The Inventive Journey 
Episode #342
Find The Best Solution
w/ Nishu Sinha

"Find the best solution for every problem. Read professionally or personally. There's a saying of mine, figure out the solution the very first time otherwise you have to figure it out again and again until you master it."

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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

to be firm with your decision and figure out the best solution for every problem be it like professionally or personally no there is like saying of mine figure out the solution at very first time as life will repeat that mistake or that situation again and again until you master that [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 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 you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always happy to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast uh nishu sinha and uh nishu just as a quick introduction so studied his bachelor got studying got a bachelor of technology graduated about 2016 in the last year of college uh worked with a friend uh or with the company his friend was at on a development team doing some app app development software applications on phones and then worked there for about a year as a student and then out of college just started to start his own app development business which is what he's doing now so with that much is a quick but uh or quick and concise introduction welcome on to the podcasting issue uh thanks david first of all thanks for pronouncing my name correctly so i don't know that i pronounce it perfectly but i pronounce it as good as i'm able to so we'll take i'll take it as a win no that's great so [Music] yeah yeah so maybe just said so i just took your uh you know a much longer journey condensed it into the 32nd version but maybe take us back a bit in time to when you're studying in college and getting your technology degree and how your journey gets started there okay so let me start from the very beginning so basically i am like running a successful software development company here in india called parallel team technologies which provides a complete range of web and mobile lab development services with like all over the world with offices in usa itself and with like our tech representatives available in usa canada uk we'll dive into that but we before we get into the present we have to learn the journey and so if we get to the jump to the present right now we miss the journey so let's start with the journey and then we'll make sure that everybody can hear what you're doing today so maybe if you can take us back a bit into the the original or where the journey got started okay that's great so to give you like brief of my journey i mean i started my career directly as mobile app consulted while i was still in my last year of graduation so basically i mean actually that was a like good story let me tell you the opportunity comes through a friend where his boss needs a mobile app developer for his team and at that moment in fact i don't know like anything about the mobile app development but uh i think i should or i must take that opportunity and i handle that their team for like a year with like well good manner so after that i mean with time i learned the granularities of this software development uh businesses and try to start it my own so let me dive in and just ask a question on that because so you were to set the stage or you were at the time you were in in school and you were getting a technology degree is that right right so you studying that and i assume it's probably similar to the u.s it's a four-year program is that a fair a fair assumption yeah i mean a bachelor of technology like four year uh program here so so you're doing that you you studied it for about three years or so and as you're getting to the end of your your fourth year you have your friend that comes along and says hey we're looking for a web development or an app development individual and asked if you were looking or you were interested or you wanted to take that as an opportunity is that kind of how things got kicked off in that that phase okay so that uh that's also a story i mean as i'm like pursuing by the last year of graduation so but my friend is like working with another company at that moment so his boss is needed i mean he uh i mean he had the web development company but he wanted to like shift or like to try the hands on the mobile app development as well so at that moment he's like looking for the active developers who can like run their app development team there so at that moment i mean he's i mean uh approached me and i go through all those requirements and studied all those things and after studying all those things i thought i mean let's give it a try so i go for the meeting and meeting them with them is like good so i started my journey as there so now one question because this there when you were studying the technology degree did you intend to go into app development or what was kind of the initial trajectory what did you have in mind as you're in school before this opportunity came along uh see if i'm talking about the education system in india it's like the very generic i mean you cannot like go with like a specific direction in terms of mobile or in terms of web so it's a very uh very generic study in uh the colleges which we are up to on that and still is like going through that so basically if you have i mean if you have to like go for a particular direction so you need to like go for like vocational courses there so i mean uh at like very last stage if i'm talking about the engineers in india so basically they don't know which field they have to go so basically they opt out either they go with the like uh what you call let's suppose they're like hired with some company and they put it uh that person to a particular technology so they are like referring to them so very few of people are known which technology they wanted to pursue so that's a very difficult question here but uh i think i got my opportunity as a like first and as in c to develop the mobile application so i jumped into that direction got it no that makes sense so now you're saying okay coming out there's a lot of different paths that you could take it's not necessarily it's defined and so you're saying friend comes along says are you interested you'll look into it a bit and you say okay something that i may be interested and worthwhile to pursue and are then looking and saying okay how do i get things kicked off for how to get things going so you went in for the interview and you know how did that go was it one where it was a matter of this is a good opportunity or hey i'm really excited or especially if they're saying hey you don't have a lot of experience there and so how did that kind of getting diving in or getting that going you're exploring that how did that initially kick off or go for you okay so basically once you like end up your like college journey so basic uh once you end up or like trying to like uh into the last year of graduation so you are like actively looking for the jobs or the company which you can like hire so specifically i got an opportunity to talk with them and i see this mobile app development isn't like emerging uh industry at that moment so specifically i i think in 2016 it is like already flourished market so yeah i mean many multiple companies even the small startups are like trying to look trying to like expand their development team there so i spoke with them and uh studied the market and after market study i got an opportunity to see that this mobile application or the the mobile application industry itself is like views opportunity for the like future upcomings so it's just the thing i studied there if there are like lots of learning process involved in that because if you go with the like development i mean with college going students you cannot like specifically uh think in mind that they already have like all those technological aspects they know about that coding they don't i mean in fact they know only the basics about all those things so very few people or very few students have known to like very specific kind of technological domain at that moment and other than that all they like grew or like uh whenever they have the opportunity to learn anything so they will like directly dive into that so i did that at the same moment so the same thing like it goes with the i mean you can like just flow with the time got it no that makes sense so now you're saying okay got into it doing mobile app development you worked with the you know the the company that your friend was at and you did that for about a year uh about a year or so now as you're finishing up the degree you're coming out you're graduating and you're looking to see you now what was the motivation or reason because i think you know you at that point you decided to start your own business or do your own app development uh firm or company but what was the reason that you decided to go your own way as opposed to continuing out with the the position you've had at your your friend's company well how did you kind of make that decision or come to that conclusion okay so from the very beginning it's like not even if i have like joined my college so if i like took my journey so from the very beginning it's in my mind that i have to do some kind of businesses so at that moment if i'm talking about if i'm if i'm not wrong so in 2008 i see this uh the internet thing is like great opportunity where all those likes are flourishing and i came to in my school also i try to work with companies like a dog creating the documentaries so going in like detail like in the market research they are at that moment also so i knew in my head and i have to like give it a try and i have to like do some kind of businesses so i choose my graduation perfectly in terms of csc that is computer science and engineering which provides you a like you know it's like very easy setup you don't have to like heavily invest on all those in front here you just need a like computer with you and you i mean learn the tech and start decoding there so it's a very simple business at that moment so i started my journey at that moment at the same way graduated from their college and after that it's look like i know i mean a single computer cannot determine your faith for sure but you took uh that leap of faith with you now one question so you take that leap of faith now as you're taking that leap of faith because you know it is always a different thing when you're getting into running a business and yes definitely understand i can understand the tech or i can you know do the coding or i can make the app and i understand some of that but there's a whole different aspect of how do i go about getting clients how do i go about running the business or hiring you're building a team or anything of that nature so as you're as you're kind of getting those figured out how did that go was it something where you had clients and it was kind of out of their day one that you just had you know work banging down the door and you had lots of work coming in or to take yourself or take your period of time to kind of get your feet underneath your get a you know get some traction or kind of how did that go for you okay i mean see if i told you a story i mean see once you are like already in the like already set of environment it's like looks very pretty easy that you can like do the same thing in your company and you can start your own but uh to be very frank once you get into the environment where you need to build the infra from the very rough or very uh new or from from the very beginning so it's like a complete new uh journey that you are going to begin okay so i mean as you told i mean all the aspects of business we design development sales and marketing all you have to do uh from yourself because initially i don't think so you will get like good pool of the talent resources with you because you are like very beginning state and nobody will able to like figure it out what will be the next thing or the next opportunity working along with you so that's the one thing and okay so just a second please uh okay so i mean to all those uh to do all those things you probably need a team but it's very uh difficult to hire all those good resources at the like very beginning so that's the one thing and yeah i mean challenges are watched i mean uh i mean uh see if you are like a coder you think i mean coding is the word you can like give your client a potential uh custom things or whatever the client needs but finding a client is like another specific task so there is like the sales involved but in sales how the people will able to figure it out or find you so then there comes the marketing aspect so in total balance you have to balance the sales you have to balance the marketing you have to balance the operations and you have to balance the developmental team so it's like huge work which you as in like an entrepreneur you have to like handle all those things now now i'll ask the and i think that all makes sense i'll ask the same question i asked with the original one which is given all that how did it go when you started your own business was it when we were able to figure those out how did it take a lot of time was it a bumpy road or how did it go for you uh sorry i missed your question yeah i just said so definitely i understand that there's a lot of things that you have to figure out my question was as you're starting your business how did all of those aspects go in other words were you able to figure it out did it take you you know a year or two to get things figured out and start to get clients and develop things was it day one you had lots of clients come in or how did it actually go okay uh see when i started i know like certain things as i know as i told you i mean at the beginning i know how the sales to how the marketing do and how we can able to like figure out the best solution for each particular problems but the problem here i mean we do have the life development team i started to i mean on initial level i think we have started with like pool of the interns or the freshers and with like one level of this india resources with them so that's the kind of strategy we have for the development and now i'm i'm like literally focused on the sales because you cannot like do marketing at the same time so getting the client first you need to find that client as well so finding that client then approaching then all those process so we got like big break there so from the usa itself i got a client so he he's like still connected with us and right now we are like more as like family members so it's been like six or seven years we have known for uh each other so we started with them then we got deferred then we uh started or like spending all those things as well so now after the sales with like one client i mean see uh in like early startup it's very simple i mean uh if you like go with the like strategy if you have like enough fun to survive for like three months or four months you think it's like good so you don't i mean you don't put like literally much more efforts to like go all those three things but once all those funds like about too scared about to finish then you actually start working on that so initially that comes where you need to like a regular plan so we learned that fact and started our marketing approach there and that's how uh we need to like build a team for like doing all those things i don't know that makes sense so now as you've got that started and get some of those things figured out and get the business up and running you're you know you've been in it now i think that was 2017 2018-ish that you got the business running how's it going where here kind of gives us an idea where are things at now have you brought on team members are you continuing to grow where you kind of see things headed or where's the business headed uh i mean in 2016 i have started my business so it's like literally it's like roller coaster journey so basically we started with one client and now uh delivering their product first priority i mean once you get the client so the first priority is like living their product but once you involved in that then there is like major aspect which left that is the sales and marketing so you are like left with all those points so again so like juggling between the development and the sales and marketing is the difficult choice so i think it runs 16 we try to like focus on like a very few client uh for an initial one in two years not like going with like further directions so one in two clients we stick with them so that was the time when we learned a lot i mean because i have like come from a company which is like initially at the very beginning level so uh keeping their knowledge and trying to figure out how we can like succeed and how we can like improve that scenario so all those things after like year we came to know i mean we utilize several developmental tools or the project management tools to manage our like developmental works and at the same time figure out the different channels from we can like acquire new clients and different way out to provide the client a better satisfaction from which they can rely on to us that make sense i mean these two years will go and after this two years we started to like begin to expand so now you said for the so that would you know after a couple years have been expanding now bringing us up a bit to where you're at today so what are you guys doing where do you guys kind of see things headed and what's the next steps for you guys okay so uh i mean see this is the developmental work and this comes under the service so we are good in that so i mean if i'm talking about serving the client right now we like serve all over the world and doing the great things here we do have the development team in-house and they have the like different skill set so particularly what we are like uh thinking about since we are like still working uh with like some of the like major financial domain company here in india as well so we are like figuring out how we can help them to like give a good product so apart from the services we are like trying to move to the product segment as well so that's our like goal for the next two years well it sounds like a good direction ahead and uh hopefully uh one that will be here continue to be successful so well now as we've kind of you know heard or gone through your journey and even leaked a bit into where you guys are uh headed always a great uh offer or a great time to or transition to the two questions i always ask at the end of each podcast so i'll jump to those now 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 okay so with that i mean uh in the very beginning i mixed my emotions with my businesses and for that only reason i provided the stakes to my friend so that was my like the biggest mistake and you literally don't want to believe i ended up losing that business so i have to start my fresh business from very start at the same moment so that was my biggest mistake at that moment makes makes sense and uh sounds like you know sometimes when you have the the failures or the businesses that don't work out or the things you have to learn from them it's oftentimes a great opportunity and provides for making the next business even stronger so the second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice that you'd give them okay so my biggest solution would be i mean try to be firm with your decision and figure out the best solution for every problem be it like professionally or personally no there is like saying of mine figure out the solution at very first time as life will repeat that mistake or that situation again and again until you master that got it no i think that's a that's a great takeaway and a great piece of advice and definitely encourage people to follow it um well as we're wrapping up the podcast if people want to reach out to you they want to use your app development services 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 contact you or find out more okay so the best way to contact us i mean it's through our websites that is pandorating.com or through our like email sales pilot team.com as well awesome well i definitely encourage people to uh check out the website um look at the services and if you're in a need for an app an app developer app getting developed definitely is a great uh great option with that thank you again miss you 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 and 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 a listener make sure to click subscribe make sure to click share and make sure to leave us a review so you want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else in your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well thank you again for uh this you for coming on the podcast and wish the next lady of your journey even better than the last thank you for having me here once again and hoping to see you in like near future my pleasure

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #341
Hire Slow, Fire Fast
w/ Yuko Tsuchida

"We tell people who your going to hire is most important. As a small business owner that is what I always think about. Our firms slogan is to hire slow and fire fast. We do our best to hire people based on culture and our values, but it doesn't always turn out to be a good hire. We try to be transparent and set goals and milestones for them so we can quickly assess if there a good fit for our company."

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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

people people who you're gonna hire is like you know most important uh as a small business owner that's what i always think about and our culture well our confirm like we always talk about higher slow fire fire fast so even like you know we do our best to hire people based on culture and our values it doesn't always turn out um turn as a good hire so we need to uh be transparent and like you know we try to like set the goals and milestones for them so that we can quickly assess are they really good fit for our company [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us at chat and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast yuko tashida and uh yuko was born and raised in japan and uh went to an all-girls school in japan then came to oklahoma for undergraduate worked in compliance did some compliance work for some big financial firms um the work didn't feel like she was really helping businesses and wasn't quite what she looking for um so then started a cpa firm for about 10 years with a partner partnership ended up breaking up went to spain i think to then get an mba went and worked in africa and japan for a bit and then in 2017 uh started a new firm focused on tax credits and tax incentives so with that much is an introduction welcome on to the podcast yuko thank you so much david for having me absolutely my pleasure so well with that um i gave kind of the condensed version of the 30 second second version to a much longer journey so why don't we uh back up a bit in time and tell us how your journey got uh started uh in japan and go from there yeah uh growing up like you know back in japan uh my parents had like you know small business uh as well so i always wanted to like you know help small business uh owners and besides that i love math and like i used to like you know compete in afghan competition so between those two i decided like you know i want to become a like you know cpa and help like you know small owner like business owners been about i was like 14. so fast forward uh another thing was i was in love with uh luke perry at the time so i decided to come to america and pursue my accounting carrier so now you said okay you went to school and you know in or schooling as uh in the in japan got that education now what out of all the places what made you decide to come to oklahoma for undergraduate yeah so i never came to america before the day i landed here so my parents said like you know okay we will hire like you know uh counselor if we can help us like select like you know uh college in the united states so i gave them like you know spillover like what i'm looking for i said i want a true american experience like where there's not much like foreign students so this person said like you know i have an amazing place for you which was oklahoma and i wanted to be close to like you know california like new york but my american map was in my small like english dictionary so even like you know small map like it looks it looked like you know closer to like california so i said i was sold and like you know after a year later i got on a plane and landed in oklahoma which was culture shock but it was a great four years they say okay hey this will be the true you know experience and uh you get into oklahoma and uh you you studied got your your 40 your four-year degree and i think as we chatted a bit before so you're coming out coming out of undergraduate you've got the degree and then you went to work with one of the big financial firms in compliance work is that right that's correct so i got accounting degree from northeastern state university in oklahoma and then i got my first job with kpmg and helped like you know file or prepare tax return for multinational companies like honda and stuff so they say okay i'm going to go into doing or doing that compliance work now you know and i think you you mentioned uh when we chatted a bit before so you did the compliance work and i think it was for about 10 years or no was it a few years or so like 10 years with the year the cpa firm but how long did you do compliance work for about three years and then like you know during that time of course like i wrote it like they call it rotation so like you know i'll go to different department like financial audit uh and transfer pricing so i have like you know opportunity to kind of like uh get to know about different tax area and like you know cpa work other than like you know preparing tax returns as well they say okay i can do that for a couple years and you get some great experience now one of the things that uh i if i remember when we talked a bit before was you know why you were doing that work and you know getting working for a big business on the other hand it wasn't necessarily the ideal setup from the sense that um you weren't helping the businesses you wanted you weren't kind of doing the work you want so what or what kind of triggered that or what was the realization hey this may not be the the you know the career field or the the job for me what kind of prompted that um you know a desire for a switch yeah so uh during that like you know me trying out different department i stumble across my tax credit tax incentive in a state and local department and one of the things like i love working for big4 accounting firm and like you know i learned so much from them um whenever like you know i was working on big four accounting firm and like you know preparing like tax credits study for like larger firms like food gaffer before accounting for thieves right i was like you know uh i was just looking around and talking to a lot of people and like you know people who really needed those tax credit tax incentives or small to mid-sized business owners but they couldn't afford to uh hire a big four accounting firm so that prompted me to like you know i love doing these work for a larger organization but i would like to uh serve like more under served community which is like you know small too like mid-sized farm and that's really why i left big4 firm and then started the company was my previous uh former business partner they say okay gonna go out strike it on my own and then do the your own firm and now i think you you know so and make sense as to why you might to look to say i'm going to make that change or make that an adjustment in the career and so you go out and you make that adjustment and then you know how did you decide to bring on you know or bring on the partner or how did you know is it some way that you'd already knew or someone that already had a firm or how did you kind of get that business up and going so i think you guys did a partnership for about 10 years or so before you guys decided to part ways but how did that get all started with the both of you yeah sure so i met jeff who was my previous business partner at the in kpmg one of the party i went to and um one of the reasons i got connected here was like you know i was doing like a rotation at his department so he was a already partner at st local tax department uh so same time similar time like you know i was thinking about leaving the big four he was thinking about uh starting his firm so we started talking what if like you know we start like you know i help him build up like you know his business and like you know we become partners so that's how all the all things i started and i was partner with him and like you know uh later on we acquired like merged with company so uh we were in a business together for about eight years so you say okay and you know without getting into the details and i always get the you know a bit of breakups within partnerships or just that it's always a bit of a breakup but what made you guys to decide to go different ways or what made you decide to end that business because you know ten years or eight years or so is a good amount of time to work together but was it simply just difference of opinion difference in direction couldn't get along anymore had a different opportunity or what made you decide to you know dissolve or go different ways and then go to get the nba in spain sure um i think like you know i consider him like a long time like really close friend of mine uh one thing like as we grew the firm i think culture and like you know where we want to go as a company we couldn't see i2i so as a minority owner i decided to leave the firm and then really think about what type of culture i want to like create if i ever have like you know another firm and then just take a time off and uh think about what is really important for me personally and professionally because like you know since i'm 22 right after college like i was working probably like 15 hours a day um non-stop and um just be tall i was probably burned out as well so it was great to like you know take a time off uh sit back and like went back to mba and then another thing i always wanted to do uh was um like uh grant here or like work for non-profit organization in underserved communities so that took me to south africa and working with a non-profit organization or finance so we say okay you know that and that sounds like you know it's uh definitely was a good change and i definitely get you know you work a lot of time a lot of hours you get burned out you're wanting to take a break you want to go different direction and so you know you step back and so you go do the nba in spain then you go and work in a bid in africa do some the things in the orphanage go back to japan now as you're kind of now saying okay i've taken that break i've taken a step back and you know had that experience what you know and you're i think you worked you know in africa and japan for a bit and then 2017 comes around what made you decide to kind of go back into doing your own firm was it hey i ran out of money and i have to make a living or hey i want to go and i want to you know i've taken my break and i want to re-engage and kind of get things going again or kind of what was the genesis for starting your own firm again yeah so uh the reason like i started my firm again number one i loved what i uh do so i wanted to like you know get back into tax credit tax incentive and like really help like small to mid science businesses number two was um i think um i wanted i was a craving for like you know can i do this can i build my friend like by myself and have a really good culture and people around my company so those are the two things like you know i jump back into building this farm and like it's been amazing like i've been telling like people like this year we had bad hires we have no turnovers but uh i have to say now we have eight people in my farm and it's amazing people are online we love our culture and people you know breathe about like you know talk about our culture how great it is at the same time like you know being professional working hard no and i think that you know sounds like yeah you know after having the experience of working with other big businesses and doing it with a partner then you kind of uh settled into hey here the area that is going to be the one that i love and enjoy is going to be worthwhile and kind of where i can add the most value and also have the most enjoyment so now as you've you know started your own firm kind of got like going to 2017 so you know you know four or five years in how has it gone has it you know been one where it has been that level of enjoyment has been worthwhile and you've loved it has it been difficult or rocky go or you know ups and downs or kind of how's it been over the last four or five years yeah that first two three years was up and down uh there was numerous time like is it worth for me to build this firm uh having said that last year i i think it really turned around our company when i hire like number one like you know business development person and she being she has been like you know my number two and really uh striving or shaping our culture and whenever we go through like hiring either like employee or like you know taking on clients we always talk about our mission our culture and like you know what type of people i want to work with we want to work with and that really shifted our company and uh the people we are working with as well and it's getting easier and easier and like in a convenient like you know we go into like you know not just selling like you know tax credit before we do that we talk about what is your liking a goal what are you looking for what type of partnership like you know would you like to have with us and so that really like you know making uh make it easy to like grow the firm with the right people and right clients and i have to say it's been such an amazing like great experience for like last year oh that's that's exciting you know it's interesting that you know you watch the the watch the movies or read the books and it's always hey i was an overnight success and everything and every time you hear you talk with an actual business owner or you do that first of all there's always a journey that comes along with it but even when you're starting your own firm starting your own business those first few years are almost always hey it was get figuring out who we're going to help how we're going to help them how it resource clients what we're going to do and is this worth it and so i think that that you know experience definitely resonates i think with a lot of experiences that people have and what how it really works out in in reality is that you know there is that difference in that first few years is not always just the easy going the the everybody always you know thinks it is but there's a lot of work that goes into that so that's definitely interesting to hear you know now as you said okay we're in it you know four or five years now we've got it we've got past those initial two or three years we've got things a bit more figured out or settled and we're continuing to grow and expand and kind of continue to offer the areas or service areas of service that you enjoy where do you kind of see the next six to 12 months going for you guys yeah next six to 12 months like you know we are continuing to grow our company one is like you know we our core business is r d tax credit and employee retention tax credits but i come from the background like negotiating tax credit as well with the state so in california california competes tax credits and like you know there's like different like tax credits out there so for us to like offer and grow with our clients we need to bring in much more like a little bit different like skill set of people who get negotiate tax credit really identify and like you know be up in front of like you know clients like investments so that our clients can maximize their tax credit tax incentives so that they can grow no i think that that's uh definitely will be you know as people are always looking to and it doesn't matter which business you're in you're always looking to say hey how can we reduce our tax liability how can we save the business money how can we grow and i think that some of those tax credits and and reducing that tax liability and also um reducing that burden on the business definitely is an area that will never go away and it's always something that's needed and sounds like a great area to grow into well as we start to wrap up so that kind of brings us to the you know a bit of or walks us through your journey and even looks a bit into the future great time to transition to the two questions i always ask the end of each episode so we'll go ahead and dive on or jump to those now um 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 uh staying in a bad partnership for a long time like it took me about three years to really decide like you know i want to leave the sperm and uh kind of stay taking a step back um i think i knew all along like you know the partnership started not to work and it was like you know it was creating toxic environment for our employees so uh i take full responsibility of like you know creating that culture uh became me and like my partner and in addition to that like you know for our employees so you know if you think if i knew better and like you know myself i will make that decision much quicker for myself my for my partner and also our employees well and i think you know that one's always a hard one in the sense that i definitely get hey we have a partner that we've brought on he's been with me or he or she has been with me for a while you know and we you know it may not always be the best partnership but we don't want to wreck it or you know how do you make an exit and how do you make that transition and so you oftentimes stay in that business arrangement because it's been you know it's something that you know and you've been doing it for a while but it doesn't always make sense and so i think that that's certainly an easy one an easy mistake to learn but also a good lesson to learn or an easy mistake to make but a good lesson to learn is that you know sometimes if you are in a partnership it's not just affecting you it affects the firm and infects the employees it makes it whether or not you have job satisfaction and whether or not the business is successful and if it's not working either look to change it or look to adjust it possible or not then you need to make an exit or making a change and so definitely a great lesson to learn from second question i always ask is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh i say people people people who you're gonna hire is like you know most important uh as a small business owner that's what i always think about and our culture well our confirm like we always talk about higher slow fire fire fast so even like you know we do our best to hire people based on culture and our values it doesn't always turn out um turned as a good hire so we need to uh be transparent and like you know we try to like set the goals and milestone for them so that we can quickly assess are they really good fit for our company oh and i think that that is it's a great way to you know to look at and i think that you need to i would you know i would say that you know hiring is always a difficult thing and it's always one where i think everybody thinks that they are great at no they're great at reading people great at hiring people and if i was a boss i'd do it differently and then you get into it and you realize you know finding the right people it's not even just are they talented but are they the right fit for the culture do they have the do they get along with the co-workers and the culture we have do they have the skills do they have the work ethic do they you know all those things come into and it's always much harder and so i think that is figuring out that process slowing it down figuring out what works what doesn't work and focusing on the people to build your business is a great takeaway and a great piece of advice well as we wrap up this episode if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be a investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to your contact or find out more yeah through our website is the best and our website address is h i t o llc.com so it's hito llc.com all right well i definitely encourage people to check out the website connect and find out more because definitely a lot of resources there and you're looking to save some money for your business with some with some tax uh tax assistance definitely a worthwhile uh connection to be made well thank you again yuko 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast certainly feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show a couple more things um if you would as a listener if you can make sure to click subscribe make sure to click share leave us a review we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else with the business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help thank you again yuko for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devin for having me

Miller IP Law is a firm that focuses on small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs/solopreneurs. We’re easy to use. We offer affordable pricing that’s transparent and flat-rate. We focus on the little guys who actually need our help. If you’d like an attorney on your team, simply schedule a Zoom call, and we’ll take care of the rest.

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #340
Understand Your Goals
w/ Colby Flood
Connect With Me

"Honestly, understand what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. You hear that all the time right but, you hear it all the time cause its important. Really focus on making sure you're not limiting yourself and bottlenecking your own growth. Check out that book the Big Leap by Hendricks. One thing I did not mention but is pretty important to me is making sure I write down my goals. Plan my goals ahead and keep track of them daily. One thing I always tell the team is to slow down to speed up. take the time to plan out what you want to do before you go for it. Lastly remain a student. Don't stop learning when you feel like you've gotten to where you want to go. Keep looking for educational opportunities."

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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

 honestly um understand what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it and you hear that all the time right but you hear it all the time because it's important um really focus on making sure you're not limiting yourself and bottlenecking your own growth check out that book the big leap by gay hendricks and then one thing i did not mention but has been very important for me is making sure i write down my goals plan my goals ahead and then keep track of them daily as well one thing i always tell the team is slow down to speed up take the time to plan out what you want to do before you go forward there's a planner from darren hardy called living your best year ever ever i sound like an affiliate marketer at this point but um it's huge it it has helped me a ton and then lastly just remain a student don't don't stop learning when you feel like you've gotten to where you want to go keep looking for educational opportunities [Music] hi everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur that's uh 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 you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast colby flood and uh colby um and in his own words high school and college wasn't the greatest experience um ended up having to go through uh go to rehab throughout part of the experience dropped out of high school after a year finished rehab uh worked in retail for a period of time and always wanted to go into marketing so as part of that he went back to the rehab center and i think he was at and did their social media and marketing for a period of time and then left and started his own uh freelancing or did freelancing on his own for a while and was freelancing until covet hit um and then you know as it happens he uh during her while cove hit her i guess shortly before after hired his first employee and now is all the way up to 17 members on the team so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast colby uh thanks for having me thanks for having me absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed it into the 30 second version so why don't we unpack that a bit and tell us how your uh journey got started a little bit in the high school college time frame yeah for sure um so definitely starting back in high school right so um uh going through you know troubles at home getting mixed in with not the best crowd at school and just really kind of losing focus on school i continued through high school and that's really when i started to use drugs started with weed and then it just kind of progressed from there right as i graduated high school it had gotten i mean it was definitely out of hand from the beginning but it had gotten much worse and i wasn't too much focused on school although i continued to try that path so i went to a university for a year and you know you hear people say um like i don't remember being in class or i don't i genuinely do not i remember two class periods and one is weird there's a thing i remember but one was a classical music appreciation class and i remember it because at the time uh ring back tones were still a thing and it was like the ring back tone for verizon and i remember them playing that and i was like oh nice so yeah ed um college was definitely i related to like the uh blue period for uh um what was it warhol i believe um not not the best time um dropped out of college after that first year and really continued spiraling down um i mean i got to a point where i was doing 300 milligrams of oxycodone every day and just kept on that path until 2015. um so i was 21 years old and had just thankfully hit rock bottom and went to a rehab called living free ministries which is in snow camp north carolina i was on this nice little farm a very small community out there and spent four months out there and turned things around i'm happy to say since 25th september 15th 2015 is when i went in i've been able to stay 100 clean since then and just that's where uh i'm here now that's where uh this journey started was that kind of page turn right there no and i think that you know i think everybody has attorneys or their journeys and you know that one sounds like you know during the high school college time frame it was a bit of a rough journey and you know he had to have that downward spiral thankfully he got uh he got help with that and were able to turn it around and you know start to put your life in a bit better direction or a bit more successful direction now as you're doing that you know you've going through rehab and and getting clean and otherwise um or turning those things around how did you kind of figure out that you liked marketing or that was something of interest or kind of as you're saying okay if life is going in a better direction a bit more happy and things are a bit more stable coming out of that you know how did you do that because i think that you know for other people that may have had a similar you know similar situation or they've other had some of those addiction or issues that they're overcoming it can be difficult to find a path where you can find good employment or where people are willing to trust you or hire you and so it becomes a bit of a barrier so how did you kind of as you're coming out of that situation figure out what you're going to do next yeah i'll tell you that is that is very tough that that transition right there especially so i was lucky and to say that i was 21 years old when when my turnaround happened that is very tough um really what i did was just focus on what i enjoyed i've always been very into psychology very much into that just that kind of learning and thinking and translated that into business like you were saying it can be very tough to find employment right i am a felon i have a marijuana charge drug felony and when i started working retail i moved up quickly but i hit a ceiling right i um i couldn't get a store manager position at dollar store because i had a felony and it was tough so that's when i had to make the decision to begin to go out on my own but just to kind of circle back to your question of how people can go about that definitely focus on what you enjoy but also look for the resources that are out there um look for the resources that your state or your county uh may have for you there's something in north carolina for example called the brian hamilton foundation and they solely focus on helping people who've been incarcerated begin their own business and training on how they can do your own business so don't feel like the burden is completely on your shoulders to to keep going forward uh or to to make that progress find people find resources that can help you with that no and i think that that's that's a good point in the sense of finding a lot of those uh resources give you the ability to you know other otherwise address or overcome some of those obstacles that may otherwise be in your way and it provides this doesn't make it you know an easy path and i think that but it does at least provide you with a path to success so now you're saying okay i found some you know coming out of that worked at retail hitting the you know a bit of that ceiling or you know makes it difficult for uh to um continue to go to move up upward within the business you know how did you then say okay maybe i'll try my hand at you know marketing and and doing some of the social media in other words was that an opportunity you sought out and you said hey this would be interesting or was the rehab center that you've gone to looking for that or kind of how did you make that transition to say i find this interesting and that's where i'm going to pursue is to create more opportunity yeah for sure i'm going to go ahead and tell you there's sometimes i don't give direct answers so i'm going to get there to you but uh the first thing i really did and this is something i would suggest for anybody is really just focused on that mindset shift of believing that it could happen there's a book called the big leap by gay hendricks which was pivotal for me because i hit a ceiling at the places i was working but i also could hit a ceiling with what i believed i could do and that's that book really focuses on helping with that but honestly um [Music] i am a very planned out person with two planners at all times but this point in my life where i made that jump i had no plan originally my idea was to go back to school and to go the school route and at the same time so happens that living free was looking for somebody to come on board and do marketing for them so i i continued at a community college for a year while working with them and for me personally and school may be a good option for some people listening that need that but for me personally i found that i was more so in school at that time for confidence than i was for knowledge and everything that i was doing at living free was teaching me what i needed um and i spent a year just being a student while working uh learned teaching myself website design email marketing all of that and just really going with that so like i said roundabout answer find a find a job in your career that you're wanting to do and just be a student as much as you can and and really focus on going above and beyond with everything you're doing with it no and i think that that's that's a good you know a fair point and i also like you know sometimes school is a good option for a lot of people it's also not a good option for others and you know finding the way that the education that you can gain that those skills and then looking for the opportunities to build your resume your portfolio type of thing in order to utilize and showcase those skills makes a big difference so you say okay took the next you know thought about the college route took the next year i assume you're working in the time but continue to develop those skills as you're continuing to you know get the income and then as you're gaining those skills how did you start to get or find those opportunities of actually turning those skills into employment yeah i started by working with people that i knew started by reaching out to people business owners in the local area and seeing if i could really give a go at the freelancing part and building out enough monthly revenue that i could justify stopping a nine to five job i i believe it was when i hit right at four to five k a month is when i made that just full change over there and just kind of kept going with building out referrals that way so now you say okay and i think that's a great place to start with the network you have start with the people you know see if there's any connections anybody that's interested or has work which you know sounds like one of the places was the rehab center then you start to get those clientele on board continue to establish reach out to people and kind of build it a bit organically and then you know and now when did you when did you start doing that or kind of as a time frame how long or when was that when you started doing those or doing those projects or showcasing or doing that work for other people uh year-wise i believe that was 2017 i believe yep so now you do 2017 and you're doing that you know you start out sounds like maybe on a bit of the side gig or side hustle and then you urge you to reach the point where it was enough to enter income to make it sustainable you could do it full time then it sounds like for the next few years and if i'm putting words in your mouth definitely um or feel it or feel free to change it to the right words but for the next few years you were basically doing it mostly on your own or as kind of a one-man show so to speak until more recently when covet hit and you happen to have the upward spike is that right yeah that's right i um really focused on continuing to dial in so i may i made the first mistake of trying to be a catch-all with marketing right i tried to do email a website and that's just not scalable uh at least when you're a solopreneur trying to scale so i dialed in on one specific service and focused on the one thing and really found uh one good lead generation source for me as well to start building myself out and yes until um so december 22nd of 2020 is when i hired my first team member and from that point until where we are now is just kind of in the scale journey for me now what and just out of curiosity what was the difference in you know first few years doing it on your own and then now for be able to scale it higher on additional team members and go to where you're at today was it just took a while made the connections pivoted niched down focused figured out what worked on marketing a bit of all the above or kind of what made that you know that pivot point from going to kind of doing it mostly on your own to having or building a team around it yeah it was definitely it was definitely some of those things so learning um learning a lot of things outside of just my craft outside of just marketing right and i circle back to this the biggest the biggest shift for me was just the mindset shift of just allowing myself to continue to go forward and and i just continue to say anybody that has ever dealt with that or had that kind of limiting belief check out that book the big leap but that just allowing that to go forward um really helped me kind of turn that page and continue to keep growing and um start hiring at a pretty fast rate oh i think that you know that sounds like one it's a definitely a good good resource and book to check out and two not only did you read it or learn it but then you put it into practice and it was a worthwhile endeavor well that kind of brings us to a bit to where you're at today now if you're to look kind of the next six to 12 months and i know world's always uncertain and you never know exactly where you're going but if you're to project out a little bit and say hey here's our kind of where we see things headed or what the plan is for the next six to 12 months what do you think the next steps are for you yeah so last year we grew at a 267 percent rate we're looking to keep that consistent and hopefully double that this year which is pretty aggressive but we are looking to build out additional services within our company the biggest goal for brighter click really i mean from our name brighter click to what our core values are to what we want to do starts with what my journey has been we want to become an educational resource for people we are education first so we make sure that our team members take paid or free courses every quarter we educate our clients but we're looking to build out university courses that are free to provide to either business owners or marketers who are in the united states and don't have the paid opportunity or in third world countries that need education as well and we want to help people reach their goals uh with no charge that that's that is our ultimate biggest goal as we continue to go forward awesome well it sounds like one it's a a very amicable goal and i like both the you know you have the growth goals and expanding the services but also or figuring out ways to offer opportunities to others that will help them to improve their situation as well so it sounds like a great uh great mixture of behind both fronts so yeah well now as we wrap towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that i ask at the end of each episode so we'll transition to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made what'd you learn from it yeah so i know we talked about me starting out with the network of people that i knew but i would say the worst business decision that i made was just not truly understanding how valuable networking is especially for b2b companies or being in the b2b industry and just not tapping in as much as i could have and should have to just building uh good connections and good good uh networks within uh the realm that i was in so very important to do no i think so and i think it's one that it on on paper you know it sounds like it's something that's easy to do and yet figuring that out implementing it and understanding the the value of it is oftentimes gets overlooked so you know the mistake that's certainly easy to made but uh one that uh is great to learn from yeah second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them you're gonna get annoyed because i'm gonna go back to the same book but um yeah i would say honestly understand what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it and you hear that all the time right but you hear it all the time because it's important um really focus on making sure you're not limiting yourself and bottlenecking your own growth check out that book the big leap by gay hendricks and then uh one thing i did not mention but has been very important for me is making sure i write down my goals plan my goals ahead and then keep track of them daily as well one thing i always tell the team is slow down to speed up take the time to plan out what you want to do before you go forward there's a planner from darren hardy called living your best year ever i sound like an affiliate marketer at this point but um it's huge it it has helped me a ton uh and then lastly just remain a student don't don't stop learning when you feel like you've gotten to where you want to go keep looking for educational opportunities oh and i like that i like all the above and um you know i like the looking for additional educational opportunities and that does not always mean going back to school you know whether it's the book that you're mentioning i love podcasts not only do i do a podcast but i also love listening to others and i think that you can garner a lot of education outside of just the conventional means but you and or the conventional means as well but either way if you're continually learning and improving then it's helping you to be better at your craft and otherwise be able to better or be able to better perform and build a business so i think that's a a lot of great takeaways yeah well people are interested if they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you or find out more i think it's funny i was thinking earlier i'm at the point where i respond to email better than i do text message my email is simple colby c-o-l-b-y at brighterclick.com you can definitely go to brighterclick.com as well if you want to uh book on the calendar but feel free to reach out their email i'd love to connect with anybody who is any of the above or anybody that has questions about that journey that i've been through love to help somebody out with awesome that i definitely encourage people to reach out connect and take advantage of of uh some great resources and and also a lot of knowledge there so with that um 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you and share your journey 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 click like make sure to click uh leave a review because we want to make sure that everybody finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always happy to help well thank you again colby for coming on the podcast and wish the next legion of your journey even better than the last thank you very much [Music] you

Miller IP Law is a firm that focuses on small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs/solopreneurs. We’re easy to use. We offer affordable pricing that’s transparent and flat-rate. We focus on the little guys who actually need our help. If you’d like an attorney on your team, simply schedule a Zoom call, and we’ll take care of the rest.

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #339
Go All In
w/ Ryan Bass

"Go all in, I mean it's something if you're going to get into, it's like Parks and Rec, like don't hold a half asset you got to get a whole asset. So go all in. You know you can't sit there to the side and say you know I'm going to work on this small business but I'm going do it under the confines of nine to five. Like if you jump in and you're not the founder or you're someone early that's joining in you need look at it as this is your baby too. And so just because you join in and there's no huge equity stake that's given to you out of the gate, it still behooves you to help out."

