Spend Your Time Wisely

Catharina Joubert
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/8/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

and this was a very hard lesson I learned, so be careful in how you spend your time so we always gonna get a very rewarding feeling from being busy, and this can we just be like, you know, answering emails taking phone calls, you know, doing marketing. But if you do not actually evaluate the impact that all this business is having on your ROI, your return on investment, and what the income is and how you're actually making progress, are you growing your audience, your podcast so whatever, what your income or profit is whatever it might be, if that's not growing fast not changing and yet you're all busy all the time, then you need to reevaluate and strategy. Everyone this is Devin, here with another episode of the inventive journey. I'm your host Evan Miller, serial entrepreneur has grown several startups, seven and eight figure businesses, as well as the CEO and founder 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 strategy meeting calm and grab some time with us to chat. Now today we have a another great guest on the podcast Catherine show Joburg or Howard, as close as I can get to. So, Katharina. She grew up in South Africa, dropped out of high school and then, instead they completed their examinations to get the degree left at home and 17 went to Japan for a while, which is a fun age to go and explore the world went back home, went to university for a while, got a degree in music and sound production and also did some went to France, do some English teaching had a family tragedy came back home taught some English taught some music. Excuse me, and then moved back to UK wanted to do something else I signed up to do teaching. First, I think Teach First Leadership Program, and some of the rougher schools in the UK, got some great experience, but it was also a very stressful thing, so I decided to move on from teaching and move over to what she's doing now, which is more of a multimedia company and also does a rise and produce a podcast so with that much as introduction, welcome on the podcast Catherina. Thank you for that great introduction you basically covered everything but I'll try and expand on some points. Absolutely. So I gave, as you said I gave kind of a 32nd overview of your journey which is condensing a much longer journey into a much shorter amount of time. So let's go back a little bit and tell us a little bit about growing up in South Africa and testing out of school and moving to Japan, so kind of tell us how that all the journey got started. Okay yes that's actually like where, if I look at where I'm at now, it all goes back to that stage and of course you don't actually realize it at the time. Now, growing up in South Africa, I mean, it was just such a mixed cultural bag and I'm of a mixed cultural heritage, so obviously one of the things they've really really influenced me was this fascination with traveling and exploring the world and meeting new people and being able to speak different languages, and the other on the other hand, however I was also both just very creative. I loved music loved writing, so these are the things I did. Now you mentioned that I dropped out of school and the reason for this was simply I just felt everything was going very slowly. And this kind of depressed me so in a way I felt like I was wasting my time so at one day I just stopped going. And my parents had to make peace with that, I got the textbooks ordered and just completed the exam, as quickly as I could. The exams that could allow me to for example apply to university and so forth. And luckily this put me in a position to leave her pretty quickly and it also gave me a lot more time to do different things so I spend a lot of time, like to put it in perspective, I wanted to be a concert pianist, I was really fascinated by the power of audio and how it can just influence people and sway their emotions and make them feel better. And then I was also fascinated by stories. So I did a couple of other cultural activities which allowed me to go to Japan, there was a very rare opportunity that opened up. And it was more through people I met, so I took it immediately, but I was still a teenager, I was 17, and my parents eventually asked me to come back and actually go to university, so I did that. So one question why, before you get back to university, so you went to Japan for a period of time did you just go on your own. Did you have a plan and what did you do while you're in Japan or kind of, that seems like a bit of a cultural jump and also just a, a different direction to go into what did you do there and how did you figure out, or how did you figure out how to make your way there. And so at the time, I can't actually remember how I got into it but I was playing Eagle, or golf, which is the oldest strategy strategy game, and it was invented like I don't know how many years ago. Basically it's kind of like chess but it's a lot simpler and a lot more complicated for example computers, only they were only able to develop a computer program to be professional Go player, like, a couple of years ago. That's how complicated the game is. So that's what I did, or spent a lot of time on, and I met a what they call the center like a teacher and because of the situation I was one of the few South Africans that especially being a female South African. So they just said, Well, come to Japan and studied again when I said why not. But yeah, so it was a very rare opportunity and I did just go by myself. I probably, from that point onwards, I've just been a bit of a nomad I have not been able to stay in one piece for too long. So you say he said okay you know sounds like a fun opportunity you know I've got my testing done with school, ago in Japan have an adventure and do that for a while so you do that, and then I think you said it was what it means studying go now, one question this is a follow up on that you know was that it was playing going up to support yourself, did you work there. Did your family support your kind of how did you while you're in Japan, not being at home anymore. How did you kind of fail to pay for your life expenses. So, obviously, all of the expenses they sorted out some accommodation for me I didn't have to work or anything I couldn't because I feel that I would have had to have a work visa. I was still like a teenager, so it just wasn't going to work out. So, because they also gave me like, actually I could attend the school for free, where I was studying, so it was kind of like a bursary. And then my parents just supplemented what I needed. Otherwise, sounds like a fun and exciting experience and so he did that and how long were you in Japan for. I was meant to stay a roughly a year but then of course there was the university question of university which starts in January in South Africa so yeah I had to cut my time short. So now he come back to South Africa say okay I'm gonna study in university. So, what did you decide to study kind of how did you know how did you decide where you're going to study and what direction to go from there. Yes, very good question, because I was very certain about what I wanted to study, and I was music, but at the same time I knew I wanted to at least specialize in a one on one language, and then, I was so, like, fired up about different languages so I wanted to so in total three majors, which meant that the best degree at that particular university I wanted to study at was something called Music Technology. Now I think this is like 2008. And back then podcasts haven't really started and what music technology basically meant was you were you were going to go into sound production you were going to do something to do with the technical side of sound. And this didn't interest me at all. Even though fast forward to today, this is what my company is basically based on but yes. So at the time I didn't know I just thought well, I could do loads of different things and that's what I've always been doing so that's why I decided to do that. Now definitely makes sense and so you study that you get a graduate from university get the degree, and then where did the next adventure life where you say, obviously the like traveling. By this time, so I was just like, Okay I need to get to a new country, or something strange but yeah that was the idea. And because I studied French at the time, I went into the did my post grad in French literature, all the while I wasn't entirely sure what the career idea was going to be all I was thinking about was just like going to as many different places as possible so it allowed me to go to France so there I got his poster the English teacher. And the idea was to stay in France, I didn't really have any plan to come back to South Africa and basically from France just find a different place to go to. But unfortunately at that stage, there was a family tragedy which meant that eventually I went did go back to South Africa. And I think that is kind of like where all my, I almost want to say worse decisions started happening because I was on this climb very fastly in a direction, and even though I didn't have a clear destination in mind I kind of knew what I was doing, maybe not. But anyway, when I went back, obviously, you know, I had to think again. What kind of job was going to do in South Africa. At the stage, I mean, I studied music technology, which already was a bit of a vague thing. At that time, and French and English so everyone said Well the easiest thing to do is just go into education. I mean, with that, it's very secure. Everyone needs a teacher, like, it's not something that's going to go out of fashion soon. And so I said okay, why not so I followed everyone's advice but the thing was getting into an industry like that, which is, I mean, I loved being a teacher I love teaching. Still, if you get really comfortable. And because it's fairly easy to get a position, regardless of where you go, it makes it even more attractive in terms of a career and then you start thinking, Oh well, I want to do more and at that stage I was working for tertiary institutes of higher education. So they asked me to do a bunch of curriculum development, which was great. But during this whole time even though I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. I kept feeling that something went lost or something went missing and I'm not entirely doing what I wanted to like when, way back when I was, like into music and into writing. and the big reason for all of this was some people were saying, well, there isn't really a career in those things unless you're like one of this, like very very special or exceptionally talented you know a virtuoso for writing it was just simply don't even try. That was the message I got message you decide, okay, I'll do teaching for a period time I think that after the family tragedy, or tragedy after you stayed home for a period of time you went back abroad and you went to the UK and did the Teach versus leadership. Yes, so, I mean this is all just kind of like a blur at the stage so basically I met my partner. When I went back to South Africa and his family is based in the UK. So at some point, we just agreed that while he said, there's a chance to go over, and I didn't even look at the map, he just said it's, it's in the north of England, and I said yeah why not. So I left everything behind, again, a very secure career job family support structure, which is wonderful. It's very useful, but I found myself having moved country already for a couple of times I knew that the community living education are the teachers so I looked at systems, and found something called Teach First, now in this states, It's called Teach America. And basically the principle for this is a leadership development program where they take top graduates, and they put them in, without any prior training, they put them in, like, really tough schools, and in normally very poor regions. So that just automatically because they haven't had no training they've had no background, they can just like really develop the students. And because it's, you know, their mentality they can raise aspirations and then those schools and students and areas will slowly turn around because of these. Well, training teachers. So that's what I did in UK. And yes, that was great. In a way, in the sense that, I mean it really developed me as a person and I got to, I hope, have a positive impact on quite a few students and mean something to them and what I taught them but also being kind of support them, but at the same time, it was grueling It was absolutely like I did not have a life at all outside of it was like very very tough. So now you do that for you know even sounds like it was rewarding and also stressful and tough and kind of everything rolled into one. And what made you kind of decide okay I've done this very time was rewarding. I want to do something else, you know, kind of go a different direction and how did you decide what direction to even take yes so strangely enough, at the same time because I was in this new country, so the other side of what I was doing, I was actually a music journalist so all along. I've always been writing always been into music and so forth. So, I was doing that at the same time living this dual life, and I was, I also had a blog to explore and kind of let the world know about this really beautiful region, with all these ideas and potential, but very few people knew about it. So, based off of that, I just simply decided that even the interesting story was, it was the first day of a new year that I walked into the headmaster's office, and handed in my resignation and just said, Well, if I don't do it now I'm never going to do it so I did it. I'm freaked out for a couple of months, just thought well I'm going to start a podcast, there's no, no podcast in this area is celebrating the space, people, and I'm just going to start one I did not put a lot of thought into it, even though I did. I just, like, in terms of podcasting and businesses surrounding podcasters and like Multimedia Production I didn't think about that, I just wanted to do a podcast. And that's what I did and then I found that regeneration studio which strangely enough was not the best name, but I was normally when I'm literally like, if you send me another direction I just. So, for the podcast, what was the original idea or what did you want to, you know, kind of focus in on what was the motivation kind of as to where you were with podcasting focus on. Yes. So, because Teach First, they allow us to do a lot of printing or like kind of, what would you call it a kind of like apprenticeship, but during the summer holidays we could go to these big companies like PWC or some of the others Deloitte, and we could do like internships, basically. So that really sparked my interest in actual business I even wanted to do an MBA at this stage. And because of that I was interested my first podcast idea was really like looking at the entrepreneurial ideas, entrepreneurs in the area, and the innovation, and kind of spreading and spreading inspiration through. So that was my initial idea, it was a little bit more business focused and but creative at the same time. So that was kind of the initial focus initial idea now, did that work out, did you stick with it is that what you're still doing today. We're kind of I think that as we chatted a bit before things continue to evolve a bit as you kind of figured out, you know where the what the place was versus was with the podcasts being there. How did they know, kind of with that initial idea you took the lead, or where did it evolve from there. And, yes, so at this time. Even though I did some market research. I actually did quite a lot. And I had an idea of it, but I didn't actually think or market what I was doing. And because of that, there was a there's loads of reasons why I didn't actually spread the word and be one of the reasons is that it was last year that I launched something called COVID-19 happened. But anyway, what happened throughout the year was basically organically, this was not the idea. I just met somebody in a coffee shop and told them about the podcast because I wanted to know if people in this area actually listened to podcasts, because I wasn't getting any traction on the one that I started right at the start. Once again because of various reasons, and if so, what kind of things would they be interested in. So I just started talking to this person and they were the CEO of a charity and they were like, really interested in that idea. And then they wanted more. And that's how my current because I suddenly realized that I've always loved writing and creating content about other people and what really drove me was not a superficial picture, I really wanted to drive into there, like the soul of a business will the soul of what mattered to people and capture that. So whereas, sure enough, there are millions of multimedia production agencies and so forth out there. I felt that there was perhaps not that many really trying to put out something that focused on the impact people wanted to have, and that's what got me thinking and then at the start of this year. I also realized that my name was, At least from a podcast or content creator creators perspective, if wasn't the best name because people didn't quite know what regeneration studio meant. While it was very clear. If you prefer to urban regeneration, which means it just means turning up kind of a crappy place where should you place into something that's kind of nice and cool. While it is frustrating swearing. So that was very clear to me but to be honest. Anyone, like if you just spoke to them, they wouldn't know that necessarily unless they're an architect. So yes, so I decided to really look at my audience as well because I realized that as much as I wanted to have an impact on the people around me. They're not necessarily they're not necessarily a podcast listener that I couldn't take that approach and just think because it's their areas, they're going to be interested in it. And even more so people outside of the area were, weren't necessarily interested in there either. So I had to find a different angle, and my angle was to look at who can I actually speak to. And that's how creative fraud came about because I'm a creator abroad. No, and now that name makes at least for me, makes it makes sense and kind of resignation so genuinely makes sense like, did the shift a bit. Now as you did that you know you've shifted he kind of gone through, you know, been a bit of a nomad going to different countries you've been different, a bit of a few different career paths, and now you're on with the the current business you're at now kind of saying okay, we've figured out a bit of work you know why you want to position the podcast what you want to do is for media production everything else. What is the next kind of six to 12 months look like. Yeah, so I've actually now got like a product like a proper thing that I developed, and I developed it around the idea that I want because I looked at, loads of other podcast production agencies and the exciting part for me is okay so I am literally the first if podcast exclusive production agency or audio marketing agency in this area in the northeast, so I'm basically for the next six months, I've just need to contact as many people as possible and put this in front of them, and also more specifically what I part of my target audience if you like, would be the people who would eventually be attracted to the podcast. So, actual creators abroad, because I'd be able to really like, that's one of the company values I decided at the start, is that it's really a celebration of diversity. So to people who who want that cultural understanding and interaction so that's my other side so people around here who don't have anyone else to turn to, and then created as abroad so that's what it looks like for me and then I've got another thing in the works which is not to do with language instruction by the way, that's what I did I was a French and English language teacher so I've got a very well, let me just say an original idea for teaching languages but that's coming later on now. Sounds like a lot of fun, fun opportunities are coming up in the future so definitely excited to stay tuned and see where things going so well as now as we wrap towards the end of the podcast I always have two questions that I asked so we'll go ahead and jump to those now. So the first question I was asked is, along your journey. What was the worst business decision you ever made. And what did you learn from it. I thought about this and there's so many bad things, but what would probably be not paying enough attention to marketing. And I know that time is limited. And you, in my case, not all of us feel very comfortable with selling ourselves with telling people what we do. But the fact of the matter is if you start a business or if you have a service, and you really believe in it. For example, if I were to use an analogy or a different kind of business there's something that would really change people's lives completely so you can cure people who are short sighted like, like if you had this medical care for people, and it doesn't have to be laser operation for their eyes, would you just keep it to yourself because you're too scared to sell this kind of invention that you know you would talk to it, to people about it, you will tell them about it and it's the same with anything else that you do you have to really believe in it and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't believe in it and I didn't sell it, and because of that for one year, I was like, incognito. No, definitely makes sense and good mistake to learn from and learn from. So now we'll jump to the second question which is, if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them. So, I'm going to give two pieces of advice, very briefly, and the first piece of advice is specifically for content creators. So someone who doesn't necessarily have a physical product that they're developing or want to sell. So the really tough thing about a business when you start out, is that you obviously you have to get the word out there. Now, if you do not have a reputation to kind of get that kickstart from. It is really important to think carefully about your branding, and how you're going to position yourself in the market. Because if people are not clear on what you're offering. So, especially like I said for content creators like if you have a podcast, amongst million others, then they're most likely just going to move along. So that time that you need to take to explain to them what it's about, are going to lose perhaps 80% of your audience. So, be very clear and very specific with your branding rather than be too simplistic with it, and too complicated. I like that and I like that, you know, oftentimes of branding and trying to convey so much information you want to know, tell everybody all the cool things and all the different things and the reason why they should pick you and everything else was you know, there's always a lot of excitement, a lot of things that you are probably doing different unique, but I like the simple processes hayleigh are conveyed the information that they're going to need, what they're going to want to know and you know how you how you want them to perceive the brand, keep it simple, and that does more to help your brand, than it is to overcomplicate it or to try and convey too much information over, or, you know, in any given time so I think that's great advice. Yes, exactly. And then just very briefly on the second piece of advice and this is more generally, for any business is. And this is a very hard lesson I learned, so be careful in how you spend your time so we always going to get a very rewarding feeling from being busy, and this can be just be like, you know, answering emails taking phone calls, you know, doing marketing. But if you do not actually evaluate the impact that all this business is having on what your ROI, your return on investment, and what the income is and how are you actually making progress, are you growing your audience if you're a podcast or whatever, what your income or profit is whatever it might be, if that's not growing if that's not changing and yet you're all busy all the time, then you need to reevaluate and perhaps influence. No, and I agree and I think that there is oftentimes it feels like hey if I'm busy, I must be, you know, must be successful I must be improving on something and sometimes that's true and sometimes you are being, you know, being busy isn't a bad thing. But if on the other hand, if it's just busy for busy sake are the things that you're doing are the things that are going to create the most value, then just being busy doesn't doesn't benefit your business so I think that's a great another great piece of advice. Well as we as we wrap up when people want to reach out to you they want to find out more about your business, they want to hire you as a content creator, they want to be a customer, client and employee and investor your next best friend, any or all of the above, what's the best way to reach out contact you and find out more. So the best place to go where you'll find all my links, and my contact details, is my website, which is creators, abroad.com, and you can just simply get in touch Email cat at creators abroad. COMM or Instagram, which is where I'm most active at creators abroad. Actually that's creators dot abroad as adopted. I definitely encourage everybody to reach out find out more and make sure to connect up with. Well thank you for coming on the podcast has been it's been it's been a pleasure. Now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell me like to be guest on the podcast is go to inventive guest calm, always love to share your story, do more things as a listener, one, make sure to click Subscribe in your podcast place you know on all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review, so that other people can find out about all the awesome episodes as they come out. Last but not least if you ever need help with patents, trademarks or enhancing their business just go to strategy meeting. COMM grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help. Thank you again, Catherine and wish the next leg of your journey, even better than the last. Thank you so much, Devon, for having me on the show.

The Power Of Networking

Ali Marchand
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/7/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

I can't tell you the power of networking and of reaching out to people and just asking for things directly and not beating around the bush. I think that we really underestimate the power of being super direct with someone instead of just kind of like sending in your resume and hoping for the best find the side doors. And that's not just for starting a business or getting your dream job like find the side doors to everything. Do you want to start a podcast or write a book or anything like that? I mean, I guarantee you, your network is going to have a huge power and helping you get there. And so networking and asking direct questions and reaching out and just asking questions to people you look up to that would be number one. 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 founder and CEO of Miller IP law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks. If you ever need any help with yours, just go to strategy meeting calm and grab some time with us to chat. Now today we have a another great guest on the podcast, Allie marchin or Marchand marshland close enough. And Allie grew up in Boulder, Colorado, went to college, I think in Orange County and studied in business and finance. And then after she as she was graduating, the professor gave her a scholarship to go to a business conference with them at the conference, she heard us speak, you're talking about international inclusivity. If I can not get Tongue Tied and kind of got your interest in that area, also got an internship in Switzerland and went to work with wealth management company there for a while, or a lot of a lot of hats. Notice that there was a big difference in the way that US companies did things versus away Switzerland, in their companies in Switzerland did that first leveraging technology and the internet and LinkedIn and other aspects. And so started a bit from that started a business and digital marketing and the finance industry in Switzerland, I believe, and it's kind of gone from there. So with that much as an introduction, welcome on the podcast, Ellie. Thanks so much for having me here. Devin. I'm excited. So I just gave the quick 32nd overview to a much longer journey. So why don't we go back a bit in time and tell us a little bit about going up in Boulder going to college and kind of how your journey got started there? Yeah, definitely. So as you mentioned, I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which people tend to refer to as the boulder bubble. We are very, I don't know, very outdoorsy and sustainable. And there are a few bad traits too, but I can't remember them. But I became conscious of the environment and sustainability from a very young age. So that was always a value that I kind of held near and dear. I'm from Boulder, I, as you mentioned, went to college in Orange County at Chapman University. And I picked business as probably many people picked business because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in the world. And I thought that would be a good way to start. Um, and I actually emphasized an international business because I had been always curious about traveling the world. I didn't travel much when I was younger. And I studied Spanish from when I was five years old, I went to a bilingual elementary school and middle school. And so I just kind of had this yearning for traveling and learning about other cultures. So So now you say you go into you go to Boulder, Colorado, you know, then you go. And I think if I remember right, it was Orange County where you got the your business and finance degree, you're coming out or getting ready to graduate. I think you mentioned kind of the thing that got your journey started was the professor they gave a scholarship or a grant or whatnot to go to a business conference with them. And that kind of got you going on that part of the journey. Is that right? Yeah, definitely. So um, I was studying, I was taking some finance classes, because I had always been interested in math and numbers. And I knew finance was where you made money, quite honestly. So, um, there was one of my professors announced to the class that he put on an investment conference in Las Vegas, and he wanted some of his students to join. But he knew that none of us had the money for the flights or kind of would do it on our own with our own resources. And so he provided a scholarship just to cover the flights, the conference, the hotel room, and things like that. And I was really interested in not a lot of students, I think ended up applying for that scholarship. But I was like, hey, a free trip to Vegas, maybe a chance to do some networking. I'm about to graduate, maybe a chance to meet some people on Wall Street, so I was really excited to go. And so he did end up giving me the small scholarship it took to get me over to Las Vegas and into that investment conference. And as you mentioned, once I Was there, it was kind of a little bit of everything, a lot of talk about gold, even some talk about blockchain and Bitcoin way early on this was back in 2016, I think. And then there were, I don't know, it wasn't the best networking environment. And so I kind of gave up a little bit early on, didn't go to all of the talks. But on my way down to the conference, the very last day, I was in the elevator, and a man started talking to me. And he was like, he saw that I had the same badge for the conference. And he just was curious. He's like, oh, what are you doing here? What are you interested in? Kind of just asking questions sparked up a conversation. And he was I couldn't tell what his accent was. But he was from Switzerland. And he ran a wealth management company for American investors. And so we sparked up a conversation in the elevator, and he was curious to learn more about what I was doing after graduation. And I'm not kidding when I say I got my first internship from a literal elevator pitch. So we ended up talking and this was the first time that I really learned the lesson. If you don't ask directly for what you want, you have very little chance of getting it. But if you're very outspoken, and kind of just ask straight up what you want, then chances are a little bit higher. So I told him that I was really curious about working abroad, I told him that I really was curious about wealth management and finance, and that I loved the outdoors. So Switzerland sounded like a great place. And I followed up with some emails, and I asked directly if there were any opportunity for an internship, can he please let me know. So now you followed up, I assume. But I'm not going to assume that then you got an internship or you went over to Switzerland or you started out? That's where you started out your journey journey in Switzerland are kind of what's the end end of that story? Or the beginning of that story? Yeah, absolutely. So yes. So a few weeks later, a few months later, I think he didn't have an opportunity right away. But we kept in touch. And he was very keen on just keeping me in the loop. him his company, and another wealth management company, were actually emerging in Switzerland. And I was very lucky because they were looking for some extra help. And so a few months after graduation, I got the email that I got the internship and was invited to kind of spend the summer in Switzerland, learning from these two merging into one wealth management companies. And that is the start, that was my very first job out of college. And that was kind of like the first place that I had lived abroad. First, one of the first places that I've ever even been abroad. And let me tell you, it exceeded expectations, but also just changed my perspective on the world and Americans and everything. I mean, I think that was part of my journey that made me grow the most and the fastest was getting out of my comfort zone. Hmm. No, and definitely, you know, anytime you go to a different country, different is, you know, different culture, different way of doing things and always introduces new ideas, new ways of doing things. And also gives you kind of that stark contrast between what you're used to and how, you know, the way that they do that. So, so now you go in, you get the internship, you work there for a period of time. And I think that after the internship, did it turn into a full time job? Did you do work for them for a period of time? Or where did you go after that? Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I moved to Switzerland with the idea in my mind that I had a summer internship that I had a three month long internship. But after the three months, my boss was very happy with me. And he invited me to stay full time on the portfolio management team. And since this was a very small company, and I think many people can relate to this, you it's very cliche to say that I wore many hats. But in a small company, I think you, you kind of have to do that. And so for the next two and a half years, I worked mostly in the portfolio management team, but also talking with clients, getting to know kind of their investment strategy. I learned so much. I even attended client meetings, I was a part of the investment analysis team. So it was a crazy journey from going from just a three month internship and then calling my parents and telling them that I was maybe gonna stay there indefinitely, and I'm still here. So pretty big shock to my parents, huh? So now you stayed there, you worked for the wealth management, you were a lot of hats. And then how did you know then I think that as we chatted a bit before the podcast, he noticed that there was you know, because of the different ways that people network and build business and manage things in the US versus Switzerland, there presented a bit of an opportunity to you know, bring them you know, bring a new or different different avenue for making connections and networking everything else into Switzerland that wasn't being done. So did you you know, as you're doing that, did you start your own company do it as a side hustle that's still a side hustle the full time gig or kind Of how did that idea percolate? Yeah, absolutely. So I should mention that when I was in college, I had a part time job or kind of an internship with this consulting company in Boulder. And what they did was help business to business tech companies market towards other partners. So it wasn't client facing it was towards kind of like other businesses. And I didn't do that much there. But I did learn the power of marketing and being online. And I just learned so much from my first boss there, and the people that worked there that I have no idea how that was going to impact me later in life, I really didn't think I was gonna keep going in that industry. And I didn't see myself like staying at that company. So when I came here to Switzerland, I was so shocked, because big tech business to business like they are, these are the really kind of nice guys in business and technology. They don't think about marketing, they don't think about LinkedIn, but even they kind of knew more about marketing than the finance industry in Switzerland. And I was shocked when I came here. And you know, all of these private banks and asset managers and wealth managers, they didn't have a LinkedIn profile, they didn't have, you know, that grade of a website, they weren't doing anything online, like nothing, because they all said it was from word of mouth, and just trusted clients. And, you know, at first I was like, okay, it's, you know, it's a different industry. We do like to be private, and finance. So maybe you don't want to be online and things like that. But as I stayed there, I kind of realized there was such a big opportunity for these financial professionals and financial companies to take advantage of the online world. And this was before the pandemic, this was before, you know, everybody had to work at home, and everybody had to work for him online. And I honestly just started talking about this to my colleagues to some other people that I knew in Switzerland, and, you know, I was making connections in the industry, I've always thought that networking is a very powerful tool for yourself, whether you want to stay at a company, or you want to start your own company, or you're looking for another job. So I always make it a point to meet new people. And I kept telling them how surprised I was at this and how different it was from a lot of the companies that I knew of in the United States. And something about Switzerland that is very inherent to the culture here. They are very much more private people, they are kind of less loud. And I think they would say that Americans like brag too much, and that they're too loud online. But I definitely saw a big opportunity in like, okay, at some point, the world of Swiss finance is going to catch up, why not kind of play a part and doing that. And so I brought it up summit, the company that I was working for quite a bit, didn't really gain a lot of traction there. But when someone that I knew mentioned it to his boss, and his boss thought that this was just brilliant, he was like, he wanted me to come in and speak to their team about getting on social media as soon as possible. And I didn't have a company, I didn't have anything with me, I kind of just went in and pitched my ideas. I was like, well, this is what happens when you are online. And you know, this is these are the possibilities and things like that. And the people in that pitch. It was the CEO of this other company, this other wealth management company, and then someone on the board who had a different company, and then someone who was working part time who had a different company. So out of this very first meeting two people, all three people approached me and they were like, hey, Allie, how do we start working with you? Are you taking on new clients? Like, what's, what's the 411? And I was so shocked. I was like, wow, I guess this is really needed. And that just showed me that there was there was indeed a huge opportunity. Hmm. So so you have that kind of had that opportunity to, you know, present, give the education you had people approached you taking that now, did you start to build a business around it? Did you do it as a side hustle? Did you say hey, I'm out of my old job, I'm gonna start this as a new job. And I'm, you know, I'm gonna make the leap or kind of how did you make that transition? No, definitely wasn't right away. And to be honest, when I first heard that these three people wanted me to work for them. I was really overwhelmed. Because marketing wasn't what I majored in. It wasn't really what I did. And I was I was kind of like telling them how important it was without knowing the technical marketing skills. And so I took a step back, and I have a really good friend that I'm so lucky to have. And she worked in one of the biggest PR and ad firms, or actually, it was just an ad firm in Switzerland. And I went over to her house right away. And I was like, Hey, I have a proposal. I have these three clients already. Would you be able to help me with the marketing and just getting them online and getting them up to speed creating some content for them? And she said, Yes. And so I actually started a business with my co founder, who was my friend who many people told me never to do but we can get to that Later, and it started definitely as a side hustle for the both of us. I'm so excited to start as a side hustle now kind of bringing it up until today, you're kind of over that journey. Is it still a side hustle? Did you pick up enough clientele or enough business? So you turn it into a full time hustle? Or kind of how did that transition go? Yeah, it was really interesting. Um, actually, we went full time with the business right before the pandemic. And of course, neither of us knew the world was going to change and have a complete lockdown and this global pandemic affecting every single industry. So yeah, we both went full time with the business right before the pandemic. And my co founder actually picked up a part time job, so that we could kind of pay our bills because we weren't bringing in like so many new clients, especially when the pandemic hit, I noticed that a lot of businesses, even the ones that were focused on growth kind of just took a pause, they took a step back on spending or hiring new partners. And so that was a really interesting start to the business. But so we've been live full time for about a year now. And it's going really great. Both of us are working full time on this new business, it's called impress them and the play on words there is that we're out there to teach financial companies how to impress them, which is like the next generation of investors or, you know, more diverse investors or things like that. And so that's, that's what's going on today. All right. Sounds like it's been a fun journey. And there are a lot of opportunity, the future, which kind of leads me to my next question, which is, so now you guys, you know, that kind of brings us to where you're at today, looking at the next six to 12 months, kind of where do you see things heading? What's the next steps? Or what's the next opportunity that lays in front of you guys? Yeah, that's a great question. I think anyone who owns a business knows that the business has a life of its own, almost like you don't, you can't always proceed where the business goes, I know, when we started it, we had really different ideas than we do now. And definitely, through the pandemic, we've been really lucky because things are moving towards more digital, they're moving towards, you know, people want things to run when they're not in the office. And people want to be building their business when they don't have to pick up the phone or fly to an in person meeting or drive to an in person meeting. So that part is really great. But I think even for ourselves, we noticed the power of an online digital business. And so we're really trying to be kind of more accessible than other marketing agencies. And so we're focusing on trying to produce more kind of digital content, maybe digital courses, and learning how to work one on one with people that won't break the bank. Because I think a lot of times with marketing agencies, you're not very flexible, and it's, you know, really expensive to hire one, and you kind of have to lock down a certain budget in order to start that. And so we're trying to move to a more flexible digital business structure. Sounds like a fun and exciting journey, Adam, yes. So Well, now, as we kind of, you know, brings you up to where you're at today a little bit, looking to the future, good transition to go to the two questions I always ask at the end of each podcast. So the first question I always ask is, along your journey, what was the worst business decision you ever made? And what did you learn from it? So the worst business decision that I ever made was also a blessing. So it was a biggest mistake. And biggest blessing was just starting a business with a really good friend, you don't like a lot of the times, I guess I didn't understand the the impact and the weight that had on the business on the friendship on the business partnership. And so when I heard that advice, like don't start a business with a friend, you'll regret it, you guys won't end up talking, I definitely understand where everybody is coming from. And it has caused lots of friction with the business because my head is over here, her head is over here. We're thinking different things. But we are trying to raise this company as our child, right. And so I'm very open and saying that we're actually going to kind of like co founder therapy, co founder counseling, and I have found that that has helped monumentally, but it has, it was definitely such a big learning process of starting a business with a friend. And I think a lot of people will say, when you get friends involved with business, it can result in a little bit of a blowout. So I think that, you know, there is I think there's probably some truth to it. And everybody basis, you know, I've seen some businesses and friends get together, they work very well together, they complement each other's you know, strengths and weaknesses. And it's a great experience. And other times, you know, it's a little bit like, you know, you know, marriages in the sense that you can have people that you know, are do very well in a marriage and yeah, they can try and work as business partners and then the stress of Hey, now now it's not only you know, you see each other at home, but you see each other at work or same thing as a friend you see each other after work and a stranger or it can work out great. So I think that You know, there's always those people that have biases one way or the other. And you always have to decide which way works best for your business for your relationship and which way to leverage it. So definitely make sense on on things learn there. Yeah. Second question I always ask is along your journey, or sorry, not along your journey. But if you're talking to somebody that just get into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them? Can I give two pieces of advice? Absolutely. Go ahead. Great. So number one comes from just how I got my first opportunity to come to Switzerland. I think so many people when they hear that are like, Oh, my god, she's so lucky. Or, you know, that would never happen to me or things like that. And I can't tell you the power of networking and of reaching out to people and just asking for things directly and not beating around the bush, I think that we really underestimate the power of being super direct with someone instead of just kind of like sending in your resume and hoping for the best find the side doors. And that's not just for starting a business or getting your dream job like find the side doors to everything. Do you want to start a podcast or write a book or anything like that? I mean, I guarantee you, your network is going to have a huge power and helping you get there. And so networking and asking direct questions and reaching out and just asking questions to people you look up to that would be number one. And then number two kind of has to do with that. But definitely, if you want to start a business, you've got to start building up a voice and doesn't matter what platform you use, like whether it's YouTube, or podcasting, or Tick Tock these days, or like anything, but just really use the power of online and that will help you with your network to because you never know the opportunities that will come out of you telling your ideas and like just talking about it publicly, because I think a lot of people don't think that they have something to add to the conversation. And I'm here to tell you, literally everybody has an individual voice and everyone has something to add to the conversation. No, and I think those are both great piece of advice. And I like the idea of networking. I think every sometimes people are hesitant to network. And either it's because you're scared, hey, I'm going to alienate the people in my network, right? If I tell them what I'm doing, they're going to feel pressure that I have to support me or any you know, or I'm going to not know what to say, or I'm going to make a fool of myself, right? You know, any number of hesitations or to your point, they don't have something to add or anything like that. And I think that holds you back from utilizing what is one of your greatest assets. If you don't a lot of people that can give you ideas. And most people are pretty willing to bounce ideas off of you give you input, give you a feedback. They know someone make a connection help you out where they can, and it can make a much bigger effect on your business. And you know, and your success if you're willing to overcome that fear that sometimes people have so I think that's a great piece of advice. Yeah, definitely. Well, as we wrap up, if people want to get a hold of you, they want to be a client, that customer 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 connect up and find out more? Yeah, definitely. So we have a website impress them.com or we have a LinkedIn page i m p r e s m, and we also have Instagram and Twitter at let's impress them, and my name is Allie marshawn. I'm on LinkedIn or Instagram or even tik tok. And I try to answer all of my DMS I love talking to people about their ideas and things like that. I have gotten so many of them and I just really love it. So you're welcome to reach out to me. All right, well, I definitely encourage people to reach out connect up find out more and definitely a great resource there. Well, thank you again, Allie for coming on the podcast. It's been a fun it's been a pleasure. Now for all of you that our listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you like to be a guest on the podcast, feel free to go to inventive guest comm apply to be a guest on the show. We'd love to hear from you. Two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast player so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review so other people can know when all the awesome episodes come out. Last but not least, if you ever need anything, any help with patents, trademarks or anything else with your business, go to strategy meeting comm grab some time with us to chat and we're always happy to help. Thank you again Alli and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last. Thanks so much Devin. This is great.

