Do It

Gabriel Cavazos
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/15/2021

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

um do it do that thing you need to do i mean you have that idea go chase it down go go learn what you need to learn to get it done and get it done hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups and seven and eight-figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller i p 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 great guest on the podcast and is gabrielle uh cavazo is that right all right and i was worried i was gonna mess it up but then i'm like i asked you before the podcast i overthought it but uh just a quick introduction to gabriel um is so he joined the army at 17 and uh at uh 17 because his parents wouldn't let him join the combat unit and went into more intelligence analytics then went off to texas state university was kind of a bit more of a party school only made it through a bit of a semester went back to the military did that again um and i think worked with i think financial fraud dealings if i remember right but i'll let you fill that in and also got a bit into onto the coding side so started to do a bit of programming um and got so good that he kind of ended up working himself out of a job or replacing himself um and then went and worked into in iraq for a period of time or a person he worked with went to iraq and then you follow along here followed along with there worked on i think it was tracking equipment for a period of time came back and or during that time had a friend that died from a motorcycle accident and part and you'll get into that a bit more but out of that kind of had the idea of why don't they have something similar to onstar but for motorcycles and so after you came back um and doing there after uh serving in iraq for a period of time continuing to learn coding build up that also went to work for a bit of a t t and then as a t as we got hit with copen or whatnot decided to uh focus full time on onstar for motorcycles so with that much his introduction welcome on the podcast gabriel uh thanks for having me so i gave kind of the the brief high-level quick or quick walk-through of your journey which never does it justice i don't want to say grief is that what you call it as brief as i can make it you have a lot in there it's a lot to unpack but it sounds like you wrote down everything from the initial energy it just repeated it for beijing that's right i i hey if nothing else i i have my i have my introduction and i want to make sure that i stick to the the facts so i don't make anything up so but maybe with that let's go back to you know 17 joining the army and kind of how your journey started from there yeah so i grew up in a small town in rural west texas um it's a 3 000 person town uh for the longest time we had the smallest walmart in the nation uh it closed at nine and a couple years ago they just got uh refrigerators in there so now they sell the coldest beer in town that's their claim to be um but yeah i i was going to high school there is there was really not a lot of options i saw a lot of kids that were older than me joining the military just just as a chance to go do something and see something other than cotton fields um and so i did the same thing um i was 17 my like you said i i wanted to join a combat mos and my parents wouldn't let me because when you're 17 that they have to sign off on it i was going to ask so i didn't know if you even could serve in a combat unit at 17 but if you have your parents sign up for permission yes if your mom writes you a permission slip then yes you can serve you can serve in a combat mls but your mom wouldn't write you wouldn't write your permission slip so then you decided to go into intelligence is that right and analytics yeah i was an intelligence analyst for um almost a decade oh cool so now you did intelligence analytics for a period of time and you know and sounds like it would have been a fun or exciting and then you i think you said and it would correct me where i'm wrong and always correct me where i'm wrong but then you at some point you went to texas state university and did that for at least a semester and then kind of came back to the military yeah so i was in the i was in the texas national guard and um at that time i was planning just to like just do my weekend uh by one weekend a month my two weeks a year just go to college um and while i was in college i went to one of the biggest party schools in texas um and i only made it a semester but for her i was on academic probation and i was like you know what um the army's got some really good jobs out there let me see what they're doing and so from then on i just uh i spent most of my time on um like active duty reserve so i would just uh do my normal job just as a active duty soldier or the national voter cool so so now you you know tried universe or tried school said okay parties partying is too much of a temptation i'll go back to the military that's a great place i enjoyed it and it was a good opportunity now when you went back you got into i think it was financial fraud or their issues dealing with their financial fraud and unit type of thing is that right yeah i worked for the texas military counter drug division and my job there was financial crimes i was a financial crimes analyst um looking for money laundering and embezzlement um those kinds of things and and this was kind of my first foray into really just sitting down and having a mountain of data in front of me um and when i say a mountain i mean literal stacks of paper that i scanned into the computer and then from there uh went and analyzed those bank accounts uh biking uh it was a very time intensive process so now i think because of the time intensive process what you mentioned before is you got into a bit of coding in order to make it more efficient and then in the end it ended up making it so efficient you worked yourself out of a job yes that's exactly what happened yeah i wanted to not do as much scanning but turns out that was part of the job that was just absolute necessity uh that was the one part that did take a long time but once it was there i didn't have to go through each file and find the uh find you know all the statement numbers move them over and put them into an excel sheet i eventually used a um ocular character recognition software to pull all that out and then um used a vba program um which is like the backbone of like um excel and access and those kind of microsoft products and was able to automate that entire process and then apply an obscure mathematical formula i had heard about in a stats class one time called binver's law which is the idea that in a random data set the number nine shouldn't appear should appear the least and if you the thing about financial crimes is uh anywhere over uh money coming into your bank account anywhere over ten thousand dollars needs to be reported um but you can get around that by putting 99999 9772 um and that's called structuring and it's also elite and so uh this uh this law you know when applied to that data set uh worked to find uh hey is this is there money in here is there structuring here um and uh it didn't always work sometimes i had done all the work for nothing and sometimes it did work um i mean something i mean sometimes there was money lingering sometimes it wasn't it did always work um but within that so so you got the you did the you know figured it out so it sounds like once you figured out that formula my guess is is you're now looking whether or not you know there's enough nines whether or not there's irregularities where hey every other deposit i make is 99999 or 998 or whatever it is and you're able to start to detect your uh determine patterns but in the process because you can now train the saw or have the software look for a lot what you were doing manually it started to flag those out and there wasn't as much need to do it manually is that about right yeah well um like i said this is my first foray into tech so i didn't milk it like i should have i should have just let them think that i was working just as hard as i should have just said look at how awesome i am at my job i can do all this and i'm i'm awesome at it and then you don't then they never know yeah i i should have just let them think i was still buried under that mountain paperworks and like watch netflix in the back like that's that's what i should have done what i did do was say hey look at this cool thing i made and they were like awesome this is really cool it turns out we don't need you anymore thank you that's great now we can save money and guess how we're going to save money we're going to let you go yeah so so now that occurs and you say okay i did i did so great of a job i no longer have a job so now what it so how did you where did you transition from there uh from there um the commander of the unit that i was in uh was going to iraq she got pulled for the assignment and i got tapped on the shoulder to go with her and it was going to be my first deployment so i took it that was 2017. um by the time we got direct with all the train up and everything was about a year and a half in the process and so i get to iraq and now i have these skills you know what i mean i know i can i can code i can i can do a little bit i know hey you know everything i knew i i learned from google and so i'm like anything that i need to know in the future i'll probably just google it um which is uh something nobody told ever told me about tech like hey you ever heard of github like the yeah so i get to iraq and there's a lot of processes that can be automated and i hit the ground um we saw what the other guys were doing um and a lot of it was going to be the same kind of work that i had already done previously um using ocular character recognition to strip everything out and build a data set and then move that data set into a visualization so now so you were you were continuing to basically you know you almost self-taught coding because you out of almost a desire to make it better on the previous position you had you go over to iraq and you kind of take that same mentality of hey there's a lot of process that i can improve things that can be done better and they can often that be done via software now or help me remember in the mix of all that you know you had your friend that had a motorcycle accident was that why you're in iraq or is that when you got back or kind of how did that overlay and play into everything yeah that was while i was in iraq one of my soldiers passed away um in a motorcycle accident and um i didn't uh it didn't really click in my mind i just knew that this was something that had happened and i knew it was something that frequently happened to soldiers and uh upon returning i found out about the circumstances of his death and you know i was like uh there's there's got to be something right there's got to be something out there that stops this from happening there's got to be something out there that calls um you know that calls ems when there's a crash like like monster like onstar for motorcycles and i just i started rolling and um i you know i start doing my research and i'm like why is there why is there nothing out here and it seems so simple and whenever i talk about what i do now um most people are like wait that didn't exist and i'm like that's what i said yeah exactly you know it's one of those that makes logical sense you're like okay you know you have them for cars if you get an accident you have an issue you know you can they'll detect the accident and they'll automatically call 9-1-1 and let them know over your um year's location and kind of you know that something's occurred and that they should respond but it also makes sense you know motorcycles is one where you don't have necessarily the you know it's it would be different in the sense you'd have to do different sensors or figure out a different way to detect it because you're not going to have the same you know front impact sensors you might have and how that would go so in one sense it definitely makes sense why you would want it and yet also why they may not have put that together so you kind of had that uh you know that idea that epiphany now did you start to work on it did you put it or you know hold it off for a period of time or kind of as your as that came up and you had your friend that had that experience how did you start to do or blend that in with what everything else you had going on well when i came back in in 2018 um i i had this idea um and i had ordered some parts i had ordered um a microcontroller and uh some drone sensors um like a gps chip and those kinds of things i was like i think these are kind of the things that i'm going to need to build this i don't know how they work yet but i guess i'll figure it out and just as a hobby i started i started tinkering with this until i had um built my proof of concept um you know and was able to attach it to a motorcycle battery and it runs itself and it and it works uh and it spits out the data that i needed and i was like okay what do i do now and i i kind of put it on hold because at the same time that i'm doing all of this i started doing stand-up comedy that's that's a fun er a different direction so you're doing one one hand you're working on a um onstar for motorcycles and then you're also getting a stand-up comedy career going and what what made you decide that you know what made you decide to go into stand-up comedy is just always something that sounded fun or something that you're passionate about or what how did you kind of get into that i think that i had um uh i had something to say you know i felt like i had i thought i thought it was a pretty funny guy uh and i felt like i could um provide some really interesting insights about uh specifically about the military that was what most of my jokes were about um uh but i also uh through that i kind of saw some some issues in the comedy world and i set out on solving those and i started a comedy company and that was kind of my focus after i had already built uh the first rex device um and i just i ran with comedy for a year um well over a year until um coveted and then that's when i i picked it back up and uh i was like well this is this cool thing that i built and i've got nothing but time since i've been laid off um and uh you know why not why not chase this down um and at the same time that that i'm chasing rex down um an opportunity presents itself in comedy and you know a couple months later i'm a comedy club voter as well so you you actually as a as covent hitting that you decided you would acquire comedy club and have that as an opportunity assuming things open back up and then during the meantime while cove would kind of shut that down or in person things you would focus on the onstar am i reading that right yeah that's exactly that's exactly what happened while everything was shut down it kind of uh it was rex's the sole focus and i was able to make all the progress that i could um you know i hired i hired the right individuals to take my my stop my hardware prototype and start making that a real commercially viable thing um and you know hired the right software team to start fleshing out my idea into something that can actually be usable and uh you know interact with it with an app like um and uh at the same time you know everything's everything's still shut down um and then one of my old comedian friends uh says hey i'm gonna start doing shows again as things start to trickle open um and he wanted to use my company's name and uh i was like yeah yeah sure you know i've just got a bunch of followers sitting out there um waiting for comedy as far as i'm concerned you know the comedy seemed grown so quickly here uh it was already awesome and then you know there's this huge influx as more and more uh comedians moved here and so we just kind of wrote that out um and he started growing our our shows you know all of these were local bar shows you know um bars and venues would bring us in to provide comedy on wednesday and tuesday nights um and and that was it and then all of a sudden um in november the uh creek in the cave in new york which was very beloved uh by the scene club uh shuts down because they couldn't handle covet um and uh my the guy that i had one of the comedy company his name is marty clark he reaches out to her and says hey you want to move to austin and so we raise we raise money i mean basically overnight we raised 400 000 in two weeks and we're able to make this comedy club happen so now so you've now got on the one hand you've got the comedy club and on the other hand you've got onstar for motorcycles so kinda now bringing it up to uh to today are you continuing to pursue both you know is both of us a passion you know is comedy open back up as comedy clubs open back up or if you still have a good degree of free time such you can pursue onstar kind of what is the mix or kind of where things out for you today um the mix is very much uh [Music] currently we just had our opening weekend uh last weekend uh it went great um and as you know everything's running smoothly i i barely have anything to do there i'm mostly standing in the way uh um and so it's uh it's been a huge relief to not have to worry about that anymore now that we're open um and you know going forward everything that i do i usually spend my days you know wake up really early um you know go go fix something at the club um and then sit at the club and uh on my laptop just sending emails and which is most of what running a business is sending emails and you know getting quotes back and working on uh our testing plans and our product development line and our manufacturing uh how all how all the pieces are going to play together um so rex has definitely been a huge focus for me um and then comedy is just it's just so much fun man it's so much fun to be around how could you stay away um so so now that kind of so it sounds like to to a degree you know you're still part of the comedy club you're still doing that um but it allows you to also focus on and go or you know continue to develop the onstar for motorcycles so now kind of looking towards the future you know now you're saying okay this is where i'm at today this is where i'm headed kind of you look at the next six to 12 months where do you see things headed is it more of the focus on the onstar you'll get that out in the marketplace going is it already out in the marketplace and same thing in the comedy club kind of where do you see that balance or where do you see things headed uh you know i don't uh concern myself too much with what's going on in the club um you know it's i'm just there because i'm the guy that knows how to use a drill the best i know how to i know how to i know how to use a drill and an assault i can fix things i'm a pretty handy guy so i that's what i get used for in the mornings um and then we just have we also grate my eyes just to be around and be able to really focus on what's going on rex so in the next uh six to 12 months we'll definitely be we are knocking it out in our development process right now um we're going to be going into crash testing in the next couple months uh just waiting to clear legal and uh and we're ready to go we'll have our uh testing prototypes on bikes and get our betas out uh before august and um we'll see how that goes and get all that testing done and then november december you know try to get a product out right in time for the uh the christmas season and that's i mean that's just for our direct to consumer side uh we also secured a small business innovation research grant from the air force uh and so we'll also be contracting um building this out for them all right sounds like plenty of things to keep you busy and keep you motivated so that's awesome sounds like a lot of fun things ahead well as we um you know kind of catch up kind of see where you're at today and also where you're headed i always you know transition to two questions i always ask at the end of the podcast so go ahead and jump to those now so the first question i'd 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 you made um man uh [Music] you know i knew this was going to be on the quiz i didn't study um the worst business decision i made was um initially i think what took me so long uh getting getting my focus back into rex um was trying to work with friends and trying to you know my friends that knew how to code better than i did and um trying to be like hey can we sit down and you can look at this bit of code that i wrote and see if i've got any problems here like because i can't figure it out um eventually i realized like my friends are going to stop wanting to hang out with me so i stopped pushing them and uh just really focused on on teaching myself and uh realized that you know in the first couple months it was it was just me i had a co-founder um but he had other obligations and it couldn't be as present as he would have liked to um and through that you know i ended up doing everything i but now because of that initially it was this huge headache trying to scramble to learn everything that i needed to do hardware wise and uh how do i get a manufacturing quote and how do i do all these things and how how do i get a patent like um you know i ended up turning to fiverr for a lot of things that i couldn't i couldn't do myself i certainly wasn't going to spend it was all about balance of do i spend my time learning something and doing it or do i pay somebody to do it because my time is better spent doing something else and because of that because i spent all that time learning because it was all me and that in the beginning of this i know this business in and out you know i did all the market research i did all the i can spout the numbers at you uh like the back of my hand you know i know it so well um so this thing that i thought was initially was a huge headache turned out to be um a great uh a great decision no that's always interesting you know especially when you're getting to a startup small business you know at some point as you bring people on as you as it grows and expands you know you have to do that but it's always great as you start out you have to have that kind of foundational knowledge of hey this is or is impossible and you have you know able to understand hey this should take x amount of time or i anticipated doing that and if not you know you can kind of get a gauge for as you bring people on as you hire it out and do other things you can get that found you'll have that foundation to work from and if you kind of try and jump past that foundation it's hard to really run or effectively run the business so i think that definitely makes sense uh what you mentioned so now for the 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 uh i did think about this question and the answer is um do it do that thing you need to do i mean you have that idea go chase it down go uh go learn what you need to learn to get it done and get it done and i i love that you know it's funny as and i and i say it almost every time that i hear the answer because as many different people to talk to with this much different journeys i would say that you know a variation of that answer is going to be the most common answer and i think that's because everybody that does do a startup does do a small business they always find out once they get started once they just dive in they do it how exciting or fun and enjoyable and rewarding it is and if they didn't always wish you know hey i wish i got started earlier wish i'd been doing this because it's just so you know i enjoy it so much type of a thing and that doesn't mean that it's not hard and difficult doesn't take a lot of blood sweat and tears and nights and weekends and evenings and worrying and juggling lots of hats but on the other hand if you you know you get into it you can much or much more quickly find that you love it you enjoy it or you're not cut out to it and you don't want to do it but i think that that that's a great uh great takeaway so yeah i'm excited to see oh sorry i'm really excited to see the uh the businesses that are coming out of kovit right now that started in code um because i feel like you know a lot of people were like me on unemployment and you know maybe had an idea rolling around and then started chasing it down because of that free time and i think that there's going to be some really cool stuff coming out of the next few years um you know as as terrible as kovit has been for everyone um there's uh got to be somebody out there that's going to make something great out of this situation no and i absolutely agree and i think it'll be interesting because i think covet is one giving people more time to think ponder look review and then all you know more time on their hands because they are have been stuck inside but also gives you an opportunity to say hey you know i can do this or i'm going to pursue this or i have the time now to do it once i've always kind of made excuses or put on the back burner and a lot of those ski excuses have been removed so i think it will be an exciting time to see how it all evolves and how how many startups and different startups come out of all of it so yeah it's really i think it's going to be a really great time to be an ip lawyer well i'll i'll definitely always uh take that because uh that's uh that's my love of my passion so well as we wrap up if you if people want to reach out they want to find out more about you your business they want to be a they want they ride motorcycles they want to be a customer client they're a upcoming comedian want to be your uh be do a show at your club they want to be an investor they want to be a partner they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you find out more and connect with you uh you can find us on all social medias at get rex w-r-e-x-x uh you can find us at getrex.com um you can find the comedy club at creek um come by and see us all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check any and all the above out and i think that both you know both the comedy club sounds like a blast and the onstar for motorcycles definitely sounds like um a worthwhile and rewarding pursuit so thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey and tell and you want to come on the podcast and be a guest feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one make sure to 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 us last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else reach out to us at millerip law and we're always here to help just go to strategymeeting.com thank you again gabriel it's been fun it's been a pleasure to have you on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much devin it's good