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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

go all in i mean it's it's something if you're going to get into it it's like uh was it parks and rec like don't don't hold our half asset you got a whole asset so go all in um you know you can't sit there to the side and say you know i'm going to work on this small business but i'm gonna do it under the confines of nine to five like if you jump in and you're not the founder or you're someone early that's joining in like you gotta look at it as this is your baby too right and so just because you join in and there's no huge equity stake that's given to you out of the gate like it still behooves you to help out [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 ip law where he held startups and small businesses with their pads and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com got some time with us to chat and we're always here to help now today we've got another great uh guest on the podcast ryan bass and uh ryan grew up in a small town called pocahontas missouri and learned to work hard had a good work ethic as he grew up on a small farm a 16 acre or so farm helped out the families went to college on a into playing soccer and was a goalkeeper thought about going pro but decided that given that he was six foot what a parent which is apparently shorter for a goalie uh decided his uh prospects weren't as good so uh went off and decided to or to pursue the college degree and do that came out of school worked for cerner doing electronic records and worked for a couple of other hospitals before deciding to start his own business in the healthcare industry and he'll clue us in a little bit more about what that is so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast ryan hey thanks thanks for having me absolutely excited to have you on so i just gave the muc or the much more condensed version of a longer journey so take us back a bit in time to how your journey got started in poker pocahontas idaho or missouri yeah yeah yeah i think saying it's a small town is kind of a an upgrade about what it really is so pocahontas is like the village so uh literally there's like 12 churches for the 100 people but one bar and one uh post office so yeah i grew up in the middle of the country we had chickens and all that fun stuff and uh um yeah so i played a lot of soccer that was kind of my outlet uh used that throughout high school and into college and i was two-time all-american in college a scholar all-american as you mentioned like the pay and stuff to do the prospect of becoming a professional if you're not going to the epl or like now there's at least livable wages at the mls to entry there um it's still pretty rough to be able to do something so i looked at it and said you know what would i want to put my body through or do i want to you know get a big boy job and so i kind of landed with getting a big boy job worked at cerner they throw you into random places so i got put into regulatory compliance got to read a whole bunch of fun law and one quick question then i know when you're interrupting the journey but so soccer was you know certainly it sounds like in high school and throughout a lot of college was a big focus or at least a big part of your life now what made you go from soccer very athletic outdoor you know out and doing sports and competing to electronic records for hospitals kind of how did you make that decision or kind of what guided you in that direction it's really like uh until now i didn't know what i wanted to do till i grew up you know what i mean like so it was cerner has a huge presence in kansas city and that's where i went to college so i had a lot of friends that worked there um they they spoke highly of like their experience and was like well i got to do something you know let's try this out and see how it goes so you know as i got into it like i said yeah i got thrown into regulatory and compliance and you know as much fun as it is to read legal regulations and from cms and everyone else um i kind of liked it uh you know a lot of people look at it and say like ah you know it's this monotonous really long like drawn out spell of what this legal requirement is then you have to interpret it one of those next steps but i kind of liked it because you know every year changes you're not selling and doing the same thing over and over again yeah you got to spend some time and educate yourself a little bit but at the end of the day you get to go and attack something new right so i did everything from alphabet soup of like iqr oqr ipf qr and you know i won't get into all the acronyms there um but all that was like free text based and like then you had to have somebody audit and like look and see if people actually like did what they said they were supposed to do and then i got to lead all the ecqms which was electronic clinical or quality measures and so with the electronic clinical quality measures i basically got to move everything from free text to discrete documentation like when you do an order in the chart when you do a drop down when you do a radio button that then completes kind of that compliance of what needs to be documented so i kind of led all of that from a project management standpoint from cerner and all their clients and really like enjoyed the additional responsibility the additional challenge like not wanting to be the bottleneck and so that's just kind of driven me in my career and then through the hospital moves with my wife and her doing her med school and then residency i've really gotten to see a lot of different areas within the health system and the hospital side of things which then kind of allowed me to take kind of my past experience of well it's an outside vendor here's a service here's something i'm doing and now i have experience with like you're on the hospital side you know how do we make whatever work how do we get to the point where um we're able to you know support this new documentation features or how do we get to you know what do we have to do so it kind of gives me a unique experience from being able to see the viewpoint from the vendor from the health system side um the regulatory background and being able to help interpret and say like well here's legally what you have to do and now that you have this legal requirement here are all the benefits that you can streamline that you know today are either done manually or if at all right and then what's the impact to your your patients your health system your bottom line no and i think that makes that makes perfect sense so now as you get in you know out of a few different motivations and you got into it now you've worked with cerner for about how long um for that like all in all it's probably two to three years um i don't have my linkedin profile up in front of me but you know i did everything from like i started with them when i was in college doing their non-profit so i worked at their first hand foundation which basically like they give money to patients that are children that have displacement or other things that like you know the kids family couldn't afford so they pay for her surgeries and everything to go along with it so i started there and then moved into the consulting wing and then led that ecq ems and then um when my now wife matched to her clinical rotations i just told sir like hey i'm moving and they're like oh well uh you have to get approved and i was like well i'm moving in a month so let me know if i need to find a new job which led to them you know approving me to go remote but then they wanted me to travel 100 of the time and i was just like i just moved to southwest florida i'm not going to now spend my entire time flying to places that aren't southwest florida so got a job at the health system she was was working at for clinical rotations and learned the ambulatory side of the world where acute was basically where i was prior no it makes sense and so that you answer one of the questions i had which is what made you so you started out in cerner and then you ended up going to a couple different hospital systems it sounds like as your wife was going through the various rotations and earning those uh degrees and whatnot and getting or finishing up the education that it made sense that you would rotate through the different hospital systems and go on that aspect so now as you're going through that and you're now in florida and you moved around you worked with a couple different hospital systems and as well as with cerner what made you kind of switch gears or start to explore the entrepreneurial path or doing kind of your own thing was it out of a matter of hey we're making another move and i can't find a job this time or was it more of hey i have a desire and i always wanted to do it or now is the right time or you know kind of what was that genesis 4 looking to start to do your own business and was it one that started on the side while you were still working or did you take the plunge and i know there's like 20 questions in there but it's kind of curious what uh what motivated the the shifting of gears yeah i mean it kind of goes to the old adage that like everyone says right um you know there's two ways you become an entrepreneur it's either that like something directly impacts you or happens to you or someone close to you and you take it up as kind of your your mantle of this is what i'm going to do or in kind of my case it's like i just got tired of working for people that were incompetent if i'm being completely frank um you know i was a regulatory expert but you know the quality director in the last hospital i was at didn't know how to tie his shoes if it meant reading a regulatory compliance document so i saved them four and a half million dollars by making them compliant within a very short window because they neglected to look at how they were going to submit what they were going to do um on the other side of things like my director had no idea about anything regulatory so it was just kind of like me out on my own island like making sure that the hospital was compliant and everyone above me you know is basically getting to set on my shoulders right and look good and so i got to the point of like you know why am i doing someone else's mission or someone else's you know goals i need to go and figure out what i want to do and so i started the side hustle you know i highly recommend even like you know people that will start working for my company like if you have a passion if you were able to cultivate skills like obviously want to grow you and bring you in and have you stay here but like if you have a passion you want to work on something on the side that doesn't you know directly take away from what we're doing then you know more power to you because like i feel like in the corporate world today it's very stifling right it's it's this is your nine to five this is your window this is what you do and so when i was i was working there i just got to the point of like you know i need to find my own path i need to find my own my own creed and like go after it and when i was doing all the the compliance stuff i found that there was this new documentation point with udi and unique device identifiers there was nothing on the market that could do kind of the end-to-end transcription and notifications that i was looking for um because as i went around the hospital with that new documentation point i was like how do we do this today like we have a new documentation point what do we do today and i got everything from well we do it in pre-op we do it in post-op we do the documentation in op notes or worst it was like we have a notebook and we write stent information in the notebook it was like well what if somebody has left-handed handwriting and they smudge the ink and you can't tell if it's a six or an eight or someone spills coffee on it like what do we do then they're like i don't know and so it's like so we can have a recall we have an important notice on a device that a patient is relying on and could potentially die from if they don't get that notification and our solution is a piece of paper with a pen and then when somebody has an issue with it they're then coming back and going through a paper book and then trying to see if they can read the transcription and then go find the patient and it's like that seems like it's a lot of time that's being wasted for like a very important notice in which like patients don't get notified and ultimately end up with the brunt of that with you know loss of life or glossary quality of life so gains are kind of yeah his answer kind of like a roundabout of what what you asked it was like i wanted to go my own path i started with a side hustle um i've got to the point where it was like all right i need to focus on this fully and you know that's been the journey of the last year and a half or so of like let's build it get the mvp get all the regulatory builds in what are the other solutions sorry to compile that like team together and you know now we're at the point of starting to commercially launch and become viable oh it definitely makes sense as you know that's a lot of times you know i think that there's a lot of entrepreneurs to get to the point to say hey i think i can do this better i can do it cheaper faster quicker more efficiently less errors and all the or any or all the above and you say you know i can't really where i'm at is not it doesn't uh provide for that or allow for that and there are a myriad of reasons they may not want to invest in it they may not see it they may have other priorities they may not have the budget any number of things but you're saying at some point if this is getting done i've got to do it in a different context and so you decide to go out on your own now one of the things you also sometimes see with special entrepreneurs is then when you get out and actually say you know i can do this better i can do they're cheaper faster you know all those reasons why you go out on your own you get into and you say this is a lot harder than i thought in other words hey how do i or do all the employees how do i get this funded how do i manage payroll how do i you know go out and find people that are willing to buy new marketing and sales and all those things that you don't really think about when you're working for someone else and you're using the system but now you're having to build it and you're having to sell it so what was your experience is it one where it was a smooth and easy transition was it one where it was a little more bumpy and had to figure a lot more things out or how did it go as you decided to start it out as a side hustle well so as a side hustle like it was it was okay like finding other people similar minded it was all right like with existing kind of side hustles so i originally started like consulting for a group and trying to figure out how to make what they had better um but really the the i'll say the the personalities of like what i wanted to do what they wanted to do were different so i went and just said okay i'm just going to go and do what i see as my vision on my own um in that i tried to i'll say i tried to hedge it right so i was like i'm a 20-something entrepreneur what health system is going to buy from a 20-something who's never done sales before i don't know kind of what i'm doing in that arena so i went out and i found someone to like bring in um i brought them in and let's just say it didn't really work out and we'll just kind of leave it at that just there were a lot of i'll say mistakes and i i like to make the reference that like um if you run with scissors and you don't fall on it one time and it works out for you like that's great but you probably shouldn't just be running around the scissors all the time saying like yeah it'll work at all occasions right so it's like essentially the biggest kind of thing that i learned and like how i started out what i focused on and how i kind of made that entrepreneur journey was like you really just got to trust yourself right you can't go out and look at it and say use that imposter syndrome of like hey i don't know if i'm good enough hey why is somebody gonna buy for me because the second you start asking questions like that like no one's gonna buy from you right you have to have that confidence you gotta have that mindset of like i'm doing this this is what i'm going to accomplish here's how i'm going to accomplish it and i will find those those steps along the way and i will make it happen and it's not going to be easy in every step of the regard so like you might run into something where you raise a little bit of money and then the money starts to run out and then you make a decision of okay do i suffer a little bit and protect my investors or do i pack it in and you know there were so many times along the early stage of the journey that like i wasn't pulling a paycheck it was very very tight at home like i voiced a resident like i said we have two kids so it's very very kind of touch and go financially but like i owed it to those people who invested from the get-go that like i was going to be a fiduciary in their investment and not just say hey i tried i you know we took your money and nothing happened so thanks a lot goodbye so it was you know like brent and barrett you go through you suffer you get what you need for the next steps you continue to grow it and work with it you know scrap everything together that you can and then you know you get that next investment wing and then you feel good and now it's how do i get to the next one right so you know when we're pushing through these next phases and stuff it's like the grit and determination's there which is also good for investors to see right like hey i've suffered if i suffer for these guys for peanuts of what you know comparatively of what they put into what we want to raise the next round just imagine what i'm going to do for you right oh i think that there's a lot of good points in there and definitely sounds like you know it's one of those where a lot of people have that journey and you do kind of get to the hey as we're getting this up and going you know i can either try and you know get out of what i can and make the money i can and i'll get paid myself an absorbent in salary no matter the cost type of a thing and if it goes under so be it i'll make some good money on the way or you can say hey i'm going to sacrifice or we're going to figure this out or i may take a reduced salary or you know for a period of time or any of those numbers and it is one where it you know it's a proving point both to yourself you're willing to sacrifice and also to those that are looking to invest in you and be along the journey so i think there's a lot of great great points in there now as you kind of you know bring that up to a bit or i think where you guys are at today or you know as you continue forward kind of where do you see the next six to 12 months going for you guys kind of what's the the road map or the plan yeah so i mean we got another trash of cash here at the end of last year so with that you know we brought in our first employee to focus on the commercialization uh we're in advanced conversations with a number of hospitals as well as device manufacturers that we're communicating with as well so we're in those initial conversations or somewhere closer to the end we just got to get it in and get it you know running in some of those first customer sites and then we're kind of ready to go off to the races that next six to 12 month runway is really like i said focus on the commercialization getting good insights getting those value statements showing the roi showing the value that we bring that we know that we have encompassed within our platform but it's just getting to that bridge to the next step right and i think that like that's a big instance of like startups right so everything is kind of uh piecemeal and it's what cash do i need at the minimum to get from a to b and then once you get there you gotta at the same time you're doing a to b you gotta start raising money for how do i get to b to c and then as you start doing b to c you're already raising money from c to d so you're constantly just like saying here's what i'm going to accomplish here's the steps that we're going to take to get there and you know at the same time thinking about well once i get there what's my next step and how much money do i need and how do i go raise that money and so it's been a lot smaller steps like as you get closer to the inception of the idea but now we're moving towards you know that professional seed round with professional vcs and out of kind of the friends family kind of investment arena and then how do we move that to a seed round and then what are those target customers what are those target markets in which we get a penetration amount and then raise the next amount of money because you know the name of the game is don't run out of money but at the same time you don't want to give away your company for peanuts right so it's kind of that adage of don't sell the farm for the for the radishes like you know you'll get more radishes so it's like you'll be fine just uh don't give it up for for you know a small amount when you can um continue to work on it and build it know that that payout is you know down the road as far as like growing it to what you want it to be and i'll key in real quick like so payout like that terminology i think that's also an important distinction to make for these early entrepreneurs and what you're doing because there's other payouts outside of just financial means everybody wants to hear that word and think like oh well i'm gonna i'm gonna sell it for 100 million dollars i want to keep 50 of it so i can put 50 million in the bank um but like if you're really solving a problem and you're not creating a problem to solve like some of that payout is like actually seeing your product do what it's supposed to do and actually impact people that you've targeted like you know the problem what's the issue how do we fix it so now that i fixed it like that's that's the reason that you started your company right uh i mean i guess not everybody some people are saying i want to make a bot but like for those that are looking at here's the thing that i'm solving seeing it in action and seeing it actually make the impact to those people that you started it for like that's that's part of that like great payment that you get back that's not financial no and i think there's a lot of uh great takeaways and i think you're absolutely right there's a lot of different motivations and sometimes you may even take your reduced pay but you love what you're doing or it's enjoyable and so there's a lot of different ways and motivations as to why you're doing a you're doing your own business so well as we've kind of reached now a bit at the end of your journey and even looking a bit to where you guys are headed great time to always transition the end of the journey to the two questions always ask about your journey 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 um i mean i'd go back and reference the kind of uh imposter syndrome so the worst business decision i made was you know hey i can't do this on my own i need to have somebody who's been there done that like on their resume let me go find them and then you know they'll help me learn and grow along the way whereas like if they're not passionate about it and they're not the ones who are driven to like actually make a change they might be there as like a figurehead but they're not going to actually help you in any sense along the way they may even drive you towards bad decisions that you know they're not they're looking for the financial outcome right they're not looking for the other impacts of hey you know i'm impacting these patients or hey i'm impacting these direct people and solving the problem so like worst business decision was not trusting myself and saying like you know i'm going to do this come hell or high water and so now that i kind of learned that um i've always made myself 100 available to anybody starting out their entrepreneurial journey of like you know i'm not going to charge you a consultant fee and like pay me 200 an hour to sit here and talk through like you know what you should do or that i've had multiple meetings with people already about like let me just you know give you an overview of like my experience the mistakes that i made and then you could take those into account of like is that a mistake that you potentially could avoid or not because i thought it was a golden uh silver bullet right i'm gonna bring on this person bring them bring them a lot of equity in we're gonna go hand in hand and every misstep along the way that like i could make they're gonna say no don't do it this way this is what you need to do and so every business is different every year every decade every like upgrade or uh um regulatory requirement that gets introduced then adds more folds so even if someone was successful 20 years ago it has no bearing on are they going to be successful to tomorrow absolutely so yeah i certainly agree with or agree with that and i think circling back is you know the imposter syndrome is one where it can be difficult and i think people even that you look and think have a successful business is oftentimes on the inside they're still wondering when the business is going to go under when it's going to fail and when they're going to be proven everybody else is going to be all the naysayers going to be proven right so i think that's always something that people are having to juggle and deal with second question i always ask is talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them go all in i mean it's it's something if you're going to get into it it's like uh uh was it parks and rec like don't don't hold our half asset you got a whole asset so go all in um you know you can't sit there to the side and say you know i'm gonna work on this small business but i'm gonna do it under the confines of nine to five like if you jump in and you're not the founder or you're someone early that's joining in like you gotta look at it as this is your baby too right and so just because you join in and there's no huge equity stake that's uh given to you out of the gate like it still behooves you to help out and like you know those equity stakes can always be improved right so show your work don't necessarily need it and like in a contract when you start but like also when you when you start those things find people who are like uh where you know they're honorable and like what they say is what they mean um a lot of people will kind of like you know say one thing out of one side of their face and the others uh other side do something else like i worked with with one startup where uh they've given me a contract of here's what we're gonna pay you here's the equity incentive and then um when it kind of got brought to light towards the end of my engagement with them they were like oh i know you signed it you've been working on this for like a year or whatever but we never counter signed it so like it doesn't happen it's void you know it's not we don't owe you anything and it's like well that's not how the wall works we worked under this like agreement that we both had an understanding that you wrote it you gave it to me i signed it i gave it back just because you didn't send it back to me you still worked under the agreement uh to this point so you can't no i think there's definitely a lot of the truth that i you know i think that probably going all the way back is to do the all-in and i think that there's you have to be committed to the business if you're going to go in because it is not going to be easy and there's going to be bumps there's going to be a lot of fun times but there also is going to be a lot of times where you're going to have to have the grit to make it through so i think that's a great takeaway well as we wrap up the the episode 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 contact you or find out more um so you can reach me on linkedin that's ryan bass you can also send me an email at rbass at carrier.com c-a-r-e-i-e-r um very open my number will be on the website when we release the new website that comes out uh hopefully in the next week or so so feel free to reach out you can uh you know reference the podcast and i'm more than happy to set aside time meet talk you know talk about any of the items above awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect up find out more and support uh a great uh business and uh and a great product so with that as we wrap up thank you again ryan 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 are um have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you you can just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show a couple more things to listeners make sure to click subscribe share leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and journeys last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else with your startup or your small business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat they're always here to help thank you again ryan for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last awesome thanks devin

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #338
Have The Right Structure
w/ Nick Zotos
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"Take the time to structure things correctly. From a legal, financial, and tax standpoint, you want to get your business set up correctly. Intellectually property. I think it's very important to get the right counseling and to get the right structure in place beneath you to have a foundation to go forward."

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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 take the time to to uh sort of try to structure things correctly um from a sort of legal financial you know tax standpoint um you want to get your business set up correctly intellectual property um i think i think it's very important to get the right counseling and to get the right structure in place um beneath you to have sort of the foundation to go forward [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast nick zotos and nick is a bit of a kindred spirit in the sense that he identifies as a reforming attorney so at least we have a overlap of being an attorney i haven't reformed yet i'm still maybe in the process of reforming uh but uh at the beginning of his journey so always wanted to be an entrepreneur and grew up in a uh or grew up was the first generation of his family to go to college and during that period he switched or switched between a couple majors and then also went to law school and also or and went into business i believe because he didn't want to be a litigator and i'm right there with him i wouldn't want to be a litigator either i'm in practice uh law for about 15 years primarily in tax law worked for a few different law firms during that period of time i worked with managing wealth for a lot of wealthy individuals and was always also always interested in real estate um partially because a lot of his clients had real estate holdings then he moved to north carolina he started or decided to start a real estate investing firm which is what he's doing now so that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast nick thank you devon thanks for having me that was a pretty pretty comprehensive uh introduction there i'm not sure there's much left for me to cover i think you got it all all right well i'm glad that i can take everybody's lives and condense it into 30 seconds and that's the totality of their life you did you did you your sound bit me sound like that that's right um so why don't we now unpack that journey just a bit so let's go back a bit in time and uh kind of growing up um in uh or growing up wanting to be an entrepreneur and how your journey got started there yeah i know i i think growing up um you know i didn't even know that being an entrepreneur was an option i think that uh you know i sort of came from a working-class background and um you know i think the uh the conventional wisdom was you know you just go to school and get a good job and you know live happily ever after um so you know that was sort of my orientation growing up and um you know i think it took me a while to really sort of find my sea legs and sort of the entrepreneurial ship see if you will um so you know i went went to college and um you know kind of knew what i didn't want to do um so i floundered around a little bit in college i was one of those one of those folks that sort of changed my major four or five times you know i ended up being being a super senior you know double majoring i kind of wanted to try everything except grow up and get a real job so so that was kind of my college experience and um you know i kind of oh just out of curiosity what what did you major in or double major and when you finally did graduate economics and sociology so uh the social sciences always kind of appealed to me so i think that that sort of uh is a good uh foundation for going into the legal practice as good as any why not i think it's like a great background so now you're saying okay coming out of you know doing the undergraduate kind of figuring out what you wanted to do to switch between a few different majors and finally landed on those and you're saying now when you're coming out of there where you're saying hey i know that i want to be you know an attorney i want to go to law school and i want to go down that path or did that come later kind of what made you to decide to go down the the law school route yeah it was kind of more of the well i know what i don't want to do so why don't i try this because i think i can do it um you know i also again i didn't really think of that as an option i think until really like you know towards the end of my college career i had a friend who one day was just saying ah you know i'm studying for the lsat and i was like what's that he's like oh that's the test you need to get into law school and i was like oh law school ah that sounds interesting um yeah why don't i take that why don't why don't i why don't you know it was just kind of on a whim you know um i mean but once i decided on it i mean i i'm the type of person that is like i'm i'm 110 percent ahead so i'm like i'm gonna do that and then i'm like and then i'm like a freight train you know i just like that that's all i do i get tunnel vision um so i just i just decided and i was like that's what i'm gonna do um i think uh you know it was around 2002 or so um so we were at or or sort of in the middle of the dot-com bubble for those who are sort of from that generation they remember um where there was a you know the internet uh became a commodity in the financial markets and then you know overnight it sort of um became not a commodity a lot of the bubble popped um and a lot of these startups uh failed and then along with that you know there was these accounting scandals um so it was a very kind of turbulent time in the economy in the job market and um you know around that time 2002 2003 it was really not a good time to be graduating i mean the 90s were a booming economy um you know so it was just you know all you have to do is go to college and you're guaranteed a job and then i went from that until you know hey nobody's hiring um you know because we're in the first recession you know in the past 12 years whatever so um you know so a lot of people went back to school and i went to law school no and i think that makes sense and i came a little bit i was right after you'd had the housing crash and that didn't quite hit me but a lot of the a few of the uh years before me with lawyers that were graduating kind of that same thing of they're coming out of law school right as they're after the housing crash and trying to find jobs and they were more scarce and they were trying to figure out do i try to do more schooling or what do i do and luckily by the time i graduated it subsided a lot and it made it a much easier thing but you know kind of that similar to the the doc tom boom and people going back to school a lot of the people that i was in school with were of that uh you know that took that same approach so now you're coming out of law school say okay i'm going to be an attorney i'm all in going to go and do law school and you came out and you know i think when we chatted a bit before he didn't want to be a litigator or well that wasn't of interest and i don't want to be a litigator we do we have other litigators here in the office but i am it's just not the lifestyle of what i want to do and so i definitely just want to know what your personality and your you're acclimated to do i mean you know i i was uh you know i really enjoyed economics and statistics um and i had a uh a professor in law school who really sort of steered me towards tax law um and i took all the tax courses that my law school offered um and um you know decided to end up doing a master of laws and taxation out in new york at nyu um and you know a professor kind of steered me towards that and said you know look if this is something that you want to focus in you know this is um you know a valuable thing sort of uh you know develop an expertise and um you know really hone in on your craft so that was the route that i went no no that makes sense and i think it's a good area of you know taxes as long as the government's around there's going to be taxes and uh you're saying hey i like you know statistic i like economics i like the numbers and those type of things that can be a a great fit and you did that i think for a period of 15 years is that right yeah so i graduated from law school at 0.6 and then the lm program at 07. um went to go practice with a firm in in new york city in midtown manhattan a well-established firm fortunately i was able to sort of hit the labor market right before uh the great recession and the real estate crash so i was able to kind of have a year or two under my belt when that happened um and it really i remember i was in new york at the time in 2009 uh when lehman collapsed and i was working down the street from lehman and um i remember seeing the people file out of you know lehman brothers they went bankrupt um they were they were the first big huge bank to go bankrupt um and it was a big deal and i was there and i i saw it um and um it was a scary time you know fortunately for me i mean i i you know sort of had a couple years under my belt and i was at a well-established firm that had you know a solid base of clients so i was able to weather that storm in terms of the labor market but i'm well aware of a lot of uh law school graduates from 2009 2010 2011 law firms just weren't hiring period in new york there was basically like a three to four year hiring freeze where they just top tiring associates um so it was a really tough time and um you know i was fortunate to sort of just be lucky to have uh landed on my feet but sort of before all that turbulence there so i just kind of stayed put you know i said you know the economy is really rough i i'm very fortunate to have sort of a stable uh role here with the stable firm um so i just uh sort of put my head down and just kept working during that period and um you know i had to make adjustments as well um you know because a lot of the the corporate deal work just completely stopped um it completely dried up um there were no deals banks were not lending nobody was doing deals um so i had to i actually had the uh uh pizza you know reposition my practice a little bit and pivot to you know that's the thing that you sort of recognize being in practice um and being an entrepreneur is that you have to pivot you have to adjust to you know whatever the market demands are uh whatever the client demands are so i pivoted from focusing on sort of pure corporate um and transactional tax to doing a lot of estate planning um because folks were still doing estate planning because there were still folks with the states that uh needed to do planning um and unfortunately i was at a firm where we had that sort of very well established well-heeled uh client base that uh had a demand for that and my tax background sort of uh fit into that as well so that was one one of probably the many pivots in my career there um you know when i was practicing in new york now you're practicing and it definitely makes sense you make that you know that pivot and you know it it's one where you you have to adapt as the you know the world that there are changes around you and so you get into you know a bit more of managing you know as you're getting into that kind of managing wealth for wealthy individuals helping on the tax side and maybe even on the state side and whatnot i think as we talked again before you'd also became interested in real estate and i think you mentioned at least partially because you saw a lot of your clients had real estate holdings is that right yeah yeah that was very eye-opening for me because um you know i hadn't really necessarily been exposed to that before in terms of just the private wealth um and frankly the vastness of it i think uh you know in in new york city uh particularly in manhattan i mean we were a park avenue law firm um a lot of park avenue clients um and a lot of generational wealth um so that was definitely kind of eye-opening um to sort of be exposed to that early on in my practice and um i learned a ton you know like i said um you know worked with a lot of very wealthy families a lot of them had real estate holdings real estate investments um and so forth so you know having my tax background and sort of being exposed to to that type of clientele i just sort of uh soaked it up like a sponge you know um it was uh just i've always been sort of very um very uh sort of intrigued if you will uh inquisitive about how things work um so i just uh i just loved uh sort of getting under the hood sort of uh see how the sausage was made if you will it was really an insider's view you know i mean is their tax attorney and you you really sort of almost know more about their financials than they do certainly the legal side absolutely maybe not as much how they do it but at least what they're doing and on the legal side so no i think that that definitely provides an interesting insight and that you know so now you're saying okay i can start to want to know how things work and kind of how the you know the sausage is made so to speak and start to get into real estate now did you start to invest yourself did you start to invest with others did you just kind of watch from the sidelines or did you just make the leap and say okay i'm gonna you know leave the legal practice i'm just gonna you know one day i woke up i'm tired of the legal practice and i'm gonna start doing real estate investing and going down that route or kind of how did you make that transition yeah it was definitely a transition it's been a lengthy process i think it kind of started with sort of the awakening in the education and then um you know i i mean being being an econ major in statistics uh and a tax attorney i mean i i i in focusing in wealth building i mean my whole career was dedicated to building wealth and preserving wealth so right so that that's sort of the orientation of my thinking so um you know i've always appreciated the um you know investing i've always had sort of you know an investing mindset you know it's really a mindset um and um of sort of leveraging what you have to to trade up for more if you will um and sort of um having a vision of uh of of what you could achieve so very early in my career i started i started saving you know as much as i possibly could to uh to start investing um i lived well below my means for for many years didn't drive a car didn't take a lot of vacations you know i had a lot of student loans uh like a lot of folks who do graduate from law school in new york is is not not a very inexpensive place to live so i lived uh very very below my means for many years in order to sort of save for my first investment and then i made my first investment um in long island city in queens um i think it was around 2011 uh around that time and um you know again it was sort of uh you know i like to think that uh i have a knack for for timing things right you know a lot of things in investing um you know in life it's really it's it's all about timing um so it's sort of seeing what is there and visualizing what could be there um so i i was looking to make some investments and i just you know felt that um you know it's kind of one of the things that i like about real estate is you you just know it when you see it um you know i'm not i'm not very big on the stock market that's not my thing um i know a lot of folks who are into that make a lot of money doing that but real estate has just always made sense to me you know when people ask me you know what's the best thing to invest in i always tell them whatever makes sense to you um because then then you're you're gonna you're gonna be invested in it you're gonna understand it you're gonna be comfortable with it um you know it has to has to fit your your appetite for risk you know it has to it has to be something that that you understand so for me that was always real estate so that was um just a matter of time um you know it was i was just always wired for that no and i think that they're you know i like the idea of you you invest in something you understand in other words don't go off you know as an example while i understand cryptocurrency to a degree i understand i have several clients that work on it i don't understand it from the sense that right now it doesn't seem to be used as a currency this seems to be a asset that people keep investing in but i don't understand what is ever what use is ever going to have it's not like a company that makes something it's not like um you know something that's a currency that's traded and so i because i'm not saying that it may not be the best thing and may not make a whole lot of sense for people that are investing in it but because i don't understand that i don't want to invest in it because i don't want to invest in something and understand i like the idea of you know the deals that you're going to invest in the things you're going to do make sure you understand them and that seems like it took you in a direction that was beneficial and so so you save up you say okay i'm going to um you know start investing in real estate and i was that before or after you moved to north carolina uh that was before so that was in new york um like i said that was in long island city queens which is um an area that is really developed in in an explosive way since then so like i said i mean i sort of got in at the right time um when when we were sort of still in the recession um and um you know it turned out to be just wonderful timing get it so you get into it it's okay i'm gonna you start out in doing it near queens and then what prompted the move to north carolina um well it was personal and professional um you know i think it was just time for a change um and um you know i was looking to settle down to start a family and um and also i knew that i had the entrepreneurial itch and that i wanted to do real estate and that um new york city was probably not going to be the easiest place to start that correct or or inexpensive place to start for many reasons for many reasons right so i i made the change i uh you know it's kind of a kind of an interesting story um you know actually just got in the car and and drove down to north carolina and drove down to charlotte and um and you know was kind of got off the expressway and you know actually saw a house uh an open house that was for sale and toured the house and and um you know my wife and i kind of looked at each other and said oh this is this is really really quaint you know we could uh see ourselves living here and then fast forward it was you know just a matter of months later you know i had gotten an offer um for a law firm down here and we moved down here and actually purchased the house down the street from that that open house that we reviewed um so it was um it all happened rather quickly but uh you know i just you know feel like when you put the the energy behind it um you know that it's not necessarily coincidental that um you know there's momentum building up behind things behind the scenes that you don't necessarily see and then and then it happens um so yeah it just kind of it was very quick now you said now you've moved you know it was quick you found the house it all works out those type of things which all make sense now are you still you mentioned the law firm as you move down so you're still working for a law firm is that part of it or you moved completely into real estate investing and doing that as a firm or kind of how did you as you move down in get settled in and kind of figure out what you're gonna do how where did you land up or kind of where you at today yeah so that's a that's an interesting story as well so you know when i came down here i was really focused on on you know i had um you know family and financial obligations and really focused on sort of building up a practice um you know even though i sort of uh knew ultimately you know long-term you know that i still wanted to do this entrepreneurial thing i wanted to do real estate um you know went from a law firm went to an accounting firm and um you know sort of never gave up on that um that thread you know and and i'm a big sort of believer in in the law of attraction and that you know if you really put energy into something and and action you know to it that um sort of universe will create opportunities for you but you have to be looking for it so literally one day i was walking down the street thinking about you know i was really kind of racking my head about what's my next investment gonna be you know because i was just always you know what's the next thing what's going to be my next investment how am i going to make this happen right um and i was literally thinking about that walking down the street and i saw one of my neighbors was building a pool house in their backyard and it was like a light bulb went out of my head and i had an epiphany and i was like i've got a really big backyard i bet i could build a house in my backyard just kind of you know without even thinking and then i was like actually you know i probably maybe could actually build a house in my backyard so i went back and researched my deed you know being an attorney i sort of knew how to do the legal research uh research the zoning laws and actually found out that um my house was sitting on sort of what used to be two lots um but it was straddling the lots so uh on its face it looked like that i'd have to demolish the house in order to sort of build anything um you know and i talked to a surveyor about it i talked to a couple of uh zoning attorneys about it and they basically sort of laughed at me and said you know you can't do that you know you you've got to demolish it um and sort of you know i'm the type of person that if you sort of tell me what i can't do then i'm i'm gonna kind of make it a point to do it so i kind of rolled up my sleeves and said well you know in my in my day job i'm pretty good at reading code i'd call myself a professional code reader um so uh you know i rolled up my sleeves and learned the zoning law and um learn about all the setback requirements the volume requirements the density requirements all the zoning laws you know and basically figured out that there was a way that i could sort of reorient my lot and and subdivide it in a way that i could create a buildable lot but there was one last hurdle that i had to clear and um there was a porch on the old house that was uh basically in one of the setbacks but there was an exception for one of the setbacks but there was a chimney inside of the porch that uh basically was considered part of the house not the porch that didn't meet the exception this is this is just how deep i had to go into the zoning code i mean there was one point where i was literally crawling around outside of the bushes like taking measurements like to do the survey myself basically because no surveyor would do it because i thought it was ridiculous um that's how deep i went to the zoning code so basically it came down to this one measurement that i needed to clear in order to get the zoning approval so i found a surveyor who's willing to do it and he's like you know you got a lot of zoning problems and i was like i know i know don't worry about it let me take care of that you just draw it up so he he drew it up and and um you know basically i i found out that the the chimney had ended up clearing the setback by it was literally a fraction of an inch a fraction of an inch so i took it to the zoning people and i said congratulations um you know you can you can you know basically do this crazy project where you're building a house in your backyard so that's what i did um and from that point on you know it was uh that that was that you know the rest was sort of uh the easy part if you will uh the hard part was was getting all the proof approvals through the zoning um so that was that was a very interesting process so kind of going through that is my very first um you know by the way i was doing this all while i was working you know a very demanding full-time job i mean i was working in in public accounting for a big four firm um you know uh which is not a nine to five job um so this this was you know what i was doing on in my spare time uh you know basically uh late nights and in in weekends um so i i did all this entire project from start to finish in less than two years um so i kind of figured you know okay if i can do that you know part-time um you know let's see what i can do when i put my talents and abilities to what i really want to do sort of full-time um and it was kind of like another one of those things where the universe was telling me something and everything came together at the same time and and so i finished building my house my new house uh and moved into it and was you know getting ready to sell my old house um and then kovit hit um right when i was doing that um so i had to sell my house during you know right literally the first week when it was like in march of i guess it was what year did copy come out 2019 2020 uh 20 people like it's better out forever i think it was uh 2020 probably 2020. we'll go with 20 money trying to move into my new house list my old house for sale when when this was like when there was a ban on like you couldn't like show your house um and um you know i ended up ended up doing that you know selling my house i took that that money and paid off all my law school loans and then uh that same week you know ended up you know leaving my practice and and and jumping into this full time because i basically felt like you know um you know me sort of following my passion for what i wanted to do had put me in that position and then i sort of felt uh obligated that um now the universe was sort of telling me that this was my opportunity you know to really go for it to try to try um so i just haven't looked back since i haven't looked back since sounds like it was a great opportunity and that worked out well and it was definitely kind of a lot of times when you jump in dive in get going then you never want to look back because you enjoy it too much and so it sounds like you certainly have the opportunity to uh to find your passion so that's a great journey and it kind of takes us a bit to where you're at today so with that it's a great the great place to transition to the two questions i ask at the end of each podcast now just as a quick heads up for the listeners um i do uh we are doing the bonus question as well we'll talk about a little bit about uh your your intellectual property question but before we go to the bonus question the normal two air questions i always end the podcast off are um first question is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made what'd you learn from it the worst business decision i ever made um you know part of me feels that uh you know that there's no such thing as a mistake that they're all learning opportunities learning experiences um and everything that i've been through sort of put me in the position that i'm you know that i'm in now and and you just sort of have to go through the growing pains okay well they don't reframe them but what was the hardest learning experience that you had well i was gonna give you a mistake all right then give me the mistake i just didn't know if you were playing the attorney card no i'm i'm getting to it all right but um so being somebody who is i you know i'm not a mark sales or marketing guru you know and being an entrepreneur sales and marketing is you know fundamental to any business right i mean i'm always looking for partners and investors and deals um so you know i i'm not i'm i'm not trying to be any sort of social media um wizard or anything like that but you know sort of being a neophyte if you will to social media and building an online platform you know and i definitely spent a lot of money in that area and one of the areas that you know i really knew very little to nothing about you know was like um seo search engine optimization and to be honest i i spent quite a bit of money uh to to invest in doing a lot of seo optimization um and what i've learned is that it's really more of an art form than a science but um you know those are the things that you learn when you try i guess but um some things you you know i guess as an entrepreneur you know if you've got some budget it's easy to sort of throw money at it and try to solve it um and you learn the hard way sometimes so i think that you know when seo i i love seo on the one hand because it you can you know you're not once you get it there you're not having to pay for the traffic all the time it makes sense on the other hand it's as much of an art form takes a lot of time to figure it out if you figure it out and then it seems like about the time you figured out they changed the algorithm and you had access to it yeah but i think that you know it's one of those where it is enticing and i think there's benefits to it we also have to be careful because it could be a black hole of mine it can be a black hole exactly well now or with that second question always ask along your uh you know if you're talking now i was against i was going to repeat this the first question i was i almost did that so second question is is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what be the one piece of advice you'd give them oh boy that's a really good question um gee i guess i'm i'm biased i'm partial i mean i guess i would say uh you know take the time to to uh sort of try to structure things correctly um from a sort of legal financial you know tax standpoint um you want to get your business set up correctly intellectual property um i think i think it's very important to get the right counseling and to get the right structure in place um beneath you to have sort of the foundation to go forward no and i think that's a good takeaway and a lot of times you know you get excited with the business you want to get started on it and you always want to dive into the fun or exciting parts you want to get the logo you want to get a business card you want to get the you know the website up which are all important so don't get me wrong everybody like you know it's always fun to get the logo business cards i don't i don't know if i love quite as much but you know on the website and other things but i think getting a lot of that foundation in place before you dive in can make it a much better experience and can avoid a lot of the issues so i think that's like a great takeaway well before we dive to the bonus question um first of all thank you 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 and you'd like to share your journey feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show a couple more things make sure to look or click subscribe share and leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all of our awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with the patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com now i flipped it and i did i almost i i've been messing up on the end of the podcast today so i'll have to repent sometime but i didn't give you an opportunity if people want to reach out to you if they want to be an investor they want to be a customer or client maybe on the tax side they still have some questions and they think that you're going to be awesome or they want to pick your brain they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any you're all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more my website it's a www.newlevelinvestments.net so yeah go check it out i i try to try to keep it updated with content you know like i said i'm not a social media uh maven yet but i definitely you know i try to try to update it with videos content um just you know i always try to bring value to people i always try to you know even if they don't end up working with me um you know i think you know what i do is very relationship driven you know so i'm very focused on building relationships i view investors um like my clients you know i've always in my practice i was very focused on building relationships it wasn't about the deal it's always about the relationship because if you have that trust then you know that when they have a legal issue when they want to invest you know who they're going to go back to they're going to go they're going to go the people want to work with who they like know and trust um so you know i'm not i'm not about selling a deal you know if i'm almost happy to talk about you know real estate investing or any questions that people have i'm always available out there awesome well i definitely encourage people to check out the website reach out and definitely make that connection so with that um we will transition right now to the bonus question so it's always kind of fun we get to talk about your journey talk about the mistakes you made talk about the advice you have and then we shift a bit of gears and talk a little about something that i'm certainly passionate about which is on the intellectual property side so with that turn the bonus question over you to ask what's your uh top intellectual property question yeah i've i've actually had this question on my list for a while um so and you're you're the right person to ask it's how do i know uh if or when that i should you know trademark my my brand my business my logo you know what what are the some of the considerations that go into that um i you know that's um yeah a lot of your listeners no i think it's a good question it's one that comes up and people often have that and is i don't know that there is a hard line bright line you know one size fits all kind of a rule but the easiest way or the best way that i've found is the analogy is you know if you're building a business if you're building a brand and it's reaching the point it doesn't have to have reached the point you do want to do it before it reaches a point but you're saying hey it's reaching the point where i it's going to have kind of an ouch factor in other words if you had to change your brand if somebody came along and sent you a cease and desist letter or you found out that you're infringing someone's brand or somebody came along and copied your brand and you had to change it in other words and he said hey if i had to go through that exercise it's gonna hurt and you know it's going to put a lot of time money and dollars behind it or marketing or you know a lot of you know a lot of brand and reputation if you're getting to that point to where it has that intrinsic value to where it would hurt it would have that out factor then it's time to get that protected but on the other hand you're saying hey you know well if i had to change it yeah it wouldn't be fine but it wouldn't be that big of a deal i just choose a new name maybe get a newer url and away i go then you probably haven't reached that point where it has enough value that you're thinking of protecting it so that's probably kind of the the best kind of rule of thumb is if you're getting to a point that if you had to change it it would have an ouch factor on your business and it would be you know and have an impact then you want to protect it because it has that value if it doesn't have that value yet doesn't mean you won't have it in the future but you can hold off now doesn't mean you can't do it earlier if you want to do it earlier earlier the better and most things with legal especially with intellectual property early you know better is always better earlier is always better than late but if you're saying hey you know if you're a lot of startups a lot of businesses you always have more uh more things to spend money on the money to spend that's kind of the best rule of thumb that i found okay good good practical advice all right well with that appreciate the the question always fun to talk a little bit about trademarks uh we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode so thank you again nick for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish to wish you the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks for having me it's been a pleasure

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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.

