Get Involved In Content

The Inventive Journey
Episode #337
Get Involved In Content
w/ Collin Mitchell
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What Is 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 know get involved in content investing in your personal brand spending time on social whatever that looks like have a strategy for that um because it's more important than you probably think [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's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller iq law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time once to chat and we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast colin mitchell and uh colin uh in his own words grew up dirt poor with the uh single mom and the three brothers and uh didn't go to college nobody ever told him that was important but instead went and got a sales job and was worked his way up to the top got to uh was promising manager position that he didn't ever get and so decided to left to go or go somewhere else along that journey he met his wife and they started their first business in around 2010 and later sold it and have since then started a couple additional businesses they're working on which is a i think a voip voice over iep business as well as a podcast agency so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast colin yeah thanks for having me man that's a wrap that's my whole story there's nothing to talk about there you go your whole life is condensed into 30 seconds so there's nothing more to it so yeah well i think there's probably a bit more to it so why don't we go back a bit in time to uh growing up with you with your single mom and your brothers and uh how your journey got started there yeah i mean to put it frank like my childhood uh was not great you know um my dad spent most of his time in prison uh my mom you know had to work hard to you know as a waitress to keep food on the table um i had three brothers and she did the best she could but you know when you got a single mom and mom's got to work uh sort of left to my own devices to do a lot of whatever i wanted to do and uh sometimes you know that could lead me to trouble of course and um you know i just wasn't a good student i didn't i didn't enjoy school much nobody was really telling me that school was important um and so i barely made it through high school by the skin of my teeth sort of dropped out got my credits and uh and then you know didn't really know what i was going to do with my life and then my first job was lugging around furniture which you know as a young adult that's fine we get to you know get outside get some sunshine stay in shape not too bad um but i just knew that i didn't want to live the way that i lived uh growing up you know check to check you know struggling to pay the rent coming up short you know you know things like that and so my stepdad who was actually no longer with my mom uh you know worked in a company uh itvar company uh in a sales job and i literally had to beg and plead for an opportunity you know i was not the most responsible young adult so he was not quite ready to put his neck out there for me uh eventually i think i just wore him down enough uh and uh he gave me my shot you know and uh you know got me a job there and i made the most out of it so i was the first one in the office every day last one to leave every day um worked my tail off came in on saturdays to send proposals you know prepare for the next week did that for a while um worked there about two years worked my way up to the top and i thought you know okay you know successful you know run at sales next logical step is i should manage people uh and uh they kept telling me i was ready and they're gonna give me a team and for whatever reason they didn't and i'm not the most patient person uh so i decided to leave and take another job doing something very similar where i could then manage a team oh and i think i definitely make sense and i think i think that's a hard spot if you're a manager because i mean you never know what's going on with the boss said sometimes they just change their mind or they you know there's nepotism and other times they're saying hey you're great in your position but you're not a manager material at least they don't do it and so i think that one's hard where you on your side you're saying hey i'm working my way up that's my next step and i want to keep her growing and evolving and the boss is saying hey me maybe not yet and so it's one of those they're saying well if i can't do it here then maybe i need to go somewhere else which it sounds like it worked out well so you you transitioned or decided to leave that position now i think along the way as you're kind of relieving that job and getting the next one you also met your your who will be your wife at the time uh so a little bit uh after that and and yeah you're right it is a tough spot because the the the reality of the situation is i was absolutely not ready to manage the team um but the challenge there and this is a challenge with a lot of bosses or specifically sales bosses um just be honest with your people you know if somebody's not ready tell them they're not ready don't you know tell people what they want to hear to you know try to appease them and keep them happy right and that's kind of what was going on so i went and got a vp of sales position and somebody who you know thought i was ready for a team as much as i was and i made a lot of mistakes like i was learning on the job how to be a sales manager you know which is a bit of a recipe for disaster but um you know i was able to you know kind of find my way and learn different ways and you know realize that hey not everybody's motivated the same way as me you know and that's probably because they don't necessarily have the same background as me and not everybody is money motivated and