Just Start Now

Lauren Chitwood
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/14/2021

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 i think people really struggle to get started and you know i will say that that action is the most important thing so you know if you're tossling or thinking about an idea um and you can't quite decide like you just gotta go and you gotta go fast and you're gonna like bump into walls and then you go oh okay we're going this direction now and like that's all normal right like startups aren't normal i think that's the other thing that a lot of people fail to understand it's like these are these really weird experiments you know and and you just have to test and test and test and see what works and when you you know you keep that feedback loop tight and you just keep on going but [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin mittler the silver the serial entrepreneur that's a grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as a ceo and founder of miller iplock 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 we are always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast lauren chitwood and give a bit of a background on lauren so she was wanting to be an entrepreneur for a while uh went to school in uh and graduated in 2008 with a public relations degree from university of kentucky and uh after graduation kind of started getting into lecturing events for kind of business related and events where it's a bit of the higher skill or upscale but or luxury side and skilled that business grew up for a while until 2016 when she sold it and then was looking for something new and the intent what part of it was to take her weekends back and may or may not have ever happened and she could chime in on that but that was part of the intent also was looking for something new that was fun met a co-founder that was in the hospital hospitality business as well and uh was looking or did a lot in the goods and wines and those type of festivals and started looking into different companies and partnered with different brands and kind of was looking for that and also reflecting back on doing a lot of the luxury events they've done and saying there was a i think there was a demand for spirit-less drinks or in other words non-alcoholic drinks or for spirits and how that was often demanded how they could start to build and form a company around that so with that formed a company and has been growing it ever since which is now spiritless.com so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast lauren thank you devon thank you very much so i gave the brief 30 second run through of a much longer journey so let's why don't you take us back in time a bit and tell us a little bit about how it got started and then kind of uh graduating in 2008. yeah well so as you as you summarize so i'm i'm a 2008 grad and i think as many graduates at that time as you're coming out of school and looking at the job market you're not exactly sure what's there for you um and i i was really sure i didn't want to go back to school and i was also really sure that i didn't want to call banner ads online and that that sort of felt like maybe my my options and so i said you know what i think i've got a network that will still be entertaining despite the times and you know i think that i think that i i think that i have the organizational skills and the know-how to to start an event business so jumped right in and was wonderfully naive which i think is a really an important skill for for many entrepreneurs because if you knew if you knew everything that you needed to know you probably wouldn't do it right because there's all those problems that we know you run into um and and yeah ended up scaling scaling that business and i sold it in 2016. now one question i'll get into because you touched on it a bit so you come out with public relations saying okay i want to do something first of all 2008 to your point is probably not the most the best type or at least in quotes the best time to graduate in the sense that it's starting to hit the crash and the housing market and things are starting to be a downturn and yet you're still graduating you still have to figure out a way to make an income make a living so how did you how did you kind of land on the luxury events and kind of doing that for in the business space was it hey i'll do something and this sounds exciting and just light bulb moment or how did you kind of land on that yeah i think it just felt accessible to me you know i think if as you look at other businesses you know and and certainly something that we're very familiar with with now and spiritless is you know just the you know the cost of entry into a lot of these a lot of these worlds or new businesses you know take some real real capital and you know what i what i liked about the event business is that um you know it was it was a relatively um accessible business for me from a financial perspective to get going and so that was really you know that would just you know an instinctual idea for my skill set um was really what said like i'm gonna try this so so and so you land on that and i agree with the your comment that you made that you know every i think every entrepreneur has to be a bit of an over overly optimistic or a bit naive in the sense if you really understood all the possible things that you could go wrong all the things that you don't know all the hidden costs all the other things you would probably never get into it because you'd be scared off way too early on and yet there's it presents a lot of opportunities so because you're you know you don't know these things you're willing to dive in get going and you can often times figure those out so i i tend to agree that there needs to be a bit of optimism now you grew that it would have been what about eight years that you were in the luxury event and kind of that you know luxury event business now as you're getting towards the end of that you decided to sell now is that out of a matter of you had somebody come along and making the proverbial offer you can't refuse we're saying hey i want to take a break this is you know the markets drying up what you know kind of what prompted the shift or that sell the business and to go on to something else it was it was an offer you know it was an offer at just the right time to probably if i was being honest which is um you know i had a young family at the time and you know there were over 30 weekends a year that i probably wasn't sleeping and running around you know dealing with some unforeseen you know crisis because that's just really what the the live event world is right just dealing with whatever happens and and you know the best laid plans um you know sometimes go awry so it was it was a really good timing for me i was i was actively already thinking about what was my next thing what what did i need to do you know i think the event business although it's a wonderful business it is um it is for the young i think that you know i knew that as i although i still i still consider myself young but i knew that it wasn't something i wanted for my for my my whole life and so you know i had already kind of had that realization and and when the offer came it was like well yes it was it was great it was just great no and i think that that you know it's usually most of the time you know because people can make an offer in your business a lot of times you say no i want to keep it or i'm enjoying it but a lot of times it's in that timing of hey i'm looking to take back a little bit of my personal life family life i'm you know maybe a bit worn out and all of those things kind of combine and say okay it's the right time so they make the offer so now they make the offer they buy out the business you sell that you know no what did you do did you write immediately go to your next you know great idea and then you know start looking for business say hey i'm going to take some time off somebody else approached you what they did kind of how did you now that you sold the business how did you kind of tackle that next phase yeah and so i you know i i probably took very little time off i think in hindsight i think it felt like an extraordinary amount of time but i think it was probably like three months that was the gap which is kind of laughable but probably i don't know for you know if you're always go go go and you you know you're doing a startup small business that amount of time you're sitting there saying okay i've got a lot of time right now what am i going to do you get you know you oh it always like it i'm kind of the same way i always like you know it'd be nice one time to just have weekends and nights where i don't have to think of anything and i turn my brain off and then i'm like yeah and i'd probably do that and if i would ever step back i'd probably get bored and in a month or two i'd be right back to where i'm at because you know that's i think a lot of times how you're wired yeah i don't think i turned my brain off for a second to be honest i mean i think that i was already incubating what was the what was the potential next thing and so i knew that i wanted to i knew i wanted my next business if i was going to stay in the hospitality and event lane which i felt like i had a lot of power in i felt like it was something that i that i really intimately understood i also knew that i really wanted to get away from the um from the emotion of taking someone or an individual's money in return for an event because that's also just like it's a roller coaster corporate dollars are much more transactional right this has nothing to do with someone's ego or you know whatever they're they're kind of trying to express um and so you know i knew that i was looking for for something that was that was outside of the leisure business i also knew that i was looking for for something that i could do with a partner i think that you know although although being a solopreneur you know there there are benefits to it but they're also just like i will never do a business by myself ever again and so all the while i'm you know just kind of incubating ideas thinking about what's next thinking about what a partner would be and who i should look for and then um you know by by another stroke of maybe luck or you know supreme manifestation i met my my co-founder in my second business abby ferguson who's actually a co-founder in spirit list as well so now how did you how did you guys connect was it somebody already knew you had to happen to meet in a coffee shop and hit it off you went to a business event how did you make that connection our networks pushed us together so um it was interesting so abby has this great history in food and beverage and so she was on the the founding team of the new york city food and wine festival when it came up from south beach from there she went down to atlanta and was on the founding team of the atlanta food and wine festival which also sold in 2016. she happened to be in louisville her husband is a native and it was it was funny because for months both of us kept hearing our network and our our pals say you know you should really meet so and so or you should meet lauren or you should meet abby and it was really serendipitous just on on an evening out she was actually walking into a doorway i was walking out of and everybody said wait wait hold on we've been trying to connect you to wait wait wait until we literally stood and talked in this doorway um in exchange exchanged phone numbers and then and then from there we we say we call it our daily period you know we had a lot of lunches and got to know one another and talked about what could be and um you know how we would blend her experience and you know the value that she brought versus um with everything that that i knew and had had experience who business so uh so yeah that's that's how it happened no and that definitely you know that's always it's always interesting how you connect with people and whether it's clients or founders or co-founders or business partners it's not necessarily the way that you you know it's not like in the movies or the television show where it's just a perfect match made in heaven but it's oftentimes you know different or interesting ways that you make the the connection so you guys said you know you made that connection you finally connected you did you went through the dating period which i think is smart on everybody's head in the sense that once you you know it it is a lot like dating and marriage in the sense that a business partner you're working with them for a long period of time you're going to have your ups and downs you're going to have the business that's going to go through struggles you're probably going to have your fights and you know you have a lot of joint assets so there's a lot of overlap and i think to make sure that that's a good fit is absolutely you know makes sense so now as you you kind of go through that dating period how did did you whose idea was it or how did you guys land on this spirit-less kind of an idea yeah so you know what we we started a company called olio and what oleo did and this was this was the second business and spirit list is the third in my life cycle so um so olio essentially connected the trade and the consumer to big beverage uh conglomerates and the brands that fell underneath them and so abby has the most amazing rolodex i mean if you are a heavy hitter in the food and beverage world she has probably worked with you and probably saved your bacon at some point so um we really use those contacts as a way to do experiential events to do um you know all kinds of marketing campaigns and marketing initiatives by being able to kind of layer on layer on that rolodex and you know that is kind of an additional additional perk um or additional angle if you will and you know really where spirit list was ultimately born is that we kept solving the same problem for all of our customers they were they were calling us and it was it was always an afterthought but always urgent and they were saying i'm so sorry i didn't i failed to mention this but this is really important we need something non-alcoholic and can it not be you know there was water coffee juice nothing syrup-based you know there was there was nothing in a can there was this enormous list of qualifiers and as we time and time again went to try to solve that problem we were really struggling to do it in a way that was creative or that wasn't just water or something that was juice-based and so um so that's really the the aha moment for for when spiritless was born is is you know just solving our own our own problems and our customers problems no and that definitely makes sense you know it's interesting uh how often times the customers will come and tell you what they want some people are good if you're a good entrepreneur you'll listen you know it's always a balance in the sense if you get some customers they tell you it's what they want but they're not willing to pay for it or they're not willing to actually do anything about it and this is kind of yeah this would be a nice to have and they keep telling you and then you go do it and you're not you know nobody it's a failed business because nobody wants to pay for it but all the other times you know if your customers are consistently wanting it and already paying you for it it presents an opportunity for you now one question i'd have is so you have oleo which is the other business that you guys say hey we're going to run these two businesses side by side we're going to spin this out it's going to start out as one business or kind of we're going to close one down close the other business down because this is a better opportunity kind of how did you make the transition yeah so so we incubated it for a while in oleo um you know we had we had kind of a separate half of the world that you know was was working and thinking about this doing some market research you know we were we were kind of plugging away a little bit on the sidelines and then when we when we really were able to just assess the size and the scope of the opportunity we just said this is ours this is ours to miss and so we essentially um we we closed that business and and went full force and into spirit-less well that kudos to you guys now one or follow-up question i have lots of fun or questions yeah and to do that you know what period of time was that over where you kind of had the idea you started to transition it take you know test it out see if it works before you made the full jump and shut down the other business was this over a week a month a year five years it was probably it was probably between three and six months which you know and i think that one of the things that i honestly felt is even you know there was there was also some other strain and some other optics happening which is that for me i really desired out of a key man business but i found myself in another keyman business which is that you know abby and i were really kind of the intellectual capital of that business that that ultimately you know scaling it again and having an asset that probably really um lived outside of us on a day-to-day was going to be really challenging and that was becoming apparent we were still kind of on that client hamster wheel which is just like oh you know every single day there's just a new a new thing and and that's really that's one of the challenges of services based businesses um so you know i was i was tossling with that reality all the while we were working on spirit list and you know to have something that you know while certainly team is enormously valuable but an asset that can really live outside of me um was was something that i was highly interested in and so as we were was we were incubating that i was also just saying like i think this is really where i want to be um no and that that definitely makes sense and so so now you guys you know you figure out okay we do that for a period time we have a transition we say hey the bigger opportunities here we're more excited about it we don't have to be on the hamster wheel of always you're trying to generate new business and clients and we can focus on the product and kind of sales on that so you go through all of that and you jump into spirit list and this was i think he said either you're third second or third startup and it was the other founders now now as you get into it was it you know was it easier after doing it multiple rounds and already have working with your partner would it still present issues would that the businesses take off and skyrocket was it bumpy as you're trying to you know get people to accept the product or how did that launch go yeah no i mean listen the launch has gone incredibly well we're we're so fortunate i think that you know although we had touched beverage and in so many ways over the course of our careers there is there is an enormous hurdle on creating a liquid that then goes to live on a shelf and i think that's also one of those things when i start thinking about the beautiful night vitae of entrepreneurship had we known how hard it was going to be to to create a process to bring it to scale to you know to navigate all the the regulatory nuance with making a high proof spirit and then turning it into a non-alcoholic product and meeting the um the you know food and alcohol regulations and then the fda you know there's so much nuance to it and those are things that we we sort of knew but then as you live it is so challenging so i will say that we have experienced success that is so far beyond my expectation especially for the amount of time that we have been in business but at the same time have had pains and hurdles um that were completely not what we expected as well but i guess if i had to pick the problem um you know having more supply than we have to or having more demand than we have supply for is probably the problem that i would choose that's always a much better it's it can still be a problem don't get i mean i think that people say oh you have sales and you know oh you now you still have to keep up with the band but it's always a much more fun and better problem to solve than hey we don't have any demand now how do we make a business out of that and so now you do that and you kind of you know take that over the last few years you guys have been building it you've been growing it you've been seeing success and finding that that place in the marketplace now looking a bit forward you know kind of the next six to 12 months where do you guys see where do you see things headed yeah so we're really fortunate that we've got this wonderful national footprint now so you know bottles are over all 50 states and that's an off-premise on-premise um also we're shipping of course direct to consumer so you know bottles are showing up on customers doorsteps and they're enjoying um you know i think when we start looking at the next six to 12 months what we're really seeing is of course an expansion of that footprint especially in the on premise um obviously being in this kind of new post almost post covered world um you know there's we're fortunate there's just enormous pent-up demand um you know in the hospitality space that i think we're really starting to feel come back in a meaningful way which is really exciting um and then we're also you know our eyes are on the prize when we start thinking about future innovations so our first product is kentucky 74. it's a non-alcoholic spirit for bourbon cocktails and we're also working on a on a product that is a that will be a similar product but for tequila based cocktails um and that will be launching in the second half of this year for us also size is an is is an innovation um so we're thinking about smaller sizes looking at doing you know specialty mailing experiences and a variety of of other things um but you know right now it's just um it's just frankly like we are still just making sure that we've got the capacity to make all of this stuff because holy moly people are buying it that's awesome that's always that's it sounds like a lot of fun or fun opportunities before you know move forward and it's always whenever you're looking in the future it's kind of you know how much do we expand how much should we try new things how much should we stay with our core product do we do more product offerings we go to different verticals or hey we go to different verticals they can sometimes hurt the brand so it's always interesting to see kind of all the different options available especially as you're seeing success and kind of where things are headed well as we start to wrap up i always have two questions at the end of each podcast so we'll go ahead and jump to those now um first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it oh my gosh um you know i will say along my journey probably the worst uh business decisions that i've made is not um not correcting a poor hiring decision um as quickly as i should have and i will say that i've i've learned that lesson twice and it was enough um and you know not to say that uh you know that it spirals your head's on the chopping block immediately but i think that you know being an empathetic person sometimes we hesitate too much to make decisions that that we know the answers to um and so i will say that i'm that i'm much more highly focused on when i know it's not right i'm i've got the power to say it and i'm and i'm you know i'm much more aggressive and remedying those uh those issues issues really quickly no i and that's one it's a lesson i had to learn as well and you know it's first of all i always found that you know when you're when you're a founder co-founder an entrepreneur you always think and at least i didn't i'll put i won't say always a lot of people think hey everybody is going to work as hard as me and everybody's going to be involved with the business and you come to as you start to grow and as you start to make it higher you come to find out not everybody works as quite as many hours as you are quite as excited and to find those individuals that are really excited about the business isn't quite as easy as it might sound and then the other one is it's hard you know especially in your small business is you get to know the people and you know whether or not they're doing a job whether or not they're good and play for the business you still develop a relationship with them they're they're in the trenches they're with you and so that one is one that you know i think is a difficulty that a lot of people hit into as as they start to get into entrepreneurship they hire people in that that it takes a couple times before you know or even more sometimes to get it right to figure out how to hire who to hire what to look for what to not look for what are the flags because it's it's a much more complex problem so it definitely makes that make sense and when it's good it's so good and i think that's the thing like you got to hold on to that idea of like i know this is painful but the right person in this role is just like you know it makes a huge difference it makes a huge difference and so you got to keep your eye on the prize right the the like the short-term pain is really an investment in a long-term gain and um you know culture culture is everything so no and the one other thing i'll add and then we'll jump to the second question which is i think sometimes especially the temptation with the startup or small businesses you get so busy you have so many things to do you get a demand you need to bring someone on and you tend to hire too quickly in the sense you just need to have you think oh i just need somebody that can do this position and you don't take the time to vet the people or get the right people and those are usually the more costly hires because then you end up having to go redo it anyway let them go after you already brought them on train them and everything and you have to go refine that right person so sometimes slowing it down has a big benefit yep it's you know it's it's hard either way because yes things are moving fast i hear ya so now i'll jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them to start i think people really struggle to get started and you know i will say that that action is the most important thing so you know if you're tossling or thinking about an idea um and you can't quite decide like you just gotta go and you gotta go fast and you're gonna like bump into walls and then you go oh okay we're going this direction now and like that's all normal right like startups aren't normal i think that's the other thing that a lot of people fail to understand it's like these are these really weird experiments you know and and you just have to test and test and test and see what works and when you you know you keep that feedback loop tight and you just keep on going but um i can't tell you how many um entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs i i talk to you and and they're really immobilized by the unknowns and and that's just that's you can't be like you just have to go um and and just always be testing and keep your eyes open no and i don't like that and interestingly i think we're coming up on a couple hundred episodes i can't remember when this will air or what number it is exactly but i'd probably say out of all the entrepreneurs i've talked with that have been on the podcast and that i work with my business that's probably the number one answer that you know it's usually a variation of get started earlier you know don't get make up excuses or get started now but it's interesting that in many different industries and many different journeys and everything people that's the one thing because people often times you make too many excuses or you make a reason why you know and i i think mentioned a little bit on the podcast before is you can always make your excuse you know i could when i started out it could have been hey you're still in school so you know i got to wait till i graduate once i graduate i got to get a little bit of experience and then once i get a little experience now i started a family and i have a kids and i have responsibilities and then you get in say oh i'll do it when i'm older and then when you get older say well i've done it for so long i'm too old or i can't risk you know too late and there's always a reason to not start now or the economy is not good or the economy or i'm waiting for a different change in whatever it is and it's always an excuse and there's always a reason not to get started and yet just get started just do it freaking rip the band-aid off man yeah well now as we wrap up if people want to uh connect up with you they want to be a customer or client they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend and you're all the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more yeah so obviously you can visit and purchase spirit lists at spiritless.com um and then i am available by email so lauren at spiritless.com all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check out the website uh support the com or the business and reach out to lauren if you have a question whether it's eddie or all of the above uh great that she's available well thank you again lauren 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 we'd love to share your journey so just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast and we'd love to share a couple more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe 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 as well last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else feel free to reach out to us just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat thank you again lauren it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last awesome thanks devin