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 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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The Inventive Journey
Episode #336
Block Out The Noise
w/ Dave Ashworth

"One thing as a business owner, as a entrepreneur, that your going to run into is your going to find people that are going to tell you that you can't do something. That you can't make it. That your doing it wrong. What you will find a lot times is the people who are telling you those things are actually a bit envious of the direction your going. So they want to sit on the outside and tell you don't do this, don't do this when they haven't even had the courage to take the leap themselves. While it can be really difficult, especially if it's people that you're close to telling you that you can't do something or you shouldn't do something, if it's something that you feel like is part of you and you're passionate about you have to just do your best to block out that noise. Go your direction and go take what's yours, because you're always going to have people that are telling you that you can't do it."

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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

one thing that as a business owner as an entrepreneur that you're gonna run into is you're gonna find you're gonna find people that are gonna tell you that you can't do something that they're gonna tell you that you can't make it that you're doing it wrong um what you will find is a lot of times the people that are actually telling you those things are actually a bit envious of the direction that you're going and so they want to sit on the outside and tell you don't do this don't do this when they haven't even had the courage to take a leap themselves and so while it can be really difficult especially if it's people that you're close to telling you that you can't do something or you shouldn't do something if it's something that you feel like is part of you and you're passionate about you have to just do your best to block out that noise go your direction and go take what's yours because you're always going to have people that are telling you that you can't do 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 has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we're held startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast dave ashworth um and uh growing up in high school in high school with cousins and others in college and uh or went to high school and then with cousins and others went to college and got an accounting degree got interested in how businesses worked and operated and had a desire to run his own business so um after getting there when uh after getting the college their accounting degree if i don't get too tongue tied um also is doing an internship with an accounting firm and after graduation worked with the accounting firm for about three years got a cpa our cpa license decided to leave went out on his own didn't have many clients and kind of started from scratch but was uh after about eight months brought on a partner into the business capability the business iterated a few times and then over the past five years has focused on a bit of an outsourcing accounting model and has continued to grow and bring on staff so with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast dave thanks for having me absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed in the 30-second version so let's unpack that a bit until uh tell us how your journey gets started in the the in high school and college with your cousins and others and getting the accounting degree yeah for sure i um early on i i've just always had this fast fascination with business and entrepreneurship and people starting businesses uh you know when i looked at a business i always thought like well who started that what was their journey how did they get here that was kind of where my mind always went um when i was in high school i i had a couple cousins and friends who were in college at the time they were going through accounting and it seemed to just mesh pretty well with what i was already good at and what i enjoyed doing and understanding businesses from a financial standpoint was really interesting to me and i also saw a path of going to school for accounting working in a large firm and then going out on my own and starting this business and so i had a lot of conversations with people at that time with like i said uh you know particularly one of my cousins and a couple other friends about what that could look like and so we started planning some of that and didn't necessarily work out with all of those people but that kind of planted the seed to where i went to school for accounting did an internship at a pretty large regional firm and then ended up working at a large firm right out of school which which kind of kicked off my journey so now you're coming out of school and say okay you know i've got the accounting degree makes sense i'll go work for a another firm or a company and and get some experience there and they did that for about three years and then i think over the the course of doing um that you also got your cpa unlicensed so you got a bit of experience you also got the license now as you're going through that what you know at what point or what made you decide that you're going to go out on your own or explore something and and kind of make a shift or uh you know make that change yeah i mean again like i i i kind of always had that desire to do that i didn't know exactly what that would look like or what the timing of that would look like um because i just i needed to get a little bit of experience and and kind of hone my skills a little bit to figure out first of all what i enjoyed and then also what i what i felt like i could build and so that was kind of my route was to go into public accounting and i probably went into it with a little different viewpoint than a lot of people so when i went into it i was obviously trying to learn things technical skills in accounting but i was also looking at a lot of the ways that they ran the business as well looking at the administrative side and the operational side trying to just gather as much information as i could now obviously there they were a huge firm and there was a lot of things that that they would do that i wouldn't need to do or i would be doing different but i could at least start to see something okay this this system really worked or this one doesn't work and how can i design mine to build it out and then you know as i was going through it um you know public accounting is a really good experience you learn a lot of skills both technical skills and people skills but it just wasn't for me and as i kind of kept going further and further year after year the more i realized that this just wasn't going to be for me long term and the the quicker that i could make a jump out on my own the better because i felt i felt like the timing was never going to be perfect because as you go further you're making more money you have more responsibility you know maybe you get married have kids there's more on your plate and i just felt like the further i went the harder it was going to be to start so i just decided that once i got my cpa which was about three three and a half years in that that was that was time to make a move so no and i think that makes sense so you're saying okay always have this desire want to do it don't know exactly what's going to look like but now that i've got the cpa degree and it's you know the timing's right and can make that leap and so you decide to go on your own now one of the things we chatted about before the cop podcast a bit and you know what i have the questions is you know different ways to go out on your own sometimes you'll go out on your own hang your shingle hope and pray that people are going to give you they're going to give you a business and that you can there generate it other times you're going to be having relationships or people or clients that you know are going to follow you and it makes it a bit easier of a landing pad and sometimes it's you know somewhere in between where you have some idea or some business that you have lined up that you may be able to dive in i believe when we talked before you mentioned you basically went out didn't have any clients started from scratch and i got or had to start building from day one is that right that is that is yeah i um i wish i had started with a couple clients would have probably made it a little bit easier but i was still pretty young i didn't have a ton of client interaction at the firm i was at so i didn't really have and and i also had to non-compete with that firm that i wasn't even if i could have i wouldn't have i wouldn't have done anything and taking clients from them i just i that that wouldn't have sat right with me um and so i just literally started from scratch i i kind of one thing that i did do that i that i think helped was leading up to leaving the firm i started to build out some of the other things in the background so i started to figure out some of the software i was going to use got the entity set up spilled out some branding logo business cards like a lot of that stuff so that day one i didn't have to kind of start from there i had something built and then i could kind of start developing relationships meeting people marketing all of that good stuff right off the bat but as far as bringing clients you know starting with some sort of a base i i didn't have any of that i just kind of kind of went for it got it now that that makes it makes perfect sense so so now as you're doing that and you're saying okay um starting from scratch whether you wish you or would have had the clients to come along but also you know didn't want to take them from the other previous employer and had a good relationship there had the non-compete so you're saying buy you know bid choice by necessity or buy whatever you want to call it you start from scratch now as you're doing that how did you go about building the business or building those relationships or bringing them on or figuring out who to fi or who who wants to hire you and where they're at and making those connections a couple different things uh the first thing that i started with was just the people that knew me the most and cared about me the most which was just my friends and family and so it was talking to them seeing if i could you know do some work for them to start but then also asking them who they knew and i so i just started to kind of build a list of people that i could just call on or email and say hey you know i talked to my uncle and he said i should reach out to you i talked to my sister and she said and just starting to build a list of people that i either knew from from past from high school or from college or from whatever reaching out to them letting them know what i was doing using friends and family i did get involved in some networking groups so like a bni group and a couple other groups to meet some people in the community and then you know those two things in addition to starting to kind of build out my own um my own network by just calling banks and investment advisors and people that i felt like we're working with potential clients of mine that i could start to build a relationship with so i just started meeting with as many people as i could letting them know who i was what i was doing um and i still have some of those relationships today actually which is which is pretty cool but that was kind of my approach is was just to utilize who i already knew and and start to build a network of other people in my community that i could work alongside definitely makes sense and so you know sometimes it is you start with the the network the people you know you start to build out the network and you get those figured out as you're going along so now as you're starting to get yourself established getting a few clients figuring out where you might find those where the networking is and then getting that going along one of the other things i think that we chatted about or you mentioned is you also uh you know started to i believe um you shifted the the model uh the a bit in the sense that you um when you brought on a partner after i think about eight months and then you kept building and then over the past about five years or so you've also gone to a bit of an outsourcing accounting model as that writer kind of give us an idea of how that evolution has taken place over the the course of the business yeah for sure so um bringing on my partner was was huge for us he had more experience than i had uh he just had more technical skills than i had and so that took us from just one level to kind of the next level of legitimacy because he just had that experience some you know people knew who he was he could speak to a lot more things than i could so that was a huge stepping stone for us in addition to that we um you know when we started the business we were really focused on the tax prep side of things you know for for anyone uh and then as as we kind of were in business over time we had some different iterations we had had some wealth management piece and some different pieces in our business but we started to figure out that we enjoyed working with other business owners and entrepreneurs and we also saw a really big need in that space so given those two things we just felt like it was it was time to pivot to something that we really would enjoy doing but also that there was a huge need and that was in the small to medium-sized business community to have kind of the next level up from a bookkeeper um that could maybe you know maybe handle some of the bookkeeping work which we do but kind of that next level that controller level where these businesses need that next level of expertise as they're growing and doing different things and need better information to make good decisions but they don't need to hire like a full-time controller or cfo just yet so we felt like we could fill that gap for uh quite frankly a lot of businesses out there that that have that need and so that's what that's what we kind of switched to doing and uh we've been building out that model like i said for the past five years or so and uh it's still a work in progress we're still always looking for ways to do things better but we feel really dialed into who we're working for you know the clients that we're serving how we serve them how we bring a ton of value to them and so now there's little tweaks along the way to make it even better uh internally but also externally for our clients no definitely makes sense and it's kind of you know as it seems like in a lot of the different industries you're getting to where it's almost kind of the fractional work right the fractional cfo or the fractional cto or some of those others which definitely makes sense especially for your smaller business you're saying hey we don't have the full time me more the full-time budget to do that and yet we need some assistance so let's take someone that has a bandwidth to do this for a few different businesses do it for a period of time and it may definitely make sense i think you know different industries are heading that direction to better cater to some of the smaller businesses and startups and other clients that are still having those needs and yet are kind of stuck with either we don't have anybody or we have to hire someone that we can't really afford or don't have to work for yet so certainly makes sense was that kind of now you know brings it a bit up to uh where you're at today and kind of a bit of what you have going on and you know sit here as i understand the past five years you continue to grow the bit staff continue to go to business head in that direction but if now you were to kind of look out for the next you know six to 12 months kind of is where you see things or things headed for you guys what directions or new endeavors or anything of that nature kind of what does that path look like for you yeah i mean we want to we want to continue to grow and build out our team i think um [Music] it's a for two two reasons one is um there's a lot of different paths that you can go in accounting uh that aren't just public accounting and i feel like a lot of people just think if i go into accounting i have to go into public accounting and it's not true we really want to create a different path for people and a really good and enjoyable work environment which i which i believe that we're doing so that's a big thing for us but then also just continuing to serve the the business community you know i i forget the statistic but the amount of businesses that fail each year is is a lot it's astounding that number and we feel like with what we're providing that we can help prevent businesses from failing by just giving them good financial information so that they can make more informed decisions on their business so those are kind of like our big goals um but for this year's is to continue to build out our team to bring on more clients to grow and just have a positive impact on the this you know small small business community oh that definitely makes that makes perfect sense so was now we've kind of reached a bit of where your journey's at today and even looking a bit into the future it's a great time to transition to the two questions i always ask at the end of each journey so the first question i always ask is along your uh along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it worst business decision um i would say one is jumping into relationships too quickly and and um what i mean by that is um early on we had a couple opportunities to work with some other people that we didn't really know they were just kind of introduced to us by someone else and we just went from not knowing them to like a full-blown like partnership basically and that was a risky move for us at that time and unfortunately um nothing that we did wrong but they both ended up not working out and kind of taking a pretty bad turn and so something i remember working with a coach shortly thereafter and he had this saying that he he talked about dating before you marry and that's something that we've carried with us for a long time is you know if if you want to get into like a big relationship with someone like that make sure that you know them and what you're getting into start a little bit smaller you know maybe instead of you know combining your companies maybe work on one client together see how it goes and you'll know pretty quickly if that bigger you know partnership is going to work or not but if you dive into that partnership and that that big you know combination and that doesn't end up working trying to unwind all of that can get really messy and set everybody back so we had a couple of those early on that i don't think were great decisions in hindsight but it did teach us how to approach relationships and take it take it slow now some are going to be slower than others some are going to be quicker you kind of have to use your use your intuition on those a little bit um but uh but that is definitely something that we've put into practice as we've continued to build our business and i think it's it's you know kept us out of some some riskier situations probably no and i think that makes sense and you know finding those right teammates hiring and firing and working through that and i think it's always one of those for as much as you've done it before in other situations seen others do it and think you have it all figured out and what the team members should be in that it's just one of those where until you get into it and you have to learn some of the lessons the hard way and you know hopefully learn from lessons from others but it's just one where you have to figure it out to a degree and so it makes sense that that was an area of growth and to learn from and area that mistakes were made and certainly plain and learn from second question i always ask is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them yeah i think i think one thing that as a business owner as an entrepreneur that you're gonna run into is you're gonna find you're going to find people that are going to tell you that you can't do something that they're going to tell you that you can't make it that you're doing it wrong what you will find is a lot of times the people that are actually telling you those things are actually a bit envious of the direction that you're going and so they want to sit on the outside and tell you don't do this don't do this when they haven't even had the courage to take a leap themself and so while it can be really difficult especially if it's people that you're close to telling you that you can't do something or you shouldn't do something if it's something that you feel like is part of you and you're passionate about you have to just do your best to block out that noise go your direction and go take what's yours um because you're always gonna have people that are telling you that you can't do it um again easier said than done but anybody that would be starting a business or they feel like this is the direction that they need to go i would encourage you just to follow that wholeheartedly and when people tell you that you can't just understand that a lot of times they're going to be telling you that for reasons deeper than just telling you that you shouldn't be doing it no i think there's a lot of truth i mean my experience has been one of two and depending on both my experience as well as looking at a lot of others is when you ask people that are friends or family that know you they're either going to be very harsh very critical and dissuading you or they're going to be overly supportive and telling you that it's a great idea no matter whether or not it's a good idea and neither of them are overly helpful because either if they're always trying to dissuade you they're probably not giving you some very good critiques or very good encouragement on the other hand you also don't want someone that just tells you to shoot for the moon when you're making a bad idea or making a bad decision so i think it's definitely one where as you're using them maybe you ask someone that's a trusted family member or friend but you've got to weigh it with that grain of salt and also decide what makes sense and what's best for you for sure for sure i agree so well with that in mind and now as we wrap a wrap towards the end of the episode that 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 contact you find out more for sure yeah and our website is uh the quantifygroup.com uh or you could just find me on linkedin i spent a lot of time on there so if you you know you want to connect on there just shoot me a message on linkedin and i will uh get back to you pretty quick so either one of those would be great awesome my dad should definitely encourage people to reach out if you're needing that fractional health with your business certainly is a great resource and definitely a lot of other knowledge to be gained from that or from from you as well so with that 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 guests on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show a couple more things as listeners make sure to click share subscribe leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and the great journeys that people have taken last but not least you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else with your startup or your small business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat thank you again dave and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks for having me

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #335
Have A Niche
w/ Levent Yildizogoren
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"Have a niche. It is so important to have a niche even a micro niche. Like many businesspeople, I was afraid to lose customers, so it led me to be a generalist. So, the first thing we do is translate from English to many languages and many languages into English. Having a specialty now I realize is so important not just for my industry but for anything."

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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.

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 that have a niche you know it's so important to have a niche even a micro niche because like many many business business people we i was afraid to lose customers so what what did then it led me to be a generalist so for instance we do localization services we translate from english into many languages and many languages into english the having a speciality now i realize is so important not just for for my industry which is organization but for anything [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller iplock where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast levant il disgoran and i'm sure i slaughtered the last day but i tried by now that was that was good that was good but lovin was uh born in turkey grew up in the uk um studied and learned in university for about a year i had an opportunity to come out to work in the print trade so decided to go go down that path gave him a lot of understanding and printing was in the printing business for about 15 years um decided to join his wife's business and made the leap over the span of a couple weeks the timing wasn't the best uk was in recession had two small kids but didn't think about it at the time decided to go for it anyway and then was uh when the it was a language translation service if i remember and then the business had about 10 employees and then there was a ski accident that power came along and gave them a bit of time to reflect explored a few other opportunities now with kobed i want or decided to get into about a bit of podcasting as well as writing in books and jumped or jumped into that step back from the wife's business a bit but still does a bit of that as well as uh consulting for other businesses so with that much is introduction welcome to the podcast 11 thank you thank you devin glad to be here and thank you for inviting me absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed in the 30-second version so let's unpack that a bit and uh tell us how your journey got started with being born in turkey and growing up in the uk well very much yes i was 18 years old when i came when i was when my parents sent me to the uk to continue with my education that was i was 18 years old and and you know i did my a levels and then started working in the printing trade and loved it because it was all um all before the digital age so i had a chance to learn all the kind of the the theory science behind it it's not just pressing buttons but more like all the theory and what the color is what it means how does print work so so it was it was great fun i did a bit of production management courses uh so i educated myself question before we get too far into the printing business because you you say you grew up in the in turkey uh or and then or born in turkey grew up in the uk and then you went studied at university for about a year what made you decide hey you know rather than continuing on down the university path you'd instead get into printing well actually i never i didn't end up going to university it was um i did all the preparations like what what they call in the uk a levels that's like almost like um university preparations but then the job opportunity came up and then it was too too exciting for me to to to to miss it and uh and also i felt a bit bit guilty because you know it was costing my parents a lot of money uh because they were earning the money in turkey and then trying to finance it in the vote for the uk education with the exchange rates and everything i felt bit guilty and and when that opportunity came up i didn't think too much about it so i just just grabbed it and and uh and i'm glad i did because um it was um opportunity of a kind of lifetime because it enabled me to understand everything in print and it pretty much laid the uh foundation for what i will do next in my life oh no i'm not i'm not regretting that well good it sounds like it turned out to be uh definitely a great opportunity you know it was one where you know you had different plans and i i certainly get i mean i went through i'm probably the opposite although my parents didn't only pay for part of my education but i went through and spent a whole bunch of money on education wouldn't change it for the world but there is definitely both a uh a tangible cost as well as an opportunity cost and it sounds like for you that the path of going into the printing business was a great opportunity and one that just you know didn't make their sense to pass up at the time and so now you're too much so you're doing the the printing business and you did that i think for about 15 years is that right 15 years yeah yeah i did uh i did 15 years and then you know it was by then you know the digital site was trying to getting introduced but at it at the same time the business that my wife set up a translation business was was you know booming and and and i was hunting her on the side okay it was getting bit better and but i was i was loving that as well um but when we got a contract to do a job that would last probably 10 12 months i knew it was time to give up my job for good and then join her for full time so it was a bit of a a decision of the spirit of the moment would i do it now probably not because thinking about it what i know now we didn't have a purchase order for the contract we didn't have we didn't have any paperwork so it was all like so much excitement and it was something that i wanted to do very much and uh so i didn't think too much about it handed in my notice two weeks later full-time uh on that on that project and we we done the project finished it successfully one day on that and so because i mean you've been in the printing business as you said for about 15 years and then with that within a matter of a couple weeks you've given it or put in your notice jumped over to your wife's business full-time and even mentioned that the timing maybe wasn't great uk was going through a bit of recession you had it yeah yes yes yes too small what was the motivation or reason what made you kind of within the space of two weeks go from hey i've been in the printing business for quite a good period of time 15 years to jumping over to your wife good question good question i don't think it was logical it was i mean it turned out to be very logical you know i'm glad i'm glad i've done this but at the time thinking about it it wasn't logical it was more emotional because um i always wanted to run my own business i i want it wasn't the money it was more like the freedom to make my own choices freedom to make my own decisions and so when the opportunity came up it wasn't logical we didn't we didn't open a spreadsheet and and made some calculations and it was lasted he said he said that's an opportunity here this contract you know it's not gonna it's not gonna happen again you know it's not gonna wait for us and uh he said that's it if you don't do it now it'll be very hard to do it 10 years later you know because as you know it's natural that people are younger they're more energetic and everything gets done a lot more easier and quicker so we thought it's the time to do it and you never looked like so so now you said okay you know it's the time kind of the opportunity is now it's going to be you know one that it's the right time of life and you know it makes sense and so you know even if it's not necessarily all in your heart or head but more in your heart say okay i'm gonna jump over gonna work with the wife on her business take an opportunity of kind of running and doing all your own business working for someone else now as you make that transition you know how did it go was it a great opportunity you loved every minute of it was it stressful working with your wife and was it hard to do through the uk or kind of how did that go for you as you decide okay i'm going to make that jump over it it went it was very interestingly um we had two small kids and we were working from our home because we didn't have time to set up any office or anything like that so because the project started and we had like french doors so these are those like with like lots of glass in between so we had a dining room so we closed the french doors and that was our office with three four five computers printers and we had two small kids and so we we had to luckily we found a baby still you know child minder so they were it was very it was a traumatic experience actually i'm laughing now but it was at the time very hard so we had two small children with the child minded sitting at the other side of the room with the french door closed but we could see them and every time phone rang it's not like this now you know people are now very proud to say that i'm working from home please excuse if my children start crying or my cats start jumping around at the time it was really like hard to say i'm working from home so every time phone rang we will say children be quiet turn the tv down and the poor children were sort of trying to be quiet and everything and so it was a kind of traumatic experience and towards the end of the day my daughter at the time she was like four or five and she would she would come to the door and say mommy why can't you come to this side so it wasn't easy at all but somehow we made it work but because we wanted we wanted it so much to to be to run our own business we made it work but the first few years it wasn't easy at all i mean once we finished that large project we moved out of the house so we you know we had our proper office and everything but yeah it wasn't easy at all it was but it was fun it was fun because we did something was totally in our control and over the years we got the benefits from from that exercise so it was it was good so i would recommend it to anyone who is thinking about it and and you know it's very hard to make i had a friend a few years ago he wanted to start his own business and it was all about uh you know spreadsheets calculations plans and plans and plans he was so busy doing planning he forgot his his gut feeling he forgot he he kind of all the planning okay i'm not suggesting you shouldn't plan definitely planning is important but the planning shouldn't kill the passion you know the the so so the some of the decision has to be done on emotional basis you know so that's how we did it and it was hard but i'm glad we we did it no i think that's awesome i think that uh definitely you know i think that that is the thing you know i worked from a little bit similar to you probably a little bit later in in or later on but i also worked from home for a good period of my career and it was kind of the same thing now with you know covert and people's lockdowns and working from home it's become a bit more normal that you know if you have a kid in the background or something's loud that people are a lot more understanding but for a while there i had my office door and the whole family knew that if the office door was shut it means that you didn't come in you listened before you know to before you knocked didn't interrupt the meeting you know just part of the dealing of that but i think that it also presents that opportunity you know it's one that you got to work with your wife you got to be there with the kids a bit more you got to just explore it and so that sounds like it was a great uh phase of the journey even if it wasn't all you know the easy road that everybody always thinks it is you and i know you and i know it's never easy running your own business but you know if you have the passion to do it i think the difficulties soon are forgotten absolutely so now i i and i couldn't agree more so now as you've done that you worked there how long did you work with your wife under business well we still we still are working um but what what happened this i mean that's been uh that's going back now we just this is our 30th year this is our 30th year so you know it's a big year for us you know round numbers you know it must be really gonna create a bit of a buzz around it i mean the the business has evolved tremendously in in 30 years um now i had a pleasure of stepping back to write my book that was april last year and so i wrote my book it's been published good business in any language i think i'm proud of displaying my the banner behind me and so that was published in amazon in october last year and because it worked so well and during that time the business grew you know so i said i said to my colleagues i said guys you don't need me you know you you have grown the business and and of course the purpose of the book and and the podcast that you kind of mentioned that i'm running is all about promoting the business so i said you you don't need me anymore so so but we did the arrangement that which was temporary we made it permanent a colleague who was an acting managing director you know we promoted her to to be the managing director so i've taken a role to really develop the business further try to reach even a wider circle of potential customers and also not just business but also do more of our charity charity type of work because we've been running this translation competition with three universities for the last nine years which we are something very proud of because we are such a small company but we've been doing this for nine years and every it takes about a month but it means at least like it's the amount of couple of our team members so you know they have to step back and coordinate this trans this competition but it's very rewarding because the students who take part they find jobs and they come back and say thank you we've done this now you got students who graduated works for apple facebook some of the larger companies and it makes us really proud so yeah it is a business is has evolved tremendously we are a team we have an office in in turkey now so the the tools we use and everything is is all um based on uh working remotely so yeah it is a it's good that things have evolving and we are just you know keeping up pace with the changes oh and that definitely sounds like it's been a good uh evolution as well now one question i have that you that you jumped over i think a bit or not this conversation but we talked a little bit before the podcast on was that you also had um a i think it was you if you if i remember i had gotten a ski accident which also gave you the time to sit back and reflect a bit more which was part of the genesis for making that transition and doing some of the podcasts in the book is that right very much very much david because um in 2009 i mean i love skiing and and you know i love stuff to do with adrenaline running you know and in 2009 christmas i never forget that skiing with my daughter in french albs i had this awful accident and uh and so it was it was you know quite quite bad luckily it was attended straight away broke my hip but it was so badly broken i was advised to lay down for six months because some of the hypoxidens after two three months they ask you to step on it because as th as this pressure on the bones it it helps it heal better because of the blood circulation and everything but mine was broken so badly they said you can't step on it and so six months i i had to lay still only time that i could i was allowed to to move is when i went to the the laboratory and uh and anytime that wasn't really just moving from one place to another and and and the other six months was on crutches so that's like 12 months and during that time it i had this opportunity to reflect and i realized that the having a network of great people around me not just my family my family was great i mean you know my wife you know she couldn't do enough and it was a lot of hard work and um for me of course i was grateful to them but also my colleagues they they all stepped up you know i couldn't go to work when i went to work after six months i had like a like a chair there for me everyone was like trying to welcome me and everything but what made me really sort of um almost like at the time i was very tearful even that the business continued colleagues stepped up and i said you know this is so the life is about making connections and building bridges and everything so you know after that year we we started the competition we also do a lot of charity work so you know it it it has made a fundamental effect on my on my approach you know having people around you is so important and and i realized that i was so lucky that you know so i said what can we do so that people who are not that lucky that how can we make some change in their lives so yeah that was really an accident that i'm trying to forget but in certain ways in certain ways it was interesting that it happened which enabled me to do things that i'm doing now oh it sounds like you know certainly you wouldn't ever want to if you had the decision to go through the accident sound pretty painful in a long or long path to recovery but also sounds like it give you gave you a lot of time to to reflect and to think about you know kind of the next phase and the next direction which leads you to now where you're getting doing the podcast you're writing a book you're looking at a bit more charitable organizations as well as still continuing to to work on and assist with the business and doing some of those things so it definitely sounds like it was a a good pivotal point for for yourself along your journey yeah yes definitely oh go ahead yeah no as we uh as we so now as we kind of get to where we're at in the present that kind of brings us to where you're at now i always like to transition and have a couple questions always ask at the end of each journey or to bringing it to the present present time 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 well good question i don't think that was one there was a few few bad decisions i think one of the the one of the um it's hard to say one but there's a particular one that actually i was talking to somebody today about this it was a uh we had we had a we had somebody worked for us for like six months and it was really good chemistry there because what i like davin is that when i choose a team member to join the company and the values the core values are so important because we need to have the same core values and and you know everything else can be secondary but if there are no core values then there's there's no connection so we hit the right core values and everything but somehow we couldn't hold on to them now knowing what i know now i should have had have tried everything to make sure that they stayed with the company so that's probably one of one of my uh it was like not you see i didn't decide to let him go but i i didn't do enough for them to stay on so it was yeah it was it was something i regret and what i learned from that is that if i see a good people that matches our core values make sure stay do everything to make sure that they save the company no i think that there's a lot of truth i mean there isn't always a trade off you're not always there sometimes employees you just can't match the salary expectations or can't provide the opportunity and there are reasons why they leave but oftentimes you don't realize the value of the employee or the amount of contribution they make until they're gone and then you're saying hey that was something that i probably should have tried harder to keep them around so i think that there's certainly an understandable mistake to make but also a great one to learn from yeah yeah yeah i think we get i think we get wiser you know as as you get older and i mean i don't definitely that's for me you're you're a young man um but yeah i'm getting i can't see that i'm getting wiser as i'm getting older and it's it's easier to talk about the mistakes that i did whereas at the time it probably wasn't that easy to talk about it no and i think it's you know it's always one where sometimes we want to forget our mistakes or we want to move on from them and certainly understandable why but a lot of times that's where we get a lot of the learning uh that comes about that we then are able to better run the business afterwards so i think that it's one where it makes sense to appreciate you sharing it second question i'll always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of i should give them well my one one i mean that's there's many as you know there are many things that we can save based on our experience probably what i would suggest to them is that having niche you know it's so important to have a niche even a micro niche because like many many business business people we i was afraid to lose customers so what what did then it led me to be a generalist so for instance we do localization services we translate from english into many languages and many languages into english the having a speciality now i realize is so important not just for for my industry which is localization but for anything having a niche if you're a personal trainer have a niche you know working with certain age group or or achieving something for for for certain maybe gender or or age group or or certain disabilities if you're a doctor having a niche i mean the doctors are probably the the best example if i have a serious condition i don't go to my family doctor i go to the specialist and and now i realize that this applies to everything but i was too worried initially to have a niche thinking that i would lose customers by having a niche or micro niche but now i realize that was totally wrong so my advice is whatever your profession is whatever the industry you're in have a niche that makes such a big difference no and i think that that definitely is a great piece of advice i think that to your point a lot of times you worry that if you have a niche or that you you have a focus then you'll miss out on that other business that could have come through your door yeah because you're they're gonna you're too niche down and yet on the other hand i think that it helps to differentiate yourself and say or set you apart as if you have that niche and people know why they should come to you and why you're different than the competition so i think that's a great take away once we wrap up the podcast if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to read your book they want to listen to your podcast 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 contact you find out more thanks thanks for asking davin i really appreciate that well i'd love to offer a free download of my book good business in any language to your listeners they can visit levant dot team that is levant l-e-b-e-n-t dot team m t-e-a-m then they can download the uh the e-book free of charge or they can purchase the kindle version from amazon and there are some also goodies as well otherwise i'm available on linkedin i'll be more than happy to answer any questions anyone throws at me or anybody wants to connect talking about international trade localization i'll be more than happy to reply to all any any listeners that that would like to connect with me awesome i definitely encourage people to reach out connect and uh and and uh utilize your services as well as take advantage of the ebook that you uh that you offered and so definitely encourage people to connect there well thank you again levin 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 them you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show also as a listener make sure to click subscribe share listen um review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all of these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents or trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with this chat and we're always here to help well thank you again levin and wish the next leg of your journey thank you even better than the last thank you david it was a great pleasure to to be on the show

Miller IP Law is a firm that focuses on small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs/solopreneurs. We’re easy to use. We offer affordable pricing that’s transparent and flat-rate. We focus on the little guys who actually need our help. If you’d like an attorney on your team, simply schedule a Zoom call, and we’ll take care of the rest.

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #334
Get Uncomfortable
w/ Timothy Kelley
Connect With Me

"Make sure you are uncomfortable. That's always the first step. Having a level of discomfort keeps you on track and keeps your focus. With that, I would say read everything you can. I don't mean just about your industry and becoming an expert in your field. There are so many outside things that contribute to your decision-making. It could be baking or learning how certain calls get called in a football game. So many things like that. Those are things that help with decision-making processes."

