it doesn't get licenses out to people I didn't go to school down there. So, I was back on my nomadic journey of like trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Now I can't do massage I'm already living down here. So I used my disability money, found a place to rent nijat gigs on Craigslist for six months, I would just powerwash a swimming forward cleaner garage out or no law or whatever and just like, make the money I needed to live on. And I just kept like doing massage for a while but then I would, when I was realizing like pattern recognition was kicking in. From all of my logistics experience right that's all Logistics is is recognizing what you use what a previous experience, make the best decision possible in the present moment for the best future outcome. So, I have learning I've worked on 15,000 People in the last decade. And you start to notice we're all the same person. The only difference really is our mental health and our story. Other than that, like anatomically biologically biomechanically physiologically things geographically, are really the same human. That's why, like, why would I talk to like trauma surgeons or like you know that you couldn't have to learn 1000 different domains, to be able to work on someone's stomach. So I realized like, There's so many things that are just environmental in what we're doing and regards to medicine so the medicine in my world, in logistical world is. It's a physics mental health and nutrition, because we are just a ball of energy, a bag, a sack of consciousness, moving through space relative to something else. The captain of our ship or mental health needs to know that our ship is safe in the environment and the people the other animals, it's around, and your nutrition essence support return function. So for me, coming out of logistics. My, my partner said this one time and it hit me, why I've had to spend so much my time so much my thought, energy, and not dehumanize people on my process. But since I was six years old people to me. I've only been headcount. They're only dots on a page, they're not. Yo, is Aunt Susie coming here wedding. Yes or No, I don't really know. I don't need to know anything about hand Susie I just need to know that she's coming to your wedding. Make sure there's room for. So, so now you got to come to this realization that you're now looking and saying okay can I take kind of the side, you know, logistics, experience and combine those. As a new adventure a new set right. Yeah, so it was just like, I started studying under this woman that was developing a system based in movement and massage and been working on it for like 40 years but never really like took off, and I was like so I studied under her, like, three years that all these classes helped teach a bunch of her classes and I was like something's missing. And they kept saying look globally look globally. What they meant was like look farther down the body, right one problem in the body might be from something else, not just for the symptom is. But then my logistics brain says well globally to me would be able to be zooming out to the point where I can see a human. That's two inches right see us as we are. How can I help the person who want to use the sample mystically or a full body and go, How can I affect this organism as human as the entire organism, mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, here's this thing. How are we going to do it. So a lot of the system I created was going well why do we keep. Why don't we encourage, why don't we build people up, why don't we tell them, it has to be mine. It has to be, you shouldn't do it that way, you should shouldn't do it this way. My ways better than your way sucks. It's all egoistic, like even in medicine, it's like, I can help you. You're in fashion and anybody else you should come to see me instead. You have this kind of okay we're going to take it out. So, then, you know, kind of get that over Oh, overall view as opposed to dislike in the myopic view of things. Now, turn that into business or you're turning that into kind of tell you know, creamy audience of, where are you at today are you kind of had to put at play in the work or what are you doing today. Yeah, so I've been working on. I guess a working prototype of my products I've been building. So I have a seven by seven cube. And it has 10 cords through it and has 50 colored balls suspended from the cord, and I simply get people tasked to do with know the phrase I gave is thrown on rules right so I put them in there and then we just infer off of each other, like they're learning for me I'm learning from them as we work back and forth together and they help them see different perspectives or different ways of looking at adversity. Because a lot of people are basing it off their conditioning of like what they were talking about, yo. I'll get people that they touch all the resistance all the blue ones and we'll do them all one time they stopped, and I was like why are you planning to stop, they tell you to stop I said just keep touching them. So you can read off of someone's programming that way and help them see past these barriers. So, I help people with that, with like human performance with mindset coaching and mix that with massage. Because once get people back into parasympathetic get their brain, relaxed a little bit, get them out of there, they're locked in rigid body and into this place state. And then you put them on the table and do 20 minutes a massage and they will leave a completely different person. So really it's been about getting the products going, and then figuring out what I can do with the products to create a system that involves helping somebody fit like, person to person, but also selling products, teach people how to work with somebody, or kids to play inside the cube together or a behavioral therapist working on a child with trauma, maybe just jumped in just the organ, towards the end of the podcast Oh yeah, I have that kind of stuff today and kind of watch what we've learned. And so as a great friend this question though is asked for inflation, only that long your journey, remains well. So I would say it's the worst but also the best at the same time because about a year or so ago is losing the space I was subletting. And the woman said, Hey, if you talk to the landlord. Maybe he'll let you keep the space. So, my ego brain of like, I'm going to do this thing let's make it happen. Let's burn the boats and take them out and I go to the landlord, I would say, hey, what do you think I don't have any credit. I have no finances, I have nothing left I'm at zero. What do you think, you think, give me a shot and he goes, Do you want to try it and I was like, Sure, I would love to afford that like a 30 $500 a month lease with negative money. And right when COVID hit, I had figured it out, work my ass off, got to the point where I was only $300 behind in rent, and then had to shut down. So I'm like, damn, I did it, but now I lost everything. So because that I put so much money into the business to the physical space that