How To Get An Assistant

Trish Lewellyn
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/13/2021

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

talk to maybe another business owner or talk to someone um just because you talk to a virtual assistant doesn't necessarily mean you have to hire them if you know someone wanted to contact me you know i have these questions that would be fine i wouldn't mind talking to them you know so you know just ask ask around ask people you know um or if you have emails for a virtual assistant you know shoot them an email or you know online shoot them an email ask them questions if if they're good enough and if they're if they're classy enough they will answer any questions that that person has without expecting them to automatically become a client 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 help 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 guest and this is an expert episode um and it's trish and i'm going to mispronounce your last name lou well in louelle all right i made my way through it so um but uh trish we're gonna talk a lot about um administrative assistants or administrative people how to get an assistant hiring one how to find one um what you might consider when you're looking for one determining if you need one whether you need an administrative assistant a virtual assistant kind of knowing what to look for and what kind of expertise how you know maybe a bit of remote working with cove and whatnot how that's affected things a little bit difference between doing an employee versus independent contractor lots of things we could talk about we'll see how much we get through on the list but lots of fun things to talk about so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast trish thank you very much devon i'm looking forward to it so before we dive into the area of expertise maybe just give a bit of a background you know for a couple minutes two or three minutes and tell us everybody a little bit about your background your experience and why you're an expert on this uh this area well expert you say i'm an expert i'm working at it um i've been an administ assistant for oh well over 20 years most of the time working in an office just like everyone else worked for many ceos vice presidents entrepreneurs but i got tired of working 50 60 hours a week and then still bringing work home with me and many years ago someone mentioned to me this was long before it was even known that well about working virtually so i had someone who gave me some names to start with and i did it just kind of part time to see if i could do it and what have you well what it came down to i was doing so well and i was getting so tired of working all those hours and not having any kind of life that i quit my job in the office i started doing this full-time and i've been doing it ever since then it's been over 12 years now that i've been a virtual assistant i can work as many or as few hours as i want i still have a life i can stop and do things during the day i have a lot of animals if i need to take them to the vet i can i don't have to worry about asking someone's permission or permission to go to the doctor or have my eyes checked or just to go shopping i can do it as long as i meet deadlines i can do what i want so that's why in a nutshell i switched from in office to virtual no it definitely makes sense and so then appreciate that that bit of that background so now maybe uh kind of jumping into a bit of the topic at hand so to speak um you know i guess the first question i would have is you know especially if you're talking in a lot of our audiences startups and small businesses is you know what uh and they've kind of heard hey you know i'm getting overloaded have a lot of things to get done never have enough hours in the day so they kind of say hey it'd be nice to have an assistant or someone that could i could offer some of that or free up some of my time and be able to focus on it so as you're kind of thinking about whether it's a virtual assistant or administrative assistant which i think is similar or synonymous other than one maybe in the office versus remotely what are some of the tasks that you can start to look at to offload or if you're saying hey should i bring one on or what that kind of what are a lot of the roles that oftentimes that administrative assistant or virtual assistant would fail well just um a quick um fyi a lot of people especially now are going with virtual assistants because a they don't have to have an office um virtual assistants use their own equipment so companies don't have to to you know put money into that um virtual assistants independent contractors are liable for their own taxes their own insurance so that's another thing off the plate of an owner or someone just getting started one thing um i've learned over the years um with um any kind of a new business or anybody who's starting a business and want to grow their business if they're spending more time on the paperwork or invoicing or what have you and not being able to grow their business then they need help and a virtual assistant doesn't have to be full-time i have many clients that i only work five hours a week for you know so it doesn't have to be 10 hours it doesn't have to be 20 hours and it certainly doesn't have to be 40 hours two or three or five generally with most virtual assistants um there's no minimum at least there isn't with me if you just help two or three hours a week that's fine if you need help five hours that's fine too but if you find you're at the point where you're not being able to grow your business you're so bogged down in the paperwork that you can't move forward then you need help even if it's just a few hours a week so now one question and i think that's a great answer and one question may be pigging back on that and there's a whole bunch of fun questions we could ask but so let's say i said okay i am bogged down i need and it could be everything from i need a couple hours assistance a week all the way up i need 40 hours or i need even more than that whatever that range is okay i need to find a virtual assistant how do you go about doing that in the sense that you know let's say if i if i don't already know someone to reach out to or i don't do it do you go through an employment firm do you go through a google search do you ask around and ask for referrals you go to linkedin or kind of if you're saying okay i made a realization i need to i i think i need to hire a virtual assistant how do you even go about tackling or finding one actually it's yes to all of those because i've gotten clients from all of those i've had people contact me through linkedin there's all kinds of various sources out there indeed you'll find a lot of people um putting job applications um for help wanted and indeed or even the zip recruiter there's all kinds of um resources now popping up for um for companies that just specialize in hiring out virtual assistants a few years ago there were none now they're they're popping up all over the place and you can find some very good reputable ones so and of course word of mouth is everything in any kind of business so um i've gotten them always so those are just a few of the ones but you can just go on indeed and and um put in a a job source where you know i need a virtual assistant or if you want to be more specialized you can do that um but those are those are any number of the ways that you can find help so now one question i'll follow up and it's a hard maybe it's not a hard question i think it's a hard question which is so you know if you're doing a virtual a lot of times you say i know i need someone because i don't have enough time in the day but i really don't know what the position is or i don't know exactly what i'm going to offload or it's going to be kind of figuring it out as i go along so to speak of hey i know i have a lot of paperwork i have odd jobs i have things i need to take care of do you need or how well defined do you need to have that position when you're starting to look for someone to say do you say hey i need a whole bunch of assistance in these areas and i don't know exactly how much time because i think a lot of you know if you're a startup or you know if you're just getting into it this first time you've done it you don't know how much you can offload or how much time it will save or how much needs to do until you actually get going so any thoughts or ideas as to how you kind of start to figure that out or you just hire someone and figure it out along the way does that make sense yes it does actually um especially if it's a company that's just starting out you know they can just place a general ad or just talk to someone and say i possibly need help in these areas but i don't know for sure and then when you get on the phone for an interview with someone then you too especially if the virtual assistant is experienced you can talk through um what your needs may be where you find yourself or what job tasks that you find the owner doing that you absolutely hate because if the job owner is doing those then he's he's putting it off he's he's not really liking to do it so he puts it off he's only doing it halfway so that's a good way to judge of um because most people hate doing the stuff that i love to do i love sitting in front of a computer doing the mundane stuff the boring stuff that most people think of doing they hate that i love it so if i can take those off their plate then they find that they're freed up for a lot more important things to do say like if someone hates invoicing okay you hate it i love it i'll do it you know it's be as simple as that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it it's like most things in life so is that almost no kind of is i like that answer is that almost a way that you can in some degree filter out who would be a good virtual assistant in other words you know if you're saying hey i have a lot that they can help me say hey here are some of the things that i can do i'm experiencing i've helped other people it kind of shows that they know what they're doing and they've already done this so they can help you along the way seems like that's kind of a good way to almost figure out who is experience or who would be a good match correct correct and um some of that should show up on your resume but again sometimes resumes are just talk but um yeah if you get to talking with someone um you can say well i've done the owner could say you know i have a lot of invoicing that i need to do and i really hate to do it and it takes up so much of my time usually an experienced virtual assistant will say hey i've done this for many many years i've done this for so and so different businesses so that way you can kind of gauge what their background is how they're liking it or same way with calendar management there's a lot of that nowadays calendar email management well i think that that's you know and i always i always and especially on calendar management i and i i still tend to like to i'm that's one aspect i don't know if i love it but it's one that i i've two eight over 10 over two i want to make sure that my calendar is right so i would have a hard time but i get that one we're getting overloaded with emails and two you're getting overloaded with calendars and i look at my calendar and it's chock full every day and i barely have time to breathe so to speak and i have to intentionally set time aside for but i think that those are definitely areas that you know would be helpful that people could say hey if you don't like these things i like that you know a lot of times it's starting with what are the things that you don't like to do that you put off because a lot of times those are holding your business back because they're not getting done and find someone else that does love them and i think that that's a great idea find someone else that does you know have that passion release that drive and that wants to do that so you can offload it yeah because so often owners whether they be owners entrepreneurs or ceos they get stuck doing those things day after day after day that they hate doing and they can't concentrate on growing their business so if they put those things on someone else that they hate doing they'll find that they cannot actually concentrate on other things and maybe even have a life you know because that's that's part of it too you want them not only to grow their business but you want them to have time to themselves or time for their families and you want them to be able to enjoy the perks of the business they're trying to grow so it makes sense to don't be so caught up in the day-to-day that you forget delegation is so important sometimes that if you try to do everything yourself you'll just find yourself just floundering no i definitely agree on that so now kind of shifting here slightly but still on the same topic you know one of the things that's been a large shift in a lot of companies and it will be interesting to see how it continues to play out is a move towards more remote working or more you know people working from home or different locations and i have different opinion you know everybody has a different opinion as to whether or not it's going to last which industries is going to last in how that will evolve will be a hybrid model and everything else you know one of the giving it or putting or my personal bias a bit a bit to it is you know some people work well with working with people remotely in the sense that they can manage it and if you're and you know they can deal with it they can have a good relationship and there are other people and probably more of me i'm in the same boat that you know i have a difficult time out of sight out of mind that you know if they don't see them in the office i can't stop by their office i can't check in with them not that they don't do a good job but i just never see them and i don't remember to follow up so as far as when you're looking at should you do it in the office should you not do in the office is a good virtual assistant you know how do you how do you start to balance that or you know how do you figure out which one's right for you well you have to know your own personality for me working virtually there's just nothing like it i love it i'm not one that i have to be in the office i have to spend time commiserating with everybody else in the office i don't need that um i'm one i'd rather be by myself do my work get it done and then have the rest of the time for myself um just not one that i need to be there and chatting with everybody and finding out you know what their life is doing and what my life is doing and you know you have to know your own personality i know some people who are very close to me who could never do it because they just don't have the motivation or the perseverance or the persistence to sit at home and do the work they need to be around other people i don't you know that that is yeah so let me ask you a follow-up question too that though but if you're looking and you're saying i don't know which i need you know i don't know if i need some in the office i don't need you know or or i can do a virtual assistant and they're doing it for the first time you know i guess a couple questions how do you know whether or not someone is good at man you know a virtual assistant is good at managing themselves from home or to getting the work done and you know kind of how do you decide which one you need because there's a difference you know if i'm in that one is knowing if the individual that is a virtual assistant in the administrative systems knowing what their person lines up with but there are some people that you know as a person you know as a person that would be doing the hiring they don't know which they need so how do you kind of is it how do you go about is it experimentation trying it out or doing that you know i don't know does that make sense oh well it does um if you're talking about the owner wondering if they need somebody in the office or they can use someone virtually sometimes it might come down to money that that's always an important thing um if they don't have the money for a big office if they don't have the money for a lot of um administrative equipment copy machines computers then definitely virtual assistant is the way to go because they supply all their own things um they don't need to go to the office so you know if you're fine the owner is fine working from home well then that's the way to go that way they don't have to to put rent in an office and all kinds of equipment but um and to again you know um some people um they don't necessarily want to just come into the office for maybe three or four hours a week virtual assistant wouldn't matter to them if it's just a couple hours a week so there's many factors it depends on what your needs are how your bottom line is because if you don't have to pay for a big office if you don't have to pay for all the equipment well then you know go with the virtual assistant no it definitely makes sense now one question kind of and all these kind of piggyback off of each other but you know now if you're looking for so let's say you've got the virtual assistant or you or the administrative the question that i would i guess and it would be one of my fears if i did you know if i were to speak for kind of the startup or that as you one where you might have is that okay i find someone that does it for three or four hours a day or three or four hours a week whatever i get them trained up i get them integrated into all that we're doing and then they're going to find another position or they're going to go you know find someone else's hire them or anything else and they're saying okay i just put in all this time and effort to train them and especially if they're virtual assistants and so they're not even you know quite as much tight in the office then it's even more worried that they're you're going to put all this time and effort and then a few months they're going to do is that a case is that a valid fear is it or is it they're pretty a lot of stability as far as once you find someone they're generally set up to continue to assist you for a long period of time or is there a lot of turnover or how does that work with virtual assistants um most virtual assistants are looking whether it's three hours a week or 20 or 40 hours a week they're looking for the long term because they don't want to keep switching where i think with the at least from my experience in the past because i used to do a lot of hiring and firing too um people would come and go a lot working in an office but with the virtual they tend to because a lot of times like myself i have clients that are 20 hours a week i have clients that are five hours a week i have clients that are 10 hours a week so you know i have different variations so i can handle them differently and i prefer and most virtual assistants will tell you this that they prefer someone they can be with on the long run they prefer someone they can grow with rather than changing up because if they're working five hours a week from someone if they need more hours they can just they can get a client that has you know well they need me for five hours so that fits in perfectly and still keep the old one rather than going from place to place to place no that definitely makes no i definitely make sense and i think at least you know almost you're almost you're making the argument which should definitely make sense that virtual assistants and people doing remotely gives them better flexibility because now they are able to slot different people with different times they're looking for long-term stability but even if you can't hire someone full time they can still have that long term because they're now saying hey i don't want to work with one client for 40 hours a week i like to have a bit of my own flexibility so i can have five hours here 10 hours here and allows them to also maintain that long-term relationship actually i prefer that i prefer different clients um with different hours um it might be just my thing i don't know but it just seems like i don't have all my eggs in one basket so to speak it should go wrong with one i still have others to fall back on you know so i guess i've been in the business world away from that too long so um i know what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket you've never done that well i've peppered you with a few other questions any other things that people are kind of looking into this kind of getting going on or thinking about it that they should consider other things that they should be weighing as they look to maybe hire one or find one or whether or not they should get going other things they should consider we'll just um when they're speaking to them whether it's a formal or informal formal interview you can get a feel for their experience not necessarily by their um resume but ask them how long they've been at it you know like with me i've been a virtual assistant for over 12. and in the administrative world for over 20. so they'll know i've been around for a while and i and nobody's an expert on anything i'm sorry devin but nobody's an expert on everything but because there's always always always something new to learn and i think that's what's great about getting a new client no matter how much experience you have someone always brings something new to the plate and i'm a firm believer and never stop learning the moment you stop learning not only in business but in life you've had it you're just done you know and and i just because everybody does things differently and no matter how many programs or software whatever you think you know there's always one out there you've never heard before so it doesn't matter how much your experience but at the same time that gives you a little feel for how long they've been around you know they're not someone new just coming in and saying they know this and that but they don't really so that's another thing to kind of kind of gauge what you're getting no and i definitely think that that's that's great advice now i'm going to flip it the other way is if you are looking for a virtual assistant or administrative assistant um are there any red flags things you're saying okay that's something i should definitely be watching out for or if i see this come along i probably shouldn't hire them is there anything that is a a a likely red flag um if you see on their resume that they tend to go again from place to place to place quickly say within a month or two of being hired then there might be a problem i mean if this happens once or twice it could be personalities but if it keeps happening then there's a bigger problem going on so that's one thing you would want to learn learn about and always um ask for references even if you don't get them if people are kind of hesitant about giving you references again there could be a problem even if you don't get them even if you don't really ask for them but when you ask for in the interview can you give me references and they kind of him and all around uh well maybe well i'll think about it then there's a problem because there should be no problem giving anybody three or four or two or three whatever references if you've been around long enough and you're proud enough of your work so there shouldn't be any problem giving references no and i i think that hey if they're you know if they're saying hey i'm just getting started then be honest and say i haven't been in a virtual assistant or an administrative citizen so i'm here to learn but then they so they may say i don't have references but if they're at least either way they should be honest if i don't have any references then then they should have a good reason and i think to your point if they don't then they're if they're hesitant they're they're they're it feels like they're hiding and that certainly seems like there's some something underlying that it would be a red flag because i mean if you're just starting out and we all start out at some point um just be honest about saying i'm starting out but i think you could be a good fit for you know for me you know if you're willing to give me a chance you know here's what i can do for you but i don't really have the references as of yet you know be honest about it and that would be fine but i've known too many people who have portrayed themselves in one way and it turns out that they weren't so you just after you've been around a while even with somebody in business you kind of get a feel for what's going on so you know kind of your your sixth sense your instinct kind of kicks in no definitely makes sense so one more question then we'll start to wrap up but uh on that on that note so if i were to look for hiring i and i and i personally don't know so i'd love to hear the answer you know what kind of price ranges or how do you even determine what to pay an administrative essential or a virtual assistant because on the one hand you want to obviously be fair to them you want to hire or pay what they're worth and the other hand is with all business you don't want to pay you don't want to overpay any more than you have to so how do you kind of determine what is the pay and whether or not it's in office and it's administrative or virtual assistant and wonder how much they're working and what their experience how do you start to figure all that out as far as what's a a fair pay scale or any thoughts or ideas to answer your one question um it wasn't kind of aster but it was kind of implied how do you know if they're actually working for you most virtual assistants will use clocking software so you'll know the number of hours that they're working and what have you um virtual assistants especially ones in the country and you you can get ones offshore overseas very very cheap but you have to be very very wary so even though those are cheap some 5-10 bucks an hour just be careful of those and i'm not just saying it because i charge a lot more i'm just saying because they are offshore they're not trained or they're not experience wise like those in the us or even other major countries um because i've had i've had clients all over the world so i know what people can and can't do but um a good virtual assistant and i'm talking about a general virtual assistant those who specialize will charge even more um you can go anywhere from 25 to 75 bucks an hour depends on naturally those who are in like new york los angeles they will probably charge you more than someone like me who's from ohio oh i mean i generally charge 35 to 40 and sometimes i i give discounts depending on the situation but i mean it can be anywhere from 25 to 75 and and those who specialize those who are just graphic designers or those who build websites they charge even more but just a general and i just consider myself a general virtual assistant who does a little bit of everything um i like doing documents and calendars and email and all that but um i don't really consider myself specialized so um those again would probably go anywhere from 25 to 75 an hour and of course as an independent contractor they're they're responsible for their own taxes their own equipment you know all that stuff you don't pay vacations or time off or anything like that so that's one of the perks for the business owner they don't have to pay all that stuff makes definitely makes sense so awesome well we've we've covered a lot of great ground and a lot of fun there but it's been a fun conversation as we wrap up the podcast yeah you know i always ask one question the interviews expert episode which would be if you if you're talking to somebody that's in a startup or small business and they're just looking to get started with virtual assistants or an administrative assistant and they're just wanting to get started figuring out trying to figure out if they need it or who to hire with that what would be one step that they could take to get started um talk to maybe another business owner or talk to someone um just because you talk to a virtual assistant doesn't necessarily mean you have to hire them if you know someone wanted to contact me you know i have these questions that would be fine i wouldn't mind talking to them you know so you know just ask ask around ask people you know um or if you have emails for a virtual assistant you know shoot them an email or you know online shoot them an email ask them questions if if they're good enough and if they're if they're classy enough they will answer any questions that that person has without expecting them to automatically become a client and i like that i think that's a simple answer but it's a great one in the sense that go talk to some a business owner that has done one or a virtual assistant you know even like that you know hey doesn't always have to be the expectation you're gonna hire them and you just want to get a little bit filled for but asking those questions and talking with someone i think is one of the best ways to get started so i think that's a great answer yeah well as peop as we wrap up the podcast if people want to reach out to you they want to ask ask you questions or they want to hire you they want you to be your their virtual assistant they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more probably at my email which would be trish llewellyn which is my name i try to make it difficult 77 gmail.com awesome well i definitely encourage people to to reach out find out more um if uh if they're they're in the in the in looking for a new uh assistant definitely uh tech or check trish out assuming she has availability as well as to uh answer any questions often if if that person doesn't they might know someone who does so you know don't never hesitate to ask asking never hurts i think that's great advice well thank you again tris 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 expertise to share or your own journey to share feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show um also a couple more these 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 the podcast as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else their business reach out to us at miller i p law just go to strategymeeting.com thank you again trish and i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much i fully enjoyed it you