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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

  usually start off saying make sure you're uncomfortable uh because that that's always the first step being or having a level of discomfort keeps you on track and keeps your focus and and with that i always say read everything you can and i don't mean just about your industry and becoming an expert in your field but there's so many uh you know ancillary and outside things that contribute to your decision-making making you know it could be you know things like baking and learning how you know why do uh you know certain calls get called in a football game there's so many things like that and those are things that lend themselves to decision decision-making processes [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 and uh 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 you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast uh timothy uh kelly and uh tim or timothy whichever he goes by um is uh started in high school and was an artist and there was an artist in sports guys which typically doesn't go together but it was it worked out well for him i went to college and started out in pre-med but then decided to switch over to psychology and then started working in the healthcare industry became a pharmaceutical rep and then worked for a company called tki which did cds and vhs and tapes and those type of things made those and the company started to sell products in the medical industry started to create software for radiology and other things also um started to move into hospitals and doctors and start using the cloud to replace the cds and that kind of brings us to work or where he's out a bit today and he'll give us a lot more detail and throughout his journey so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast thanks devin appreciate it and uh thanks for having me here absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed the 30 or 40 second version of it so let's unpack that a bit and tell us how your uh journey has started as being a artist and sports guy in high school sure uh well well first uh yeah just call me tim because timothy's only if you're angry with me so um but yeah back in high school yeah it's kind of you know people thought of you as an artist or an athlete and uh it was both and so it's it was kind of a they usually don't go together which if you're playing sports people say you can't draw something but uh it wasn't the case so just kind of a funny thing so now you did that in high school and enjoying the sports enjoying doing after athletics and they say okay now i'm going to go off to college and i think he's mentioned that you started in pre-med and what made you decide as you're going throughout college to go from pre-med over to psychology uh just because uh too much beer and and ladies and it was too much commitment to stay in med school so it interfered with my social life and uh um so psychology was just a fast way to get out so never never let your schooling get in the way of a good time that that's right so uh hopefully if i pass my my learned lessons on to my kids that there's sacrifice involved if you want to get further so fair enough no that's a that's a good it is a reason i was i was going to say that's a good reason to switch i don't know if i would go so far to say it is a good reason but it is a reason to switch to psychology but then you still went down and i think you started so you got your psychology degree coming out of school and i think you started out working in the healthcare industry is that right yeah well while i was in school um got hired by a pharmacy benefit management company um oddly enough called pms which is his own own problem but uh yeah that was it was nascent at that time there was there was a new industry to basically carve out sending prescriptions to people's homes at three months at a time for your maintenance drugs carving out a major medical and then watching the drug utilization review and comparing it to lost work time hospital visits doctors visits and it was found out that if people had more regular maintenance of their you know daily regimen of drugs that they needed for high blood pressure diabetes whatever the disease state may be that they had better outcomes over time oh that and that makes sense and so you're going here coming out of school doing that why school coming out of school and then how did that was that where you got into doing repping pharmaceuticals and kind of going in that direction or how did you make that switch or transition yeah it was understanding i didn't know really anything about the pharmaceutical business at the time of getting into this pbm business but you started to learn things about formularies and what certain drugs did so it gave a broad background and then um one of the smaller pharmaceutical companies hired me to be a rep and then going out and visiting doctors was a lot of fun because i love talking about medical stuff and um and then you learn something that most people don't know is that reps really dictate how doctors practice medicine which was a really interesting thing to learn is that you know most people believe that doctors just know everything but they learn a lot from the reps they're they're scientists by nature and you know their their learning process is part of being sold things from reps from pharmaceutical companies equipment companies whatever products they are using in their practice so but i always found that interesting i'd teach them something about a mode of action of a drug and you know what expected results would be and you know contraindications and all those types of things and then see them practice it in their practice it kind of freaks you out a little bit that you're telling them how to treat their patients and then they do it but that's that's the process so now you're and that makes sense so you transition and say okay i'm going to kind of go into far most pharmaceutical rep and you know teach the doctors or teach the medical industry what drugs they might consider how to treat their patients or at least what options they have and you do that for a period of time now how long were you doing the the farm or in the health care industry and then being a pharmaceutical rep uh well from at that point there was a just a few years in the mid 90s and then was hired by a pharmaceutical veterinarian company actually dermatology veterinarian company which is every time i mentioned that people would say do dogs get zits i mean what are you talking about and um actually they do but there's a lot of other skin issues that dogs cats horses certainly farm animals and so addressing those kinds of issues and from there a veterinary distributor hired me where they carried 10 12 000 different products so all the drugs all the hardware i could even lease them a truck if they needed it so from there that's where i was introduced into radiology products like ultrasounds and digital x-ray and started selling those to veterinarians and then that brought me to um tdk which was the uh the company you mentioned sold tapes and cds and that's where most people know their big seven billion dollar conglomerate but i said one curiosity what made you decide to kind of or move or move between the jobs in other words i get that you know you're in there you're selling some of those products you're aware of them but what made you decide to hey i'm going to go work with tdk directly because it on the one sense i get that you've been you know do work with radiology and they may have some overlap but if i remember right tdk wasn't and i'm not trying to put words in your mouth so correct me if i'm wrong wasn't necessarily uh predominantly or you know in the medical industry or doing a lot in that area and so what was the impetus for saying hey i'm going to switch over i'm going to take on this obvious opportunity or did you see a gap in the marketplace i thought you could make a difference i was a good opportunity what what kind of uh was the the genesis of that change i'd say was combined curiosity they came to me as part of an outsourced management group to say hey why are these hot why are these hospitals buying cds and tapes and dvds and can we exploit that marketplace is there more of a of a place for that so you're kind of uh you know sales and marketing guy and into medical so you know joining this team and and i was curious too what were hospitals doing with these things and it was in the late 90s so 98 99 and found that they were replacing cine film is what they called it in cardiology so back then to record a cardiology study basically a movie of your heart they would record them on cine film like a movie and so it's better to keep them in a digital format and they're recording that onto cds and dvds and uh yeah and that makes it you know makes sense so they they basically came and said hey we don't know exactly why we need or why they're all these medical we're grateful for the sales but we don't know why they're all buying them can you help us figure it out why and then see if there's an opportunity there so now you say yeah i'd love to do it sounds interesting and love to kind of explore that as well you know was it just a straightforward thing it was a pretty quick you could figure out why and you broke into a whole new industry or was it still kind of building out that sector of the company kind of as you're figuring that out and trying to build it and otherwise go or go after it how did that go was it just you know how did that how did that exploration and building gum uh yeah i was um discovering that that's what was happening they were buying them for cardiology and then the video cassettes were being bought for obstetrics recording ultrasounds at that time so when moms would then get the copy of the ultrasound on a video cassette as a keepsake in many cases back at that time and uh with my partner at the time we thought geez you know how much further could we exploit this and so uh we wanted to push it into radiology i thought there's an opportunity to replace film and make radiology into a digital format and at the same time uh there was big companies like ge and phillips and siemens pushing what they call pac systems which are essentially big storage systems for storing all the radiology images and then doctors seeing them on a screen instead of slapping up film into a light box which was the normal you know protocol at that time and um the first couple of trade shows we went to we were laughed at and said hey you guys are boneheads no one's ever going to use these cds and and now 20 years later there's still the predominant format of exchange in healthcare and it's becoming kind of weird that cds will become this bizarre exotic media of healthcare because it's the only industry that still uses disks there's really nothing else and so there's still a few movies left but that's those are fading rather quickly too no so now and that that makes sense and so it sounds like it was one where you know initially it was a bit laughed at and but then it's become pretty well accepted so you build that out and had a hand and billy that uh portion of the industry out now i think is and as you were going through that and it kind of talked a little bit transition to where you're at today or what you guys are doing today but you've been doing that for quite a bit of time also i think you mentioned got into a bit of the software but you're really looking and saying can now you take it to the next step which is where a lot of other people at we're making a cloud base making it so that you don't have to have the physical or tangible cd or vhs or tape or anything of that nature and so i think that's where you guys have now headed today is that right exactly so looking to cannibalize a business once again and eliminate cds and move everything to the cloud it's much more convenient much more secure better for patients you can keep your own personal records in the cloud moving that data is is pretty seamless these days and it and overall like any of these markets when the consumer market starts to drive it the professional markets have to adapt to it and you see more and more consumers just keeping all their videos and pictures and documents in the cloud now and so why not your medical records too and um it's going to become standard practice so now you know kind of the question that arises from that is when you originally went to the cd vhs tape kind of industry and providing that to the healthcare industry you said you know they kind of laughed out of the room so to speak or it took a while to acceptance are you seeing that kind of same pushbacks as you're saying hey there's a lot of opportunity people want to have access to the records you make it more accessible between doctors or between specialists or hospitals and people can discover it on their own and have that record themselves has it been one that's been pretty well accepted and people are readily or you know easy to move over are they more reticent saying hey this is we already made this sleep once and then we're comfortable we don't want to make any transition or have you found that as you've got or kind of started to promote and get that idea out there how's it been accepted yeah i i thought it was going to be a similar process but it's definitely been different where with the cds replacing film it was we were changing a protocol because they were going from essentially analog to digital and in this case they're already all digital they're just using an older method of moving that data so we're just trying to upgrade their their methodology and so it's not adoption now it's adaptation it's a different thought process and the the barriers are different and [Music] back then it could be physical where they just didn't have a cd drive and now that's becoming a problem again because they don't make them in computers but the biggest problem in getting the adaptation is is fear of compliance security um you know who has access to the data if there's a breach who's responsible so you have to cover you know we call the five pillars of security and um those even then once you you can promise them up and down we insure it we indemnify them uh you still have a lot of uh barriers to get through to get that final approval so now and are you starting to see that you know you start to figure you know that that kind of happens a lot of times with in the industry that you're one of the first entrances you're trying to make that shift or that transition people are reticent a bit to change and the unknown and how is this going to affect it is it going to work as well is it going to be reliable are they going to have increased liability and so you have to con or kind of address all those concerns are you starting to see that industry is they're starting to accept it or there's still a bit of an uphill battle or convincing them or kind of gives an idea of kind of where things at today yeah yeah they're definitely starting to um to do it it's been a harder push than originally anticipated and a lot of that just has to do with how we encapsulate retiring that those risks so we one of the first of course is security so if we can retire that the next one is is this easy to use does it integrate with our current systems that we're already using is it fast is there down time and um and ultimately how does it affect their patients and does it make their patients lives better and their outcomes better it all sounds like it's definitely uh fun er exciting time a lot of opportunity and continue to work to change the industry and improve up for the better so well that brings us uh kind of to where things are at a bit today now if you're to kind of look in and it kind of dovetails right onto that question but if you look out into the kind of the next six to 12 months where do you see you know the business headed you guys headed and then kind of what's the next steps for you guys well we're um you know pie in the sky type of guys so we our ultimate goal is to create a global healthcare communications platform where that's oriented around the primary diagnostic tool which is radiology so everything is moving towards let's take a look inside as as the diagnostic tool and eventually will be atomic level imaging where you won't get a you won't get a pin prick to get a blood sample but literally put your hand in a machine and look at the literally the cellular structure and atomic structure of things coursing through your bloodstream and say okay that's h1n1 that's why you're not feeling well and i know that sounds like star trek kind of stuff but that development is already out there so if you look at these images as the primary diagnostic tool for you know could be from a broken bone to a cancer to a virus that's going to be the primary tool radiology surpassed pharmaceuticals as the most expensive aspect of health care back in 2014 and that divide will continue because it actually even decides what your drug regimen is going to be you know certain radiology procedures so with that and you look at your telehealth boom where you're keeping sick patients at home and healthy patients at home for good reasons you and i could be having a consultation where let's say i'm the doctor i say okay devin now i'm going to bring up your results and your images whether it's your pathology or your um your knee that has to be scoped from a sports injury we can have that consultation i can show you exactly what the issues are and with that because i'm showing and sharing the imaging with you it's going to have higher compliance too because once you see what is wrong people tend to do the right thing instead of just when they're told this is what's wrong um because we always crack jokes you know the guy who just had a heart scan and gets a stent put in that day or three stents they're feeling pretty good so they hit the mcdonald's drive-through on the way home why not if you're you just got all cleaned out you might as well uh clog it back up so no that that's funny no but it sounds like there's definitely some good opportunities a lot of interesting things continuing to go in that direction and as you guys continue to make inroads and uh showing people there a better way definitely uh sounds like a great opportunity for you guys as well well as we start to wrap up the podcast i always wrap up with uh two questions so we'll go ahead and jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made what'd you learn from it well geez there are so many bad ones it's it's hard to pick but um you're going back to the beginning of my entrepreneurship uh was turning down money when it was offered to me because you think i can just do this completely on my own and with that was help you know it was help and money and thinking i had all the answers and stuff to terrible decision making process back then and i was i was pretty green at the time and thought i was like a wonder boy and you know you just just not um and then at one point i had an opportunity to sell a technology called the baby cd for a considerable amount of money and again thought i was smarter than anyone else in the room and i wasn't and took a pass on on that sale and it went from worth a small fortune down to nothing so that was a big mistake another one i'd say is uh you know spending too much early on for example going to a trade show and thinking you have to impress the people coming to the show one point we spent a huge fortune at a big booth that was 30 feet tall and we put leather couches in a white wood floor and i can't remember how much money it was but it was like building a small house and uh um we couldn't even man the booth it was too big so it was it was just uh it was just dumb and it didn't help us get a single extra sale well i think that sometimes you know even i look at all those booths and sometimes you think hey we got to spend it we got to make like look like we're successful and sometimes it works out and you know it does it but a lot of times you put in a lot of effort for trade shows you go there and you find out there are 5 000 other people there and there's a lot of boost and it's hard to cut through the clutter and all that extra money you put into them and some of those type of decisions don't always have that reward but it definitely has those trade-offs and so it definitely makes sense on some of those mistakes how you how you make them but also the lessons learned from them yeah second question i always ask is if you talk to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them yeah you know i get asked those questions certainly by people wanting to start something and i usually start saying make sure you're uncomfortable uh because that that's always the first step being or having a level of discomfort keeps you on track and keeps your focus and and with that i always say read everything you can and i don't mean just about your industry and and becoming an expert in your field but there's so many uh you know ancillary and outside things that contribute to your decision-making um you know it could be you know things like baking and um learning how you know why do uh you know certain calls get called in a football game there's so many things like that and those are things that lend themselves to decision making processes everyone thinks they have one way of answering something my dad used to give me a great line all the time there's no such thing as genius only thinking objectively and you know that's coming at it from all different angles and that helped me a lot another one my dad just said to me don't sell the business to yourself make sure you're able to sell it to other people i think a lot of people convince themselves how great something is which is fine but if you can't convince somebody else you don't have anything oh i think that that's absolutely right and i mean some and that's one that's i think sometimes easier said than done because you always can convince yourself something's a good idea a great opportunity sometimes it isn't it definitely makes sense but other times you're just sitting in there and you've convinced yourself it's a good idea when in reality nobody else would want to pay for it or it's not there's not enough big marketplace or any number of things so i think those are great takeaways and great pieces of advice well as we wrap up the the episode if people want to reach out to 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 of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you or find out more well one is just my email it's very easy tim tellaray.com so t-e-l-e-r-a-y dot and then uh phone number they can call us at 844 for tellaray and uh just ask for me and so pretty easy or just go to our website and you can hit the infotellerate.com all right well i definitely encourage people to to connect uh and check things out and make sure to utilize the services especially if they're in the medical industry so with that 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 a 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 share subscribe leave a review make sure so we can make sure to share all these awesome episodes with everyone that's out there that's looking to do a startup or small business and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with the chat we're always here to help thank you again tim for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks you

Miller IP Law is a firm that focuses on small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs/solopreneurs. We’re easy to use. We offer affordable pricing that’s transparent and flat-rate. We focus on the little guys who actually need our help. If you’d like an attorney on your team, simply schedule a Zoom call, and we’ll take care of the rest.

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #333
Prepare To Work Hard
w/ Rick Garcia
Connect With Me

"Prepare to work hard and give it the runway that it deserves. What I mean by runway is it's going to take longer than what you think to be successful. I think people are looking for short-term wins, get rich quick, whatever it is. If you think in terms of decades instead of in the next two years I am going to make this much money. Put some longevity behind your plan and then go execute your plan. The correct expectations will be set and you will build a solid foundation. You will learn a ton along the way and have a lot of fun. Think a little longer terms than short term."

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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

 is prepared to work hard put put uh and and give it the runway that it deserves and when i say by what i mean by runway is you know uh it's going to take longer than what you think to be successful it's got yeah i think people are looking for short-term wins right uh uh get rich quick whatever it is but but if you think in terms of decades you know in instead of in the next two years i'm gonna make this much money right if you think in terms of you know put some longevity behind your plan right and then go execute on your plan because those the correct expectations will be set uh you'll build a solid foundation you'll learn a ton along the way you'll have a lot of fun but uh but that that's kind of i guess that would be my advice is you know think in terms think a little think a little longer term instead of short term [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 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 if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time to chat and we're always here to help now today we've got another great uh guest on the podcast uh rick garcia and uh rick started out in high school in his own words he was a hustler to make money um he also played high school or played baseball for a bit and then entered into the workforce and didn't do well holding a job again in his own words uh went to i think it was around 15 jobs or so and then his aunt and his wife at the time now ex-wife worked at american airlines so he went and worked there um also wanted to be a lawyer and so did uh did some undergraduate work and uh or studied the degree but then decided he didn't want to be a lawyer either and so read a book that was uh thinking grow rich and and was uh thinking uh or looking onto things that he could grasp onto based on that moved to texas started working for a telecom company in a sales job figured out that was his very how to monetize his passion joined another company made an accent started his current business and has also been joining and acquiring a couple other businesses along the way so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast rick thanks devin i appreciate it uh i forgot we shared that much so it's interesting to make all that public that's great absolutely so it makes for a good there makes for a full and a good journey so with that now let's go back a bit in time um to when uh you were in high school was uh or what were hustling to make money and how your journey got started there yeah you know uh i think i think it goes before high school to be honest right i mean i was uh i was a kid that would mow your lawn i'd knock on your door ask you if you wanted to have your you know your lawn mowed and you know roll rolled around in a riding mower and things like that so i was fortunate enough to have one of those guys around but um you know so i think it started a bit before high school but rolled into high school did uh you know played played a lot of sports played baseball forever um you know when i finished there uh you know i started out with a little little college ball and then and then quickly realize that that's not making my uh it's not it's not going to achieve my financial success by trying to try to play you know extend my high school sort of experience and and play some more ball so uh you know figured out then you know during that time i started to have these small jobs you know a restaurant or a you know a a a fast food place you know kind of the normal high school sort of jobs didn't like any of them really you know i just i just uh i didn't like any of them maybe i was a bit entitled perhaps i mean now that i'm an adult and i feel like i'm an adult and have a better understanding of what i was thinking then uh it may have been a little entitlement or something like that but uh it didn't do well at holding a job i always thought i could do something more you know you know i could be more aggressive and do this and do that so um that's kind of where it rolled into i will say that i tried a lot of different things growing up as a kid to to hustle to make some money you know i lived fairly close so i was in texas is where i worked for american airlines and i ended up moving to seattle um but but there i was pretty close to the mexican border as an example so i sold some blankets before you know i i sold lots of different things um you know i had friends that were doing uh lots of email campaigns uh when i was just getting out of high school and this was well before can spam uh and so i did a little emailing for your own sort of nutritional brands and all that stuff so i kind of figured that out for a little while and did some of that but there was a you know a lot of sort of trial and error i had a tobacco license in texas and and sold cigars online you know so there was quite a few things uh that i had kind of given a run but nothing really stuck i didn't know what i didn't know to be honest now one question i'll ask because that's a whole bunch of very different jobs and that they're you know pretty well across the board sounds like a lot of fun or at least a lot of different opportunities but was you know was a was it that it was a hard time holding down a job because you didn't like having a boss over you was it just you hadn't found something that you enjoyed and so it was kind of a slug or you're saying you know you mentioned maybe a bit of entitlement earlier on or kind of what made you kind of decide to move between jobs or what or what was it about those jobs that just didn't quite suit you yeah so so i will say this i i was during that trial and error sort of period of kind of start wanting to start something i i did have those jobs off and on when i landed at american airlines i think i was 20 years old or so i landed at american airlines i stayed there for about five years and the reason i stayed there for five years is because like i told you i had uh my aunt and uh and my uh my future uh a bride ex-wife now but my future bride there she uh they were both working next to me all the time and so i had no choice but to really sort of settle down accept a little bit of responsibility and and be you know be productive and so so not always thinking about what else was i going to do right but but in my mind you know i'd finish that and i'd always had something else that i was working on or trying to do you know and i look at that today and i go boy what a loser you know that's kind of what i think about myself right but but i wasn't quite fulfilled in just kind of working a job and feeling like a job was my was going to be what i was going to do so that was early on i was i did not feel that i was going to work for someone early on now you're saying okay no bit a bit of a mixture of uh you know finding what you're wanting to do not wanting to work for someone else figuring out what that means for you and where that's going to lead you and so you you know you you're settled on the job of the airlines and you do that you said for was it five or six years um and then after that you know kind of what so you worked under then it sounds like you'll have to correct me from wrong that was it during that time or after that time you also thought about being a lawyer and reading the book or kind of that is transition you're kind of going from there going those different areas yeah so so i i started off in college you know doing a criminal justice degree did that for you know three years i think and like i said i was kind of on that extended plan you know i i went to college for six years right and so i tried a lot of different classes and tried to figure out what it was but when i went to um when i went to this orientation for law school and then i i met a bunch of people there and i was like these people are really serious about their job these are about their careers and i i just quite i didn't feel like a grown-up uh you know i i'm a you know a summer baby essentially so i was a bit younger when i graduated high school but i still didn't feel like i was anywhere near equipped probably intellectually to be honest i was probably you know a bit sort of not embarrassed but a bit intimidated right and and when i you know in a room with a bunch of smart people i was like oh boy this may not be for me uh so that was during that time so all that was all right after right after high school and then and then running for the next five years trying to figure out that's what i was going to do right you always have these aspirations it's interesting i'm going through this now and with uh you know thinking about uh am i related my current relationship you know uh you always have these grand sort of ideas of what you're going to do in life right and and when reality starts to set in on you may not achieve what you initially thought you were going to achieve you know you get you get a little discouraged and so uh i think that's where i kind of hit on with with being a lawyer so i was i was trying to figure out what was going to be next you know where was i going to go and then uh you know i ended up moving to seattle with my girlfriend and uh in working at the phone company i had two job offers at uh when i arrived to seattle number one was alaska airlines and number two was us west the phone company and uh and i thought you know i've already done the airline thing for a good while and it's colder in seattle than it is in texas it's wetter in seattle texas and i thought well i don't i don't want to be outside at all so uh so i ended up taking the the phone company job and and that's kind of where where things kind of kicked off and at the time i was reading a bunch of motivational material right so maybe it was some tony robbins maybe it was some zig ziglar maybe it was you know lots of different things but uh think and grow rich and holding hell certainly was a book that i kind of carried uh i didn't carry it along with me literally but but i kind of had that as you know what i had remembered and i i think i read it 23 times or so that's a good amount of time to read it and hopefully a bit of it sunk in and it definitely makes sense so so you say okay bounced around a lot you know did the airlines for a bit of time thought about being a lawyer now you know and then decided okay gonna go into the telecoms and i think about when i we chatted a bit before it was also the the more of the sales position and selling that was interesting to you and hopefully not putting two million words in your mouth but then i i believe that after you kind of found that that was a bit more where you're passionate about passionate about and how you can monetize that passion you went and joined a different company and then made an exit at one point is that right yeah yeah so so i'll walk you through that so essentially what happens is i work at the phone company for five years and they do an excellent job of training they do an excellent job of teaching you the very basics of things right uh and then and then kind of releasing you out so we did that um and that was um you know again it was five years worth of training there uh i went to a competitive phone company after that it was mci at that time i kind of figured out here's the deal this is my skill or this is not just selling but selling was certainly where i were kind of excelled but but telecom in general telecom in general is where i'm gonna you know make my living and i forced myself right and this is the early 2000 late 1990s and early 2000s when everyone was kind of migrating to software and software was the cool thing right i stayed in telecom i forced myself to stay in telecom because i felt like you needed to put in your time into whatever you know every book tells you right you're going to do a business do a business that you know right you've got it it's something that you know uh and so i forced myself to stay in telecom went to mci for a couple of years and then i went to a small company after that and the small company i went to in fact the uh the former ceo of that company he he's long sold out of the telecom space now he owns 20 or 30 luxury car dealerships around the country right but i learned so much from him in the course of two years it was a small telecom company uh and and that was when i realized look i could start my own telecom company i could do my own telecom this is not you know it's a it's a difficult business because it's a regulated business and there's a lot of components to it but when you know the business thank you very much u.s west for the training right an mci when you know the business uh it's something that you think of and you go i can actually do this and again going back to my napoleon hill is you know uh a is acquired a specific uh specific applied knowledge right you can monetize specific applied not so if you know something very very well you can build a business around it right better than anybody else you can build a business around it so i went to that small company sold that company sold i wasn't a shareholder in that i was just uh you know it was a the leadership in their sales department essentially and then i went to another company in this company uh it was called 360 networks and 360 networks was a carrier for the carrier so what i got to see for a person that knew i was going to one day be in the telecom business for myself i looked at this and i thought well i could go to the largest carriers in the country and i i can speak to their leadership i understand what they're doing i understand their marketplace and i get to see how they acquire customers so i had this sort of perched view on hundreds of companies and how they operated and so for me it was like oh this is exciting right i get to see how everything runs uh and so i was fortunate enough to to do to stay in that role six or seven years and then ended up doing some mergers and acquisitions for them uh in that same company so acquiring different uh organizations and and bundling them with our organization at that time uh when we sold that business i started g12 communications oh and that makes sense so you sold that business said okay you know i i like how you hit on you know when you become an expert in the you know or gain a lot of experience in a given area it does be it does or lend itself to saying why don't i do it now some people are saying i don't want to be here run my own business i don't want to take on that you know additional stress or additional you know those type of things but on the other hand if you're more entrepreneur minded or want to do it on your own you're saying okay i can figure this out i can do it now sometimes you get into and you figure out hey that was a lot harder than i thought it would be but nonetheless it gives you a foundation to build from and i think that that is oftentimes the impetus for you know where what uh moves you to to make that leap and so now you make that leap you go start your own business you're building that you're growing it and you're saying i can do this how did it go in other words was it a great success and skyrocket to the top or was it bumpy and you know had the good times and the bad times was it all downhill or kind of how did it go for you i i'll say this for those of you who who want an eight to five job and who want to knock off at the end of the day and and and let the tv wash over you and and hang out in a in a lounger being an entrepreneur isn't for you because i it was i didn't know what i didn't know all the all the little starts and stops along the way you know the the 10 you know little businesses that i kind of dabbled in to try here and there all of them were part of why we succeeded at g12 right but i still you get into an organ you get into a business and you think you know what you're doing and then you quickly realize that this gets really really deep and it gets really really hard and there's no one behind you there's no one to to help shake it off there's no one to help you know alleviate the the aggravation the stress right the uh the just the hard hard work there's no one to to to alleviate from you you you are the backstop for everything uh and so it was rough i will say it was a rough start um you know uh we started it was me and a partner we started together uh and one thing that i learned along the way is uh there's there's some things that some people are good at and there's some things that you know that that others aren't so here's how it ended up i was not the financial and legal guy but but i partnered up with a financial and legal guy right uh and so that made all the difference in the world right and and to boot he had a work ethic at the time you know just as strong as mine and so uh you know we could we could really work through anything together so that was that's really what's what's been just uh you know i've heard the sayings my the best business partners are me myself and i right but but ultimately i'm very fortunate to work with this individual because he brings a level of sophistication to our our legal and financial and corporate organization that i couldn't bring right i could bring product development i can bring you know uh selling this product i can i can build a product and support the product but i couldn't bring those other corporate sort of uh uh skill sets right and so uh having having a partner uh with me to do that has been great but i i will tell you at the very beginning it was rough and we're a phone company right so early on i can tell you uh this is probably i probably shouldn't say this is kind of funny but you know we take some boxes and go hand deliver them to some places before we kind of didn't know you know kind of the everything that we need to know so just to check it out and just to see how it worked out so our first few customers hand delivered some things uh in fact in a law office uh one of our very first customers in the law office i saw um the lead attorney fell down had a basically a stroke in the hallway and they ran to our phones and dialed 9-1-1 and i remember thinking in my head wow i hope 9-1-1 is going to work i mean we've done everything right let's see if this 9-1-1 works and that's not the time you want to you want to have something go wrong i was in the office when this happens right and i'm just like wow and and the authorities were there and i was like oh we did everything right you know we did do everything right um but but it's still it's like you're you know this is you you just don't know what you don't know and so it's very very hard i will say that once you do it for a while and we're you know we're a 10 year old 11 year old company now uh now we've got you know 50 people and you know there's you know job wrecks open for people and growing and growing and and now you know we're we're kind of the the old kid on the block now essentially right you know it's like we we know exactly what we're doing we're scaling appropriately you know not too fast not too slow and and now it's a fun fun organization to be a part of and you look at this and you go that was uh you know call it seven or eight years of just real real grind like you know like you know get your overalls on you know you got your shovel and you're digging you know so so uh it was seven or eight years of a real grind and and you know the last four or five years have just been amazing oh and i think that and that but i think that there's a lot of commonalities in the sense that most people you know i think that you go into a business with a lot of naivety in the sense oh it'll be a year or two and then we'll just take off and then we'll get things in place we'll have all these customers and we'll be so busy we don't know what to do occasionally that's the case and i'm sure that happens but i think for the vast majority it is that first while is a grind and then you get a bit more success and you get a bit more stability and it's still a grind and then you actually have a company that you're saying okay we're doing well and it's still a grind and so i don't think i like that how you said if you wanted to do an eight to five clocking clock outlet tv wash over i don't think it's now on the other hand i think that you also have a lot of fun you can have either direct your own you know direct your own destiny and you can have a lot more control and you can be a lot you know you can have a lot of reward and there's success and freedom but it has to be with the understanding it's not just going to be like it's on tv where you go into work and work for a couple hours in the morning you go get a lunch off take off early and you know life is just miraculously wonderful and you never have to work again i think it's far from that but i think there's also that as you get bigger as you have that patience you you get that more step or stable business with the with the building success so i think it's a a great takeaway well as that kind of brings us up to where it's at where you're at today and kind of walks us through your journey i always end off the podcast uh with a couple questions so we'll jump to those now 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 uh the worst business decision i've ever made uh um i think the worst business decision i made was was really um early on i will tell you early on you you try to cut corners and what i mean by cutting corners is you don't hire an expert where you need an expert you don't hire you know someone who knows something that you don't know and you just try to wing it right or or you'll fix it later let's just get this done and you'll fix it later and in some cases that comes back to really really bite you so i think some of the worst decisions i've ever made were around uh to be honest this you know not doing some legal documents properly or hiring an attorney to do some legal documents properly uh whether that's you know uh uh maybe a small asset purchase an asset purchase agreement you know i mean uh uh you know just stuff like that hiring the right individuals to do the serious stuff like if you're gonna if you're gonna cut corners you know uh you know and i don't advise cutting quarters anymore now that i'm a little more seasoned right uh but when you're bootstrapping you make some some good decisions to move you forward because you're trying to kick the door down and you also make some really bad decisions and so what i would say is well here's what i've learned where it really really matters and i would say financial decisions legal decisions you know uh corporate structures and stuff like that where it really really matters um you really need some experts in your corner and and you can you can talk to a lot of different people there's a lot of resources out there and you can do it inexpensively if you needed to but boy having the right resources not necessarily in place but finding the right resources be resourceful instead of being cheap okay so so that's what i would learn i would say is important to learn no and i think that you know it is it is that you know a bit of that cash when kids you're getting going and it is you're you're always having more things to spend money on the money to spend as a startup in a small business as you're just getting started and you're saying okay you know do i spend it on payroll do i spend it on rent do i spend it on product development or marketing or do i spend it on legal or do i spend it on accounting and you're saying all these competing things and i think it is to your point you know first of all you know you're having to balance competing interests but you need to realize okay where are the areas where i can be resourceful i may be able to do it on my own at least for a period of time with some sweat equity and where the experts say hey i really just have to have somebody that knows what they're doing here because it's going to either hamper the business or set it up for failure or anything else if i don't and having that ability to understand or to navigate that i think is a great takeaway but it's easy also easy to understand how you might you can make that mistake of saying hey i don't have the money i'll get it i'll do it myself when you really don't have the the resources or the ability to do it so i think it's a definitely a lesson to learn and an easy mistake to make yeah following up that the second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them boy if you're there if you're there and you decided to do it how exciting for you it's it's very exciting right i i wouldn't do anything different i love my business i love being in business i love that you know our our employees are my family essentially and we we we support their families and and it's uh it's the best thing that i've ever done right start uh g12 but what what i would say is prepare to work hard to put but and and give it the runway that it deserves and when i say by what i mean by runway is you know it's going to take longer than what you think to be successful it's got i think people are looking for shirt short-term wins right uh get rich quick whatever it is but but if you think in terms of decades you know in instead of in the next two years i'm gonna make this much money right if you think in terms of you know put some longevity behind your plan right and then go execute on your plan because those the correct expectations will be set uh you'll build a solid foundation you'll learn a ton along the way you'll have a lot of fun but uh but that that's kind of i guess that would be my advice is you know uh think in terms think a little think a little longer term instead of short term yeah no and i i think that that's a you know if nothing else it could take away a lot of time you're saying hey everything's you know i got to put out the fires now that are the the most urgent and there's some true to that if you have fires and it's going to burn the building down in your business sound so to speak you need to do that but if all you're doing is putting out today's fires and never looking at the long term you're forever going to be running a short-term business that isn't going to have the success that you need so i like that having that long-term outlook on it so well with it as we wrap up the the the podcast we wrap up this episode if people want to reach out to 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 of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more yeah so the website's g12com.com it's g12com.com you can head over to g12 com.com you could send me an email r garcia g12com.com find me on linkedin it's rick garcia you'll you know at g12 you'll find me on linkedin there so feel free to reach out uh send me a note uh we'd love to chat and meet you and uh and listen to your story and and maybe we'll trade stories and it's fun to talk to entrepreneurs all the time awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect and support a great business especially if you're looking at anything in the telecom and with that um as we uh as we wrap up the podcast thank you again uh 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 and 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 also as a listener if you can make sure to click subscribe click like click follow click share because we want to make sure that everybody finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your with your business with any patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help thank you again rick for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks for having me devon take care

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Episode #328
Day-to-Day, Admin, & Self
w/ Bryan Clayton

"In the first 4 years of the business, you're doing three things at once. You're working in the business, serving customers, answering phone calls, in my case mowing grass. And then you're working on the business. What does the marketing system look like? What does the employee recruitment system look like? What does the employee retention system look like? How do we activate cold customers? All of these things are working on the business. Then you're working on yourself."

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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.