I could have invested into my own company and kept building it. A lot bigger than wasting all that money trying to keep this space that I was trying to show off. I think a lot of us try to show off you want to show that our business is bigger than it actually is already. Instead of going just staying real in staying down and staying like going here's what I got. Let's see if I can build this thing solid as my solid nucleus and then expanded, where for me I was like I'm going to take this big, fancy beautiful space and I'm going to do it I'm going to make it. And I thought that was a great decision. And then now I owe $23,000 in back rent to the landlord. So now it wasn't that I wasted all this money for nothing, because it's empty money that's gone. Yo, now I have debt on top of that and it was like it was all over my ego, it was all me going, I had this cool fancy space I can do it. So I think that that makes sense. You know sometimes when you go where it makes sense from an outward appearance is always. Definitely the mistake to make. The second question and just a reminder to the audience all the way down to the bonus question about intellectual property after the jump now from last year. You're gonna get one piece of advice to the to someone that's just getting into a startup or small business. What I did was raise capital but raise capital in a way that you can build on it slowly so I build them, I started my entire company using square them, I got my first one for work and they paid it off based on my credit card sales and stuff like that offer me another one for 16 $100 reallocated the money to what I needed in the moment and just kept building on it. So I stayed away from raising big capital and raised what I needed. In the moment or for where I thought it was at and where my recent or my short term goal was one of the things you see a lot of times, movies, articles, they take a whole bunch of money they reveal a bunch of money and they end up giving more different company they give more control of it and they end up taking a lot more obligations, necessarily, because the more money and time the better and I think a lot of time thinking what can be a better way to maintain control maintain better aspects of your business and that was we wrap up the normal upper portion of the podcast. If people want to reach out to they want to contact you, they want to be a customer they want to be a client, they want to be an employee, they want to be an investor, they want to be your next best friend. Any or all the above. What's the best way to reach out, contact your my website right now is move therapy, Mo ve th, er, e y.org orgy. You also reach me by email at Joe at middle movement therapy. COMM any real movement therapy, calm. So this is the two easiest ways. All of my socials are moved therapy NC. So that said, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, I tried to stay up on some of it I'm not a big social media fan so I do my best to keep him posted but awesome. Definitely, definitely reach out and appreciate bypass. Now for all of you that are listening, you might be guests on the show, we'd love to have those listening to one or the other people to find out more often the last but not least, we ever need help with your startup. So now that we've wrapped up normal fortunately the podcast is here. Now, you could ask a question that I get to answer it. So, what is your talking. Well, my question was, I had a feeling when I was building was very special is very important to me. At the time I don't feeling I had so I took out. Six years ago on my cube and went through Legal Zoom which I don't think was the best idea, because I think I could have done it way cheaper finding somebody to actually help me with it, and be able to understand all of the details of it. But because I didn't get all of the details in the beginning, I didn't realize that I still had to come up with even more money when it got kicked back to me to go okay so here's the comparisons that we have. How is yours different than these five comparisons, what no I need another $3,000 According to them to like submit my comparisons for how to do it. I like that. So, my mistake was, you know, not that LegalZoom is bad but I think finding someone like you, that would be able to help you walk through and understand the process but everyone's been great. But I guess so my question was like my mindset and went into abandonment. And, originally they said I was worried I was like, now what I'm going to do and now it's abandoned and I was like, I still get it back and they said you know like, you can just work with an attorney, they can, they could provide a letter and maybe, you know, we'll review it and maybe reactivate your account, reactivate your patent. So I was like, I don't really have any other options. So what happens now that I'm an abandonment, with my patent way of getting that back or is it just where it is now, I'm sure. Probably not. I mean, so a few exceptions one to let a patent fan in, it's now less, unless you're with them in the public domain. Anybody, anybody else. The one exception, they're talking about is you can do what's called revival and, which is basically, if you if you unintentional letting go abandoned meaning you can say hey, listen to have money to respond to that I didn't have the time. That's not to say we didn't, didn't get not a proper notification or, you know, some other reason why we unintentional didn't mean personal abandon thing usually within about a year to a year and a half after it's done a man and up until that time you can make vacancies, they're usually fairly expensive or a couple $1,000 to buy. And so if you're kind of within that window and it was unintentional. Yes, you can get it revived and you can have a basic react. Aside from that, if it's just hey, take the time I didn't have the ability to form a thread and have fun. And typically, you're in assembly is gone abandoned and there's not a lot of recourse and that's kind of by, you know, generally with all pass laws. You had a few practice deadlines because once you miss a lot harder for that genie back in the bottle. Yeah no I can totally understand that. So, I think, I think going forward I have a lot of select the cube and everything, it will eventually incorporate a lot of machine learning, AI, so I think my having the art as the art, and then work on the patents and stuff like that that I can use myself to when it starts to talk to itself, or starts to like work with people and automate automated medicine, essentially. So I think that will be the direction file that was probably on it's abandoned it doesn't look like for a while revive. As you continue to innovate, continued greatness. Still on an ongoing basis because of the new things that you're reading innovating. With that, we're gonna wrap up the episode appreciate you again for coming on Joseph it's been a bite. It's been a pleasure, and with the next leg of your journey, even better than the last. Absolutely.
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