Keep Pushing Forward

Joel Jacobson
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/5/2021

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

Constantly Believe in yourself, believe in your product, if you feel like your product is, if you feel that you have your product has value, you'll have a lot of people that will dismiss it or say that's really cool. But you know, that's as far as it goes. And you'll have a lot of days where you're thinking, maybe this was a mistake, you know, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And you'll have a lot of times where you're doubtful, but I would say just continue to keep the faith, keep holding on to your belief that you've come up with something valuable and that just keep pushing forward having faith it'll work out. 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 pens and trademarks. If you ever need help with yours, just go to strategy meeting Comm. We're always here to help. Now today we have another great guest on the podcast, Joel Jacobson. And to give you a brief introduction of Joel so he went to Bonneville High School for those of you that are our listeners are in Utah grew up in a within a single parent home or single mom home and she always worked to provide provided a great example of, of hard work. Originally, he didn't necessarily care for as school as much didn't like math, and some of the others didn't do as well in math in some of the other classes. Grades You're so so graduated, went to be a commercial plumber for a period of time, went on a religious mission to Brazil came home and decided he didn't want to be a plumber for the rest of his life. And he wanted a bit of a different career path. And so really never thought about college into that point, but decided to go to college. When I started out. It wieber went to U of U went into some engineering, got one of his professors owned a consulting company inspired him to go into that got his professional license and engineering when worked at Hill Air Force Base on F 16 for a while, got some mentorship, got some licenses, started his own engineering firm, got some do D scholarships, graduated when worked for another contractor and that 16th got or did or continues his own engineering firm and worked on some of the products including one that we're happy to be helping with a bit on on the patent side as well, which is a cool product. That's a quick connect for ar fifteens and for other products. So with that much is in production. And that's quite the journey. Welcome on the podcast, Joel. Thanks, Devon. Dang, I guess we can conclude this one. Well, this walk or leave on a high note. So that will be it now. So I gave that 30 30,000 quick overview of kind of your journey. But take us back a bit. Take us back if I can not get tongue tied. Take us back a bit in time. And tell us kind of how your journey started. We're going to Bonneville high and we'll chat from there. All right. Yeah. You have to go into Bonneville high. You know, I was a more of a jock, I guess you'd call me or Derringer. Back in the day, I didn't really care for school as much and didn't do well in math. And I, you know, had some really close friends back then. And we were pretty tight knit group. And but yeah, back then sports was pretty much my life. And so I never saw myself ever, that I was going to be the owner of an engineering firm, you know, in the future. And, you know, having graduated with advanced degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering, so, it was it went to Balboa high and then is what I mentioned part of the journey as you graduated, you know, got soso grades, some classes like math and other ones didn't love it or love it enjoyed quite as much at that point in time. Now, what made you decide to go into Commercial Plumbing after the after you graduated? Yeah. So after I graduated, I had a cousin who worked for a plumbing company, you know, and he just said, Hey, you graduated, you want a job. And I just thought, sure, low hanging fruit. So I took the job, you know, work full time, and was able to make some pretty good money and kind of just work full time and got to see the labor side the boots on the ground side of the workforce. So good. Good for me. So no, and I think that's, you know, it's great to get those jobs where you learn a lot get experience, learn what you like, what you don't like and what you think of things and everything else. And so you did that. It sounds like for about a year or so. And then he went and he served religious mission in Brazil, which is always a fun thing. You know, a great and I'm sure rewarding experience. Now you come back after your you know, after your mission. And you know, what was kind of buoy saying, hey, maybe I'll get back into plumbing or Hey, I want to do something else to kind of what was that decision or that career path that pointed your journey towards engineering? Yeah, it was a couple of things. So, you know, I got home from my from my mission in Brazil and I started to question you know, whether I wanted to jump back into the plumbing world. You know, at that time, I was, I guess, a second year apprentice, you know, in the apprenticeship program. And I thought, well, I guess, man, I could get back into it. Or I could maybe go to college, which to me was kind of a swear word. I was like, I don't want to really go to college, but I kinda liked to learn how things worked. I, at the time, I had a four wheeler that I rebuilt, I loved their bikes, I love four wheelers. And so at the time, I had a four wheeler that I was rebuilding, and I stripped the entire bike down to the frame the engine and taking the engine apart, rebuild, put it back together. And I started doing that kind of tinkering with with some other things, you know, in that three, four month time period that I was home and kind of not really had much to do, you know, you get home and it's like, well, I don't have a job. I'm not going to school yet. So I just kind of Tinker. And I started thinking, you know, what, what is it that I wrote, I really enjoyed doing and then what am I passionate about? And it just kind of seemed natural that I like to learn how things work. And I like to take things apart and see how they, how they work, how they function. And so I was like, Well, I guess the only thing I can think of that I you know, could probably earn a decent living and have pretty steady income would be like an engineering, maybe a mechanical engineer, but that's way too smart. For me. I got way too many math classes in science, and I probably wouldn't be able to do. So. That was the turning point though, for me. So now so yeah, you decide, okay, kind of have that Turning Point decide to go get the degrees, you go get the degrees in engineering, and then you come out of school and I think is at that point, you decided you'd go work on F 16 for a period of time. So yeah, so I started up a weaver state, you know, did their pre engineering program at the time, they didn't have an abet accredited engineering program. So I either had to go to the EU or I had to go to Utah State. I decided to go up to Logan to BYU couldn't CIF. I could have gone to BYU to give a little plugin for my alma mater. So there wasn't really Yeah, I just I didn't really think about BYU that time. I just was either going to be the U or Utah State. I went up to Utah State go Aggies, and went up there and took, you know, stumbled through I mean, I guess you could say, anybody, any engineering student, I'd say 95% of them just kind of stumble their way through the material curriculum and get through it. You know, there's 5% or whatever that are natural. smarty pants is but the rest of us we work through it. So that was me. Graduate I was right there with you at school is not one. Oh, yeah, this is a breeze. No problem. It was always one I had to do a lot of work with so I might in the same camp with you. Yeah. So now, got that. Once I graduated, then yeah, I went out. And I was able to get into working with the Air Force as a civilian there at Hill Air Force Base. And I was my first assignment was first position was there in the F 16. Structural department. Kind of a cool job. I don't know. And that sounds like a cool job just to be able to work on F 16. I mean, that's it sounds like an exciting whether or not as exciting as it sounds, it certainly sounds like a pretty exciting job. It will now go now, how did you so you did that for a period of time. And I think you worked at Hill, you also went got a master's degree at Purdue. So kind of what made you decide and then I think you went back to work on F 16. So kind of what was it decision of going back getting the masters and then also going back and working on f6 ts before you started your own engineering firm? Yeah, so kind of in the back of my mind, I've always had the dream of owning and operating my own engineering firm. And so I had the opportunity when I was working at Hill Air Force Base to work with a licensed professional engineer. And, you know, I asked him, Hey, you know, would you be okay with me training under you? While you know, while I'm studying and preparing for my professional, my PE exam? And he says, Yeah, yeah, and if you pass the exam, they'll sponsor you. So we kind of had an agreement, I saw that as a as an opportunity to get licensed, licensed, become a licensed professional engineer, and then that would then open the door in my mind for me to be able to practice engineering professionally on a professional level for clients. So it was kind of always there. So now you go get the pert, you know, you go get them the additional degree, you continue, I think to work on, you know, f 16 for as a as a civilian for a period of time. Now, what was what was kind of the tipping point, when do you decide, okay, I've got enough experience. I've got enough degrees, I've got enough, whatever, before air to decide, okay, I'm going to jump in and start doing my own firm or start developing my own stuff. Yeah. So, you know, I started up Jacobsen engineering the year the very year that I got licensed And I just started to try to take on freelance work, try to get some sort of some experience under me try to give me some some kind of foundation some credibility. And it was like the following year that I got accepted into the d. o. t smart scholarship program and was afforded the opportunity to move out to West Lafayette and do my master's degree out of Purdue. Do my thesis out there. When I came back to the government, however, it didn't, the challenges were not the same. I didn't have the same drive, you know, it was just different coming from grad school in a highly advanced aeronautical field and university. Coming back to the mundane paper pushing that I was doing that I didn't realize I was doing kind of before, but came back to that and thought, well, this just isn't doing it for me anymore. So I decided to leave the government. And that cost me money because I would have to repay all that I had a commitment to them. So debris, pay that, but I went work for the government contractor, where I was actually doing more developments were more research, more design work, more integration, I was actually hands on putting stuff on the jet new avionics packages and new systems. And I really liked that it was really fun. I got to learn a ton. And yeah, and so I was there for about four and a half years. And at the time, I had taken on a really substantial contract with a client that was in itself providing full time work. And I was working full time with the government. Well with this contractor, and I just decided, I need to give one of the two up, we were in a good place financially, I just decided to go ahead and make the jump and let's let's try the Jacobson engineering full time, and see what happens. So that was when we we decided to do it. Now one question when you are working with you know the VOD contract and doing a lot of that as a contractor. Were you still doing Jacobs? engineering on the side? Or were you saying hey, I already got I'm already, you know, have way too many things going on? I'll put that on hold or, you know, or what was that? What before you jumped in full or full time on your own engineering firm? voice? Dude, you are still doing that on the side? Or was that on hold? No, I was still doing that on the side. You know, I was I wasn't I was looking for, I guess you could say, the the big contractors, a big client that would be able to allow me to leave my full time job and then do what I've just been dreaming up for the last, you know, 10 years or whatever. And so I finally got that client in 2019, toward the end of 2019. And that work carried me all the way into and past summer of 2020 at a full time basis. And then so I was working that and my full time. day job. So I had the two of those I was trying to balance and I just thought I've got it, I've got to get rid of one or the other. And I this has always been my dream. Let's let's try it out and see how it goes. So now you and I think it definitely makes sense. So now you jump into your own dream, you say okay, I've always want to do my own thing. Can I do my own engineering firm, you know, and I always figure side hustles really are just a second job because you usually spend as much more time on the side hustle as you do on the quote unquote full time job, but you dive in full time say, Okay, I'm gonna try my own thing. At that point, you know, how did it go? Well, you already had some clients, you had some basis where you, you saying, Hey, I gotta hustle, I got to get some more clients, I'm, you know, I got my own projects I want to work on are kind of how did that go as you jumped in full time? Yeah, so as I jumped in, I had one one client with several hot leads, you know, for other clients. And it seemed like, things were going to shape up nicely for me. And when I, when I left, you know, I really only had the one one major client who had a lot of work projected, but ultimately didn't never pan out. So I left the comfort of my salary job to become, you know, Jacobson engineering full time, and it didn't pan out the way that we were hoping and, and what he was, what they were what I was being told and promised, and then all of these other hot leads, I had just kind of fizzled away and I was left with a little bit more spare time than I would have liked. Which kind of leads into magnatech. So that's again because you need just kind of answer the question so you know, you wouldn't you get you know, leads dry up or your figured out what you're going to do, you know, you have you know, everybody has to make that leap and you always have that client or one more clients, he hopefully comes along your hope has work and sometimes it works out and other times you had to start to scramble. So as you're facing all that, you could have You know, you had one path where, hey, I'm going to pursue my own projects, I'm going to do my own thing and start to make it go the business that way. Or alternatively, you can say, Nope, I'm gonna, you know, hustle, the, you know, whatever it takes to get new clients on board, how did you kind of grapple with that decision? or How did you weigh those out? Um, it was kind of a calculated decision, you know, it was just I wait, like I said, we were in a good place financially, to take the risk. I felt like if if, at the very worst case, I needed to go back and get a salary job somewhere, I can always do that, I felt confident that I could do that anyway. So it was just kind of weighing the risks, and just saying, you know, it was taking a leap of faith, like he said, we had the clients, or the one client that was providing the majority of the work. And then it was just let's focus on our marketing to try to find more clients. And hope that it hope we can find some work. So it was really a leap of faith, honestly. Now, as you're doing as you're doing your own project, you know, I guess the first question, how did you come up with a project? or How did you land on which product or project you wanted to take internal? And do your own work on? Are you talking about Mike magnatech? are right, yeah, that's a good example. Sure. Or if you have any other projects that are worthwhile to discuss, whichever projects, he kind of decided, hey, I've got some good ideas. And I'm going to take on, you know, take these on and see where they go. Yeah, so I found a lot of ideas in the past and really magnatech was, was the only idea that I really tried to bring to market and it's been, it's been a lot of fun, it's always been a dream of mine, to to invent something, to get it patented, and be able to, you know, make something useful for our society. So it was always that was kind of always a dream of mine, as well. So yeah, like I said, just having a little bit of extra spare time on my hands, I was able to, I got myself my first day are back in June of last year, through a brother in law, and I asked him at the time, you know, what this little accessory mount was? And he told me, you know, this is for accessories, if you want to attach this or that, or whatever on there, and I thought, hmm, is there any, anything out there right now, that's a quick attachment or a magnetic accessory, he's like, no, nothing really that worth anything. And so anyway, that's where I had the idea, you know, let's, let's see, if there's some way we can do this, you know, what would be some of the criteria that you think would be important for an accessory mount like this, and he said, you know, just being self zeroing and being strong enough to withstand your recoil and stuff. So anyway, so I started down that path of, wow, this is, you know, the creative juices were flowing, and I was able to just, things just started coming together really organically, I really didn't have to battle too much with this particular idea. It just kind of all seemed to come together. And it was, it's been a lot of fun so far. No, and that, that is fun, it's always fun, when you you know, you have an idea, you have something that you can latch on to you start to see it come together, you start to produce a start to do everything and, you know, get some that traction. And so you know, for me, it's always fun to have the idea. And then it's fun to see the prototype. And then that first sale, you know, you kind of have those different milestones all which are really just fun and exciting, then kind of keeps building. So now as you kind of, you know, branched out, you started to, you know, do magnatech, he started to predict, you know, chase after some of your own projects. Now, looking kind of into the future a bit the next six to 12 months, kind of what are the plans? Where do you see things heading? And where do you know, what is? What do you hope for in the future? Yeah, so I think, you know, in the next six months or so, I'm hoping to continue, I do have two to six month contracts with two different clients in the aerospace industry right now. So I'll continue with those clients. And I will continue to look for other opportunities to work with clients in any industry, aerospace and automotive, renewable energy. So it doesn't really matter the industry, every almost every industry needs mechanical products and design. So I'll continue to pursue those types of opportunities through Jacobsen engineering, I'm trying to scale up this business a little bit, trying to bring on more workflow that I can spill over and bring on some employees some engineers. So that's the goal with Jacobsen engineering is to scale it up to maybe a two person to engineer firm, two or three, you know, just depending. And then with magnatech is I hope to grow that also that product. start scaling that right now what you we produce 250 kits have this magnetic mounting accessory for a particular flashlight that we've, we've procured and sourced and we are now selling. So I would say the next goal would be to double it. Let's try 500 kits. And let's see what happens with that and just keep going from there. Cool. Sounds like an exciting road ahead. So that's, that's fun. So well now we kind of brought it brought or brought everybody up to the the president even looked a bit into the future kind of hits that point in the podcast, I always have two questions at the end of each episode that I asked. 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 did you learn from probably the worst businesses, you know, made is probably not tiring a business attorney to help me establish or set up my business, you know, with, with me having multiple businesses, I took the advice of my accountant, and he said, you know, it'll be easier if you set it up this way, maybe easier for him, it may not be the best way, business wise. So I would say that that would probably be one of the mistakes I made is just relying on my accountants to tell me how to how to set up a business rather than getting some advice from legal counsel. So as I say, so that was what I learned from now on. If you're gonna set up a business, make sure you just spend an hour or two with a business attorney, and just make sure you're doing it right. Now, and I think that's always great advice in the sense that, you know, with the, kind of follow on with that a lot of times as an entrepreneurs, you know, as somebody that's doing a startup, so in business, you always look into one, you know, save save money, because there's always more things to spend money on than money to spend. And to you're saying, oh, wow, I can probably do this myself. And so kind of when you get into that mode, sometimes you're right. Sometimes you can say money in some areas, sometimes you can do things yourself. But there are also areas where you're saying, hey, I need the expertise. I know when something needs someone that knows what they're doing, how to do it, make sure it's done, right. Because usually, if you don't, if you cut corners on areas is usually more expensive and time are tight and more time and effort to fix it than just get it done. Right if it is able to be done. So I think that figuring out what areas you need expertise on who can help you in those areas is a worthwhile thing. But it's an easy mistake to certainly make. Yeah, the second question I always ask is, if you're talking now someone to someone that's just getting into a startup, just getting into a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them. Just probably to constantly Believe in yourself, believe in your product, if you feel like your product is if you feel that you have your product has value, you'll have a lot of people that will dismiss it or say that's really cool. But you know, that's as far as it goes. And you'll have a lot of days where you're thinking, maybe this was a mistake, you know, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And you'll have a lot of times where you're doubtful, but I would say just continue to keep the faith, keep holding on to your belief that you've come up with something valuable, and that just keep pushing forward and having faith it'll work out. Now, and I think that, you know, one of the things that differentiate between everybody that, you know, there's a lot of people there, they're the idea of, you know, idea guys or idea people that they have great ideas, and they you know, they think that you know, oh, I have you know ideas all the time. And I'm if I ever Chase, I might be a millionaire type of thing. And those people are much different than the people that actually execute, they actually do something they follow through, they continue on it, they stick to it. And those are ones I are oftentimes successful. And no ideas as he goes are a dime a dozen. It's that execution. It's a follow through on the ideas that makes a difference between somebody that always has that idea that never does anything with it. And someone that builds a business around it. Couldn't agree 100 I couldn't agree with you more. Devin, it's, it's, it is so true. And I've had a lot of ideas in my lifetime as well. But like I said, this was the only one that I felt like magnatech was the only one that I felt like I Well, it was just a combination of things, just time and resources. And it was just a lot of things combined. That just said this is a good time to do it. Let's do it just felt right. So yeah, and I definitely think that I think it's a great advice. So as soon as we wrap up if people want to find out more about magnatech they want to look at the you know the Quick Connect accessories for the AR 15 other things you guys are producing or they want to reach out in your engineering firm. They want to hire you for a contract basis or they're worth the D o t. They want to be a customer 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 find out more? Yeah, probably the best way is to just go to our websites. Jacobson engineering services calm is my website and magnatech calm and magnatech is spelled with a hyphen between magne and Titan tech. Oh, I don't know if the podcast is going to have any videos. Is it? It will have video so Magna is right there on the hat so yeah it's right here on the hat. If you're watching on the video side then go ahead and you can just grab it there if not is Ma Ma je ne das tch comm right? Yeah, yeah, that's a so I would say go there. We have there's contact us on both websites just just hit that. Fill out your information, it will send an email right to me. So awesome. I definitely encourage everybody to reach out find out more support the support the business support the startup and in hire, hire Joe for all of your engineering needs. on LinkedIn. All right, LinkedIn are connected on LinkedIn as well. So well as we wrap up for the for the podcast. Appreciate you coming on job being a guest on the podcast. So 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, we'd love to have you as a guest on the podcast. Feel free to go to inventive guests calm quiet to be on the show. Two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast player so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out, and to leave us a review so new people can find out about all of our awesome episodes. Last but not least, if you ever need help with patents, trademarks or anything else, just go to strategy meeting comm grab some time with us to chat. Thanks again. Joe's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thing, Devin

How To Create Content For Social Media

Makenzie & Joshua Jamias
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/3/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

Get your website up and figure out your sales process. Because I think that's been the hardest, hardest businesses to work with is when they don't have a clear sales process. So we can get you all the web traffic you need and want, right? Like we can set up ads, we can do everything organically that we know how. But if you don't have a way to close, then it's all for not So figure out your sales process, figure out how you close people figure out like, yeah, like what you actually need to do to increase revenue. And then it's like the most agency owners that that are good at what they do, we'll help you figure out those channels to amplify your sales process. 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 in the seven and eight figure businesses, as well as the CEO and founder of Miller IP law, where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks. And if you ever need any help with yours, just go to strategy meeting comm grab some time with us to chat. Now today we have a first we've had, in other episodes for the normal inventive journey we've had more than one people on but I think this is a first episode for expert episodes that we have two people on. So we have Mackenzie and Joss Josh, Joshua, Jim, Jim is and they're going to be chatting about a variety of topics. But a lot of them include kind of, you know, how do you write content and connect and have that kind of strategy behind your content, we'll also talk a little bit about photography and how you actually capture that. And then they'll also be a little bit maybe about social media platforms, how you choose between parlour clubhouse, or people leaving Facebook or not leaving Facebook and you know a lot of content creation for your business and how you choose what content to create. And then kind of what maybe rates for services if you're looking to have hire someone kind of what that might look like. So we'll have a lot of good conversation and go through over that as a quick plug their businesses, a gym is creative, just in case you want to look them up. So. And with that, welcome on the podcast, Mackenzie and Josh. Thanks for having us, Devon. So I gave kind of just a quick run through a bit of what we're going to chat about today are some areas of expertise. But before we dive into that, maybe each one of you just want to take a minute or two, just kind of give us a bit of your background or why you're an expert on this on this topic or why people should listen to you and why No, you're talking about. Because you could go first I'll go first. Well, first of all, we're husband and wife team. So we kind of get the luxury of working together and living together too. Yeah, um, but we own device creative together, we do social media marketing and content marketing for your business. We have been working together for about four years now, this is our fifth year in business. And we exclusively do social media and like the organic side content creation of social media, which we really love doing. So we kind of have complementary skills. I'm the photographer and more of the visual person. And Josh does the other stuff. Yeah, I started freelance writing, like in college, and it kind of happened by accident. So I literally I was going through public relations program. And I was just reading up because no one in my family was ever in marketing. And so everything was like all new. And so I was just reading like consuming anything I could. And it was like, hey, public relations, people know how to do social media, they know how to write. So I literally like created a website, put my first blog post tweeted it on my brand new Twitter account that I only had for like a year. And that's how I got my first freelance writing gig. Like I remember sitting in the library and someone replying to my tweet, and then from there became social media, social media marketing, and fast forward a few years later, and this is where we're at now. So it's been a fun journey. I think like what what keeps us in business really is like, realizing this, realize a lot of like, what we do for work isn't impossible. It's not hard to learn. But I just think there's some things that people would rather do than others. Same reason why we hire a tax accountant and a bookkeeper. Like, can we not learn how to do that? Like, is that impossible? No, it's not impossible, but it's just like our natural interest and skill sets move us towards marketing. And so that's where we're at. And that's how we're able to be in business. Awesome. Let's definitely a fun tag team and a great way to get into it. So now jumping a bit into the expert experts side of it and talk a little bit about content. You know, maybe jumping into your first a little bit with you Josh, and you kind of get in If I understand that, you guys, you are kind of on the consecration and Mackenzie's on kind of the photography and making it look good, so to speak. And so we'll kind of tag team back and forth a bit. But maybe on the first side of you know, when you're looking at writing and content creation, kind of how do you develop a strategy? And how do you know what content great what to write on how to make it appealing and kind of how to make it so that it is worth You know, it has that return on investment, so to speak. There's two questions that always come to mind. And these are the two questions that I asked myself and I asked, whoever we're working with is, number one, which problems are businesses paying me to solve? And what are the most frequently asked questions I receive? And so if you can answer those two things, your content will always be on track with your brand. And I've noticed, like when I saw a stat, something like just under 50%, of people who unfollow a brand, is simply because a brand is not sharing content that's consistent with what they do and what they're known for. And so if you can keep on, you can keep focus on like, Hey, you know, people pay me because I'm really good at mowing lawns, or people pay me because I can get them back after getting an injury and like they can start playing sports again. It's like, if you can answer those questions, then great. And then if you're like, Okay, I feel like I've already covered a lot of the frequently asked questions, we'll go down that list of your top 10 most frequently asked questions, and then maybe identify the top three that you get asked the most often, and then go deeper and break those topic topics down even more. Yeah, that's kind of the direction we take. So you kind of start out first, let's generally answer each of the top 10 questions, kind of what are the ones that our clients are coming to you most of all, whatever your businesses, and definitely tailoring it to what your businesses are, what those needs are. But then once you get those top 10 questions, you get an article written on each day, and you start to branch out or expound on that and dive into some of the intricacies or some of the details or some of her something along that lines. And that's a good way to start out with a strategy. Is that about right? Yes, yes, you got that? Yeah. So now all right, that definitely makes sense. Now, I'm going to switch gears, and then we'll probably go all over the place. And I think it's fun to have a couple different people. So let's say you write the world's best content, you know, just, you know, a masculine worded perfectly, and then it's a, you know, a work of art, so to speak. And then how does photography play into that? I mean, so, you know, with you, Mackenzie, on the photography, are you trying to match it, you do more on the product images? And kind of with the look and the feeling when they're trying to sell? Or is it more on images that match up with the content? So you kind of have both sides are doing appealing? Or kind of when you're looking at a content strategy? How do you also make it visually appealing with photography? Yeah, I mean, with social media, I feel like five years ago, like when we first started doing social media, I feel like it was content first, and then you look for photos after. And I feel like that's shifted now to you usually look for the visuals first. And then you write the captions to go along with the visuals. And so in a lot of social media, photography is mostly lifestyle imagery. So it's a lot of getting, getting pictures of people using your product, or in your business, or just some sort of human element, even if it's like a product, and you're just adding a hand holding the product. That's what people engage with the most on social media right now is the lifestyle images. And so one question on that, and then on the photography, I think it overlays Well, the content as well. Because there is it is an important one, you know, whether it's whatever social media or you know, for sharing what your your product is, or trying to, you know, market it or so to speak or and getting eyeballs on it. Do you need to have the product in the pizza or picture meaning I see and I see a bowl Do you see some that are just simply the product picture you see some that are more lifestyle where you see the product somewhere in the picture. And then some you see kind of pictures that represent the product, but aren't necessarily the products not necessarily in there, meaning Hey, this is a lifestyle brand. Or maybe it's for backpacking or hiking. So you have the outdoors picture, but aren't necessarily the product. So how do you start this alag kind of which products fit you or your brand or kind of which ones you should be using do use a variety to use a whole bunch of use one kind of how do you start to figure out what is the imagery Do you want to present? Yeah, I mean, it really just depends on the brand. Kinda like you mentioned, if it's an outdoor brand, you're going to get a lot more outdoor images, even if it's just like someone hiking and maybe you necessarily aren't even focusing on the product, but the actual, like landscape versus if you're, if you're a business if you're like a restaurant and someone has to come into your restaurant to eat, you're always going to use images of your food or up your physical location. So it really just depends on the type of business you are and like what you as a brand are wanting to portray to other people. So now I'll ask a quick follow up question. How do you let's say, I don't know. I mean, in the sense that hey, I know what I obviously know my my goods or services I don't I'm product is, but I don't know what what to represent a client's I don't know what you know what will resonate and I hey, I may have, as you mentioned, let's say I'm a restaurant or I'm a law firm, or I'm an outdoors product, or I'm a plumber, you know, I don't know what I know what my services are. But I don't necessarily know which are how I want to represent myself, how do you start to figure that out? Yeah, so I mean, let's take like a law firm, for example, you have to think about like, Kay, who's your customer, like, I feel like you really go back to your demographics of your customer. And think about what types of images that age group is looking for. If it's older people, you want older people in your images, if you're looking for younger people, you want all your images to exclusively have younger people in them, because you want people to be able to see themselves in that photo. And so if you're like, if you're, if you're a law firm, you want people smiling when they're you want people who like working with you, you see their face smiling, they see your face smiling, like, it's like capturing still images of you talking to clients. Kind of all of that like walking through the process of what it would be like for a customer to work with you and capture those images of that process. Definitely makes sense. And I have a question for you, Josh. Just and I do have one more question on the recording. So I don't want you to feel like I believe in the out of the conversation. So one more question on the photography and is, you know, there's a couple different ways you can get images, you can obviously go and take their photographs, you can actually that you can also get a lot of stock photos, and a lot of you know, there's a lot of different services, any thoughts on whether you should be taking your own, you know, because I'll give you a couple thoughts on it. And that I definitely like everything, you know, stock photos, the problem with those is I I tend to see a lot of the same stock photos used over and over. There's some very, there's ones that are popular across the internet. And maybe there's a reason maybe they're they're popping up their resume that people are using them over and over. Or it could be that there's only so many good photos and they start to get worn out. So is there a benefit? Or is there a way to decide over there? Hey, I should go get an account with Adobe Stock or whichever one it is and use the stock photos versus Hey, we should take custom pictures and we shouldn't use our you know, use ourselves or other people who work for the firm or do that. Any thoughts on the air between those two? You definitely have an opinion? Well, I mean, it's like you said, like, I feel like people recognize like, oh, I've seen that photo before, like another brand. And so we do what we do, so that like all of our clients do have their own custom imagery. And I do understand, I feel like if you don't have the budget for it, then stock images are great. Like, if you are starting your business, if you can't afford to hire a photographer to capture like your business yet. stock images are a great way to start. But then I feel like to really grow following on social media or to really brand your company, then you really need your own custom images of your business. Okay, no, I don't I'd probably the it seems like there's a big mix. Sometimes you're able to use stock photos, or just use that. But a lot of times there's that custom touch and feel that, hey, if you're seeing the same images over and over, you're probably getting washed in with the rest of everybody and you're not really standing out. So I probably do tend to agree with you on that one. Now, question now is maybe switching gears a bit to Josh is, you know, there's a lot of different platforms that are coming up and available with content you know, some of them are tried and true. Facebook's been out for a while you have Instagram you have you know, Twitter and all those and then you also have new and up and coming ones with varying degrees of success and different focuses everything from parlor that's you know, had a bit of controversy to clubhouse that right now you can only do on the iPhone. So I blocked out because I have an Android to all of those. But how do you start to figure out what content to put on what platform and how to use which platform? And how do you choose which platform and kind of because it can be especially the startup or small business they can start to get overwhelming. And since there's a lot of platforms, all of them have a bit of a different focus. Twitter's not the same as Facebook, it's not the same as Pinterest. It's the same as Instagram. Not the same as WhatsApp not the same as parlor, not the same as clubhouse and they're all different. So how do you end you can't do them all unless you're a huge company that has a huge you know, marketing team hard to do at all and you may not have the return. So how do you even start to tackle which platforms to go after? It goes back to like asking the right questions, right. So I think the question for this situation of like which social media platform should I use is which which networks or which platforms have the attention of my target audience So right. Now let me ask you a follow up question. I'm sure you had an additional answer. Let's say I am a plumber, because I'm trying to think of just something that I owe you law for. But I tried to expand out. Let's say you're a plumber. How do I know if Twitter's i don't know i? Especially if you don't know who's where your market? I don't know if Twitter is a place for plumbers versus Facebook versus Instagram, Pinterest? Maybe not because it's kind of more crafty clubhouse, I'd maybe not parlor, I have no idea. So how do you start to figure that I wouldn't know as a plumber if I and I'm not a plumber. But if I were to get into that, how even start to kind of figure out where my audience is. So okay, let's take the plumber case as an example. Right. So some things that you could assume as a plumber is, chances are if someone's hiring you as a plumber, they're probably a homeowner, or own some sort of property. Right, whether it's commercial or residential. So there's a few assumptions right there. And then you could probably also assume if you're a plumber that most people that are owning homes or owning properties are probably not 18 year olds. Right. So then you cancel out tik tok. So you you probably could still get some customers from tik tok, because the user base is getting older as we speak, moment by moment, but then you probably look okay. Like you said, Facebook's been around for a while. So Facebook would probably be a good place to start. In fact, Facebook's like fastest growing demographic is 60 years plus. So it's getting really old, which is why it gets pretty onry pretty quick, right? Like you look at all the posts and the arguments. It's like, like, a lot of the arguments is like, well, this is how we did it back in my day. So but you can also safely assume that like, some of these people probably are homeowners as well, because they probably bought their homes pre recession, and pre COVID. So so it's just like, yeah, trying to figure out like, so like, if you know your industry pretty well, then you can probably safely make assumptions as to where they're hanging out. So now I'm gonna ask probably the hard question. I don't even know if there's an answer to it. If you're the kind of rapid fire say kind of if you were to have if you were to have to, and I'm boxing because you have to, but choose a top demographics are kind of the focus of each of the different platforms. And you have everything Tick tock, Twitter, Facebook, generally. And I know it's a generally a question, but kind of what demographics are on the different plot or all the various platforms? I think, Okay, let's go to clubhouse because you brought that up a few times. So I spent like a lot of hours on clubhouse the other week, just kind of listening and jumping from room to room, I'd say club house, you can safely assume the bulk of them are millennials. People that just like want their voice heard. They're tired of all the imagery, and they just want to talk. Right? Um, Twitter, I think it would be safe to assume that you got anywhere from younger millennials to probably Gen X not so many boomers. Usually, they're like more tech focus, but they're not as focused on like video or pictures as a ton. Mostly like quick news blurbs, like Twitter is still one of the best platforms for finding real time updates. Facebook, I mean, Facebook obviously started off with a whole nother intended intention from what it is now. Facebook, it's like you definitely have a lot more boomers, a lot more people that are older than boomers, if they're still around. Less, it's pretty tech friendly for what it is. You still got millennials but Gen Z is not really touching it. And then Instagram probably has majority millennial parents, and some Gen Z so and then Tick Tock. I don't know if I already covered it. But yeah, tic tocs definitely has the highest attention when it comes to Gen Z. And and you know, I'll go ahead as well. So twitch Twitch is probably its own thing, too. But yeah, that's kind of the breakdown of the most common ones we get asked about. Alright, know that that's helpful. Break them. Oh, Pinterest is really awesome to Pinterest is mostly women, Pinterest, like I think more than 70% of their users make over 200k a year in terms of household income. And so if if you're selling consumer goods, Pinterest is probably the place to be because you don't use Pinterest if you're not going to buy something interesting. All right, I am learning lots of plenty. There are plenty of fun things now. What are the couple of questions that kind of follow up on that you know, you have some platforms that are just kind of stay out of the news. They just chugging along and then you have other ones that are more controversial and I'll use parlors an example just because that one was a more recent one and I'm sure there are other ones and Facebook had their issues for a while with privacy and other ones is if you're but if you're looking at should you stay away from controversial platforms. They are in the news or controversy? Should you not, you know, don't want to be associated with them do people care? Or kind of any thoughts on if you're, I guess two questions, one, if they're controversial, or two, if they're up and coming, should you stay away from controversial ones? Should you dive in? And then the same thing? And if they're new and up and coming, and you don't know who the users are, should you hurry and jump? Because I mean, clubhouses, one that you know, I can I keep bringing that one up, just because an easy one is example. That was a fairly new one. is Scott still kind of figuring out what it is? But you know, you're trying to figure out who's on there. And so how do you want to deal with controversies? And how do you deal with new platforms? I mean, I'm gonna jump in here, I would, I would first join as an individual user and check out what's going on. So I wouldn't automatically jump to like having your business go on a brand new platform. But for us ourselves. Like once we heard of Tick tock, we both downloaded it. And we both just started using it started watching videos, or sort of creating our own content before recommending the attorney recording. Yes, because you have to understand what types of content is on it and who is on it. And the only way you're really going to know is if you get on yourself. Yeah, definitely, I would highly recommend testing it out from personal usage. But in terms of like AI, like I mentioned earlier, it's like I have a public relations background. And like, when it comes to controversy, I think the question you got to ask yourself, there is like, Are you prepared to deal with any potential Fallout that can be tied to your brand. And I think like a lot of people forget that, like, it's easy to be a keyboard warrior, right. And it's like, it's like, I love martial arts. Like I love fighting. Like, it's something that I've picked up in the last few years. And it's funny, because like, I talked to my wife about this all the time, like people who can actually fight are some of the nicest people, both online and in person. And so I think a lot of people that are, I think, at the end of the day, the sad thing is, there are people that are hurting, that are online, there are people that are wanting to fight, but in a virtual sense, right, like they couldn't actually back it up, if you call them out in person. But as a brand, you have to kind of protect your brand in that sense of like, Hey, this is what pays my bills. This is what feeds my family. So if I'm not prepared to handle any of the mess that could potentially come out from this, then I should just step away and not be associated with that. Now that made sense, that kind of dovetails. So my next question was gonna be, you know, you see some brands that are very outspoken on certain issues, and whatever it is, and they both sides, the aisle politics, not politics, everything else, but they have a very firm stand, is that good and for brands is a bad you know, because, you know, sometimes it can alienate people, but it can also endear people to you, right, and essentially take a stand up and get a lot of people there, yay, they're cheering on, you know, whatever the topic is that I really am passionate about, and I become endeared to the brand. But on the same flip side, you can also alienate the people that don't agree with you on that topic. So how do you tackle that as a brand? And to your point that you should you always just easier to stay away? Or should on for some issues? Do you take that as as Hey, we can now focus our brand and really Garner that audience that would support us. So any thoughts on that? have thoughts on that? I mean, it comes down to your company values, and a lot of time that ends up just being who's the owners values, right? Because at the end of the day, that owner kind of has a say on topics like that. And so we've had some clients that like to talk about those issues, and we've had others that do not mention it at all. Um, so. So yeah, I don't necessarily think it's good or bad to do that. I think it really is just like, you just got to be prepared for whatever happens. Yeah. Because of whatever stance you take. So that's probably our recommendation. And it's like, well, we'll coach clients on that, and, and like, how to deal with that, how to respond to comments how to respond to direct messages. Because Yeah, it's like, there are certain topics that are just fire topics, right? And it's like, people will literally fight for every inch online. They're virtual space. And to me, that's really funny in a lot of ways. But at the same time, it's like, like McKenzie said, like, if these are your values, and this is what you're willing to stand by, no matter what the cost when Hey, go do it. But just know that there's a bunch of other things that could lead to that. And so just being prepared, whether it's good or bad. No, definitely makes sense. So well, I'm going to slightly switch topics and still along the same lines, but you know, a lot of the questions. A lot of questions that I get from startups and small businesses and I've had myself as well is there is a wide variety on both photography, content creation, social media, marketing, kind of all that there's people that have started their firm yesterday. And there's people that have 20 years experience, there are people that will charge an exorbitant rates, people will charge cut, you know, very minimal rates. And you know, it's hard to figure out, especially if you don't you know, startup or small business, who you should go with what rates to expect, what rates or services you should get, how do you start to even tackle, you know, should end? And then there's always a question you get part of startups Hey, should you DIY it and do it myself? Because I can't afford it. And I think you guys touched on that a bit, but maybe focusing more on if I'm saying, okay, I've grown to the size that I'm looking to hire someone or whether it's in bringing some of them house having an outside agency or anything else? How do I sift through all of that? Because there's a lot of different competition, a lot of different good ones, bad ones, expensive ones, cheap ones. Any thoughts on any of that? Oh, yeah. So we we work with, I guess, to give the listeners some context of like, what types of businesses we work with. So like, we have clients where like, they want us to fully manage all of their social media channels, whatever it might be on. So that could be anywhere from 1000 to $5,000 a month, we have some clients where it's like, they're literally just getting started, they only have a budget for just content creation. And so we literally create their content a month at a time, handed over to them, train them on how to post everything. So and help them with bread, best practices. And then we also do some consulting, where it's like, okay, I can't afford the content creation, I can't afford the management, but I can't afford like to give you some, to get some advice from you, where you check in with us a couple times a month. A lot of that comes down to like, okay, like, Yeah, what are you not good at, that you're willing to pay for which things would actually help you save time, which things stress you out? Because, like we have, like, there's one client that I can think of right off the top of our head and, and they provide experiences for their guests. And it's like this client, the owner has her own team that handles all of the reputation management, any of the comments, the messages, complaints, good reviews, bad reviews, and it's like we don't have to touch anything, because it's like her her team is so well trained in that sense. But then like they just like they're besides themselves when it comes to all we need to take pictures of this. Oh, we need to write posts. Oh, we need to make things or you need to schedule out things ahead of time. or something. No, yeah, it really is just like what do you what do you what are you willing to do? And what are you not willing to do? So a lot of people just need help learning about social media to begin with some people just need the content help other people need the full management help. So it's, it's kind of like what can you afford? Because our content packages like Lord just creating content are usually just a few $100 a month. And so that's a lot easier for people that are just starting to handle then like a full service management. Yeah, if if you have like any listeners right now that are like hey, I'm I am in a spot where I'm thinking about hiring an agency. Some of the questions you should ask are, Hey, mister agency or missus, agency person or miss agency, person, whatever, like agency owner? Do you create the content? Or do I have to create the content and give it to you? Do you handle the reviews? Whether they're good and bad? Or do I have to do that? Do I have to organize photoshoots? Or do you come in and do that? Or do I send you the product and you take it? So just kind of asking those questions and working through that. Because there are some social media agencies where they literally just expect you as a business owner, to provide them with everything. And then all they do is click in posts. And if that's your thing, then great, right. But if you don't have time, or the bandwidth or the mental energy to do any of that, then make sure that the agency you're hiring actually provides those services. No, I think that that's definitely makes sense. And it's great advice will now as we're wrapping up towards the end of the podcast, and there's always so many more topics I wish we had time to chat on that we never do. But if we always asked one question, the end of each expert episode, so we'll jump to those that one now. And the question is, if you could if you're talking to a startup or a small business, someone that's just thinking about getting into social media and marketing and content and photography, and all the above, and you could give them this one thing, one thing that they get started on today that would help them to get down the road. What would be that one thing? Think get your website up and figure out your sales process. Because I think that's been the hardest, hardest businesses to work with is when they don't have a clear sales process. So we can get you all the web traffic you need and want, right like we can set up ads, we can do everything organically that we know how. But if you don't have a way to close, then it's all for not so fast. Hear out your sales process, figure out how you close people and figure out like, yeah, like what you actually need to do to increase revenue. And then it's like the most agency owners that that are good at what they do will help you figure out those channels to amplify your sales process. So that's really, the that's probably the biggest piece of advice I give. No. And I think that's a fair point. I mean, and that's one of the things that I had to learn with, you know, doing a few different businesses, especially as we got online, is you can have the world's prettiest website. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have a very nice and professional looking website. But if you don't have that sales process of how you're actually going to convert people or move them forward in the funnel, then a great looking website isn't going to give you that return. And so why you need both. You can't just simply say, oh, if we put a nice website, that's all we need, it needs to be that you mentioned that sales process behind it. Definitely. Well, as we wrap up, if people want to reach out to you, they want to be a client, a customer, 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 find out more? Just go to our website, demise creative. COMM j Am I as creative comm has their contact information. And the thing is, if you're shy if you're a shy person, you're like, Okay, I'm not quite ready to reach out to Josh McKenzie, we have a blog, you can definitely consume all the blog content you want. If you're like okay, like these guys sound okay, but we don't know exactly how they think or if they're going to explain things in a way that that we would we would get it Yeah, just read our blog. That's that's probably the best way to get to know us better without having to actually talk to us if you don't want to talk to us, but you want to learn more awesome I definitely encourage people to check out the blog it sounds like a great source of information as well as you know if if they're looking to engage or otherwise get into the this social media realm and and up their game of bed, definitely encourage them to reach out to you. Well, thank you again, Mackenzie and Josh for coming on. It's been fun. It's been a pleasure. Now for all of you that are listeners. If you have your own journey to tell and you are and you're on it or you're in or your own expertise to share Feel free to go to inventive guest comm and apply to be on the show. Also a couple more things as listener one in your podcast player, make sure to click Subscribe so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out, and to leave us reuse or new people can find out about us. Last but not least, if you ever need help with their patents, trademarks or anything else, just go to strategy meeting calm, and we're always here to help. Thank you again guys and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last

Ask Questions

Evan Price
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/2/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