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the first maybe four years of the business you're you're doing three things at once you're working in the business uh so just you know make getting the business going serving customers answering phone calls you know in my case at certain periods you know boeing grass um and then you're working on the business you know what's the marketing system look like what's the employee recruitment system look like what's the what's the employee retention system look like you know how do we activate cold customers all of these things working on the business and then you're working on yourself [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another uh great guest on the podcast brian clayton and uh brian started uh or to start his journey started mowing lawns in high school to make some cash uh made about uh 20 the first time he did some mowing and was hooked and so i'm decided he would take that as far as he could so he built a built a bit of a business around it that could grew it um and also i think continued when he was in college doing it as well as as he was deciding to go forward went to college um graduated built the business or started a business and built that over 15 years um sold that business and then retired but then got bored so i thought about uh thought about an uh an app for doing uber but for lawn mowing um recruited a couple of co-founders and started building that app um the first year was a total flop and failure in his own words i built a second version of it and got a few hundred customers nine years into it they now have over three hundred thousand customers using the app and they never had to take any inside cap or outside capital insight capital probably but outside capital and they're still growing and uh all or all of his businesses have been self-funded which kudos to him so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast brian great intro devin thanks so much i appreciate you having me on your show absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condescended into the 32nd version so let's unpack that a bit and tell us how your journey got started in uh high school bowling loans yeah yeah you just nailed 20 years of entrepreneurship two businesses uh in one industry but yeah i started cutting grass in high school as a way to make extra cash and i was like forced into the business by my father he made me go mow the neighbor's yard on a hot summer day and like you said i made 20 bucks doing that got hooked and i thought this is great you know i can i can mean i can work as hard as i want to work and make as much money as i want to make uh this is why doesn't everybody do this and so people like capitalism it's great well i understand this this is incredible and i just i the first thing i did is i passed out a bunch of flyers all over the neighborhood and got like a dozen customers that first year and uh always had more cash than my friends and it was just amazing i loved it and stuck with that lawn mowing business all through high school uh all through college and then when i graduated business school i thought well what now um should i i didn't really want to be a lawn guy my whole life um i didn't think that's what i went to college for but i thought well maybe this could be my lane this could be the thing that i can kind of work really hard in and make something of myself and and i made a little business plan and over a 15-year period of time ended up growing that that lawn care company into one of the largest landscaping businesses in the state of tennessee eventually getting it over 8 million a year uh or eight figures a year in revenue or before you get too far into your journey so you did this in high school which you mentioned and then i you you continue to do it as you're going to college right that's right so i went to school uh with the night school in college took me like six years to get an undergrad because i just went nights and nights uh and weekends but mowed yards cut grass all day and so i put myself through school and uh and also bought my first house when i was like 20 years old so so business ownership afforded me the ability to avoid student debt and also to start investing in real estate at a very young age which was great ask one other question because that makes sense when you i assume when you got into high school and even maybe early into our college you didn't necessarily i'm reading in there so i put words in your mouth so you could take them out and tell me the wrong words but you know i assume that it wasn't necessarily that you're saying here is the industry that i'm going to be spending the rest of my life in and you went to college got you know kind of went the normal path or got the degree but then you found that you were good at business it was a good stream of income you enjoyed it and it's worthwhile to pursue is is that kind of right or am i reading that right yeah i nailed it i had no dreams and aspirations to be a lawn guy my whole life um in fact i hated cutting grass i hated the landscaping business um i hated the smell of cut lawns hated the smell of mulch uh but i saw that it could it could work at a bigger scale uh because i had two or three employees and i just you know did some some duplication and understood that you know if i had four or five of these crews out there working every day and i was managing them and doing sales that i could actually build a business doing this and so i laid out a little business plan and did that and executed against that plan and eventually growing it's over 150 employees and and and eight figures a year in revenue um a little over 10 million a year in revenue so so uh luckily i saw that as my lane and kind of just put everything i had into it and and was able to build a good good company in it and and it gets acquired too which doesn't happen very often in this industry uh rarely are these businesses ever ever bought and sold so that was a hell of a journey and learned a lot about building a business growing a company leadership systems processes that kind of teed me up for when i started green pal that i kind of was already on first base well for learning the things that you got to learn to get a business going so now and now before we dive to greenpower which we definitely will but you're kind of circling back just a bit so came out of college and i just had a curiosity what did what was the degree in college that you got business administration and you know which was congruent with what i was doing but when i was in school when i was in college uh i'm taking these business classes and i'm like this ain't how business works you know i'm running a business and like they're not teaching me stuff like marketing they're not teaching me leadership they're not teaching me management they're not teaching me customer service they're not teaching me value proposition and how to develop a competitive advantage and and even stuff like managing your personal psychology when growing a business college doesn't really teach you about about entrepreneurship and founding a company it teaches you more or less maybe the the the nuts and bolts of maybe of running a business but not starting one from scratch and so and and i'm right there with it because hey so i ended up getting way too many degrees but one of the four degrees i got was an mba and i was doing that happened to be a different kind of story but i started my first startup while i was getting the law degree in the mba degree and i'd go to the mba school which is much like business administration it's the master version versus the bachelor but i think they cover a lot of the same things or at least i think um and i'd look and say you know half of this seems really fluffy like it's great in concept and you know i think it was for me it was worthwhile in the sense i got some good foundational knowledge and tools and things to work off of but on the other hand i'm saying half of this i never see how it's going to apply it's very fluffy it's kind of just very you know on the the philosophical level and when you get into business then you have to have practical applications so i couldn't agree more that you're coming out and you're getting a lot better education or a lot better practicality in running the business so i always have the opinion you should be running a business if you're as as you're going to college and you can absolutely have that real application so now you come out of college you built you know you say okay whether or not i love the the smell of cut grass which i still like this smell of cut grass so i haven't got to your level but i probably haven't cut nearly as many grasses your lawns but you're saying okay this is a good business i can grow it you know i can do the business side of it i can market i can sell i can build a team and do all that you do that over the period of 15 years what and you know then you mentioned an acquisition was the what was it prompting for the acquisition was it just hey the proverbial too good of an offer i can't refuse or was it hey i finally got to a point i want to do something different or pursue something or have a new idea or i just want to retire or kind of what made you prompt to after putting 15 years and building a business to say hey i want to to do something else yeah i never intended uh to build the company to sell it and so ideally if if that is your your end game that's your goal that your dream you should well first read a book called built to sell which is a really good book about how to how to groom your business and building it and build it in such a manner that you could get it acquired but that's not how i built it and and the reason why i sold it uh was because i realized something in about year 13 that my business was the thing that was causing me to move forward in life it was a thing that caused me to learn things that i never would have learned and take on new challenges and and conquer new territory and i had kind of hit a plateau uh in that part of my life i i was running this business i i had kind of almost taken it as far as i could take it and it was very profitable and and we had a great culture there and we were doing really good but for me to kind of get to the next level of the game would have required me to maybe take it multi-city or or do something or move into an adjacent space or something like that and i didn't really have the desire to do that so i kind of reached a personal plateau in terms of my personal development and it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks one day i was like you know what i should have explore uh an ex and exit explore selling this company and from the moment that i had that notion to the moment that i was able to get it sold was like a little over two years and really probably two of the hardest years that i have ever had in business was was getting that business groomed for sale because i had to reversal engineer a lot of things into the company that weren't there and also the way you run a business as like a family business versus one that you intend to sell are vastly different uh just things with how you make investments into the company and how you manage expenses and how you avoid certain expenses are very very very different so if it's your plan or your eventual goal or dream to sell your company start now work a five-year process and and and start doing the things today that you need to be doing to maximize that outcome no i think that there's a lot of wisdom there and i think you know i think that you can build it to sell a lot of people are saying hey i just enjoy it and you get to the appointment that you're saying either i've taken it as far as i want to take it or i'm worn out with it or you know it's a good offer and um you know all the or all of the different things are coming together and so you say okay this is a good time to make an exit i've you know i've had a good run it's still a good business it has a lot of value and so you're going to make the exit and so you know you sell the business and then i think you mentioned that if craig went from wrong he said okay i'm going to take a bit of retirement or take a bit step back or otherwise take a breather after or you know running in the startup or small business world for now over 15 years so is that right is that kind of the next step that you took for a period of time yeah that's right uh when i sold the company i i thought wow that was really hard uh and i'm beat i'm whooped uh i was 32 or 33 but i felt like i was 73. like it was really really challenging getting that company sold it was also very stressful running a business that size and in that particular industry it's very much uh organized chaos and hand-to-hand combat on a daily basis and so i took some time off uh and and uh maybe it was like a little over six months and i and i quickly got bored quickly uh realized something about myself that i was wired to want to be in the game i was wired to want to be a part of something that was bigger than myself and and that this was now missing out of my life and it was almost like a hole that wasn't there and a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that previous company so it was like almost like i i had an identity crisis almost and so i thought well i want to start another business i certainly don't want to do that again because that was really challenging i want to do something easy i'll start a software business and boy i didn't know what i didn't know uh i thought you know going i i had the idea for an app needed to exist for uh for ordering lawn mowing services much like an uber or a lyft or or even like an airbnb i thought an app needs to make all of this uh easier and so i thought how hard could it be you know i'll just pay some developers and we'll build it and we'll launch it market it and we'll just be off going and recruited two co-founders and we went to work on the idea quickly uh well not quickly took nine months to build the first version but once we released that version we quickly realized like wow this is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be and one thing that i under indexed on or really didn't know was that there's a big difference between running an existing type of business and existing type of industry like a construction company and maybe a house cleaning service landscaping business restaurant whatever versus inventing a brand new product from scratch that does not exist nobody knows how to use it nobody knows it exists nobody knows to even use it and and in a multi-sided marketplace at that connecting buyers and sellers i didn't i didn't know what i didn't know and i was we were quickly confronted with the reality of wow this is going to be really hard but we stuck it out you know we just kept on uh trying to grow the numbers we we ended up ended our first year with like 25 customers uh but uh we we got enough validation from those first few customers that know that this is a good idea that people wanted an app like this people wanted to use something like this and we just kept our nose to the grindstone and now we're uh nine 10-year overnight success we have like 300 000 people using this app to to get their grass cut oh and that's awesome but now one of the things just to or not to gloss over too much and it's always what we want to cross over which which is you talked about a little bit the first year was a flop but it's a failure i get that you had a few customers but it was first of all you know software always seems like it's going you know you get the budget you get the time frame and then it always is like way more expensive and takes so much longer and you're like why is this taking so hard long why is it so hard so i definitely get that having done that on other industries where we've done software and it always makes it look easy because software just on a computer it should be easy but it's not but even then to compound that is now you're taking and creating a new industry or a kind of a new sec or segment of way people approach it and so what was it you know when it's sometimes hard to pinpoint but what was it that kind of made it that first year's in your you know words when we talked before the podcast you know kind of a flop or a failure what caused that and how did you figure that out or adapt it to make it a success later on or in the next version a couple of uh couple of things that i miss miscalculated and didn't really understand because i'd never done this before i ran a traditional business but i never started a tech company is one thing was was that you don't really know what the hell you're building so you have an idea of what the app should look like what it should be how the interfaces should be designed what features it should have what people want but you really don't know and no like piece of technology like survives first contact with the customer and so it's it's kind of like building a house or maybe even a skyscraper with no blueprints and you're just you're just kind of like taking your best guesses on what people want and what people would like to see the features to be and what people would like for it to do but you really don't know and and so then you release it and then you realize all the places that you had like these invalidated assumptions and and then you have to like iterate and correct and fix those things so that's like one one problem the second problem was none of us knew how to code we didn't know how to build software we weren't engineers uh and so so you take the uh you know you take the house plan example and on top of all that you know you have to like you have you're at the uh you're at the mercy of a of a development agency to do these change orders and stuff and it's just it's a nightmare you cannot go through the cycles quick enough uh looking back it's as stupid as trying to start like a five-star restaurant with no chef um like like how silly is that well that's what like starting a tech company with with no development talent and you know in the team it's kind of like is impossible starting a restaurant with with no chef or no recipes and uh so we quickly we like we realized wow this is harder than we thought on many different like paradigms and we we thought well if we're gonna you know if if we really want to do this we're gonna have to learn how to build software so we took every online course we could take read every blog post watch everything on youtube my co-founder went to a boot camp nights and weekends and over the course of like two years we learned how to build software and we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch steeped in the feedback we were getting from our handful of users on how it actually should be built and how and the features it actually should have and the workflows and how they should look and and and then balancing the delicate balance between buyers and sellers on the marketplace and like getting the feedback from users to figure out what that should look like so one thing that looked that stands out like looking back is is that you don't learn then start um you start then learn and and the you know all of these ideas and assumptions we had were like false and we didn't really understand any of it until we actually got into the game started and started interacting with customers and getting that experiential wisdom from their feedback where we able to figure out okay no this is the direction we need to go with this this is how we're going to get there it was really really tough and on top of all that we sell funded it we didn't take any outside capital so that made it challenging as well but uh it was just some of our super super powers were and still are to this day which is consistency showing up every day figuring out what like triaging around what the two or three biggest things we have on our plate let's solve those let's fix those let's move on to the next set of things and just keeping driving the ball moving down the field and doing that for a decade you know now we've got a good profitable business i don't know like that one of the things you hit on in this what drives or what uh i always get pounded on with the the software programmers that i've worked with is that he always have feature creep and that can be one of two things either you keep thinking of new features or ideas that you want to incorporate into the app or even you think of things that you didn't ever think of that you needed in this offer in the app in order to make it more functional to make it work better you just never anticipated either because you didn't anticipate the users would need it or that would be the workflow you know how it goes for the flow of the application or anything else and so it always is just one of those where to your point i you know just kind of had to laugh internally because been there as well where it's just like every time you're just doing another revision another division and you see the dollar signs going up especially when you're self-funding and it's just one where just feels like it's a drag and a drain forever because you always are putting more and more money in and wondering when you're ever actually going to be able to start making money so i think that there's definitely understanding there but i think to your point is you have to get your you know you have to push through it you have to get that user feedback you have to go through you have to start building it you have to have an understanding and all those things that there is just no easy way around it or replacing they'll just have one day you have an idea for an app it's built you know somebody builds it perfectly exactly how you envisioned and there is any changes in that and the market just it works exactly how you envision almost never so i think that there's a good takeaway but it sounds like as you guys stuck with it as you continue to figure it out iterate update it and otherwise figure out where it's placed in the marketplace then it took off and as to what you guys have grown into today um where it's a much larger business and has a much bigger user base yeah and and to your point that feature creep you know on the one hand it's it's bad for several reasons the feature keeps bad it builds a bloated product it makes it harder to understand how to use and the other the the main impediment is it gets in the way of you and getting it in the hands of the customer because that's really the only moment in which you really learn about what it is that people want where you're trying to take the business and so the feature creep is is is it's like it's easier to sit behind the computer and build stuff than it is to get something in the hands of customers and like first-time founders and i've been guilty this first-time founders worry about features and product second time founders worry about distribution because if you've done it before and you're now doing it for the second time you you really understand that there's a minimum feature set you got to have and and you need to get that into the hands of customers but that the bigger problem is distribution and how you're going to market it how you're going to get people to use it because if you build it they will not come you you have to innovate on like product and solving people's problems but you also have to innovate on distribution and growth and figuring out like what are the things what's what what are the what are the unique things about this endeavor that are going to cause it to spread and and i don't mean just like pumping a bunch of money and facebook ads i mean like what is the thing that the hook in the product is going to cause people to to be exposed to it um second time founders worry about that because they know that's harder than than than features i know i agree and i think you know there is that balance because if you have if you don't have that minimum set of features which you do need and which people need for the app if you missed that then you're never going to get adopted because it's someone is so hard to use unwieldy people aren't going to understand and be able to use it and so you do have to nail that but to your point is now you you off it's very hard a lot of times the things that you think you're essential or critical often times aren't and so now you're building it and bloating it or otherwise even just burning time maybe they are great features but you don't need them to get it launched right now you're wasting time that you could have been out there selling get adoption getting feedback and otherwise doing it so yeah i get it it's a hard balance on both especially if it's your first time through but there's definitely a big learning curve but i think to your point you know if you build it 99 of the time they're not just going to come unless they know where to they don't they need to know where to come and then it's even in existence before they can even come and you have to fill that out so i think that's some great lessons learned we could go all day about a lot of fun with the lessons learned and and we'll have to have you back on and maybe uh talk a little bit more about that that aspect of things but uh for this journey for this episode now as we kind of reach the present day of where the business is at and the journey that's taken to your at today always have two questions i ask at the end of each podcast so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is long your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it well you know success is a lousy teacher and so you you always learn from your mistakes and it's okay uh you're gonna make them you just try not to like uh make uh mistakes that are going to sink the company right you try to you try to make mistakes a lot of times in in business it's more like poker and not chess it's it's you're making small bets you're making bets on things and half the time or more they don't they don't pan out but some big mistakes that i have made particularly in building green pal was we delegated too soon meaning that we we delegated all of the technology development to an outside shop and that was a disaster and then and then we like had the scars from that and then three took us three or four years to to build out a team and then we delegated too late so we delegated too soon and then delegated too late and so a lot of times when you're building out a team and you're delegating to teammates you you want to delegate from a standpoint of stewardship and not one of education like education is i don't know how to do this it scares me i don't want to learn how to do it you handle it like that's always a recipe for disaster stewardship is here's the scope of what i need you to do here's how long it should take here's how much i think it should cost here's the how we're going to measure the quality of it here's one i want it back by and here's here's our standards and and and that's stewardship delegation so so once you get to a point where you can delegate from a standpoint of stewardship you should do so very quickly because that's a force multiplier so that's a mistake that i made i had to learn it the hard way and it was it was it was a difficult one took me it probably cost me three or four years no i think that it is one of those where on the one hand you always want to delegate because you're too busy too many things to do and so you're wanting to hand things off and you know rightly so if their people can do it better faster cheaper than you can you shouldn't be focusing on it but there is that sometimes hanging it off too early then you're going to hand it off to people they may not give them enough direction training guidance oversight and even if they are competent good it can still set that up for secure for failure and make it a much more difficult thing and vice versa you can get too long and then you hold now you learn that lesson okay i'm not going to delegate and you hold on to it too long and now it just has the opposite effect of to where now when you're it's slowing down the business because you're not letting other people do it they could do a much better job so i think that's right it's a easy mistake that almost i think all entrepreneurs will make it at some point and yet it's one where is it's definitely um you know one that is a great to learn from second question i always ask is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them yeah you know it's this stuff's hard um the first first off it can be the best thing that you do with your life so i would encourage you to do it um but the reality is is is that it's it's a seven day a week thing uh it's it's especially in the first few years the first the first maybe four years of the business you're doing three things at once you're working in the business uh so just you know make getting the business going serving customers answering phone calls you know in my case at certain periods you know boeing grass um and then you're working on the business you know what's the marketing system look like what's the employee recruitment system look like what's the what's the employee retention system look like you know how do we activate cold customers all of these things working on the business and then you're working on yourself you're you're listening to podcasts reading books listening to audio books listening to uh conferences on on on youtube that you didn't go to that you probably should have um and so so you're doing all three of these things at once and it's really like a seven day a week thing to to make to to get a business going from scratch from zero to one that's that's what it takes so so i would tell i would tell anybody that's new listening to this that that get in the game uh because only when you're in the game can you win and be willing to just pour your soul into this thing for three or four years and that's not just you know a lot of times people get stuck in that in the business thing they don't work on the business or on themselves and so they stay stuck there and they get burnt out be cognizant of the fact even down to like managing your your weekly schedule that maybe monday through friday's in the business and the saturday is on the business and sunday is on yourself so you can quickly see how this is a seven day a week thing and so that's the advice that i would give anybody getting started i like the one thing you'd hit on you know multiple great pieces there but uh is the i like the continual learning or figuring things out in the sense of you know i listen to a ton of podcasts i'm always consuming that reading book and learning things and i kind of like you guys found out that hey we just need to learn at least enough of programming or how to do this whether it's we all do it ourselves and build it from the ground up or at least we have enough of a foundation then when we are hiring programmers if they are doing things that we know whether or not is what's necessary and what that's right you know doing i think you need to get that that level of education understanding and always be learning and you know that's one of the things even as i got into the law firm and i had the mba and i had the law degree and i've been doing it for a while and yet i'm still always learning because you know what are new ways to help the customers what are new systems what are new ways to reach out to them and market and sales and all those things and even if i had a good foundation when i started it's continuing to evolve and change and you have to continually have that learner mindset so i think that's a great takeaway absolutely and and uh it's it's dynamic it's it's a lot of times it's blocking tackling a lot of times like i spent six months reading every book i could read on copywriting because i was trying to be a decent copywriter uh i i uh was it was in some uh a lawsuit with with with somebody over a business agreement and i spent like uh four months reading every every legal book i get my hands on so i could be a better consumer of financial services um a lot of times you're moving it around and you're and maybe you need to pick up a book on leadership and you spent four months reading everything john maxwell ever wrote because you're now building out a team and you realize you're a crappy leader you move it around like it's it's blocking tackling for whatever you're dealing with at that stage of the game whatever level you're on um and and and before you know it you do that for five years you're like wow i'm 80 20 good at a lot of different things and it's kind of cool yep no i agree and i think that then it gives you a foundation even what i find is a lot of times even as you're hiring people on bringing them on have new teammates or you know people on the that are doing things you can still pull from that foundation in the sense that now as you're managing them as you're directing them making sure things are done you may not be doing the day-to-day but you still need to have that foundation to make sure it's done right or that you can give them the guidance and the direction of the training they need so i think there's that's right a lot of a great piece of advice but we can go on all day but as we're wrapping up the podcast for today if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to use your app 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 is the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more yeah you know any life's too short to mow your own yard so just download green pal and the app store or play store uh if you want to check out the app anybody who wants to hit me up you can reach me at insta on instagram brian m clayton just dropped me a following a dm there awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect download the app and otherwise uh get her to check it out so well thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you uh have your own journey to tell them you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com fly to be on the show also as a listener make sure to click subscribe make sure to click share make sure to leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome journeys so we can help businesses along their journey to success and in that vein if you ever need help with your patented trademarks or anything else to business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always they're happy to help thank you again brian for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin [Music] you

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #332
Get The Right People On Your Team
w/ Renee Rosales
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"I think the biggest piece of advice is to get the right people on your team and don't be afraid of doing that. Take the time in the beginning to strategies and hopefully move forward in a way that you can afford to financially invest in those people. For me, I have a wonderful business consultant and he has been really helpful to me as far as moving forward and giving me those gold nuggets and pieces of advice to build right in the very beginning and the structure that I need to have in place to start things right."

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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

 think the biggest piece of advice is get the right people on your team and don't be afraid of doing that um and i think take the time in the beginning to strategize and hopefully move forward in a way where you can afford to financially invest in those people for me i have a wonderful um business consultant um kenya shaw and he's been really helpful with me as far as moving forward and and giving me those golden nuggets and those pieces of advice to build right in the very beginning and the structure that i need to have in place to start things right [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast renee rosales and renee came from uh in her own words hard working family parents always had side gigs and so in college she had multiple jobs while earning the earning a degree including i think a painting business or something to do with painting at one point got a degree in education worked in public education for a while got married had some kids um and just got going doing some side gigs while she was raising the family and i think it might have something to do with teaching school or she can correct me wear a bra and then with covid all the kids went online decided to launch your own business and she'll get into a little bit more as to what that is so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast renee thank you so much seven i'm so happy to be here and i love what you're doing with the inventive journey i think it's awesome for us to be able to share our experiences with one another and hopefully gain a lot of wisdom along the way we all have a different journey but um we share a lot of the same struggles and challenges and hopefully we can help each other share some of the same victories um absolutely no and i think that's great now it's always fun to hear everybody's journeys and to help each other along the way so now maybe to kick off you know talking a little bit about your journey so we uh we i gave the 30-second version the high-level version which doesn't i'm sure do any justice to it so maybe with that tell us a little bit how your journey has started with working in you know we're coming up in a hard working family and how you did multiple jobs going through college yeah sure um basically my parents were they're wonderful people they both have full-time jobs throughout my childhood but they always had a side hustle they always had their own business that they did together um and i come from a lot a history of creative people and my parents were crafters my my father's a carpenter and so they created home decor together and they sold that um to different individuals it was before the internet so they had little home groups that would come over and i was a part of that and it was always kind of like the i never even thought about it it was just something we did as a family they recruited us to help them do things i'm a painter um an artistic painter and so that led into me developing a business called artistic accents when i was in college just to kind of supplement i was also waiting tables and getting my degree in english education with a concentration in art and um i enjoyed doing that and i but i had a difficult time really dialing in exactly what i wanted to do with the exception of i knew i wanted to help young people and i saw education as being this huge um benefit and an opportunity for kids that potentially didn't have this kind of resources i did growing up having a way um out or a way um through some more of the challenges it's like you know we know that with an education and now the landscape is changing but in the in the 80s and the 90s you needed to have that degree to get the job and to make a way and so um i went into english education and i loved it but i uh early on recognized that i had leadership uh qualities that other people didn't necessarily share like i was always doing extra i have a i am a high functioning adhder like i i have the energy of the energizer bunny you know i always have done extra and so i got a lot of ed tech experience and that kind of launched me into um online schools and at the time those were i've been clicked on that so because we i think jumped over part of the journey which is so you went to school you got it you know you worked at multiple jobs and doing those things while you're in college you came out with an educational degree now before you got into ed tech and online schools i think you mentioned that you can create more imran you worked as a you know normal teacher in the educational system or teaching kids to face-to-face is that right yeah so i started as an english teacher and i taught inner city cleveland i'm at a middle school and i waited tables on the side and i still had my artistic accent thing going so i was doing a lot of different things all at once um and i loved it i love working with um kids and i i really love alternative um education that's kind of what my niche was i i've always had an easy time working with kids that other people may have found challenging or difficult to reach that was kind of always an easy uh uh ex it's a point of that excellence for me i could just dive right in and find that connection and making connections has never been a problem oh and i think that you know it sounds like plenty to keep you busy and i think that you know but being a teacher is a full-time job and then you add on a couple things now one of the things that we haven't talked before but i thought it was interesting so um what just out of curiosity what part of cleveland were you in the group didn't actually and then i moved to little italy and cleveland i don't know if you would know where that's at that's that's funny just because i went to case for a lot for my law degree as well as my mba degree i went to case western so i actually lived in little italy as well so it's always kind of funny to how small the world is but yeah so we we lived in little italy for the whole time i was uh going to school and so certainly uh familiar with that area as well yeah and i waited tables at corvo's the golden goal when it was awesome still that's always funny that how small the world could be so we'll focus on that but i just had to add there i thought it was an interesting side note that we both had ties to cleveland it sounds like we're in the same area so with that um so now you're saying okay i'm doing you know doing the being a teacher doing additional side hustles trying you know to continue to do that now how did you start to get into ed tech or to doing more online and kind of making that transition was that kind of just branching out from what you're doing as a teacher or as a side hustle or kind of where how did you get into that it's kind of interesting because honestly i had a vocal cord issues when i was um and when my first three four years of teaching and i had to go through some vocal cord operations and at the same time i had met my husband and he was going into his residency and we relocated to arizona and so and my voice wasn't still full throttle i mean i was in with a headset in my classroom because i there was like six months where i could barely talk louder than a whisper and i still push through and we moved and then i was looking for a job in arizona and i ended up they didn't have an english teaching position open but i um found a job they wanted me at mountain view high school in marana which is near tucson and i and i they put me in a computer lab and like i'm very high energy so i happen to know the software system and i developed a credit recovery program um for the students there and it was the first credit recovery program in marana and so after doing that my i went from having no kids in the class and just being monitoring the lab to having seven periods of the day the class was completely full and then the um superintendent came to me and said you know we're recognizing you as an emerging leader we want you to build this school without walls um and that's when really online high schools were first coming to fruition um so i partnered with date was or what year was this just curious you know because certainly now as we've hit covet and now everybody has had to probably experience online schools through degree whether they're done well or not it's a different question but you know what year was this when you started to get into that so i moved um it was around 2000 between 2003 2004 we had to write um and get approval to have the school get rights from the state for that we went through the process and the school doors were open um by the spring of 2004 we had the first students enrolling um and then we moved to flagstaff my husband finished his residency and we ended up moving to flagstaff so we partnered with mesa unified which is the largest school district in um arizona and they were the first public school district to have an online school program so we used their curriculum we shared students um and i went to the then director um doug bernard it's now jennifer eccles and um i said hey can we do this again in in northern arizona so he said sure just find me the partners and we'll make it happen again so i we moved to flagstaff i started teaching at flag high i was teaching english i said you give me a job and i'll bring you an online school and so that's what we did and in 2005 i started another school then it was a program and we made it the 16th school in flagstaff in 2016. so it sounds like you know you started all the way back early 2000s and it's been a bit of an evolution that uh kind of as you're teaching and being part of the the school system that you were continuing to be you know develop that and implement things and be a lot of the point person so now as you've kind of gone through that and you're continuing to go through that how did your journey transition a bit to where you're at today and i think you mentioned correct me again where i'm wrong that has started out a bit with kenna koben and seeing your kids and others having to go online and do things that maybe had not done as well or something along that lines and so how did you kind of what prompted you to kind of go after the endeavor you're at today and did you leave this teaching system are you still there is this a side hustle this is a full-time gig kind of clue a sentence to the kind of how your journey leads you to where you're at today my husband and i did keep a side hustle so when we moved to flagstaff we started in real estate we started renting properties buying properties um dipping into short-term and long-term rentals and airbnb um and we've kept that going from the very beginning uh from our first days in flagstaff but then at the same time i'm building up a school i'm having kids um and really it was a combination of things but um kovid launched me into going into my own business i ended up leaving on fusd in uh this last july to go full throttle with fiara which is um my new company and in large part that was due to my experience as a school administrator and as a mother um i i have five kids but one of my uh my middle son is profoundly dyslexic he was also um born with a condition called childhood apraxia of speech so he didn't really talk till he was almost four for someone that's life is full of words that was really hard for me and at the same time i was pretty well versed in the world of special education at least from an administrator standpoint i was in iep meetings and 504 meetings all the time and i was able to see areas where there were like disconnections and um places we could create bridges and opportunities for better collaboration between parents and schools also you know i was in the thick of it with my own children trying to manage jobs and um i i put together things that really worked for me at home in relationship to well-living and so um in april we were i mean my school northern arizona distance learning tripled in size overnight and um we were we all went online there were some people that wanted to go online with the the school that had been online all the way through and uh i manage it i'm not the type of person that leaves you know it when you're in the middle of a storm i don't do that you know i stick things out and um we successfully got through the year and then i really decided this is time for me to um work from the outside in versus from the inside out i mean when you're in a public in the public sector um there's bureaucracy and there's red tape that you have to work through where as when you're working privately you can kind of make strategic power moves and i think my experience as um in entrepreneurship even though it was kind of minor and a side thing all the way along it's really helped me see because i did struggle in that we didn't lay the right foundation and um i learned i think along the way what needed to happen to to have a more powerful impact right up front no and i think that you know that makes sense and sometimes it is interesting you have to almost get from the outside and it's one where there's multiple things and i didn't i'm not quite to the outside because i'm still in the law or the law practice but a lot of the things i'd even love to do with the legal practice and what we do with miller ip law bugs are trained and you know it doesn't really feel like it until i start talking with other attorneys and kind of explain how we do things and how we approach things and how we tackle them and why it makes sense to us and then it's like yeah this really isn't the norm and sometimes you have to kind of get outside of what people are used to to make that make that difference so it sounds like you kind of found that as well and so now you decide okay i'm going to make the leap kind of make this a more full-time focus and go after that how has it gotten since then i mean certainly coleman has changed things but i think that it's also exposed you know some things that should have probably been available and being being done beforehand and it just kind of accelerated some of that but how has things gone is it you know gone well and it's been well adopted and accepted or is still a struggle or kind of where where are things at today um it's gone extremely well um you're never gonna get in a position i don't think where you're void of struggle that's part of this business right when you're doing new things and when you're an innovator and a trailblazer you're gonna have to you're gonna you're gonna hit challenges you're gonna have difficult times um but i think having building right and having the right mindset going in and that's really kind of the core of what i'm doing with fiara with the ara we're lighting the way to well living for the neurodiverse and those who love them at home at school and at work and i'm doing that by building curriculum well really online training that's very potent easy to follow things that you can take away um to to really help people maximize their reach their fullest potential maximize the time that they have in their day um use principles we give guided principles we use a lot of acronyms i know everybody kind of we i feel like acronyms are overlooked sometimes because they're such incredible memory tools and so i use a lot of acronyms and one of the things that i've really incorporated is the build acronym that we use at theater and that's be the bridge um not the barrier utilize your resources and that was probably one of my greatest challenges is i was doing a side hustle on my own i wasn't i my husband and i would work together but he was like my main point person versus inviting other really talented people onto our team and realizing that you know with that you're inviting creative solutions that's the i in the build so so you're inviting new people new members that have new ideas and then listening intently to those people um that's the l and then directing positively like i think it's really important we have a no negativity role and that's not to say that you're not going to meet those challenges you are but you always have to step back and say okay what's the golden nugget in this yes this is a hardship but it's also training for me how can i take something away what can i learn here how can we do this better so um the journey definitely is a great a great approach now one question i've had that i maybe you'll be able to share shed a bit of insight i mean certainly there's been a large acceleration with covert right a lot of online schooling people are shut down forced by necessity and and you know without getting into political overlays as to when things will change or when things line up i think it's a bit of a crystal ball and the wet state hearing probably overlays that as well but within all that uncertainty but also opportunity you know kind of with all of the change going around where do you see things headed in the next you know six to 12 months for you guys well i'm hoping so the curriculum that i've developed that we're developing is is for home for parents at home for early childcare workers it's also for educators k-12 so it's guiding people through the academic journey and the parents of those students and teaching them how to most effectively collaborate together and then we have know the way at work which is diversity equity and inclusion training that has a neurodiversity focus and we also have a piece that's emerge nd which is how to emerge positively as a neurodiverse individual you know people don't oftentimes wear a t-shirt that says i'm dyslexic in fact i just had a conversation with my son and the car was 12 and he's like you know mom am i gonna what's high school going to look like for me and we i mean literally it was this morning and he had tears in his eyes thinking because he's extremely intelligent he's double exceptional and um he he's like i don't want to sit in a classroom with different kids well that's the whole reason i'm doing theara is to change the landscape and i think what has happened historically or what i saw for many years is kids who struggled in this way a lot of times felt um insecure socially and they would end up online and it can be very isolating for kids online they i think they struggle more with issues like anxiety and depression when they're at home and they're just sitting with the screen and not getting that face-to-face encounter so i think the best when it comes to education is a system where we're merging the best of our technologies and our in-person encounters with one another and that's really what vr is trying to capitalize on how can we do this together most effectively how can we build relationships in the most impactful way no and i think that there's a lot of opportunity and it's i don't know that it's easy or straightforward because i think that to find that balance and we do a lot with our firm of doing you know servicing businesses that are all across the us and trying to find that balance of personal touch and interaction and be able to establish relationship and that's where it's not even an everyday and ongoing thing and it's still a ton of work to find that right balance and so kudos to you guys because i think that there's a lot of their issues to address but a lot of opportunity and done right it can certainly be very impactful with that as we start to reach towards the end of the podcast um if i always have two questions i ask at the end so we'll jump to those now 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 worst business decision and it's kind of counterintuitive i guess but it was just i always dove right in and i didn't always lay the right foundation for that and so i would end up scattered and uh stressed out and full of anxiety when we were hitting trouble zones and i think that that kind of leads right into probably i think what the best thing or or my biggest takeaway was and the biggest takeaway is really building right and that's you know the acronym i was sharing before which is be the bridge utilize your uh all your resources invite creative solutions listen intently and direct things positively so those are my my my best piece of advice um in relationship to entrepreneurship no i think that that that definitely makes sense and i think that that's a easy mistake to learn or to make but also a great one to learn from so the second question i'll always ask is if you're talking now to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them i think the biggest piece of advice is get the right people on your team and don't be afraid of doing that um and i think take the time in the beginning to strategize and hopefully move forward in a way where you can't afford um to financially invest in those people for me i have a wonderful um business consultant um kenya shaw and he's been really helpful with me as far as moving forward and and giving me those gold nuggets and those pieces of advice to build right in the very beginning and the structure that i need to have in place to start things right awesome well i think that's definitely a great uh great takeaway and i kind of like that getting those i think getting those pieces in place on the the front end and getting that setting it up for success can have a big impact on the business so with that if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be a 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 contact you find out more investment contact news at ciara.com t-h-d-a-r-a dot com and we're also on a that's social media and tick tock on twitter on instagram svr away um just w-a-y so t-h-e-a-r d-w-a-y well i definitely oh go ahead um i should be available there you know we i've got a blog going and we're going back with people and there's also an opportunity to describe subscribe to a monthly newsletter and an opportunity to donate and we need all the donations we can because i truly believe the neurodiverse are the innovators of our future you know you have people like like elon musk people like um bill gates steven spielberg you know they all are are self-identified as neurodiverse and they're world changers and so i think we need to really capitalize on that competitive advantage oh i couldn't agree more and i think there's a lot of ways that we can or help people to uh be able to learn the best way possible to have the most benefit and otherwise set them up for success so i think that's definitely a great takeaway and i definitely encourage people to reach out find out more and if you whether you want to be a customer employee an investor or just be uh renee's next best friend definitely a a great opportunity with that thank you again renee 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you um just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show a couple more things as listeners make sure to leave us a review subscribe share because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well thank you again renee for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you for having me this has been wonderful i really appreciate it hey my pleasure have a good one you too [Music]

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The Inventive Journey 
Episode #331
Persistence
w/Chris Stavros

"Persistence is king and, I know you are going to hear that a lot or don't give up, don't have fear. But the way I describe it is there are days when I am kind of afraid of heights and, there are days where I feel like my job is to go, walk on the edge of a seventy-story building and look down. I just swallow it and get on the train and start working. You really have to push yourself past your comfort zone. Don't pay attention to the negative. Focus on where you are getting traction and momentum. Believe in your passion and what you are working on. Focus on building a network with people who really buy into your dream as opposed to spending your nights staring at the ceiling thinking about why somebody told you that you suck."

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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

 uh persistence is king and i know you're gonna hear that a lot or don't give up or don't have fear but you know like the way i describe it is there's days when i'm i'm kind of afraid of heights and i there's days where i feel like i'm my job is to go walk on the edge of a 70-star building and look down and like just swallow it and you know get on the train start working and i it's a it said you really have to press yourself past your comfort zone to uh not pay attention to the negative to focus on where you're getting uh traction and momentum and um and believing you know your passion what you're working on uh focus on building a network of people that really buy into your dream as opposed to spending your night staring at the ceiling thinking about why somebody told you suck [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab sometimes let's just grab some time with us at chat we're always happy to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast chris uh steve rose star ghost if i can pronounce it close to being right um so chris came out of high school and entered into the dot com workforce so started out as a support tech then went to project management um did some things on the engineering side and then after the dot co dot com bubble i'm getting tug and tied all over the place today uh we're after the dot-com bubble uh worked in the educational system for a while um to build software platforms for various um college and other services um and then went over to a digital agency to work with the fortune 100 businesses um and then left that uh left that you found an enterprise portal company um and been doing that for the last 15 years um platform allows you to share your files and to work or to get some work done on the platform and he'll grab a lot more detail i'm sure on that as we chat so with that much his introduction welcome to the podcast chris hey devon thanks for having me today i really appreciate it hey my pleasure excited to have you on so i gave the third or thirty second version of a much longer journey but tell us how uh your journey got started uh coming out of high school and getting into the the dot-com workforce yeah so i actually get exposed to computers really young um had some data entry jobs even while i was in high school uh i think really where my sort of career journey started was i got lucky i applied for a job in a local paper uh for a small software company that was doing pre-press workflow software and they were kind enough to hire me as a sort of a lackey in the office but i very quickly got sucked into the support uh operation and sort of worked my way up through the ranks there so i learned um linux by looking over the shoulder college students that were doing it started to uh work more on the product management side and uh and during the dot-com bubble uh have some really interesting opportunities to work with companies like apple to bring um unix servers to the market uh spent a lot of time on the road a lot of time in trade shows some of the you know big uh shows of the day the mac world and see bold uh and drupal kind of shows and um it gave me a really um broad exposure to what the technology was doing how it was being applied in different disciplines everything from uh business education to consumer space even though you know at that time it was just sort of a fledgling uh space and so i just was everything that related to computers i was sort of you know enamored about um i actually took a break from it for a while while i was going to school and moved to an area where i didn't have access to the technology and ended up coming back and working for the same company a couple years later um in a sort of a more mature role uh started to run parts of the operation got involved in product management running the support group and um what happened was i you know i decided to branch out on my own at the right around the time that the dot bomb happens uh i started a small company doing technical consulting and now let me just ask one quick question you said yeah on your own is it did you have the foresight did you think that the you know you could see the writing on the wall the the bubble was about to burst it just happened fortuitous timing that you just happened to get out at the right time or kind of what made you decide to transition i think um but i was anxious to sort of go off and realize the opportunity that was uh the promise of you know where this technology and uh consumer technology computers in general enterprise uh computing was headed so i you know the bubble for me was um something that i experienced but i wasn't part of some huge startup that fell apart uh you know and went off the rails and so it was more of an observation of what was going on in terms of the spend and how companies were burning through capital and not necessarily sort of get to the other side of the dream but you know i also grew up watching companies like apple which were the underdog for decades uh you know strapped their way to being you know the king today really because they were focused on things like user experience and the quality of the technology so i wasn't so much um paying attention to the business cycles as i was looking forward to the opportunity i happened to make some bad timing decisions and frankly i was a kid i was you know 22 years old and didn't know what i was doing yet but it was my first sort of entrepreneurial foray into doing something independent and it really became the foundation for what we're doing today in some ways uh i cut my teeth in terms of understanding how to work with customers and solve very unique uh custom technical problems that's actually sort of it was a huge foundation for uh what i ended up doing in the agency space in the digital agency space in terms of creating unique custom solutions for large brands so it was a great learning experience i mean i learned how to create a business and you know get insurance and um and you know register an entity and uh go out and fish for business but i also you know it was early my career uh i didn't have any obligations and so it was easy to sort of transition into something uh that worked and where i ended up uh was working for the cal state system so i took a job with a local university here cal poly and san luis obispo and working for their it group i started by running the modem pool and creating the software that was used by students and other and faculty and staff to get connected to the internet um transitioned into a role where we started a program to create a unified web interface for all of the different campus systems that were used everything from matriculation to registration uh going through the campus life cycle and even interfacing with students and or excuse me staff and and alumni uh and let me just ask one question just because i'm kind of curious because i mean what made you decide to go into the educational you know software path and you know was it hey i have a great idea and i think it's can i can do something there prove on it or did they approach you or kind of how did you go in that direction yeah well so it was a sort of a it was a couple of um i guess agendas one was that it was an opportunity to work in an enterprise technology field at a very large scale so this campus is uh is pretty sizable in terms of the number of students and faculty and the institution in terms of the resources and so i it allowed me to use a lot of the skills that i developed in the small software space and pre-press technology and sort of move into a space i was very interested in in terms of dealing with large volumes of users and internet connectivity and solving sort of the broader problem of tying together different technologies to make a business run and i also wanted to go back to school and i you know sort of had a a vision for finishing out what i had started in terms of my educational journey and i and i never actually got to the other side i ended up being so heavily steeped in what i was doing from a career perspective and in terms of what we were doing i mean in a lot of cases at the time we were doing stuff that wasn't being taught yet i think that that landscape's changed tremendously but uh it was we were really pushing the edge of the envelope uh we brought wi-fi to campus you know i was one of the first people to be able to walk around with a laptop on campus and get uh get on the internet and browse the web and at the time that was you know it was incredible people would look at you as if you were an alien walking around with a laptop doing something like that so i it was an opportunity to really play with uh what has become sort of very commonplace enterprise technology now in terms of connectivity security interoperability and being able to glue together uh different systems to solve a broader problem and that really was the foundation for my everything i do now uh as it relates to integration and and solving technical problems it all sort of ties back to this concept of using a a framework a frequently called enterprise portal framework that's used to tie together disparate systems to create a unified user experience on the front end and they can also serve as a exchange for data expert systems and other systems of record just to be able to exchange that information and also augment it with additional information to drive the business where there is no home for it so both from a data warehousing and identity management and a user experience perspective what i really did is i get very deep into the world of creating a custom sort of wrapper around all of these different technologies that campuses and other businesses make an investment in in order to create you know a holistic workflow and experience for users that are using it to drive in this case it was campus operations so uh i it was great because it gave me an opportunity to play with technology at scale i learned a lot about politics in large institutional settings and how to really get um different uh factions inside of a business with different um you know drives uh to get on board and and embrace uh technical change and disruptive change in a way that um that makes a difference and i you know what i'm so excited for today is they're still using uh at the today on campus and across the csu they're still using the same uh portal foundation that that i established there a couple decades ago so that was really a wonderful opportunity to get you know steeped in big boy i.t uh and understand not just that the technical challenges there but also um how you finance that how you manage it how you deal with rollouts very large scales and in mission critical businesses and that was great i so i really i sort of walked out of that uh that space with a very strong sense of how to solve those kinds of problems and what i was hungry for at the time was to do things that were a little bit sexier and more consumer-facing you know i saw the wonderful things that were happening in terms of web development this was pre-mobile pre-smartphone even and um it just so happened that uh i bumped into an agency that was up and coming here uh in the area called level studios which um has turned out to be a darling in the digital agency space it's been known by other names these days sapient razor fish level uh web associates but it's basically a small firm here that was servicing really exceptional brands building applications for companies like apple and cisco and roxy and quicksilver and monster energy and um aeon hewitt i mean it was really uh it was an opportunity to be able to build the very cream of the crop in terms of uh custom applications that drive business uh either partner to partner b2b or consumer facing with the richiest richest you know uh most engaging user experiences you can possibly imagine um and working with teams of professionals in the design uh and and um application development camps that were just basically building stuff from scratch because we were working with brands that had the budget division to do that that was fantastic let me just dive in just kind of one question on on some of that you're hitting on um which is you know for those that are watching the the video version of this um you can certainly see in the background that you have the the make c you know makes the uh banner and and some of that you have going on now how did that fit in with doing some of the enterprise portal or software and doing that with the educational thing is that they continue on or expansion of that is that because i think that that now gets into the augmented reality virtual realities that's still geared towards the educational platform and is it just an expansion of that or is it something different that you started or kind of help us understand how that plays into things yeah so you know um macey has been through its own sort of evolution i left the digital agency space and started a business that was building and hosting couple of custom applications for these kinds of uh brands both back office and consumer facing but the goal of that company was to serve as a foundation for doing stuff that we were really passionate about and wanted to bring to market as our own uh ip and maxie originated as a place to store evolving intellectual property for makers and 3d creators as folks especially in the 3d print space and in verticals like education it's essentially a repository a better place than a dropbox or google docs to store and capture projects and knowledge that are is being exchanged between teams and evolving over long periods of time where we want to capture and retain that information so that the next generation of users can use it so in education it's all about the next uh class coming in and being able to use the project work from previous classes and businesses oftentimes it's about capturing ip before it exits the company and keeping it in a safe place being able to keep track of attribution so you know to call as issues come up and um what we really are is a content management platform that has a lot of focus on uh attribution and is based around a project workflow and what happened was uh augmented reality virtual reality has been a technology space has been super interesting to us for a long time and uh you know a new class of hardware hit the market about two years ago now and apis for that those new classes of hardware to be able to do um development and create user experiences that were that are still today disruptive next level uh very different than what we think of when we kids think of the sort of traditional concept of vr the ability to mix content with the real world to be present with other users and share it as if we're there together to be able to take our audience on a journey to other locations that we can't travel to safely or have access to and so as we started to study that technology we came to a couple of really exciting conclusions one was that it's really hard to get your own content one's own materials into mixed reality on these ar and vr devices like magic leap and hololens and even the quest to uh for collaboration and sharing i can experience you know very highly polished stuff that's been produced by movie studios or game studios or that's been pre-baked but what happens when i want to share material that's important to me and part of my daily charge and so we saw an opportunity there to help solve that problem there also wasn't one easy way to collaborate have any sort of a co-present experience with that content and so uh and we also understood that when you're creating these kinds of experiences you need a place to curate all of these assets and materials that go into these experiences place to write down notes and instructions a place to be able to launch the experience uh when users are surfing for it and reading through to understand you know whether it's worth their time and what what we realized was making us that solution so uh mixi is it really the platform that makes it easy to create those mixed reality experiences and to curate all of that content uh that comes along while you're doing that production work so that you can focus on sharing the content with your audience and having that co-presenting experience awesome now that that definitely makes sense so now help me understand because i like that was a great explanation of what makes c is but it kind of missed the question which is perfect perfectly fine but now i'm you know where i'm trying to understand is you know you've been doing the 15 you know 15 years and in academics you did a lot of the software the platform and then you have make see over here is that one company or in other words where are you at today in other words you know yeah you did you were in the educational area for you know 15 years plus and then this came along is it one in the same is it one more focus on the other you should chasing two things in parallel or helps us understand kind of where you're at today no so what i've described to you was sort of my career journey those were jobs that i took with different companies that you know paid a salary for my participation uh i left the digital agency space and founded the company that is the behind makes me is a brand company called a megabit and um we started makesee as a platform as a product uh of omegabits about five years ago now focused on that originally on specifically in the 3d design and maker spaces and that sort of organically included educational institutions is a natural fit because schools are often using 3d design and maker workflows as part of stem programs so makesee is uh is is our core business today it's the product that we sell into different verticals uh through channel partners that are using this platform as a vehicle for delivering experience in mixed reality that are relevant to their users we have a lot of customers in the educational space um as an example but we're also working in other places like media and events and entertainment and energy sector and elsewhere where uh this is very universal technology uh the way i describe it is you know i just sort of stumbled upon i think that makes sense but rather than dive quite into the technology and we do have a different um podcast series for that and definitely love to have you on that more of the journey of just kind of it sounds like today this is the primary focus in other words but i but what i'll tell you is that everything that i've done up to this point in my career has fed into what we're doing at maxie we're working very heavily in education and understanding how to uh provide solutions in that in that market and that ecosystem that fit and that our cost justified that are relevant from a stem and learning perspective is a huge deal but also my experience in enterprise technology and building software solutions for you know large fortune size companies has given us a lot of insight into how to drive innovation and disruption inside of businesses to allow them to differentiate to get ahead of the competition to be more efficient to do a better job of engaging their customers and so we're i uh and my team a lot of which i've worked with in some of these previous roles who have joined us as a company today are part of make c and our company that are helping solve this problem now using this new class of technology so makesi is uh is my company i'm the founder uh it was seeded out of you know years and years of um of learning uh how to solve these problems using enterprise computing technology and now with this new class of hardware uh devices that have come out on the market we think it's a game changer in terms of what you can do to influence your audience compel them help them understand better uh do a better job of selling and training and support no and i definitely get that i said and i i'd definitely encourage everybody to check it out more because i said i think sure it's certainly a great platform has a lot of applications a lot of uses unfortunately we don't have time to go into all of the pos or all the details of the product and so um but it definitely is insightful to kind of what brought you up to where you're at today and kind of what things are going on not a natural progression yeah sure absolutely so with that as we start to wrap now towards the end of the podcast and i said love to have you back on and we can dive much more in depth into the what you guys are doing today with make c and how that or how that company's evolved but with that as we jump to or towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that i ask at the end of each episode 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 uh oh man i've made a few i guess um worst business decision and i've probably done it a couple times in my career has been to try and have a go out of it on on my own or with a small team you know thinking that we could pull off uh something spectacular um you know with little time and resources so i've learned a lot about how to really understand the hidden costs of doing things and how uh what it requires to engage others and get them uh in involved and on board in a way that creates real momentum um but i think that that's you know uh trying to do something grand with uh in an in too small a capacity is a has been a lesson i've learned a couple times in my career and i definitely applied it to what we're doing these days that makes e no i think that you know there's a lot of lessons learned and you know figuring that out along the way definitely makes sense and easy to make that mistake but a great one to learn from second question i always ask is if you talk to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them a persistence is king and i know you're going to hear that a lot or don't give up or don't have fear but you know like the way i describe it is there's days when i'm i'm kind of afraid of heights and i there's days where i feel like i'm my job is to go walk on the edge of a 70-story building and look down and like just swallow it and you know get on the train start working and i it's a it's a you really have to press yourself past your comfort zone to uh not pay attention to the negative to focus on where you're getting uh traction and and momentum and um and believing you know your passion what you're working on uh focus on building a network of people that really buy into your dream as opposed to spending your night staring at the ceiling thinking about why somebody told you you suck those people don't get it and they don't matter so um my persistence is king i mean that dearly i taught that to my kids and i hope that that's something that people park away with no and i think that there there's a lot of it's a simple you know there's a lot of different ways to say it and be people that are on time and yet there's a lot of truth to it in the sense that you know doing a business whether you know any and having any level of success or any level of ability to sustain it is going to require a lot of that persistence a lot of the time and effort to get into that and there really isn't a replacement other than just doing it and diving in and being willing to continue to work hard and dedicate yourself towards uh building something so i think that's a great piece of advice we've touched on it a bit but for people that want to reach out to they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be in your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to your contacts you find out more yeah uh you can find me um on linkedin my name is chris stavros uh i also could be reached through makec.com m-a-k-e-s-e-a dot com we'd love to hear from you there's some great examples on the site of how the technology applies and we're really eager to see users apply this for their interest in discipline i mean i you know the way i would just explain this is think of us as sort of like youtube for augmented and virtual reality we're putting the power of this technology in your hands to tell your story uh to your audience and it's about virtually any subject matter no pun uh so the opportunity is yours we're really excited to see creatives and teachers and uh influencers and sellers and others take advantage of this uh to do a better job of engaging their audience and taking them on a journey and helping them understand uh and we're here to help uh participate that we're really excited to be part of the journey awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out to you on linkedin on the website or any other way um and and check out uh both the the services you can provide and and uh and and make sure to support you guys so with that 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show couple more things make sure to leave us a review share click subscribe however you can help us to share this with everyone else out there so we want to make sure that everybody finds out about all the awesome journeys so they can be supported along their journey and with that you need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else feel free to go to strategy strategymeeting.com applied and grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help thank you again chris and uh wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last it's a pleasure thanks so much for having me take care absolutely you