um you know learning new skills um and some more business acumen for the time there where i drove millions of dollars in a short period of time um and then yes i met my wife we met in a running group and uh we used to run marathons together and you know run up in the santa monica mountains often with a big group of friends and then she was in sales as well she was doing recruiting at the time but she wasn't really loving her job and i said you know why don't you come over here we're having a lot of success um you know i think you'd like it and uh i think just maybe she you know was willing to give it a shot and is a little bit of a risky risky move for sure um not everybody can you know work with their with their partner or significant other uh but it worked for us worked well and uh and then eventually i said i think we can you know maybe go do this on our own and and that's what we did so our first office was you know we moved all of our furniture in our living room of our one bedroom apartment and put big two big desks there and uh that was our first office and then eventually we got a real office uh and we grew that first company to five million dollars in 26 months oh that's awesome and so and you and i i may have missed it but what was the first business that you and your wife went into yeah so we were you know doing the same thing that i had been doing um we just started our own business and then you know the the companies that i worked for previously were more very product centric or a bits a bit of an itvar so um you know value added reseller of products so office equipment supplies peripherals we mainly dealt with school districts and government those were the clients that we served um so essentially you know we're doing the same thing but then we started to kind of pivot into more uh you know service uh based you know offerings as well some of those failed completely you know i was out of my depths and trying to get fancy and uh had a lot of painful painful learning lessons in that first business um and um so yeah we you know hired sales people we spent zero dollars on marketing and grew it to five million uh in a pretty short time that's awesome and uh definitely is um great that you guys are able to you know one it is always i think a trade off you can work with the spouse and sometimes it works great but all other times you know the fights that you have at work follow you to follow you home or the fights you have at home follow you to work and so it is always that kind of trade-off to where you can have that great synergy and work off each other and have the same goals and then it also has that added layer of dynamics so so as you're doing that and it sounds like it overall worked out well and i definitely also get you mentioned hey you know we tried some things that didn't work and i think that's a sign of a good business and hopefully a good business you know in the sense that if you're trying to trying out new things not everything is going to work but if you're never trying out any new things and you're just kind of keeping with the status quo and trying to just you know keep with you know keep as as is and to get along you're never going to grow and you're never going to find the additional areas that work and so i think that definitely makes sense no i believe as as we talked a bit before the on the or before the podcast you eventually sold that business offer you and your wife sold off that business and you moved on to the next business is that right uh not quite so i actually still have that business today um but from there i started another company which is unified communications company so in that business we heavily relied on our phones that's where our sales people made money and we had lots of problems with them all the time you know uh the technology wasn't super new it just wasn't great at the time um you know uh and we had lots of challenges and you know sales people can get a little pissy if they're you know waking up at 4 00 a.m to get in by 5 a.m to call their east coast clients by 8 a.m and the one tool that they need to do that is not working or properly or not working at all uh so we would you know we went through like five different you know providers um in a short period of time and really was just ripping my hair out and there was a you know um tech guy in in our building that was our neighbor named elise and he's like i think i can kind of whip something together that'll work a little better for you and i'm like man i will try anything like please help me um and so he put some server he put this piece of software on a virtual server and connected it to these trunks i didn't know what the heck he was doing but i was like i'll just try it and it worked well extremely well and so of course the entrepreneurial um you know part you know thing in part in me was like i think more people had this problem that we could help solve it for and that's when we started that other company and scaled it to six thousand users on the platform uh and then recently just exited that company well that that makes sense so now you you did that and so it sounds like multiple words in your mouth that you were you that one is almost out of a matter of convenience right in other words you had a large reliance on that for the current business you're in saying hey we use phones a lot it's kind of the lifeblood of the industry and so we've had to figure this out why don't we now as we continue to figure it out offer or expand that out and offer it as a service that we can offer to other people is that right yeah yeah i mean that one happened sort of by accident right and prior to that i had long tried to launch about three different service type offerings and two of them failed completely i mean failed miserably like we didn't sell any deals we spent lots of money on marketing we spent lots of money