and kind of going back to that first one as well before you go into the like the fun stuff like what what what is the design of my logo gonna look like and all this other stuff really figure out what transformation you're gonna take your potential clients through they're here you want them to be here figure out what those places are and how you fill that gap because without that you're just going to be spinning your wheels you're going to be pivoting a lot like i did um so really figure out ask those questions where are my potential clients at where do they want to be and how can i help them get there [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 where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com where we and grab some time with us and we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast evan price um give you a quick introduction to evan so started in uh in the music industry as a drummer and in a band at about 15 years old um kind of uh took over and booked his own gigs as uh people in the industry otherwise wouldn't do it because they thought he was too young or wasn't able to do it and so took over did his own venues do his own shows his own booking kind of became the music and band promoter found he really enjoyed it um so then as he was trying to kind of figure out what he wanted to do when he grows up so the speaker in quotes um you know his mom gave him the sage advice of hey you should you know you're passionate about this so you're really excited it does you know something you would enjoy um why didn't go after it so kind of in the mix with that when did some community college for a couple years did some general eds um worked at a movie theater and then decided to pursue his passion also i think in in the mix and there also went to columbia university and then did chicago and started his own business doing um or working with independent artists small businesses doing a lot of what he did with for his band when he was in a younger phase so hopefully that's a reasonable summary to a much longer journey but with that welcome on the podcast evan thank you devon appreciate you yeah i think i think he hit everything all right perfect well i gave kind of that quick kind of brief 30 second type of a run through but now let's go back a bit to earlier onion journey when you started in a band at 15 and tell us a little bit about how your journey got started yeah i mean i i remember taking the test telling us like which instrument we recommend and they just they landed on drums i was like sure i'll give it a shot ended up falling in love with it uh played a jazz band uh ended up just starting a band with my friends just starting it out as a passion i had no idea it would not then become you know the music industry would become my lifelong dream so uh it was just really cool to jam with my friends no just out of pure curiosity not really necessarily as much as a journey what kind of music did you guys do what kind of band were you guys it was metal all right you gotta slam on the drums and make some noise yeah absolutely yeah start we started off as like a lighter rock band and then slowly got closer to metal music um but yeah you know nobody was there they're managing us we were just doing it ourselves and somebody had to step up and i guess i don't know if it was just the virgo in me or something just stepped i was like i guess i'm the manager now so it just kind of happened and i found that i loved the management and just the behind the scenes stuff more than the you know in front of the scenes actually playing so i don't play as much anymore i jam every once in a while in the studio or something but i just really love the business side of it that's really what's you know tickling my my passion right now so now and you can mention that it makes sense definitely on the one hand you know you have a you know you you have a band you're 15 years old and so you're going you know trying to get people to book you or do real venues and all that doesn't necessarily work if nothing else because you know they think you're too young you know you guys aren't a real band you don't know what you're doing so how did you kind of figure that out as far as okay other people won't book us we can't we'll have to do it ourselves how did you know and you didn't necessarily i don't think it unless i correct wrong you know you kind of it was i always imagine you're kind of looking around the room saying okay how are we going to do this who wants to do it and you're like well i'll do it kind of thank you so you rose your hand not knowing that this is going to be a passion but as you did that now you know how did you figure that out how did you get into it how did you actually you know get to work and make something out of it yeah i think mainly it was because a lot of the venues in our town were were bars and we just couldn't be booked there so we only had one option at the time which was this all ages like uh straight edge punk club so they didn't have alcohol drugs on the premises it was really really kind of made for for kids who want to get into the punk scene and the the rock scene of sorts so it really made sense i became friends with the venue owner at the time and it was just like there was no like raising of a hand moment it was just like i woke up one day i was like i think i'm the manager of this band that i'm in um but you know how i got started was i just figured it out honestly um at that point i didn't know what i was doing at all it was just i you know got experience by gaining experience i was just like you know researching things online i was uh when they grew past like the local bands i was just like okay the same i'm booking the same bands like let's try to get some bands we would love to play with so i'd go on to myspace and i'd find their agent's information i'd call them and i'll just say hey uh my name's evan i i play in this band we really did um dig the band that you manage or you know book or whatever and i see you have an open date in between these two cities like i can you can stay on my floor under the floor of my house i'll get you some little caesars pizza as a writer and um give me 200 bucks that's best i can do and started to you know gain traction and those bands started to get bigger and bigger and they just loved coming back so you know it just gained experience just over just trying it honestly i think that you know not to overlook you that you know that's engineered in the sense of okay you know we don't have a big budget we can't do it but hey we'll find some bands that we like or that are similar to us they have some time we'll offer to give them a few a free place to crash and a bit of food and pizza and a little bit of money and i think that's awesome that you kind of you know it's kind of that trial by fire and says hey i don't know what i'm doing i got to figure this out or it's not going to work so you know i'll fake it till i make it i'll figure it out and then we'll you know see what works what doesn't work and find some success so that's kind of cool that's how you got started into so now you you know so you can continue to do that you're working your way you know doing it after high school doing it with the band obviously going to high school as well you graduated from high school now what was that transition you know because i know that you kind of did you know you did some general eds i think it was the university of columbia and you're also trying to figure out what you wanted to do so kind of how did all that transition work yeah i mean i even when i was going through my gen eds at a community college in my hometown i still wasn't really sure what i wanted to do i just knew i wanted to save some money and get my gen eds out of the way it's literally the same classes so when it got to the point that i needed to apply for quote unquote real college or whatever i was like i definitely had that crossroad moment i was just like what do i really want to do and that was the moment that you spoke of before it's like my mom was just like you're literally doing it right now just continue doing that there's plenty of colleges there's plenty of outlets to allow you to grow your your knowledge base in this realm well just go for it so there wasn't very many places that had music business um all of the state schools were like yeah sure we'll stick in the music department and you can take some business classes i'm like that's not really the same thing but okay thanks um so yeah i went to ended up going to columbia college in chicago one of the very few places i found that actually had a real music business like department so yeah i transferred in uh as a junior and went there for two years and got my feet wet and was able to see like you know the city life of sorts and see what the industry is like here we had a bunch of internships and really was able to see outside of my me doing it myself um and it allowed me to see like you know some more entrepreneurs that were doing a similar thing for me internships i i took were not like record labels by any means i wasn't getting coffee for people i was like working side by side with these with with these people building their own labels or companies as well so i think that also inspired me to build my own stuff after and now one question on that because i think it's interesting so as you're going through and you know both the general leds and then you say okay what am i going to do i kind of got the general heads out of the way i got to either drop out of school or pick a major or do something and then i think it was you know inspired your mom said well you're already doing that is you know that's what you want to do now did you were you still doing your own business at the time doing bookings being in the band doing other things or were you more exclusively kind of going to school focusing on the the make their studies and that or how did that you know what were you doing during that that time yeah when i when i moved here to chicago i stepped away from the band i stepped away from the promotion company and i was just like okay now is my time to actually not just learn you know try by fire as you put it i'm actually gonna learn i'm gonna really learn so i had to step away from that a little bit um the band replaced me and then they eventually broke up you know because i was the glue that held them together let's be honest um but yeah even to this day we're still very good friends i you know grew up with those guys so uh it was bittersweet but i knew that it was just my the next step of my journey to really just get get my feet wet in the industry and learn more about the music business that i already apart from what i already knew well awesome and that that definitely makes sense you know and it's interesting i it's it's kind of interesting because i think there's a good mix of both it probably is a good thing that you have the trial by fire figure things out because you know i've done both i've done startup small businesses i've got the mba degree you know that teaches you or at least teaches you it gives you some skills on how to run a business but there is no replacing it for that on this on the you know on the street kind of figuring it out getting going on it but there's also i think in a good good mix with having some of the educational background so you really can kind of get it from all angles so so now as you're coming you know so you go get the degree you kind of focus on that give up the band for a period of time coming out of school then you know did you try and go work for the big labels did you kind of you know try and go do something else did you start your own band did you say hey i'm going to start my own business i already know how to do this or kind of how did you get going as you're coming out of college yeah um the first internship i got i of course i came in as a junior so i was like i need to apply for an internship as soon as possible because i'm a little bit behind already um there was a portal that we could use within the college that helped you connect people there were there's not a lot of labels here in chicago a lot of indie labels there's maybe one um there's one label i looked up to called victory records that was here but nothing was really available um but i ended up connecting with a blues musician in town you know chicago is known for its blues definitely wasn't my cup of tea in terms of of music choice but i was at college to to get out of my comfort zone so i was like you know what i'll give it a shot um ended up being the best decision of my life i was really able to see so he was uh he was building his own label his own publishing company he was doing it all himself very entrepreneurial mindset and i looked up to that and he was actually able to show me you know the old school way of thinking like he was still selling 20 000 cds you know physical cds at a time where like this was you know you know putting the time stamp on it this was when spotify was just being created like very new you know it was like giving it away free memberships to college students type of thing so the streaming was still up and coming so it was kind of cool to get that knowledge base of like how he's really booking his own shows he's you know he's charging five grand a show selling cds um tour in the world type of thing so i was able to get a viewpoint that i don't think i would have gotten if i was just an entry-level intern at a label so i think that also helped me get closer to the decision of starting my own business because i was seeing him doing it and he was being successful at it no and i think that's always it's always nice to kind of have the mentor and whether or not they're doing everything correct or they're doing something old-school new school or any mixture it's kind of one nice to see how others have done it been successful and how they built it and to have that kind of person that can guide you along the way or you can bounce ideas off with or just you know commiserate with sometimes in other words so so now you get you know you get going on you say okay i think i can do this i'm going to start my own business i'm going to start building it how did it go was it one were you able to find a lot of people to sign a lot of independent artists so you know startup or small bands was it difficult was it you know rocket ship to the top or kind of how did it go as you dived into doing your own business yeah i did a lot of work for free or for basically nothing um because i was just starting you know yeah i had i had the degree but you know the degree is one thing but the real life experience is something totally different and i understood that especially it's like it's not a degree you know it's not a law degree it's not a doctor you know i'm not a doctor it's like more of a great i have the underlying composition of like what it what all of this this means in terms of royalties and things like that but you really get that knowledge in actually doing it especially when you think of branding which is what technically our company is a branding company music branding company it's like i just needed experience so i worked with a lot of artists that i just was passionate about i love their music i love their vibe i felt like i could like add to it so i worked with a lot of friends a lot of people i saw in college um and just wanted to get experience as much as possible so it was a slow you know it was i remember it being a slow build because i was just like i want to work with artists but i'm not really sure what this is is it management is it marketing am i branding them so i i definitely saw the business pivoting quite often but looking back i don't regret it at all it looks messy for sure but um i think every startup or small business looks messy if you're to reflect back barry seldom have i seen a small startup or small business where they are they go that is exactly the direction they envision almost inevitably you're gonna have to pivot adjust figure out what works what doesn't so definitely makes sense so you know so now you start out you know you start doing it and working for free working for a minimal amount getting the reputation clientele referrals you know get making connections you know so fast you know kind of fast forwarding through your journey a bit you know is that still where you're at have you finally got people that are willing to pay you is still in the growing mode still in the you know kind of where where'd that all end up as you kind of pat or went through all of that uh journey sure i mean i always say this i feel like we're always in the growing mode i think we've stopped the constant pivoting though which is which is really you know i can have a sigh of relief where i'm just we know that we're on the right path now um and yeah we are we do have active clients um essentially we're coaching consulting uh young independent artists that love what they do but they don't really know how to build a business around it so we come in and we guide them we give them a path based on our experiences so it's myself and three other coaches that are involved in the business you know before it was just myself in my college store room so i'm very very grateful to have an amazing team to to back my vision and be able to tap into their specific expertise and bring that to artists so yeah we are i feel like we're in a good groove nowadays in the past couple years we found our our rhythm no and that's that's great and i like probably no no pun intended but rhythm with music was a good play at worst i was thinking that too now so now you so you can that kind of brings us up to where you're at today now you know kind of looking six to twelve months in the future kind of where do you see things growing is it just kind of a steady growth and continue along just doing what you're doing you have any future plans expansion contraction mergers acquisition kind of what do you see the next six to six to 12 months looking like yeah so recently we you know built out this program it's called the lifelong super fan program which is a very specific coaching you know curriculum if you will i think we're going to ride that out for a while it's basically the foundation that we believe is important for every single artist to focus on these four you know crucial elements without tho these four elements you know they're just going to be spinning their wheels wasting money on marketing and things like that so like i said i definitely feel like we've found found our rhythm found our groove and we're just going to continue to build that out and work with as many artists as possible a one-on-one coaching you know in a in a world of you know courses it's just like you know it's course heavy um i think what's i think what's missing in that is proper you know implementation i think people are concerned whether it's you know you're consuming a course to learn about you know ip law or uh financial stuff or music it's like people will consume that all day and then never actually implement it so i think that's why it's important to have have a coach there or a guide to be like great here's you know here's the things you can consume but i'm going to help you along the way and give you accountability um i always say this you know we are we're like the personal trainer for your music career like i could i could feed you courses and youtube videos all day but will you actually take action is the question usually it's a no so um i feel really really passionate about what we've built here and the our clients are really happy with with how we're helping them you know learn things and also implement on them well that's awesome that's that's that's a both a fun place to be in a fun direction to be headed so that that's that's that's fun on your journey so well now as we you know as we kind of walk through a bit of your journey and even looking a bit into the future we kind of reached a point where i always have two questions at the end of each podcast so i'll jump to those now so the first question i'll ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it yeah i thought i've thought on this since you mentioned it before i think for me it was you know this was right before kovi we we moved out of it right before kovit hit but it was getting a brick and mortar like office space you know i would always had in my mind like this i made it i've got an office i got up four walls then with my name on it um i got a business card yeah exactly and it's like focusing on those things before actually figuring out how i'm going to help people um i think that's you know the shiny new object like yeah the business card thing is a great idea it's a great example but i think that was the worst decision i made you know it's just like you know several hundred dollars for me to just get out of my bed go there and work by myself um you know i had in my mind i was going to get interns and it was like then the interns came and it's just like well now it's a full-time job just to manage the interns and figure out what they're going to do so it's like i kind of jumped the gun a little bit so i think what i learned there is like you need your product service figured out before you kind of you know polish it with all these fancy tools and you know a shark tank and you're in your office or something it's like none all that's just fluff and it just takes you away from the actual business itself so um yeah you know like a lot of other people right now i'm in my home i've got a home office i love it i've been able to find a balance where a lot of people are like i can't work at home because then i'll just do nothing it's like i've been able to find that balance as everybody else has during this time and i'm feeling good and we're saving money on rent and i'm able to focus on the business itself and not just the flash if that makes sense no it definitely makes sense you know and it's funny because you know i do have an office but if you were to look the offense it's not like it's a bad looking office but it's far it's not immaculate it's not a downtown or in a high-rise and that's kind of what always people think on a lawyer is oh they have immaculate offices adorned with wood and it's in the big building and it's you know middle of the city and you know show success and yet i'm kind of with you it's like you know i often times when you start on the business you focus more on the things that make you feel successful as opposed to that actually make you successful you kind of oh i've got a i've got to get the the big office and the employees and everything else because then i then i made it and i feel successful and then you find out a lot of times those are detrimental to business or they don't help it or they have ever have increased costs and everything else and it doesn't really help to grow and build a business especially early on so i like that as a mistake to be made but also a lesson learned so now we jump to the second question which is um if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them figure out again kind of going back to that first one as well before you go into the like the fun stuff like what what what is the design of my logo gonna look like and all this other stuff really figure out what transformation you're gonna take your potential clients through they're here you want them to be here figure out what those places are and how you fill that gap because without that you're just going to be spinning your wheels you're going to be pivoting a lot like i did so really figure out ask those questions where are my potential clients at where do they want to be and how can i help them get there no i like that and you know one of the things i'll piggyback on that because when i set up the the law firm there are a lot of law firms a lot of good law firms out there but most of the time lawyers are terrible about thinking about the journey that the you know the client actually takes and it's much more to say i'm going to give them good legal advice i'll do good legal work which is all important i'm not dissuading that at all but you don't really think of how do i get them from point a to point b what is that journey what does that feel like you know what information they need when do they get confused when do they need help and kind of how do i move them along so that it's a one to get to from point a to point b but it's also a good journey along the way and i think that if you focus on that most of the time especially if you're in a service based industry even really a product space industry but especially service you're going to be above the most of the competition because most of them they don't think i'm just going to provide them a service they're going to take it they're going to use it and they never really think about the journey so i i love that as a as a a takeaway for startups and small businesses well as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to learn more about the year service they want to be a client a customer they want to be a they want to start a band with you they want to be 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 find out more sure um first place is our website it's artist artistcollect.com um our business is called ourscollective but artistcollective.com costs about 65 thousand dollars so no thank you so artistcollect.com or you know instagram i live on instagram uh you can reach out to me directly it's at ac underscore evan and just shoot me a dm let's have a conversation a lot of our services and how to get started in the program i talked about it's going to be on our website got a cool video that really explains our philosophy and that foundation those four elements if you're curious what those four elements are uh head to that website and check it out all right well i definitely encourage people to check it out hit you up on instagram check out the website do all the above and definitely worthwhile to find out more especially if you're in a band or if you're an independent artist and never need help on that journey well thank you again evan for coming on it's been a fun and a pleasure to have you on now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to share it we'd love to we'd love to hear it just go to uh inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener one if uh make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two make sure to leave us a review so everybody else can find out about our awesome episodes last but not least 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 and always happy to help thanks again evan it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin appreciate you

Invest In Yourself

Manish Vakil
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/1/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

you have to invest in yourself you know a lot of people always say go and talk to everybody else but you have to know your weaknesses and you you definitely have to work on those uh you know that's one of the things i've done you know i write down uh still to this day i have a book in front of me right you know and i write down listen uh before every meeting that starts right on top uh because you know as when you're starting off a business you think you know everything uh you know and one thing one thing is you know learn to listen uh you know that's one of the things i have to learn from myself so i would say you have to invest in yourself and you know find your weaknesses uh and then and then work on them that'll definitely go a long way in you being [Music] successful everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder 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 manish vakil you know as close as i can to pronounce name right and uh he came to the us when he was in sixth grade i didn't speak any english they had to actually take him back to fifth grade or because of the english barrier learned i think to speak most of his english by by television and by going to school and then when he got into high school kicked things into gear and said hey i want to be successful i want to get a good uh good education so i got there graduating from high school went to rutgers did finance and econ and then worked with wall street for a period of time did some consulting as well and then was doing that for a period of time i decided to go out to his own business about the about a year before he got married did have his own businesses got into some franchises bought some franchises sold some franchises ran those for a period of time and then decided to start his own franchising company um was actually with one of the previous people he'd worked with on a franchise gym bought that from them turned it around built it up and been doing that along with a few other franchises and growing things ever since so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast i appreciate it devin thank you very much for having me so i gave the quick 30 or 30 second run through to a much longer journey so that'll take us back in time a bit to sixth grade and trying to figure out how to learn english coming to the u.s going to school and how that started there oh wow uh well that's a flashback yeah definitely uh yeah i came here from india when i was 10 years old came as you mentioned in sixth grade and they put me back in fifth because of the fact that i didn't know any english a very different world let's put it that way coming in from india landing in jfk airport uh you know and uh and then suddenly you know you're thrust into uh manhattan and you're driving through and then and then you end up in jersey of all places in the world so uh you know uh it's at least to say it was it was a shock um you know looking at the world up at everybody and thinking oh my god i don't understand what anyone is saying and i'm in a completely different world and now i'm going to be living here uh so uh but you know everything has its challenges but also the positives that are there as well uh so it was the nice part of exploring a new world and that kind of gets me into where i am entrepreneur today which you know allows me to kind of pivot and go into different areas and you know as i said i like to be i'm only comfortable when i'm uncomfortable the minute i become comfortable uh it feels like i'm becoming complacent so you know we started with that uh went into i guess elementary schools and high schools and as you mentioned you know the hard part the best part was i did get to watch a lot of tv you know so because the idea was to tell the parents hey this is the way i'm learning english you know so that was the positive side of it uh so so that worked out uh from your uh you know the one that i didn't mention to you was the tv shows was uh wrestling was one of the things i used to watch when i was 10 years old it was a saturday morning 10 o'clock wrestle you know wrestlemanias and uh and i don't even remember that way back in the day uh you know tito santana to macho man and hulk hogan stuff uh that was that was some of the stuff that i used to watch too uh but you know going going into the business side of it uh it did definitely prepare you for what you are today uh you know in your past you know a lot of people say i wish i didn't do that i wish i didn't do this but all of those things build me to who i am today you know um and that's a key part of it no and i think that definitely you know i and i a little bit later in life i went to or did a religious mission for my church when i was 19 and uh i i went to taiwan so it was chinese and i had absolutely no idea you get like 12 weeks of training and then you get over into taiwan you're like that's not what they taught me and i have no idea what they're saying and you just have to dive in and get going so i feel for you and that's got to be a bit of an even a more interesting uh period of time when you're a little kid and you're saying i have no idea what they're saying i guess we'll we'll start to figure it out so now yeah you know you start to acclimate to the language and the culture and kind of get in the u.s and then went to high school you know kick things into gear got uh or get ready and go to college you went to rutgers and i think you said you did finance and econ is that right yeah you got it yeah yeah so actually i started off it wasn't even that i was supposed to go into dentistry so i started doing the science classes you know and then you go in and you're like hey you took science in high school uh but did you go into college and you know i did bio ap and all this stuff in high school and it was like yeah it was great um and it was nice and it was fun okay great now you get in and you're doing it in college and you're like yeah i'm not really a fan of chemistry i don't really like physics so the first year luckily didn't take me longer than that and i took electives classes was mainly because i took econ because when i talked to the professor they said listen everyone who goes into business if you want to go into dental school you're gonna have you're gonna want something that's different than everyone else everyone who applies is gonna have chemistry biology any one of these majors so he goes go and do a business minor and that'll make you stand out you know well long behold you know i took that as a minor which turned into a major after because i didn't even bother applying for dental school because i couldn't stand the science to be honest um but that's how i ended up in business yeah so now you you come out of school and you graduate in business you know you say okay dentistry is not for me it's not where i want to head i'll go into the business which i'm right there with you business sounds a lot more fun but you go and do that for a period of time and you know you i think you started out going there graduating and went to wall street is that right well yes i was working during the school years i used to work uh throughout the day like you just have the unpaid internships and this is you gotta remember it's internet boom time right this is 97 95 96 97 98 you know you're talking about you know the i graduated in 95 so right after that that's when the the internet is just going absolutely nuts right founding of amazon google all of this stuff is happening uh so i was working on i was working at a couple of these different startups in manhattan uh and we used to work from like you know eight to four come back take the train back to to college and then go to class from six to nine at night uh it was the evening schooling uh so you know three credits a day you know four days a week in a saturday class which was man that was torture uh but uh uh but uh but yeah that was the idea and and then i ended up on wall street afterwards which was i was doing consulting for a company out of boston and it put me in a consulting job at wall street uh for jp morgan so i was working on their project management side um which was a lot of fun that was a lot of fun that's where the technology side comes in you're working together with a lot of different areas i even forgot the pinnacle alliance i think is what it was called it was like a combination of old anderson consulting and jp morgan and comp you i forgot the uh compuserve i think was it i'm not even sure the third company that was there but yeah all these old companies that don't exist anymore uh but it definitely teaches you a lot it was a lot of fun you know you're 20 something years old and you're walking into wall street makes a huge difference than starting and not speaking any english then you know you know you know 12 years 10 years before that no i definitely and that you know kudos to you that hey you kind of come from i didn't speak english now i've gone to university now i'm going to wall street i'm working for some of the biggest firms and you know and and uh having that opportunity that's a that's certainly a great journey to have now you you did wall street for a period of time and then how you know what what caused you to get out of wall street or to change directions or to go in a different direction well so when i was there you know originally i i could never you know that's why i was in consulting i had a hard time and i listened for what it's worth you know my parents probably thought this guy's been i don't know where he's gonna end up or what he's gonna do because it was like i couldn't hold on a job i should say uh because i kept leaving jobs left and right i always thought something was better something was new anytime something became mundane i was like you know i have to move on and it was like nine months to a year year and a half every place um you know that's what it was so i kept moving around from job to job so the consulting job in manhattan they ended and then i ended up at places in new jersey uh i actually took a job which was crazy was uh uh enterprise rent-a-car believe it or not their management training program and i have to give them credit i'll be honest because uh leaving a job that was paying so well and when i ended up here it was working with people and it was literally cleaning cars moving up to writing rental contracts and learning how to run a business that's where i learned a lot you know you're looking at income you know you're working as an assistant manager now i worked my way up to an assistant manager there and i remember you're looking at you know your profit loss statements how much did you make this month you have to go to local marketing go talk to body shops go talk to insurance companies you have to build up local business with local corporate people and go and set meetings with them that's where i actually learned a lot of the hustling i came from and i have to give it i mean it's an amazing training program that i went through real life uh and that's what it was and i didn't mind working you know six days a week and i was working probably like 70 hours a week but it was a lot of fun uh i definitely learned a lot from that job and that's what got me into the business side of things of owning a small business well that that's got to be a pretty good transition between you know working for wall street to go working for you know car rentals and yet i you know it's interesting as many you know some of those they have to have really good programs because it's competitive marketplace you have to learn how to to you know be better than the others you have to know how to pitch yourself you know how to run the business and you know do profit loss and you know look at profit margins and return on investment and on and on and it can make the big difference between whether or not it's profitable in a good business or whether or not it goes under so so now you go do that you you do that you know do car rentals for a period of time and then you know how did you then get into the the franchise aspect they're starting to go into franchises or franchises and do that for the career well i could have stayed with that company right and then i had an opportunity and a friend couple of friends who were working for uh you know adp and this i had another corporate place and they were like you know now you're thinking about i was going out with my uh now current wife and it was like you know what are you gonna do you can't exactly stay at this job for a long time she'll get a master's degree or something else at that point uh and i was looking at that and i didn't want to pay for it right so the best thing to do is go get a job with a company that's going to allow you to get a master's degree so i ended up with uh adp uh automatic data processing uh obviously one of the biggest payroll companies now uh that's out there and you know i was working for them and doing my master's degree at stevens institute uh on the on the weeknights and weekends um so because they were paying for the classes there so i did it in project management um and i was doing all the major classes i actually never completed it to be honest uh because of the fact that i was like you know afterwards electives were too expensive and i didn't want to pay a thousand dollars a credit great school stevens by the way but that's what it was um and i did all the major classes and and the idea was actually to go and you know open a business or work in a business where i can start my own business that was a thought process now how was i going to get there um i looked up at you know grants and sba loans and did all those things um you know so once we got i talked to the my girlfriend and wife and that's what that was the plan uh to get into that area um and hopefully we figured we'll figure out you know at that point you know 27 26 years old you're like hey conquer the world if something will work out you know that's the i i kind of miss that nowadays being 44. uh that you know now you tend to think a little bit more without before acting uh so but yeah that's how i ended up in business the original idea so and so now how you know so you're you did that and i think you know going through getting the education finding somebody else will pay for it is all the better so you're not having to go into it and then only taking the classes that you know really only are applicable because you know i was used to joking i got the the mba and i did that at the same time i've seen the law degree but i always say you know i'd walk over from the law school and there would be you know analytics and tearing pieces apart and looking at court opinions and then walk over and everything seemed in the nba scene about 50 percent of it seemed fluffy and 50 of it seemed useful and so i was looking you know always felt like i was double paying for what i really needed because i only really found about half a useful so i think that's you know great that you just pay for what you need so to speak or get someone else to pay for what you need so now you do that for a period of time you're getting here coming up getting married soon how did you you know what made you decide to go for franchises and how did you find your first franchise you wanted to get into um you know i think one of the things that you look for originally is you know what is your passion in right uh but i didn't do that uh i i tell everyone to do that now i wish you know i did that i you know it turned out to be what i was good at but um you know originally i looked at and i said you know what is a recession which one is what do people spend money on the most uh what are things that are up and coming uh so you know i looked at you know and i didn't have kids obviously we just got married uh and then we're looking and we're like you know looking at kids businesses because we figured it's a from an overhead perspective how much is it gonna cost by the way half of the stuff that i calculated was wrong uh to be perfectly honest but you know i got very lucky in certain places um but yeah i went and started in the kids area because i figured you know everyone always spends money on kids no matter what uh and you know luckily so far 16 17 years in now uh proven to be true uh which is very good uh so uh so that's how i went about it uh i wouldn't suggest anybody else do that uh but uh uh but uh but that's what i certainly did and um and i had to pivot when i bought the first franchise uh you know what what i heard from the franchisor was you know go and open up this you can have this many kids in it you can make this much money and you know you're kind of you know drinking the kool-aid as they say and you're thinking it's going to look and it's going to look amazing and i realized early on luckily uh that what i built and the place i rented for business was not going to be able to survive if it wasn't you know with the model that i had uh so i went ahead and actually took i had two locations so i saw the back of it off uh and then opened up another business over there which was complimentary it was a it was a tutoring center i found about five months in and that's what i ended up doing uh so i had a stem class business a steam class business and then i had a i had a learning center business a combination so they kind of fed each other so it definitely supplemented the rent and the staffing and that's what helped me to survive and i have to learn very quickly that you know what you see and what you hear is not what you get when you actually start doing it uh you start getting into business itself so everything as you said in like an mba right 50 is theory based 50 is fluff yeah and you know that you find out that fluff is there very quickly so uh so that's how i ended up in that it was a very hard lesson right from the get-go um you know live right from the go i had a full head of hair at that time i still remember and within like nine months ten months you're looking at it you're just like you gotta be kidding me i'm like you don't realize the stress that you take on um so and i'm sure you understand that yeah no definitely there's it's always interesting you know i think everybody has this you know misconceived probably because of movies and television at least that's why i'll blame it on them oh you go and start your own business and it's wonderful you work two hours a day and then you go and you have lunches and vacations and everything works out perfect and you're rich and it's just you know just go do it and there's a lot of rewarding things about doing your own business don't get me wrong but it's not the same it's not this life where you work a couple hours no stress everything's perfect now it's a lot of hard work a lot of sleepless nights a lot of stress and it definitely you know you have to have the the grit in order to stick with it to ever make a success or go of it and even then it's still far from certain that it's ever going to be successful so i'm definitely agreeing with you on that on that front so now as you go do it you know so you you got into you got into the the kids business and because you're having a kid and looks like it may be you know at least recession resistant i don't know if there's anything recession proof but at least resistance yeah resisted correct yeah now you get that you know you get into that for a period of time now i think at some point you decided to sell the franchise or get out of the franchise or ship to go somewhere else help me understand that remind me that yeah so what i did is i opened the first one and i had the learning center as well but i was running it on a daily basis so you know i'm cleaning the bathrooms i'm you know i'm the one sweeping the floors and then i'm also the director i'm on the sales you know as you say your ceo but your chief everything officer you know there's no such thing as just sitting in a corner office it doesn't work that way you know so you know i'm the accountant i'm you're the marketing person you're everything um and that's what it was so i did that and then um you know uh i opened the businesses in 2006 seven uh and then i had i opened the gym in in seven middle uh so it was literally within a year i had three of these businesses running and and lucky enough you know obviously wife is doing her a degree and she's getting she's finishing her degree become a nurse practitioner while simultaneously working as a registered nurse uh and then i'm running the businesses at the side and you know going into it afterwards what i realized was my life was changing right so you know now you're married now if you're having kids and whatnot your time commitment's gonna shift you need to be able to say that hey uh you know you you're not going to be able to come to work every single day anymore so are you able to hire somebody to run it but is the business that you bought it's a franchise do they allow you to do that forget about the fact if they allow you or not is this is it you know does it generate enough capital for you to hire someone and still take money out because at the end of the day you're working there you're not paying anyone else so you're taking the salary at least right so now if you're not working there where's that salary going to go you have to give it to someone else and are they going to do the same job you do so all these questions come up so i had the gym that was running and i set the gym up to be kind of in uh you know a semi uh uh kind of you know i just over oversaw the operations and i had a director already running it and everything else like that so decide to sell the the learning center and the uh and the uh both the learning center and the stem program in 2009 and my uh so i was gonna also have twins in 2010 so about six seven months before uh the twins were born in february i sold the business uh so then wife was still you know obviously working she couldn't tell her to quit her job uh she just became a nurse practitioner um you know a year before so that's that's how i actually got into it and and kept the gym business uh because the other two didn't have enough income in order to uh you know kind of hire a full-time director uh in order to run it so uh that was that was an interesting time frame so you learn different things as you go along and and the gym definitely survived that part of it and we kept it and the little boys loved the gym uh you know uh they took their first steps you know you're walking in take them to the office with me uh some of the days and the staff would sit there and play with them all day long music classes you know started walking at seven months and nine months because i had so much exercise in the gym which was insane but uh but it was a lot more fun it was definitely a lot of fun no it sounds like a kid's uh a great kid's playground for growing up that's got to be a fun place for them to to grow up and learn a bit so that sounds fun now you did that you know i think he's ran up for three or four years or so and then he decided okay it's i've done enough franchises for other people i want to do my own thing or start my own franchise and kind of take that bulls by the horn is that about right or kind of what and follow under kind of what caused that transition what made you shift from kind of doing somebody else's franchise to want to do your own well you know i ran into a lot of issues so i had the learning center i had the the tutoring franchise and when i had the tutoring franchise i opened i owned about six seven of them myself in different states in partnership together by myself and i was also an area developer for them so i opened locations i helped them open locations in multiple different states or through people that i knew uh through the other franchise system so i had a lot of experience in going and assisting them which was you know field operations going and talking to them how are you running the business what are you doing for marketing how do you find a location what are you doing for build out architects all of these things so it was you know it was you know working mba essentially for enfranchising here's what i was getting or opening and starting small businesses so when i was doing that for a long time and i had the tumbles uh jw tumbles location was called at the time and jw tumbles was bought out by another company uh out of new york and they wanted to and they they acquired it for acquis for uh essentially they were acquiring the hiring and the pipeline for sales it was a great company out of new york that was there and it was called kidville um public information so it's in our franchise document anyway so i'll name it uh you know and uh and when you bought the company and they're great people there but you know they had two different brands they had a kidville brand coming out of new york really high flying doing amazingly well a lot bigger you know a lot more expensive obviously to build uh they were way bigger uh in size um but tumbles was a nice quaint little small business just running great and i had it running for about you know three years at that time when they took over uh two years actually by the time they took over and they asked us to switch the brand to kidville if we wanted to it was an option and i said no because i already paid for this franchise i already built it i didn't want to put more money into changing everything um but you know when a new company comes on you know you have two different companies you're operating under the same umbrella you know it it you're going to take a back seat in certain areas obviously right because they're going to focus on the main business and rightfully so nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that so you know they did that and then i ran the business for about three four years and i said you know it's about time now to move on to a certain area where we ran at absentee for about five years and it was doing it was doing well so we could and i moved it to a new location because our first lease was up uh because i ran the first one for uh for five years and then i moved into a new location um for the next three and when i moved it obviously our expenses dropped quite a bit so our revenue went up you know our profit went up a little bit because of the fact of our overhead went down uh so i said it was a good time to sell and when i sold it i didn't know what i was gonna do so you know i in the terms of saying i don't know what type of business i was gonna start or franchise business or anything else so i said you know we'll look and see what happens so i went to thank actually the ceo of the the company kidville and the president at the time and just to tell them thank you and they told me hey they were you know trying to figure out what to do with tumbles uh jw tumbles at the time and i said oh well you interested in selling it and that's how it actually came about because i figured it would save a lot of time and i don't have to tell you how much legal fees can be to start a new uh and do all the work from trademarks to you know systems to the documents for the federal trade commission and the fdds uh and whatnot so that's how i got into it it was about pure luck i mean it was a chance meeting and a chance email no and that you know hey it's interesting how sometimes as much as as much as anything starting a business and and you know going in a different direction is by chance or just happens to be hey this is what i came into stumble across the opportunity came across and looked too good to pass up type of a thing and you know and i definitely get you know by the time you have to figure out the franchise name you have to figure out the franchisees you have to do the legal documents you have to get it up and going even if it's not ideal it can short circuit or shortcut a bit of time that you'd otherwise have to put in if you were to start something from scratch so it definitely makes sense so now you purchased that and i think as we chatted a bit before the podcast you know you purchased the franchise went that direction you kind of then went to went back to basics so to speak rebuilt it from the ground up and kind of look and said okay this has a lot of you know a lot of potential needs a lot of work and we're going to go in this direction is that about right yeah yeah you know so i was a franchisee for so long right so you know you look at it and you go you know there's some good obviously that come from all these brands and learned a lot but i always looked at and said as a franchisee what else do i need you know what do i need to be successful so all those things that were missing i wanted to make sure i ran a company and i started my own company i wanted to do it from that aspect of what do the franchisees need where can we provide the best support what systems do they need what makes it easiest for them uh that's the that's the approach we've taken you know the biggest one i did was you know revenue wise you know you pay for rent you know obviously 24 hours a day seven days a week right 365. but you know if you have a business when i was running a learning center you know you're operating it or you know tutoring center you're operating it three or four days a week for three hours a day but the rest of the day what are you doing with it nothing you know on the weekends you're not doing parties you're not doing anything else it's empty so you know i said how does this make any sense you're not getting the most out of utilization out of the space that you're renting so when i when i started with tumbles you know we only had the gym program so we added the steam curriculum but we did it from a bodily kinesthetic standpoint where it's applied mechanics right you actually go and learn something in the classroom and then it's not just theory based you actually go and practice it in the gym so we added this curriculum in so you're running it now after school for older kids as well so you already have the market from the younger kids coming to the gym so i figured you know as a franchise owner the one thing you don't want to go and ask your franchisor is hey i have all this debt time what do i do with it you know so we added a mo we have a mobile program we have the steam program we have the gym program uh you know you have birthday parties so you when you do all this stuff you're gonna have enough revenue to be sustainable so if one part goes down the other one is still there so you're not gonna be completely underwater when things do go wrong uh like you know right now during copenhagen a lot of our franchisees went ahead and did you know virtual classes outdoor classes outdoor birthday parties to go classes all these different things and because you couldn't do a lot of classes in person uh so that that does help uh so that was the idea that was the idea to do things where from a franchisees being in their shoes living it for so many years and then knowing what's hopefully missing and hopefully i'm doing it right uh that that and that's that and that's the hope no and i i'm right there with you interesting you know that's kind of you know i always liked uh i love listening to the you know kind of we took it and whatever what are franchises doing wrong or we don't like or what otherwise would we change and what can we make better and improve and that's a lot of you know when i take now the legal industry different industry but kind of the same thing of there are a lot of things i think you know intellectual property patents and trademarks so you can do better you can do more fishing you can update and you know sometimes you fall into the trap of you just you know you do things because that's the way it's always been done and not necessarily because what makes sense and to take that and actually say no i'm not going to do it just because that's the way that it's always been done i'm going to do it make sense gives you a lot of opportunities to grow and to expand the business so definitely kind of fun to hear you know that journey along the the franchise route as well so that kind of brings us up into where you're at today now kind of you know as we transitioners we kind of now are up to today i always have two questions as we kind of get towards the end of the podcast and this is a reminder for the listeners well we are going to hit on the the one bonus question talk a little bit on intellectual property so make sure make sure to stay tuned for that but for the normal two questions we'll jump to those now the first question is along the journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh trusting when someone tells you from a company without writing anything down so from it comes into the legal side so right up your alley there my friend um was you know a company told me and i terminated a franchise and i was done they didn't sign the actual one back to me and said oh we'll just get back to you tomorrow uh and we closed the location they came back afterwards and tried to sue me for a lot of different things which had nothing to do with me you know um in all different areas so you know what happens in the mistakes is and this happened when i saw the first franchise uh that was what i'm talking about in 2009 i sold it to someone and i signed it over and then uh i had to end up suing that person because of the fact that they didn't live up to their end of the bargain you know uh that was issue and that was in 2000 and uh 2009 the first one i sold because i took a note on the business i didn't take the money off i didn't take the money up front because i knew the business was doing well so i figured they could pay me back so i shouldn't have done that uh but uh you know you live and learn and you go from there um so uh so that was a pretty bad mistake no and it's one it's one that you know some of the worst mistakes you make are the ones you learn the most from and hey hire the experts that know what they're doing and i'll get the mentorship or the guidance for the things that i should there shouldn't be thinking i can do on my own definitely is one to learn from so now as we jump to the second question which is if you're talking now 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 yeah and there's definitely a lot right the first thing i would say is that you have to invest in yourself you know a lot of people always say go and talk to everybody else but you have to know your weaknesses and you you definitely have to work on those uh you know that's one of the things i've done you know i write down uh still to this day i have a book in front of me right you know and i write down listen uh before every meeting that starts right on top uh because you know as when you're starting off a business you think you know everything uh you know and one thing one thing is you know learn to listen uh you know that's one of the things i have to learn from myself so i would say you have to invest in yourself and you know find your weaknesses uh and then and then work on them that'll definitely go a long way in you being successful no it definitely makes sense so i like that i like that and investing in yourself definitely pays some of the best dividend so makes makes perfect sense and so well now as we wrap up and again we'll jump into the bonus question just a minute but for all the the normal listeners that don't want to listen to ip and i don't blame them sometimes you just want to get on with your day but for the as we wrap up you know if people want to reach out they want to find out more about you know your franchises the things you're building they want to be a franchisee they want to be a client they want to be a customer 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 find out more well uh www tumbles t-u-m-b-l-e-s dot n-e-t uh or and manish at tumbles.net either one of those uh you'll be able to reach me from there so you go onto the website you'll have our sales team contact me and let me know or you can reach me directly so either one of those will work all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out and find out more and get more information and go check out tumble so 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 like to be a guest on the podcast love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com and apply beyond the show two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two make sure to leave us a review so new people can find out about our awesome episodes as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now is now we as we wrap up the normal episode it's always fun to do the bonus question switch gears a bit talk a little bit about intellectual property because you know it's one thing that i definitely passionate about and definitely have a fun time talking about so with that i'll switch gears a bit and turn it over to you to asking your top intellectual property question you know i'm looking at the different areas i know i hear about this madrid protocol all the time right and then i'm trying to figure out and look at it so the reason i asked the question let me preface actually um we just signed uh we just signed the letter of intent we're going into ghana uh in into africa we're already we already have a signed deal in the middle east and now we're going into asia as well and the asian countries and the african countries uh for that matter i mean the patent law just seems extremely vague i don't know how to i don't know how else to word it uh and i i'm having a hard time at the end of the day and be perfectly honest is just kind of figuring out which is the best approach because everyone keeps telling me you know i'm looking at it and they're like well you can do the madrid protocol on this one then it doesn't apply i don't know if there's another way to do it do you recommend having an attorney here and then having a local attorney there or do you go directly to the company there uh you know in the local country that you're going into but then you don't you don't know them so i feel like there's just i mean i can ask you a hundred questions about this as you can tell so any you know so so this is where i'm at right now that's what's going through my mind um yeah so that's gonna approach this yeah there's a few things and you're probably uh i'll prep it what they'll probably give you advice answer because you know that's i can only give you the answer based on the biases that i have um but i i always send a like and you know when i've done i've done i've been on both sides so i've ran startups small businesses continue to be involved with them i've also done the ip side and it's it's generally nice to have a cohesive or essential place for someone that manager manages all of your iep in the sense that yeah if you go to a us attorney and say hey i need to do madrid protocol you know i need to file a pct application or a eu patent application or i need to file for multiple trademarks via madrid or any of those natures they can generally manage all that for you now what they're going to do is they're going to hire local cancel council in that given area but they're still going to understand the overall picture and so what gets difficult is if you don't have that centralized person most you get so many dispersed people you're working with they don't understand do you have a us one that you can add priority to do you what is the protocol do you already have a us patent that you're doing it or are you you do your pct application you're wanting to go international and kind of having a lot of that cohesive strategy in that centralized location generally gives you a lot better counsel and then they can also have an idea what are you seeing in other countries that may affect the prosecution here so let's say you filed for a patent in china or europe or wherever and you were saying hey here are the grounds for rejection now we can go now when we get that goes grounds for ejections in another country we can already have anticipated see if our arguments work if they're convincing what other art is out there and so kind of having that centralized location where you can have strategy they can see what's going on with their throughout all the portfolio and make better decisions is generally where i would start out with or at least for my biased answer because it gives you a lot more cohesion a lot more leveraging of the knowledge you're getting across the whole portfolio as opposed to breaking it out and then nobody having that centralized knowledge does that make sense yeah it definitely does i like that aspect of it so you have one place where you can go to as opposed to having seven different firms i guess that you're talking to in seven different countries not extremely helpful that definitely does help so i think sticking with the us area is going to be the best course of action on that one and the other one that's nice is you know is counterintuitive it sounds a bit and some people say hey but if i have a u.s firm i'm now having a double pay because i'm having to pay an attorney in the u.s and they're also having to pay in europe but most of the time i find that you get more cost savings because you're now having somebody that already knows a portfolio that's gone through it and can give or you know reduce the cost of having so many back and forth and having to give you know give them direction so hey i just gave direction to the european or pa or european counterpart or foreign associate on this matter china is about the same one i'll give them the similar direction so yes i'm going to have to do both of them i'm the mid intermediary but i'm giving a direction such that we're not they're not having to come up to speed and you reuse the same amount of time to do make them figure out the same thing so it ends up actually reducing the cost and giving you a better overall product because you're not having everybody that's having to figure out and having different or coming up to speed all the time no that's a great point because you know i'm not an expert like i just said beforehand right like you know know your weaknesses right and that's definitely a weakness for me so for me to become an expert in terms of what the best approach is rather than utilizing it that's very helpful i appreciate that thank you absolutely so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast always fun to talk a little about intellectual property and if if you have any other questions or the listeners or the audience has any questions just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us chat always happy to discuss anything on your mind and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up thank you again manish for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next live journey even better than the last so thank you again thank you all right thank you very much devin for having me you