Establish Your Relationships

K. Trevor Thompson
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/11/2021

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

establish boundaries around your time and make sure that you schedule your self-care time first because we can fill our calendars up with work not a problem that it's easily done but when we try to squeeze in self-care it's harder to find time you put that on your calendar first you don't move it don't worry the work is going to find the open slots it won't be a problem but schedule your self-care first and and color code it too use and i do this what i do with my calendar i use my favorite color to you know demonstrate self-care and things that are beneficial to me [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 built 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 and today we have another great guest on the episode michael levitt and michael has a good story to tell and i'll give a quick intro so back in around 2009-2010 over the course of about a year he went from a heart attack that almost killed him losing a job in a recession getting a car repossessed having a house foreclosed on um everything in in between all the way till today where he's now doing his own thing and being successful and uh rebounded from that so and he'll fill in a lot of the gaps in between but with that as an intro welcome to the podcast michael great to be with you devon so i gave the the sad front to your story but maybe if you want we could start there but if you want to give a bit more details kind of how that all played out over the course of a year sure and when you're doing that story i i kind of want to play like sad trouble music in the background because it it's like oh wow you know you had all that stuff going on and you know i was like well why are you why are you bringing him on you know he is he where is he at no you know what it's all those things yeah they all happened over a period of year and they were all caused by me being completely burned out and not taking care of myself and really struggling with life in every aspect of it and ignoring the signs of burnout because they were all there i just ignored them and you know it led to what i like to call my year of worst case scenarios with all of those before you go to the worst case scenarios and we'll dive absolutely into that what were you doing that led to your i mean what was your job or what were you doing that led to the burnout i was a healthcare executive for a startup healthcare organization so i was responsible for recruiting physicians hiring staff educating the community on why our clinic was better than the other clinics that were in the area working with funding officials to get more funding for a clinic and navigating all the demands that healthcare has to it so it's in a way ironic that you know a healthcare role gave me a health scare in a way it's i guess although it was really good to be there to get tested to figure out that's exactly what had happened you know i had my when i had my heart attack i was you know the tests were done at my clinic so it was an interesting time for sure so you were working at with the startup in the healthcare industry just maybe summarizing and making clear on my end working uh it sounds like a whole bunch of hours you know and with a lot of startups that's kind of i don't know expected but certainly i'm not outside the norm you're at a startup you're hungry for business clients money investors products developing getting everything up and going everybody's wearing multiple hats and then the midst of that as you're doing all that then you as you indicated you started to go down the path of startup and over the course of a year kind of had that awakening so what was that kind of progression was it the heart attack that was first or which what was the progression or how did that play out for you yeah it was the heart attack was first and then i was off of work for 17 weeks recovering and then went back to work to find out that they didn't want me anymore so they let me go now let's rewind here so that time it was the fall of 2009 so we were still pretty much in the middle of the great recession uh and if we remember there was a lot of jobs being lost mortgages all that good stuff and i was outside of windsor ontario across the border from detroit and the auto sector was on its last leg the government had to bail the gov you know those businesses out otherwise gm and chrysler for sure and all likelihood would not be here today if it wasn't for the government assistance and ford was you know pretty close they had a lot of their own funding but they still needed a little bit of assistance here and there so when you're working in an area that was so heavily tied to the auto sector and there's no jobs it's really hard to find something so it did require a relocation for me and i moved to from from the windsor area up to toronto so leaving a community of roughly a quarter million to an area that has close to seven million people slight adjustment in traffic but so after the heart attack and the job loss i was able to find a role in toronto and then the family car was repossessed because when you lose your job and you're on unemployment and you're getting a little bit of money from unemployment it barely covers anything we all know that but the problem was for me i also had an additional thousand dollars a month in medical bills and the medications that i had to take so i was paying a thousand dollars a month for drugs and not the good not the good kind that make you legal drugs that aren't nearly as fun yeah exactly the legal ones aren't fun from what people tell me but anyway so a thousand dollars a month for that on top of food on top of mortgage payment on top of bills and all of that and i'd worked with my creditors and explained to them the situation and they you know gave us a pretty lengthy grace period but that grace period ran out and then they exercised their right to take the family vehicle which you enter an agreement i give you money you give me a loan to buy a vehicle if i stop giving you money you get to take the vehicle so the exercises are right never i've never been mad at them at all um that was just the reality of it and then after moving up to toronto and moving the family up we forgot our bunk bed ladder at the old house so i was going back to that area to visit with family in a week or so and i was going to swing by the house and grab the ladder and when i went back to the house to grab the ladder and anything else we forgotten i opened up the screen door in the front of the house and i saw the largest padlock i've ever seen in my life you don't see these locks at home depot the only the only place that sells these locks are organizations that foreclose homes and that's what happened uh the home was foreclosed before we were able to put it on the market so it did save me some you know fees when it came to working with the realtor because the bank decided to sell it for me but still to have all of those losses and those losses are gigantic each one of them on their own are a big deal and they can really impact people from a mental state for sure and i had them all in a year and it was all because i was burned out and i wasn't taking care of myself so after all of those losses i had choices i could have said you know what i'm blaming everybody for doing this to me i could have blamed my bosses the fast food restaurants the banks i could have you know started pointing fingers and saying how dare you do this for me but i never i never played the victim because i was responsible for all those things happening it was me i was the only one that was common in all of those elements it was me i could have said hey you know what i survived all that i'm superman i'm just going to go about living my life the way i want to and everything's great or the choice that i did make was okay i'm very fortunate to be alive what do i need to do to make sure that this experience never happens again and that's the path that i took and it took me some time before when you make that they make it sound so easy in the sense of hey i'll just i i got two you know clear minded i got two pass before me i'll choose the path that doesn't lead me to a despair and anguish type of thing was it really that easy or was it a process a period of time self-reflection or how did you because you know certainly in you know you have startups that go under right and whether it's you know you you get burned out and you have a heart attack and then you get let go or you just have a startup that you put your blood sweat and tears in doesn't work out take out loans get foreclosed on whatever i mean other happens other people and you can start to say hey i'm going to slip into depression i'm otherwise going to start as you mentioned blame everybody or i'm going to you know start or lose all hope or you know any number of bad things so how did you you know over that period of time was it did you start out depressed and have to pull yourself out of depression was it a realization hey i've either got two choices i can go down a bad path or a good path or how did you make it you know it sounds really easy but i'm assuming it's not that easy so how did you kind of make that transition or have that realization yeah it took some time in that 17 weeks that i had between the heart attack and losing my job a lot of the framework was done there and of course at that point i didn't know anything about losing the job or the car or the home type of situation those weren't um those weren't in you know in the situation at that point but for those 17 weeks which is during the summer i did a lot of reflection and i i never had any depression or anxiety after uh the cardiac event actually of everybody involved with family friends and all that i was probably the calmest of everybody and a lot of people were like curious about that and even to this day i i can't necessarily say why i was but i it was just the state of mind that i was in i'm like okay that happened to me i don't want that to happen again okay what do i need to do so i just relaxed you know for that the first i would say four to six weeks i just was recuperating from it and getting used to the medications and going into life at a much slower pace because you got to remember i was going full tilt 6 a.m to 11 p.m seven days a week to not doing anything that is very very difficult for somebody that is a type a personality doer let's go do this and this to somebody that needs a nap at two o'clock in the afternoon and i was 40. okay saturday afternoons in the fall yes i'll take a nap because i'll have the college football game on and i'll just get comatose and i wake up in the afternoon and going you know why is ucla playing it's like oh it's it's it's in the afternoon late afternoon okay completely missed the first game all right you know so at least now we can rewind with our televisions back then that wasn't still wasn't around as much so so basically i just i took that time to just kind of reflect and go okay what do i need to do and it was just basically keeping track of my thoughts how i was feeling my energy interactions just going in a way just kind of observing life maybe just a little bit outside of myself and that's it wasn't easy to do that but it's just like okay why you know if i had an argument for example okay why was i upset about that situation what were all the ingredients beliefs patterns and and all of that and when i started doing that i started realizing okay a lot of this was programming that i had for a long time and just how i was my demeanor my personality my beliefs how i approached things and and i joke about facebook i some people love it some people hate it i i'm hit or miss with it but the one thing that i do love about facebook is the memory section because it'll show you your posts that you did years ago and when i see posts that i posted prior to my cardiac event i recognized that person but it's not me i'm not i'm not that person anymore because i made changes and is it easy to do it it's not easy but you have to go at it from a very methodical okay how could i look at this situation in a different way could i approach this differently instead of ordering this food from this restaurant maybe i can order this instead or let's you know try a little bit more activity to start taking better care of myself so i wasn't dragging all the time and eating improperly and getting a proper amount of sleep and a variety of other things that i implement in my life which you know has made my life obviously much better than it was before so so you did that introspection you look and say okay what are the things that led me to this what can i do differently and how can i move forward now taking it you know kind of back to almost a journey of so now you made those kind of introspections you take that period of time how did you then pick yourself up and how did you decide okay i've still got to make a living i still have to have an income so i have a family to support so i got myself to support how can i you know what was the path to now getting new employment different employment was it hey i'm gonna go do a startup i'm gonna do my own thing take my control you know take things into my control i'm going to go work at walmart as a greeter it's a temporary thing to get some income or you know i'm going to go work for a big company or kind of what was that transition for you now trying to make that uh make that decision as to where is it where do you go from here yeah one after you know the house was uh repossessed or actually during that period of time i found a role a healthcare role ironically in toronto and my parents wanted to have me committed they're like are you crazy you're going back into healthcare it nearly killed you what the hell and basically i said you know what no i'm gonna go at this differently i need this was something that i had to prove to myself like can i go back into the sector that i failed miserably at and actually come out of it successful and i did and what i did is i used it as a healing mechanism to again do the work that i was doing but really setting priorities and boundaries around my work and establishing when i was going to work when i wasn't going to work shutting down email not going onto the computer after hours not working nights and weekends really you know establishing those rules from the very beginning and it made the biggest difference for me and you can do it in a startup you can do it if you're working for somebody else it's easier to do it at the very beginning and it's just like any habit once you establish it and you practice it then it becomes more routine and you can do it so going through all the healing and reinventing myself and you know looking at life differently and living life with more boundaries and protecting myself and focusing on my self-care more life was going good i was becoming really successful in my healthcare roles doing a lot of great things working with funding agencies on strategic planning sessions i was on boards of directors you know making big decisions for organizations and while i was doing that and life was going really well and successful i started paying attention to my colleagues and i noticed that they were going down that burnout path that i did and it scared me and i'm like what in the world you know you just start it's all those things it's like you know if you're a smoker and then you quit smoking then you all suddenly start looking around you see everybody smoking it's like horus you buying a car everybody and now you start to notice everybody has a red car that same type of a thing exactly like you know i'm the only one in this neighborhood that owns this car and you look around and there's like six in the parking lot nearly okay i guess i was exactly exactly it's like someone's following me oh they're stalking me kind of thing but no i think what happened was in that situation i started talking to my colleagues and i didn't share my story so much with them other than look i've had bouts of of stress and burnout i know what it looks like with all due respect you're showing some signs and you should you know take some time and ease up and all that and i said i'm just gonna work through it it'll be fine later i knew that it wouldn't be because i know the work that they do and i know the demands that they had and the way that they were approaching it wasn't gonna be helpful so i thought okay i need to do something a little bit more so i started researching burnout a bit more because burnout's been around for a long long time i actually have a book that was published in 1980 titled burnout and so it's been around for a very long time but it's just more prevalent and there's more awareness of it now which is good and bad it's bad that exists but it's good that there's awareness and there's talk happening about it because once there's talk then eventually there's action and then there's movement and then some people are addressing it so doing all this research and finding all of these things like i should start sharing these with my colleagues and and then i realized i just started looking around and seeing other sectors outside of healthcare we're having similar challenges legal education manufacturing it was all over the place so i thought okay how what should i do about this and then the entrepreneurial spirit which i never thought i had although in my startup roles that i had in my life i actually did but you know what i i need to formalize this a little bit more instead of just having a blog why don't i launch my own