on specialists and consultants and hiring specific uh you know uh sales reps to sell that particular service and just like blew through a lot of cash and um and they failed miserably uh and one of the services that we had launched you know we hit a couple of singles and doubles but just no home runs and you know it was you know still a loss um and so at that point it was like oh this is this is what we should be doing and so the reason we didn't just you know sell that under that business was because we after launching those other services we kind of started to look like this company that you know does a little bit of everything and maybe nothing well i was like we need to launch this as its own business as its own brand uh you know sort of independent than what we're doing and it worked extremely well i think that makes sense and you know it's interesting kind of as you you did that that's actually one of the businesses we're getting ready to launch here in a bit is uh is some on the website design and offering a few additional services because we work a lot of startups small businesses we've kind of been doing it under the radar and helping a few clients that have you know don't have that direction we've had to by necessity with some of the businesses i've done and they continue to do had to figure that out and get those internal resources so as we've expanded into that area and are getting ready to launch at the end of this month um more formally it's one of those where we had to figure it out but it was the same a little bit the same issue as hey we're a law firm and it doesn't you know to the outside of you know world it doesn't feel like it jives wise along from doing website design or why is a web design firm doing a law firm and so we did kind of separating those out to make it a better message or more easy to understand message as opposed to you know or making it confusing for the consumer so i definitely get that it makes sense so so now as you guys have now kind of bring this a bit up to where you're at today or close to it but now if you look kind of at the next 6 to 12 months kind of where you guys see things headed what you're going to be focusing on you've got the different businesses and continuing to those are continuing to evolve so with all of that kind of where do you see the next six to 12 months headed for you guys or what's in the pipeline yeah so you know exited that company and and for the last 18 months i've been really focused on podcasting right with salescast uh quick you know how did what is salescast how did it happen uh well i went on a podcast for the very first time ever clearly if you know probably you probably remember first time you ever go on a podcast very exciting right um and i had a great experience and uh my co-founder chris was like hey i think i want to start a podcast how can you help me um and he's like yeah i can help you and uh you know i was like i'm super busy i can maybe do one or two episodes a month which is a horrible idea but he was willing to meet me where i was at he's like sure whatever's you know comfortable and then a very successful podcaster came along and he's like oh no you have it all wrong uh you've got to record like 20 and release them daily and i'm like what i mean that's how many i plan on doing in like six months you want me to record them all now and daily he's like yeah if you want to get on the new the coveted new noteworthy section of apple and pick up tons of followers and i'm like all right this dude knows what he's talking about let's do this and so we recorded 20 in like two weeks and we started releasing them daily and then you know after about three weeks not on the new noteworthy section four weeks not on the new note where the second like what the heck but we kept with that frequency of a daily podcast and we learned a lot uh in that time frame of high frequency content and at that time it was a different show where i interviewed entrepreneurs and founders and really the goal was just to build relationships and open doors with people i wanted to do business with and it didn't work extremely well because it was a highly transactional product you know it works really well if you have a highly relationship driven sort of sales process right and it's a great way to meet people and network and build relationships by providing value and collaborating creating content um and uh but the thing that kept happening was the same exact thing that had happened to me as people were like hey i've really been thinking about starting a podcast you know how do i do it can you help me um and then you know at first i was kind of like yeah yeah we could help you and then you know they got back to christians like and people want us to help us with them with this thing we gotta figure out how to help them and you know we've gone through some sort of iterations of the business but uh now you know in the last last year alone we launched 65 shows we managed 45 shows today um and then we also have a podcast community for people who are interested in starting a show growing a show guesting on shows and that's what we're really focused on and it's been a lot of fun i would say honestly it's for the first time it's something that i actually really enjoy doing that's awesome and i think that you know i agree with you i've been doing a podcast now for a while and i think that for a lot of people just getting into them they think oh i'll just you know throw it up there and everybody will find it and i'll maybe i'll throw it up on my facebook page word of mouth will spread it'll go like wildfire and we'll have millions of listeners every day and 99.9 of us that's not the case and there is a i think a ability that you have to be consistent you have to grow you have to have a plan and i think that if you're diligent on it it can be a great uh greater area for to