Don't Grow Too Fast

Steve Preda
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/29/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

my advice is going to be from the perspective of the entrepreneur who is bootstrapping their business and it is to crawl before you walk and vote before you run i think it's really important to uh to not grow too fast uh to you know to keep the keep this gradual pace uh because it's not just growing a business is about figuring out how you can sustain the business and every step of growth makes the stability of the business it reduces the stability of the business you have to grow into that larger business so that you are on top of it and you can then get to the next level [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 and 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 feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast steve uh pretty pretty or pretta is that right yeah rita close as i'm gonna get so um give you a quick uh background on steve so since the age of the 10 or age of 10 always wanted to be an entrepreneur um was a bit inspired by his grandpa that was a baker in budapest parents were both professionals and wanted him to become one as well and then went to college graduated came up the idea for a board game graduated got a job went to work for i think big bangs for a period of time and then put the board game aside um did that or worked for the big banks for about 10 years and then there was some downsizing that got let go with and best thing that could have happened to him in his own word so to speak got fired on friday and opened his business on monday had his clients that started to come in became a market leader and then hit got hit with the eu crisis a bit in 2011 so decided to come to the u.s um then uh got into or had someone that wanted to buy his business had a few things and when where went along with there uh came back with in a and came back and then did business coaching so with that much is a brief or quick introduction welcome on the podcast steve thank you devin great to be here but i mean you told my whole story so maybe we can wrap this up right here there we go we'll just leave on a high note and call it a day so no i gave a brief overview but now let's go back in time and talk a little bit about your journey and a little bit how you got started at uh 10 years old and uh getting expired with inspired with your grandpa is a baker and budapest okay so a small corrections it wasn't my grandpa it was my great grandpa so i never actually met with him but he was a baker in pre uh second world war hungary and he built uh you know it was a small business but it was like 20 employees actually just a week ago i got a picture from a distant relative of the whole uh team you know and in front of the office it's actually pretty cool so uh yes he was the entrepreneur and he became successful but then with the nationalizations after the war you know the family lost lost the the business and my my parents became professionals and i i always felt like uh that it was not gonna work in an office job where i'm constricted and and put in a box i was like this no limit existence i exist as idea where you basically you can make of yourself whatever you want um and and i had this board with my dear when i was around 21 years old when we had the change of the regime we went from communism in hungary to uh to a multi-party democracy and i just bought grim idea which was a version of monopoly for for communist countries and so instead of buying property you would nationalize and confiscate property from other other players so there were more ways of of losing losing your property and but this never took off because i got the job um i got a scholarship in the netherlands and i went to london to work there for for a few years with kpmg accounting firm and then i got back and got into banking and uh my entrepreneurial story starts when i was 35 years old and uh and i was you know i was running this mergers and acquisition department in this bank and we were just you know i took over this department uh maybe nine months previously and started to build up the pipeline and just when things were starting to take off the bank went through a softer summer and they realized that they needed to cut costs to make their make their numbers and they looked at the payroll and i was one of the higher player employees so they pushed me out and first it was a big big shock but within ours i realized that this was a huge opportunity for me because for the previous uh several years uh i you know i had to put my entrepreneurial plans on ice because i had this career so to say career uh i was well paid i was you know i was on this management track and the opportunity cost was too big for me to switch and suddenly the big fire from the bank the opportunity cost was gone and i no longer had to make this painful decision of putting my family at risk of not having this you know started coming in every morning uh every every month so uh so that was when i started running my business and uh and we had a good run uh one thing i'd like to mention around 2004 um i stumbled upon a book called the myth by michael gerber which i'm sure devin you you read it and many of our listeners probably read it which is basically a recipe for how to turn a small business into a growing thriving enterprise well let me just dive in really quick because i just had one or kind of one before we lose that or go too far down the the um the whole or you know too far into the future when you so you're working for a big bank at the time and and you know that was a you know stable or a good job or you you know you did it for this ability for you know 10 years or so when you did get downsized i think one of the things that you said was you know basically you know you got fired on friday and opened your business on monday and you know how did you you know that's a pretty quick pretty quick turnaround to open up a business get it going and trying you know have clients follow you and everything else so how did you you know over that quick transition you know when you got or let go was to say okay i've always wanted my own business i'm going to do it now i'm not going you know rather because you could have also gone and applied to other jobs you could have gone and got hired from someone else you could have taken a bit of time or anything else rather than just and within the matter of a weekend opening up your business so how did you kind of make that decision that you're this was your opportunity to go chase down your own thing and get going on it well actually so i can i can replay the whole weekend for you if you want but the sequence of events was so i got my pink sleep or around 5 p.m on friday and i made some calls and my first reaction was uh and my team my team basically said hey we are with you if you're leaving and we're going to leave video and i made some calls and the first idea was to to basically the whole team to walk over to another bank and uh and it turned out that you talked to two banks through connections and turn out that they were not gonna be able to make a quick decision on this so this was kind of a pending thing and then in the meantime uh my second in command got summoned into the office of the the senior vice president who was my boss and basically they took my car they gave him my car they gave him my you know they gave him a big bump on his salary and essentially he was off from that moment he decided that he was not gonna leave so this idea was mute of us walking out as a team and uh then you know i had basically the weekend to figure out what i was gonna do and we had actually had four clients at the time in the department it was like five or five of us in the department and we had four clients and one of the clients was ready to walk over to me uh within within a matter of days and then the second client came over as well within a couple of weeks and i was i was a little bit pissed off with this whole firing so i kind of resolved to myself that i was gonna get the other two clients as well just to prove my point that they should have fired me and uh and and actually they also came over so by uh within six months uh both of the other clients came over and uh i got my little revenge but essentially all i needed was a computer i walked across the street a friend of mine land uh let him his apartment that was vacant for time being for like 100 bucks a month so i got started i called one of the computer guys from the office who i was friendly with and he came over and he fixed up my computer and i was off to the races so that's that's what that's what happened sounds like a very uh productive weekend or a productive few days so now now that you did that and and you know you were getting into you you know you you got the visit you know you got the business open within a matter of a few days got your first few clients you know and now you have the opportunity to kind of build your business or you know take that leap of faith and actually go out on your own how did it go for it was it a raving success and continue to build it from there was it the ups and the downs or kind of how did that go as you now were out on your own and running the business so the first thing was uh you know the first thought i had when i started the business was that all i wanted to do was to cover my salary so basically i thought okay so i'm not going to get this paycheck so what would it take for me to get just as much business so that i cover my salary so at least where i was before so we don't have to cut our lifestyle or anything like that and that was pretty quick so that happened uh you know within within a month basically and and then i thought okay so what do i do so maybe i need the real office not just this apartment maybe i hire someone uh you know i i took some subscriptions out so suddenly within a bit in a month or two my expenses started to beat it and i realized that my salary was not enough because i had to cover the expenses as well so within two months i realized that i had to actually double my salary as a like a revenue just to cover my expenses and then another two months later i realized that i had to triple it and it kept growing kept growing because the more things i did obviously the more uh the more i became a business not just not just the salary it was other cost to cover so that was the first thing and the other thing was that about six months into into the business i i basically burned through my roller decks i caught everyone i knew that i could have kind of enticed to become a client and then i realized that wow this is a new phase it's no longer personal connections now i have to figure out how i promote this business how i market my business and that was a big a big mine shaft mindset shift and i realized that if i can't do that then i'm i'm gonna be back uh in in a job within six months so i really have to break that nut and um and and basically i started calling people i started you know cold calling uh people and uh you looked at the newspapers and if there were articles about companies growing then i gave them a call and and i managed to get clients and then we found um we latched on and by that time that was basically about six nine months later i had to employees or associates and at that time we there was a program that started which was the capital injection program it's like the sba an organization in hungary like the sba started this program of helping small to medium-sized businesses with with minority capital injection so we started working on this and we became very successful because we were one of the first teams that figured out how to apply for this this capital uh projects and we got quite a few clients and we closed a few deals so there was a really we had a really good run the last next year and then we had a big had to pivot because about 18 months into running my business uh around the end of 2004 the the the person who ran the department in this government-owned bank who were dispersing these laws he kind of uh i think it was a personal jealousy he was kind of my age and he went to college at the same time and we were in similar circles and he he was head of the venture capital association and i think he didn't like me kind of dominating these projects and making a lot of money uh you know and he he basically taught his team to to stop working with mb partners our firm so suddenly we lost our bread winning a product and we had to pivot and we we started doing uh trade m a uh you know selling companies to strategic uh investors at that time there were not too many private equity groups in hungary to sell these businesses so strategic buyers and and the first deal that we were going to do it was a stationary distribution company it's a nice little company they had maybe five million revenue a million dollar uh of profit and uh and we're very very excited they put out this teaser and we had a handful of uh businesses um making offers and one of them who signed a proposal they came over to do due diligence and the morning of the due diligence revoked into the company and the ceo called me in and he said steve we have a problem so what do you mean well actually the problem is that our warehouse is nearly empty even though we have a lot of inventories on our books but we actually don't have this inventory we only inflated them because they didn't want the bank to call the loan we are actually making losses as opposed to profits and uh unfortunately this guy is going to show up for the due diligence they're going to see a half empty warehouse so i just wanted to warn you so that you know this is that thank you very much these investors came in and it was the most humiliating experience i had you know basically had to confess that the the books are you know cooked and you know this company is probably not for them and they they already hired the accountants they were very upset with us so that was a big lesson for me to do my own due diligence when i sign a client up it's not enough to just take the money and figure it out what you do afterwards it's better to know who your client is and and that you don't not don't deal with groups that is and that is always good words of wisdom that you don't deal with crooks so so now you do that you do that and you know you build up the business you go through the ups and the downs and you hit the i think then at one point you kind of hit the uh the eu downturn right or the the eu crisis back in 2011. how did that impact things or how did you pivot or adjust or what did you know where did that send you send you along your journey so uh so yes so we had a good run and uh we in 2007 was the best year ever for us and i was very confident that you can you know double the business next year i had a bunch of people we got a lot of deals we had like six deals under due diligence in the summer and uh and then the eurozone crisis here and it was a shock because just a few years earlier uh maybe i'm confusing the two so we had a good run in 2008 we had this big dip and we recovered from it uh but it was really tough i had to downsize my team and and almost went out of business and then we recovered and then the eurozone crisis like another uh dip happened and we were down at the lake balaton which is like a big lake in hungary with my my wife and kids and on vacation and you're looking at the news what was happening and your banks were going out of business countries were going down the drain and my wife and i looked at each other and said are we going to wait for strike three we had the financial crisis the lehman induced financial crisis we have the eurozone currency crisis maybe there's a third one shall we wait for this or shall we make make a move so uh you know started researching options we looked at different countries in australia the uk canada eventually decided to come to the us and uh next next that was like late august september and then the next spring as we were figuratively you know packing our luggage to come over here i got this call from this guy called christian who was running a private equity group in budapest and he offered to to basically merge our businesses became partners become partners be become a merchant banking operation and to expand in the region and uh and i was very touched you know you know i was very impressed uh very happy that he thought about me to to to merge but i told him that listen uh we committed to make this move so i cannot be your partner however it's kind of good timing if you want to buy my business why don't you give me an offer so a week later i got this offer i got the email and opened it up and i could not believe what i saw so basically to summarize the offer it was that steve uh your business is worth zirch but i'm happy to buy your fancy furniture and your computers uh and i'll pay you a commission for all the deals that you have in the hopper but you you're the chief uh a cook and battle washer in the business you're you're the face of the company you do the marketing you're you know you're the ceo you've got all the investor connections you you get the clients so without you we don't have a business and and kind of he had a point he had a point it was very painful because i had been teaching all those companies how to make themselves viable so they can go and find an investor and then when it was my turn it turned out that the emperor had no clothes so it was very very painful and uh but then i started you know we moved here anyway and and i figured out that the problem was that i was not delegating i was not empowering my team and i stumbled upon on another book so i mentioned the e-myth which is kind of a management blueprint i called them i stumbled upon another management blueprint traction from gino vickman and i started implementing the tours and uh empowering my team and you know basically stepping back from day to day i was here in virginia and just uh going back every three weeks just to make sure everything's okay but my team took from me and and it was really excited and they re-envied it and within a year uh christian came back and uh he he told me that you know he saw that the business was working and my team was executing and i was not here and obviously it's it's more than just just a one-man show and and uh i managed to uh do a deal and sort business and and move over here now uh why it's important because this book that you saw behind me bible is about this idea of you know being caught with your pants down like i was with an unbiable business so i wouldn't want uh other entrepreneurs to live through that and there is a way to to avoid that it's by making your business viable so this book is about how to make your business viable no and i think that's that's awesome so a lot of what you've kind of learned from when you went to sell your business and they basically got told well it's not worth the whole lot other than the physical assets because you built it around yourself so much that you leave the business kind of shuts down to now this is how you set up the business so that it is viable that people can come in they can take over it and it has that value to it so i think that's great so now if you since you've done the book and since you transitioned there do you still run any of the businesses still do any of that or is it now primarily shifted over to more business coaching and in the the book or the book area yeah so when i came over here you know i started to set up an office so the initial idea was to continue the investment banking business here i had a couple of clients but i realized that it was a big client to build a business and no connections here whatsoever to build a business which is very transaction driven and very not every deal closes and it's a success different thing so i would have had to build quite a big machine to have some kind of a stability of cash flow so we decided not to do that and i started working with leadership teams and and i started implementing um the entrepreneurial operating system the attraction describes that i implemented in my business and uh and another management blueprints and bible is basically uh it gives you the framework to how to figure out what you need to do with your company to live your ideal life what it takes for you to get there so what is your magic number what is the value of your business whether you have to take your business and then implement a management blueprint like like traction like eos or the emf and orchestrate your business so that it's self-managing it's growing sustainably and it's profitable and maybe your business is already ready for you to harvest your magic number to do your ideal life but if not then the next phase phase three is to you know to instill value drivers in the business and then when you have grown the business to the appropriate value then how do you transition so how do you monetize your business what will be your role uh in the business or outside the business but in the business there are various roles an entrepreneur i've seen entrepreneurs you know being just a shareholder being a consultant working in the business actually without executive authority just doing the business or being an advisor or being a board member so that different roles and there are pros and cons for each so i talk about that and then i talk about the mindset of what it l what's the emotional impact of of letting go of your business and how does it feel and i felt it myself it was it was quite difficult because you it gives you status it gives you connections uh it gives you relevance and when it's gone then you suddenly just the soul you know a soul person uh not with not very much leverage so that's that's an interesting uh there was an interesting experience and and i've seen many entrepreneurs who didn't figure out their end game what they would do after the end game and and they suffered uh accurately and they bought the boat and the they went on the vacations and they realized they didn't like to be on the water anyway and the boat wouldn't start anyway because i hadn't brought it out of the marina for six months so it's not really a solution you have to have a compelling future beyond your business and figure that out first and then reverse engineer the buyability process well awesome well i think that's uh definitely a fun story to tell and in you know and a good journey as well some great advice well as we wrap up towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that we hit on so we'll let's uh go ahead and dive on those now um so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it i think the first business decision was in in 2005 after i read the e-myth i got so excited i implemented e-myth in my business and then i got so excited about this whole concept of of systemizing business that i thought that i would start a second business doing the systemization so i started this business it i think the name was mechanized or the equivalent of it in hungary and i hired uh someone to run it and we you know put a lot of energy into creating this this template this program and and pitching it the at the same time it was not enough for me at the same time i also started a business brokerage operation because i was reading all these books about business brokerage and and i thought maybe there is uh you know there are a lot more companies smaller companies that can't afford investment banking maybe we can do a cookie cutter approach for them and that's going to be a high volume uh business and it's going to be very easy i thought easier to put the transactions together so i hired another person and we started doing that as well so suddenly i was running three businesses and the net effect was none of the new businesses took off because they were not quite the right idea neither of them and then my legacy business went down because i didn't pay attention i dropped the ball on it so essentially i lost two valuable employees one of them was an old friend that i had to let go it's very painful i had a high-flying employee who was one of the most promising ones who i appointed to run the brokerage and he got burnt out and he left so i lost him plus he started we started making loses in the losses in the investment banking business so it was a huge mess and it was just because i wasn't disciplined enough i thought just because one business is going well uh i kind of have the midas touch and wherever i get into it's gonna go as well and lost my focus and almost you know ran into trouble many managed to course correct but we lost time and attention and money and and good people as a result well i think but i think that you know that sometimes and i tend to even suffer with it a bit as well as i think a lot of entrepreneurs you have a lot of whatever appear at least and probably a lot of them are good ideas and things are exciting you catch a new thing you want to implement it you want to try some out start a new business and you know that can be great and lead to a lot of opportunities but if you get kind of you know the old saying over your skis or you get too far ahead of yourself and we get things to where you're too strapped on time you're not able to focus on the core of what you're doing and then it can actually you know have that adverse adverse effects as you is you touched on more entrepreneurs go bankrupt because more businesses go out of business because of indigestion rather than starvation so that's the indigestion suggestion that's fair so now now let's jump to the second question which 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 give them um so i think there are two types of advice if this is a funded business so someone goes out and it's venture backed then obviously that's going to be different so my advice is going to be from the perspective of the entrepreneur who is bootstrapping their business and it is to crawl before you walk and vote before you run i think it's really important to uh to not grow too fast uh to you know to keep the keep this gradual pace uh because it's not just growing a business is about figuring out how you can sustain the business and every step of growth makes the stability of the business it reduces the stability of the business you have to grow into that larger business so that you are on top of it and you can then get to the next level and i think a big mistake is to grow try to grow too fast and and then you can run out of money you can run out of the ability to execute you you hire people who are not right right not right for your organization or for your seat so you get into all sorts of troubles um and you know jim collins has this concept of the 20 mile march and it talks about the story of uh 19 i think it was 1911 when or 1919 when the two explorer groups i think 1911 i think it was a 14. anyway there are two groups trying to get to the uh to the antarctics uh into the antarctica and one was uh scott who was a brit and there was a moons and a norwegian and the brit uh he basically uh when it was bright weather and good weather they would march 50 to 70 miles and when they had bad weather they basically stayed in their tent to wait for the bad weather to go away whereas amundsen he had this strategy of 20 mile mark so every day they would get out of that pant they marched 20 miles whether it was beautiful weather or terrible weather they would do that and they would stop and they would you know goof off do something else it was bad weather they would still make the 20 miles so that kept the team the kept the morale high and kept them progressing um and and they got there and back with food to spare while scott's team basically died they they reached the the antarctica they were second so they they didn't win the race and they they died on the way back 20 miles from the next food depot because they exhausted themselves i love that and i love that idea of you know basically you know don't exhaust yourself or you know if you are going at such a pace on the business and growing it or bringing people on or doing other things that you exhausted that can have a lot of that adverse so i think that that's that's a great advice well this is a quick reminder to people we do have the bonus question we'll talk just a little about intellectual property but uh for the nor or the normal part of the episode uh we'll go ahead and wrap it up and want to say thank you steve for coming on 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 apply to be on the show two more things is listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us your reviews so new people know how to find it or the awesome episodes as well last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else just feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help so now with that now that we've had your journey we always got to make the fun transition of where you had to switch switch gears our bed and talk a little bit about intellectual property so with that you know um i'll turn it over to you what is your top intellectual property question yeah so my question is uh whether it's possible how it's possible to trademark a common use word in the english language so specifically the time of my book i know that as far as i understand book titles cannot be trademarked but but words sometimes can be trademarked so for example the i mentioned the attraction the book the attraction word us word might manage to trademark protraction word even though it's not a product it's title of a book um there's other ways to use they use the traction verb but it's i'm not clear on how they use it or how they made it so anyway so long long question what are the ways of turning a common use english word into a trademark without having to necessarily have a product with the same name yeah so there's a few a few things to unpack so i'll try and hit on those i mean generally for a trademark a trademark has or whether it's a word whether it's a logo whether it's the name of a product or anything else it has to be tied to a goods or services that you're offering and so in other words you have to be selling something with that you know using the mark you have to be providing a service so you can you know whether it's a plumbing service car wash attorneys anything else you know whatever it is but it has to be tied with the goods and services because really what trademarks are intended to do is to associate a goods or services with uh with the the source be a source identifier so in other words i know when i see coca-cola that it's going to be sold by the company coca-cola and i know that with that i know who's selling it i know what the quality is i know where it's coming from and you know so that's identifying the source of who's buying it so when you get into trademarks that's really the first step you have to do and so the problem you get into is we talked a little bit about a book is if you knew the name of a book it doesn't necessarily identify who's selling the book right if i use the word and you know you have your book in the background buyable it's a great name and it's a great brand but no if people aren't going to look and think okay the name of that book indicates that here's a person that's selling it or here's a you know the source of the goods or services similar to you know now there's always an exception you know you can do as an example harry potter as a brand they built you know a series of books multiple books they build out a whole brand around the book such that now when people hear harry potter they think okay it's not just a name of a book but it's a whole name of a series i know what is going along with it i know there's previous books i know it's going to be sold by this and so you can build it around a book but it has to be almost more of a series otherwise generally it's hard just to do it as a name or a title of a book the other thing you can look at is you know if you take for instance stephen covey which did the seven habits of highly effective in you know people he built a whole franchise around that but was really out of not just a book but also you know he took what each of those habits were and he built seminars and webinars and trainings and certifications and all those things and so while it was kind of centered around the book initially it branched out to goods and services so now when you hear the seven habits of highly effective people you don't just think of the book but you think of all the things that come along that and all the marketing and the branding and everything that came with that so generally you're looking at a trademark it's you know generally it has to be identify the source of goods or services it has to be tied to something that's in commerce whether it's a good or a service and then the other thing when you look at a trademark as to whether or not it's a trademarkable term is it has to be something that's more than merely descriptive meaning if all you're doing is you know if as an example if you're going out and you wanted to open up a fruit stand and you're going to sell the or the the fruit apples and you named your fruit stand apple well you can't you wouldn't be able to trademark that because everybody describes the word uh the fruit apple as an apple and so people aren't going to think that that's a source of identification now if you go out and start a consumer electronics company with the word apple it's not going to be merely descriptive because people don't typically call a smartphone apples because it has nothing to do with the word apple so those are kind of a few things as you go along or the few basics of trademarks with the really the idea of it has to identify a source of goods and services that you're selling and then you have to do something that's not merely descriptive so with that that's going to we'll wrap it up for there and if you have any other questions on uh intellectual property patents trading marks or anything else whether you or any of the listeners feel free to go to strategymeeting.com we're always here here to chat and answer questions i'm always here to help and uh with that i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last and thank you for coming on the podcast thanks devin it was a fun to chat with you thank you

Start Earlier

Roger Tilton
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/28/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

start earlier don't think about it more and more and wonder when you're going to do it if you have the idea and you have the passion to do it don't wait start today start right now make that first phone call get your business license get set up name your company start moving don't waste time because what you'll find is once you get into this you never have enough time 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 and seven 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 feel free to go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast uh roger tilton and give you a quick introduction to roger so i didn't realize till a few years ago that has had or life had a theme since really started in high school um when in high school it was always trying to get access to something that people didn't want to have or didn't want him to have access to nothing bad of course but just uh and he'll expand on that a little bit been in high school um his his parents got divorced uh mom had three kids was a single mom grew up and and you know a meager meager lifestyle dad on the opposite hand had a nice lifestyle so kind of saw both sides of that after graduated went to university of washington got a degree graduated at one or not the best time in the 1980s with the depression but still found a job as a journalist or did that for a period of time and then his wife at the time told him that there was opportunities to make more money than a journalist because journalists often times don't make as much as you would think so went in to be a stock broker did that for 20 years and then started his own private equity firm so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast roger thanks very much glad to be here so i gave a very quick run-through of a much longer journey so take us back in time a bit to you know how first of all the a bit of the theme of your life that started in high school and kind of how how things got going from there and let's uh talk about your journey from there all right well when uh when we're growing up we think that our situation is normal that this is how everybody grows up so we don't really see ourselves as any different but you got it right i called it uh going from poverty to posh in a weekend in a 45-minute car ride uh when my parents were divorced uh my mom was single like you said i had two brothers and we lived in what i call the gario you know part ghetto park barrio in san jose but on the weekends we'd go stay at this high-rise twin peaks condo overlooking san francisco san francisco bay and oakland so i didn't realize it but i had one foot in each bucket basically since the time i was a little kid when i got to high school i ran for class president as a freshman because from what i had heard the freshman class never got anything out of the student council so i thought hey i'll give you access to that i didn't know the word access back then but it became a theme of my life and when i left the brokerage firm for the last time in 2016 i realized that my whole life had been providing access to people to something they didn't have access to whether it was politics in high school or i became a reporter i would go out and find the information so people would have it so they would have access to the news the newsmakers the news conferences i would report that back to them so then the whole money thing is like oh yeah that's not you can't make a living doing that let's jump or jump back just because you jumped over a whole bunch of story which i think is interesting so you went to high school kind of figured that out and you kind of saw both sides or both sides of the spectrum with the rich dad poor mom type of thing you said rich dad poor dad you know those type of right we got to see both being within a short distance time went to you know university of washington but then you were coming out during kind of the depression in the 1980s and i think that's why you kind of said hey i was trying to figure out what i want to do journalist opportunity came available and that's how you started out after graduation or kind of how did you start out in journalism yeah i started out in journalism when i went to a community college in uh cupertino california went to de anza college and on the first day i went into the newspaper office and they needed bodies and i was sports editor by the end of day one editor-in-chief two and a half months later and i was also a reporter photographer typesetter i did it all and then when i transferred to the university of washington i worked on the uw dailies and then from there i ended up at a tv station doing writing and uh producing newscasts well that sounds like you know fun opportunity and something that kind of interesting as you're getting you're coming out of college now you did that how long how long did you do the journalism uh journalism position or journalism job it was i was i spent a total of 10 years as a journalist the last five with the tv station the tv news um and that's when and that's when i switched over to merrill lynch and it was really all about money and isn't wall street really all about money and that's kind of what i realized you know after 27 years being a financial advisor i i realized that that really wasn't what i wanted to do i mean i enjoyed helping people giving them access to investments right access to capitalism but it really doesn't work that way the rich get richer and the poor and the middle class get poorer hmm no and that uh definitely that definitely makes sense and so you know now you get into journalism you know it sounds like it would be a fun or exciting job but after a period of time saying hey it's more difficult to support myself off this wage i'm going to look for something so i said okay i'll go into more of the investment go into wall street they're about money and i can make a good wage and income when you make that that transition you know did you have any background or experience or know how to get into it or how did you because it seems like you know a bit of a jump from journalism to more of a wall street investing in venture capital and angel investor and and finances and all that so how did you kind of make that transition with that leap well this is where the story gets good devon my mother as i told you um had three sons single part-time jobs and she went to college at night she ended up getting her college degree in her 30s and then got hired at ef hutton in the mid-1970 as a stock broker so i had a part-time job there for a few months in 1979 and i thought oh i could do that but i was a journalist i was writing i was getting published i didn't want to do that but it was in the back of my mind and so eventually many years later i thought oh i could do that and so i went about getting hired without ever telling my mother that i was quitting journalism i just called her one day and said hey mom i do what you do now i work at merrill lynch hmm no and it makes sense and see now you do that for a period of time you say okay i'm going to go i'm going to work at merrill lynch i'm going to do finances now the one question i had was was it simply it was at was it as simple as simply your wife said hey this is going to be you know we need to make more money or we need to figure out a better income to support the family was that as simple as the decision was or was there anything more involved or anything that kind of more that went into that well it was a little bit more involved um in tv news especially you bump into a ceiling you know i was working in the seattle market i think at the time it was the 14th largest television market and it was a destination market people wanted to move to seattle so they would take lower pay for me to get higher pay i'd have to move to a larger market like new york and i didn't really want to do that plus i wanted to wear nice looking suits to work every day and i didn't do that as a journalist and i thought yeah i want to i really want to ingratiate myself into this wall street lifestyle so now so now you make that transition you kind of you know start to figure it out was it enjoy you know was it as rewarding or enjoyable as you know doing the all the journalism stuff was it fun and exciting or did you you know did it was it one where hey i made a lot of money i got to wear the nice suits but i wish i'd go back to journalism and kind of how was that transition for you well two months after i started at merrill lynch i was at the world series in 1989 it was the fifth consecutive year i had gone to the world series huge baseball fan right and there's an earthquake and i work at merrill lynch i'm not a journalist and i was so bummed it's like oh my god i want to tell this story but i couldn't um yeah there was a lot of give and take i i liked helping people i like giving people access to wall street investments but i really soured on it over the years because wall street really does only care about themselves and the one percenters and everybody else is just kind of a nuisance and so what i wanted to do was give access to the 99 percenters you know most people don't realize this but access to capitalism is very limited in this country and when i say capitalism i'm talking about generational wealth building capitalism not capitalism with loan sharks and student loans and refinance and foreclosure because look at people in their 20s and 30s today what have they what is their experience with capitalism debt loans difficulties making it i mean they don't have access to wealth generating capitalism like private equity like venture capital like new industries and that's what i've set out to do with my companies give people access give the 99 percenters access to the wealth building mechanisms of capitalism like private equity like venture capital and i'm doing it with the legal adult use cannabis trade because it's not regulated by the federal government right now and if you as an investor wanted to get into private equity or venture capital or legal cannabis you have to be accredited accredited means you have a million dollars of liquid net worth sitting over there in your bank account or your stock account and you make 200 000 a year or 300 000 if you're married that's one percent of the people so we're eliminating 99 of the people from access to getting rich hmm no no one question and we'll definitely dive into that a bit but before just backing up a bit so you did worked on wall street it was for 20 plus years is that right 27 years as a registered representative on the nyse so now so now you do that for you know 20 plus years what may what was the tipping point or what's the the what point you say hey i want to do this on my own i want to go out start my own firm give people access to you know capital they may not have otherwise done and that type of thing what what gave you that you know that what gave you that motivation that prompting to do that well i think it started when i wrote an op-ed that went viral in october of 2008 that said dear congress don't bail out wall street because i knew exactly what would happen you know i read that article now 13 years later and exactly what i predicted would happen happen you know they took all the money and they gave themselves big bonuses for bailing themselves out hey we saved the company yay um so 2008-2009 the way that wall street engineered that financial meltdown you know it was disgusting and nobody paid the price not one single person went to jail for that so that's that's kind of when i started looking for an out and then in 2012 uh when washington legalized adult use cannabis and colorado did too i thought okay there's an industry that's going to become one of the fastest growing industries in the united states not the world in the next decade or two i mean and now we've seen it that was nine years ago that we first legalized adult use cannabis in the united states nine years now we have 15 states that have legalized and we're on our way to 50. i mean there's no there's no doubt we're going to get there and so who's going to make money on the cannabis industry the rich fat wall street guys again probably but what i want to do is offer access to that industry that generational wealth building opportunity to the 99 i'm not going to leave out the one percenters but the way that i look at it devin the minimum for the one percenters is 25 000 the minimum for the 99 percenters 420 now the accredited investors still get all that fine due diligence research of a wall street analyst i mean i've been doing it for 30 years now i've spent the last five years tracking the growing legal cannabis trade [Music] no that definitely makes sense so now that kind of brings us brings us to where you're at today now if you're kind of you know and doing the investment helping the you know the other 99 or those that are don't typically have access to it or can invest when you look at now kind of the next six to 12 months where do you see things headed or what's a trajectory you guys are on it's nothing but up devin i mean this industry every every time you turn around there's another store opening i live right on the border with massachusetts in southern new hampshire and there are legal adult use marijuana stores opening all over the state i mean it's just happening maine now is starting to open retail stores you've got illinois and michigan i mean it's a growing industry and for anybody who wants to participate we're here for you you don't have to have a million dollars net worth you don't have to have a 25 000 minimum you can have access so so no and i think that that's that's cool in the sense i think that you know it's a industry that you know people oftentimes don't know how to get into it or they get into it and they have to be accredited or they have to go through a lot of regulations and so providing access to people with in any given industry i think is an ad admirable if i could say the word i'm endeavor so well as we kind of now catch up to a bit of your journey and where you're heading a bit in the future i always have two questions i ask at the end of the podcast so i'll jump to those now for a bit the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh know who you go into business with know your partner um before access world group there was a predecessor company which i won't name and i won't name my partner but get to know your partner or you can lose everything quickly no and i think that's you know it's an interesting you know if you get partner getting a partner in business is uh there has a lot of overlaps with dating and otherwise get you're marrying someone but people oftentimes you don't you don't take it nearly seriously or think about it in the sense that you date you you know you get to know the person you have a relationship you go out a lot and everything else and yet often times with a partner you just think oh that they they compliment this so they have this money or they have this access and good enough you know you kind of jump in but there's a lot that goes into you're going to be with them a lot you're going to be working long hours you know you're both going to be contributing and are hopefully contributing you're going to have your ups and downs you'll probably have your fights and whatnot and so you better make sure as you're doing that the partner you get into bed with is going to be one that that you enjoy and then one that's going to be a good relationship a business relationship because otherwise it can certainly have you know certain negative repercussions for the business yeah i was um uh pretty astute when i figured out what was going on it was um it was like six or eight months after we started that i thought this is not working you know what did i have access to 27 years of clientele i had access to money what did he have access to well supposedly expertise but he was just more interested in the money that i brought in so i started over and here we are no definitely makes sense and a good lesson to learn and one that a lot of entrepreneurs when you go into going into a partnership or in the business you learn one way or the other so so the second question oh yeah i was going to say second question i always ask is if you're talking now to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what be the one piece of advice you give them start earlier don't think about it more and more and wonder when you're going to do it if you have the idea and you have the passion to do it don't wait start today start right now make that first phone call get your business license get set up name your company start moving don't waste time because what you'll find is once you get into this you never have enough time no i like that because i think that you know you always you can always make excuses as to why now is not the right time and whether it's hey i'm just you know i haven't i don't have the right education or i'm i'm you know getting uh starting a family i'm getting married or i'm farther in my career and i don't want to change it or i don't have the money there's always reasons why you want but every time people get into i say the number one answer we get you know with people is they say what they would tell entrepreneurs if they could is get started early get started now because you'll always you'll you'll very seldom look back and regret getting going now but oftentimes you'll wish you just got started earlier so i love that as it takes away absolutely well as we start to wrap up the podcast that people are wanting to reach out to you they're wanting to know more they're wanting to you know they want to be er have you invest in them they want to be a customer that client 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 find out more you know just like you devin i give out my personal number it's 978-597-8900 and my email very simple rht those are my initials at acwg.co very simple email rht at ac wg acwg.co well awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out and just as a reminder people we are going to talk for just a couple minutes with the bonus question after the normal episode about intellectual property uh we'll hear your number one intellectual property question but as we wrap up if you uh for the normal episode thank you again for coming on 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 i'd love to have you on the podcast and uh and share your journey just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one is if uh if you end your podcast player make sure to click subscribe so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two uh make sure to leave us a review so new people can find out about us last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else go to strategymeeting.com sign up and uh and grab some time with us to chat and strategize so now as we wrap up the normal episode now we get to go on to a bit of the bonus question where we get to flip the tables a bit and you get to ask you know you could ask me questions i normally during the normal episode always get asked questions and you get to tell me more about your journey and now we get to flip that a bit so with that along or i turn it over to you what is your number one intellectual property question you know i got a patent back in 1997 and shortly thereafter i think was maybe four years it expired is that right is that how long they last uh not unless you maybe didn't depending on when you had maintenance fees due as possible so normally it will give you the normal answer then you give a couple caveats normally when you do a patent application is 20 you get 20 years from the date of filing so in other words from the day that you filed your application you get 20 years before it expires now there are a few maintenance fees that you have to pay in different increments along the way in order to keep that keep that patent application active and going so you know you have them every few years increment and they get progressively more expensive and the way the government basically sets up is hey if this is an important patent to you you're willing to pay more you know fees in order to keep it active for that full 20 years if at the you know if you get into it and you're saying hey we're no longer using it no longer valuable it's no longer worth enforcing then you can let it go abandoned so probably where you got into it was after you went through the examination for a period of time you hit one of those first maintenance fees period you didn't pay the maintenance fee and therefore it went abandoned yeah and then uh about a year later i started getting uh photographs sent to me from eastern europe of my splatterless urinal all over eastern europe and i didn't make a dime on it well that is that is always a trade-off you can get a patent and if you if you can do it it's worthwhile and yet there's also that cost and that trade-off of how you maintain it how you keep it active and what makes sense so but back then back then it was just a whim i was working full time full boar at uh at the wall street firm that was my total passion at the time the patent was just kind of a whim and then somebody sent me a picture of my toilet over there and it's like wait a second how did that happen and that's how it happened yeah i definitely understand it's one of those that you can look back and hey if only i kept it active if i could have been you know i could have enforced it or got licensed from it or anything else and yet on the other hand you could if nobody had ever done it or they hadn't knocked it off you're saying hey i paid all these fees i never did anything with it and it doesn't make sense either so yeah always always a crystal ball and you have to decide where what uh which path you want to take well that that totally makes sense now the way the government does it ratcheting up the fees so that you have to decide whether you think it's important or not yep exactly anyway it's in the public domain all right well that was a great question it was fun to chat a little bit about intellectual property appreciate you again coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and if you or anybody of the listeners ever have any other questions about intellectual property feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and otherwise i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last hey thanks very much i know i know where i'm going to go for my ip law devin thanks a lot sure thing you

How To Qualify For Tax Credits

Eric & Michael Procaccinni
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/27/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