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #329
Never Stop Learning 
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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

the first maybe four years of the business you're you're doing three things at once you're working in the business uh so just you know make getting the business going serving customers answering phone calls you know in my case at certain periods you know boeing grass um and then you're working on the business you know what's the marketing system look like what's the employee recruitment system look like what's the what's the employee retention system look like you know how do we activate cold customers all of these things working on the business and then you're working on yourself [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another uh great guest on the podcast brian clayton and uh brian started uh or to start his journey started mowing lawns in high school to make some cash uh made about uh 20 the first time he did some mowing and was hooked and so i'm decided he would take that as far as he could so he built a built a bit of a business around it that could grew it um and also i think continued when he was in college doing it as well as as he was deciding to go forward went to college um graduated built the business or started a business and built that over 15 years um sold that business and then retired but then got bored so i thought about uh thought about an uh an app for doing uber but for lawn mowing um recruited a couple of co-founders and started building that app um the first year was a total flop and failure in his own words i built a second version of it and got a few hundred customers nine years into it they now have over three hundred thousand customers using the app and they never had to take any inside cap or outside capital insight capital probably but outside capital and they're still growing and uh all or all of his businesses have been self-funded which kudos to him so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast brian great intro devin thanks so much i appreciate you having me on your show absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condescended into the 32nd version so let's unpack that a bit and tell us how your journey got started in uh high school bowling loans yeah yeah you just nailed 20 years of entrepreneurship two businesses uh in one industry but yeah i started cutting grass in high school as a way to make extra cash and i was like forced into the business by my father he made me go mow the neighbor's yard on a hot summer day and like you said i made 20 bucks doing that got hooked and i thought this is great you know i can i can mean i can work as hard as i want to work and make as much money as i want to make uh this is why doesn't everybody do this and so people like capitalism it's great well i understand this this is incredible and i just i the first thing i did is i passed out a bunch of flyers all over the neighborhood and got like a dozen customers that first year and uh always had more cash than my friends and it was just amazing i loved it and stuck with that lawn mowing business all through high school uh all through college and then when i graduated business school i thought well what now um should i i didn't really want to be a lawn guy my whole life um i didn't think that's what i went to college for but i thought well maybe this could be my lane this could be the thing that i can kind of work really hard in and make something of myself and and i made a little business plan and over a 15-year period of time ended up growing that that lawn care company into one of the largest landscaping businesses in the state of tennessee eventually getting it over 8 million a year uh or eight figures a year in revenue or before you get too far into your journey so you did this in high school which you mentioned and then i you you continue to do it as you're going to college right that's right so i went to school uh with the night school in college took me like six years to get an undergrad because i just went nights and nights uh and weekends but mowed yards cut grass all day and so i put myself through school and uh and also bought my first house when i was like 20 years old so so business ownership afforded me the ability to avoid student debt and also to start investing in real estate at a very young age which was great ask one other question because that makes sense when you i assume when you got into high school and even maybe early into our college you didn't necessarily i'm reading in there so i put words in your mouth so you could take them out and tell me the wrong words but you know i assume that it wasn't necessarily that you're saying here is the industry that i'm going to be spending the rest of my life in and you went to college got you know kind of went the normal path or got the degree but then you found that you were good at business it was a good stream of income you enjoyed it and it's worthwhile to pursue is is that kind of right or am i reading that right yeah i nailed it i had no dreams and aspirations to be a lawn guy my whole life um in fact i hated cutting grass i hated the landscaping business um i hated the smell of cut lawns hated the smell of mulch uh but i saw that it could it could work at a bigger scale uh because i had two or three employees and i just you know did some some duplication and understood that you know if i had four or five of these crews out there working every day and i was managing them and doing sales that i could actually build a business doing this and so i laid out a little business plan and did that and executed against that plan and eventually growing it's over 150 employees and and and eight figures a year in revenue um a little over 10 million a year in revenue so so uh luckily i saw that as my lane and kind of just put everything i had into it and and was able to build a good good company in it and and it gets acquired too which doesn't happen very often in this industry uh rarely are these businesses ever ever bought and sold so that was a hell of a journey and learned a lot about building a business growing a company leadership systems processes that kind of teed me up for when i started green pal that i kind of was already on first base well for learning the things that you got to learn to get a business going so now and now before we dive to greenpower which we definitely will but you're kind of circling back just a bit so came out of college and i just had a curiosity what did what was the degree in college that you got business administration and you know which was congruent with what i was doing but when i was in school when i was in college uh i'm taking these business classes and i'm like this ain't how business works you know i'm running a business and like they're not teaching me stuff like marketing they're not teaching me leadership they're not teaching me management they're not teaching me customer service they're not teaching me value proposition and how to develop a competitive advantage and and even stuff like managing your personal psychology when growing a business college doesn't really teach you about about entrepreneurship and founding a company it teaches you more or less maybe the the the nuts and bolts of maybe of running a business but not starting one from scratch and so and and i'm right there with it because hey so i ended up getting way too many degrees but one of the four degrees i got was an mba and i was doing that happened to be a different kind of story but i started my first startup while i was getting the law degree in the mba degree and i'd go to the mba school which is much like business administration it's the master version versus the bachelor but i think they cover a lot of the same things or at least i think um and i'd look and say you know half of this seems really fluffy like it's great in concept and you know i think it was for me it was worthwhile in the sense i got some good foundational knowledge and tools and things to work off of but on the other hand i'm saying half of this i never see how it's going to apply it's very fluffy it's kind of just very you know on the the philosophical level and when you get into business then you have to have practical applications so i couldn't agree more that you're coming out and you're getting a lot better education or a lot better practicality in running the business so i always have the opinion you should be running a business if you're as as you're going to college and you can absolutely have that real application so now you come out of college you built you know you say okay whether or not i love the the smell of cut grass which i still like this smell of cut grass so i haven't got to your level but i probably haven't cut nearly as many grasses your lawns but you're saying okay this is a good business i can grow it you know i can do the business side of it i can market i can sell i can build a team and do all that you do that over the period of 15 years what and you know then you mentioned an acquisition was the what was it prompting for the acquisition was it just hey the proverbial too good of an offer i can't refuse or was it hey i finally got to a point i want to do something different or pursue something or have a new idea or i just want to retire or kind of what made you prompt to after putting 15 years and building a business to say hey i want to to do something else yeah i never intended uh to build the company to sell it and so ideally if if that is your your end game that's your goal that your dream you should well first read a book called built to sell which is a really good book about how to how to groom your business and building it and build it in such a manner that you could get it acquired but that's not how i built it and and the reason why i sold it uh was because i realized something in about year 13 that my business was the thing that was causing me to move forward in life it was a thing that caused me to learn things that i never would have learned and take on new challenges and and conquer new territory and i had kind of hit a plateau uh in that part of my life i i was running this business i i had kind of almost taken it as far as i could take it and it was very profitable and and we had a great culture there and we were doing really good but for me to kind of get to the next level of the game would have required me to maybe take it multi-city or or do something or move into an adjacent space or something like that and i didn't really have the desire to do that so i kind of reached a personal plateau in terms of my personal development and it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks one day i was like you know what i should have explore uh an ex and exit explore selling this company and from the moment that i had that notion to the moment that i was able to get it sold was like a little over two years and really probably two of the hardest years that i have ever had in business was was getting that business groomed for sale because i had to reversal engineer a lot of things into the company that weren't there and also the way you run a business as like a family business versus one that you intend to sell are vastly different uh just things with how you make investments into the company and how you manage expenses and how you avoid certain expenses are very very very different so if it's your plan or your eventual goal or dream to sell your company start now work a five-year process and and and start doing the things today that you need to be doing to maximize that outcome no i think that there's a lot of wisdom there and i think you know i think that you can build it to sell a lot of people are saying hey i just enjoy it and you get to the appointment that you're saying either i've taken it as far as i want to take it or i'm worn out with it or you know it's a good offer and um you know all the or all of the different things are coming together and so you say okay this is a good time to make an exit i've you know i've had a good run it's still a good business it has a lot of value and so you're going to make the exit and so you know you sell the business and then i think you mentioned that if craig went from wrong he said okay i'm going to take a bit of retirement or take a bit step back or otherwise take a breather after or you know running in the startup or small business world for now over 15 years so is that right is that kind of the next step that you took for a period of time yeah that's right uh when i sold the company i i thought wow that was really hard uh and i'm beat i'm whooped uh i was 32 or 33 but i felt like i was 73. like it was really really challenging getting that company sold it was also very stressful running a business that size and in that particular industry it's very much uh organized chaos and hand-to-hand combat on a daily basis and so i took some time off uh and and uh maybe it was like a little over six months and i and i quickly got bored quickly uh realized something about myself that i was wired to want to be in the game i was wired to want to be a part of something that was bigger than myself and and that this was now missing out of my life and it was almost like a hole that wasn't there and a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that previous company so it was like almost like i i had an identity crisis almost and so i thought well i want to start another business i certainly don't want to do that again because that was really challenging i want to do something easy i'll start a software business and boy i didn't know what i didn't know uh i thought you know going i i had the idea for an app needed to exist for uh for ordering lawn mowing services much like an uber or a lyft or or even like an airbnb i thought an app needs to make all of this uh easier and so i thought how hard could it be you know i'll just pay some developers and we'll build it and we'll launch it market it and we'll just be off going and recruited two co-founders and we went to work on the idea quickly uh well not quickly took nine months to build the first version but once we released that version we quickly realized like wow this is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be and one thing that i under indexed on or really didn't know was that there's a big difference between running an existing type of business and existing type of industry like a construction company and maybe a house cleaning service landscaping business restaurant whatever versus inventing a brand new product from scratch that does not exist nobody knows how to use it nobody knows it exists nobody knows to even use it and and in a multi-sided marketplace at that connecting buyers and sellers i didn't i didn't know what i didn't know and i was we were quickly confronted with the reality of wow this is going to be really hard but we stuck it out you know we just kept on uh trying to grow the numbers we we ended up ended our first year with like 25 customers uh but uh we we got enough validation from those first few customers that know that this is a good idea that people wanted an app like this people wanted to use something like this and we just kept our nose to the grindstone and now we're uh nine 10-year overnight success we have like 300 000 people using this app to to get their grass cut oh and that's awesome but now one of the things just to or not to gloss over too much and it's always what we want to cross over which which is you talked about a little bit the first year was a flop but it's a failure i get that you had a few customers but it was first of all you know software always seems like it's going you know you get the budget you get the time frame and then it always is like way more expensive and takes so much longer and you're like why is this taking so hard long why is it so hard so i definitely get that having done that on other industries where we've done software and it always makes it look easy because software just on a computer it should be easy but it's not but even then to compound that is now you're taking and creating a new industry or a kind of a new sec or segment of way people approach it and so what was it you know when it's sometimes hard to pinpoint but what was it that kind of made it that first year's in your you know words when we talked before the podcast you know kind of a flop or a failure what caused that and how did you figure that out or adapt it to make it a success later on or in the next version a couple of uh couple of things that i miss miscalculated and didn't really understand because i'd never done this before i ran a traditional business but i never started a tech company is one thing was was that you don't really know what the hell you're building so you have an idea of what the app should look like what it should be how the interfaces should be designed what features it should have what people want but you really don't know and no like piece of technology like survives first contact with the customer and so it's it's kind of like building a house or maybe even a skyscraper with no blueprints and you're just you're just kind of like taking your best guesses on what people want and what people would like to see the features to be and what people would like for it to do but you really don't know and and so then you release it and then you realize all the places that you had like these invalidated assumptions and and then you have to like iterate and correct and fix those things so that's like one one problem the second problem was none of us knew how to code we didn't know how to build software we weren't engineers uh and so so you take the uh you know you take the house plan example and on top of all that you know you have to like you have you're at the uh you're at the mercy of a of a development agency to do these change orders and stuff and it's just it's a nightmare you cannot go through the cycles quick enough uh looking back it's as stupid as trying to start like a five-star restaurant with no chef um like like how silly is that well that's what like starting a tech company with with no development talent and you know in the team it's kind of like is impossible starting a restaurant with with no chef or no recipes and uh so we quickly we like we realized wow this is harder than we thought on many different like paradigms and we we thought well if we're gonna you know if if we really want to do this we're gonna have to learn how to build software so we took every online course we could take read every blog post watch everything on youtube my co-founder went to a boot camp nights and weekends and over the course of like two years we learned how to build software and we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch steeped in the feedback we were getting from our handful of users on how it actually should be built and how and the features it actually should have and the workflows and how they should look and and and then balancing the delicate balance between buyers and sellers on the marketplace and like getting the feedback from users to figure out what that should look like so one thing that looked that stands out like looking back is is that you don't learn then start um you start then learn and and the you know all of these ideas and assumptions we had were like false and we didn't really understand any of it until we actually got into the game started and started interacting with customers and getting that experiential wisdom from their feedback where we able to figure out okay no this is the direction we need to go with this this is how we're going to get there it was really really tough and on top of all that we sell funded it we didn't take any outside capital so that made it challenging as well but uh it was just some of our super super powers were and still are to this day which is consistency showing up every day figuring out what like triaging around what the two or three biggest things we have on our plate let's solve those let's fix those let's move on to the next set of things and just keeping driving the ball moving down the field and doing that for a decade you know now we've got a good profitable business i don't know like that one of the things you hit on in this what drives or what uh i always get pounded on with the the software programmers that i've worked with is that he always have feature creep and that can be one of two things either you keep thinking of new features or ideas that you want to incorporate into the app or even you think of things that you didn't ever think of that you needed in this offer in the app in order to make it more functional to make it work better you just never anticipated either because you didn't anticipate the users would need it or that would be the workflow you know how it goes for the flow of the application or anything else and so it always is just one of those where to your point i you know just kind of had to laugh internally because been there as well where it's just like every time you're just doing another revision another division and you see the dollar signs going up especially when you're self-funding and it's just one where just feels like it's a drag and a drain forever because you always are putting more and more money in and wondering when you're ever actually going to be able to start making money so i think that there's definitely understanding there but i think to your point is you have to get your you know you have to push through it you have to get that user feedback you have to go through you have to start building it you have to have an understanding and all those things that there is just no easy way around it or replacing they'll just have one day you have an idea for an app it's built you know somebody builds it perfectly exactly how you envisioned and there is any changes in that and the market just it works exactly how you envision almost never so i think that there's a good takeaway but it sounds like as you guys stuck with it as you continue to figure it out iterate update it and otherwise figure out where it's placed in the marketplace then it took off and as to what you guys have grown into today um where it's a much larger business and has a much bigger user base yeah and and to your point that feature creep you know on the one hand it's it's bad for several reasons the feature keeps bad it builds a bloated product it makes it harder to understand how to use and the other the the main impediment is it gets in the way of you and getting it in the hands of the customer because that's really the only moment in which you really learn about what it is that people want where you're trying to take the business and so the feature creep is is is it's like it's easier to sit behind the computer and build stuff than it is to get something in the hands of customers and like first-time founders and i've been guilty this first-time founders worry about features and product second time founders worry about distribution because if you've done it before and you're now doing it for the second time you you really understand that there's a minimum feature set you got to have and and you need to get that into the hands of customers but that the bigger problem is distribution and how you're going to market it how you're going to get people to use it because if you build it they will not come you you have to innovate on like product and solving people's problems but you also have to innovate on distribution and growth and figuring out like what are the things what's what what are the what are the unique things about this endeavor that are going to cause it to spread and and i don't mean just like pumping a bunch of money and facebook ads i mean like what is the thing that the hook in the product is going to cause people to to be exposed to it um second time founders worry about that because they know that's harder than than than features i know i agree and i think you know there is that balance because if you have if you don't have that minimum set of features which you do need and which people need for the app if you missed that then you're never going to get adopted because it's someone is so hard to use unwieldy people aren't going to understand and be able to use it and so you do have to nail that but to your point is now you you off it's very hard a lot of times the things that you think you're essential or critical often times aren't and so now you're building it and bloating it or otherwise even just burning time maybe they are great features but you don't need them to get it launched right now you're wasting time that you could have been out there selling get adoption getting feedback and otherwise doing it so yeah i get it it's a hard balance on both especially if it's your first time through but there's definitely a big learning curve but i think to your point you know if you build it 99 of the time they're not just going to come unless they know where to they don't they need to know where to come and then it's even in existence before they can even come and you have to fill that out so i think that's some great lessons learned we could go all day about a lot of fun with the lessons learned and and we'll have to have you back on and maybe uh talk a little bit more about that that aspect of things but uh for this journey for this episode now as we kind of reach the present day of where the business is at and the journey that's taken to your at today always have two questions i ask at the end of each podcast so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is long your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it well you know success is a lousy teacher and so you you always learn from your mistakes and it's okay uh you're gonna make them you just try not to like uh make uh mistakes that are going to sink the company right you try to you try to make mistakes a lot of times in in business it's more like poker and not chess it's it's you're making small bets you're making bets on things and half the time or more they don't they don't pan out but some big mistakes that i have made particularly in building green pal was we delegated too soon meaning that we we delegated all of the technology development to an outside shop and that was a disaster and then and then we like had the scars from that and then three took us three or four years to to build out a team and then we delegated too late so we delegated too soon and then delegated too late and so a lot of times when you're building out a team and you're delegating to teammates you you want to delegate from a standpoint of stewardship and not one of education like education is i don't know how to do this it scares me i don't want to learn how to do it you handle it like that's always a recipe for disaster stewardship is here's the scope of what i need you to do here's how long it should take here's how much i think it should cost here's the how we're going to measure the quality of it here's one i want it back by and here's here's our standards and and and that's stewardship delegation so so once you get to a point where you can delegate from a standpoint of stewardship you should do so very quickly because that's a force multiplier so that's a mistake that i made i had to learn it the hard way and it was it was it was a difficult one took me it probably cost me three or four years no i think that it is one of those where on the one hand you always want to delegate because you're too busy too many things to do and so you're wanting to hand things off and you know rightly so if their people can do it better faster cheaper than you can you shouldn't be focusing on it but there is that sometimes hanging it off too early then you're going to hand it off to people they may not give them enough direction training guidance oversight and even if they are competent good it can still set that up for secure for failure and make it a much more difficult thing and vice versa you can get too long and then you hold now you learn that lesson okay i'm not going to delegate and you hold on to it too long and now it just has the opposite effect of to where now when you're it's slowing down the business because you're not letting other people do it they could do a much better job so i think that's right it's a easy mistake that almost i think all entrepreneurs will make it at some point and yet it's one where is it's definitely um you know one that is a great to learn from second question i always ask is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them yeah you know it's this stuff's hard um the first first off it can be the best thing that you do with your life so i would encourage you to do it um but the reality is is is that it's it's a seven day a week thing uh it's it's especially in the first few years the first the first maybe four years of the business you're doing three things at once you're working in the business uh so just you know make getting the business going serving customers answering phone calls you know in my case at certain periods you know boeing grass um and then you're working on the business you know what's the marketing system look like what's the employee recruitment system look like what's the what's the employee retention system look like you know how do we activate cold customers all of these things working on the business and then you're working on yourself you're you're listening to podcasts reading books listening to audio books listening to uh conferences on on on youtube that you didn't go to that you probably should have um and so so you're doing all three of these things at once and it's really like a seven day a week thing to to make to to get a business going from scratch from zero to one that's that's what it takes so so i would tell i would tell anybody that's new listening to this that that get in the game uh because only when you're in the game can you win and be willing to just pour your soul into this thing for three or four years and that's not just you know a lot of times people get stuck in that in the business thing they don't work on the business or on themselves and so they stay stuck there and they get burnt out be cognizant of the fact even down to like managing your your weekly schedule that maybe monday through friday's in the business and the saturday is on the business and sunday is on yourself so you can quickly see how this is a seven day a week thing and so that's the advice that i would give anybody getting started i like the one thing you'd hit on you know multiple great pieces there but uh is the i like the continual learning or figuring things out in the sense of you know i listen to a ton of podcasts i'm always consuming that reading book and learning things and i kind of like you guys found out that hey we just need to learn at least enough of programming or how to do this whether it's we all do it ourselves and build it from the ground up or at least we have enough of a foundation then when we are hiring programmers if they are doing things that we know whether or not is what's necessary and what that's right you know doing i think you need to get that that level of education understanding and always be learning and you know that's one of the things even as i got into the law firm and i had the mba and i had the law degree and i've been doing it for a while and yet i'm still always learning because you know what are new ways to help the customers what are new systems what are new ways to reach out to them and market and sales and all those things and even if i had a good foundation when i started it's continuing to evolve and change and you have to continually have that learner mindset so i think that's a great takeaway absolutely and and uh it's it's dynamic it's it's a lot of times it's blocking tackling a lot of times like i spent six months reading every book i could read on copywriting because i was trying to be a decent copywriter uh i i uh was it was in some uh a lawsuit with with with somebody over a business agreement and i spent like uh four months reading every every legal book i get my hands on so i could be a better consumer of financial services um a lot of times you're moving it around and you're and maybe you need to pick up a book on leadership and you spent four months reading everything john maxwell ever wrote because you're now building out a team and you realize you're a crappy leader you move it around like it's it's blocking tackling for whatever you're dealing with at that stage of the game whatever level you're on um and and and before you know it you do that for five years you're like wow i'm 80 20 good at a lot of different things and it's kind of cool yep no i agree and i think that then it gives you a foundation even what i find is a lot of times even as you're hiring people on bringing them on have new teammates or you know people on the that are doing things you can still pull from that foundation in the sense that now as you're managing them as you're directing them making sure things are done you may not be doing the day-to-day but you still need to have that foundation to make sure it's done right or that you can give them the guidance and the direction of the training they need so i think there's that's right a lot of a great piece of advice but we can go on all day but as we're wrapping up the podcast for today if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to use your app 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 is the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more yeah you know any life's too short to mow your own yard so just download green pal and the app store or play store uh if you want to check out the app anybody who wants to hit me up you can reach me at insta on instagram brian m clayton just dropped me a following a dm there awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect download the app and otherwise uh get her to check it out so well thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you uh have your own journey to tell them you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com fly to be on the show also as a listener make sure to click subscribe make sure to click share make sure to leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome journeys so we can help businesses along their journey to success and in that vein if you ever need help with your patented trademarks or anything else to business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always they're happy to help thank you again brian for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin [Music] you

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The Inventive Journey 
Episode #330
Don't Waste Time
w/ Mick Smith

"Anything that you don't think you can do. If you are an entrepreneur, don't waste time trying to figure it out. It's going to waste time and, it's the one resource that you can never get back. People will ask what's the most important thing in your life and you go well you know there are a lot of things love, money, what have you but believe me time. The older you get to realize this, that is the one resource you don't have enough of and, it's limited so, it's going to end. So the best thing to do is to do what you can do. Use the talent and skill and the knowledge that you have and everything else; if you are starting out as an entrepreneur, make sure that money is going to the things that you don't know cause you are just going to be wasting a lot of time and resources and, you won't get the return on it. ROI is the bottom line here."

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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

 anything that you don't think you can do if you're an entrepreneur don't waste time trying to figure it out it's going to waste time and it's the one resource that you can never get back and people ask you what's the most important thing in your life and you go well you know there are a lot of things love money what have you but believe me time and the older you get you realize this that is the one resource you don't have enough of and it's limited so it's going to end so the best thing to do is to do what you can do use the talent and skill and the knowledge that you have and everything else if you're starting out as an entrepreneur make sure that money is going to the things that you don't know because you're just going to be wasting a lot of time and resources and it won't you won't get the return on its roi is the bottom line here [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has thrown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast mick smith and uh mick uh when he was in high school was interested in in history and probably came out of uh school in the 60s and 70s or was in school so there was certainly plenty of history here plenty of things in history going on at that period um graduated right at the end of the draft went into college majored in history and i think minored in religion became a professor or taught at school for a period of time um then the internet hit around 94 became interested in the internet i got into broadcasting and also was putting courses online early on which seems to still be her education sometimes still is catching up to that so it was way out of his time i did some consulting work as well um then hit a low point in life realized that he uh it was making money for other people as a consultant but not necessarily himself and was wanted to change that a bit so i decided to get into digital marketing with marketing with the internet i'm at the same time also i was working for startups and i got it or got out before the internet bubble burst and then focus on the digital marketing agency and has been doing that ever since so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast mick oh thank you so much i appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience and also like to help people if i can and learn from all the mistakes that i have made over the years so i'll try to avoid those awesome well definitely it will be a great conversation and uh looking forward to it so with that um you know i took and uh packed your you know a much longer journey into the 32nd version but let's unpack that a bit so tell us how things got started for you in high school with the with your interest in history yes i was at a very contentious time in american history two things really dominated my generation growing up and that's civil rights and the vietnam war so i was fortunate i got the tail end of the draft but you know i was wondering what would happen to me and how my life would be very different so i'm also very grateful to all the veterans out there especially the vets in the vietnam era because that could have been me and i could not be having this conversation potentially so if i had been drafted to my two closest buddies in high school said we definitely would have gone there's no question about it because i love my country i love america and all the things that you can have is an opportunity and i was fortunate i live to put it simple as that so trying to figure out what my place in the world is and that's what i think really motivated my interest in history and religion trying to figure out things first from a personal point of view but then also just trying to figure out what was going on during that time so my parents beautiful people wonderful parents and the best in the universe ever had been but they were from another generation and the 1960s and into the 70s was very very different from their very isolated area in northeastern pennsylvania so they didn't necessarily know what was going on i had to figure it out for myself and that's kind of what got me on my journey kind of intellectual and kind of and then eventually trying to get into academia as early part of my career so and that makes sense so yeah you're coming out and it's certainly a interesting point in time that with a lot going on so you say okay uh you know end up going off to college and i said you got the degrees um in in religion and uh and uh and whatnot and as you're coming out of getting your religion and history degrees you know which makes sense you had an interest in history you know what made you decide to go into professorship is that the typical path for a history and religious major or degrees or how did you get into professorship and then where did your journey go from there yeah that's what people say well if you're gonna major in history and religion what are you going to do with that right so especially coming out of a blue collar family as i did my dad was a factory worker so he was one of the people who would always chide me from time to time when are you going to be a permanent student so my answer to that in emphasizing in liberal arts or understanding those kinds of things you're articulate you can read you can write you can do those kinds of things when people ask me what are you going to do with those degrees and my answer was short and sweet anything i want so i think i turned that into an advantage and again knowing something about the world the context the background history and religion are helpful because it really gives you an in-depth view of things and if you can understand the past that gives you insight into the future and i was thinking in terms of career this is something that just really helped me i have the advantage of being able to look into the future a bit because you see patterns because you things that have repeated things have happened before and you can get a better idea and able to predict things are going to happen in the future as well so it's really turned out to be an advantage and i got to be honest i have done everything that i've ever wanted to do in my life and so i'm pretty fortunate in that regard hey if you can accomplish everything you want to in life there's no better place to be so now you did that and how long did you go into the educational and do academics yeah i did that early part of my career and that was the goal to answer your question because there really isn't a whole lot other than what you can do with those degrees at least initially and just teach so teaching and researching and what have you so you had mentioned in the introduction so about 1994 which again really early kind of like when the dinosaurs roam the earth and internet speak i said yeah there's something really significant going on here and i'd want to be a part of that so i started doing some consulting work at that time and i realized that after a while really being able to consult was very rewarding as well too so i got into say the digital marketing era and sort of understanding how the internet was evolving at that time but early on it helped students and that was the bottom line because they're pressed for time well one question i had on that because i mean you started to get into the internet and show interest in that was that you're still doing a professorship and teaching or did you say hey this is too good of an opportunity you know put academia aside and get into the world of the internet and find a career there kind of how did you make that transition as the internet came around yeah the thing is odd because when i first started doing this i worked with a graphic designer computer science person the content expert there was a number of us but i noticed like after about nine months and i definitely don't have a computer science background but i'm like well i almost know everything that this guy does and he's a professor so i thought well in another field well if he can do it and i've learned it i must have some skills there and then you find consulting work and they said you know it's lucrative so you realize well there is a financial advantage in this as well too because other people are getting into it and getting into the fact that you could offer distance learning courses so that's what i did so i'd see it kind of like was a a transition that was easier than you might think because i would say i don't have i know enough about the technology to be dangerous but i'm certainly not as sharp and good as programmers and other people but realizing that other companies and other organizations also are interested in the internet and it was a growing field so i think that was the attraction the movement the idea that this is growing and there's perhaps i had some talent and skill in that area as well that makes sense so and partially answered my question now i'll follow up with just the rest of it which is um you know so did you as you're figuring that out you're saying okay hey i don't have a degree in this but most other people don't either we're all figuring out together and i know as much or as more as the next guy type of a thing did you say okay i'm gonna put you know and you originally started kind of incorporating that the classroom doing online classes and that now how did you how or when did you decide to make the transition to doing it more full-time or is it endeavor doing consulting or going and working for others on it or kind of what was that that part of the journey yeah it was that's a good question so i was in the philadelphia area which is not known for its technology although that was actually where eniac was that's in world war ii when they were trying to figure out how to shoot artillery accurately the eniac was one of those early computing applications and it did come from the university of pennsylvania so there is and was a computer industry in that area but actually i got an opportunity at a startup and i thought well okay again pretty strange transition to answer your question like well how does a liberal arts professor end up at an internet startup well it was an interesting experience i walked into this room and i'd never seen anything like it there was a secretary at the front they open up the doors and all i see is about 50 or 60 computers and people sitting at desks and they were like the picnic table type desk no offices no separation of it this is a very bizarre work environment but what it means that of course it wasn't totally internet-based business so again something new something fresh and i think that's where the intellectual attraction came and then you know there is a certain amount of money involved in it as well too so it turned out to be lucrative so it was an opportunity and you know occasionally opportunities they come your way and you open the door and you walk in and that's basically what happened and then to kind of cap that story again this ability to sort of look to see what was happening i get out just before the dot-com bubble bursts because again i can see well this is not sustainable because the founders would get something like they'd run out to the silicon valley get 11 million dollars and they say we're successful but i'm asking some basic questions like hold on a minute you know you guys are not profitable you know you're raising money but this may not be a business which is going to actually be successful so it's also time to get out as well no and i think that makes sense and you know some people that were you know there and that that still goes on a bit today you will you'll see companies that will be living off investor dollars for a long period of time and you're saying sometime they either have to get profitable or have a path to profitability or they're going to go under you can't live off of that for forever now there are a few exceptions that have been living off in a very long time but at some point they still have to do it as well and so you say okay have the sure a bit of the the foresight see that that's coming and that it's not a sustainable model let's get out before the bubble burst which it certainly did so what did you or how did you get out or where did you go as you were getting out or trying to figure out what is the next step if it's not working at a company that's living off investor dollars for the foreseeable future where'd you go from there yeah it's kind of interesting because you know the this path to success does not take a straight line there's no question about it because i still had to do some soul searching at that time and well where am i going so at roughly the same time the american association for history and computing was just getting started so i go okay well got part of the academic background got part of the internet background let's go in this direction so i did start seeing that in academia they also were getting on board and knowing the fact that the internet was going to change things in terms of marketing in terms of their recruitment and in terms of driving people who are going to attend a university or college so again kind of a transition there it was also unfortunately kind of a low point in my life so everybody's been there at one time or another so everything was not going as planned my wife was unfortunately terminally ill she passed away so it was also a time where i realized i'm a full-time dad not necessarily by choice but i raised my daughter from the time that she was eight years old on so now i got another problem a lot of bills legal bills financial bills medical bills and an eight-year-old daughter to raise by myself and at the time i had all of five dollars and 20 cents in my pocket and when i say i had no money i had no money so my car had also broken down at that point so low point everybody can relate one time or another doesn't necessarily be the same details but had to do some soul-searching and said you know i've got to be able to make a living and also being able to raise a daughter at the same time as a full-time single father so looked at consulting work because it does have the advantage of being both lucrative and then available in terms of time because you've got to be able to juggle the home responsibilities with the work responsibilities so did that started to see also again it's a soul-searching moment i'm making money for other people but hey wouldn't it be great if i was making money for myself and support my family and my household and what i need to do so i think it was very fortunate because you know i looked upstairs and there's the big man upstairs who's got a plan for my life and i said well yep thanks god because you're giving me a little bit of direction when i really really need it so relying on god was really helpful at that point and i think then being able to help other people because i could see the kinds of things and mistakes they had made having been in the internet game and marketing now for some years starting to see that they also were realizing that the internet is a way to go and so you know you can see where we get into social media and how the internet has evolved and it's a continually interesting field because it is very dynamic and that appeals to the intellectual side of my nature one and i think that's definitely an interesting journey and path that you took and one kind of maybe follow-up question to that which is so you know you get consulting and say okay got knocked down a lot or certainly uh grieving from the passing of your wife having to figure out how to pay for all the bills how to take care of a kid as a single father now plenty on your plate and so he's saying consulting is a good path that i can go about be able to you know earn that greater income have a better path maybe have a bit more of the flexibility in other ways go down that route and now as you're doing consulting what you know it makes sense also you know i think a lot of people initially get into consulting going to find out hey i think i can do this as well or better as the people i'm helping consulting and yet they're the ones that are i'm helping to make a lot more money than i'm making or doing the consulting instead of saying i'll do that on the side but you know that's a lot of times it's an easier transition it's kind of like you know the employee that is looking in and saying i can always do it better than my boss and i can always do you know anything better and then you get into the the boss seat or they kind of go and do it and they say oh there's a lot more to this i have to you know run payroll i have to do marketing i have to do sales i have to manage other people do hr and all those other things some people thrive and love it and other people are saying this is a lot different than what i envisioned as you're kind of figuring all that out how did you figure out what you were going to you know what it was that thing was going to be that now you're no longer going to be a consultant you're going to do your own business how did you kind of arrive at what that would look like yeah i think you know there's a strong case to be made about things that you like and you don't like but any position that you have is going to have a job aspect to it in other words there's things that you enjoy doing and then there's the job part of it but it doesn't matter whether you're working for yourself or you're working for somebody else so i said look if you're an entrepreneur which is what i would tell anybody who wants to start a business or is in a business if you're an entrepreneur you're the guy who unlocks the office door in the morning and you're also the guy who takes out the trash so you got to keep that in mind it does mean that there's everything that you do need you're the one who's going to be making all those decisions so again something i learned from the internet outsource the things that you are not strong in but able to keep the skills and the talents that you have and everything else is cheaper to outsource so for example i'm not really a accountant i don't really know the financial part as well as other people so again i outsource that it takes time away from my job and when i'm applying with this to other companies i'm saying the same thing to them look if you're running and you're selling widgets let's say right whatever it might be you're not going to be an expert in social media and you're not going to be an expert in having a website so that's where i come in i said all right well i will strategize with you but if you're going to try to figure out google ads believe me it's going to take you a lot longer and you're going to waste a whole lot of money outsource that stuff run your business and i think i can apply the same thing to my own life and my own journey as an entrepreneur i'm going to do the things that i can do and i'm going to take somebody else's talents and pay them for it so again it kind of transitions into when i didn't mention when i was back in college many many many moons ago i also started out in radio so i've always had a love of the audio medium so that's why i too like you i've got a podcast a doctor a digital podcast i said well that i've got a skill you know i've got something i can do and it's also something that other people can do when i talk to business owners i go number one do you have a voice i say yes number two do you have a business that you are somewhat of an expert in they say yes all right well you know think about podcasting you know if you're an expert in something and you know a field then tell the world and that's your journey and that's your passion because there's people that run businesses that know far more about things than i do and i'm always trying to pick other people's brain because they know a field that i don't and i respect them for that they need to tell the rest of the world no i think that's a that's a great outlook and a great way to continue to gain knowledge and experience and make the business successful so so now you do that you say okay i'm making that transition i am going to go from consulting to building my own business and we've now i think been doing it for 15 20 years something like that yeah right so now you're doing that 15 20 years i'm sure you have your ups and your downs and your your bumps and things that you learned but as you're figuring that out now you've been doing that for 15 20 years where is you know if you're to look now kind of in the next six to 12 months where do you see the business going is this kind of keeping it even kills like continuing to grow is it evolving into different areas or kind of where do you see things headed you know there's a great line by bob dylan because at the doctor digital podcast the subtitle is marketing tips with a musical twist so i do love music and there's a line from bob dylan he says he who isn't busy being born is busy dying it's a great quote so i'm one of those people who say themselves despite the age and the look on my face i'm like i'm still wondering what i can do when i grow up because i think the point that dylan is addressing is the fact that you always have to reinvent yourself and those of us who are living in these tumultuous times look change is constant and it's something that ancient philosophers would talk about you know you can't put your foot in the stream at the same point because everything is changing therefore you have to adapt and i think when i said things having to do with digital marketing or the internet because it's such a dynamic area it appeals to a person like myself who understands that dynamism is really the nature of the world things change very quickly and a lot of us have experienced a very different lifestyle in the last two years for obvious reasons than they did previously well what did you expect did you expect the world to be stable it's not things are going to be changing so knowing and really getting yourself centered on what is real and true and what have you that you have in terms of your skills and the journeys that you are on and the journey that you can the path that you can follow i'd come back to saying you know look i can't figure it out and this is where i say i'd rely on the big man upstairs because a lot of these things i don't have an answer and i'm not sure but i do know that following the true path and following path that god has outlined for my life is gonna continue and that's what have happened because i have enough experiences in my life social media is changing drastically if you think about drill down you talk about facebook you talk about instagram tick tock what have you these things are not standing still they are constantly evolving and changing and that's what makes it an exciting field and it also means that somebody needs to consult with a person like myself or someone else who stays on top of this on a daily basis no and i think that that that's there's certainly a lot of truth there and a lot a lot of points hit on so that's uh definitely a a great uh great opportunity to do in the future for those that are continuing to to get busy living and sort of get busy die and so i think that's that's a great takeaway so now as we you know as we arrived at a bit of where you're at on your journey today or where you're at the present always a great time to transition to the two questions i always have at the end of each podcast so we'll hit on those now okay 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 yeah i think that's an excellent question so i appreciate that and here's what i would say the worst business decision that i ever made is consistently almost the same thing and i can't center on one thing but i would tell you this the worst decision that you make is to do nothing and there are times when i got stymied there are things and times where i didn't know what to do and i sat on it and i go that's a mistake because you need to constantly be moving and constantly be looking and whatever you think you ought to be doing it's probably something that you know in your heart and it's probably something that you think you should be doing well don't wait it's the worst business decision that you can make is to not do anything and to be stagnant and i think you gotta move so that's always the worst thing every time i've been stymied every time i delayed it was a mistake i lost opportunities and i would say encourage everybody else to do something if you feel you should do something in your heart and it's in your gut you should go for it and don't wait awesome well i think that's definitely you know i think that sometimes you know the not doing anything can be more you know bigger mistake or be more impactful is to you miss out on opportunities or you don't take advantage of things you could have then it could be for a myriad of reasons whether it's you know fear whether it's complacency whether it you know risk aversion or other things and so i think that uh when you sometimes become that complacent it can have that negative impact that you're hitting on so i think that definitely is a great an easy mistake to learn to make but a great one to learn from with that the second question i always ask is talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them yeah i think um it kind of goes back to what i was saying anything that you don't think you can do if you're an entrepreneur don't waste time trying to figure it out it's going to waste time and it's the one resource that you can never get back and people will ask you what's the most important thing in your life and you go well you know there are a lot of things love money what have you but believe me time and the older you get you realize this that is the one resource you don't have enough of and it's limited so it's going to end so the best thing to do is to do what you can do use the talent and skill and the knowledge that you have and everything else if you're starting out as an entrepreneur make sure that money is going to the things that you don't know because you're just going to be wasting a lot of time and resources and it won't you won't get the return on its roi is the bottom line here no i think there's a there's a lot of truth to that i mean i think that you know which is or there's a bit of ironic because i think that as you're doing a startup or small business people that's where they focus all of their time and efforts and i am a big believer that that's not the only part no i love it i'm a big startup guy there's a lot of fun to it and i i definitely wouldn't uh change it on the other hand if i were to then focus all of my time and effort just on the startup on the small businesses at the expense of my family religion and even just you know personal satisfaction hobbies and enjoyment i would never have that balance in it and and so i think that looking at where you're going to invest your time and where you're going to get the greatest return whether that's business money you know or giving back serving others or you know having a family or whatnot is definitely a great takeaway because i think that looking at your time as your biggest investment is a great way to look at it with that if people want to reach out to you you know if 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 your contact here find out more yes well i try to be as visible and audio available as possible dr digital podcast but you can also get a hold of me at mick like jagger except he's got a lot more money mick.smith at wsiworld.com we simplify the internet mic.smith wsiworld.com or you can call me direct 619-389-360 619-389-3636 all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect and take advantage of a lot of experience a lot of opportunities and the the great services you guys offer so well 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 you have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we always love to have our great people great journeys on the podcast so feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show a couple more things listeners make sure to click subscribe share leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks anything else your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well thank you again mick for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last let's hope so and if you need intellectual property help say is the guy a lot of us are not expert get a good attorney absolutely couldn't set it better thanks mick thanks for your time i appreciate it be well you

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #329
Know How To Listen
w/ Adam Frank
Connect With Me

"Speak with as many people as you can. But, always know how to listen, and what to learn from every type of conversation and from every interaction."