build a business but it can't be one where you just expect it to do it on a road and all you have to do is stop the content which is it sounds like where you arrived at as well and i think that definitely uh well awesome well that kind of brings us a bit up to where you're at today and with that well it's a great time to transition to the two questions i always ask as we reach the end of the year the journey of the discussion so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it oh yeah uh it's kind of two-part right but i would say in that you know in that first business um getting away from the parts of the business that i loved most uh was a huge mistake right and i'll explain that a little bit so um i love sales i love meeting new people i love building relationships i'm one of those weird people who even enjoys cold calling so much so that i do it on a linkedin live weekly um so when i stopped doing that and started working more like strategic on marketing and all of these other things that i actually was not good at and didn't enjoy i wasted a lot of money a lot of time and i was actually very unhappy um and so when i got back to like i enjoy being on the front line of sales i enjoy working with sales people i enjoy you know always kind of staying close to that um that was a huge you know learning lesson and then the other thing and then and then the other thing was like you know we all hear it failure is part part of the recipe of success you know so um i think the will the part of the reason i was willing to you know make take so many risks and like try new things even though i fail i failed at some of them um was because you know i'd worked for companies previously that were really just about like you know doing the same old thing status quo you know we were we're we're doing it this way because it's the way it's always worked you know um and so i sort of overcompensated a little bit because of those experiences but you got to be willing to take risks if you want to grow as a person as a business as an entrepreneur really at anything no i like both of those you hit on even you know the taking risks and figuring that i'm always the kind of the i like to i don't like to fit inside the box or i don't like the norm and it's not that you know if there's a good reason that it is a norm then i'm all for it i'm not just trying to say hey let's recreate the will if we don't need to but on the other hand you know for me it's always i'd love to hey why you know what are the areas that people are just doing that because it's always been done that way when it really doesn't make sense or this is not the best way to do it and is there an opportunity there and that's what we've done with the law firm and so we've got what i've done with other businesses and saying hey i think there's an opportunity here where we can do it differently do it better and then i think that it provides that value and i also like the other one to hit on which is you know if you're i think the areas of where you're the most passionate about you're going to drive the most value to the business because there's a lot of things that have to be done and if you're getting bogged down and there's always times where you have to get things done you know don't love every single activity that you're doing but if you're spending a vast majority of your time on things that you really don't love and are passionate about you're not going to drive the value into the business that you otherwise could if you're really working on those things you can add the most value so i love both of those the takeaways i think there are also mistakes that you can easily make as you get into business because you have a lot of things that are getting needed getting done have to get them done and usain's a wealth i have to get them done somebody has to do it and it's going to take me longer to train someone else to do it or get them up to speed and it has to get done now and so you always start to get pulled into directions that up things that need to get done not necessarily the things that you're passionate about so i think those are great takeaways second question i always ask is talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them [Music] man that's a that's a toughy it's hard to it's hard to pick one thing um just getting started i mean i'll i'll try not to say hey you should start a podcast even though that's what i really want to say [Laughter] but you know get involved in content investing in your personal brand spending time on social whatever that looks like have a strategy for that um because it's more important than you probably think definitely a great takeaway and a good piece of advice well as we wrap up the podcast if people want to reach out to 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 of the above what's the best way to reach out to you to contact you to find out more yeah uh great question so i have a podcast sales transformation they can check that out that's the best place to figure out what's new and exciting with us uh sales transformation dot fm and what or whatever podcast platform you're listening to now uh then you can search that out and find me awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out check out the podcast and sounds like definitely be a great asset to learn a lot of great information for those business owners and entrepreneurs out there well as we wrap up thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show a couple more things as listeners make sure to click subscribe make sure to click share make sure to leave a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else with your business feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help well thank you again colin for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you [Music]

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