10 payback based on their r d expenses so they they think their last step is you know running the payroll hiring employee coming out with the product we want to create the other last step which is let's take a look at your expenses maybe maybe beyond just having an expense on it on your profit loss we can convert that into an already tax credit let's let's start the planning if we use it for the payroll tax credit that would be great or else against income taxes so so we do a lot of planning phone calls exchange information so and i would also want to say that we use uh technology we do a lot of zoom or in teleconference we record a lot of our discussions and our interviews every single thing we do is to save time for the client [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 business 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 feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great expert episode today it'll be with uh michael and eric pratachini or as close as i can to pronouncing their name but a few things that we'll go over is one that is maybe not as sexy of an area as far as experts but definitely has an impact both on the bottom line and one that can impact a business especially if you're startup or small business which can be a lot to do with tax credits and more particularly a lot to do with r d tax credits kind of what is a tax credit how do you get you know what how you might qualify what you might want to consider and kind of how you might anticipate that and kind of what or and have a good discussion from there so if that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast eric and michael thanks for having us yeah thank you so much so now before we dive into all of the the excitement of tax credits and kind of what that all entails maybe just give kind of the audience a two or three minute overview a bit of your background and a little bit why you're an expert and why they should trust and listen to you sure sure so thank you again for the time here today and i'm going to go ahead of eric uh if you don't mind i guess osato with my credentials that i am a cpa so i'm a certified public accountant but i'm also a chemical engineer so those credentials and law in addition to my experience makes me consider uh an expert for the irony tax credits i i was lucky enough to spend a little bit over five years working at a public accounting firm so that's really where everything got started and it's fabulous uh opportunity to to learn how to really how to manage clients and also uh just a general intro into the different tax entities so you have the c-corp escort partnership and i did that for about five years and then the last 15 years i worked with a group in montreal focusing on usa r d tax credits and then i i was lucky enough to work with a group out in california so that was my commute right from rhode island to california about one weekend a month and i would travel to california and then i would travel up and down the west coast uh palo alto san francisco and and that was my uh intro and my experience with a lot of the startup companies all the software and so up until that point i was mostly with manufacturing companies uh so that was my intro into the into the software world the summer of 2017 i decided to go on my own and in addition to working on my own last year i joined uh an exciting international group fi group they're located in paris france so i'm lucky enough to work with true uh global companies with the ird credits and a couple of other tax incentives that we work with no that was a great introduction definitely makes sense and uh eric is your son if i remember right so he he works with you and does a lot of the the leg work and setting things up and uh making sure things get through or get done as well is that right yep right on yeah a little less exciting than my dad here but just just learning the ropes and falling alongside him well that's awesome and i've had an opportunity to work with my dad on several projects and different startups and it's always a fun dynamic sometimes it can add a little bit of stress but it also adds a lot more fun to it as well so definitely well maybe with that let's dive in for and chat a little bit about uh you know the the reason of area of expertise which is tax credit so before we get necessarily into specifics of r d tax credits maybe just help people understand a bit of what is a tax credit or why they're offered or why they might consider it kind of then we'll get into the specifics on the r d side no that's definitely so uh like it's almost like an ideal client that they invest in innovation technology new or improved products and even without the client even knowing about the r d credit they're in survival mode they have to be one or two steps ahead of the competition so even without the r d credit they're doing some things for themselves that they really need to do hire engineers figure out uh their current products that they have or software so it's so interesting that the irony credit should be almost like an afterthought before we dive into r d let me back up just real quick because tax credits and you can correct me where i'm wrong because i'm by far not an expert on it i kind of reasonably understand it but a tax credit is basically where the government has different categories of qualifications that you can get reductions on your taxes such that they're saying hey either we'll give you a credit so you don't have to pay as much taxes or will reduce what you owe on your taxes because you qualify for different areas is that is that a fair kind of summary of what a tax credit is yeah it is and we always ask we use the 10 percent rule of thumb so if someone has 100 dollars of r d expenses they'll get roughly a ten percent or or a ten thousand dollar federal credit it's almost equivalent to on a w-2 you have your federal withholding or you make your quarterly estimated payments it's very similar to that yes okay so if in other words if it's so backing that up just a little bit tax credits i should look and say okay there's a lot of different tax credits out there that can help me with my business and so some of them can be you know if you're to look at personal tax returns it can be you may you know you have earn child income you can that would be a tax credit if you have so many kids if you're a parent and depending on how you do that now when you get into startups and small businesses there's different ones and you know different kind of thing but similar to the you know they have some of them that are for with covet and that that you can get for a deferral of how much you pay in the you know i think it's um the credits for how much you pay maybe for unemployment or you can have different credits so you pay for if you have you know different qualifications one of which has been around for a little bit longer certainly predates coved which is you keep referring to is r d tax credit which is a lot of times applicable for startups and small businesses that are doing r d which is research and development and so that's bringing or developing a product figuring it out or researching it and then bringing it to market and they give a credit or for credit depending on if you qualify for how you're able to do that development if you're incentivized basically companies that are trying to bring new products to market so maybe talk a little bit about kind of the you know within r d because r d can be very broad broadly used term within businesses too can everything from you know r d if you would ask a restaurant they're saying i'm developing a new recipe to a you know technology company that's developing a new product to maybe a medical company that's developing a new medical device so when you look at kind of the r d tax credit what is things that what are things that qualifications that startups or small businesses should be considering when should they start to look at it and how do they qualify right excellent so i've actually nicknamed it the wrist credit so somebody starts off with r d they think about the white you know the white coats and in an actual r d research center but if you if you take a step back really it's a risk credit so somebody's taking a risk on hiring an engineer or buying a new kind of product or they're trying to have innovation where there's a financial and technical risk where maybe it work out or maybe it will not so people feel more comfortable oh they don't really understand r d but risk the risk tax credit michael as you're nicknaming it i feel more comfortable with that so so now you take that and so my follow-up question to that is so does any startup qualify meaning if i'm taking because i mean almost every startup takes some risk right in the sense that they're going they're they're going out on their own they're going to start investing either take their own money and invest it blood sweat and tears they're going to do starting up would a restaurant a mom-and-pop shop a technology company and a medical device company all qualify or there's some that qualify better than others right so um if they if they have uh technical employees so as you're gonna find we try to oversimplify everything so instead of going through the irs four pod tests and everything else we start off with is it a stable company is it stabilized is it making money so we we try to like circle the wagon do you have by the way do you have any engineers or a computer uh computer science specialist that work on your and then i ask big questions like why do you hire them oh we hire them to solve our technical problems and so really we try to convince them that they're involved with the rd cycle so and it's just a matter of having a discussion like we're having today ask the right type kind of questions and that way the air we feel comfortable about the r d level and then they do as well no i definitely think that makes sense now i'll follow up with another question which is you know if what are some of the company flipping the question almost a bit on his head what are some of the companies you're saying you're going to have a difficult time qualifying or you may not want to consider it it may not suit you well so you know what i'm trying to do is help so you know if you're a startup you're saying great i can get a tax credit everybody wants tax credit nobody wants to pay any more taxes they want to pay the taxes they're owed because they don't want to get audited but you don't want to pay more than you have to but are there companies you're saying yeah if you're in this area or this area you probably are going to have a difficult time or you may not you may not want to go down this route versus hey here's a sweet spot it sounds certainly like you have engineers software technical people that's an easier area are there ones that are more difficult to qualify on perfect so let's first talk about the 100 non-qualifying client okay okay they have no financial risk they have no technical risk they have no technical employees like at all and they've hired the right attorneys that have made sure that they take no risk at all so the bottom line is heavy their tax liability is heavy and i cannot help them out at all all right so now let's say let's say i qualify for one of those so i have risk i'm putting in my own money i'm putting my money or my savings at risk but i don't have technical employees and i'm not solving a technical problem can you still qualify is it more difficult should you consider it not consider it you need to have that and it was the last point you made you have to be connected to the sciences the hard sciences engineering software physics medical you have to have some kind of a uh a hard science attempted to that so we're always trying to check the box and that would be put them in a hard i wouldn't be able to provide the credit really at all they have to be connected to technology one way or another so in other words and not putting words in your mouth but putting your words in mouth um you have to have some sort of science technical or solving some sort of technical issue meaning really if you're a mom and pop shop is opening up a a small cert or convenience store even though you have some risk involved probably not going to have the technical people same thing on a restaurant unless you're like an uber or you know somewhere where you have software you have ubereats or you know some of those different ones doordash and that they do have a technical aspect but if you're opening up a new restaurant those are incredibly risky because a lot of them don't make it but it doesn't have that technical aspect on the flip side if you're doing whether it's software you're doing electronics you're doing some medical devices where it has some hard sciences to where you're going to have to invest with you know have employees or independent contractors or different individuals that are going to be doing a lot of that research and that development then you'd be a reasonable candidate now one question to follow up on that is it too early i mean let's say i come up with the world's best idea for the next you know whatever device it is i'm going to create the next iphone that's going to just knock everybody's socks off of and i start my i get my llc or my s corp my c corp whichever it is set up tomorrow i go get i go get investment dollars and i hire 20 engineers can i can i and do it this year can i get started or when should i get started how early in the process or late in the process should i consider it it's probably the sooner the better the early planning stages there is some as far as the r d credit you know as the irs never lets us down right they want documentation they want evidence they want so you're better off starting it as soon as as soon as the irony cycle starts out because the information's fresh the project listed fresh everything's right there so so to go so right now this is 2021 for us to go back and do a r d credit for 20 19 and 18 the information gets diluted over time so i'm better off getting involved early on and a couple of uh as far as the startup companies are really a really an ideal situation so we have a general definition of a start-up but the irs has a start-up where they have a five-year rule you know one two three four and five will uh create the amity credit and they can check the box and elect to use the r d credit against payroll taxes okay no now another and i'm just kind of a lot of different questions that i'm getting anticipate people would have does it necessarily matter if you have whether it's an employee and it's you know 1099 employee versus an independent contractor versus a part-time for full-time do those matter as far as irs are qualifying for the credit as far as which type of employees you might have no and that's that's a great point so uh if they they can have employees or they can have contractors you know we go through the interview process the same exact way you get they get the bigger the bigger bang for the park with the w-2 wage earners but the start-up they have so many things to worry about and hiring somebody is usually low on the list right so they have outside contractors they pay them at 10.99 and that could also provide the rd credit for them as well okay so in other words it while 1099 might be a bit easier you could certainly even if you have independent contractors or other arrangements with employees you could still qualify one other question that comes up and then i'll hit on or one of my questions i like which is intellectual property but before we head there let's say i've been doing an r d project for two or three years and i just heard this podcast episode or i just found out about your specialty or any number of things can you go back and recapture some of that credits or is it only moving forward meaning hey i've been doing this for two or three years i didn't realize i qualified is there any way to recapture that or is it more hey now that i know about it i can capture it going forward yeah now great so you know even like an individual tax return you have you have three years from when you filed it to go back and amend and that's what really opens up the opportunity to go back for the prior years so the answer is yes yes definitely go back if it's available and part of the planning is to really figure out that whole net benefit you know it's one thing to do the credit for the prior years there could be an ordered risk that has to be managed and understood as well it's so much easier to do it in the current year where the audit risk is i think less than one or two percent for the empty tax credit the prior years it's somewhat of a it's not a order risk but it's a flag item you're a minute in return for one reason for the hourly tax credit but if you burn the already expenses and you've earned the rd credit you have nothing to hide it's definitely uh worthwhile okay now one one additional follow-up and i think we chatted a bit about it and certainly an area that i that i i'm a bit biased towards which is intellectual property and i think you talked about that as one of the places that it helps to qualify or you can show her you can show that as part of the r d is that right yep it's so true and the irs would have they have a safe tax harvest and they have it for the irony credit and they only have two and one of them is the intellectual property so we can it's not required to have intellectual property but if you're involved with r d activity of the activity is connected to intellectual property it's a safe tax however the irs will lightly review everything because the uh it's so much more difficult to get iep than it is to have ir sorry r d so if we can make that connection um between the r d and the ip it's a really nice secure way to to have the credit and you're building a very easy audit file a lot of advantages all right awesome well that's just another reason to get intellectual property because it makes the audit audit uh trail all the easier if you ever get audited and also to substantiate it so just for everybody listening go get as much hype no i'm just kidding as much as you can but do it do it if it makes sense so so now talking a little bit we've kind of gone through a bit of what the i or what the tax credit is some of the qualifications what you might consider now you know you've done this for a period of time and you've also get full disclosure to the audience you've you've done it for us as well for one of my companies and it was a great experience but you know as you do it you mentioned a little bit we talked a little bit about different companies you helped and that give us an example is you know is it hey this is going to save me a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars or kind of what should they anticipate and is it worthwhile is in their for startup or small businesses time to put in the time because it does take a little bit of time expense you want to make sure to keep the audit trail you want to make sure to substantiate you don't want to just put your uh you know put your finger up in the air and make a guess but you want to actually have it substantiated so give us people a bit of an idea of kind of what or what they might be looking at as far as why it might be worthwhile yeah maybe we just go through a couple of a quick uh case studies so working with a manufacturing group out in california and uh 2020 was actually year number seven so we provided a a really a very very good already tax credit it was federal and state so california has has a strong state credit as well and i believe the credit was about 40 000 it was about 25 federal and west california and it was very humbling engagement where they they were going to use that rd credit as a reason to hire someone so that's really to have to provide the credit not only to save taxes but to justify hiring somebody else you know it's very meaningful to us another case study is with a software company that was year number three and they're a c co-op they had net operating losses so we're able to do the r d credit for 2020 19 and 18 and with special rules the irs has we just reported all three years of r d credit on the 2020 tax return so in that case they did not have to amend you know at all so i think the credit was a little bit higher there they hired about 20 over 20 software engineers and that the credit was i think it was over it was over two hundred thousand dollars oh cool definitely worth uh worth the savings and worth a little bit of effort to do that so now people were to you know they're thinking about it help them understand so full disclosure you know you're also we're setting you up we as people may have caught we're doing what called a strategy on demand sessions where they can you know get a half an hour of you guys time to kind of go talk through see if they qualify and what makes sense but let's say they come and they you know they sit down with you for half an hour kind of chat through what they have going on see if they lines up and makes sense they do that through the strategy on demand or otherwise connect up with you you know as far as i'm a big proponent of you know transparency and cost how much it's going to cost up front all of miller ip law stuff you can go on our website and you can see exactly what our flat fees are what everything costs so if they're to approach you and they say hey you know i assume you guys don't want to do it for free for everybody i'm sure everybody would love it but i assume that you actually guys want to stay in business and make money yourselves so people were to say okay what is this going to cost me and kind of how long does it generally take kind of what are those two criteria well that's great so we really have really two sets of clients one that's not only new to us but they're new to the rd credit so with them we'll uh uh we'll typically uh start off with maybe a uh maybe a 20 fee okay so we're almost like a finder fee we try to come up with maybe a 20 fee of whatever that net benefit is but we try to move like the very next year into a flat fee all right so there's no sticker shock there's no element of surprise at all then we have our other clients that have already they're familiar with the rd credit and they're already familiar with a different kind of different kind of a pricing structure so we'll ask about that if we're able to duplicate that then we'll do that as well okay so it sounds like there's a couple different options if they're already fairly familiar with it you guys will set up at what would be a fair reasonable price for the people who are new to it or otherwise you win usually year one there's a a percentage that you'll take afterwards it'll move to a flat fee is that about right yep and then we also have it's a little bit corny but we always talk about we want to take the journey with them especially for the startups if they're if the money's a little bit tight and the credit they don't utilize the credit in year number one and you have to do a carry forward then we want to have that discussion so we want to have our deliverable want to have our fee but the actual payment we we want to have a lot of flexibility with that if they're going to use it two or three years down the road we'll take that journey with them we don't want to we don't we don't want them to worry about paying us we want it it's more important to get that r d reported as currently as possible and just contribute that way okay perfect makes definitely makes sense and now a lot i think the last question maybe or maybe not i always say your last question i always have more questions but if or one of the last questions and maybe i should start saying one of the last questions that works better um is you know as far as the length of the process are they looking at you know they were new to it they hadn't gone through it before are they looking at a day a week a month a year kind of how long should they anticipate kind of or how many hours or whatever is a fair way to measure it as far as going through the process with you guys wonderful we try to do a four to six four to six weeks so week one and two is exchange of information week three and four some interviews really coming up with like a draft calculation and then week five and six we want to review our calculation convert it from a draft to a final have a a report so we like to say we want to we want to just visit them we don't want to really move in with them so we want to have a start date and an end date so they can actually check the box hey mike and eric did a great job the rd credit's all done and then we want them to move along with their lives with their operation and everything else here so that's how we try to do it four to six weeks all right definitely makes sense and yeah i know it's my i'm guessing that is as much as people don't typically although i hope i'm the exception don't want to go see a lawyer typically my experience is they don't like accounts of tax people any better because they're wanting to focus on things and the thing that's exciting for them so i think that that's definitely a reasonable time frame and uh when we went through it with one-on-one business with you guys it was a fairly non-invasive it wasn't an overly burdensome and it was a fairly quick and easy process and so definitely would recommend it well as we wrap up you know and i always ask one question at the end of each expert episode and we're kind of reaching that now which is if you know with the r d tax credit if they if you could if you're talking to someone that's in a startup or small business and they only could take one step to get closer to getting going aside from talking to you guys which i'm sure would be the first step but if they're to start saying hey i just want to take a look at this i want to understand and i want to get going what would be the one piece of advice or one action item that you give them to start getting things kicked off that there's a 10 payback based on their r d expenses so they think their last step is you know running the payroll hiring employee coming out with the product we want to create the other last step which is let's take a look at your expenses maybe maybe beyond just having an expense on it on your profit and loss we can convert that into an already tax credit let's let's start the planning if we use it for the payroll tax credit that would be great or else against income taxes so so we do a lot of planning phone calls exchange information so and i would also want to say that we use technology we do a lot of zoom or in teleconference we record a lot of our discussions and our interviews every single thing we do is to save time for the client awesome well i definitely i i'm sure they definitely appreciate that as as like as as everybody always has more things to do than time to do it so that that's awesome so well as we wrap up definitely one option that people if they want to reach out they can go through the strategy on demand they can sign up there they want to reach out to you directly or otherwise find out more about you guys or anything of that nature what's the best way to find out more reach out to you guys or otherwise getting get involved yep they get uh contact eric yeah probably either uh usually linkedin linkedin's always good um pretty active on there and then our website as well at algorithmtaxgroup.com yeah all right well i definitely encourage people to either check you guys out on linkedin make those connections go to algorithmtaxgroup.com or use strategy on demand any which will make sure to help you get those tax credits well thank you guys for both coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and i don't most people don't usually say that when you talk about taxes because it's usually our but i've been enjoying having you guys on i appreciate all the expertise you guys have shared definitely um an area where i think people can have some savings and benefit their business now for all of you that are listeners if you have either expertise you'd like to share or a journey you'd like to share on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things if you're a listener one um if uh if you uh our listener make sure to click on uh subscribe on your podcast player so you get notifications as all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about the podcast last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else reach out to us at miller ip law by going to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help thank you again both of you and uh wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last you

Do It For The Right Reasons

Brian Winch
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/26/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

well make sure you're you're getting into the business for the right reasons i would say don't chase the dollar signs don't get involved in an opportunity solely because you believe that you're gonna make a fortune uh if you really don't enjoy doing what you're doing it's pretty easy to give up when you run into some roadblocks [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 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 brian winch and to give you just a bit of a background so brian in 1981 was a 21 and was working a full-time job as a shipping receiver real i didn't want to do that forever did a bit of self-reflection um also at that point he was reflecting on his dad that had passed away that was a janitor and did a lot of side hustles one of the side hustles these did was uh cleaning up some litter um by buildings always kind of stuck in his head and wondering kind of thought would there be a business there started to dive into that build a business around it stuck with it and i think for 40 years and you'll have to correct me if i'm wrong and it seems like that's what i have but that's a long time so that's awesome and uh scaled up the business and uh did it with uh or built an army of people has built it into a full business and going from there so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast brian it's great to be here devon thanks for having me absolutely so i gave kind of that brief introduction and i kind of walked through but take us back a little bit to graduating from high school doing your shipping receiver job and how your journey got started there well you know you're right it it has been 40 years since 1981 and uh time flies when you're having fun i guess but you know back then you know one of the first part-time jobs i got while i was in high school was working at this large sporting goods company and and i actually i worked the sales floor and selling sporting equipment and when i graduated high school um i started working there again on a full-time basis and uh but they moved me into the shipping receiving department and uh i did that for a while and i didn't mind the job but i couldn't see myself doing that for the rest of my life and you know seeing as i didn't have a college education i realized my opportunities for advancement in the company weren't that great so i started looking at you know what could i do for myself and um you know i always wanted to kind of you know work for myself at some point i i remember when i was five or six years old uh instead of just the lemonade stand like a lot of kids tended to have uh i instead grabbed some of my younger brother's toys and cleaned them up and put them on a card table in front of the house and started to sell them and they were too happy with me but uh i you know i made a few uh bucks there and my parents i think were kind of impressed you know with me showing the initiative at such a young age so uh so yeah i i was looking at different opportunities i i barely graduated high school i didn't have a lot of money in the bank and not a lot of skills other than what i had kind of learned from working in the retail business for a while and uh i had that memory of my my father who had recently passed away back then um always doing something on the side to supplement the family income and and yes he you know he did clean up litter from uh the outdoors or the outside of a commercial property a small strip plaza in the neighborhood and he'd taken me along with him a couple times and all we did was just walk around the property the the sidewalks the parking lot the surrounding landscape and sweep up any litter material into our litter collection tools and in just a matter of minutes of the time it took to walk the property we were done and you know he went to work and i went to school and and so i thought you know what let me see if there is a market for this business you know a full-time i could turn this into a full-time business and that's how it all got started and i you know i i at first it was just something on the side and and it was learning from the school of hard knocks i had to learn all the things you need to do to start a business and to market the business and how to deal with customers provide customer service and once they got comfortable um you know i i was doing very well as a one-man operation but uh decided to scale it up to uh you know where we hired people and but one question now let me just dive into this one question before you scale it so you you know i get you you have the idea and said okay you know i can't see and i think a lot of people have been in there where hey i don't mind my job it's not a bad job it's not one where i can see myself doing it in 40 years or those type of things or i can't see it being a long time job and so you start to say now what can i do and alternatively you're different so you know i definitely commend you know that and not only to say hey i don't want to do this job but actually taking the steps to do that now as you say okay you know first of all figuring out he didn't want to do that and then figure out hey here's one thing that my dad did that i think was a good idea that to see if there may be a business there how did you go from that to actually building the business meaning did you walk around to the strip malls and ask them if they wanted to be your clientele did you send out in those days you know the little postcards in the mail and say hey here's my business or kind of how did you start go from that being an idea to actually building or starting to build a business around that okay you know no that's that's great um so i recognized when i got started that my clients or my prospects were property management companies and not the individual businesses or stores that make up every commercial property so and and my dad i remember him talking to his client a few times and and i remember seeing the business card and it was a property management company so you know i that much i knew and then i i got from my from my dad so so what i started to do with the test to market was just uh you know the internet of the day was the big fat yellow pages telephone directory and and i started thumbing through real estate management or property management or you know property development companies and just started making cold calls and and refining my elevator pitch and uh i guess five or six calls in um um the prospect indicated to me that oh this was a very opportune time for me to be actually phoning it because they were just having this discussion in the office that they weren't happy with the the contractor they were using to clean the clean up their uh their property and would i be interested and so i went out and i took a look at the properties and and developed what i thought was a fair price and got back to them and they accepted my proposals and it all started with those first three uh uh properties so now you know so you go and you do that you use yellow pages and just out of pure curiosity how you know what was the success rate of starting to look things up and go to them from the yellow pages whether it's giving a call or go visit their property was it a pretty high batting rate or did you have to go to a lot of properties to find a few clients or kind of how did that work out well i mean every city i mean this is a niche service so every city only has so many property management companies it's it's not like you know you're selling pizzas and you've got a huge everyone that lives in that you know vicinity of your your store or whatever so uh but the great thing about your prospects other than the fact that you know who they are is they all manage a multitude number of properties no nobody gets into that business to manage one property uh you know they have a whole portfolio could be three seven 12 you know 20 27 properties so you know once you get your foot in the door with one and they try you out and they like your service at you know at you know one or two properties they try out you know chances are really good uh if they like you and you you know you're you provide great customer service that they're going to send more work your way so you really only need a handful of clients depending on how large you want to get your business so so basically i was kind of taking this low and slow and learning the business as i was going along and gradually adding more and more buildings and clients to my portfolio to the point where i i couldn't handle any more just by myself and so i had to make the decision am i going to start turning down business or am i going to uh you know get people to work for me and and then you know continue to grow and and we did that and as i gained more comfort in in managing the business and operating it that way we kept adding more and more people and so we scaled this business from a side hustle to one that uh initially brought me you know uh you know about a hundred thousand dollars a year just as a simple one-man operation uh and to one that now where we're billing out um sometimes up to 700 just over 700 000 a year and that's only litter cleaning we we don't do any other cleaning janitorial landscaping snow removal any other services other than just what we we specialize in now let me dive into just one other thing that i think is interesting i had a question on which is you know it's looking back it always sounds easy oh yeah we we built it into a huge company and we you know we had them we had to hire people on and everything else you know at the beginning it's a lot of times it takes a lot more time and effort and everything else that we often times people don't realize so as you're saying hey you know first you know give us a bit of time period of how long did it take how long was it a side hustle how long did you get it to grow to where it was enough to replace your income you moved over there full time how long is it was until you brought on employees and kind of how long how was that progression how long to take place okay well when i started this out um i was working you know my job still and i i had the opportunity i think that's a great way to start any business is on the side or as a side hustle um so you still have your full-time job to pay the bills if you will and so um i i did that for only about three or three or four months uh and as as on the side part-time but i was making more money working part-time for myself than i was full-time as as a shipper receiver so you know i did the math and i thought well you know what this is crazy uh there's only so many hours in the day so i left my job and devoted my time full time to to my business and continued to grow it so that um i was working full-time and i was content doing that actually because the whole reason i went into business was not to create some huge massive huge empire but it was to be independent and be able to do something i enjoyed doing and working for myself but as i mentioned earlier um you know i got to that point where um i i i i either had to grow or start turning down business and i and i just didn't want to turn down business so then we brought people in you know maybe uh one or two people to work part-time or full-time and you know over the over the years we continue to grow and we kept adding more people to working for us whether it be part-time full-time and you know the business has always been growing at a pace that we are comfortable with um and um and it was a learning curve along the way as well i mean i had to learn how to market it and you know a good elevator pitch when you when you get on the phone you don't want to waste your prospects time you want to sell the benefit of your service or in our case how we can give our our clients a cleaner litter-free property for less money and and we start the conversation you know we'd like to send you some more information and and show you and let you know how we can do that and so it's not a matter of where i i even expected uh when i first started out that i would get on the phone and bang make a sale and and uh but i had no sales skills and i'd like to tell people a lot a lot of times people say well i can't sell anything but if you look at your past life experience you've you you know when you have to be a salesman you definitely can be i mean when you were a kid and you you wanted to raise your allowance you went to your parents you would sell them on the fact that you know why you needed that raise and allowance and when you got older when you were dating you had to sell yourself when you were in your first job interview you had to be presentable and you learned different tactics or skills to make yourself an attractive candidate and you again you had to sell yourself so and i think on that note you know oftentimes we make excuses as to why we can sell ourselves right in the sense it will say oh i'm not a natural people person or i don't know how to sell or i feel bashful about asking it i think a lot of times the best way to get over that to become a sales person if you think you're not is just to get out and sell it you know go hit the payment hear what they have to say and he you may bomb your first few sales pitches you may absolutely walk away and they may laugh you out of the door but you're gonna figure out what the what makes sense what doesn't make sense what works what doesn't work how to interact with people how to what they're looking for what to charge for it and everything else and a lot of times the best ways is to get out and do it and overcome that fear rather than using it as an excuse to never go out and build anything exactly and that's a good point and i learned two things early on is you know you have to kind of plan your day and you have to kind of you know plan your week and say i'm going to do or make these many calls today and follow up in the next week etc and and just stick with it and just get it out of the way and do it and it really isn't that difficult i mean whether it's my service or or or whatever else if you believe in your product or service it's not difficult to sell it because you're not you know you're not selling really a product if you will if you if this makes any sense to somebody you're selling uh what the benefit is and how your your your your prospect is going to benefit from doing business with you and so it's a win-win situation and and i think if you truly believe in what you know what you're what you're in business for um you know it's not really it's not a hard sell you you want to explain to the world or your prospects you know how you can you know give them a you know a better uh property a better cleaner property or whatever the case is whatever the product or service that you're you're selling no and i think that i like that i think that if you really believe in your product you know if you're a founder co-founder you started a bit if you believe in your product it's really not hard to sell in the sense that you're not really selling people you're just telling how awesome you think your product is you should love your product and you just walk in and say here's what we do and here's why it's great here's why i love it and exciting you know in your case and if i'm making it up you know hey we love to you know don't you love to have a nice clean building where people come in and you can be proud of it and it's not you know not run down doesn't look you know look like trashy but it looks great you know and that's even what i found like on the um lost side one of the things that i do and it's not by any means ground or groundbreaking but i send emails where i record a quick video and just interact with people because a lot of our clients don't come into our office and as simple as that is it's something that so many people don't do just because they're afraid to put themselves out there or sell it and yet you know if you're just willing to to take that little extra mile do that extra little bit of sales and uh and just tell people what you're you know be that human and personable then it makes such a big difference so i like how you approached it well and that that's right 100 and i i just want to point out that i'm an introvert i'm not an extrovert i'm not a person well a lot of people think you know a natural born salesperson and the person just talks and talks i'm not that person at all but when it comes to talking about my service uh i get excited about it or or my you know my product i mean i wrote a book which tells people how to start and operate this business in their city for example and i get excited talking about that and it's not difficult to to you know to explain the benefits of that product or service whether you know if you're an introvert or extrovert it just it comes natural if you really enjoy what you're doing exactly so now it's now kind of taking us to the future you know or to the present sorry so you know you do this and you do it for i think it was around 40 years and you grow the business you bring people on you know you do all these different things now where you know are you still doing it today did you sell it off did you wrap it down did you retire did you shift to something else kind of where did you know as you built this business or 40 years sounds like it's successful like it grew you brought people on kind of where did you where did that lead you to today okay well i'm still doing it because i still enjoy doing the work uh but obviously i you know i i've been doing for such a long time and i have other people working for us i've scaled back the number of hours that i do uh the actual cleaning but you know i realized that this was a great opportunity for a lot of people out there across the country that that you know where maybe we're in my shoes uh you know when i was 21 years of age you know and uh they'd be you know looking at this opportunity uh maybe you know this is an offline opportunity you still have to have some online skills somebody in term in terms of marketing etc but it it really is a simple business and uh if people are looking for an opportunity like that i thought you know what why not write a book um i looked at franchising it this is too simple to franchise in my opinion people are not going to want to pay ongoing royalty fees franchise fees so i wrote a book very similar to a franchise operations manual it comes with my free support and uh i i basically you know take you by the hand and show you look at it this is how this business uh operates and and this is what you should do and and uh if if you need free support it's my way of um you know giving back to an opportunity that's provided so well for myself and i really enjoy helping people get started and growing the business what and you know everyone's motivation is different some people just like to do it on the side make a few uh extra thousand dollars a month some people eventually want to work for themselves they want to leave the corporate world or or leave their shipping receiving uh job if like similar to me and do this full-time and feel good about the service they're providing in their community no and i like how you know right you say oh this is i can find a lot of people say let's franchise on that but you're saying hey this is simple people could do it rather than exciting a large franchise fee which they're going to come to regret or it's going to create an adversarial relationship let's give away the information so to speak for free or for a book you know not completely free but give them the the tools and ability to go do it themselves because hey there's plenty of opportunities there's a large market for it definitely i think it makes sense and i think it's a great way for people that are looking to make that transition to utilize it so that kind of now shifts to i think a good transition to you know to the last two questions that we have because where we're now kind of the present as to um shift to the questions i ask at these end of each podcast so we'll jump to those now which are the first question i always ask is so along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it well about four years in um my clients you know were so happy with the service i was doing you know cleaning their parking lots i i guess now looking back it was pretty natural for them to come to me and say well what other services do you provide and and rather than stopping there they would go on and start telling me this is what i'd like you to do for me i have a little piece of grass on the side of the building can you cut that for me oh and i have a little sidewalk in front of the building it's not much can you clear the snow for me and we were afraid to say no and you know there there's a lot of conventional wisdom out there that dictates or tells people that you know yeah the customer's always right you always have to give them what they need etc and so we did that for oh uh you know maybe a half dozen years and we hated it we absolutely did not enjoy doing any of that work and so we made the conscious decision of getting out of that and to our surprise we only lost maybe one or two clients the rest of us had no problem they said well you know we can find somebody else to do that and but we definitely want to keep you guys on uh you know to maintain uh our properties litter-free because we realize that's what you do best and and uh that's great not an issue and so we we learned you know to set boundaries and it's all right to say no sometimes to your your prospects or your customers and and just say no this is what we do and we specialize in it and we guarantee you we will do it better than anybody else no and i think that's a good point because you know there and i always call i call the contractor's dilemma but i get i have the exact same thing in ip law i get anytime you get in the service industry because the rea and why i call it contractors you always have you know if you ever built a home or done any construction they're always taking on more work than they can realistically do and they're always running behind schedule they're always having delays but it's the idea of oh i don't want to if what ends up work slows down and they've been through those beasts and famines and when you hit the famines you're always saying well i don't want to go through a famine again so i'm always going to take on more work that i can reasonably do and that includes taking on work you don't necessarily want to do because you don't want to go through those famines and so then you can start to get into things where just to your point i don't love this or i'm so i'm always behind or i'm delayed or i'm not doing any number of things because you're taking on jobs that you don't want to do or that you don't you're passionate about and i think to your point it's much better to hey we've got a good business we've focused in let's niche down do our a great job there and expand the business there as opposed to taking on the jobs or you're saying hey i just hate this or i don't like it this isn't where we do our best so i love that it's both the mistakes we make because i think it happens all the time especially in service industries but it's a great thing to learn from yeah so now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're starting if you're talking to someone that's just starting out in a startup or small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them well make sure you're you're getting into the business for the right reasons i would say don't chase the dollar signs don't get involved in an opportunity solely because you believe that you're gonna make a fortune uh if you really don't enjoy doing what you're doing it's pretty easy to give up when you run into some roadblocks and you know you can make excuses well you know what i i you know it's not worth it um you know and you make excuses and try to justify you know giving up on an opportunity if if if you really don't enjoy doing what you're doing and like for in my case i started out and i enjoyed working outdoors i enjoyed you know a different routine kind of every day i i enjoyed um you know feeling good seeing the results of my work and you know leaving the you know the the neighborhood of community a cleaner uh more litter-free environment um and so i i when i would run into the roadblocks and inevitably when you're running a business you're always you're gonna have good days and bad days but it gives you the power to struggle through and find solutions and you know what i i'm not saying to people that you know you have to find the solutions yourself and just work for yourself and you learn to delegate you know at some point you can bring in a mentor or you know you you reach out to a law firm and you have the law firm you know take care of the legal aspects of your business and you know we reach out to an accounting firm or a bookkeeper and etc etc and you you you develop over the number of years you know a stable of people that you can call upon for that specialized type of assistance and so so you're always growing so that's the great thing about starting i think a business in my case as a side hustle you develop those skills uh and and at some point you know if you just keep the business as a side hustle and you're you're always working your full-time job um you're gonna be a better employee too i think from having a side hustle no i like all that and i think you know the biggest thing that you hit on i think we always tend to make excuses and i think i've mentioned it or chad down the podcast a bit before but you know we always have there's always something in our life that we can give it an excuse for not getting started or not trying and it can be oh you know i just uh graduated from school i gotta get it i gotta get a degree or if i got a degree well i gotta get some experience with the big business first before i can do it and then once you do it he's like well i started to have a family i had like a wife or a kid or anything else and now i can't you know it's not i can't uh put my data at risk and so then you wait a little bit longer and then you get farther and you're like well i've been working for the business so long now you know i don't want to lose my pension or i don't want to lose my retirement or anything else and then i don't want to you know take that risk and then you get old enough but when you could do it you say okay now i'm too old i don't you know i don't know if i have the and you always can make excuses whatever they are for reasons why you shouldn't get started why does that make sense why the timing isn't right and if you're forever making those excuses and you're never going to get to it and you're going to look back and maybe you know maybe it was a horrible business and horrible identity wouldn't have it wouldn't have worked out but if you never tried you won't have that you know you'll never know and you'll always look back and regret it and a lot of times even if you fail the first time you can pivot you can adjust you can learn and do better from it exactly and you know you're going to have failures i mean i've been in business for 40 years but that doesn't mean i haven't failed and so you have to have the the positive outlook on things that you know failures are basically just learning experiences or their lessons and you learn what didn't work and you try not to make the same mistake uh you know uh twice no i i completely agree with that so now as we as we wrap up if people want to they want to find out you know you have your book out you you had your business you're still running the business if they want to be a customer or their client their property management that wants to use your services they want to be they want to start their own business they want to be an employee of yours they want to be an investor they want to buy your book they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you find out more well you know if you want to learn more about the book and you know clean lots america's simplest business i suggest you go to my website uh cleanlocks.com and there is a brief video on the homepage about three minutes long that shows me actually cleaning a property and how simple it really is i like to tell people it's almost as easy as going for a walk you know if you use the right equipment and that's the key and uh there's also a free uh um a report that you can download if you want if you if you're not sure about the opportunity and you know it kind of guides you into you know finding the right opportunity for for your yourself because everyone's different everyone has their wants and needs but uh yeah cleanlots.com is is the best place to check me out all right well i definitely encourage i think it's a cool business and i think it's one where a lot of people it's one that's to your point's a simple idea but a lot of people that could do it they would enjoy it it'll give them an opportunity to do something different and would be rewarding and whether it's i could see everything from somebody in high school all the way up to a full-time job to building a multi-employee company i think it's just a cool idea so i definitely encourage people to check it out and find out more 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 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 apply to be on the show two more things as listeners one click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with the patents trademarks anything else feel free to go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help thank you again brian for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin

Be Clear On Your Goals

Jenny Paul
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/25/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

be really clear about what your goals are in the situation so like you know and i and i think we did it well even even even some of the the groups that weren't as copacetic working together that i've worked with over the years that you know sort of half referred to before being clear on what the goals are and what the responsibilities are amongst people really helps [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 we focus on helping startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks 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 uh guest on the podcast jenny paul and jenny grew up in texas went to high school wanted to be a doctor and always kind of was doing theater more kind of on the side there for fun uh went into undergraduate studied pre-med and after a first semester or two found out she didn't liked it so switched over um started taking a few uh theater classes it's extracurricular kind of fun classes ended up by the end to taking in theater and i think graduating with a theater degree or something of that nature moved to new york started acting for five or six years um started doing also started doing content creation kind of did a web series decided the next time that she was doing content creation uh for a web series and whatnot she was going to find a way to market it monetize it and uh allow people to buy things through and that's kind of led to a bit of where she's at today so but that much is a introduction welcome on to the podcast jenny hi wow you did that quick got to give that quick short or short introduction but now it's now we're going to rewind a bit back in time and walk us through a little bit more in detail kind of you know high school wanting to initially be a doctor going to medicine and then how your story went from there yeah i mean that's that's pretty much what happened i i sort of always knew that i wanted to do something that was uh designed to help people um whether it be you know sort of therapy if it were to be psychology or if it would be medicine kind of kind of proper um my dad my dad and my mom are both doctors and my dad was he was the king of the neighborhood he was the internist for you know all half of my teachers and you know most of my community and so you know people really appreciated and respected him for being their caretaker in some regard and and i think that was always attractive to me because i always sort of felt the sort of felt the urge that i that that i wanted to care for other people as sort of you know number one um or at least help you know help them in some way if i could um and so i ended up flipping over to theater because i realized i didn't love the science so much um where my father my mother both really loved the science so of course you know 12 years of science looking down the barrel at that didn't seem so tragic to them um but one question on that just because so i mean since really high school you've been kind of thinking about i want to be a doctor yeah you know the you know i had influence with your parents and whatnot so you know that you know the decision to switch to theater i'm guessing wasn't just a one day woke up and want to be theater so how did you kind of decide or what was the triggering point just saying hey i've been in a semester too this really just isn't as exciting or interesting as i thought it would be what do i want to do or are you already doing theater on the side so that's really where my passion is or kind of how did you make that initial transition i mean i i grew up singing in choirs and solos and things like that and um and being really invested in that and then when i got to high school i switched from uh choir to theater and was doing theater for you know most of my childhood or you know some sort of performing and so it was always a thing that i loved but i also grew up you know dallas um texas isn't necessarily a place where people necessarily decide to go be performers it's not like i grew up in the new york metroplex or in la or whatever so it wasn't so much didn't it didn't seem to me so much as a choice and then when i went to college and i was taking theater on the side while i was doing my pre-made courses the people that went to the school that i went to took it really seriously and i went oh this is a this is actually a choice like you can you can do this so that's sort of how how i fell into it is you know i got really very stressed out by the science and doing super well but realizing i just wasn't loving it and then um and then taking the theater classes and then dropping out of the science classes and then only having the theater classes and so until i i figured i would do that until i figured out what i really wanted to do and then i sort of realized that is what i really wanted to do um so that is sort of how all that happened and then um and then you know moved to new york to be an actor and have been doing that for 13 14 years and also um in the meantime learning how and becoming really good at content producing as well on top of that and so that's so that's how that all happened so now and this now backing up just because that was a good or a good p or space of time so you decide okay first thing is decided you know maybe pre-med and medicine wasn't or what you'd envision or what you wanted to do it wasn't what you're passionate to do so you said okay i'll move over to theater get the degree you graduate and you go to new york now you know i've imagined and maybe you can correct me where i'm wrong in new york there's a lot of people wanting to get into theater and acting and everything else so how did you once you what was your initial experience when you got to new york and you're trying to figure out how to actually get into theater and acting and do and you know chase your dreams how would that experience go i mean i think i came you know when i came to new york there were a lot of people my same age trying to do the same thing whether it was musical theater or straight theater or some tv film which wasn't as prominent when i moved to new york or it was but it wasn't something that a 21 year old could necessarily expect to get into right away without a lot of experience um so you know my experience was you know coming to new york with you know kind of a full community of people that were excited to do plays and figure out how to do little things in the park and you know and so basically i sort of uh sought out anything that seemed interesting to me i wasn't in the unions yet so anything was sort of possible and did a lot of little you know little developmental plays and met playwrights and um you know screenwriters and designers and directors and producers and anybody that i sort of clicked with found a way to do projects with and and so i think that that's sort of the the initial experience of coming to new york and i imagine it's still the same for people right out of school where they find those little groups of people where they're making craft together that have you know similar voices in the art um and then you know what i found is as time goes on people kind of left the business or a couple people you know people that are really uh you know some people made it some people didn't make it some people decided to do other things some people uh decided that the business was just not for them so you know now i'm now the the community of people is much smaller but it's also you know um it's still you know the same people the people from that i met at the beginning that i had really good relationships with and artistic work with are some of the same people i'm still working with now no definitely makes sense so so you do that and you did it was for five or six years um i mean i guess yeah i mean over the over the the course i would say i was those first few years i was kind of kicking around maybe three or four years before i got an agent and started really getting you know kind of elevated work i also had a full-time job excuse me that wasn't this so um so finding time to you know make money and do these other things um was uniquely a fun i think but also you know annoying and difficult in a lot of ways because just out of curiosity what did you do for the the full-time job as you're also trying to balance all of your your acting your theater career i was working as a manager for the 2010 census so and i did it for quite a long time so i was in charge of if if you know new york city well enough um roosevelt island in the upper east side um for quite a while and you know pieces of that and i got moved to you know bigger bigger jobs and smaller jobs because the way the census works is it works in uh in projects so we have this you know the first project and then they when they moved to the second one they moved you somewhere else and you know um so i was doing that for quite quite a long time um and then when the 20 2010 census ended probably in i don't know august or september of 2010 i'd been working for it since 2008. um then you know we all got laid off at the same time but i was working for them for for quite a while and managing anywhere from 20 to 80 people at any one time so um you know kind of getting my bearings and you know being an adult in some ways being you know being in charge of people that were far more experienced and older than me um because it's a you know very civic community oriented type of job so there are people from my age all the way up to you know retired and post-retired um um just you know coming to work because they thought it was an interesting thing to do and why not it definitely makes sense so now you do that you know you work on the census and i always like it really is side job is just another full-time job so you usually end up working as many or more hours on the side job but you're doing the theater you're trying to get that up and going as well as you know supporting yourself and doing the the census and that now how did you transition over to doing kind of your content creation doing that was that kind of just an add-on or an additional effort as far as you're doing the theater and acting and trying to get that up and going or is that different opportunity or kind of how did that start to lead you to where you're at today well i think um maybe so we're talking about maybe like 2012-ish possibly i think at that time um web series were starting to be like an inkling of a thing so before then people did not create their own content at least they did in theater and we did plenty of that but not in in tv and film because the networks were you know god in that way and and you were auditioning for them or you weren't and that kind of was it so i think 2000 i want to say 2011-12 is when when the concept of creating your own work started to sort of seep through the seams and what was happening is there were a lot of people that were around my age that were actors who hadn't booked a big network show myself included um who wanted to be seen to do film um because that's sort of where our heads were at i was always sort of my head was all i always wanted to do like sitcoms i was always that was sort of my pie in the sky goal um but you know they there weren't a lot of opportunities to do camera work um in new york especially but if you weren't if you didn't have an agent you weren't even getting auditions for these roles much less um getting you know getting seen for them and so um so i sort of took advantage of that pretty quickly and said well if people are making your own content now and that's the new big thing let's go let's make some content so that we have real to show people to get an agent to get you know to get booked on television shows and things and i teamed up with two other actors and one writer to create a show called that reminds me um that you know featured all of us in ways that we couldn't have you know sort of even imagined before this became a thing so that's yeah that was sort of the beginning of the content creation you know chapter for me i think one of the things you kind of learned if i remember when we chatted a bit before was say you know you got into content creation kind of started to explore that as a avenue to get your name out there get your content out there you know to if you're not necessarily a mainstream or a major actor that everybody knows there's a way to kind of showcase a little bit of your talents and that now you did the content creation i think one of the things you mentioned was you know you didn't necessarily think about how you're going to monetize that initially or how you're actually going to you know have a return on that so how did that kind of transition after you initially got into content creation to where hey i'm actually going to try and make a business out of this or make an income or actually you know start to make or you know have something more than just as a being a hobby i mean i think i think at that point that the goal wasn't monetization the goal was representation so getting an agent getting a manager getting people to see you know i've been doing plays in new york new york for years but none of the people that i grew up with that would have been you know happy to come see me in shows lived in new york i grew up in texas so you know i didn't i wasn't able to you know sort of show off my performance sort of talents to anybody other than the people in the immediate new york new york sphere unless somebody wanted to come up and see a show so that original goal was not money the original goal was you know exposure and then when i continued to make content for myself for other people help other people make their content as as the sort of genre grew and people started realizing that it was a good way to get their representation and to get so i i did get my agent from that show so um so when people started figuring out that it was working you know people started moving into creating their own content and then it sort of became this thing where you could absolutely create your own content maybe you did a kickstarter to get the funding for it that first time whatever you did but there wasn't really a way to keep it rolling if the product itself deserved to have a life rather than the people in the product so you make you know one season of a short sitcom and people are like oh this is really good we're season two and you go well we can't afford that we didn't think of that um so it's that concept of uh realizing that that these projects a lot of them not all of them you know not everything's amazing but a lot of them deserve to have a life that was independent of their creator um and to live the way that network tv lives or the way that you know uh cable tv or now streaming lives and so that was something that sort of was always on my mind as i was doing more and more of this was none of these you know go to web series festivals and the best web series you know whatever one best web series didn't have any money to make another season and didn't have any way of making that money and so that was sort of that's been on my mind for all of the years that i've been doing this is there's got to be a way for people to monetize these things outside of asking their friends for the money so that's that's sort of you know the the genesis of of what ended up becoming adulting with jane is let's let me figure out how to monetize this so that it actually is beneficial to whomever is you know giving lending involved with the money but also you know so that these projects could have a real life no it definitely makes sense so so now that kind of brings you up to where you're doing today so you now got adulting with jane so how did you kind of start to take and incorporate kind of the things you learned the experience you've got on the other ones and kind of all of that to now fold that into something that you could monetize or otherwise be able to at least support so that you can make the next series you can continue on you know and continue to do that without having to go to the friends in this family to kind of support it how did you kind of start to adjust that model or adjust to where you're at today um so i think you know over time if you're creating enough content you sort of develop a uh you know a drawer full of ideas and things and you're hoping that one day this one or that one will have a reason to get you know funded or you're just you know collecting ideas and and one of the ones that i really was in love with was this concept of you know we always go to youtube for how-to videos um but they're not particularly entertaining there's nothing real special about a how-to video it's just sort of a necessity um and google is uniquely suited to do that because they're google so you know if you're saying like how to change a tire and then youtube which is you know easily the most popular place for indie content to live um at least in terms of like longer form more structured not necessarily like tick tock videos this sort of thing so um you go and you watch some really dry dude like show you how to unscrew the you know nuts and then jack the car up and the dude and you're like okay you know and it you do the thing because you have to do the thing but i always thought you know like why not why not kind of why not feel empowered in the adulting rather than the word adult you know the the the original incarnation so the the original word adulting was uh coined by an author i think her name was kelly brown um and she wrote a book she wrote a book about you know 300 things you need to know to be an adult and so she coined that term um and so immediately when adult the word adulting started becoming a thing it was like adulting do not recommend you know adulting sucks adulting one star adulting i need coffee whatever whatever those things are and i was like well for me a lot of this stuff could and should have been interesting and fun because i'm one of those people that's just very learning forward and curious like i i like learning how to do things because it makes me feel like i you know did something right um so you know that i'm kind of like an adult girl scout in a way it's that that the stuff that people kind of think sucks i also think suck sometimes don't let's not play but if i were to learn it in a way that was interesting to me and that didn't feel like you know death and taxes and destruction i would probably enjoy myself versus like how to change a tire where it's like i'm actually stuck in the middle of a highway and i really do want to kill myself and i'm waiting waiting through 15 minutes of youtube because i'm literally on the side of the road and i think that was sort of the impetus for this even before sort of the monetary piece of it was i want to do a show that teaches people how to do these things so that they already know kind of how to do them so that by the time they are on the side of the road if that happens to them they don't feel so utterly scared and hopeless they go oh you know what i kind of know how to do this let me look it up or whatever they're going to do to finish it but not have a panic attack about it because it's not the worst thing in the world it's not you know the you know we're gonna die on the side of the road kind of thing i know a little bit about this i'm a little bit empowered here let me do that let me let me figure this out i'll figure this out um and i think that was sort of the impetus so so taking my two loves of you know sort of helping people and sitcoms i was like okay let's make a sitcom that you know helps people and it maybe puts them in a position by the time they do have you know a major issue that they're not feeling so overwhelmed by it and i think i think i kind of found a uniquely good time to do it when you know this is around the time that marie kondo came out and people were starting to get excited and you know and uh and ready to do things like clean their houses where like that would have been miserable before but now like a lot of people especially women but a lot of people are like oh i'm gonna do this for my house too it's very cool so kind of entering the sort of lifestyle diy at the right time and i was like between that and then the other factor was the money factor i didn't you know back to what we started talking about is is this something that would fit the model that the networks use which is advertising and the answer i you know really quickly was yes but it's too small for people to care so how do we make it big enough for people to actually care a and then b how do we make it interesting in a way that actually actually benefits the small businesses um to kind of weave it in so that it's kind of working for everybody so that's sort of how we did it's a sitcom and how to video and then we are working we're working with a shoppable video technology so basically this is one of the first ever to do this and everything's working now but it's like just barely off the ground but you can actually click around within the video you can literally click it and it pauses the video and then if there's a product you know you like my earrings cool i can click on the earrings and go shop them look at them put them in my cart whatever i'm gonna do come back to the video or in our case we're using the things that are like the tools so like the tire jack and the sewing kit and things that might actually complete the experience of the learn so okay i just learned how to change a tire click here there's the kit for the tire jack that i can chuck in my truck forever hopefully never have to use it one time for any reason but it's there um and so that's sort of how we kind of came to it as we wanted to make it beneficial for the audience and fun for the audience but also beneficial for any potential small businesses that were joining us to work with us on this um so that they're actually getting some you know value and benefit out of it as well um and enticing them to help us make the show so that we can help them advertise their products no definitely that's something you know it sounds like a interesting model to start to to monetize that to be able to you know both you know people see something in the show that they think is looks cool or is nice and that they can actually check it out and start to shop for it sounds like an interesting way to start to solve that hey how do we sustain doing these series and then you know make a job out of this or you know an income out of this as opposed to doing as a hobby so it sounds like a fun path to go down so well now as we start to get towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions i always ask so we'll jump to those now first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it um so i will be judicious about saying what i'm going to say but i will say that i think it's really important to make sure that you know who you're getting in bed with when you're working as a with business partners and and with people so in my world there's a lot of people and and you know you can't necessarily know everybody fully before you go in but um one of the things that i did reasonably early on as i sort of got really excited really fast and was like sure i will you know i will go into business with you know i will do this thing with these people that i don't know as well um and i think i think if i had gone back i would have said like let me let me figure out what i really want here get to know the people that i'm working with make sure we have a good working relationship that we are you know a good fit to work together and all of that before i you know before i kind of jump whole hog in so that's that's the thing i would say is that you know i i wouldn't let my excitement get the better of my judgment in kind of jumping into things as sort of how i would phrase it um because everything worked out okay and you know not too much love lost but also a lot of extra stress and like if we had known from the beginning you know like if we had really thought about whether or not this was a really good idea or or whether or not we were a good you know good fit to work then then maybe it wouldn't you know we would have been able to sort of like navigate it but with much less stress involved no definitely makes sense and you know it's one of those it's interesting how dynamic shift or things shift as you move from what would be friends or having worked together to now you're actually worker you know co-founders are working on the project together and just you know how that is all be adds an extra layer of complexity to where you may have a very good relationship with them outside of work or when your co-workers are when you work together but now when you're actually you know doing a project who invests and what time and what money and everything else it always add that extra lay of complexity that always is one where you have to look as to how to make that beneficial or whether or not it makes sense so definitely understand as we jump now to the second question which is if you did talking to someone who's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them um i think i think that you know if one piece of advice would be to be really clear about what your goals are in the situation so like you know and i and i think we did it well even even even some of the the groups that weren't as copacetic working together that i've worked with over the years that you know sort of half referred to before being clear on what the goals are and what the responsibilities are amongst people um really helps so you know that first series that we were all super really excited to do this and then you know we're rolling and we're rolling and then um and we all realized that the whole point that of this thing was exposure um but we were all getting very disappointed that you know we weren't finding more audience or we weren't finding a way to find money and we were able to take a step back at some point in the middle of all that and say wait whoa whoa that wasn't the goal the goal was to have exposure for the art so if you can look at that and say okay actually we succeeded in quite a lot of the ways that we wanted to succeed and i think that's i think that was really important and i wish we had clarified it for ourselves sooner because we were getting real wrapped up in what was working what wasn't working where we actually did do the thing that we intended to do and we did it quite well um so you know i think that's the big thing is is come in with the understanding and make sure that everybody at least is somewhat on the same page of what the goal is so that you know when you hit it that you haven't done all of it for not and when you're in the midst of all of this whether you're a startup and you're growing and you're going through all the growing pains and all the things you can look back and say hey actually we did really really well here like this was really really excellent and having those positive benchmarks and so you can have you know mini celebrations as you're you know trucking and pushing and huffing and puffing and doing all the things you need to do you can look back and say like no no we're we're doing well and and kind of keeping a little bit of that optimism because when you're knee deep neck deep in a startup whether it's going to last forever or whether it's just to do a show everything feels overwhelming no and i definitely could you know and it's it's always very easy when you get into it that you always have the next thing that needs to be done the next fire needs to put out the next thing you need you to grow or to income or anything else which is all true and the you should focus on that but to remembering the milestones but also to savor those a bit and actually take the time to reflect back and look at it i think is one that's important because otherwise you'll start to forget you know why you got into this and why it's fun and why you actually wanted to do it so to you know reflect back and uh savor those their entire times are definitely i think a good point as well well as a as a reminder to the listeners to the audience we are doing the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so for those of you want to stay tuned for the bonus question definitely invite you to do so otherwise as we wrap up thank you again jenny for coming on it's been fun and pleasure to hear your journey and for all of you that are now listeners if you have your own journey to tell we'd love to have you on just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast couple more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two make sure to leave us a review so new people can find out about us so well last but not least 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 with that now as we transition we i always enjoyed the bonus question where we're going to talk about my one of my favorite topics which is intellectual property and patents and trademarks and whatnot it's also fun to always kind of flip the tables and have somebody else ask me the questions instead of me asking the question so with that i'll turn it over you jenny to ask your top intellectual property question so um i guess you know over my time with film and tv stuff i guess maybe my my biggest question is twofold at what point is it appropriate or is it needed to copyright a script of some sort or a concept and more specific to me do you have to both copyright the script and the final product and what are the benefits and you know disadvantages of doing that in terms of what's actually you know you know we've had i've been through a lot of things in my time where somebody kind of stole an idea but it was like different enough that they could do whatever they want you know so what are what are the best things to do in best practices and and expectations yeah i mean that's certainly a bit of a complex so i'll give you kind of the general answer and there's always you know any attorney's gonna say well it depends and give you all the caveats we'll try and give you a bit of a substantive answer i mean with copyrights which are a bit different than patents and trademarks copyright's a bit more unique in the sense that you do have inherent rights to your creative work as soon as you what they call put it in a tangible medium so if you write it down or if you put or take the picture you do the sculpture you film the movie whatever it is upon doing that in a tangible medium meaning you get it out of your head and you actually write it down so to speak you have inherent rights to the copyright now a lot of times a reason why you're going to register the copyright is a couple fold one is that you're wanting to establish the date so that it's not in question hey at least by this date i created it so nobody can come and say well i did it first and then you're in a battle of well no i created it first no i created it first because yes you know you may have created it first but now you have to prove that if you register the copyright at least by that date you can say i registered it the other reason a lot of times you'll get it registered is let's say you let's say you have really good proof so you're not as worried okay i can really very easily say hey i made this by this date a lot of times when you go to enforce a copyright is the other time you'll register the copyright and that that's usually to do with damages which is hey if i'm going to somebody ripped off my work product somebody ripped off my script or my movie or whatever it was and they're causing me to lose a lot of money or they've otherwise made a lot of money off of it that i should be getting as compensation then in order to go and force that in court you have to register the copyright in order to get a lot of those damages and so you have a lot greater ability to go after damages and get a recoup money if you have it registered so usually one of the reasons is register it early so that you can establish that date the other one is if you're going to go and enforce it you got to make sure to register so those are kind of the two triggering points they're beyond that it's kind of when i a lot of times i look at it the other question you hit on was kind of let's say i have an initial script and then i keep working on it and i have a final script or i wrote the rough draft of the book and then i'm re or polishing the book and i add an extra forward or a preface or something of that nature an index or anything of that well then the what you register in your copyright is what's protected in the copyright so a lot of times you'll either do one of two things if you're not as worried you may just wait until you get the final work so you don't have to spend the copyright to do both of them or if you're saying hey i'm going to go and take the script i'm going to shop it all around i want to you know a lot of people are going to see it i want to make sure it's protected you may do that initial rough draft so you have that on file once you finish it and finalize it you file a separate copyright just to capture that that final work so that's a lot of times a couple of the different approaches you take does that answer your questions that make sense yeah i think so there's always plenty more to learn and always plenty more but that at least is my initial crack at answering your top intellectual property question with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the the podcast appreciate you again jenny for coming on now for if you or any of the listeners have any other questions always feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some additional time with the uh with me to chat and definitely can go through your questions and more in depth but with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and uh wish the next leg of your journey even better than last thank you so much thanks for having me you