company i'll keep my health care roll launch it um so that way if it takes time to build it up i can do it and run both simultaneously and of course with caution because you know it's not good for the burnout guy to burn out it's not good for pr so i just thought i need you i was like the healthcare professional having a heart attack right now but no yeah exactly but exactly exactly you guys should do this well look what you guys did to your director i'm not listening to you doc yeah yeah i'm sure the patient results for that community weren't that great after they heard that but anyway no actually the the physician there um that caught my cardiac event it's a really good doc so uh but end of day i thought okay let me launch a business let's start writing about this and you started out as kind of as almost a side hustle right if i remember kind of we talked a little bit before it wasn't just hey i've got this idea for a consulting business of how to do burnout you know avoid burnout but i'm going to keep my job that i'm doing now and get this started to kind of decide hassle on the site is that right that's correct yeah i started as a side hustle with the eventual goal to migrate to it full time which i did several years ago and because the work was there and is there and during the time of this recording in the middle of this pandemic it's really there um i'm and we'll jump into some of the things they do but after you know writing about it you know somebody said you know you should probably do a podcast about this because podcasts are starting to get popular and you could you know give some quick tidbits of advice so i did and that the original premise of my show was i was just gonna yap for about five minutes here do this you know triage your calendar you know prioritize and here's some things that i do to help and that's what it started off as and then uh the person that told me to do the podcast said you need to start interviewing people and talk to them about burnout or whatever comes up and been doing that ever since then you know we're three and a half years into it so it's been a blast for doing that but what ended up happening was the organization that i launched my initial thought in the plan and the structure of the startup was i was going to be consulting with c-suite executives and senior level management people because that's the types of roles that i was in i know those people burn out and i know they do their best not to talk about it publicly especially if they're fortune 500 executive and they're burning out if that gets in the news that stock is tanking and it's tanking fast and so the people that i talk with you know a lot of times and entrepreneurs all know this many sites you for businesses i work with coca-cola and fedex and you know they list all the logos of all the great companies to do that i can't do that because if i put the name of a company on there or an individual you know again they could take their stock and cost people billions uh my insurance does not cover that um so my my limit is not that high so for me even if you're to take the smaller businesses you know and i and i said i and mentioned in this podcast and others i run several businesses and if i were to go if if the people that worked under me that you know that were my employees and i don't like to say under me but you know work that are the employees that i employ if i were to go and say hey i'm burning out and i'm worn out and there then they would start to worry about their job security as well if hey if the boss the person that's running things isn't going to be able to keep you know getting everything done what are we going to do and then they start so i think that even across the stage whether you start up small business all the way up to the huge businesses it's it certainly is a worry for everybody that's on the management level c-level type of people because they have a perception that they have to exude confidence they have to let you know whether it's a market or whether it's the employees whether it's clients you want to make sure that you look like you appear to have you're on top of everything and you've got everything handled otherwise some people start to lose that confidence so now jumping to it so you did all this you started you know you i think you said in 2018 you kind of went all in full-time you're going to do all of this you're going to switch from you know doing this as a side hustle to now building a podcast doing speaking doing consulting and really helping people address burnout so you take that 2018 so you've had it the last couple years has it how's it going as far and i'm sure you know covet has also been a a factor in it maybe that's helpful maybe it's not in a sense it probably creates you know different types of burnout and other things to factor into it but as a business you know taking that as a business has it gone well gone upwards has it kind of gone those ups and downs or has it gone for you uh it started off kind of a slow climb and then the pandemic hit and i shifted things because i was speaking and i had several events this year booked already that i was going to be speaking about burnout because burnout was and has been pretty prevalent the pandemic hit and it took off um and and what we see is monster.com did a recent survey and those surveyed indicated that 69 of people surveyed are identifying as being burned out so in an organization if those statistics are accurate seven out of ten people in your organization are burning out we have a pandemic within a pandemic that's huge insurance claims for mental health claims and mental illness and sick leave are skyrocketing a colleague of mine works in the insurance industry and he says yeah the claims this year are astronomical so what's going to happen and the challenges mental is issues and stress and burnout a lot of organizations have been reluctant to do anything about it because it's it's difficult in a way to do it and they say well you know it's not really impacting their bottom line well it's going to because your insurance premiums are going to go sky high next year and you're going to also have a ton of absenteeism and people leaving your organization and we know it takes you know depending on the role 18 months to two years to get fully back up to speed if you lose the key individual yeah well you start losing five to seven you know out of ten people in your organization and you're not a mcdonald's that's a problem and it's going to impact your deliverables to your clients your clients are going to get upset they're going to leave believe me it's going to impact the bottom line so you need to get ahead of this at whatever level in and create opportunities for people to bring to light the challenges that they're facing because the working from home burnout situation is a huge problem because one you know so many people working from home their homes aren't set up like an office or they weren't they might be now hopefully but they weren't before and for many people they've never worked remotely before and all of a sudden they're like what's zoom you know how do i use this what what's this and i think everyone knows what it is now and we're all kicking ourselves for not buying the stock in march but that's another story sure but i think at the end of the day we have work and home are now the same place and so many of us that's a good point even to the point of you know and i think a lot of people think that they work well from home or they always dreamed of working from home and you know they don't you don't realize so i work from home i don't work at home anymore i have my office i haven't played but for beginning and for quite a bit of my career i worked several years from home and i worked for remotely and you know it was everything and i'm an introvert so i tended to be fine i didn't i didn't need the social interaction but what i did even for me doing it all those years it took me a while to figure out how do you balance so if your wife comes in and wants to have a question for the kids to get home from school and you're on a call how do you balance that or how do you not you know get distracted well i've got these couple things i just need to get done at home and so i'll make up the time for work later on and then it creates those issues of missing deadlines and it it creates a lot new a lot of stress that if you haven't done that or you're not used to it makes it you know a much different dynamic than you're not used to so i completely get that and i think there's a lot of issues with or you know a lot of things are addressed there we don't have as much time to address at all here but my question would be i'll give you two opera or two things and then i'll always hit my last two questions first is you mentioned you have a podcast and addresses a lot of this people want to find out more want to listen to your podcast get to get more information what's the podcast that you that you do it's called the breakfast leadership show and it's on all the major platforms and some that i've never heard of and so yeah i listened to your show on this i'm like on what like so yeah it's it gets replicated everywhere so uh itunes spotify i heart radio all of them so breakfast leadership show okay well that's so that would be the first thing so people want to find out more about um how to avoid burnout how to deal with it and other people's experiences i think that sounds like it's a good resource to go to with the one other thing so people want what would be the one and i know that it's always hard because there's a lot of things what would be the one tip or piece of advice you'd give people to avoid burnout or at least to address it or to you know guard against that limit your screen time on your smartphone um it's you don't understand how many times you're interrupted in a day just in normal things for your smartphone great devices but my goodness we pick these things up so often and they eat up a bunch of our time and take us away from the deep work that we really need to do and even during this pandemic we're we're consuming a lot of content and unfortunately a lot of it is negative and that can impact your mental state which impacts your physical state which lowers your immunity and you don't want to have a low immunity right now no i think that that's a good advice i mean it's always one that we hear it a lot it's a simple one and yet how often do we either oh you know and i thought it was interesting this is inside you know you see a lot of the studies and that of people think you know how often do they people think they're on their smart device or on a screen versus how often are they actually and people like oh i'm on my phone maybe an hour a day and then you do the you know the trackers and everything else and people are on for two and a half three hours or plus and you know then it's you know it's a has a much bigger impact that oftentimes people disregard it is and you know for mine i use mine often as a computer so it it piles up on on the time and you look at you go like yikes so you know i try to do different things and and build in breaks and not use it as much but yeah i keep the time of the track and i go wow that's that's not good okay yeah because when people say i don't have any time it's like according to your smartphone you you're spending about five hours a day so you think you could carve out maybe 30 minutes away from um tick tock and and and maybe do something else although tick-tock if you're dancing and you're moving you're getting action and activity that's true that's you know well as long as it doesn't get banned we'll be good yeah who knows what will happen there that's a whole longer conversation so yeah all right so as we start to wrap up the the podcast i always ask two questions at the end of the podcast we'll jump to those now so first question maybe it's already all you know within all the things that we've covered but what was the worst business decision you have ever made worst business decision was not starting this organization sooner center it is funny because i think we're you may be 100 if not we're getting close to the number of episodes 100 i don't have the exact number but we'll call this 100 it may be what a couple off but of the 100 ish episodes i've done i would say the number one thing is that people say their biggest mistake is is just that they should have got started earlier i love this it's a it's been a life-changing all of the above and so i think that it's just interesting how many people have so many different journeys and yet that's probably the number one answer is the thing that they wish they'd done earlier okay second question is if you were to take someone that's now just getting the startups just getting into small businesses just starting out or wanting it started out what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them establish boundaries surround your time and make sure that you schedule your self-care time first because we can fill our calendars up with work not a problem that it's easily done but when we try to squeeze in self-care it's harder to find time you put that on your calendar first you don't move it don't worry the work is going to find the open slots it won't be a problem but schedule your self-care first and and color code it too use and i do this what i do with my calendar um i use my favorite color to re you know demonstrate self-care and things that are beneficial to me then that way i can look back at yesterday or last week or last month and if i don't see enough of my favorite color i know there's a problem and i need to make an adjustment with my time in my schedule so you it's your favorite color and it doesn't have to be an electronic you can use paper one too just use a highlighter um and and highlight uh the self-care uh with your favorite color then that way you can look back and go okay yeah i'm getting enough and you can tell it's just you ask yourself you do a check in with yourself how am i feeling and you know both physically mentally you know does my outlook on life look good do i feel dejected and i feel kind of down am i anxious about something do those check-ins and keeping track of your calendar is is one good way to make sure that you keep in check uh with what's going on in your life no and i completely agree and i always there's always more fires to put out more things to do than you ever have time to and i'd put that in there that's just kind of the same perspective i have with family time too is you know having those boundaries because you know in self-care and i'd put family is both very important things and you they're always ones that are easy to push off right oh i can work start running or working out tomorrow i can start taking a break or medication oh we're back sorry dropped off there for just a second yeah i looked i i looked down at the thing and i was like do i okay sometimes it's me but i look down it's like no all all white bars on this and i'm like i'm like all right for the listening audience we had a temporary break so i'm going to back up and if you if i repeat myself you'll just get an extra thing but what i was saying is you know for me i look at it just to your point taking time for yourself you almost have both family and self-care kind of fall in the categories uh it's easy to push off in the sense that you always have fires to put out at work you always have things to get done especially if you're a startup small business or a c level is you're always going to have more things to do than time to do it and so family always say oh you know all i can get that tomorrow i can go to that game or that practice or i can spend time reading the book to the kid same thing i can always start running tomorrow i can eat healthier you know next week and i'll just get through this week type of a thing and yet if you're not intentional if you don't do it you're never going to have that you never if you're you're always going to have things that will fill up your time and if you don't be intentional about it you're always going to have to fill it up and never have that self-care and you're never going to have that family time so well as we wrap up as we finish up the podcast people want to reach out to you they want to learn more about you learn about your find your podcast read your book schedule you for an event uh they want to work for you they want to pick your brain any or all of the above what's the best way to connect with you best ways go to breakfastleadership.com at you know the bottom there's a thing where they can enter some information and i can um you know reach out to them social media under be fast leadership so the letter b and then fast leadership on all the major social media platforms so interact with me there as well i'm happy to help or guide you on you know whatever you're facing when it comes to this burnout awesome well i appreciate you coming on it's been fun to hear about your journey about how you've overcome burnout and how you're now helping other people with it now for any of you that uh have your own journey to tell love to have you on the podcast and feel free to go to inventivejourneyguest.com and apply to be on the podcast and come on and tell your journey if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you can get a notification of this and all the new or all the new episodes as they come out and lastly if you ever need help with patents or trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller ip law always here to help thanks again michael for coming on it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you you English (auto-generated)