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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

 speak with as many people as you can but always know how to listen and what to learn from every type of conversation from every interaction um [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several 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 if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast adam frank and uh adam was born in australia um and went to or moved to jerusalem when i think when he's around eight years old um joined the army of the air force he'll have to remind me which one it is and i was there for about a year um and then ended up leaving that and did some analytics i think it was for the air force and then studied computer science got an mba as well um did some interesting work on twitter correlations with presidential campaigns they'll have to hit on that and then work for a startup also worked for a startup as a student continue to work for that startup after graduating then decided to do his own startup with a partner partner had a bit of hesitation so had to convince him to do the startup got funded scaled quickly pivoted in a new direction and uh and the change to change things around a bit and then has arrived at a bit where they're at today so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast adam hey thank you thank you so much for that great introduction a pleasure to be here how you doing absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed it into the 32nd version of it so let's unpack that just a bit so um tell us a little bit about how your journey got started in australia and israel and and how things got going from there okay um so yeah i was born in australia um 35 years ago uh i you know start i um lived in melbourne and then at the age of eight my parents just decided that uh it's about time for us to um to go and move to israel the the promised land or jews so um you know we have to go and and live uh in israel so that's that was my parents ideology uh nobody asked me as soon you know as soon as i know and you as soon as i knew i just uh popped here in israel started my life it was it was quite a change when i say okay you know i'm sure that the the difference between israel culture and uh in australia is a bit of a different contrast and um sounds like it'd be uh you know a good move and uh was beneficial now i think at one point as you're growing up you joined it was the army of the air force i couldn't remember which one it was right so i joined the air force in the army um i was there for five years uh the first year i was in the flight academy and then after a year they kicked me out um unfortunately or maybe fortunately they usually start from like the first first first uh interview 20 000 and they finish with 50 pilots uh every six months so when they kicked me out uh we were 100 people out of the 20 000 so i was very very close to graduating um and then after the flight academy i um i went to um to the uh intelligence units within the air force so i was an officer there for four other years and that makes sense and so you know and i have a brother-in-law that's also in in the is an air force and he flew for a while now he's moved over to doing some uh drone piloting in other areas of his career but sounds like you know i think in every area in every country being the elite of or flying the the planes even if you're awesome at it is still a very competitive program so sounds like your experience was very similar but now then moving over to analytics sounds like it was a great opportunity so now as you're coming out of the air force you're finishing up there doing the analytics and i think you went moved on or then continued on and studied computer science and got an mba is that right right so then i went to um to study computer science at the hebrew university um and it was a really great degree and i i was exposed to so many amazing things in the in the in the math world and in the algorithm world and it was great as a matter of fact that's where that's when i actually met idan my co-founder and that was also the first time that we were actually exposed to the creator economy um when we were studying for tests we were following small size creators who are explaining really hard algorithms and interesting uh things that we just couldn't understand uh during the lectures so um you know at the time it was it was really trivial that we would reach out to those creators and ask questions um but they never answered us so um you know that that was the beginning of who we are today wizio but uh we'll get we'll get there but but at the end of the day we reached out to so many creators and and nobody answered us now you're doing all that and so you're getting into computer science you're viewing the mba and you're also reaching out to creators now circling back to one other thing that is off topic but on topic uh that you mentioned is you also i think while you're at school and correct me if it was during school or after you also worked on a twitter correlations campaign for presidential or for presidential campaigns or understanding the correlation is that right yep yep yep so so after my first degree i immediately continued to the to my mbas um and the final project there was with a really great professor called ronan feldman he is an nlp expert so i got exposed to all of the the nlp machine learning technologies uh while working for for that project and we did an amazing amazing final project where we were trying to find correlations at the time it was between um between hillary clinton and donald trump and we want they were like running for the elections and we tried to automate and understand the correlations between their daily tweets and the change in the daily polls the day after and so we built a robot that knew how to extract all the tweets and understand them and understand what what what what is the topics of these tweets and what's the sentiment about around these tweets and we found really crazy correlations we found that um like i think that the number one um the number one thing that really moved the needle uh was them crashing about each other and not about and not talking about any really important things um we also saw that when hillary got sentimental in specific topics then um the daily poll usually went down for her and when trump got sentimental saying the same topics he usually got up and that's you know probably because of many gender issues and things like that but but we found like really really interesting correlations and that was the first introduction to machine learning technologies for me oh and i think that's a both an interesting and fun uh application also you know kind of a bit real world and so it gives you a lot of a great insights as to how you might apply that or you know apply some of that machine learning so now as you're going along and doing that and you know you're studying getting the mba studying those things i think at some point while you were a student then after you graduated you started working for or someone else's startup is that right true yeah i worked for a startup called talk media it was backed by jvp one of the biggest vcs in israel um and i started as a student i i was the qa there and um with more lux luck than brains i actually ended up being their cto and i worked there for about four and a half years um and it was it was really more like the brain because i was uh i was relatively affordable um and i had tons of passion and they just couldn't afford the the mega star cto so they just uh i just i just got there and one once i was there i had a huge support from from the ceo ron um which is actually part of the the c-level team today in wizio and we're working together again but i had a huge support from him um to uh to to become a proper cto i was like totally afraid and intimidated by this by this mega position out there but you know he was so encouraging and he believed in me and at the end of the day i i owe him so much uh due to that because i got exposed to all the managerial aspect of starting a startup becoming a partner in startup i was added to all those important meetings together with ron and i actually learned so much about every single aspect of a startup from from from from you know from bottom to top that's awesome and that's always a great insight to have i mean there's a difference between having a good idea or getting it and you know and developing it versus getting it out in the marketplace and you know why people think hey all it takes is a good idea and implementation there's a lot more to the business side and to get that exposure early on definitely sounds like it was beneficial so now as you're you know bit working for the startup going along and doing all those things and and you know learning along the way you know what kind of at what point did you decide you wanted to go to your own startup you know or kind of what prompted kind of saying hey you know i'm getting a lot of experience getting a lot of insight which is awesome and great now i want to kind of go my own way or do my own thing you know at what point did you um kind of what triggered that and what prompted to go in that direction right so i think i owe this a lot to edan my partner um he came to me after a few good years that i was working in talk media and he said hey adam listen you know you're one of the most creative people i know uh and together we're a very very good team um let's start a startup together and i was like hey buddy dan you know we we don't have an idea we don't have this we don't have that and he was like don't worry about it we'll be fine and um and i'll send you some materials to go over them and and well dwell on it and and uh it was like he really pumped me up and he pushed so many so many materials to me and eventually after about i don't know maybe two months i said you know what he done you're totally right i can see the opportunity we um we understood that there's a huge opportunity in the emerging creator economy it was about six years ago maybe five and a half years ago it wasn't as obvious as today that it's such an amazing amazing amazing market at the time it was a relatively small market you had a few kardashians out there nothing too serious um but but we saw the huge potential and we saw that the trend and we also understood that the cheaper mobile phones will be the cheaper uh videos video cameras will be um we will see more and more and more creators out there and you know the market today is exploding with 50 million creators out there and it's expected to be two at 150 credits by 2025 so our assumptions were very very right to uh start building solutions for that market oh and that definitely makes sense so so you have you know the you had some encouragement you had some there your teammates and team members you're saying hey this will be a great experience or great opportunity how do i pass it up type of a thing and so you go along and you do that now one of the additional questions that you know that comes up is you know there's a difference when you make the leap or you you know you you move or make that leap forward as to going out doing your own startup and moving forward on that was it everything that you'd anticipated that was smooth sailing and everything went perfectly and the business got up and going was it bumpy or rocky or kind of how did that how did that go along the way right so um it's a great question so i i remember the first day ever that we started working together we got accepted to um this accelerator here in jerusalem and we got a desk we had a bottle of whiskey uh and two pretty faces that's everything we had um we arrived and we had like no idea where to start from what to do and we just drank the whole bottle of whiskey within a few days um and you know we slowly slowly started to speak with people and do some research and like we saw the the lean start we were at the lean startup we saw how to start a startup from white from yc such a great great great uh uh um session of of um of lectures there um and and you know at the beginning because of the fact that we are both engineers so we managed to build a very beautiful mvp with zero cost and very very relatively very quickly so um after building that mvp we are knocked on a few doors of uh most i would say mostly jerusalemite investors um out of seven investors we reached out to five immediately said we're in so for us it was very very relatively a very easy start um it's i'm not implying on on the rest of the journey i was just saying that you know it was a relatively easy start we worked um on the mvp for like two months and after two months we already you know got our first yes from investors so we had a lot of luck there sounds like it was an exciting journey able to get to a quick mvp get people on board and be able to uh you know kind of hit things out of the gates uh quickly which is always a great place to be so now now just kind of for the audience how long you know so you started the business and i think at one point um you know when or i guess to a couple questions but when did you initially start that business or when did that get kicked off for you right so um we started we um we quit our jobs in 2016. uh we started working on our first startup on our first idea we called it scale about um and scalebot was a um was a solution for the long tail of creators it was a machine learning solution that uh that solved the exposure problem of the long tail we didn't want social media creators to rely uh on the social media platforms to get exposure so we built scale about that knew how to take their content from the social media and post it outside the social media in a very interesting and smart way so um we built we built them an mvp it took us you know a few months we got funded then we started this uh this pilot with a very big publisher um and um and yeah and we ran the company for about three years until we pivoted to vizio that's awesome and so now you're saying okay you know you ran that company had some initial ideas now what what prompted the pivot to what's now visi or vizio as well as the the rebranding of it was it you know slow acceptance in the marketplace was it a better path forward or kind of what prompted that switch of that that change over to kind of what you guys are providing now right so when we got funded at uh 2016 um publishers were our real estate publishers were our solution where we actually posted the social media content and at the time they were a little more um dominant than what they were in 2017 18 19 and eventually uh at 2019 we understood the publishers are kind of like a declining player uh a declining player their publishers today are definitely not like publishers they used to be 10 years ago and i project that they won't be you know as close to what they are today in 10 years from now because of many reasons so we understood that our solution is relying on a declining player and we really really didn't want that and actually one of our one of our design partners just out of the blue told us one day okay we're stopping the collaboration you're an amazing product but i need to sell my real estate to um abusive ads because i need money so at the end of the day publishers told us guys you're amazing i really want to use your solution but you should your solution is a little less better than you know than the horrible abusive ad system that i can use and this is what i prefer to do i don't i can't i it's not that i don't care about my readers but they they had to have some sort of source of income uh that is that is you know stable so eventually at the end of the day we we got replaced by one of our major design partners and that was a huge wake-up call the second thing that happened that led us to pivot to vizio was that i actually became a social media creator myself uh and once i was a social media creator myself i saw the huge opportunity that uh that we're solving today at vizio so um and that that's a really great personal uh positive story if you wanna i'd love to share that yeah absolutely go ahead okay so um so yes about a few years ago i i had an early mid-life crisis i was overweight and i decided that i want to make a change in my life so um i decided i wanted to become a ninja warrior i don't know why i don't know how i didn't know anything about it but i just i just signed up for the auditions and i started training and eventually you know i got i got i got in i lost 25 kilos i um i started climbing and i learned all about how to how to become a ninja warrior and actually i documented my journey on instagram i opened an instagram channel and posted everything about uh uh uh weight loss and transformation and climbing and entrepreneurship and ninja warrior and i gained a few thousands of followers and once i gained a few thousands of followers i said hey i'm part of the creator economy let's make money so i took a look at the existing solutions um and i saw that none of the solutions fit me because i wasn't big enough to do marketing i wasn't expert enough to offer courses and i wasn't famous enough to offer shout outs i wasn't trendy enough to sell merch and i wasn't committed enough to offer exclusive content on patreon for example such an amazing company and i wasn't committed enough or businessy enough business oriented enough to build communities and websites so at the end of the day i i saw that you know i have great following i've great content i have an amazing channel but i have no way to monetize my channel and then taking a look at the market we've noticed that i am part of a way bigger wave we call gen 3 creators which are 80 percent of this market who don't have a substantial substantial way or sustainable way to make any money and to earn from their channel and from their assets and then i noticed that my followers are reaching out to me um through the dms of instagram they wanted more for me they wanted my opinion my advice my love my attention um my feedback and you know they just reached out to me trying to understand how i coped with being overweight and how to do a transformation where to start from and questions about ninja warrior and entrepreneurship and some people just wanted five minutes of my time and i totally ignored all of them and the reason i ignore them is not because i don't care about them but because i had no way to manage all these incoming approaches and then we had the aha moment then we understood something that nobody understood before we understood that every creator is a potential mentor advisor and even a friend but they just don't know it yet and this is how vizio was born wizard empowers all creators to become mentors advisors and friends with solutions that suit the long tail and then and their needs awesome and all that sounds like it's a that's a cool journey so just to wrap it up just curious so you went on to ninja war and you competed is that right or did you almost or how did that i got accepted to the show and it was a blast and then up until today i take part of every season since here in israel that's awesome that's that's uh that's a cool goal to set and definitely uh exciting that you were able to take part in that so no that and that was a it sounds like a great journey and kind of interesting how you figure that out as to where the current company with wizio is going to be your position itself is based on a lot of your own experience of kind of going through and figuring out how to position them for yourself so that definitely is very interesting well now as uh as we kind of reached the the present point of where you're uh where you're at in your journey today it's a great time to transition to the two questions i always ask at the end of each episode um 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 yeah well um there are many mistakes that we made we may i think we made more mistakes than than not non-mistakes um but i think that looking back i think that our big our biggest business mistake was actually um not closing the company uh when we pivoted i think that at the time it kind of makes sense to pivot because we still had a few uh some cash in the bank and we had a lot of support from our investors and um and you know it was very intuitive to pivot and everything just made sense um but looking back these days um we're an old company right so we're instead of being a two and a half year old company or a two-year-old company we're a five-year-old company and it really uh it really um makes it hard to raise money um because you know investors don't want to know what's happening and you always have to explain yourself oh no listen we've been a different company and we're recapping the cap table anyway and everything everything's going to be fine don't worry about the founder shares we've got enough we've we've reached an agreement but it always requires me as a ceo and a fundraiser to explain myself instead of having this wow effect telling our telling future investors hey we're a two-year-old company look at what we look at look at what we've achieved so far so i think that you know looking back knowing today what i like knowing what i know today i would definitely close the company and reopen it from the beginning i would give you know the opportunity for all of our investors to rejoin of course um we extremely appreciate them every each and every one of them they're extremely supportive but i think that that would uh that would that would make our lives very easy uh or or way easier than it is today to fundraise and to deal with all the cap table and all the equity issues uh and the mess that that is there due to a pivot you know and i think that there you know there is it is an interesting dichotomy because i mean you know investors especially get into venture capital they're going to want an upward trajectory right they want to see that hey if we put in money we we're pouring gasoline on the fire so to speak and it's going to make the company take off well if you're going through a pivot or if you're figuring things out or having to go in a different direction either by choice or by necessity either one then it's going to introduce those questions as to why do we want to invest in a company that's or that's not doing well or it's been on hiatus for a couple years or this kind of peaked or is going downward and i certainly get the qualm of you know the quandary of now you're having to explain and dance around that and sometimes to your point is maybe you're better to shut down that business and then even if it's the investors that were on there previously give them a you know arrangement that makes it beneficial for them to join again and so they're not losing out but at the same time it makes it easier to go out and fund to raise more so i think that that's a definitely a great uh certainly an understandable mistake to make but a good lesson to learn definitely definitely and i i wish i wish i would know i would know that uh earlier but you know you sometimes just have to make those mistakes to learn absolutely no i think that you know sometimes that is those while it's it'd be nice if you could go back and not make the mistakes you also have a lot of times the opportunity to learn more from those mistakes that you then are not making that same mistake again so i think that there's a definitely that that balance so well now the the second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's uh just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them right right um so the i think the number one advice would be to speak with as many people as you can but always know how to listen and what to learn from every type of conversation from every interaction um and and i'll try to like break it down just a little bit uh when we started the startup like when you speak about when you when when i tell people that i'm you know founder of a startup they always say oh are you are you um okay with sharing your idea and you know this is like some this is from the past this is a conception from the past where where you know everything has to be very secretive and you know you can't share your idea to anyone because they'll steal your idea and do it but it doesn't work like that today your your idea will change a million times and it's not about stealing your idea it's about the team and about and it's about implementation and implementing uh your ideas into reality uh and that's that's why i really encourage you everyone to discuss your idea with as many smart people as possible you don't don't talk about with your grandma unless it's a grandma startup but but um but on the other end always be true to yourself and try to really extract the gems out of every piece of advice try to understand what is behind what people are trying to say while you know uh going through your agenda so so you'll always fine-tune your idea uh and and and um and with the help of of crowd of the crowd and i think maybe maybe if i could also add to that advice never ask people if your idea is a good idea or not this this is not a good question to ask the market always wins do you want to know if your idea is good or not ask the market and do the best to release a you know a poc in the most uh uh in the most fastest time le as as as less resources as possible and go and ask the market if if half of the companies would ask people do you think it's a good idea uh the companies that we know today um they would they would say no before they even existed you know like the best example would be a tablet right before the tablet nobody wanted or or thought that a tablet would be necessary and you know now it's a huge chunk of the market and i can give you a million ideas out there so you want to know if your startup is it is if it's a good idea go and ask the market oh and i think that that is an absolutely great uh takeaway and i think you know the now because you have to be careful if you're to ask a few people i like the example whether it's a tablet whether it's the even the smartphone at the time you know when apple came out with that and keep on the apple example you know blackberry was out there and people say but i want my little keyboard and until you experience it until you understand it sometimes you're just not going to grasp it and so putting out that you know kind of quick you know minimally viable product or you know kind of that uh initial offering so people can understand and grasp it and then go out and test it and get their feedback and understand that i like that as the one thing you hit on the other one is i think having an intentionality to the conversations you're having or at least taking advantage if you're in front of someone that has a lot of knowledge that has a lot of experience and they can help it elevate your business you'd be a fool not to you know take advantage of that conversation and to learn those things as you're talking with them so i think those are a great uh both great takeaways and uh definitely are a good piece of advice yeah well now as we wrap up the podcast if people want to reach out to 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 of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you or find out more uh well i think my best business card will be my uh instagram account it's uh adam bottom line frx um and you could always find me on linkedin facebook all the other media channels out there awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to uh to reach out to you connect with you and otherwise uh be a customer and and support you guys well thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you um feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show a couple more things make sure to click listen or click subscribe make sure to click share make sure to leave us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all of these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents or trademarks or anything else with your business feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with this chat we're always happy to help thank you again adam for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last my pleasure thank you so much [Music] you

Miller IP Law is a firm that focuses on small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs/solopreneurs. We’re easy to use. We offer affordable pricing that’s transparent and flat-rate. We focus on the little guys who actually need our help. If you’d like an attorney on your team, simply schedule a Zoom call, and we’ll take care of the rest.

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1. Cheapest Way To Get A Patent

2. How Long Does It Take To Get A Trademark?

3. Why Are Patents Important?

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #327
Learn From Others
w/ Liz Kislik
Connect With Me

"In addition to knowing what it is you want to do, look at how other people, either in your field or adjacent, do it. You can learn as much from the good that they do as you can from the things that you disagree with. It's really useful to be able to thread your own path that's a little bit different from what everybody is doing but getting the benefit of what they have learned."

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 Apply to be on the show! We accept entrepreneurs of all backgrounds.

Click to learn more!

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Listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs share their wisdom.

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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

 in addition to knowing what it is you want to do look at how other people either in your field or adjacent do it because you can learn as much from the good that they do i don't mean that in a moral way i mean what's effective as you can from the things that you disagree with and it's really useful to be able to thread your own path that's a little bit different from what everybody's doing but getting the benefit of what they've learned [Music] 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 ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we've got another great guest on the podcast uh liz kisslick and uh liz uh graduated from high school and wanted to get right to work uh or graduate from college i said high school college and so she took a job as an intern for a couple summers over then took over as a man her manager in um her manager and then i think took maternity or for someone taking maternity leave um promoted for about every six months for a few years and then at 23 was a vice president running a 300 person call center and then moved on to our next thing um the owner died there wasn't as much of a succession plan decided it was a good time to try something else and move on so started her own practice and has been uh did that they're doing that for 34 years um and the nature of the work has changed but the practice is still holding strong so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast liz hi devin thanks so much absolutely so i just took a much longer journey and condensed it into a 30-second version of it so with that uh let's uh go and unpack that a bit more so take us back in time to graduating from college and how your journey got started there okay i really wanted to work unlike my friends who were going to grad school i just believed that work was where you could make things happen and i still believe that and so i went to this marketing agency as you were describing where i had worked as an intern previously over the summers and couldn't have paid for the education i got there it was a great example of if there's a gap and you want to fill it people will appreciate that so as you were describing when i was hired i was hired as an account executive but it turned out that the manager of a clerical department was on maternity leave when i started and so they threw me in there instead to act as interim manager and i had to learn how to deal with two dozen people who were more experienced than i was i didn't know their work they certainly weren't expecting me and it was a really fascinating experience to get them to trust me for me to trust them uh we learned a lot from each other their real boss was a screamer and i was not and the first staff meeting i held they started screaming about things that were bothering them and i told them i couldn't really hear them when they were screaming at me hard to tell what was going on they got adjusted to the idea that i was actually different from their boss and it was a fabulous lesson in how different your expectations can be and yet you can still learn to accommodate each other if you have good will so i kept finding things to do their boss came back i became an account executive and where there were problems in the organization or work not getting done i didn't like it i would take some of it on and i would get promoted every six months and as you said i was quite young probably too young too inexperienced to be responsible for so many people although that's what happened and you know at the time it i might have been their best shot so i didn't enjoy that job because it's very hard to get everything to come out right i didn't like going home at the end of the day feeling that so much was still undone and that there were still so many needs but i had several other jobs in that company and as you were describing the owner died pretty suddenly and with no succession plan and the widow brought in a new guy to run the place and it was going in a direction i didn't like and i ended up resigning but because i was well known in the industry within a week after i left consultants were subcontracting work to me and that's how i got started and i never stopped the work has shifted just one quick question on that so you know that makes sense you know management changes they are death of the owner you know somebody else comes in they have a different style have a different vision different direction which is all their prerogative and they come in and they have to do it according to how you know what makes sense to them but on the other hand it also shifts the culture and it becomes a place where you're saying this isn't the the same place that i enjoy working and it prompts that change so as you're kind of going through all you know that transition their business going to transition you're making coming to that realization how did you decide what you were going to do or you know if you're going to make an exit do i go work for someone else or start my own thing or kind of how did you land on what was the next step for you um it really was i'm going to say a kind of emotional decision on my part so this was a telemarketing agency and i worked there long enough ago the telemarketing was really a good and wonderful thing we did very high-end complex projects it was it was good work the fellow who came in and took over was a lovely person his approach to telemarketing however was what we now think of in many ways as bad telemarketing it was pretty commoditized and i was not comfortable with that kind of work i didn't feel it was good for consumers and i felt that strategically and by this point by the way i was executive vice president um strategically we were not going in a direction that would be successful for the business and the plan that i recommended he only half-heartedly accepted and i really didn't have confidence and at the time um it just seemed like the firm would actually be at risk and i didn't want to participate in that so i left without a real plan i figured i would figure it out so i had to assess my options i was actually pregnant at the time and the idea of interviewing for what would have been uh say a vice president of customer service in a bank or some other large company might have been a natural thing to do i wasn't going to relocate so though that would have been a reasonable option but the truth was that this was a pretty entrepreneurially behaving company until this more corporate guy came in and although i had always had somebody who was called my boss i operated pretty independently and i couldn't see going into a corporate hierarchy so i hadn't even really made plans yet i was so lucky people contacted me that i knew in the industry and said we have too much work do you want to do some of it so from that i saw not only that i could do the work that they had but that there were plenty of assignments to be had in the kind of consulting that i had had exposure to when i was in the agency and so it just seemed like a natural progression and i worked i had my son i kept working and i kept working had another kid kept working it's just been very very lucky i also work very hard and i know what i'm doing but i've got to say i was really lucky that people knew me i had a good reputation um some right time right place know the right folks you know and i think that makes sense i think it gives a good landing you know kind of a landing pad you're saying hey made the exit not exactly sure what i do but i have you know the connections the contacts i made we have people that are asking me you're telling me that you know there's work out there and would you want to do some of this that makes it an er you know natural transition to say sure i'll start doing that and start your own thing so that you'll have the ability to control you know your destiny so to speak or control your path while also having that income so now you do that and i think you've been doing it for 34 years is that right yeah um yeah this past december yeah so now my question would be is you know that's a natural place to start the business but i would assume out over 34 years you've grown and expanded and pivoted and adjusted and so you start out with that natural transition of you have people that are saying hey we got asking if you'd like to take on work and if they've got projects they'd like to pay you for now where did you take the business from there how did you grow it or pivot or adjust it what has changed the most i think looking back is the nature of the work as opposed to the size i mean it's still me and a part-time assistant um but the nature has changed so i started out doing the kind of telemarketing that i had learned in the agency um and consulting two companies that had some kind of telemarketing or inside sales call center but because the industry was going in a direction that i didn't care for my first shift was into customer service and so then i was consulting about that and that also expands the number of companies who might have needs so that was very helpful and then what i learned through the years in a variety of corporate call centers whatever goes wrong in an organization sooner or later affects the customer and if a customer has a complaint it's likely to come into the call center so i would learn a lot of things from what customers said and also from interviewing the representatives in these call centers i would learn what was going on in the company that wasn't working so well and in some of my clients organizations there would be a senior leader who wanted to hear that stuff of course there were some organizations that wanted me to limit my work to the call center that was totally fine it was what they hired me for but because in many organizations leaders want to know what could be better or recognized that i had access to information about problems either they were unaware of or weren't sure what to do about and so i would be involved in helping to solve non-call center problems and to work on non-call center projects so over time i've done everything from strategic planning workforce planning all kinds of organizational design and development and a lot of leadership development and really helping people figure out how to get the work done together when they've got different ideas about how it ought to get done so a lot of internal facilitation some kinds of mediation and development of people so that they could work better together oh that makes sense and you know sounds like things you know you figure out both things hey i don't like these things that are the way that it's done i think there's a better offer option the better path forward and then by the same token as you're figuring those things out you're able to assist and help others and it takes you here kind of helps you there to find the the path that you know that works best on all fronts and so definitely makes sense so that takes us a bit up to where you're at today now if you're gonna say okay been doing this you know 34 years and had those kind of wines and those you know adjustments and pivots along the way and you're saying now i'm looking a bit into the future kind of where you know things are headed or what's the next you know phase or part of the journey where do you kind of see the next six to 12 months going for you and and for the business it's really the same kind of work you know when kovid started there was a big pause companies weren't sure what to do what they needed couldn't be on the road anymore and there were many organizations that really didn't have the budget anymore and that seemed completely reasonable and fair to me it's very hard to be laying off staff and paying outsiders you know you want to hold on to your folks and take good care of them in difficult times so there were a few months in 2020 when it was really a little perplexing about what was going to happen next and you know thank heaven for zoom because so much of my work it's not like manufacturing even if i'm working with manufacturing people we can do it on video because it's dialogue so the work picked up and in many ways is now more interesting than ever distance is no issue although i will say in the next six to 12 months i'm so looking forward to going back on the road and seeing people again there is a real difference to being physically present at least i feel that way i'm an introvert but i miss my clients something awful it's really nice to be with them um but the work itself is still what the client needs so it's everything from planning a client's growth strategy to i work with a number of family businesses and succession planning is a big issue a lot of that going on and the kind of inter-departmental support just to have the work go smoothly have everything get done have people regard each other well right now in this period in some ways that's more important than ever because many employees know they have opportunities elsewhere there are enough open jobs now that good employees if they want to they can find something so it's really important for people to feel comfortable at work and a lot of my consulting and coaching has been lending itself to trying to keep people and making sure that everybody has a good sense of direction so there's job crafting involved sometimes and career development internally it's really varied and that's part of what i like so much one of the wonderful things about being on my own is the independence the flexibility and the variety i think that that uh that definitely makes sense and uh you know sounds like good opportunities to come in the future and you know be interesting i i tend to be the same way i think you know we do a ton on zoom and a lot of our clients are remote but there is a different you know for a lot of industries and for a lot of people they're saying hey you know that may work on a temporary basis or for some circumstances on the other hand hey i want to get back in front of people or be able to see people face to face and have that a bit more of interaction so as that continues to hopefully progress in that direction it'll be interesting to see how it continues to play out so well that was uh you know now as we've caught up or gone through a bit of your journey and also caught up to now where you're at today and a bit into the future great trying time to transition a bit into the the two questions i always ask at the end of each podcast or the end of each episode so on 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 i would say it has been not taking action quickly they're i've got two you know and there's they're interwoven it's not taking action quickly enough is definitely one you know you have a feeling about something that it's not so great and you watch it for a while sometimes it's hard to make a change when you need to make a change and i say that both in terms of employees and clients sometimes it's good to get out when things are not going the way that you feel they should um so that's one and the second one is i have not always paid enough attention to building a pipeline of business i love the business i've got i'd rather do that than anything i'd rather do that than the writing i should do i'd rather do that than you know the sales and business development i should do i just like the work itself so um when i've made errors it's usually because i've been too focused on today and not enough on what's next i like both of those i mean there are a couple things to hit on one is focusing on what you tend to do i mean i think that that one's always a balance and especially if you're a startup small business owner you always have things that you feel like you have to do or that you know that need to get done even though that may not be your area of passion or expertise and then there are areas that you can add value yourself and a lot of times the more you can offload those areas that you're not a passionate you don't enjoy you're really not adding the value that you can so that you can focus on the areas that are really you know specific to you and the things that you can really add the most value tends to be the the ones that uh are the most beneficial to the business and yet always much easier said than done on that front but i also like you know getting here getting here getting things started getting things done is another a great uh takeaway so second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them all my clients would say i have a lot of trouble giving one piece of advice so i so i'm going to give more than one i hope you can stand it devin i would say in addition to knowing what it is you want to do look at how other people either in your field or adjacent do it because you can learn as much from the good that they do i don't mean that in a moral way i mean what's effective as you can from the things that you disagree with and it's really useful to be able to thread your own path that's a little bit different from what everybody's doing but getting the benefit of what they've learned so understanding that and how it works i think that's an important lesson up front but then with that in mind asking your customers if what you do is working for them is important all the time and getting their feedback about what could work better for them what they're happy about or not so happy about helps you understand what to do next and that's been a very valuable thing for me that uh that definitely is a good uh good good takeaway to have and a great piece of advice for those that are getting it they're just getting started with the startup or business or looking to grow as well well as we wrap up the podcast if people want to reach out to you they want to you know 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 contact you find out more oh thank you um easiest is to go to my website that's wwe l-i-z-k-i-s-l-i-k and they can also find me of course on linkedin and on twitter and if it's useful to anybody in your audience devin i've got a free ebook on my website about the interpersonal aspects of conflict and how to deal with them and there's loads of material i've been writing weekly for more than 10 years loads of material about all kinds of organizational human dynamics departmental issues that might be helpful to people awesome well i definitely encourage people to check out all the above check out the website connect up with you on socials and then also you know anytime that you can get a a free ebook that gives you a direction helps you to become a better leader and a better business owner definitely worthwhile to check out 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you um just go to inventiveguest.com or doc inventive get in if i cannot get tongue tied 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 and make sure to leave us a review so everybody can find out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well thank you again liz for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks so much devin great to be with you absolutely [Music]

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The Inventive Expert
Episode #64
How To Develop Apparel
w/ Terresa Zimmerman
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"The second you say brand to somebody they are like, oh, I have the greatest logo and name. Hopefully, the conversation we just had shows you that's really not what a brand is. A logo and a name that's a visual and a verbal queue of what your brand is. But that's not your brand. Just because you come up with a great logo or a great name does not mean you have a brand."