Take Every Opportunity

Robert & Michael Silva
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/24/2021

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

take every opportunity like don't even hesitate about it just do it of course you want to like think about it right but like from what i've learned that sometimes like when you hesitate on like when there's like an opportunity in front of you it really slows you down especially a startup which is one of like the main like pros of being a startup is that you can like move at a certain pace right you can quickly change your model you can adapt faster than most businesses so i would say definitely like if you see an opportunity take it either like joining a podcast or just you know spreading like your name out there just 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 that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder 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 and we're always here to help now today we have another couple great guests and so every once in a while we we have a couple guests on at the same time and so those are there's one of those great occasions today so we have a a couple of brothers robert and michael silva's na and uh give you a quick introduction michael was is the ceo ceo of the company um went to the university of texas uh originally he's an undeclared major and then went into graphic design um started in college trying to figure out what he wanted to do his brother was also working at whole foods at the time as an analyst and so um didn't or they'd also kind of during that time his brother was a show or introducing a lot of the co-workers to flan which was a healthy kind of dessert type alternative um so as michael was trying to kind of figure things out what he wanted to do saw an opportunity there so as michael was still as a student and and was working doing that out they got together with the with the robert explored the opportunity robert was on the engineering side and so after a few years decided to kind of dive in go full bore and continue to push this uh or develop this as a business so with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast uh michael and robert hey uh thank you for having us on uh this is pretty exciting uh just talking about sharing us a little bit about our story and you briefly went over it right i'm one of the co-founders michael this is robert another co-founder and then our other co-founder is my brother and yeah just pretty much like you covered most of you touched based on like a lot of like the start of the company so i gave kind of the brief or high level overview but let's go back in time a bit so when you're going to university of texas kind of trying to figure out how where what you were going to do and where you were headed and kind of help us pick us up from there so tell us a little bit about your journey yeah that was back in 2014 when i uh that was my first semester at ut the fall 2014. oh man such a long time ago and uh yeah i know like originally i was going in as for kinesiology didn't get in uh for some reason but uh so i went and declared i went to utm declare and i didn't know i had no idea what i wanted to do it was like between biology and like something within like art which is kind of weird uh and yeah uh and then my brother who at the time was a master's student also like he wasn't sure what we wanted to do and uh that's when he went to like the data field and he became an analyst at whole foods and uh just he over there just started seeing like an opportunity uh because he was giving his co-workers flawing and on my side i was still like going and going through the motions going to school you know it was around my junior year when like things kind of started like coming together i'm like okay i want to do something on my own i don't see myself working under a big company um because i i was on the side i was doing freelance graphic design working with like other startups and small businesses and i was seeing like how all that worked and it seemed more free as like a creative as well like i love creating content and i just love the idea of being able to like be my own boss and like just really do what i wanted to do and it wasn't until last year 2020 uh where finally everything like you know started coming together all the like pieces started fitting in the right places and the flan flam was the product that we saw could like really uh you know we could build something around uh which is kind of weird right like you don't really think flan could like be something but you know uh we're very passionate about it because it's our dad's recipe and it's something we grew up with and we noticed that it wasn't really out there wasn't any good fun the fun that you find at the store uh is really like just pre-made pre-mixed and um or people don't know what it is it was kind of funny because flan is like a global thing you know it's originally from france and it's spread through like all these other countries and so yeah 2020 when we started um so let me dive or rewind just a little bit on that so you guys are so you're doing you know you're in the undergraduate and i think uh one of your brothers was in graduate school and then robert you were working as a um engineer is that right yeah so i mean jesse and i we both graduated last year from the macomb school of business at ut um i started my career as an engineer and jesse is the data i was hoping that's right so now so kind of you got a mixture of you know kind of three brothers that are going in three different directions a bit of whole foods analysts engineer undeclared graphic design and kind of all that so how did you guys as your started out taking different paths are you guys still kind of taking those different paths and this is a side hustle you hope to build into a full-time hustle or if you guys all come on board and are doing it full-time and kind of how did you guys all make those connections of hey we want to dedicate our life to flon so to speak we want to put in an effort and kind of go down this route how did how did those all start to intermix and interlink well um for me um i saw this as an opportunity like i said to create really right this is something that i want to pursue for fully for the future hopefully it turned this can be like a way for me to like uh start my own things and like learn through like this business like from each other that's really what the goal is for me but this is like an actual dream like you know fully dedicated to it i'm doing this time um when we started i was like still working part-time uh also going to school i was doing part-time uh at one of our local grocery stores here at heb also so i was like balancing three things at the same time and uh finally i got to a point where like you know this has like my full attention yes so yeah with me it was it was a little bit different so pretty much my whole career has been in the corporate sector doing design and construction uh in the oil and gas field industry um when i met jess we kind of talked about maybe potentially owning doing our own business you know getting away from the corporate side of things just doing our own thing so really as the years progress we actually decided to apply to school to the business school uh and where we got a degree in technology commercialization where you focus on launching your own startup basically it's an entrepreneurship program so during that program that someone decided all right well what opportunities are available right now you know looking at austin austin's booming right now in the tech industry and it's growing in the cpg industry so why not get into the cpg industry and that's kind of how it all started with us um so we actually so jesse actually started putting dulce together towards the last semester of our graduate program and then eventually launched officially in may of last year and as of now um yeah the goal is to quit corporate and just you know have our own business so now as you guys are kind of going down that route you know quitting corporate is that so all are all three of you guys in as a business to a degree that you can kind of support yourself are you building it to get to that level or kind of as you guys are all diving in or figuring out how which roles you have and who does what where the business is headed kind of how you guys all sorted that out yeah no i was just gonna say uh so at the beginning uh pretty much we were all doing a little bit of everything nothing was really defined i mean we gave each other roles titles but it wasn't necessarily like oh you're only going to do accounting oh you're only going to do you know finance it was more everybody did a little bit of everything as months progressed we kind of started assigning each other roles with things that we will focus on more like for example michael both started focusing more on operations and uh graphic design i started focusing more on the financial side of things and that's kind of how it just it just sort of happened as we progress um as far as sustaining ourselves just with this company for now we're not there yet i mean that's our goal though i mean we've been growing every month since we launched uh revenue-wise growing our customer base i mean it's been going really well so eventually we want to get to that point where this is our job no definitely makes sense so now as you guys have done that and you know you started to build it you're having you know you're growing month over month it's you know figuring out the market figuring out what each of you are doing figuring out how to bring it to the market and all that where do you kind of guys see the next you know six to 12 months headed for you guys um so when we first started this the main goal was to get into the grocery store um and month to month we've added like micro goals so within like the fifth month we made our goal to like get into like uh these boutique grocery stores call royal blue and we got into that and uh and since then it's been like these micro goals right because the main goal is to get into like the our biggest like grocery store here which is heb and um i think that's still our goal but we but things keep pivoting and changing so much within like what we're doing is that we keep hitting new goals for us like greek suddenly it's been like we're getting into like local restaurants as well because we see an opportunity there as well besides the grocery stores and that's how we kind of been going uh we even from like the start uh because we kind of started where the mountain word of mouth like uh telling our friends telling their friends to friends uh that's how we started selling and eventually to become more still we got into the farmers markets uh here in uh here in texas and uh that went really well for us as well and that this just has kind of been you know like to really keep us like on track it's just like having these little goals that lead up to the main goal which is grocery store yeah there are throughout our progress we've been having to pivot a little bit and it's just a learning curve you know this is our first the first company that we've ever launched um and even though we have the educational background for it we you know this is we've never actually done a real company before so it's been a good experience so i mean what started up as a us delivering blondes door-to-door is now basically now you can find us at the stores and at restaurants so yeah well awesome definitely sounds like you know on the one hand as copenhagen's adjusted you're having to you know adjust and pivot a bit and yet on the other hand it sounds like uh continuing to make progress continuing to grow and and move forward so now with that we'll you know as we've kind of brought it up to today and kind of wear things out and looking a bit in the future we'll go ahead and dive to or dive into this a couple questions i always ask each podcast which is the first question is is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it where's business decision we learn from it that's uh that's true because we're not even a year old right and so like as maybe you've seen it's like a lot of like early businesses like a lot of decisions are like ah was that a really good idea maybe oh i think i would say investing in uh like a themed packaging was one of the biggest mistakes uh we kind of like were curious and it had a little uh we're a little ambitious we ordered like a valentine's day themed packaging and then uh texas got frozen over and uh and so that way yeah texas froze over we weren't able to like uh really keep pursuing that uh theme uh because it really slowed everything down so that really kind of garden we just learned that like okay maybe since this is our seller first year we should like slow down on like themed packaging and just really focus on like you know building our brand first and our identity yeah and then that that kind of affected us because uh at the time we were mostly selling at farmers markets and with the texas trees going on all that shut down so basically we couldn't sell any of the valentine's day products that we were hoping to sell so that was unfortunate but we decided hey let's not throw this stuff away let's save it for something else you know so it's not a complete waste but it was a little bit yeah it was like a big like uh learning experience definitely as far as uh i wouldn't say a big mistake but as far as understanding what consumers want in regards to flavors and things like that has been uh has been very interesting as well you know we at the beginning of the year when we first launched we started off with uh tap cake and uh have flan or like choco plant right um over months as months progress we started noticing trends like what people want right they want to be healthier they want to look at local ingredients they want to uh they want to focus on gluten-free items so we shifted a little bit and now all our products are good free so it's been i wouldn't say it was a mistake but it was a good learning curve during that time awesome definitely sounds like uh you know things that things that you can always look back and say hey if i'd only known type thing i would have done something different but it gives you a bit of a learning curve gives you a bit of an education and it helps you to figure out what to do next time and how to move forward on that so that all sounds awesome and great things to learn from so now i'll jump to my second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them um looking at it i would say take every opportunity like don't even hesitate about it just do it of course you want to like think about it right but like from what i've learned that sometimes like when you hesitate on like when there's like an opportunity in front of you it really slows you down especially at startup which is one of like the main like pros of being a startup is that you can like move at a certain pace right you can quickly change your model you can adapt faster than most businesses so i would say definitely like if you see an opportunity take it uh either like joining a podcast or just you know spreading like your name out there just do it yeah i i would also say after that um if you're not sure what you want to build yet or what business you want don't just think of like this difficult challenging thing like like oh i gotta be the next you know instagram or the next facebook or uber yes i mean all those like awesome new companies right but at the same time like you can come up with the simplest thing and become huge at it i mean you don't need you don't need something difficult to to make something work yeah you don't need to reinvent the yeah basically if you if you you have to find that one thing that people need and you know you you can build something out of that and become very successful no and i think that that's definitely all all great advice and definitely some uh things that as people are starting out and uh and getting going on their business so they should take or take to heart so well as we start to wrap up the podcast if people are wanting to reach out to you guys they're wanting to be a customer client whether it's to buy one for themselves or they're a wholesaler retailer 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 connect up and find out more so we do have uh we do have a website occludizafoods.com you can also find us on all social media at uncle booster foods uh best way definitely you know contact us emailing us uh we will reply to like direct messages on social media as well so yeah that's kind of the best place to find us awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect up find out more and support support the flan out there now for thank you guys again for coming on the podcast for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you want to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as listeners one click subscribe in your podcast players so you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review so new people can find out about us as well last but definitely not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else in the business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat thank you again robert thank you again michael for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you uh thank you for having us on and uh this is a really cool thing you're doing and definitely subscribe guys [Music] awesome you

Take Advantage Of Every Introduction

Vance Reavie
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/22/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

along that product market fit you've got to get out there and take advantage of every introduction that you can get and to talk to those potential customers or those potential uh you know they may not they may not actually be a customer this may be someone who knows something about that domain or has tried it before or has seen these things happen before a competitor even but get out there and take advantage of every introduction you can get to have those talks and learn from them [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 ceo and founder of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and train marks if you ever need help with yours just uh reach out to us by going to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast and it's vance and is a revive not quite but close just look great right make it easy that's right so vance started out uh his life with the goal that he wanted to be prime minister didn't quite hasn't made it there yet but that was an initial goal i went to went to school or went to university um got a political science degree and uh and a master's i think in public administration if i'm not wrong worked for the treasury department um was doing everything in print uh caught er and then he kind of found his first love with technology and so from that started his own or his first business as a startup um went to that i think it was with web design and development and it was at the height of the tech boom sold that business off timing was good at the height of the tech boom and then continued to work in the tech consulting and i think it's banking and travel for a period of time did another startup um with a different or with a business partner sold that off after seven years went back to consulting did another startup took a break then went into creating an app which is i think involved into the the junction ia dot ia that you're doing now today so um with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast vance great thank you very much great intro i really appreciate it and excited to be here today absolutely so excited to have you on so i kind of gave a brief you know brief overview of your um of your journey but now take us back and talk back a bit in time to when you originally wanted to be the prime minister and how your journey started from there yeah i mean i you know i've always been fascinated by business and politics and it's one of those things i'm just addicted to what's happening in the political world around us all the time and what's you know where things are going and the trends that are trends that are part of that and um uh you know so i i always saw myself as being that politician and um but as i i guess i guess move towards that career part of your life i started realizing that i enjoyed being on the the back end of things a little bit more and understanding and working in policy areas things that made a difference and um i felt made you know could make a difference very tangible very practical things and that that actually carried over i think that's probably sort of an ethos that drives me because as i got introduced into technology world again that same sort of like well what difference can i make like can i have a practical impactful relatively quick difference on people's lives their work lives in that case um that sort of that sort of followed me along from the from the political arena into the digital technical arena so now and now go and we'll get to the technical reading just a minute but you did you know you went all the way through school you got an undergraduate you got a master's and you went to work for the treasury so you were at least kind of getting into that politics realm and doing that and you did that for a period of time now what was the point where i said okay although i've always wanted to get into politics i want to be prime minister i'm going to switch and be in tech instead was it just kind of happenstance was it hey i saw a good opportunity or kind of how did you make that transition from where you originally were setting off to do with the what you got with your degree to what you're doing as far as business i i think the driver was the project i was on at the time we were looking at you know we were printing just streams and rooms of paper and books and stats and information about government you know progress and policies and spending and budgets and all these sorts of things and there's all this talk of innovation and talk of change and we were certainly innovative for what we were doing at that time but i guess i just had enormous impatience because i could see how the whole digital economy was rolling out at that time and the immediacy of things and i didn't want to spend years in a project to get digital i wanted to go and be digital now i didn't want to you know have endless meetings about how we'd get there i actually wanted to do i wanted to be on it so um i i did some retraining at that point but i realized my my skill sets that i'd learned from being a treasury and certainly in the university was that ability to to um you know really understand things and get a way of getting around things quickly and understanding things quickly and then to organizing those you know those approaches so it landed my it lended i guess to becoming a project manager in that way and with that really quickly i kind of found my fitting that as a project manager i could translate sort of the needs and wants of the client or the you know the end user with what was you know the the people building or creating or the doers of it and i really really enjoyed that space and and that's what i guess triggered me to go you know what i'm i'm gonna be you know i'm gonna love being in the digital world because things happen quick number one uh you can see the results really quick you know quickly but also there's a need for that person that can play that bridge that can talk the technology role but also translate that to the business people that need to use this technology and get ahead with it or find ways to you know improve their processes save some money improve their revenue whatever it is and that that's sort of just how that's how it evolved from that point um no it definitely makes sense so now as you get into that and say okay i want to be the one that's building technology have the impact be able to do that as opposed to kind of waiting for others to do it if they ever do and is if it's if it's anything like the us to be able to get anything done in government takes 20 times longer than what if you do it privately or do it yourself you know private industry so you decided to do that for a period of time you know as you get into technology and start to kind of work that out what was the kind of the first business you got into i think you said it was web design and development and those type of things yeah so i moved to wellington new zealand i've been an exchange student in new zealand when i was a kid at 15 for a year and i loved it and i knew i wanted to go back and so i just saw an opportunity when i got there i had a lot of friends and contacts there and so a business partner and i a friend of mine and i we became business partners um she had already been working in the web industry i had as well and some contracting and we thought you know we want to create a web design and development company to help businesses you know get their products online and and do all that wonderful things that they can do with those e-commerce sites and engagement sites and with government clients and things like that as well um and you know it was just uh she was a she was an expert in the internet and leading figure at that time as well and i came with my project management and business background it was a really good marriage from that point of view and getting a business up and going fast no that definitely makes sense so now you get you know you so you figure that out you kind of say hey i want to be in technology i want to be able to figure it out i want to be kind of part of it and be able to build it you build up the business and do that for a period of time and then what kind of you know and that you see that was kind of up to the point of the the height of the the tech boom or you know before the bubble burst so to speak as you did that you know how did you then deci what made you decide to sell and kind of how did you what did you do after you sold i think you know there was a couple triggers on the time to sell like we were very young you know we were in our 20s yeah that whole thing you think you know everything then and uh you know you know you know there's something you can learn but you you've got a lot of moxie and confidence then and you think you know so uh we realized quite quickly as we were growing um and we grew really fast um we were getting these offers from consulting companies that were trying to move in this area and so we did take advantage of that because you know for both of us at that age we could see our lives were going to go in different directions and and that you know it just was a good opportunity to take us up to that next level you know get money obviously the sale you know gave us both um some money and that would free up options for you in life to do what you want to do next and um that really i guess resonated for both of us so uh we took advantage of that and um you know and also we could see where the technology was going we knew we needed um to have a stronger and bigger back um office function you know more developers and you either have to go out there and get a lot of investment to make those investments and then you know they pay off as you get those new clients or you know you have to bootstrap it the whole way or stay small and i i think at that point we didn't really know how to get big at that time and there's a bit of an art to that right and you don't so we didn't really know how to scale at that time we didn't really know how to get investors in or you know sell part of the company for you know promissory notes or investment whatever it is these days that we is so easy but then it wasn't as clear and as common so we didn't i don't think we knew how to scale and make it big so it just was good timing no it definitely makes sense you know that's so you know when it's always in the timing of hey you've reached to a point a lot of times with a business a lot of times you'll you'll reach to a point where hey we've kind of built this or we're hitting a bit of that the glass ceiling type of thing where we you know we've kind of there's different individuals it's interesting as you kind of look and study businesses and some people are mentor wired or geared towards doing the startup a small business and figuring it out and getting it up and going and doing it but aren't necessarily don't it's not the same skill set as really growing the business into a huge thing and some people can do both some people love both some people are saying hey i just really love the song the small side of the small business and so i'm not going to work or i don't want to get into that having to deal with you know or hundreds or you know tens or hundreds of employees and doing a big business i just like the small kind of figuring out aspects so definitely makes sense and so now as you sold the business as you're saying okay we sold it off and we're transitioning i think you went into consulting for a period of time you know what made you go into consulting as opposed to doing your own business or you know but starting a new business or something of that nature i i the the drive for the consulting side was really wanting to do deep dives in a variety of different sectors and see how they were using innovate you know innovative technologies to transform their businesses so i was really interested in where banking was going because obviously they've been a leader in you know online banking and i wanted to be part of that so i worked at a major bank um traveled the same thing i mean there was so much change happening there um with you know with all of that moving online and that taking over the traditional role of the agents so again i wanted to get my feet wet there and government as well i mean the big spenders in technology and again you know my government background you know it touches everybody's lives and the more that's digitized you know renewing your license online or getting those permits online or whatever it is those sorts of things i wanted to really dig deep and learn the ropes on all of those areas so i had some strong sectoral understandings of what you know what the what the needs what the product is you know how to make a product fit for those markets and so that consulting was really valuable for me and then you know i went on with my a new business partner at that time to um then create a web hosting company and um specialize in in hosting you know high volume transactions and e-commerce sites and high volume engagement sites and things like that that just you know that immediacy and speed was so important all right no it definitely makes sense and so now you do that you know do that consulting gig for a period of time and you know or kind of go down that route now as you kind of transition into doing another startup what made you decide to you know move back away from consulting or otherwise say hey i want to go do another startup or was it hey had a great idea or somebody approached you or you were kind of getting that itch again or kind of how did you decide okay now that i've taken a break so to speak done consulting you know step back from a startup life now i'm going to get back into it and kind of because you did that a few different times right yeah three different times yeah every time i have this little retirement period after or whatever and then the third one i had a fairly significant retirement period after i you know moved to latin america um while i was selling the business while we were selling the business and then spent some time you know living in costa rica and just sort of enjoying a retired life but every time i do this this process i find i get bored really quick i mean i'm always fascinated by what's happening so i just need to be busy i need a project i gotta have something that i gotta get my you know sink my teeth and get going on and um you know so i did some work and you know i built some houses and sold houses you know i thought i got to try that so but of course technology called me and i had some ideas that i had formulated and that led to you know um what junction ais today and i'm fascinated by data because as we all know you know the growth in data and how it affects every every system now and every technology implementation and and how it works and you know that it just seemed to be an area where um i could see a really big difference could be made and it was just interesting i found it fascinating and interesting i mean all the way back in university i remember doing those stats courses where you you're analyzing data and trying to figure out the connection between whatever and this and i i enjoyed it then but i didn't realize that you know 20 years later wow i wish i would have paid a lot more attention and probably done some more advanced courses in that area so i just went in for the practical reasons i thought you know what i'll do some online stuff but i'm just going to get in there myself and get really practical about this and learn about data and um so junction ai really did start uh as an app before that that was a b2b2c app for marketers um that was about you know looking at data and how we can use data to understand everybody's personal preferences you know if i'm at the corner of second street and and third avenue or whatever it is i want to know that the stuff being marketed to me is very specific to what i want to do care about want to see want to engage in i don't want all the rest of the stuff and um we knew that data had the answer for that and you know it was just like an addiction i got going into it and then junction ai happened i didn't go into this with this idea of becoming an ai person i never even thought of it really but um as we looked at this data we just thought there's a wonderful technology tool ai wow machine learning let's start let's start using that and see what we can do hmm no it definitely makes sense so so now as you kind of say okay we've got you know an idea i think you know having more specific marketing or intelligent marketing and kind of based on the individual and maybe where they're located or what their preferences are and kind of taking you know that targeting to the next level in a good way in the sense of rather than just blasting people with a whole bunch of ads that they're not going to care about or that aren't relevant to them or you know that aren't going to have that return to make it a more specific or tailored experience to each individual so you get that going and as you kind of you know figure that out how was it that um you know as far as getting the company up and going having done a couple startups and selling them and doing consulting and doing another startup and that doing this last round has been one where it's been easy and it's been the hockey stick right straight up or has it been kind of back and forth and up and down and figuring it out and pivoting you're kind of how's it going you know um i it's a bit of both because this is the first time i've gone into it with the idea that i would you know bring investors into this company the other ones uh they were bootstrapped and self-funded and approached it that way this one i knew i wanted to move a lot faster i knew that you know looking at the data world and the ai world especially these these are things that take a little bit more effort uh especially with a sas product like we are you do need to invest more up front because all your costs are up front uh and you you know it's it's hard to bootstrap that you have to you have to build that product up before you can start selling any access to it and so this one was a different one it was one where i had to go back to almost school in that sense and learn well how do i go get investors uh how do i make myself into that brand and that company that investors will want to jump in and be part of and at the same time build a product that customers want to buy and you know and engage with so um i did a you know we did a an accelerator called blue startups um in hawaii and i know it's just a horrible place to go do business and learn about business oh terrible who would want to do that everyone felt so sorry for me spending three months in hawaii at an accelerator but you know blue startups is a great experience so i learned a lot about you know what what what do you do when you want to open an investor friendly company and what are the basics that you have to set up even in that because it's different than when you're you're doing it a lifestyle or a bootstrap company and so that that was a big change for me and a big difference too and learning how to bring that money in and then how to spend you know to keep running really super lean because we are but also making those investments count so so now you did that and you know kind of had a mixture of both and that kind of brings us a bit up to where you're at today where do you see kind of the next six to 12 months going for you how does how does that look or where's kind of what's that direction looking like well i mean as you know from your own experience too product market fit is everything and um i've learned a lot about that too so um what we've really seen over the last year especially with the pandemic and the impact but as we started working with marketers in this data we really saw a lot of opportunity on the prediction side and helping marketers get more accessible on demand information and so that actually changed how we we approached our business a little bit too we we realized that there's a lot of value in the data and marketers have more data than just about anybody else in an organization but they don't have the ability to harness it and make you know to use it really quickly so we started um you know we started more on the idea of the personalization side of things and we tested that out but we realized quickly that the underlying infrastructure for really good personalization was well what's your creative saying for you do you know what the audience wants like what's in demand what are their interests what are their behaviors and then does your advertising creative even reflect that to engage them in the first place you're not going to make that e-commerce sale if that image doesn't actually engage your audience so we um we really you know we did a bit of a pivot then and that product market fit we kept working on it and so really over the next 12 you know 16 months we we see our opportunity mostly to be you know growing in that platform sense from the the product management systems out there the advertising platforms out there to you know integrate straight into them of course we do work directly with brands as well but and agencies but integrate into those platforms so that marketers have those on-demand predictions and insights from the ai as they're doing their work within their workflow so they're not having to go to an i.t department and go i need to book a data scientist or an analyst for some work and you know three weeks later they get this person like they need this today um no i think that definitely makes sense so well now that kind of gives us kind of where you where how you got to where you're at and then a little bit of where you're headed it's a good transition to always jump into the last uh or a couple questions always ask the end of the podcast and just as a reminder before we jump into those we're also going to talk uh do the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so for those of you that are interested in hearing that question make sure to stay tuned after the the end after wrap up the normal podcast but as we jump to the normal last couple questions they asked first question always is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it um you know i don't know if there was a worse business decision but there were decisions i made that weren't informed like they should have been or i didn't i didn't you know i guess one of my worst first decisions was um not you know not uh paying for the professional advice and this was you know again when i was in my 20s i didn't know any better um you know a friend of a friend's an accountant or a friend of a friend's a lawyer or whatever it is right and you do the best you can thinking you're saving money and they're giving you good advice but you really can't um you can't replace getting the proper you know professional advice and it may take you interviewing like i interviewed lawyer in this latest one i interviewed a variety of lawyers before i decided which lawyer i wanted to work with and things like that so you have to put the time and effort into getting the right advisors and the right people and the right professionals to give you the right advice because it might cost you a little bit upfront but boy oh boy that's going to save you a lot of trouble headaches and money in the future for the mistakes that you could have made so i didn't know that back in my 20s i know now and i know the difference it makes no and i definitely agree in the sense that you know what too often but it's understandable the startup or small business saying hey i don't have the money or i can figure this out or i can google it or i do it myself for any number of reasons and sometimes occasionally that's true but a lot of times what you end up doing is you either get half or you know half-baked advice or wrong advice or you think you don't do it how you should and then you either end up spending more time figuring that out catching it up correcting the issues and if you'd spend a bit more of that time up front to get the expertise get that information get that knowledge it would save you a lot of time in the long run so exactly your own research don't go in there don't ever go in dumb do your research but yeah do do get those professionals involved all right i definitely agree with you so now let's jump to the second question which is if you're just getting if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh it's along that product market fit you've got to get out there and take advantage of every introduction that you can get and to talk to those potential customers or those potential uh you know they may not they may not actually be a customer they just may be someone who knows something about that domain or has tried it before or has seen these things happen before a competitor even but get out there and take advantage of every introduction you can get to have those talks and learn from them and you're not going out there to push your solution you're not going to show them a demo you're there to hear what their challenges are what they want to do what would affect their job would make their business better whatever it is right you've got to really listen and you and it's not just once you don't just go out there and do those interviews or you know those those meetings and then think you've nailed it go build go start spending money in the tech whatever it is right you have to constantly be out there doing that and um you know for founders you get a lot of different founders as i'm sure you know some are more technical some are more the business development we all have our own skill set but it's really important that all those founders get out there and do those that that customer investigation and that research because it's going to make a big effect and you can't do any you can't do everything they're asking you for but you're going to pick up the cues of where your product roadmap needs to go so that you know you're going to have demand when you when you can afford to deliver that piece of the product or whatever it is yeah spend time you can't replace it no and i think that that you know too often you take your network for granted or you don't you know you have a lot of resources a lot of people you know and a lot of you know people that are a lot of times people are willing to you know provide a bit of feedback or their help or assistance or lend an error or give you that and if you'd only utilize your network and yet too often you're too bashful or shy or think oh i don't want to bother them or it's going to be an intrusion or is going to affect your relationship when most times they're saying yeah should have reached out i'm happy to chat with you for a few minutes or help you out you know you're spot on there i've been blown away by the generosity of my network but then the people they've introduced me to and their networks everybody has been more than happy to have that coffee or have that phone call or that meeting and then often a second and third even though i didn't you know i thought wow i'm really imposing on them but no they've actually been i've been so thankful for the generosity of so many you know business people and communities who have helped me and given that time so get out there and make those connections and listen and learn we'll definitely agree well awesome well as we wrap up before we jump to the bonus question and want to say thanks for coming on the podcast it's been fun and a pleasure now for all of you the listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you want to be a guest on a podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com plan to be on the show two more things one as a listener one if you uh make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players you know when all of our awesome episodes come out to also leave us a review so new people can find out about us as well last but not least if you ever have any if you ever need any help with patents trademarks or anything else with business feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so with that now we get a transition to what i you know one of the points i and i love the whole podcast but it's always kind of fun i always am the one that's asking the questions and you know talking about your journey and now it's kind of gets a opportunity to flip the tables a bit and you know ask a little bit or let your have you asked me a question and or talk a little bit about my area expertise which is going to be on the patent side so with that turn it over to you to ask what is your top intellectual property question yeah i guess for me it's really understanding um how i know uh or one i guess preparing and what do i need to do to to get to that position where i can go talk to someone like yourself or you know an expert in this area what do they need from me to understand whether there is an ip you know uh opportunity with what i'm doing like what what am i what am i potentially patenting or what can i patent and what do i need to have like what documentation or diagrams like what is it i can do at the very beginning or as i'm in this product journey and development journey to start building up that corpus of information so when i do talk to an expert like yourself they can look at this and go yeah you do have opportunity or there's value in this or yeah you can pitch this to your investors as a patentable opportunity so how do i prepare the groundwork that is like a a two or three hour answer but i know i know that's not fair i'll i'll condense it to at least a few thoughts as to how you might first thing is is to you know the more information the better is an attorney usually if you come in prepared and that can be everything from you know a patent is for is for a you know a something that has a utility a functionality it does something so if it's a patent and you're looking at hey i'm creating an invention or a widget or something else do your homework and you know get some of your documentation together what is my invention how does it work what have others done kind of what is you know what am i what is unique about mine what am i trying to solve and i wouldn't do an extensive amount of research but take five or ten minutes and actually just google it online you know and do a google search because it's shocking how many times i'll have people come in my office so there's a client will have a meeting and they'll be like i've got this great invention it's going to change the world and i'm like oh and they explain it to me i'm like you know it seems like i've seen that or it seems like that's probably already been done and we'll spend five minutes and say yep looks like there's already it out there you know and then the conversation really gets is okay if it's already out there are you doing something different are you doing something unique but you need to kind of know what's out there and do a bit of homework but come in prepared same thing with the trademark or brand hey have you done and look and see is anybody else using this brand is a url available because even if you get the brand and then you want the website you may not be able to get it and you do a little bit of homework so most of that is just really as a general do a little bit of homework and then gather as much information as you have and then go and talk with the attorney and they're going to give you some guidance because every situation is different if it's invention that you're needing you know help on they're going to walk you through hey it looks like you're too early on you know i haven't developed it far enough or hey you're being behind the ball let's hear and get caught up or whatever that is and same thing with um you know trademark they're going to say hey it looks like we can help you out and this is what i suggest so as a general rule get us do your bit of homework spend a few minutes so you're not just going in and not having done any homework and then second gather as much of the information is last thing i would do is also kind of you know going into saying hey i've got a business what what kind of intellectual property it's probably going to be a very broad question isn't going to they'll give you a good answer and i've had those conversations and we still help you out but what's the most productive is look and see what is the core of your business are you a product business and hey a patent is really going to be important to you because you want to protect the new whether it's software hardware and you know electronics or anything else but look and say okay this is really the core of our business this is where we want to focus on versus hey are we a brand business and you know brand and really what we do really well is we are great at customer service and we market better and we reach people and we have a better story to tell and yeah our products about the same as what's out there but our brand is awesome or as hey we came up with the world in the next best book and it's going to be the next harry potter tom clancy or whatever it is and we want to make sure we protect that because we're going to write a really great book or we've already written it so kind of whatever it is so takeaway is one do your homework two is to um government coming prepared and then three kind of gives some thought as to what is a core of your business or what do you really want to protect or what's important to you if you go into an attorney with those who you're gonna be above most of the people that walk in their door and it's going to make for the most productive a conversation and also give you kind of the best direction or guidance as to where to go awesome good advice i appreciate it so awesome well with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast if you or any of the listeners ever have any other questions as i've already mentioned before go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help and answer questions and make sure to get it taken care of otherwise thank you again vance for coming on the podcast fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last great thank you very much devin really enjoyed our talk today