Get A Coach Or Mentor

Dr. Kelly Henry
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/10/2021

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

get a coach and or mentor you know i i probably think it's self-serving saying getting a coach but i it may be a little self-serving but it's also i'm speaking from experience because i have been efficient tremendously through the years by having uh tremendous coaches but also had some mentors if you're if you're not in a place where you can hire a coach you know look up people in your industry look up people that are doing what you're doing look at people that have uh there are successful at what you're trying to do and just contact 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 into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo of miller i p law where helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast uh kelly henry and uh first of all it's an easy name i usually always slaughter dave so i'm glad to see i get a softball today with an easier name that i can pronounce so thank you again for that kelly but it's a quick introduction to kelly um so he played baseball in high school until he uh heard it or had his arm hurt um went to a chiropractor to see if it would make it feel better and uh and and helped to alleviate some of the pain from the injury but also kind of piqued his interest in that career for a bit later on suzy went off to college when did that for a period of time i think dropped out worked in manual labor for a year decided to then go to chiropractor school and then afterwards moved to phoenix hung out as an own shingle didn't know how hard it was to run a business or what or what was all entailed eventually moved to new mexico bought a practice found out about uh client or customer service is really the key to a lot of the industry did that for over 20 years sold the practice and now it's kind of moved into a bit of a coaching role to focus on customer service or service i think primarily for um chiropractors but maybe rotter with customer service and that and i'll let you talk a little bit about that but with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast kelly hey thanks devin i appreciate the opportunity absolutely so i just gave kind of the quick high level 30 second overview of a much longer journey but take us back a little bit in time to high school and kind of how things all got started for you well like you mentioned i i played baseball like a lot of a lot of teenage boys do and uh i was a pitcher couldn't throw the ball more in just a few times my arm just felt like it was about to fall off so went the medical route just couldn't ever get anything figured out my mom had been a long time chiropractic patient decided hey let's go check you know let's go to the chiropractor i can't can't hurt anything and uh lo and behold i had some issues in my neck with the nerves coming out of my neck going to my arm got that cleared up and i said hey this is this is kind of neat maybe uh maybe i should look into this career and uh we also had a a friend of the family that lived in a in a different community but he was a chiropractor and we were around him no fairly frequently but he had all the toys the house on the lake the boat the smuggle bills all the all the fun stuff and uh i looked at him and said hey this guy's making some pretty decent cash maybe uh maybe this chiropractic thing you know could be pretty financially uh beneficial as well so that was probably more of my motivation than the the fact that my arm was was healed initially but uh uh that that ultimately is what started my journey into the chiropractic world so now so you kind of have that initial experience in high school and you say you know first you you go to a chiropractor it feels better you also see they have a good career lifestyle and they can have you know some of the nicer things in life and be able to afford a good lifestyle and that's they said okay all of that you know kind of works to interest you or pique your interest or a bit now you went to college i think you said for about a year or so and then you dropped out so how did that go as far as your experience with college and then deciding to not to pursue it at least from that angle for a period of time yeah i went to college and again like a lot of males that go to college and get away from home they don't make the best decisions and it's not that i failed out but i did pretty poorly and uh i just decided you know i don't know if this college thing is for me and so i i ended up dropping out and broke my mom's heart got a job doing manual labor i did that for about nine months and this is in colorado so i was digging ditches and mowing lawns and then when uh the weather came in i was shoveling snow and raking leaves and just stuff like that and i quickly realized that i didn't want to do that the rest of my life and so i decided to uh jump back into college as i did that though my dad sat me down said hey listen uh you know i was paying for that first year uh completely i'm not doing that anymore uh you're gonna have some blood in the game in this and so he said i'll pay for books you pay for tuition and so that also uh got me real focused hey uh this is my money and maybe i should pay more attention and start getting some better grades and from that point on i i really did so uh finished up my college career my undergrad career and then uh moved into uh graduate school or chiropractic school and got my doctorate uh later on so one question just to dive into that so when i get manual labor i mean and i was talking with somebody else that they were you know different completely different journey but they were talking about how they wanted to be an artist i think they went to nyu or one of the or good art schools like i think i could be slaughtering which school was i can't remember they're talking about oh i always thought i'd be or saw myself as kind of being the starving artist and i would just serve tables for kind of the rest of my life and then like then i graduated and started serving tables like serving tables is hard it's a lot of lifting and work and working for tips and everything else i'm like and i decided i didn't want to do that anymore so i went did something else and so it's kind of the same thing well i went to manual labor and i said well that's not quite what i had to envision let's go back and do something else but as you go back into college was it with the idea now i am going to be a chiropractor and that's kind of what you set your sights on or kind of how did you after you did manual labor and decide to go back to school how did you decide where you wanted to go well actually i didn't go back in that second go-around with the focus on being a chiropractor i i was kind of undecided maybe you know do something in the business realm i wasn't really sure so i was just taking general studies um and then finally i just decided after looking at career paths and whatnot that you know what i do want to be a chiropractor that really intrigues me um that's what i want to focus on so it took me about another oh probably another year before i finally decided to you know what let's uh let's note down and and get serious about being a chiropractor so so now you narrow it down and you go through school you know you get the degree or you have to get the undergraduate and then you go off and even do more schooling and you finally make your way all through schooling you probably have some student loans or dead or otherwise accumulated and you come out and i think you said you initially went to phoenix after you graduated is that right i did so i was married had our first child at that point once i graduated chiropractic school i'm from colorado my wife's from new mexico but we wanted to live in phoenix so we packed everything up packed the family up headed to phoenix didn't know a soul didn't have any family there didn't have any acquaintances friends anything uh just a dream and an idea that hey that's where we want to live and we want to make millions there so get out to phoenix and uh found a an office to work in i was a it was a clinic that had several chiropractors but we all had our own businesses so it was nice in the sense that i could learn from the other chiropractors and it kept overhead low but i still had to build my own business and and bring in my own patients and i uh i failed pretty miserably at that um i went in very naive i like to say i didn't know enough to know what i didn't know about starting a business about attracting patients and doing those type of things so it was it was tough we were there for not quite a year but it was a difficult time in the sense of not making money not creating wealth not getting patients in but it was invaluable in the experience that i gained from some of the mentors some of the chiropractors that i worked with to really get they really gave me a foundation to move forward and be much more successful once i i moved on from phoenix so so now you did that for a period of time in phoenix and you know and that's a i think with a lot of businesses you get into oh it's not that hard i've seen other people do it or i'll figure it out and there's a lot that goes into business you don't think about everything from marketing and sales and payroll and hiring and firing and doing you know customer service doing the actual work and making it following up and scheduling and all those things and until you get into it you know you don't realize that everything that oftentimes goes into it so i think that you know that realization is one that often hits people and then you either you fail and you bounce back or you have to figure it out or you pivot navigate so you did that for a period of time and then you said okay i learned a lot i had some great mentors now what made you decide to get out and try and go or go buy a practice in new mexico as opposed to continuing to try and uh to make the current current one work um we were just in a you know kind of a low spot there in phoenix uh just you know just struggling to get by you know we laugh about it now but literally we were scraping you know a few dollars together on sunday after church is to go to taco bell and order off their dollar menu at the times it was that bad so um the there was a chiropractor that i'd met uh and and actually followed for a day uh as we were transitioning and moving to phoenix and in the new mexico area and he just called me out of the blue and said hey i'm retiring would you like to buy me out and move back to to or move to new mexico um and at that point our lives were like yeah you know that that sounds great that area is where my wife's family was from where my wife grew up there's friends and family in that area so it looked very attractive but you know i suffering through what i did in phoenix and but learning from that and really getting a foundation from those chiropractic mentors that i had in phoenix really gave me the ability to move forward and be able to have the confidence in buying that practice and be able to sustain and build it up now one question because uh i haven't i've done i've come into businesses later on but i haven't just kind of bought a practice picked it up and taken it over you know as you did that was it a different feel to it was it you know kind of more already established and so you already had some of the systems in place and was improving on it did that make it easier kind of what was a bit of that hey we're going to go do a new start and pick up somebody else's practice how did that go um i i basically just had made the decision to just leave things as is it was an established practice the the the chiropractor had been in in business for 30 plus years uh so he was well known in the compute community he did things a certain way and so i decided you know why you know why change it why uh why try to change something that's not broken um come to find out that was a mistake i i should have should have changed things and done things a little differently and ultimately i did several years down the road that created a way better business for me um but again i didn't know enough to not to to know that and to do that initially and so i just left things as is and it ultimately handicapped me from growing that business because the systems and systems in place weren't there or they weren't effective enough for me to grow and build that practice up i did have income i did have patients you know i had a decent lifestyle but also i had goals and dreams that i wanted to achieve and the way i was running things didn't allow me to move forward and grow that practice to the extent i really wanted to and want to grow to the extent i wanted to and and knew in my mind that i i could no and that definitely makes sense and that's kind of interesting in the sense that hey you know to some degree why why you know don't if it's not broke don't fix it so to speak but at the same time if you get complaints and say oh this is how it's been done and just kind of continue along the business isn't going to change or evolve or become better and so you know that one it definitely makes sense now along that as you're saying okay for a period of time we're just going to let it kind of continue to go long as it's already been doing for a period of time and that resonates when did you kind of make that shift or transition because i think you started focusing more on customer service and how to make it a better client experience and go through that kind of what triggered that and kind of how did you make that realization or start down that road well i did and that customer service aspect i i jumped into that early on when i when we moved to the community in in new mexico the community was a small community a lot of established businesses not a lot of competition and so these businesses you know really didn't have to treat you all that well and you still had to work with them and i that just bugged me so i just made a decision you know what my office my clinics are gonna be different you know and i didn't do it from the standpoint of this is gonna help me grow them it's just i did it from the standpoint of we're going to be different than these other businesses and treat our patients better so i used that early on but i just didn't have the proper systems in place um to grow like i mentioned earlier so i you know i was just struggling along and i you know i'm trying to achieve these goals and nothing's happening and i'm i'm throwing stuff at the wall trying to get things to grow and change and just couldn't ever just couldn't ever get anything started and and this went on for about four years and uh finally one of my buddy chiropractic buddies that uh uh we'd gone through school and graduated together his practice was taken off and so i was like well you know what are you doing he says well i hired a consulting firm and i have a coach now i mean and they're awesome you should really try them out so i contacted them and and got a hold of them and uh liked what they what they had to offer and so hooked in with them and they immediately helped me start help me start to develop sit or not develop use their system because it was proven and they had a great track record put the system in place do it this way trust the process and see what happens and lo and behold that's what that's what i needed and practice took off took off and i never looked back so you did that and now i did was it just a one-time iteration let's figure it out and how to make a better customer service or was it kind of if you're like me and i'm really into it a bit you're always looking you know once you do