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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

 so the second use the second you say brand to somebody somebody's like oh i have the greatest logo it's the greatest logo i have the greatest logo and the greatest name um hopefully hopefully the the conversation we've just had shows you that that's really not what a brand is um a a logo and a name that's a that's a visual and a verbal cue of what your brand is but that's not your brand right so you know just because you come up with a great logo or a great name does not mean you have a brand [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive expert 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 ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast teresa zimmerman and teresa we're going to talk or probably about a lot of things we'll see how far we get through things but she has a background in the apparel industry and i think for a lot of the listeners at least the aspect of your business whether it's doing you know swag whether it's doing shirts or apparel or lines or extensions has a lot to do with that so we'll talk a little bit about that on supply chain sourcing sales and brand positioning and at a broader scope maybe even talk a little bit about e-commerce and see how far we get from there so with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast teresa thank you thank you i'm excited to be here and to become sort of an expert in something that's awesome hey i i'll tell you if anybody ever wants to call be an ex they never have but if they ever did i would take the title so um well before we dive into the topic at hand maybe just for those that you know this is a reminder the audience uh teresa is on the inventive journey which is the uh sister podcast to this one um so if you want to go check out some of her episodes there and get to know her a bit better in her journey definitely invite you to do so but for those of uh people that haven't had a chance to listen the episode was saying hey i've got too many things to do i just want to hear the expertise introduce yourself to the audience give a kind of a one or two minute overview as to why you have expertise in this area and then why you have experience yeah sure sure so i so you you said we were going to cover a whole lot of topics um and um i want to come at it from the point of brand strategy there's a lot of misconceptions about what brand strategy is and how it plays with you um so i my background is in brand strategy and various marketing disciplines that you know go along with delivering that brand strategy to the market um the last 10 years it's our birthday this year with wood underwear happy birthday thank you i founded uh founded a men's uh uh underwear undershirt loungewear business men's foundations business 10 years ago and um you know applying brand strategy to a startup i think is particularly important um so i really kind of wanted to talk about that um it i guess you know coming from coming from my my sort of agency corporate you know big b2b brand strategy background um bringing it to a startup is um uh is a big change because you clearly don't have the resources of a big you know you're i'm on every side of the inbox so i get to tell myself what to do all the time and uh so that that's a bit of a challenge but you know startup founders um have that challenge all the time too so brand strategy can really help if you have it defined no i think so i like to comment if you're on all sides of the inbox and i feel like sometimes that's the only place i've had anymore is i'm usually spending more time with my inboxes responding to clients and talking with them and walking through things and i am running the business now in reality i still do plenty around the business but some days it feels like that well as we get into it yeah i like the you know i i think that it's interesting because apparel is i think a very competitive in other words i get you know on the ip side i get a lot of people that come in and they're they have the next great idea for whether it's a pair line or they just want to have their swag or they got a cool logo and everything else and so it's i think a incredibly competitive or crowded field and to be able to break into and have that brand strategy and i think you know you can take that and apply to a lot of other industries as well but you know you talk mentioned a little bit about kind of brand strategy or strategy and standing out how do you go about doing that in industry that is you know for all intents and purposes pretty crowded well and and i think this is true for every industry but but i think you're right i think everybody thinks oh i can i can put out the next greatest t-shirt and it's going to be an overnight success right and um so there is a there is a lot of that in apparel maybe because we touch it every day and we think we can improve it every day um but at the end of the day no matter what you know business you're in brand um brand is about being relevant and being different at the same time so relevant differentiation and relevant to your audience and different from what else they have out there as an alternative option and and then you have to deliver once you define that then you have to deliver that to your audience in a way that they can hear it and absorb it so and that's typically storytelling so you've got to keep it simple enough for your audience to get it and to absorb it easily and then repeat repeat repeat and stories are amazing um as far as that goes so the the the coming up with the next greatest you know t-shirt um or underwear in my case um is one thing but then you've got to decide all of those things about why does anybody care and and why is it you know better different you know whatever than than what else somebody is offering because otherwise you'll never you'll never sell it um i get approached all the time from from people who have the next the next greatest mousetrap so to speak and and they want to know how to put it in the market and you know you ask you ask a question about okay well you know why why isn't somebody else doing it are they doing it oh yeah so-and-so is doing this but my color's gonna be different like okay well can they just repeat can they just can they just do that um as soon as they see your idea and is there anything proprietary about that is there anything special about it what you know and it the idea falls apart you know pretty pretty quickly because you haven't thought through that relevant differentiation um part of it and that's even before you get into your business planning you know you've got to have the idea and then yes and one of the things and i you know this is my uneducated biased opinion but i think one of the things that people gravitate towards apparel is everybody thinks they have a catchy some sort of apparel thing and there's a lot of off-the-shelf product not saying good quality other than they do but you can go and silk screen a shirt you can go buy a whole bunch of blank ones and say well all i need is a funny catchphrase i'll put it up there and you add you don't have to your point a brand or a ability to position your brand and have a sell strategy there's a lot of people that have had good ideas good ideas and quotes for shirts or clothing lines or that because you can go and buy it off the shelf but if you can never position it people never know about it then they're not you know if you don't they're never going to find out about or find out about your brand you're never going to make any sales yeah yeah that's right that's right yeah i mean so i mean ultimately you know ultimately with brand strategy it's you've gotta you've gotta develop you've gotta develop those things and then you've gotta deliver those messages out into the marketplace to your audiences and have them replayed back to you in the way that you wanted them understood that's what your brand is it's not what you tell people it is it's what you tell me it is after you and i like that so now let's take your your business or one of your businesses as an example which is you know wood underwear and now you know you have an expanded apparel but you started in men's underwear so how did you how did you even go about positioning or how did you go about creating that brand because you know i if when i was growing up it was the old whitey tighties and that was that was what they almost the moms bought and nobody gave it much more thought and they were out there and i'm sure some of my you know i probably have somewhere i'm guessing some of those old underwear probably still from high school and i'm sure my friends do too and so it's one of those things that for a long period of time people didn't give much thought and so how do you go about in an industry where people you know a lot of times it's at least for high school kids and that your parents or your mom buys it for you never really think about it how did you go about creating a brand position within that industry all right well first of all when we finish here you need to go to your underwear drawer and probably start over but i think i would say that there's a about 90 percent of my underwear has been within bought within the last year or less so i am getting better i don't know that they've all been purged but they are they're mostly gone okay all right good well so so for me i mean i did start with product because you have to have the product because you can build a brand and then if your product doesn't stand up for it then you know you're you're done you'd slip stick on a pig right so you you you can't have a brand without a product product without a brand um so i started i started with product um and um then uh and my first year was learning we've talked about this on on my story on the podcast but my first year my very first product um is not the product i have today it was you know one style and four colors and a completely different fabric and different packaging and you know the whole the whole bit was very very different because my learning was about what it was and how how how it was special to the marketplace and how i wanted to build its specialness and that included compounding the story wherever i could right so with the name having fun with the name i did have the name so wood underwear you know we're having a little fun with that but also you know putting the putting it in the fabric there's beautiful wood viscous fibers out there so wood is also in the fabric in that story place so it's compounding the messages that are out there it's a premium product it's an affordable premium product so how do i talk about it in a premium way i mean we air and especially with with our name and the fun that we're having with it we err on the side of sexy not sex so it's a fine line in underwear and um and we prefer to play on the sexy side as a more of a premium positioning and foundation pieces i mean over a decade you can imagine and this is another reason why brand strategy is important it provides you guard rails so because every single person that meets you as a founder of a startup company has a great idea that you should then do and so i mean in in expanding my line and um keeping a focus um on what the brand and and the product can deliver on versus what everybody thinks i should be doing and expanding on um it's foundational pieces right so i'm not doing i'm not doing leisure wear or i'm doing loungewear i'm not doing athleisure i'm not doing um you know sportswear i'm not i'm not trying to compete with the underwear out there that you can take two pair for a 14-day camping trip that's not you know that's not what we're trying to do um so you know having having that focus on the premium level foundation you know foundation pieces um for everyday wear for every guy um and uh you know in the locker room test it's not scary it's not too it's not sex it's it is it passes the locker room test so that was what it's gonna because you hit on one thing which is you know first of all you can have a what you want to position your brand that and then you're trying to get that feedback to see if that's actually how it's understood or the ret or how people are is being conveyed to people how they're understanding it so when you're talking about you know it's more of you're selling sexy not sex and those type of things how did you go about confirming that where you were trying to position your brand was actually or another and i think that's you know overlapped with a lot of people in other words i know what i want people to think about my brand but it doesn't always match up with how people can pre perceive it and i've had those even with some of our businesses so how do you do that to where you are confirming what how they're perceiving it you have to know yourself and you have to trust it right but then you're always testing those boundaries and figuring out how far your brand strategy can test i mean in a in a a visual way if i think about our prints the prints and the color ways that we start with right to stay on the side of sexy not sex you know we're not doing crazy you know i don't want to say obscene that sounds like a judgment but um uh like sexual visuals uh on our underwear we don't do novelty because we really are about wardrobing so it's fine to have you know banana um banana novelty prints on your underwear that's not us you're gonna go somewhere else for that we're we're really about everyday wardrobing stuff that is going to be a mainstay in your drawer in your in your wardrobe that is going to help you know build the the rest of whatever you put on top of it um you know as part of as part of a holistic you know approach to you um and so yes absolutely have fun with some of that other stuff but you're going to go somewhere else for that um so it it it really does help you define it it helps us to find how we are in sexy stores so there are sexy stores but we also are able to play in in the finest men's stores because of our positioning so if we were in the sexy stores as sex stuff then our men's stores probably would we probably wouldn't be appropriate for that but we're really about wardrobing and um and offering uh you know products that you know fill a more foundational wardrobe function you have to and you do have to test it you have to test it all the time i mean we came out with thongs and jocks a couple years ago and everybody's like oh my god you know for men um but you know it's amazing how many how many we sell and you know it's it is not that's not a that doesn't cross the line because there's a reason for it i mean there's a reason why women wear thongs they're comfortable there's not a lot of fabric they don't move um you know and men are figuring this out so there's there's uh there's a function for it i i still haven't uh or honestly i haven't figured that one out yet so i'm still lagging behind a bit but maybe maybe someday i'll have to i'll have to try it out it's not gonna be for everybody but i mean the point the point is is that if you know yourself you know and you know what your brand stands for and you know what it what you want it to stand for then you can use those as decision making you know criteria like the guard rails right guard rails are not finite you can move your guard rails you can shift right but you're you know headed in a certain direction hopefully so i think that that definitely makes perfect sense so let's shift gears slightly and they're kind of along those lines but i know that you know you and we've talked a little bit before in some of the you know invented journey episodes get into a bit of supply chain i think that that is you know i it's been exacerbated by you know the the recent things but i think it's always to a degree you have to have you'll have supply chain issues in other words been i'm working with a lot of startups and even before covet and some of the different things hit you still had or people still had to deal with supply chains and making sure that things got there on time and that you had enough supplies and always working through those issues and so as a business you know having done or having gone through or maybe you're still going through supply chain and figuring that out how do you go about tackling that or approaching it or any words or her thoughts for people that are facing that uh patience i mean the the the the good and the bad of it right now is that every single one of us out there is going through it and so there's you know it's not like somebody's messing up right it's not like somebody's missing a deadline because they can help it um it's uh you know so everybody's having to have a whole lot of patience right now but um but having having good relationships and this is again i'm gonna tie this back to brand a little bit so we i i founded this business because i wanted to get out of the transactionalness of corporate i wanted to be in more of relationship based type of business and so that's how i function my my business and that's how i've kind of built my brand around that and so my you know my import export broker it's a big corporation but i know them right my manufacturers are they're smaller size they're smaller manufacturers i know who they are i have conversations with them um i'm not just shipping a faxing and order off and you know it's a it's a fax deal um and um and so having those having the relationships that you can have in that supply chain just helps to make sure you can you're doing everything you can do to make sure the parts you control are going smoothly so the whether it can get into port on time i mean none of us can none of us can deal with that except set expectation accordingly right so every conversation i'm having right now with my customers and i'm having those conversations again that's about the relationship with your the all up and down the supply chain is is to say hey customer my manufacturer is going to deliver on time but here's what we don't control right and so understanding all of those pieces and then laying it out there i mean i find people are really understanding for most things if you're setting the right expectation um and and that's really all i've figured out to to do with this whole supply chain thing because i mean i'm i'm hearing now that we've got you know railroad uh railroad uh and burglary issues now too and that's once it gets through the port so i mean you know hopefully hopefully there's an end in sight to some of this stuff and and it can get under control but control what you can control and set expectation for what you can't no and i think a couple things you hit on that definitely make sense and i would i would echo is one is establishing the relationship with people goes a long way and that's whether it's suppliers whether it's buyers whether it's your customers and then also you're being in communication with them in other words if there's things that are out of your control now people are patient to degree if they have to wait five years in order to buy a car they're probably gonna go somewhere else or underwear if they had to wait for an exorbitant amount of time but to it within a reasonable amount of time they're going to say hey i understand everybody's going through this it's not your fault you've been very good in the past and you know we have a great relationship and i think you're going to deliver and it buys a long way and then i think you just have to work through that but if you're having or continuing to maintain that relationship and have that um open communication definitely goes a long way to buy goodwill to with all of the customers yeah well and and the apparel industry you know i think also because people you know back to this thing area we started on was you know everybody thinks they can make the next next best you know t-shirt or suit or whatever it is um you you don't necessarily think about all those pieces you have to learn i mean i didn't i'm still learning i'm still learning about it but you have to become a student of the entire chain um you know i'll never forget when my current you know my current and for 10 years warehouse uh uh owner called me and said hey you know what are you doing for 3pl and i'm like what the hell's a 3pl i mean i think i can write that down right now but i'd like to learn more right so i mean i didn't know what i didn't know but you know once you start learning some of these pieces you've got to become a student of all of the pieces whether you whether you need to be the expert or not you still have to be a student of all of us so you can connect all those dots and and develop relationships where you can oh i think that's that or that's that's a great point now one thing i'll switch to a little bit because i if i understand you can tell me where i'm or misunderstand your business because i'm by far the expert but one of the things you do a lot of is on the e-commerce side or e-commerce platform and you know part of your sales and efforts and i get that there's storage and distribution but if you're talking you know one of the areas i think is certainly an area that's growing is the e-commerce side because people have found whether it's the pandemic you don't always have to go into retail stores you don't always have to go into or you know physical locations for everything you're purchasing now some people may want to and there's still a reason that it's around but if you're saying now for the e-commerce side of platforms and that any words of advice as to how you might position yourself you might or represent the brand how you might convey that and other any other kind of piece of advice in that realm yeah well so um so again i think if you are going to be an ecom brand that's a very different thing than being a you know national whole wholesale plus econ brand right um there's a there's a lot of brands out there starting that are pure ecom um but i think you'll even i i think i think you can even see with what amazon has started to do about um physical locations you you're not going to get away from the store i mean ecom is growing and it's growing at phenomenal percentages but it's still a small percentage of commerce that happens so i haven't seen i mean i know because everything was shut down last year and much of my or in 2020 and much of last year as well but um so i know those percentages have grown but people are going back into stores this year so it's going to be interesting to see at the end of 2022 what those numbers come back to before 2020 um i think that i think we hit a high of like 11 percent of all um of all commerce was done on ecom right 11 that means 89 is done in a store so that's where people are like oh it's it's crazy right because 11 percent might have might have meant you know a thousand percent growth so that's the headline service like oh nobody's shopping anymore well 89 of buys still originate in a store so um and i think uh ecom you know or 2020 and 2021 certainly those numbers maybe even doubled i think in our case um ours went up by about nine percent um but we're really a wholesale model and and again back to my brand i did that intentionally because i want it to be relationship driven so i believe in main street main street stores boutique specialty stores know their customers they have relationships in their in their in their communities they are foundational to their communities and their neighborhoods foundational that buys into our brand i know who they are they know who their customer is they call me personally um you know we're happy to to entertain you know all kinds of things with our customers because we know them ecom you don't develop a relationship with and and that's that's a decision you make as a brand that you are going to be transactional and there's a lot of uh there's a lot of products out there that lend themselves to the transactional um but if you but it and it's a decision you make for your brand how you're going to do that so um it sounds like that you guys have taken a balance where you're certainly wholesale you believe in main street and and being in stores but it doesn't mean that one is exclusive to the other in other words you do have a bit of a balance is that an accurate case or should be we'll be looking at some sort of a balance and pursuing both of them i think i i mean i think you have to have some kind of online presence whether you decide to sell online is a whole other decision that's a decision you have to make i intentionally came out with a wholesale brand we have to be online because we're small so it's you know we sell online because we're not everywhere for everybody to find us otherwise so but our focus really is our our stores and we do our very best not to compete with our stores um in our e-commerce activities so for me a ratio for me is 80 80 20 max right so i would always like to be 80 store um store led my wholesale store led um and that's that's a choice right so if ecom if ecom overlaps that hits 25 or 30 that means i'm doing something wrong on the wholesale side that doesn't mean that i can't grow my ecom it just means that my pie on the wholesale side needs to get bigger now one thing you hit on i hadn't thought of we hadn't talked but it raises an interesting question is when you're getting into you guys have an online presence and you're trying not you know you do your best not to compete with the wholesale which makes sense in other words if if they're trying to sell your product and people can come onto your website and get a cheaper faster better than it tends to or you know sour the relationship about the wholesale side because then they don't have the ability to sell your product as well how do how should people think about that balance or how do you reach that balance where you have that presence people can get to know your brand find out more information but you don't create the issues with the wholesaler with the wholesale accounts yeah so uh it and it it it varies and you come across different scenarios that you have to make decisions on all the time um so a lot of a lot of stores will price match um and so you want to make sure that whatever you have out there online us our store or our stores online stores don't conflict with that and force somebody else to price match right so you have to create certain terms and conditions that you want your stores to follow and then you know decide what you're going to do if somebody breaks those conditions for us that means that we don't allow our stores to go on to amazon without permission or third-party sites so we have i believe one store that has that permission right now and they hold price they're amazing they're incredibly professional um they're a smaller business as well but you know there's no there's no discounting so what what somebody sells in a store if they um if they want to run you know store promotions and it's not searchable that's not our business and and i stay out of that but once it goes online into the public space where it's searchable then that's where i care um so and and on our own site we just don't put things on sale we'll we'll do sample sales things that you know things that have come back things that are were taken out of our you can see my showroom in the back all of that stuff gets swapped out right so it's all new it's never been worn and so we will put that up on our on our site but it's stuff that we couldn't sell to stores and some people are very happy to have our samples sample sales are amazing i love sample sales um if you fit in sample sizes it's it's the greatest um but um but also it is a matter like for us we will put things on wholesale clearance if we have things to clear which we don't um very often but when we do we put them on wholesale clearance so we give our our wholesale stores the deal to then pass to their clients first so and if you know if in fact we have stuff to do as far as that goes so there's decisions along the way on how you you know how you deal with that and how you don't compete with your own customers no i think that that's you know good ta or a good approach is you know however you're doing it make sure you're not competing with your or the wholesale customers you have because they are customers and they're trying to make the sales and if you now make it so that everybody goes and buys your product on amazon that you're selling directly and the whole seller's saying we can't compete or you know it doesn't make sense anymore you just robbed yourself of those opportunities and that's a and that's a brand decision it's a it's a brand decision and there's a lot of companies out there who don't make that decision they're happy to sell to anybody at any price they can sell it to yeah and i think that that one's most of the time probably a more short or short term approach in other words if you take that approach and you may be able to get some of those short-term sales but if you're trying to as you said establish relationships in the long term it's very difficult if not impossible to do so yeah we could go on for a much longer period of time and we'd have a great conversation but uh people would probably say okay we're reaching the end of the podcast i want to get back to my normal life so with that i always have one question i asked in the end of these podcasts but before we jump to that just as a reminder we do have the bonus uh bonus section where we're going to talk a little bit about teresa's one crazy idea so make sure if you if you're interested in hearing about her crazy idea to stay tuned after we wrap up the normal episode this is a it'll be a good one so i'm excited to talk through it but before we get there um the question i always wrap up with each episode is um you know within your industry within your area of expertise what is one of the biggest myths so so the second use the second you say brand to somebody somebody's like oh i have the greatest logo it's the greatest logo i have the greatest logo and the greatest name um hopefully hopefully the the conversation we've just had shows you that that's really not what a brand is um a a logo and a name that's a that's a visual and a verbal cue of what your brand is but that's not your brand right so you know just because you come up with a great logo or a great name does not mean you have a brand no i think that is absolutely fair i mean if i were to take you know i take an iconic brand now i'm not an apple person my wife loves apple but if you take the brand there our reputation is being innovators new inventive products now i'll argue to them do i go blue the faces to why i don't believe the brand but they have a very strong brand about that and a lot of people like that about their brand and it's not just the apple hike or apple logo so i think that that is a great myth that people think i've got my logo i've got my logo i've got the name of my business we've got the brand established now we don't have to worry about it there's a lot more to it well and one thing that you know the the ubiquitous brands are great as examples because everybody can understand and the ones that i always come back to are cook and pepsi right coca-cola and pepsico though the product i mean i believe there's a difference you can people will argue to their until they're blue in the face about whether or not there's a difference in the product i personally think there is um i'm i'm a coke drinker but i'm a neither drinker so i don't really i don't have a dog in the pipe but i mean okay so this is interesting maybe as as you don't drink either one but you probably have very different perceptions of what the two are right so for me you know coke it's like this it's refreshing it's classic it's it is um it is it i i can almost smell it i can feel it it gives me you know a different feeling and pepsi is pop culture it's pop but it's pop culture it's more it's today it's you know it's the latest trend um and the feelings you get are very different about those things and so my replay of that back to those two brands is really what their brand is yep no i i think that's that's a great point and a great example well as we wrap up we'll do the bonus question here in a minute but if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer or client they want to be a wholesale client of wood underwear and wood apparel they want to be a 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 contact you or find out more well so you can always go to woodunderwear.com w-o-o-d underwear dot com um i'm on linkedin um always happy to take uh take dms on any of that we're on all the instagram channels at wood underwear email phone all of that information is on the website so very accessible call visit give us your thoughts love to hear it also i definitely encourage people to check out or check you out at all the different ways to connect up with the business so well 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 uh before you log out we always ask that if you can click subscribe click share leave us a review because we want to make sure that everybody and all the startups and small businesses find out about these great areas of expertise so they can continue to build and grow their business and on that note if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now with that as we wrapped up the normal portion of the episode now we got to jump to the fun part or it's all fun but the bonus question which is we get to hear a little bit about a crazy idea you've had and these are usually ideas that hey this would be fun i may never actually pursue it but i had the idea if i had them limited time money in in the ability i would pursue it so with that turn it over to you to tell us what is your one crazy idea i'm glad we brainstormed this uh in advance because i love this idea it is underwear that self combusts when you should get new underwear i mean so it's like you open your drawer after two years and that pair is no longer there it's like so it's almost like it's kind of like the magician paper that just goes up in flames and so after two years it just has a self-imposed timer that all of a sudden you just open your door and there's just a big poof of smoke in your underwear is god where it used to be that's right and you're forced to then go get fresh underwear because most people's underwear drawers need need help so yeah now now i'll ask a follow-up question because i'd have no idea do you have any idea of how you're actually going to implement the idea yes no but if you run across any technology that helps me with that send them my way all right well if i come across or if there's any listeners that have odds mods send every underwear with a package of mobs to eat through the cotton so it's kind of just a very slow eating underwear so when you're getting close you're saying okay the boss are getting close to eating it through and then just one day it's gone all right maybe we'll do that i do know some people that are in the biotech industry so maybe there's something there where they can actually do it where or with some chemical i don't know who i do it maybe it's just like the old james bond movie where this movie or this message will self-destruct them so many times and you just have a timer on the underwear where you can see it counting down the number of days you have less until it just combusts so love it love it all right well i expect that uh that wood underwear will soon be coming out with this i'll be your first customer if you buy it not because it probably because it'll be a self-imposed timer so i can get from that 90 or 95 to 100 in my underwear drawer of not having any old ones that are stuck around way too long so i'll be your first customer once once you figure out how to do it perfect perfect all right well thank you again teresa i love the crazy idea it's a fun one and thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing all your expertise definitely i'm sure it's valuable to the audience and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin thank you so much

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The Inventive Journey
Episode #326
Get Good At Hiring
w/ Rick Girard
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"Get really good at hiring. Your team is going to determine whether or not you are going to be successful. All your business problems are people problems in disguise. You can tail everything back to your people. There are some of us who are entrepreneurs who people are drawn to, and they want to work with us for whatever reason. That's great, but if you don't have those skills or that muscle that's something you really need to build upon. You need to do it from the standpoint of who you are as you build your business. what are the values of the organization? People who align with the organizational values are going to make a greater impact, and going to be a better hire."

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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

 get really good at hiring right because your team is going to determine really whether or not you're going to be successful and it's about the people um all your business problems are people problems in disguise right so you can tail everything back to your people so you know there are some of us that are entrepreneurs that are natural like people are drawn to us and you know they want to work with us for whatever reason those it's great but if you don't have those skills with that muscle that's something that you really need to to build upon and you need to do it from the standpoint of who you are as you're building your business and what the values of the organization are because people who align with the organizational values are going to make a greater impact they're going to be better hires [Music] 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 i p law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we've got another uh great guest on the podcast rick gerard and uh just a quick introduction to rick so he went to uh art school wanted to be a photographer and then decided that that lifestyle wouldn't provide that wouldn't provide the lifestyle that he wanted um so uh recruited into a business by i think a cousin's husband if i remember right um went for the opportunity because it was in the location that he can go snowboarding or skiing and otherwise play in the airplane the snow so first six months were brutally hard not a lot of training but uh then uh continued to go for it got good at it grinded through and figured out how to do sales and became a top performer got promoted to a manager um left the business and decided to move to california and started a business with a co-founder and did that for about three years before exiting the business and moving to hawaii and then went to hawaii for 10 years i did a whole bunch of surfing and maybe a little bit of work and then met his wife got married had kids and then moved back to california and started his business that he's doing now so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast rick hey well thanks for having me devin man that's a lot that's a you took really good notes because i know we had a conversation about it but yeah hey i always try and capture the essence of the journey but i always it's always fun to unpack that a bit so i just condensed a much longer journey into 30 seconds or so so take us a little bit back in time and unpack it how did your journey get started in art school well you know yeah i just i kind of was one of those kids i was really big into surfing and snowboarding and i wasn't really that great at it i was i was good but not like you know where i could make a living at it um and that's where i was kind of that's what i was passionate about and um so you know i started thinking about things that you know i like to do and i got into photography and just kind of went to college for it and started you know started working for a professional photographer and doing a system work and got into that world and then quickly noticed that you know making 125 a day for a 12 hour day is not going to get me where i want to be and probably not where you want to be not at all not at all i mean i felt like i was just kind of a glorified construction worker slash film loader like back in the day when they had film right so that's all i did and um and so you know my my my cousin's husband came to me and said hey we're moving up to sun valley idaho and if you want to come up um you know you can have a job and i'm like sweet i'll do it i'm like is there snowboarding there yeah absolutely so i uh i didn't even know what i was getting myself into i just knew that he had a business and that guy was doing amazingly well and so thank you rick parzik for you know setting me on this journey um but um but yeah i um i i kind of got into it i had no idea what i was doing i was probably the worst cold caller in the world for the first six months and that's all that's all you know the recruiting business is it's cold calling pretty much and uh and uh you know i got lucky on a few things and then uh you know just kind of progressed through the organization became a manager that's always a fun thing when you become a manager because you're a high performer and they teach you nothing and they go okay make it work you know everybody's like you figure it out so now figure out how to make other people do it exactly exactly i remember i remember having a conversation with my my my um mentor at one point and he's like i'm like well look i don't know what i'm doing you know help me out he goes well just just do what you think i would do and i go i don't know what you would do you know so we'll just pick up some books and read him you know like so he he recommended like the one minute manager and something else and i'm like i mean i read them i still i i don't know what to do in situations because i haven't haven't encountered any of them so in a little bit it's a trial by fire or baptism by fire that uh hey figure it out and uh hey if you succeed then it'll be great for you and if not then you won't succeed and you'll move on so before we dive into the or one one question i didn't want to circle back on so one of the things that you said that did draw you to there is hey i can go snowboard snowboarding and that sounds like a fun adventure and a good way to have my free time did you get it with all the work and learning and doing all the business did you get out on the slopes quite a bit or was it a dream that never came true no i did i did my goal was to get a season pass and um i think i moved there in like june and i had to buy it by october so like i worked my butt off to be able to afford to buy my season pass and then i bought my season pass and i would snowboard pretty much every day um i got i was getting like over 100 days a year in snowboarding but it was like i'd go snowboard for lunch i'd be the first one in the office and the last one to leave and then i'd take two hour lunches and so we had that flexibility so i'd go ride for two hours it was great because the the office like looked out at the ski lift i could actually walk down to it it was pretty nice actually my house i could walk to the to the lift on right off the bird drive so it's kind of nice that sounds like a great office location and a great uh flexibility as far as what you're able to do so now i'm just curious because it wasn't necessarily essential to your journey but that was one of the reasons you moved there so now you're saying okay moving up to manager i kind of had to figure out how to do the sales thing i get better at it and that's usually what happens now they move to manager and yeah you know you kind of take on the responsibility of training others and so how did your where did your story go from there yeah i um i i really had a hard time with being a leader and a manager like i like i i struggle with that a lot because i i was either like the one doing all the work and then getting frustrated with everybody else because they weren't producing and then i'm feeding everybody and then i was just kind of feeling really resentful about it or i wasn't doing enough work and i was handing stuff off it was just like this weird balancing act so you know i i didn't really like i said i didn't get a lot of help but i decided hey look you know what i'm gonna just go learn something so i actually enrolled in a community college like management course just so i can kind of get an idea of what i'm doing i did get a little bit of flack for that but you know it was kind of like it was worth it you know it's something i had to do no and i think i mean you know and what's interesting is you kind of hit on but what i've found here you know in my experience and watching others is sometimes you can be an awesome sales person you excel at it you can figure out what that is and then they move into manager and sales people just hate it because now you're going from sales and calls and and meeting people and they'll be able to talk to now you have to try and manage people and deal with their problems and train them and do be it meetings and it's just a much different shift and some people love it move over to it some people say i just want to go back to what i enjoyed and what gave me the freedom and the flexibility plus sometimes you make more sales people because you're able to get out and close a lot of deals and get commission so definitely make sense on how that might not have been the desirable position that it sounded like it may have been so i think it or as your journey there continued you left that business and then moved to california and started another business with the co-founder is that right yeah actually with the with uh my same mentor like he actually moved back we moved back to california started up another business we grew that during the whole dot-com boom it was a recruiting firm i mean it was it was a fun journey because in three years i think um we we exploded and during that whole dot-com boom i remember like people were just hiring crazy you know we worked with pets.com and i think we we built them an ungodly amount of money like in six months and what was interesting about it is like they were just hiring anybody i remember the hiring manager saying you know as long as somebody has java on their resume like we'll hire them like we have all we have half an office it's empty and we need to fill all these seats it was just it was crazy and um and then yeah that was all like right before kind of like that whole 9 11 thing happened and then we decided to i i decided to go a different direction um my my partner wanted to go into biotech in some other areas and i wanted to stay in tech and um and i wanted one question we didn't answer which is what made you so was it did you guys kind of both decide you're going to make an exit together and you're going to move to california he had the idea started the business i thought you'd be great for it or kind of how did you move from that manager position to decide hey we're going to pick up go with the my mentor and go to california kind of what was that transition or how did that occur yeah they decided like actually it was kind of a so i was up in idaho for i think five years and then um i i was kind of get i loved living up there but it was just kind of like i missed the ocean i missed some of the other things and um and so he decided he was going to move back we talked about it and like he's like we'll just start up a new company and grow it vertically and we'll grow a really big like well-oiled recruiting firm i'm like great let's do it so it wasn't uh there wasn't a whole lot of in-depth like lengthy conversations about it was kind of like yeah let's go hey sounds like a great adventure another great place to go play for the two-hour lunches why not let's do it yeah so now you do that okay okay i'm gonna you know i go out there and it sounds like you know you guys got going and then as you know as the business continued to grow you guys wanted to take it in different directions and so you guys decided to you know it sounds like you know at least as i read between the lines amicably part ways and then you say well you know california is nice but really where i should go is hawaii because hawaii sounds even better for for playing in the on the beach is that about the thought or how did you kind of decide you're going to go to hawaii for a while that that was it that was it like it was decided over breakfast on a saturday morning where i was just like you know what i really don't want to go start up another biotech group or anything like that like i i don't want to i want to grow either up or out and uh and you know and that wasn't really the option on his end so i'm like well you know what let's just let's just part ways i'm going to pack up and move to hawaii and then like i had wanted to move to hawaii so it just gave me that opportunity to be able to do that so that's awesome and so now i may missed it but did you have a job lined up or did you know what you're going to do in hawaii you just said hawaii's a destination that sounds fun and that's where i'm going to go figure out a job yeah i mean i basically exited my interest and then decided hey i'm going to um i'm going to go ahead and figure it out i was going to start up a company in building hawaii that was the plan um i'll go ahead sorry about that no i didn't say did you know what the company was going to be or did that come later yeah i was going to yeah i was starting up another recruiting firm but i took some time off i took at least well uh my plan was to take a year off and then then start building but i incorporated right away when i got there and i got the company kind of up and running and then i met somebody who was doing recruiting in japan from hawaii and he needed some help so i i actually joined up with him and helped him kind of get his organization streamlined and get things built out for himself no that sounds like and it sounds like it was a fun time you know so and you were there you i i think if i remember right you said that you didn't intend there to be there quite as long maybe six months or a year and then you end up staying 10 years no no i had planned on like that i was gonna stay there for a while yeah you're gonna retire in hawaii and just have a business and have some fun i was somewhat retired i mean i i don't think i would ever kind of retire because i have to have something going on but um yeah hawaii's like a really interesting place to try and build a business especially a business that's doing business on the mainland you know so it was it was uh it was challenging but um you know i i kind of knew at some point i would probably move back just because you know this is where you build things and i'm a builder and by nature for a long time i wasn't really building anything substantial so and that that definitely makes sense and yeah i think along the way as you were doing it you also met your wife and that was part of the the journey while you're in hawaii is that right yeah yeah i met my wife um we got married and then we had my daughter and then we started getting pressure from the in-laws right like and then my my parents like when am going to see our granddaughter why don't you move that so that kind of forced the issue a little bit more um you should have just told them hey we live in hawaii it's a great vacation you can come here it's free board we'll probably give you some food and it'll be a great time that you can come and take some time off every year that would have been my pitch yeah well what it kind of was and then you know we we actually talked about it quite a bit and um i was itching to kind of get back and build something again and so that was the i you know i do i do really well with with partners and and so um you know i had a partner that i kind of joined up with and and so that was that was kind of the plan and then you know since we've been here we we parted ways but but uh it's been it's been good so hey that that definitely makes sense so so you say okay coming here in law pressure want to go back to where i can build something i want to continue to you know or cultivate something california's a place for me because it's a nice place to live you know a little expensive for my taste but otherwise a nice place and uh yeah you come back and yeah and you come build something and you say okay now did again kind of as you're moving back to the you know there's a the lower 48 or upper 48 whichever direction it is from hawaii um you know as you're coming back did you have an idea of what you wanted to build as you got back to california or was it kind of more of all get back get settled and then start something or how did you kind of transition to that next phase yeah so the transition was you know basically to build another recruiting firm i think i realized a few years in um i actually didn't want to build another like large firm um because i i found there's some inherent like some really really systemic challenges and things about the business that um that weren't really working for me you know we were doing contingency search which means you know basically it's free unless you hire one of my guys and then you pay me a big lump sum and um and so we shifted i shifted the model around and then we started really doing um value value-driven search for companies from the perspective of being retained and also being in a position where like we really help solve their problems as opposed to just kind of slinging resumes over and hoping they hire one of our people now and i'm just curious more than anything because i i've got i've seen both sides and you know predominantly what i've seen in the industry is more of hey we'll hire you you know you'll have a you'll get a percentage of their first year's payer you'll have maybe a flat fee that's pretty steep that you say okay i'll do that so how did you kind of shift that model or what did you do to kind of set that up to be a bit different to where it's providing more of hey we're actually providing as opposed to finding going out finding a whole bunch of resumes throwing them over and if they happen to hire one then you get the payment how did you kind of shift that value model yeah you know so one of the things i realized back when i had hair um was that um hiring managers and nobody likes to admit this but like a lot of people in the interview process don't know how to interview people and so there's a there's a big kind of area where when two people go into a room and they do conduct an interview you have no visibility to what happens there and you know there's there's kind of questions you can't ask that get asked sometimes one and then number two uh it's usually just like it's like a speed date you know tell me about this okay great okay and tell me about that okay great it's just like this really surpassy uh not going deep under the hood conversation it gives you really um a whole interview is basically just run off of bias i mean that's really like what it what it breaks down to so i set out to tackle that problem with a lot of the clients that i was working with so the way we packaged it was hey look at we do we do what we call engaged search and if we work with you if we choose to work together one of the things we bring is an interview process and so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna put together an interview process for you that you're gonna lead this search with and um that way it's gonna ensure that you're gonna find the strongest person for your organization and it's it worked out it started to like it was uh it was a lot of kind of fine-tuning the method but started working and then i started seeing clients that were coming back to me saying okay you know we hired our vp here through your process and we really loved it how do we roll this out into the rest of the organization and so i had some clients hire me to like you know come in and fix that problem and so we've just been evolving that with the search and it's not really anything that any other search firm really puts into play i mean they'll put in some interview strategy um but again i i feel like it's it's just kind of um it's slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound that that never gets solved right so so i made it my mission to solve that problem basically oh and i think it's a great one because i i you know learned by some hard experience and had some er you know some they're good they're hires and good success but it is one where a lot of times it does feel almost like an analogy of speed dating to where you know you'll have maybe one or a couple interviews at least early on before it figured out what better process it works at least for us but then you know you have a couple interviews the resume looks well you'll hire them on and then it's 50 50 if they work out well you know i don't know the exact odds but you know you're taking a bit of a gamble because it's hard to really figure out is a good or a good fit and so solving that problem and making it more valuable higher i think definitely makes sense and provides a much more of that value so hey that's a definitely a great model yeah and i feel like i feel like you know as leaders we should be really good at hiring but we're not you know we should make it our mission that like hey look at in order for this organization to succeed i got to get good at hiring and um you know and still at best a lot most companies have like a 50 50 chance they're going to make the right decision so you know some companies should just go in flip a coin and and say okay you're hired or you're up you know it's tails you're out so maybe you'll weed out the resumes and they say okay we've got these two and you just turn around to do a blindfold and pick one so no but i think that there's definitely a better way to do that than just kind of that blind hiring and work or hoping it works out then you put all that time and effort both into the hiring process and onboarding and training people only to you know a lot of the time having to redo that process yet again so i think that there's definitely a much better way it sounds like you've solved that so now as we've kind of got to you know present day so we've come or come through your journey there's always two questions i ask at the end of each podcast so why don't we jump to those now 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 um you know i've been one of these people that i always make the wrong choice first and but i learned from it right so i i do everything wrong and you know i i endure that pain i don't know if that's just my my cross i'm bearing i don't know but for some reason i usually and and i've been making a mental shift to actually like okay i'm inclined go this way so maybe i should go that way so i i've um i've taken a very kind of opposite approach right like george costanza in seinfeld right um he started doing the opposite of what he would normally do and then as a result he ended up like getting a job with yankees moving out of his parents house got a girlfriend you know everything worked out um so uh when i did uh move down here to orange county i actually kind of got really excited about working with a friend of mine and um we just kind of came together without a whole lot of conversation and started working together and then found out very quickly that the expectations were completely misaligned and we were not a good mesh for each other and so um that was the that was probably one of the biggest um misfires that i did on my end like i did no do no diligence at all and uh as a matter of fact i probably you know we again it was like probably a 30-minute conversation before we made the decision to to um to do that one of the things that i learned from that was if you're going to have conversations with people then you really need to set expectations up front and so i created an expectations document that i do with people when when we're talking about working together where hey this is this is kind of really laying out my plans for the business and what my roles and responsibility are in in and you laying out what your you know pain desire and impact is that you want to have for the organization and you can roll into it and if we're in alignment then great we can work together if we're not then we shouldn't no i think that i think that there's a lot to impact it but i think a lot of times it is interesting sometimes we make the wrong decisions or we have to we're continuing learning and say i'm going to do the opposite or i'm going to try something outside the box or different or we're going to break the mold so to speak and a lot of times that's where the success arises so i think that that's both an interesting you know worse business decision but also something that great to learn from it second question is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them get really good at hiring right because your team is going to determine really whether or not you're going to be successful and it's about the people um all your business problems are people problems in disguise right so you can tell everything back to your people so you know there are some of us that are entrepreneurs that are natural like people are drawn to us and you know they want to work with us for whatever reason those it's great but if you don't have those skills or that muscle that's something that you really need to to build upon and you need to do it from the standpoint of who you are as you're building your business and what the values of the organization are because people who align with the organizational values are going to make a greater impact they're going to be better hires and so take the time to sit down you know even on a on a napkin with a crayon and write out what your values are and really like put those into motion and put those out there oh and i think that is that's definitely great advice and defining what the values are and putting it i like you know whether it's a napkin it doesn't have to be arduous doesn't have to be long i think some people have in their mind they have to have a big meeting and everybody give their input and you go through it and pick apart every word and a lot of times it's like you know what are your values what are you trying to accomplish let's write it down let's put it somewhere and make sure we have that well defined and then let's get to work and so i think that that that's a great uh great takeaway well if you're a startup or an entrepreneur like there's probably one to two maybe three of you right like so sit in a room for a half a day and do it and it's not that much work right oh and i think that i think that that's a great point and it kind of i think also helps to get everybody aligned you're on the same page so you know this is what everybody has in mind and maybe you know two people have something different but then you can look to see how we're going to accomplish those or incorporate it and it tends to better align things and if people are just kind of having different missions in mind so i think that's a great piece of advice yeah every startup needs a north star exactly well as we as we wrap up and if people want to reach out to they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to use your service to hire their next employee they want to be an employee of yours they want to be an investor or they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you and contact you and find out more i'll take them all well i'm pretty active on linkedin it's rick gerard g-i-r-a-r-d um if you are a entrepreneur and you want help with putting a system in place for interviewing i did release a book called healing career wounds in may and it's an entrepreneurial guide to win winning the strongest hires for your startup and it even goes down into giving you scripts of what to say and how to say it and why to say it um and i i too have a podcast like you know like you devin it's called higher power radio it's hiri power radio it's not a religious show but um you know you can you can find me pretty much there i'm i'm pretty visible everywhere awesome well i definitely encourage people to connect up any or all the the ways provided uh it sounds like both a great book to check out great resources and you're looking to make better hires definitely a resource to keep in mind well thank you again for uh coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com fly 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 us a review because we want to make sure that everyone finds out about all these awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your uh business with patents trademarks or anything else just feel free to reach out to us go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us at chad well thank you again rick for coming on the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much for having me devon absolutely you

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