Have People Who Challenge You

Justin Ullestad
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/21/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

surround yourself with people who are going to challenge what you're what you're saying in a positive way but also that you can learn from because you know before i even moved to austin i didn't have a wide network of people that i could i could leverage from a connections from a network from from just an intelligence standpoint nor did i have people who would challenge my ideals as and not not a bad way just like hey why do you think this or why do you think this product is important and i think the last you know couple years specifically especially over covid i've tried really hard to bring in just a vast amount of people that i trust in or that have backgrounds that i can learn from and just continually educate myself but also you know can give me feedback [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and uh ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if 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 justin eulestad if i say say the last name right and there's a quick introduction to justin so uh went to high school and his words was kind of a wannabe athlete uh got hurt turned to music went to college uh was a music major and i think did a major in music and in business and he can correct me where that is um and was always interested both kind of on the creative creative side as well as the logic side of the brain after undergraduate went and worked in la for a distribution company for a while uh learned how not to or how not to run a business uh went back after a year or so and got an mba and then went into consulting for a while worked on a couple startups for others also started a business focusing on student athletes and then had to pivot that a bit as covet hit and then he'll tell us a little bit about now how that brings him to where he's at today so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast justin appreciate you having me devon that was a great intro awesome well i gave kind of the 30 second quick run through of a much longer journey but now take us back in time a bit back to kind of high school and getting into athletes and how their athletics and that and then how that how your journey went from there absolutely so so as david said that uh as you said the the stem of my journey sort of started when i was i was one of those you know short kids that wanted to be a professional athlete right i was i put two junior so you know i didn't really get the the run-up uh that i that i you know dreamed of as an athlete i i was in basketball baseball football you know the major sports um got hurt my freshman year and uh you know never really continued on that journey because i just didn't fit and i was always worried about getting hurt again so um turn to music uh as that was you know the other thing that i was really passionate about and sort of you know down head first and that went to allstate went to you know solo ensemble contest and like really you know worked my way through that um you know getting getting further into that space and then went to uh university of iowa and was a music major there um and then with my background as well knowing that like i probably wasn't gonna be a professional musician like that wasn't my end goal um also got a business degree while i was at university of iowa so so the two opposite ends of the spectrum as far as a major you can choose i did so you know i was there for you know four and a half years um and so finished out school university of iowa i loved iowa it was a great time sometimes wish i could go back uh and then as you said i went to i went to los angeles for a year tried uh it's 2011 so you know when you you get a job right out of college you took it at that point and so uh went out to l.a tried it for a year lost money you know not for you know the company wasn't the right fit uh but you know i learned a lot about hold on just one second on that yeah so how did you get a job that you lose money at was it one where you invested in or they didn't pay enough or like cost of living usually at least your job will pay you so that was where i wanted to double check on them yeah i made i made 30 000 in l.a my first year and as anybody who lives in los angeles or who lives on the west coast would know for california like that's not necessarily a livable wage uh and i struggle with that a little bit as far as like okay i'm working here it wasn't a lot of career growth you know i had a savings going out there and i that dwindled away you know you're paying you know almost 2 000 in rent just just by yourself so um you know that was the whole thing so uh but look i enjoyed my time in la as far as like a social standpoint if i could make you know obviously gobs of money like i think i would enjoy you know having some some time in la but uh you know from a your first job standpoint i mean everybody talks about this dream moving out to los angeles and like starting their career and it is a grind and i appreciate those people that like are willing to put in the time and effort to to do that grind in los angeles so no definitely makes sense and so that's what's gonna say so you didn't it wasn't that you lost money in the sense they didn't pay you that it was just the amount that they were paying you as such that you weren't able to support yourself or make a living off of it such that in essence you lost money so yeah i did that for a year and i think you also mentioned a bit when we chatted before the podcast he also kind of learned a bit of what not to do or what how not to run a business or those type of things maybe provide a bit of an insight as to kind of how that went yeah absolutely so one thing i learned off the off the hand is like you're obviously in a business like your customer is the statement your customer is always right but for me it's always trust you're always treating customers right and so there were certain times where i had built relationships with distribute distributors or customers and you know it would be more profitable for the company to do it this way but in my mind in my midwest morals like it was better for my customer relationship and just from a you know standard to do it this way and because the company chose to do it the company beneficial way like we lost customers and we lost deals because of that and so you know learning of hey you know from a accounting or like an fp a standpoint like hey let's do business this way or let's set it up this way as opposed to the way that you know we that company had and so um there was a lot of i mean it's international company so there was a lot of things that didn't necessarily translate the united states as far as culture as far as uh regulations as far as additional like just business acumen uh but i learned a lot and it was a great experience to me of like hey if i as someone who wanted to be an entrepreneur here's how i wouldn't run a business or here's things that i would put in place to uh fill these holes that i'm seeing in this business right now which was you know making you know net revenue you know a million two million a year with their u.s business no definitely makes sense so and you know and it's always interesting one of the you know how how much customer service and how much you know how you interact and treat customers and all that can impact the business it's one where it has a big impact on it but often times you don't necessarily think about it there's one where hey you're more focused on doing the work or you know figuring it out or making you know cost or whatever and yet the biggest thing the often or people often forget about is taking care of the customer so that sounds like it was a great lesson to learn early on in the career so so now as you kind of go as you go through that you know and do that and then you said i think he went back and got an mba after working for about a year or so with the other company so that you'd have a better kind of business background or acumen as far as um is you know as far as if you're to be a participate or run a business or otherwise do that is that about right correct my my business degree in undergrad was in entrepreneurship right so it was a lot of case study and market research and those kind of things and so i i had missed the at least my boy the operational and like the actual function of the company uh or building a company from an operational standpoint and so i wanted to go back to grad school one because i wanted to leave california and that wasn't i was it and this this role so like one option for me was like okay i had an in and a grad school that i had a living situation set up like this makes more sense than not to um and so went to grad school it started to learn about operational efficiencies and setting up a team and how to really launch a business as opposed to launch a product and so spent two and a half years in south florida for atlantic university um i did specialize in entrepreneurship but more from an operational stand-up situational and learned a lot from them worked along with the the athletics department as well as um the the bachelor of arts uh school and you know worked as a ta which was beneficial because i got to work with students i got to help them through their undergraduate journey which ties into the student athlete company later on and also just got you know the the training i needed to you know see the world a little bit differently through more of a operational lens as opposed to a here's a product lens no definitely makes sense so now you go back you get the mba kind of get that additional training and education and whatnot and as you're coming out kind of now you're looking as to what you want to do or what kind of employment and that and kind of where did you transition or land to from there well after grad school that i i was had no shortage of jobs that i applied to uh it just my you know a repercussion of the timing in which i wouldn't got my grad school at least in my opinion i had too much education not enough experience to like fit in the roles that i was looking to dive into and so i ended up just consulting for a myriad of companies on the side as an independent contractor just like i couldn't find the right fit of like hey i want this level job or i think i'm valued here but i didn't want to take an entry level or even some entry levels wouldn't take me because of my education so i had a couple opportunities that i said no to just based on situationals one was a job in new york city that you know was going to be a very similar situation to my l.a situation where it was like right above the cost of living right and and there was some people that there's some people that are willing to take that risk and i based on where i was situationally i didn't want to take that on and i and the company wasn't the the exact fit i was looking for so take its old thing for about a year and a half um and did product launches worked with non-profits worked with you know franchisee owners did a lot a myriad of things um website development social uh digital advertising uh pitch decks you know a wide range of things that have helped me now later on that i it was really really was an invaluable year and a half but at some point in time health insurance is important so i definitely wanted to you know spend the time learning but also finding the next uh step in my career which which led me to austin no and so now so now you get to austin definitely makes sense how you're kind of navigating and i think along the way as you graduated you know got the nba you wouldn't work for a couple different startups prior to kind of starting your own thing is that about right correct so what you know what was the experience with those startups as opposed to when you worked at la and did that business did you love working for other startups was a good experience did you further gain education as to what what not to do and kind of what were those startups so the first thing i worked for was a sports media company here in austin like full full-time workforce as far as a w-2 employee and i was i started in there in one role in in a sales operation standpoint as far as like a pre-sale and like building out pitch decks and building a strategy of how we're going to you know gain revenue through advertising and was able to work my way through the company into new roles new new visibility higher you know higher up as far as responsibility and insight into the business excuse me and you know by the time i left you know my my partner at the office and myself had built out a huge value prop for the company as far as how they did business and what they used to measure business success right so i was able to see you know from you know a role that is you know mid to senior associate all the way to like a senior manager as far as understanding that growth perspective but also understanding like hey once you get to a certain spot uh within a startup world you hit a ceiling because there's there's only so far you can go internally until you you know have to make a big jump and a lot of times in startups like that is people that have been there forever that is people who are founders who have you know a lot of investment in the company and the companies invested a lot in them as opposed to someone like myself who was just you know grinding away you know pounding on doors and working my way through um but it was a wonderful experience that i learned hey there are certain things across the business that you can build here and then you can actually uh scale across and hey this affects not only your department or your function but it affects the bottom line across all the fbnas across your business and you can you can bring impact with just your one uh your one initiative or your your one rollout or your one product release and really bring value that is you served across the company so that was a great experience i you know i'm still very close with a lot of people i work there like we were in the trenches that's the thing about startups right like you're in the trenches you're you're pushing forward it's a grind but like the the winds are are your wins the winds are uh are are a team win it's a it's a much more it's a much more gratifying feeling than you know when i was working in l.a it was like you know you get a win it's more of a corporate win and nobody really has like there's not that celebratory thing there's not like feeling like you accomplished anything it was just like hey we we rode the boat forward a little bit we're still at sea no definitely makes sense and you know it's it's one word you know that ceiling you hit it in different forms unless you're doing your own business your own startup you're always going to hit that ceiling at some point or another in the sense that you know it's going to be one where there's only so many here so only so far up you can go only so much room and then you know then there isn't any more for the room to grow so kind of as you started to you know work for those other startups get that experience and then you know or realize that you had kind of those glass ceilings how did that trend how did you start how did that transition to the doing your own business so the big thing for me is it always been is like self uh growth and personal motivation and like actually getting better every day like that's i have that on a poster on my walls like you know hustle you know stay humble hustle hard right and like making sure that you're you're still growing every day and once i like at my first the first startup here in austin i hit that ceiling it just became more of a monotony and as far as ham do the same task every day we're out of build mode now we're in maintenance mode we never really got a chance to go back and build mode and you know we were we were in we were in that sort of like hold you know hold the course for about a year um and so you know after that amount of time you're just like well if i'm gonna if i'm here if i've been here for a year like what's what's stopping the next year being the same right and so you know i moved on to a different startup in a different a different uh kind of capacity from an m a for you know m a position and then you know the market change so like that got moved around so you know there's been a lot of things that i i as an entrepreneurial mindset in person um i like to have control of my situation whether that's career-wise or personalized and i also like to be in charge of my own destiny and so you know certain things over the past two years have pushed me towards hey i have these ideas i have these goals um you know the the founding teams that i'm on like we we all believe in what we're doing and there's no there's no time now like the president specifically with like the the market change over the past year with copen19 and sort of the the resurgence of consumer buying habits here in the last six months um there's no better time than president to like actually give it a shot and try and really take control you know take the bull by a horn so to speak and really give it a shot as opposed to you know keeping keeping the safe ground i'm gonna say but also um understanding like your your mental happiness and sanity is super important specifically in a very remote based working world right now um and i and i think that's one thing that is definitely the last six months uh run true for me as well as my partners as far as hey it's important for us to achieve our goals or at least try to achieve our goals as opposed to just sitting on them and wishing for them to happen and i think you know for the remote working environment that we're in that is definitely heightened that uh how heightened that uh effort to push forward no that definitely makes sense now circling back just a little bit to when you you know kind of transition or looking to hey i want to take control and you know take the bulls by the horns do my own thing captain my own destiny kind of whatever cliche you want uh but you know he's saying okay i want to do my own thing now as you go out and do that how did you figure out what that was or did you start doing it did you quit your job and just say hey i'm going to go full blasted did you start something out as a side hustle did you get other partners or how did you kind of make the transition and how did you figure out what you wanted to do 100 so with on that on that moment on that note um i found two co-founders and myself started athletes athletes uh two years ago uh two years ago actually this month and it was it was an idea to help high school student athletes have a better recruiting experience and inevitably have a better college experience which enables them to have a better holistic life experience post college because a lot of uh the student athletes today like they're inundated by recruiting information just out the wazoo as well as you know fictitious information presented by recruiters who are paid to entice you to become schools and so you know providing a a service that's performed and and you your interactions with former student athletes and former college athletes like that was that's really the value prop that we we uh push forward and all our advisors are former college athletes and so we started that in 2019 because we saw the writing on the wall of like the recruiting landscape was changing we want to be part of you know the next you know wave of empowering high schoolers right the the the player empowerment movement as they're talking like the professionals like that is also a thing that's we're pushing forward in the high school space and so we started this 2019 we had uh you know big time goals for 2020 uh starting in january february of last year uh with the goal of you know some of us some of the founders going full time on this and then cope it happened and everything stopped and so at that moment we're all like okay we're gonna you know stay in pat keep our day jobs uh because nobody's there's no sports happening for six months twelve months and so we we push forward through that and then you know just recently uh i i have made the decision to move on to this full time so like jumping off that cliff uh so you know taking the entrepreneurial step and then another founders coming on full-time here in the next couple months uh which is really exciting and um but but i would say like the the timing of it was both beneficial but also like tumultuous as far as we wanted to push hard on this you know last year and we really wanted to go for it but you know understanding that timing is everything and i think if we waited another year uh i think would be too late so i actually think the the timing was uh perfect for us to really get our get our house in order move to a digitally only digitally only project product which was a huge thing that we weren't doing we're doing in person advising um and spending you know the six nine months to really re-evaluate um re-launch so to speak and push forward with you know the new vision of our company no and that definitely makes sense and one of the other things you hit on as we chatted a bit before was you know you have the company you launched it a couple years ago and you had to pivot a bit with uh covet as well right in the sense that that landscape change so how did or how did you guys pivot and you know was that beneficial in the sense that sometimes the force pivot is hey it's not what we want it's not as is uh you know lucrative or is is worthwhile for the company but we want to keep alive and keep it moving forward versus others sometimes when you're forced to pivot even though you wouldn't have thought of it it forces you to go in a new direction that can actually be beneficial or better than what you originally are doing so kind of as you did that pivot how what did you do and how did it work out so far i think it's i think it's a bit of bold as far as like the pivot you have to and then actually was beneficial um you know when coveted hit in march we'll say last year i can't believe it's been you know 13 months of this actually but um you know all youth sports stopped i like tournaments canceled nothing happened and so you know the amount of money people your parents were spending on their kids you know diminished entirely right so so the the the stoppage in events led to a stoppage in advising which led to a stoppage really in our business um from a from a new from a new client intake perspective and so as we were a one-on-one advising in-person company here based in central texas and we served dallas austin and houston areas um broadly you know we were we were doing our advice in person we were one-on-one conversations with with kids which we still think is super valuable right but because that one-on-one interaction is is so uh tangible and and you can actually have you know face to face and read emotions and understand you know what what the vibe in a room is as opposed to a digital meeting but with the pivot we've made in the last you know year to a fully digital space we now have the ability to advise to advise and our market nationwide so it completely opens up our our pipeline for additional kids that we can help but it does take away a little bit in that one-on-one advising experience from that in-person standpoint and and with a lot of companies entering the space that are very tech fa tech focused and like heavy on like will give you x and you go do it you know we definitely want to be that personal touch company as far as hey we build a program for you for your student athlete for your parents uh and understanding that vibe but again like being in a digital first environment makes it just a little more tricky so we spent you know the extra time the last you know 12 months figuring out how to move our one-on-one advising into a digital space that is still effective to a rate that work that we think is acceptable no not definitely you know pivoting one sense you have to figure out a new way sometimes you know you figure out better ways and it helps to it and on the other hand you're all saying and i'd also like for life to go back is a bit as normal because we liked our own model and it had a lot of good things to it as well so it sounds like kind of on both fronts and it's beneficial because it increased or expanded the model you guys are at and it also as things hopefully open up you can also incorporate that with what you're previously doing and have kind of both of those models so definitely makes sense so well as we kind of now are brought towards you know the future of the current or where your uh journey is up until today i know um always have two questions kind of the end of the journey that i always like to ask so we'll shift 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 did you learn from it the worst business decision i ever made is i didn't do my homework and when i say homework in this this context i mean i didn't go and ask customers what they wanted i had an idea i asked people that i trusted as far as like friends and like people that would like the product and just put it out there and i think for like a proof of concept that works but in my younger you know more naive days i was just like oh people around me like this why don't we just put it out to the market and it'll be great and not understanding the landscape not understanding you know what the competitive what competitive uh depth was and also not having something that was super differentiated from our competitors and that didn't help right so and this is like 2014 so like the the e-commerce space isn't what it is now and those kind of ideas um but i'll parlay that into the same situation happened where i had an idea and i wrote out a business plan and a case study and all kind of stuff and i didn't do my homework and i should have done it and it would have been in a much better place today if we had done it in 2016 or whatever it was because i actually had an idea that was ahead of the game and now is a very prominent ideal across the sports media industry but because i didn't do my homework we i didn't do anything with it and so you know that on both fronts can is something that i wish i had done better with which is which i've definitely learned from now as far as like with athletes athletes specifically like we talk to student athletes as much as we can i even if they're not even involved with our program we like here's what we do what is the value we talk to former college athletes and say hey would this program be valuable and i can tell you 100 certainty every student athlete we've talked to that has gone through the recruiting process and has gone through college athletics wishes they had something like we have now and so it just it it reiterates the importance front loading our this information and this service to high schoolers to help them better prepare for a college athlete experience which is completely different than a just a regular student college experience no i think that uh definitely is is one to you know as far as doing your homework is one where you know every you always i don't think anybody thinks that you shouldn't do your homework but one is you oh i know the market well enough or oh i know that's well enough or hey this is definitely something i would use and other people would obviously use that and even if that's the case now you have to figure out okay how big is the market now and is there 10 people that use this including myself or is there a million people to be using how much would they pay it for versus how much they would cost and you know the thing is everybody's like well you know you do a business plan and you know you do that kind of thing and it always it always inevitably changes and you pivot you adjust which is always true but you also need to at the onset as you're figuring out what to do and how to approach and how to tackle you need to have i think that structure such that while you're inevitably going to pivot you have enough reason you convince yourself so to speak that there's a reason to there's a market here and there's an all-business opportunity so i definitely think that makes sense both on getting excited and it's easy to make that you know mistake but also one where it's a good one to learn from yeah i did passable homework not a plus homework that's that's right yeah so now we jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you give them the one advice i would have and that i've really tried to do the past two three years is surround yourself with people who are going to challenge what you're what you're saying in a positive way but also that you can learn from because you know before i even moved to austin i didn't have a wide network of people that i could i could leverage from a connections from a network from from just an intelligence standpoint nor did i have people who would challenge my ideals as and not not a bad way just like hey why do you think this um or why do you think this product is important and i think the last you know a couple years specifically especially over covid i've tried really hard to bring in just a vast amount of people that i trust in or that have backgrounds that i can learn from and just continually educate myself but also you can give me feedback and and one thing that i tell young entrepreneurs is like don't be afraid to share your idea there's a very very low risk that anyone's gonna be like that's a good idea i'm gonna go do it now like that's that's not the entrepreneurial space right they they're other entrepreneurs are here to help you and so you know share your idea like don't give them like the schematic but like here's what i'm trying to do what do you think right or here's here's my concept of how this might work in this marketplace you work in this marketplace what do you think right and get feedback on your idea get feedback on your business model get feedback as much as you can from people that you trust and you will be much better suited for student for it because i can look i mean just an example i can look at a word document and read it 30 times and be like cool i'm ready to go and then you get a new set of eyes and there's one thing you missed and getting additional set of eyes on on an idea or concept especially if you're gonna you're gonna tie your horse to it is super important and super valuable no i and i definitely agree with that and i think it makes perfect sense well as we wrap up if people are wanting to reach out to you they're wanting to find out more about your business and they have a student athlete or you know they have a nephew or a niece or they are the athlete or any of the above if they're an athlete they're they want to be a client a customer 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 contact you or find out more 100 so uh the business website is athletes2athletes.com it's t o athletes to athletes.com um my instagram handle is j olestad uh j u l l e s t a d or you can email me directly at justin athletes athletes.com we are currently excited about our growth excited about the future for what we're doing we have in plans for investment and additional staffing and additional resources you know in the next couple of couple years throughout the throughout the next you know 18 to 24 months and we're super excited to help you know additional student athletes whether they be you know uh freshman sophomore junior even even middle school at this point um you know help them through their through their recruiting journey and get them to a school that makes sense uh for them and their needs no i think that's a great way to reach out great way to find out more and definitely appreciate you you're putting it out there well 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 feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one yeah in uh make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out two leave us a review so new people can find out about our awesome episodes as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat thank you again justin for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last appreciate devin thank you so much

How To Set Your Company Up For An Exit

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/20/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

the best way to get the highest valuation for your business and sell your business for maximum value is proprietary the 4p is proprietary this is the number one value driver so this can take you from a 5 multiple to an 8 multiple to 10 multiples to 15 multiple this is all proprietary so why am i saying you should start with this because if you get this wrong then you could practically be out of business [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 focus on helping startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with any of yours give us reach out to us and go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great expert episode and every once a week we have a great expert on shares a lot of different information and to this week is no exception so we have michelle seiler tucker and uh we're she's going to be talking a little bit about uh generally about mnas and or for those of you that own m a's mergers and acquisitions and we'll talk a little bit of that how to be a bit of a sustainable company how to set up for an exit kind of what things you should or think about when you're going to sell different types of buyers how to get top dollar and whatever else that might come up in the meantime so i'm sure we'll have a great our conversation with that welcome on the podcast michelle thank you thanks for having me devin absolutely excited to have you here so before we jump into the topic of expertise maybe just give us kind of the listeners or the audience you know one or two minutes is kind of overview as to why you're an expert and why they should uh why they should trust and listen to you i'm not an expert don't listen to me don't listen to anything i have to say that's how i feel sometimes i'm like i've been doing this for a while but i don't really feel i don't know if you ever feel like you're an expert well you know what i think it's it's all about learning right you know when you think you know it all this is when you'll figure out you don't very quickly but okay so a little bit about me um i've always been in entrepreneurship i've always owned different businesses i did get caught and stuck in working for corporate america for a short period of time xerox actually recruited me um from their competitor so i did work at xerox and within six months my nickname became the closer because every time they can close something like well call michelle she'll close it she closes anything it's kind of like give it to mikey he'll either he eats anything so our nickname became the closer and then right away um a supervisor came to me and she said michelle there's a regional vice president position opening up over 100 salespeople she said you'll probably never get it because you've only been here for six months the xerox policy is you have to be here two years before they promote and pleasure you know there's a bunch of other people interviewing for it and i'm like well why and she goes it's gonna be a three-month grueling process and i said well why would i ever waste three months of my time for something i'm never gonna get and she says because of the experience she said you'll learn so much going through this process than you know anything else and i said okay well i'll do it and she's right it was a three-month grueling process you know we had to meet with all the high-level executives do a q a we had to do a q a with them asking them all these questions about their problems and you know what how to solve their problems and come up with solutions and then do a presentation and demonstrations anyway i ended up getting it even though i was told i would never get it so i guess i truly am the closer and um you know then i realized very quickly i hated it i did all this work and newton finally landed it like the odds and i hate it yeah i hate it and it's funny because i hated it plus all my friends were mad at me because i beat them out of the position but what i didn't like about it is you know i always say i always say that business owners if you got a great sales person if you have the closer on your team don't promote them keep them the closer you know because not everybody's good you know a lot of salespeople aren't really good sales people so you want to be careful about that but anyway the reason i hate it is because corporate america you can't really get anything done you're having meetings to schedule more meetings to have follow-up meetings and you really can't solve a problem so it was just too much red tape for me i like to get things done i like to say okay there's your problem devin here's our solution here's what we're going to do we're going to fix this within 30 to 60 days we've got results you know and so i ended up leaving xerox and went in the franchise house franchise consulting franchise development and was partners you know with a few different franchisors and then i kept finding myself saying no all the time no no no and i'm a yes person so you know i always think for the law of the universe law of attraction you need to be yes yes yes right buyers kept asking me do you have existing businesses i don't want to buy a franchise and i kept saying no no no and all of a sudden i'm like yes no i don't but yes i will i'll figure it out i will get you that i will figure it out and that's how i started my mergers and acquisitions firm out of pure necessity to say yes and that was 20 something years ago a thousand transactions ago we've done over 2 000 transactions we've done thousands of valuations i learned very quickly that what steve forbes says it's true that eight out of ten businesses will not sell eight out of ten eighty percent so i'm like oh my gosh if i don't fix them i'm gonna storm to death so that's when i really started fixing businesses growing businesses putting them on a build to sell plan so that they could sell for their desired price tag because like i said 80 don't sell and you know on average get our clients a 20 40 percent higher selling price close 90 i closed 98 i can't say my agents do but i close 98 of all offers i write and um that's my story so i've written three books and my newest book is exit rich which is right behind me in case you forget the title case you didn't catch it no that's awesome and i think that was a great intro now so now i'm even more excited to talk a little bit about mna and how to set things up and how to do it so maybe just diving right into that and appreciate absolutely the intro you know if you were to say so a lot of the audience is startups and small businesses and so one of the questions that i think is maybe a misconception maybe you'll tell me it's a good conception is are startup small businesses should they be thinking about mergers or acquisitions setting up to sell or is that something that you should think about down the road when you're a big company and you're you know you have lots of employees and huge reoccurring revenue kind of give us an insight as to when you should start thinking about that or how you should start thinking about it so i'm going to tell you you should be you should start thinking about that from the beginning because the number one reason that businesses don't sell when they end up in the 80 percent is because they don't think about selling until a catastrophic event has occurred whether that's internal or external internal being health issues partner dispute divorce death you know external covet so you really you don't want to sell when you're in the middle of chaos because you're not going to be able to maximize value so the best time to really think about selling your business is from the beginning of starting or buying your business and really have formulate what i call the gps exit model and i talk about that in exit rich of how to do that from the beginning because so many business owners like i said don't think about it and i had a sweet little lady called me a few months ago and she said oh i really need you to help me i'm like what happened and she said well my husband dropped that up from a heart attack and left me with a mountain of debt and she's probably in her 70s and she said i need you to sell his business she goes i heard about you and so i started asking her questions about okay well tell me about employees processes etc and he had a contractor's business a construction business he had no employees everything was in his head he had nothing written down so everything all the data was in his head he dies the business dies it was nothing to sell and he left it with a mountain of debt so business owners really got to think about long-term setting your family up for success not for failure and i call this a gps exit model if you want me to walk you through it real quick absolutely let's hear it so number one all right so when you want to drive somewhere devin what do you do you pull out your phone you go to google maps and you plug in your i'll i'll give it one time when i want to drive somewhere i asked my wife where we're going and then i put it in the gps after i asked her where we're going then i then i pull out the phone and i i'll either google it the name of the company or the name of where we're going or if i have the address and i'll i'll put it in google that's the best answer i've ever gotten ask your wife smart man that's so anyway you plug in your wife your wife plugs in her destination she plugs in where she wants to go otherwise as she just relies upon you she's going to be driving around in circles same thing or she'll end up in a completely different destination we might have a great time but we won't get where we're wanting to go so and that's what business owners do they don't plan to fail they fail the plan so they don't have a destination in mind so they're just driving around in circles driving up and down the financial heels the hills to end up nowhere to end up ex exiting poor instead of accident rich and um so first things first you got to figure out your destination your end game and i always tell my clients pick a number and they always get hung up on the number and they're like oh i don't know i'm like just pick a number for god's sakes it's like the lottery pick a number you know so let's say you want to sell for 20 million dollars great there's a start you might hit it you might not you know but at least you have a starting point you have an end game you have a desired sales price then what's the destination need to know the model needs to know not the destination what's that gps exit model need to know now it needs to know where you're starting from what's your location what's your valuation do you know that most business owners never get a business evaluation we go to the doctors once a year to make sure our heart's still ticking and we're still kicking we drive our car to the shop but we don't get an annual business valuation checkup that's financial suicide because there are events that increase valuations and invest decreased valuations so you need to know what your business is worth on an annual basis do you know what your business is worth right now devin um depends on which business so um you need to know what every business is worth not just it depends on which business that is true i do have a pretty good valuation on a few of them but i'll probably keep that one off there but uh yeah i i i don't have to say the number i was just wondering if you actually know what it's worth because most business owners don't know so let's say you want to sell for 20 million dollars and you're currently worth five million dollars the next the next step in the gps exit models know your time frame let's say you want to do this in 10 years great the next step the fourth step is know who your buyers are going to be you notice i say buyers not buyer and the reason buyers is because sellers come to me all the time and say michelle i don't need you to put on the market i have the buyer i just need to represent me and i'm like i'm not going to do that because i can pretty much guarantee you that buyer is never going to come to fruition the deal is going to fall apart somewhere and you put all your eggs in this one buyer's basket you have no backup buyers plus if we're trying to maximize price and get you the highest value how can i do that with one buyer have them compete against themselves you know hey if you can get buyer to bid against themselves you're doing great but no i definitely agree so you didn't accidentally one question i'll have just to dive in and not to derail the five and we'll definitely get back to it one of the questions i've had posed from now kind of figuring out your valuation kind of asked what is evaluation some of the valuations are out quote-unquote easier at least that's what they say if it's a product business or you have a recurring revenue or you can see this is how much inventory we have this is our sales trajectory what i hear a lot of times is on service-based businesses to where a lot of times is built up around an individual right so if you take as an example i'll take the law firm that you know miller ip law is an example but there are a lot of others out there is you have one or more individuals or the quote unquote rain makers that have the connections that have the people they've had long-term relationships with they're good at selling and if that person exits whether it's retired leave the business they die catastrophic whatever then it's hard to evaluate the business because a lot of those relationships you're not sure if they will maintain so any thoughts as you're getting into how to evaluate a business on a service side business it's kind of that setup so remember the story i just told you about the woman who's whose husband died from a heart attack there's no value because his business isn't worth anything at all but i'll jump into value in just a second because i want to finish death no fair enough i'm going to control the narrative not you so anyway there's five types of buyers so your listeners really need to understand there's five types of buyers so if you're trying to sell a 20 million dollar company here's who your buyers are not going to be it's not going to be a a first-time buyer if we get and 90 of buyers are first-time buyers because they buy small businesses it's not gonna be a turnaround specialist because they buy distressed assets so it's probably gonna be a peg which is a private equity group and we work with about 3000 of them so it's probably gonna be a peg but they buy based upon platforms and add-ons or it's going to be a strategic slash competitor now i'm going to get into valuations but i'm going to do it when i take you through the six p's because it will make more sense does that make sense and then i'm going to tie how important it is to have a good trademark attorney and a patent attorney but anyway so strategists and competitors will pay the most for a business typically they'll pay the highest multiple because they're buying synergies so what you really have to do is identify those synergies in the business and that drives value and then you have sophisticated and serial entrepreneur and they are industry agnostic they chase ebitda only for insurance taxes depreciation amortization all right so then you need to know well gosh if i want to sell my business for 20 million dollars i know this all sounds simple but it's harder than you think well i'm going to sell my business for 20 million where's my top line have to be gross profit margin most most importantly where does the earnings they either have to be earning preferential taxes depreciation amortization to sell for 20 million you need to ebitda between 3 million and 5 million depending upon your synergies then you need to know well what's the characteristics what's the synergies what are these buyers looking for that they're willing to pay top dollar for and build your business and meet their specific criteria right you want to do all that from the beginning of starting or buying a business because even if you decide not to sell at least you'll have sustainable businesses scalable and profitable because at some point you will want to sell it because i can guarantee you look it used to be that business was handed down from generation generation generation now the kids don't want your business they don't they want to go out there and create their own legacy they want to create their own masterpiece they want to make their own footprints on the world you know they don't want so less than 10 percent businesses are actually um are actually passed on from generation generation less than 10 of all businesses are through an esop which is what you sell to your employees so it's either a percentage of the selling percentages of the business or selling 100 of the business um the last step is the why you got you got to have a powerful why because it was easy to sell a business for 20 million dollars even though devin you've probably done it 20 times but now it's not easy and most people have a hard time doing it so your why has to be power enough to keep you in the game and keep you motivated so if you want we can jump into six speeds and start talking about evaluation absolutely i'm enjoying the conversation i'm learning a ton so let's dive into the six p's so there's six you know there's there's there's six different methods that we use for valuation and um the asset approach discounted cash flow market approach sold comps um few future what i tell future earnings and most importantly to six p's because it's all about the synergies so meaning number one you said well michelle how do you sell service business how do you evaluate a service business well number one the first fee is people so this construction company didn't have any people he had subcontractors he had all 1099s okay so number one is people you don't build a business you build people and people build the business so entrepreneurs have to stop trying to do everything themselves they get a fi they got to focus on their strengths and how are their weaknesses you need to have the right people in the right seat and ask the who question who opens the door who has marketing who underscore customer service who handles dealing with devon and his legal stuff who who does matt who is transportation logistics environmental the clue devon is you should never be next to the who you have to create a business that can run without you so people is the most important thing so service business it's very tough got a dentist that came into us wants to sell this business been in business 45 years no other dentist has three dental hygienists and i said listen i can sell your business but you're gonna have to stay for two to three years he's like michelle i'm done i've worked 45 years i'm done i said well then you can just say goodbye to your business because it's not sellable when you leave the patient's leave same thing with the chiropractor's business we're selling and um when he came to me he's like michelle i have three doctors he said great no problem then i'd start setting up meetings and find out that employers are not going to stay the doctors are not staying they're leaving when he leaves so now he has zero doctors and he's like why haven't you sold by now i'm like i haven't sold by now because you haven't found more doctors you have to have doctors because he doesn't even live he lives in another state from the practice so service businesses are very very tough if you're a lawyer and you don't have other lawyers if you're a dentist you don't have other dentists if your chiropractor a medical doctor whatever it is you got to have a business and not a glorified job many business owners have built their job that they go to work to every day versus a business actually works for them no i think that's that's definitely and i always i like that and i can't remember where he picked up it's one that's out there a lot you should build a business that you can take a month off from and it would still continue on in other words it's not built so much around you that you take a month off and it falls apart and it kind of sounds like that's what you're here or mentioning as well is if you're wanting to sell the service based business you have to have those people that are able to run the business when you're not there able to continue on such that when you sell the business it can continue on without you being there is that a fair summary absolutely and they have to you have to have those professionals so if you're a lawyer devin i hope you have other attorneys i do so i've at least take that box if you're a plumber you need other plumbers you got to have that professional that mean to put you and plumber in the same sentence you got to make sure you have those professionals if you're in a professional type service business because otherwise it is i can sell it because i can you know i can do sometimes impossible but it's never will sell without that owner sticking around for a few years look i got another business that is a fabricator company they do fabrication and the owners told me they've been in business 40 years two partners they're in their 70s and they said honey we can fabricate anything anything you want we can fabricate i said okay where's the pp manual for that and they go what it's all in our head and they have four employees we've been trying to sell that business for a year and the problem is we could have sold it over and over and over again if the business wasn't so tied to the owners so people is number one you will never grow a business without people okay number two is product kevin so when i wrote my first book and i think this is very interesting when i wrote my first book sell your business from one it's fourth in 2013 and did the research and learned that i learned that 95 of all startups will go out of business the first one to five years is the most risky right we all know that that's common knowledge but when i wrote exit rich in 2019-2020 i did the exact same research and learned that the business landscape has flip-flopped before co-vet and most people don't know this only 30 percent of businesses will go out of business now only 30 percent of startups i'm sorry startups will go out of business now so your startups this is a great time for you to go out there and start these businesses however out of 27.6 million companies those businesses have been in business for 10 years or longer 70 of them will go out of business 7-0 so you see how it flip-flops it used to be you've been in business 10 years or longer you're goad and you're going to stay in business forever so now you you beg the question you probably leaned up why is the flip-flop because i'm curious because i always hear the ones you know startups for one to five years is the most risky most of them go out of business so what do you see what is the motivation or what caused that flip flop so here's a reason so you hear about the big the big public companies all the time in the media toys r us in business 75 years goes out of business kmart stein mark pierre one cadaver chocolate closing down 1500 locations gnc closing down 900 locations but you're not hearing about other private companies and these business owners are being forced to sell for opinions on a dollar close their business or file bankruptcy so why is that that why is that that's a bit that's a great question the number one reason for that is what i call aim business owners stop doing aim aim aim is always innovate and market always innovate and market business owners stop innovating toys arrested nothing different in 75 years blockbuster saw netflix all the writing on the wall did nothing set back fat and happy they had the opportunity to buy blockbuster they did nothing ended up out of business you have to innovate because consumers buying habits has changed the way millennials buy is not the way that gen x buys your next buy the way they buy is not the way that baby boomers buy you know millennials care more about the experience than anything else right so whoever makes the easiest for the consumer to purchase products and services is the company that's winning amazon is winning right now because they make it so easy to purchase their products and have it delivered to your house within two days i mean you can practically buy a horse on amazon and have a delivered i would be surprised if you could buy a horse my daughter's trying to have a 10 year old and she's trying so that's so that's why so that brings me to product product is your industry your service you know you have to ask yourself is your industry or product on the way up on the way out is that thriving or dying do you have an amazon and you're at the top of your game or do you have a blockbuster and you're about to go bust and many industries by the way the statistics are way before covet but many industries that were thriving before cobit are now dying and vice versa so if you're in a dying industry that doesn't mean you just go home and you know crawl under your bed and grow up into a fetal position that means that you gotta get creative and align yourself with an expert with a mentor and ask yourself really three transformational questions you know amazon did this back in the 90s amazon asks themselves what business are we in and every business owner should be doing this what business what business are we in and amazon said we're in a book selling business we sell books question number two amazon asks what do we do better than everybody else and they said we do fulfillment better than everybody else so the third question the most obvious question after that is what business should we be in and amazon business yeah and you know those three questions transformed them from a small book seller company to a multi-billion dollar worldwide conglomerate that they are today so every business owner should be asking them questions and you need to here's another p for you need to pivot so you have to pivot and you have to add concrete revenue streams one of the reasons that these businesses are going out of business is because they keep doing things the way they've always done them you're either growing or you're dying there's no in between and you can't be married to your original concept you got to grow from that you're going to innovate okay so let me ask one question on pivoting because and it comes up sometimes people get in the same i just need to stick with it a little bit longer and sometimes that's true hey you get too early it doesn't work out it's not because it won't work but you give up just short of this or the finish line and it's like three feet from gold like three feet from go exactly on the other hand you can also be saying you get so stuck on what you're doing that you never pivot and your business dies because you never actually take take where you opportunities in the market that do present themselves because you're so stuck on where you're at so any id any uh feedback is you how you decide to pivot or when you decide to pivot well i think you know most a lot of business owners don't pivot they stay stuck because when you're in your fog guess what it's foggy so you really need an outsider's perspective to help you see the warning signs and really help you figure out those three questions because those three questions are everything don't you think i mean if amazon would have stayed stuck amazon would be out of business today if they would have kept selling books they would have probably been out of business today so you really gotta gotta get unstuck and and the most important thing is trying to get out of the tactical mm-hmm and get into the transaction get out of the transactional and get into the transformational and a lot of times like i said you need an outsider's perspective to do that and that doesn't mean that you just stopped selling books amazon didn't stop selling books amazon's still sold books but amazon started adding all this other stuff so as a business owner you might still do what you do it's like me i was doing i was selling businesses but then i said i'm like oh my gosh what business am i in i'm in the book selling business what i i mean the business selling business what i do really well and i'm like i know business because i've owned a lot of different businesses and lots of different verticals so i need to start really fixing these businesses so what business should i be in and the business i'm in is really specializing in buying selling fixing and growing companies because i buy companies i flip them and i partner with business owners investing my money time energy and effort so you don't just necessarily give up something but you really should have multiple revenue streams you know that's the problem with like a lot of businesses right now while they're going out of business is because they have one profit center let's say restaurants non-profit center all their eggs are in that basket they have about two to three months of working cat one to three months of working capital and then they wonder why they go out of business you need to have multiple revenue streams and you need to have at least one year of working capital and we need to be smarter business owners in order to weather these kind of catastrophic events you know it's like me i was in new orleans when hurricane katrina happened and 95 of my clients literally went underwater literally and i'm like this taught me one big lesson never have all of my business in one state one city in state so now i got businesses in texas i have businesses you know in different states so to me that's you know you're always asking that question because you should always be growing does that make sense absolutely no i think that that definitely makes sense and resonates and so i think that that's that's a good and i and i like that the idea of you know when you're pivoting it shouldn't just because i mean you hear pivoting a lot in the in the business and it's a bit of a buzzword and it becomes oh we just need to do something different well don't just do just something different just for different saying but it needs to be hey what are we doing to i like kind of the innovating and coming up and and finding out your marketers and continuing to make sure it's got to be strategic you know it's like apple apple computers from steve jobs when steve jobs came back did they have phones back then no they had computers right yep yeah tablets they didn't have phones they didn't have ipads they didn't have the the smartphone they didn't have ipads and they have ipods they didn't have you know all that stuff eye music he came in and innovated you got to innovate and a lot of visionaries are pretty a lot of entrepreneurs are visionaries and they're typically pretty good about innovation but what happens is they get stuck in the day-to-day and then they're working in their business not working on their business and now they have no more creative energy definitely and that's an easy thing to get stuck into in the sense that you have a lot of day-to-day things and you get busy you get caught up and then you never step back and say what is the direction how are we going to continue to do and that's why one of the i think one of the worst industries my biased opinion is a legal industry which has been horrible about now i think they're up and comers i think there are people doing it and even see legalzoom that you know love them or hate them they came along and they did something innovative and different that is causing people to now have to shift and adjust and a lot of lawyers don't like them just because it makes them not be able to do their same thing the way they always did it because now they're having to figure out new ways to compete but i love the idea that you really should be innovating because if you're not doing it somebody else is going to and then it's going to it's going to make it so your business isn't successful anymore yep and the biggest way to innovate too the biggest way to innovate devon is ask your clients ask your clients business owners stop asking their clients business owners stop asking our clients what do you need what do you want how can i better serve you how can i make life easier for you how can i make doing business with you but with us easier for you you know that's what amazon did you got to start asking your clients what do you need what do you want because business has changed so dramatically even now so even more because of after covet you got to ask those questions right because clients needs have changed yep no definitely agree and absolutely we've had a great conversation i would love i would love to have probably another hour's worth of conversation then we would have an awesome time and listeners would probably say okay we've heard enough of mma so as we start to wrap up the podcast i do want to hit on one question i always ask the enemy each expert episode um which is if you're if talking to a startup in small business you're to give just one thing one thing that they could start to implement start taking away today that they could say hey there's a lot of things we covered a lot of things we chatted about and they can't you know don't get overwhelmed start on this one thing what would that one thing be well so that's you know number one you buy exit rich that's the one thing and you go through the whole book because we didn't even make it through the six p's we made it through two b's you know yeah but now they got a reason to buy the book so it worked out great well i'm going to answer that question with telling you about the fourth p because since you're an attorney and you specialize in patents and trademarks i think this is the most important because i was trying to answer your question i was answering questions about valuation so the best way to get the highest valuation for your business and sell your business for maximum value is proprietary the 4p is proprietary this is the number one value driver so this can take you from a five multiple to an eight multiple to ten multiple to fifteen multiple this is all proprietary so why am i saying you should start with this because if you get this wrong then you could practically be out of business so this is probably even before people okay so proprietary there's six pillars i'm gonna make it quick number one is branding you got a brand you know the more well-branded you are the more i can sell your company for as long as the brand is relevant in the mind of consumers nobody's paying any money for blockbuster the most valuable brand in the world is we've been talking about it i'll go with apple but i don't i'm worried i'm going to say the wrong one no you're right go with your first instinct apple is the biggest brand in the world most valuable brand 249 billion dollars that's not included in accounts receivables inventory assets real estate ebitda that's just a brand alone number two is trademarks here's where most business owners get this wrong and that's why i said if you're starting your business get this stuff right from the beginning trademarks trademarks are huge but most business owners will go go get a trademark in their state and then they never check the federal database and isn't it important for them to get a federal trademark devin absolutely i 100 agree on that one because if they've been in business for years and years and years i've seen this happen to business owners where they've been in business all of a sudden they receive assistant assist letter right and they have to stop using that company name now they'll hire an attorney they'll throw lots of money at it and most of the time they'll lose yep and then they have to start all over again and you have to re-brand you've been in business for multiple years you've put in a terrible customer base i don't know what you charge to get a federal trademark but my attorney charges me between 1500 to 2 000. so spend the 1500 or 2 000 get a federal trademark not just on your company name but your usp unique selling propositions anything that is important to you like exit rich i'm getting a trademark on the st six fees the st gps exit model your podcast we actually have a business we're selling that has like 12 different products and they all have federal trademarks and each product is is exclusive to like rouses and krogers and different grocery store chains so trademarks are huge patents are huge yeah if you want shark tank every single investor i mean i sound like a broken record every single investor asks every investor the same question you have a pattern on that you have a patent pending do you have a utility patent so patents are huge contracts are big too manufacturing contracts franchisor contracts distribution contracts any exclusive contracts the most valuable of all are your client contracts that have reoccurring revenue subscription models but here's a mistake to contracts and devin could probably help you all out with this absolutely most business owners forget they they don't have this let me tell you something i've never found a business owner that actually has this in their in in their contract we're selling a 70 million dollar company right now ebay has over 12 million dollars no 17 million 17 million dollars transferability clause that this contract is transferable upon a new entity because 99.9 percent of all cells are asset sales not stock sales and if the buyer refuses to do a stock sell and your clients won't sign a transfer to a consent to transfer then your deal can fall apart so crosstalkts.drives and have that transferability clause in your contracts from the beginning hmm no i love that and i think that's definitely makes sense and definitely i you you're speaking my own language i i like profession well that's why i wanted to answer your question because i'm telling you you got to do that stuff in the beginning if you don't do the stuff in the beginning not only will you lose money you could lose your business and then you're going to have a really hard time selling it databases are the other thing i wanted to mention real quick because facebook paid 19 billion dollars for whatsapp and whatsapp was making how much money i don't know if it was profitable was it never they were hemorrhaging hemorrhaging hemorrhaging hemorrhaging but they had a billion users buyers pay for synergies you know so celebrity endorsements are big um any type of econ we sell a lot of e-commerce businesses you know anytime you can get those top three spots on etsy wayfarer amazon any of that's huge radio radio endorsements with celebrity endorsements are huge because they can only endorse one vertical at a time otherwise they completely lose credibility so anyway proprietary there's six p's but proprietary isn't one you must start with even before you you hire people i love that and i i and you're talking about but even beyond just patents and trademarks so just thinking about what makes you unique what is proprietary and differentiating about you and your business yeah and then that's when you get into patents or trademarks and building around it but even starting with that what makes what is our unique selling proposition what's different what's proprietary about us that we can protect is definitely a great place to start well we have we have covered so many funding i would love to have it back on at some point just because we didn't exactly i think it'd be great to have you back on and we'll definitely have to lighten that back up but as we wrap up at least for today's episode we touched on a little bit you have the book if people are wanting to reach out they want to learn more they want to be a customer a client an investor a purchaser of your book a your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out find out more and get in contact i have lots of business but i can use some friends so first things first they need to go to exitrichbook.com i just want to say a couple of things about exit ridge my book was endorsed by steve forbes which is huge kevin harrington original truck and shark tank wrote the forward sharon lecture's my co-author who wrote richard poured out of robert kiyosaki she's a financial literacy expert a cpa and the advisor to many different presidents so you can accurate rich comes out in june but you don't have to wait till june you can go to exitricebook.com now for 24.79 which is less than it is on amazon yay so 24.79 we will email you the digital download immediately plus we'll ship the hardcover to your doorstep for anybody who lives in the u.s outside us is more shipping of course and then we'll give you a lifetime membership into the exit rich book club where if you like what you're hearing here there's more video content me doing deep dives and different strategy plus documents documents to run your business documents to sell your business so we have example employee handbooks non-competes organizational charts sample letter of intents purchase agreements due diligence checklists closing docs all these documents if you went to an attorney like devin it would cost you over 30 000 to recreate all of these documents they're there for your review and download so for 24.79 you're getting the extra rich book plus all the documents plus a 30-day free membership and two club ceos which is an entrepreneurial mastermind where we ask those transformational questions so we can help business owners build a sustainable scalable and win a ready sellable business well that is definitely a great value great way to follow up find out the rest of the or the six ps and we'll have to have you back on so we can finish that six piece discussion i definitely encourage people to check it out and you said exitrichbook.com and um definitely a great way to connect well go ahead i was just gonna they could also text michelle to 888-526-5750 all my social media pops up follow me connect with me linkedin and uh my main website is soldertucker.com all right plenty of great ways to connect and definitely encourage people to connect up a lot of good information a lot of things to think about as you build as you start to build your business um to make sure that it's uh on a trajectory for assess in the short term and in the long term well thank you again michelle for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have either your own expertise to share or your own journey to share we would love to have you on the podcast feel free to apply just go to inventiveguest.com and let us know and we'd love to hear from you also two more things as listeners one click subscribe and the podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about us last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help thank you again michelle it's been fun it's been a pleasure look forward to hopefully having you back on again in the future and in the meantime good luck with your journey thank you devon it was a pleasure thank you for having me