it it's not an ongoing hey we figured out what the customer journey is and now we're done but it's always looking for ways to improve that make him you know used whether it's technology or just you know how you do things and how you approach things and always kind of look to improve that or make it better was that kind of the case for you or kind of as you're figuring out that 20 years or so of practice um how did that how did things evolve for you yeah like you said it would it did evolve and it was always always looking at how can we improve how can we be better how can we we serve the patients better one of my and actually i learned this philosophy from that that first consulting firm i hired was you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting so i didn't want to be ripe and rotting i needed to be green and growing and continue to to improve um never-ending and continuous improvement uh and so i you know i really tried to place that you know into every piece of the business not just customer service but that was a huge piece and it you know it was making a better experience for the cu the patient or the customer for for those listening but it was also making it a better place for my employees you know is you know how can we we'd be better in the community as a whole you know how can we take technology and work things better how can we you know we're changing some of this how we do things in the office how can we how can we always keep focus on the patient and make this better for them so there was you know different challenges and then when i expanded and moved in to a new or another clinic or started another clinic and hiring associate doctors again there was always new pieces that we had to work through and evolve through but always keeping that core concept of you know the patients first let's focus on them and make sure we're valuing them and making them feel important each and every time we're interacting with them no and i think that you know and what's interesting focusing customer service because another industry that is horrible for customer service is the legal industry i mean they're just there is very little thought i mean most the time we take in giving example industry average once you reach out to an attorney no matter what is text email your potential client your current client anything industry averages three to five days before they even respond back to you meaning if you leave a message you give them a call you shoot them an email a text whatever you can do it on monday and you may not hear back until friday or monday or the following week quick which is horrible and so it's interesting and yet it's how people kind of as i said the industry is stagnant it's what they're always used to and it leaves for a lot of opportunity but it's it's in the other thing that's interesting is you don't know what good cut you don't it's eat it's hard to make good customers so in a sense people know when they have bad customer they usually if you have good customer experience they don't really think about i mean it's a good experience and they like it and they're coming back but they don't really think oh that was great customer service but if you have bad customer service boy do they remember and it really sticks out so it's interesting just to make a good customer service it's so a lot of times it's taken for granted or people don't think about it until they get the opposite so now as you kind of go along your journey and you continue to iterate figure that out make it better do it in different locations and everything else and you grow the practice then you come towards i think it was the end of the 20 years what made you decide to transition kind of sell the practice get out and kind of go more to the coaching mentoring route what was kind of the motivation there how did that how what uh made that arise you bet before i answer that i want to touch on a point you just made as far as the bad customer service and you know a lot of that goes on you know as humans we tend to focus on the negative and so that's why it's so important you know and me working with my clients or just customer service in general for the listeners to keep in mind the the customer's not going to remember the 100 great experiences they have they're going to remember that one bad and when you have that bad they lose confidence and it creates a wandering eye so you have to be so careful you have to be so consistent that each and every interaction is is is good uh is above average and really keep them focused on that great customer service so i appreciate you bringing that point because no all men all men one statement the one time that they will remember good customer service is if they had a bad customer service from the previous people they work with and they come to you and they're like man you guys do great this is so much better then they'll sometimes remember most of the time they'll take it for granted and that was just kind of one addendum to what i said so so now going to the question of kind of transitioning to or selling the practice kind of what made you decide to make that decision kind of how did you do it and how is that transition absolutely as i mentioned i bought out a chiropractor there in new mexico well about uh six seven years later i bought out another retiring chiropractor in that same community both these chiropractors had been in business for 30 plus years and unfortunately for them um they'd basically gone past their prime they didn't have much left as far as patient volume um you know equipment everything they had was old and and uh really not much value so it was good for me buying them out because i was really buying them out on pennies of the dollar but you know them going into their retirement years you know they were not uh you know they were really not benefiting from all those years of service that they had provided the community so i made a mental note that i wasn't going to be like that if if i got the desire to go ahead and retire and move out of practice i was going to do it at my pinnacle or at a high spot as opposed to letting things die down to the end of my career and then just basically giving things away so in 2017 it really felt like you know hey it's it's time to to move on it's time to transition you you've done phenomenal you've got a great product to sell so it's time to time to move um i've had coaches for years like i just mentioned 20 2003 first time i hired a coach for my business i've had several business coaches i've had personal coaches i've had coaches for different aspects of my life and and obviously i've seen the impact on that and then the customer service realm of my chiropractic clinics again i've seen how impactful that is and how that just incredibly incredibly benefit of my business and help it grow to extraordinary heights so when i retired i knew i wanted to coach because how impactful that can be and then i knew the customer service side of things how impactful that can be on a business so that's why i mesh the two together and and have moved forward with helping not just chiropractors really any service based business really any small business the principles i teach and coach and and work with businesses on help help any small business for the most part uh move forward to grow and expand their business and and help them profit much much more than they would otherwise no they and that definitely makes sense and so now you've transitioned and you know kind of moving to that coaching mentoring building a business around that has that been easier harder different than building the chiropractor business was it you know finding teaching people how to have good customer service doing all that was it been more of a passion project or was it hey this is even better than chiropractic or kind of how is that all gone um i love being a chiropractor and and working with patients so i do miss that aspect of just that constant interaction so um so i i miss that um you know not having somebody to to you know be in front of just you know every few minutes type of thing but um i love what i'm doing now too and just seeing the impact it's making in these uh in my clients businesses um it's so important it's so valuable you know i've had multiple doctors i've had a lot of employees and particularly associate doctors i worked with i always consider myself mentoring and coaching them because several of them left and then started their own practices and did some things along those lines so you know i always felt like a coach in that aspect so this transition into coaching and working with clients it wasn't a big leap because i always felt like you know for several years at the end of my practice i was i was coaching and helping chiropractors anyways now i'm just moving into chiropractors and other business owners and helping them and coaching them in that regard so it's the biggest transition is just not being in front of people and moving around all day it's being stuck in front of a computer or on the phone um more often than not no definitely makes sense so well that kind of brings us up to where you're at today so now with that we'll kind of transition a bit too i always ask two questions at the end of the podcast 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 it well we always you know we just discussed the you know the utter failure failure in phoenix so that that's that's one of the biggest uh well let me touch on another one the other one was hiring a wrong associate doctor um i went against my gut i went against my normal procedure for hiring i went outside that and didn't i saw the red flags and ignored that and i went outside with my spouse what she said and so i have no one to blame but myself on that situation um and that that was that came back to uh bite me uh pretty hard to the point of you know we had some legal wrangling uh at the end of at the end of things unfortunately but you know i i live by the philosophy of you know live and learn so just take that as a lesson learned and move forward more intelligently i can use that experience to help my clients make better decisions as well but that's one that uh i've kicked myself uh several times for because i i went against uh what i knew what was right and and still made the wrong decision no and i think that uh definitely makes sense you know hiring is always interesting when you get into hiring you get you learn more as you do more hiring in the sense that it always looks easier when you're not doing the hype oh i can read people i know what they're going to do and then i always even beyond that you know reading people and thinking you'll be a good hire you know at least for me and i'm speaking out of my er you know my experiences i always thought hey everybody's going to work as hard as i am and everybody's going to have the same work ethic they're going to get in they're going to want to build it they want to get it done and everything else and then you get in there and some people are that way and some people are not and so kind of all of that is always hiring is always hard to do it and it can be one where it can be a great asset the company or can be a great anchor that you're having to fix and learn from so i definitely get that one on that mistake and learning from it absolutely second second question i always ask which is um if you're now 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 get a coach and or mentor you know i i probably think it's self-serving saying getting a coach but i it may be a little self-serving but it's also i'm speaking from experience because i have been efficient tremendously through the years by having uh tremendous coaches um but also had some mentors if you're if you're not in a place where you can hire a coach you know look up people in your industry look up people that are doing what you're doing look at people that have uh there are successful at what you're trying to do and just contact them say hey i'm trying to do this too i see your success i admire your success can you take 15 minutes and just let me pick your brain and just ask a few questions um just to just to get a little more information on how i can better uh move forward and be more successful and more more times than not that person is going to say you bet you know they're going to be honored that you're even contacting them and admire them for their success and they're going to they're going to talk talk to you and move forward but having that mentorship having those coaches they see things differently they see things outside of the emotions outside of being in the middle of it they see things from experience standpoint what i tell my clients is you know i'm i'm going to help you save a lot of money save a lot of frustration and save a lot of time and moving forward with your success so that's generally what you get with a coach or having a great mentor helping you move forward no and i i definitely agree and what you know whether it's a coach a mentor someone that you look up to someone that has experience you know taking the time to really learn what they've done how they've done it what you know learn from their experience learn from the things that you can do better and sometimes you know learn from what they wish they'd done better what they what they could have done better and the things that they always look back and say i wish i'd done this or what if this and that type thing i think are all very positive things that can help you to grow your business make it more successful and also avoid some of the pitfalls so well as people now as we wrap up the podcast if people want to find out more they want to reach out because they want to be a client or a customer of your coaching service 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 or find out more best way easiest way is just go to my website dr kellyhenry.com dr kellyhenry.com that's where you can find out about me my services uh my book um all the vital information about me my book is define deliver customer service uh define and deliver exceptional customer service excuse me there you can find that also on amazon i call it a success manual that of customer service it's not full of fluff it's just straightforward ideas actions and principles that a business can take implement and start improving upon their business creating growth and profits and that's that's what it it's all about so again dr kellyhenry.com also on that webpage is a free download my five top actions any business can implement in their business to immediately improve their level of customer service and improve the perception of their customer service so again you can find that on my website as well dr kellyhenry.com awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to check out your book check out the website learn how to do better customer service i think that on across basically every industry it's something that's always needed if you can do it well more often than not it sets you above the competition because most of the time people don't put the focus or heir to uh craft as well as they should have so 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 just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the podcast we're always uh happy to share your stories a couple more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe and you're 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 the podcast as well last but not least if you ever need help with your patents train marks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us at chat thank you again kelly it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey is even better than the last you