Start Now

Terresa Zimmerman
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/19/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

start do it just do it figure out figure out what your risk tolerances are leave everything else behind give yourself a period of time do it just do it everybody once you put it out there people are going to rally it's amazing 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 we are always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast which is teresa zimmerman zimmerman yeah i just want to make sure i pronounce her right and uh teresa was uh founded a business about nine years ago for men's underwear which is an interesting journey in and of itself to how do you get into that but the journey started back in high school when she and then ending the college and uh when she got a degree kind of did that to check the boxes and be able to have that degree as part of that and then moved or moved on and ended up going doing a longer career in consulting that worked with a lot of fortune 100 companies and whatnot worked with some big big agencies but never really owned her own work or did her own thing so decided to make the league from corporate to doing your own thing um talked with a few different people kind of explore things and decided to land on men's underwear and uh did that for a period of time was uh gutting got into selling it figuring out what the market was and how to make even better product and they've been doing it ever since so with that much is a uh uh introduction welcome on the podcast teresa wow thank you no thank you for having me that's uh that's the full story i don't know what i could elaborate on well we can just as the old side field goes we'll just sleep on a hideout we'll just walk out there now but i gave kind of a brief uh 30-second high-level overview but uh why don't you take us back in time a bit kind of the high school college time frame and tell us a little bit about how your journey got going and how what led to where you're at today yeah i mean you know maybe serendipity um uh comes into play you know since i've been trying to get into men's underwear most of my life so uh that's that's my that's my short story it all worked it all worked out yeah no so um i mean as you said for me um you know formal education was it was all check boxes i mean i just i i was i probably rushed through things way too much just because i wanted to get on to you know whatever was going to be real next i don't know why i didn't think that what i was doing at any moment in time wasn't real enough and you know important enough but i was like i just needed something next i had to go so check all the boxes that you know you're expected to check and um and then get on with life um but it was a journey i i mean i couldn't script it uh for sure so um you know went from high school to uh changing i got into all of my colleges early and then at the very last minute decided i wasn't going to do any of that i was going to be a veterinarian and um canceled all of that and kind of started from scratch and i think it was like april before my before i graduated that spring which is like crazy late but uh i decided that college was going to be a check box too and i wasn't going to spend a lot of time um and extra years doing some sort of medical degree which you know is probably better for for everybody but any case same same with college i started in boulder colorado my first year i skied a lot i did not have anybody holding me accountable so to go to school because it's such a big school and so i got away with everything in order to be on the ski slopes it was fabulous but i knew in order to check the box i had to leave so i ended up transferring myself to santa clara university which was like 180 degrees out right i mean you're you're uh it's a small jesuit liberal arts university compared to a big public you know maybe 30 000 students at the time down to 2 500 students maybe maybe fewer that might have included graduate students at the time so um i kind of had to study a little bit more but i played a lot so it was it was a blast after after college i moved myself to tokyo um my japanese teacher in college told me i would she would never recommend me for a job in japan so of course that's where i went um i ended up i mean during the 80s it made a little bit more sense than it does now i mean everything was happening in japan japan had just bought rockefeller center i mean they were buying the world so it made a lot of sense that that's you know if you wanted to be in in the throes of things that that's where you would be so that's where i went and and i ended up spending a couple years there so uh it was always one day at a time um i threw myself into things all the time but with an attitude of you can do anything for a short period of time break it down it's one day you know make it to the next day make it to the next day you know and at some point it becomes a year and um so that was fairly fabulous and um through that whole thing i ended up um you know being jumping into some consulting and marketing and brand strategy and you know that was kind of my my life's love doing brand strategy work with really big companies with really big problems at the time they were trying to solve problems one question because i mean it's hard enough and i know a lot of consultants have done a great job but it's already a hard enough thing to get into consulting here in the us where you know the language know the culture and everything else now you're over in a different culture a different language everything else how did you get into consulting yeah good question well so at the time there i was kind of acting i was acting a little bit as a go-between between the company the company that the japanese company that i worked for was a business services company so they had a whole they had a huge uh range of services that they offered um i they hired me because i was a token blonde californian i mean let's be real right i knew nothing um and didn't even have a recommendation from my japanese teacher so um so there was no you know there was there was no pretending i was something i wasn't there but i took advantage of it right and so i got into conversations that i probably should never have gotten involved with but my my consulting there was a little bit more mediation so i worked for a japanese company a lot of us companies and european companies were coming into the country trying to do business there and they needed somebody who could form a bridge um in what they wanted to do and and uh and then the japanese companies they wanted to do it with and so in a really really really small way that's kind of where that's kind of where i started my um my consulting practice um and you know you know turned that into a career for myself because i mean i studied this is going to sound sound funny but i mean i studied political science in santa clara and i really think that set me up well for it because with political science specifically there you know maybe liberal arts colleges generally you know you are forced to consume this much information in a very short period of time and condense it down to a couple of points that then you need to defend or put forth or have a position on hear somebody else's you know opinions and i'm sure you'd do the same thing in you know legal studies and then decide if you have your position changed or not and be able to explain all that so you're doing a lot of translation so to speak in that um and so i think i found i think i found that um kind of natural for me loved it loved it definitely and i think it sounds like a fun part of the journey so now you were in japan for a while working with the big consulting firm what brought or when when did you come back to the us or what brought you back to the us or you're saying hey i've had enough i'd like to go home be my family yeah or miss the culture or kind of what what uh prompted that shift yeah it was time to go home for sure it was time to go home i spent a couple years in boston and then i um and then with with a guy um and then i um jumped over to brussels belgium i lived in brussels for five years i ended up starting with the agency world there and that's really where i kind of started growing into working with really big companies um there and and because again i was you know not native any language there um i i ended up always working at kind of a higher level because i wasn't going to be the one to speak local you know whether it's local culture local issues local whatever so i always ended up in a strategic or planning role which you know served me well and it's you know where my interests lie anyway so um that ended up being um kind of the start of my agency career an agency is where i you know it fed my add so to speak right because with agencies you work with a lot of different clients all at the same time so you know you can be working with a backend technology infrastructure client and and a mining and metals client and um you know financial services client all in the same all at the same time and so you've got to be on your game with all of those things at any one moment in time when you're speaking with them so i just loved it and i'm the same wayne and we were chatting even a little bit before the the podcast when we started about you know i've got i do miller ip law where we do patents and trademarks i've also you know as a background i've done seven and i continued several startups in small businesses um we just recently rebranded relaunched one of the businesses it's in the religious or religious products and then i'm also started and my goal is to have it'll probably i hope it my goal is to have it this summer it may be the following summer but to have an orchard with 100 trees planted on it and some land so i i completely get the 80d of like liking to do lots of products liking to see lots of different things and so it definitely makes sense yeah no love it yeah i mean and you know even when i left consulting in agencies i still do coaching and advising i still do a bunch of other stuff i'm writing some books and you know and then of course nine years ago i started wood underwear which is kind of my um my baby at the moment my nine-year-old baby at the moment so it's uh yeah but it's it i you know this day and time when you can work remote and when you don't aren't tied and i'm not sure that i'm involved in the gig economy necessarily but i love the fact that we all have so much flexibility and freedom in a way that we didn't you know even five years ago no and i i completely agree i completely agree with all that and i think the lens itself so you have a lot more opportunities you know what was interesting is you know i was talking with somebody else and i neglect or i forget the name and so i apologize for whichever listener that you know whichever guest that was we were chatting a bit about how it used to be you know that startups and small businesses had a huge failure rate and you know you made it five or ten years whatever statistic you looked at that was when you made it and that was when you know that now you're likely to going to continue to succeed and it's almost started the paradigm started to shift where startups small businesses are the ones that are being more successful and the older businesses are having a much harder time in struggling and it's just interesting how the paradigm shifts with with all of their as everything continues to evolve now getting back from my rabbit hole which is so now you so you did you know you moved around a bit you did big businesses you went to japan came back to the u.s did some consulting i think you moved back to california i was in i was in europe for five and a half years and then came back to the us and then i ended up in hong kong for a couple of years as well all this is through you know agency consulting and then uh got back came back to the united states um and sort of planted myself in san francisco for a little while so one question that i'll get to my real question but what might because you know moving around doing a lot of things what made you finally decide to settle down in in san francisco is that what family was where well so yeah well so i love san francisco i mean san francisco and paris are probably my two favorite cities at least they were then um you know i know that both of them are in a little bit of a of chaos and disarray in in different ways right now but i've always loved um both of those cities and uh when i came back to the united states i had opportunity and you know wanted to be wanted to be there right so when i went to santa clara university um they uh you know technology was there of course um but when i was graduating all of you know my my you know peers were taking on these tech jobs and you know there were a few of us are going like why would you do that what's technology you know who needs that right so i mean again i didn't have a lot of foresight um uh when i was younger but um but it's such an exciting place to be silicon valley and san francisco specifically um because of a lot of that so now you get no and that definitely makes sense you get back to san francisco and you're saying okay starting to maybe settle down at least a little bit and you know got to still keep it exciting but you start to settle down you know what did you go and start working for big tech companies or continued consulting i was still with my consulting company i was still i still i was still with agency so most of the time i was bouncing around with the same agency just taking on different roles for them around the world so um so there there there was the spot for me um in san francisco was with an agency that i had been in hong kong with um and i was still managing the asia pacific region from san francisco so san francisco is a good base for a lot of reasons so now you do that for a period of time now how did you kind of get to the itch of wanting to do your own thing you know was there how did i get to men's underwear well we'll get some men's underwear just but even before you know and i definitely that's an interesting jump but even before that you've been doing agencies you've been going you know working you know with as a consultant with the agency for quite a period of time in a lot of different locations what first before you got to men's underwear but what even prompted thinking hey i want to do my own thing start down my own path or you know switch up and not do that anymore yeah well you know i think it was just a it was a i was seeking some depth um and what i mean by that is you know i'd gone from you know this very broad um you know broad and very timely mark pr marketing kind of function within agency or you know role or purview um into you know more advertising than into more brand strategies so what that is is you know pr's pr you're already late as soon as you put the press release out you're probably already late it's already happened right when you when you do advertising you want your advertising to last for a little while right you see ads over and over for a period of time and then they go away so it's a little longer lasting when you do somebody's brand or work on their brand strategy that's decades in the making that's that may be longer right so there's some depth to that that i loved but then you know taking it another step further is there was i i wanted to own something right as a consultant you're working on someone else's projects so and i don't i didn't necessarily mean own literally but you know that's certainly part of it but when you're working on someone else's stuff it's their baby you're helping right however however much you're helping it's not your baby so i was looking for something that i could get into and get my hands on i wanted it to be a you know a thing not a service um and you know then i just went through i went through a good you know at least 12 18 month exploration of different areas and it included services too it included you know my exploration included franchises it included starting services companies it included buying companies um it was a it was a pretty broad broad exploration now when you're exploring did you actually try some of those i mean did you do other startups or businesses or is it more exciting i did not see what you thought yeah i did not um although not for lack of trying um because i did make offers on a couple of companies and they did not you know we went pretty far down the path i went pretty down down far down the path with some people you know to get into other businesses um it just didn't end up working out so um so wood was was really you know the first company that i you know launched so now so you know you look into it you do the other companies you get you know try and make some offers didn't work out you know you go through the all the various things they're saying hey i know i want to do my own business kind of have something i own you know both you know physically but also just you know kind of that you can say this is mine type of a thing and so how did you as you're weaving through all those exploring different things making offers and that how did now now i'll ask a question how did you land or land on men's underwear um well i've already used up my joke so um no so um i was doing some brainstorming as part of this exploration with with some other people um what uh underwear came out of it my husband happened to i showed him a prototype and um and then i kind of just set it aside and he um he harassed me for about three months um and just said you have to do this you have to do this you have to do this until i finally said you know how how hard can it be to you know sell a few pair of men's underwear really so and here we are nine years later and i can tell you it's hard it's harder to sell it than it is to buy it well fair enough so now because i think one of the things i think you talked about so you you kind of got that feedback said okay you know got some support from your spouse and did those other things and then you started to i if i remember right and correctly where i'm wrong started kind of taking more off of the shelf for lack of a better word underwear and kind of initially using that but it wasn't to the quality into the standards that you wanted yeah yeah so what you're referring to is um the the first product that i had um i had one style and four colors and i had a lot of it and i uh i ended up loading up my car and you know driving around la and walking into stores and asking the buyer owner if they wanted to see my underwear and that i mean that was really my pitch and um i i learned a lot that year i mean that was probably the first six months of that first year and um i i sold some which is is awesome and it kept me going and um i uh some of my best customers are still some of those customers that i did that you know that that was my first experience with um but the back half of that first year um i changed everything i changed the manufacturer the fabric the packaging the i mean the whole thing changed um and i started out that second year january of that second year with really what is the the um beginnings of the line that we have today so you know we've got five different styles of underwear some thongs and jocks we've got undershirts we've got loungewear we've got henley's um you know all all those sort of core basics and you know really trying to build the story around it so our fabrics um are they have wood viscous in the fabric so there's that part of the story we're certainly having fun with the name and it being men's underwear um you know my whole life is a pun fest right now so it's it's it's a blast um but it's uh it's good though because all of those experiences i mean one of those experiences i drove i drove north to uh san francisco i had a couple of trunk shows set up with stores had my list of who i was going to stock uh talk to all the way up to seattle stopped into a store in portland and um he knew i was coming before i even knew i was there because he had somebody call him from san francisco who would see me at a trunk show and when i walked in he knew who i was which was shocking to me i had no idea that men's underwear was so connected um but uh i i left i left his office and i got in my car and i canceled all my other appointments and i cried all the way to seattle because everything that he told me that was wrong with my product was absolutely true and that's why i spent the last six months of that year changing things and improving and i mean i had the good i had good basics the foundations were there i just needed to put more work into it and i did he was totally right so now now i'm going to shift to so we've kind of brought you up to the story of where you're at today yeah now where do you as an under i'm maybe i'm wrong and i could you could tell but but it doesn't seem like there's a a large amount of area to innovate within men's underwear but where do you take the company is it getting into more stores is it innovating new products and you can prove me wrong there's a lot of innovation to be had there or kind of where do you guys kind of see the next six to 12 months going for you uh so six to 12 months is one or two seasons so um in men's menswear has two seasons a year i think women's has like six sometimes eight seasons a year i don't even know how they do that um so uh it it's one to two seasons is a pretty short amount of time where what we focus on we focus on specialty stores um we folk that means boutiques that means independently owned sometimes they own multiple doors you know there are chains that are owned by private individuals and but that's where that's where we live we live there because i love main street i think main street is the foundation of our whole community main street you know is is is is is is the basis of our neighborhoods um it's it's hard to it's hard to think about having a community in a neighborhood without that main street sort of component to it um and those independent store owners and operators are just critical i think um uh to to society so i love to work there and that's that's kind of what drives me and that's that's like completely opposite from where i started in corporate um which is also pretty fabulous um and then so for men's underwear there's innovation maybe in the form in the context of ip maybe not a lot of innovation because um you can prove me wrong on this i don't think that there's a whole lot you can defend but um but there men don't have all of the fabrics women have so there are fabrics out there that men are only just now being exposed to and women women have had them for decades um there's uh and when when you've when you figure out what's been out there for women all this time and you kind of go what i mean how come i how can i how come we didn't have this right how come we didn't have this um and then also there's an education that needs to happen with men that isn't again maybe necessarily innovation but education is important too and that is that um men need to diversify their underwear drawer i mean if you this is going to be a huge generalization and i don't mean to offend people but i know some people will be offended by what i'm going to say right now you look in a man's underwear drawer across the united states open it up you're going to find the style color brand of underwear that his mother put there when he was 15. that's that's probably a fair it's a it's a fair generalization i'm sure there are exceptions but yeah yeah there are exceptions absolutely but um but yeah so as a as a as a general rule um that's going to be fairly true and the worst part of that is is dependent really kind of doesn't matter how old you are you might have some of the same pair in there men's underwear drawers are really dated so now you're so on a mission to change a man's underwear drawers one jordan correct correct correct and there are some kind styles colors of underwear you don't wear for every occasion or under every pair of pants right i mean a bit you know sort of no-brainer your gym underwear is not your date night underwear well hopefully not some people probably that's the same but yeah i don't know i should not be right not me that shouldn't be as a key word so should not be well as we start to wrap up the podcast and there's always so many things i would think it'd be fun to talk about we never have time to but i always ask two questions at the end of each episode and as a reminder we also have the bonus question that we'll talk a little bit after the normal episode about ip but the normal two questions i ask are um first one is um along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah no i you prepped me for this and i i struggle with the answer not that i don't have an answer but to struggle with one right there's so many there's so many mistakes that you make in business i mean i guess um the the one that comes to mind is i didn't know what i didn't know but i don't think that's a mistake because i think as an entrepreneur founder of a business if you if you knew what you didn't know you wouldn't start right so that's that's just you know it's it's better to go into some things ignorant and figure it out as you go but i think my biggest business mistake was probably not listening to myself about talent i think talent is a really big uh issue for founders and entrepreneurs and business and people who lead businesses and it is having the right talent at the right time and also trying to find that talent when when you can't really when you don't really know that you can afford talent you all you don't really know that you can't afford not to have good talent either so i made some talent errors um brought in people where my gut was like you know i i don't know and um you know you correct those decisions pretty quickly but i probably should have avoided the error all together by just listening to myself a little bit more trusting myself no and i definitely agree and you know talent is one that's a i it's one where i think until you get into it i mean you can always sit back and say oh that was a terrible hire that was a great hire but when you're sitting there trying to figure out who to hire what to hire and what to look for it's a lot harder and sometimes especially as a small business you don't even honestly know all the time the positions aren't fully defined it's not like you're in a big business hey we need a marketing people it can do social social media ads and not only just social media as it has to be facebook ads not only facebook ads you know and you can whittle it down because you have a big enough or you know big enough pool of people that you know specific but when you're a small business or startup yeah it's like i need someone that can do hr hiring and firing marketing and sales productive and you know that you have all these things and you can't hire 20 people all at once correct so it is a hard one to find those and and to find the job so i definitely get that it's one word a terrible error can be a big anchor on the company well and you actually you make a really good point and i'm gonna log the way you put that i think it's easier to hire specialists than it is generalists right people who can wear that you know wear a lot of hats in a you know in a smaller location than somebody who knows how to just do one thing super super well that a small business doesn't usually have luxury to do yeah that's a really good way to put that um yeah so and but my my talent so i i was smart enough to focus on sales talent the challenge was i wasn't smart enough to vet those people properly right sales people can do a sales job on you if they're doing a good job right but um it doesn't necessarily mean they can do the work for you so yeah all right now we'll jump to the second question which 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 advice you'd give them start do it just do it figure out figure out what your risk tolerances are leave everything else behind give yourself a period of time do it just do it everybody once you put it out there people are going to rally it's amazing it's amazing i mean my the guy that um that uh runs my warehouse 3pl services i went to high school with him when i first started my business before i even launched i sent out a note an email to my um to you know my contact list that's all i had and said hey friends and you know and colleagues and family here's what i'm going to do starting three weeks from now i've got this container coming from china and i'm gonna do this and that and i'm gonna you know figure out how to climb the fence and get my product out how to hock at the dock and figure out how to get it to a warehouse and i'm going to be packing orders you know and take him to the post office at night so my friend kevin as soon as i put that word out there you know he called me and he's like teresa you're not doing any of that there there are companies that do this i do this i've got some room to do this no you're not doing that so um in a way i mean he really set the groundwork for for us to be successful today by that one phone call just reaching out and that's what happens when you put it out there if you're going to do something just if you want to do it put a plan together you don't even need a big plan just got to start just start you know and i love that interesting we're coming up on probably this is now you know not aired episodes but over 200 episodes that will be by the time this airs and i'd say probably that's the number one answer across a lot of different entrepreneurs a lot of different journeys is everybody you know it's a variation of basically just go ahead and start like you know everyone can always make excuses you can always figure out reasons why not to do it and yet you'll never or hardly ever regret maybe somebody regrets it but almost never regret getting started trying it out even if you fail you get to try it out you got to live your dream you get to see if it works if you like being an entrepreneur and you leave beside all the what-ifs and could have beens and i should have done that and so i love the idea of just getting started well as we wrap up you know the normal episode again reminder we'll have the bonus question after the normal episode um but as we wrap up this episode if people want to reach out to you they want to find out more they want to be a customer a client they want to be a distributor they want to be an employee they want to be an interesting call me they want to be your next best friend and you're year how do they reach out love it love it well i'm on linkedin of course theresa zimmerman but you can um you can email me at teresa t-e-r-r-e-s-a at what underwear dot com you can go to woodunderwear.com and make purchases there we've got a first-time purchase uh discount code uh try wood all one word i think it's caps i don't it may not be cap sensitive or case sensitive but give it a shot there we'd love to have new customers we'd love to have new friends all right so lisa there's some of the above right so yeah exactly so now appreciate you 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 share your journey just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show and a couple more things as listeners one click subscribe so we know when all of our awesome episodes are air and two leave us a review so when you know or other people can find out about us as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com so with that now that we've now that we've talked about through your journey it's always kind of fun i always i'm always the one that gets to ask the questions and gets to direct things and now we get to flip the tables a bit and you get asked me the question so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask me what's your top intellectual property question oh good i'm excited about this so um so we have you go through the process of protecting your property right so we've got trademarks we've got registration marks um in our in my business but what happens when somebody infringes i mean how defensible is it really in the united states and then more complicated outside the united states so it's and at what point do you decide you can't defend it yeah and that those are a few questions in there so way to yeah question into one question no um no question is it defensible yeah with enough time if if you're in the right you know frivolous lawsuit society but let's say you have legitimate claim somebody is knocking off your brand they're knocking off whether it's patents or trademarks or anything else with enough time and effort you can usually defend and be victorious now the i think so you know and that can be everything from and it's not always a lawsuit sometimes as you reach out to them and you send them a cease and desist and they say hey i didn't realize you were a brand i didn't realize you were creating an issue and they resolve it and a lot of times you get two business owners are being reasonable you cannot resolve it outside the courts you know you can also reach out to them and say hey if you're going in down this road if you're interested we provide a license you can take a license from our brand and you can become you know have that as a business arrangement and have that as an income or you can say if they blow you off you can go file a lawsuit and you can generally be you know have some success the bigger question i think is what you kind of hit on towards the last part of your question which is does it make sense or is it worthwhile to always pursue that i mean you can go and you know here to take as an example patent lawsuits if they go all the way through most of them don't most of them settle out but you know patent their patent lawsuit you're up into the million plus you're in seven figures yeah to get all the way through trademarks are usually six or you're probably probably high five figures or six figures so then tens of thousands upwards a hundred thousand and the question is generally is whether or not it's worth it to pursue meaning if it's a small mom-and-pop shop that hey yes they're technically infringing your brand your fringing app but hey they're making they're not cutting into your cells you know the total amount you could get from them before they go bankrupt is a few thousand dollars or tens of thousands of dollars if you're not going to send or set or spend enough or get get enough to make it worthwhile and or you don't want to have that you know sometimes you get a reputation as being an aggressive you know goliath that's trying to hammer people and then it creates an image problem for your business so you have to look and say or is it worth pursuing but other other times you're going to say hey this is the they're eating into ourselves we've seen a drop of 20 or 30 percent in ourselves it's going to be a big deal it's going to hit our bottom line and we have to pursue it then it is worth it because you're saying it's going to be worth it from our sales perspective because now we are having customers that are being confused and they're buying it from someone else and they're piggybacking off of ours and so most of what i say is if you want it to be defensible you can defend them there's several different options depending on how you want aggressive you want to be but you need to look at and see is there going to be enough return i'd look at it the same as with everything else is there enough return on investment is there enough roi to warrant the investment to go out and enforce it if yes then go out and enforce it there's a good return on if no then you have to say okay let's explore other options or just simply let it go and while sometimes it works you that somebody is writing your hotels it may not make sense as a brand or as an investment does that make sense yeah yeah no it does it does yeah it's uh it it'd be nice to wave a magic wand and just have it go away it's true and everybody you know it depends on which side of it in the sense that if you're on the side that you think that they're attacking you and it's frivolous you're saying i don't want them to just be able to i don't want to have to go pay all this and we're just going to here on the other side we're saying hey we've built tens or we spent years building this and tens of thousands of millions of dollars in a brand and now somebody's writing our coattails and saying i want them to stop so it's hard to make everybody happy true true all right well with that we'll go ahead and wrap up appreciate the question that's always fun to talk a little bit about an intellectual property and certainly a topic i love uh with that appreciate it again coming on the the podcast theresa and with the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you devon appreciate it very much

Plan Before You Start

Tristan Pelloux
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/17/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

yeah i would say you know it might be borrowing but planning before you you start is uh is i think a big key to success and and then obviously execute you know on your business plan but first you need to write it down [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur entrepreneur that's grown several startups and the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder 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 now today we have another great guest on the podcast tristan or blue if i can say the last name right or kind of get that accent there um but to introduce you a bit to tristan so after high school um did uh prep prep school for a couple years and then went into business school did a couple internships during that period of time and then graduated moved off to london worked for a company did mergers and acquisitions or m a for a period of time and then worked at a bigger bank i think it was in finance um part of that job was to work with fintech companies and then he kind of decided that when as his time was up and uh with that bang moved to barcelona spain wanted to build something for himself and is it is launched in his growing uh fintech review which is a blog that he's doing on is his own job um that uh it provides a lot of information about fintech and also doing some consulting and strategy for other companies so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast tristan thank you thank you for having me so i did kind of just a quick high level run through of your whole journey but maybe now take us back in time to kind of after high school going to prep school doing a business school and kind of tell us how your journey went from there yeah sure sure so yeah as you said i went to business school in france and during that time kind of they forced you to move around so i i did i did several internships i went to jordan in middle east um i uh i went south of france um an exchange program in the netherlands in in rotterdam studying economics and yeah in my last last internship i was i was in in mna in london and i actually never left i after my internship i've done a job um at virgin money uk um so worked on a few projects in the corporate strategy team their mergers and acquisitions restructuring innovation projects a lot of stuff and yeah my last job there was focused on developing partnerships with fintech startups and big technology companies um and yeah and last year i decided you know uh london was great my job was great but it was time to move on so diving into just that just part of it just for a second so when you say you know deciding it's time to move on you know was there something that hey i'm just worn out or i'm working too many hours or i don't find this in interesting more or is more of hey i want to do my own thing or kind of when you get kind of decide to make that transition or you know move on from it so to speak what was the motivation or the the trigger so to speak of what uh what caused you to move on yeah i guess um i guess i i was thinking for a couple of years already that i wanted to build something you know to to see something grow and and get you know if it's going well it's all on you if it's not going well it's it's not it's it's also all new um right because this thing is when you work in a big company you're part of a collective which is which is great but at the same time it's the collective so it's less so on how well you're doing and more so on how well you know your team the the company is doing so i wanted to lead the chart to charge on something and and develop and develop something and then look back and say you look i've done this it's great now and you know it's um i always thought about this so um i decided it was the right time for me to uh you know to jump in no definitely makes sense so so now you decide to make that jump and what made you because i or did you stay you moved to barcelona spain as well right so what was the motivation saying okay i want to do my own thing i want to build something and kind of have it as my own what what necessitated the move with that was just hey i want a new location or it's nearby family want new surroundings or kind of as you're making that transition what also kind of prompted you to move yeah actually it was more associates the way around is i decided to move as you say to be closer to my family that is in south of france and my partner or family is in spain because she's spanish and so i decided to move and then once i had moved i was like so now i need to do something else so maybe it's the right time to actually you know go on and and be an entrepreneur um so it was the other way around but because it was a move and already a lot of changes i thought instead of looking for a job and actually wasn't the best period to look for a job so i was like you know what actually right now is uh is the right time for me to start my company so no and i think that definitely makes sense and you know hey if i'm going to start my company let's go by family let's go buy you know people that are going to support and otherwise be there for me as i'm endeavoring on now taking on a whole new animal starting my own thing now as you're doing that did you know hey i worked with fintech i know i want to go into kind of fintech review and do that as my passion or kind of was it unknown or kind of how did you land on or decide what you wanted to pursue or how you wanted to pursue it yeah exactly it's it's more it's more passion that i decided you know i need to make it into into business um i'd been following innovation in financial services for as long as i had worked in banking uh from my internship days in 2011 to um to right now so um i really liked the sector i liked innovation following that and then in my job i was working with fintech so um i i started you know blogging as i just want to to write about it and and look at the market and and just get my thoughts out and and actually when when you know i i i decided to scale it so i was like okay i'm going to spend more time on it see if i can turn it into into a real business and so yeah it started from a passion and i was like you know what if i do something i really like then i won't feel i'm working um and it's it's actually the case because i really like what what i'm doing what i'm working on so i don't feel like it's it's actually work um so that's that's that's what i wanted to do so so now you kind of land on that decide okay i've kind of found where my passion's at what i'm gonna do now how did you was there a business plan behind that how you're going to go about making money or you're saying hey i'll follow the passion the money will you know i'll follow my passion then the money will follow behind that or saying hey i'll do these other side gigs things on the side do consulting working with our business to support this as up and going you're kind of bad you're saying okay made the leap want to do my own thing figure out what i want to do now i had to put a business around that how did you go about starting to kind of build that business around it yeah so because my previous job was a lot of business planning um i kind of had to do a business plan so i did plot out how it was going to be like as a business uh but because i knew that it would take a bit of time to scale it to size that makes it a sustainable business that's why i continued and i continued to this day being a bit of side gigs as a consultant because i knew that the economics wouldn't work out for for a certain period of time and and because i didn't want to i wanted to bootstrap i was like my way of bootstrapping would be to use my my savings and at the same time continue to do side gigs so that i can continue developing my business and take my time because i didn't want to rush into aggressive monetization strategies so and to scare away my my little group of fans so so i'm taking my time to to develop my business but there is an actual an actual plan behind this hmm so that makes sense so now so now that kind of brings us a bit up to where you're at today but now you're saying you know so maybe one question before i was gonna ask a different question but one other additional follow-up question though so as you've done that as you've kind of built things up as you've you know figured out the business plan as you started to do that and also you know do the site hustle so speaker ways to have an income and to support yourself how have things gone is it you know as you've kind of dived into your passion project started to build it hasn't been a success has it taken off has it been you know slower than anticipated has it too early to tell or kind of how are things going so far as things have been i've been going great um i think that i've put lots of effort into it obviously and it's been it's been only only about six months now so it's still early days um but i guess after christmas i i found that you know the gross wasn't there because i guess i i hit like not a wall but around christmas people were not because so so much into into it but then really after february march and and now i'm seeing like good growth in terms of readership it's like you know over a hundred percent in months and months so it's it's going it's going really great um so so no i mean so far it's been good and now that i've started introducing more so more products so premium premium offering and i'm starting to develop a bit the content strategy we'll see we'll see how it goes from there but i think the feedback so far has been really good i've developed a good base of people that are are quite um interested in what i'm writing and the people i'm interviewing in in the the content that i'm producing and i find i i feel that i found a niche and that i'm continuing to go into that niche and it's going well so far no that's awesome so and that kind of hits on so you're developing the niche kind of and you're developing new products offering doing some you know premium uh or premium offerings and you know some subscription base so is that kind of where you see kind of the next six to 12 months continuing to head for you as you continue to increase the offering continue to offer different levels of you know service or access so to speak and you know for different costing or kind of where do you see the next six is that you know see the six next to six twelve six to twelve months going for you yeah exactly that's that's uh that's what i've introduced i've introduced um three levels of uh membership and within this membership i will continue to build content for each of these levels so my my plan for the next six to 12 months is getting more content out for all these people so to kind of get them to talk about it because i i know that like the best marketing strategy at the end of the day is people recommending you like you should have a look at that so that's what i want to do i want to continue invest my time into building this whilst i continue to develop also the free and of the free bits because this is how people come uh come to my come to fintech review so i will continue to do that and and yeah i think i'm quite clear about the path the next six to 12 months and i know that i will continue i mean as as it gets bigger and i i need less so spend time you know doing consulting gigs i will also have more time to dedicate to create content and that's why i thought it was the right time to do it now and i know that i mean if the gross is good and continues that way i know that by the end of the year i'll be able to almost you know put to the side to side gigs and then focus much more much more on that so so we'll see no definitely makes sense and sounds like some interesting exciting opportunities as you continue to move forward well as we are as we get towards the end of your journey and i always ask two questions at the end and so we'll jump to those now so the and as a reminder for listeners we're also going to be chatting a bit about intellectual property is a bonus questions after the after the normal episode wraps up so if you want to hear the uh that discussion in bed make sure to stay tuned but as we hit the normal two questions the first question i always ask is along your journey what's the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it i think that um it might sound silly but i think the worst decision was not to start earlier in the sense that this could have been a side gig for for much longer and actually i didn't put enough time and efforts as it was a side gig because i i technically started it in january last year but for six nine months i was just writing very periodically and i wasn't putting enough thoughts and looking back i feel that if i had started much more to write much more to develop my social media accounts where most of my traffic is coming from this is saying that i could have done you know i could have started a year ago and i waited i waited way too long i waited to be like free to do it whereas i could have started much more before so i think this was the biggest mistake i've made which was um i mean because now now the thing is it takes time anyway so there's it's not something that i it's not something i can i can get back is that it's going to take me probably you know three months to get where i should have been or six months and the thing is i could have i could have got this um you know i could have could have started earlier so yeah this is the worst worst thing i've i felt i felt i've done no and i think that uh definitely makes sense as far as kind of the mistake but the lesson that's also learned there and getting started earlier and then focusing on it and be able to build it and be able to put more time into it and all those things always play into and always one where it's uh you know if you'd only started earlier if you'd only done a few things it would have you'd be so far so much farther the head today so to speak now as we jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i think i would tell them to plan um so i'm as a side gig what i do is that i do strategic consulting so i'm helping entrepreneurs build business plans and i always tell them is that you know even if it's just for you you should have a plan because you know it's business plans are not only to get you know bank loan or to get funding from an investor it's also for you to know where you're going and it might take a bit a bit of time it doesn't need to be very complicated it can be just a few play pages but just lay out exactly what's the idea you know what's your market how you what's your product where you're going with it and it's really good because as you do that you will realize that some assumptions you have are not you know are not working out because the market is not the ones you wanted to because the the worst thing that can happen is that you just jump in and then you realize you lose a bit of you lose a bit of time a lot of time because you realize that you're not going in the right direction so yeah i would say you know it might be borrowing but planning before you start is is i think a big key to success and and then obviously execute you know on your business plan but first you need to write it down no i think that's definitely good advice for people to take to heart well as we wrap up the normal or the normal portion episode and reminder we'll also talk in the in a couple minutes just about intellectual property but if people want to reach out to they want to find out more about fintech they want to be a subscriber they want to be a you know a listener and a consumer 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 connect up and find out more um so on any social media accounts that are out there so twitter facebook linkedin instagram and otherwise um hello at fintechreview.net um we'll uh i'll answer everything but yeah various ways to reach out or directly to me on on linkedin i i'm also also happy to have a chat have a digital coffee or a real one if you're somewhere not so far all right well that sounds like some great options to reach out connect up and find out more so appreciate you coming on tristan to the podcast now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell or you want and you want to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to share your journey feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about us last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just let our let us know and go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat well now as we we've wrapped up the normal episode it's always fun when we do the bonus question to flip the tables a bit and talk about a topic that i always certainly find interesting whether or not everybody else does which is intellectual property so it's fun to hear a few of the questions that other people have always had and discuss that a bit so with that i'll turn it over to you for a bit and let you ask what is the top intellectual property question you have yeah so what's um what's your take about you know online content when it comes to intellectual property so my business is to create content some of them is free and uh i just wondered because you know my my viewership is very much international i mean my company is incorporated in the uk i'm in spain most of my viewership the almost 40 is in the us so i'm just wondering in terms of you know someone comes in copy everything put it on his blog and what's what's happening even if he's not a paid so i guess there are two things if it's a free article what what happens if it does that if it's a paid article like it should be a member actually someone comes in is a member copies the content send it to his friend how does this actually work yeah so i think that there's a couple ways to there's divvy that up in the sense of what are your legal rights and then what are some of the practical implications of it so if you're to look at you know somebody comes in and whether or not it's paid content you still have the same rights the only difference may be that you can show a bit more damages that hey i normally charge 100 for this content you're sharing to other people therefore you can see i lost out on 100 so to speak on that or whatever that number is but as far as you know when you when you have a copyright when you create something whether or not you charge for it you still have copyrights to it so particularly like on blog and content and figure pictures and you know all the that information falls under copyrights and so you have inherent by creating it you have rights to that which are called copyrights and so from a perspective whether or not you're selling it or not you still have those rights and unless you give those you know give somebody a license or otherwise allow them to um have those rights or you know allow or give them permission to copy that you still own those rights and they're not able to come and simply rip it off or copy it so in that sense now you can say okay i can go and enforce my rights i can go and you know everything from reaching out to them letting them know to a cease and desist letter to something more aggressive with the lawsuit or whatnot but you can certainly defend those rights and if there is an example you know they're harming your business or they're reducing your income or anything else you can go after them now the practical app or implications are a bit different in the sense of yes they are technically infringing your copyrights now you have to decide how you want to pursue them or what makes sense in the sense that hey if there is subscriber and you know they go and share with a friend or two and you're saying okay one it may help my business in the sense that if the friend or two likes it they may go get a subscription themselves now if they're sharing it repeatedly or they're you know doing it all the time such that you're not never going to realize that income then you're starting to have the opposite implication and then you have to balance okay is it better to potentially alienate the one individual that or whoever it is a subscriber that is paying in order to try and get the money from the other individuals well it kind of depends on you know hey is this somebody that's post you know taking the content copy and pasting putting it on their own site and now they're using you know they're getting thousands of subscribers well it's probably gonna hurt you in a sense and now they're not they're going to your competitor as opposed to you first if it's an individual that's sharing it with a friend or two so it's almost a balance of how much how much harm are they doing what is what is the reward that they you know if i go after them or otherwise get them to stop and then is it a worthwhile investment of time money and effort in order to get them to stop and that's going to be kind of your balance so that's kind of the legal rights are you have legal rights to protect with copyrights on the point of should you go in and enforce it or otherwise or enforce those rights and a bit depends on who's doing it and how they're doing it does that make sense yeah yeah i know it does make sense it doesn't make sense all right yeah no i think it's so clear awesome well it was a fun to chat a little about intellectual property and if you or anybody else ever has any other questions you want to chat with us or ask your top intellectual property feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and thank you again tristan for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much thank you for having [Music] me you