Be Fearless

Devron Larson
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/8/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

i would say be fearless um it really does take that um i have talked to so many people i was a i was coaching football for my son just you know the little league football type stuff seventh eighth grade kind of thing um one of my assistant coaches great guy still good friends to this day um he came up to me and says we got talking about busy like he goes i have got the idea that i know will make me a millionaire i just know it will and i'm like awesome what is it he's like i'm not going to tell you you'll go do it and i said well one i won't but two and i i said i said fine don't tell i don't care what it is i said why don't you go do it he's like he literally said because i'm i'm afraid i'll fail and and i think that has stopped more people from ever becoming successful than any other thing [Music] everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller iplock where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast our podcast if i don't get to a tongue tied devron larson and introduced devron a bit he grew up on on a farm so manat for my own heart i don't know if i grew up on a farm technically i grew up doing a lot of things on a farm but didn't actually grow up on a farm dad always told him to get an education ended up getting here majoring in chemistry at least or went into chemistry um and then i think in the fourth year of college doing a lab couldn't picture himself do being in a lab for the next 40 years so decided to not or didn't want to finish up the career degree instead when bought a franchise in carpet cleaning sold that invested that or invested with a company and a friend that one will and then i think lost everything you correct he can grant me where when we get if i get anything wrong started up another cardboard cleaning business at the same time was working for i think it was a marketing company and then the marketing company or around the kind of the housing crash that took a turn and one day saw another carpet cleaning van on ksl put down a deposit after he put down the deposit told his wife that that's what they're going to end up doing um and uh or got back into that started up the company took a huge pay cut invested everything they had and then been building that and then growing it ever since and making it to a success so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast everyone thanks a lot david appreciate it absolutely now and now i'm gonna get i'm gonna i'm worried i'm gonna call you devon because devron and devon are so similar that i'm gonna end up messing up your day because because it's too similar but uh welcome on so i dived through a little bit of your journey and kind of give that quick uh run through kind of where what your journey was but now let's go back a little bit tell us a little bit about growing up on the forum getting an education and then how how your journey went from there yeah just you know um great parents uh good work ethic of course you know tell me that um every summer i grew up on a farm most of my friends were out you know goofing off and playing and stuff and going on scout trips and things like that and and i was always working and i didn't even know it and i just that's just how life was i didn't really understand any different and when even when i i got older one of my friends said yeah we we always felt really bad for you and i'm like why it goes because you just always had to work every summer all summer the whole entire time while we were all like goofing around and i'm like well i did i just didn't i didn't know the difference i didn't even know that was an option so you know just worked really hard but the whole time my my mom and dad were really big on education because they didn't have degrees or anything like that and you know but they were kind of entrepreneurs as well they owned the farm they owned like a bowling alley they owned some apartments and real estate and things like that and they did okay um they ended up actually starting some restaurant franchises and did pretty well with that and anyway but um so i just kind of had the entrepreneur mindset but they always just wanted me to go to college and and i didn't really know what i wanted to do so i i was gonna do this and this and this and i thought well i really like chemistry for some reason and i like science and math and and so i thought well major in chemistry that sounds like a cool thing to do maybe it's not a lot made me sound a lot smarter than i really was but um and you know so anyway i got going into school and uh i was in about three and a half years and i just remember specifically being in a lab one day and you know mixing a couple of things together and and then watching it for a few minutes and mixing some more stuff and watching it for a half an hour and i'm like this this is awful i hate this and then it dawned on me like well i love the learning of chemistry i like i like the classroom part of like which was crazy but um the lab part i just dreaded and hated it dawned on me that that point i'm like well you're not what this is what you're going to be doing every day this kind of stuff and i'm like oh my goodness and it was it just it shocked me literally it's like like an aha moment like holy smokes you know i'm not just going to be a student forever i'm actually going to be doing this and so um it didn't take me very long just a few weeks to realize that that is not what i want to do so um while i was going to school just to work my way through school and pay for it i was i was managing a chem dry carpet cleaning franchise and um i decided i'm not going to do the school thing anymore and so i talked to my wife and we made some decisions and we had the opportunity to buy that franchise and so at 23 i went and got a 40 000 loan and well 39 000 and to me which back then you know 30 years ago was a fortune i thought that was uh that was just a crazy amount of money um let me and before we get too far i just had one quick question i'm guessing that when you tell your journey other people ask i mean you've been three and a half years you're almost done with the degree you know if it would have been me and i'd not tell you how to live your life or do your journey i would have just finished it out even if i never intended to use the degree so what was the thought process and saying hey yeah i could finish it out on the other and i get on the other hand saying if i'm never going to use this degree if i never want to go down that route why would i spend another dime on type of thing but how did you build that because i i would assume that parents or you or other people thought i'm close why don't i finish so kind of how did you make that decision never really cared what anyone else thought and so i just um i'm i'm a very um i make decisions quick um and and sometimes that's good you know um in business there's times where you don't have a lot of time to think about stuff um but this wasn't specifically that case i had plenty of time but it was that definitive of an aha moment for me like oh my goodness like i do not want to do this so i finished the semester i was in and i actually would have had another full year to go um i didn't just have one more semester ago it would have been with the way i did things and whatever whatever it would have been about another year and so um but it was pretty definitive moment for me like no i am not doing this i will not do it so there were just no point for me to go any further into that specific degree and you know um could it have opened some doors could it have been a better thing sure i'm sure it would have but i really don't have too many regrets because i literally never would have stepped foot into chemistry lab had i done it well i don't think i would have um but i just love the entrepreneur um aspect of things i i'm i feel very comfortable i don't know if i'm very good at it i'm very comfortable with um taking risks and and um i just you know that never would that never was a concern for me so just like hey make up move you know make a decision move on go with it um take some risk it's just it's just never bothered me now luckily i have a phenomenal wife and she's always supported these crazy ideas and stuff and um sometimes it worked out really good sometimes it worked out not as good but um that's just that's just my personality definitely makes sense so and i get it i said it in the one sense you know i did it a bit different i i got the end of engineering school and said oh i like engineering but i don't want to be an engineer so then that's the end so i went did law school in the intellectual property which was you know i like being engineering it was kind of a good mix for me to i definitely get to getting towards the end of the degree and say okay you know this really isn't what i want to do it's not what i'm passionate about and i can't see myself doing this for the the remainder of my career so now you did go you wouldn't bought that you know lever seems to you know kind of went out bought the the franchise bought the the cleaning stuff started on that and how did that go or as you dive into it as you took the 39 000 loan as you mentioned how did how did that go for you uh you know as a 23 year old kid and you know it was a scary step but um i had done it i've been managing that for about a year a year and a half so i kind of knew that i knew the ropes of the industry a little bit but but um then when it came to be mine then it was obviously you know you treat a little bit different like everybody when it's actually your business you know you treat things a little bit different but um you know that's the one thing i did learn about when you invest is you're you are committed and i will i will if we're talking about you know what what are some things that i've learned in my journey and i'll just i'll just sidetrack here for a second and say that's one thing um if you don't invest something and you you can just walk away at any time typically when the times get tough lots and lots of people walk not everybody but lots of people walk and so if you know if you're not going to invest something whether it's your whether it's money would be the most important but but especially just your heart and soul and your time but you've got to invest something or when times get tough which they will in any entrepreneurship type thing you'll just walk and so that's just a little side note but you know we didn't really have the option to walk so we spent about the first four years building that up um got to a point where he's doing pretty well we actually hired a a person to manage that forceful time i still kind of help oversee it and stuff but then i had a chance to start another company with a cousin of mine and where we did like sales and marketing stuff anyway uh and it went really really well um for the first couple years and then um the fulfillment come we had fulfilling the product portion and the service portion that we were actually marking and selling we didn't find out that they weren't fulfilling for quite a while and then by the time we found out it kind of collapsed it on itself and we had a lot of refunds and we had to reimburse a lot of people and anyway one thing led to another and um i sold that chem dry uh about a year after that and a year before that i sold it to help fund that marketing company and stuff and then uh everything when everything went bad we end up literally losing everything again one of those things where you know you take the risk you roll the dice in this case um you know we got uh we got we got kind of burnt on that one and you know we lost everything we walked out of our house we gave our cars back we um we had three kids small kids at the time um we had i bought this little truck toyota truck to get us around i think i paid 1500 for it you know and that was all we had to our name um anyway and so we started over and i started another carpet cleaning company did that for about six eight months sold it got enough money from that to kind of get us back one question i i just had a kind of curiosity because i get you know they're i completely agree you have to strap in if you want to be an entrepreneur you want to run your own business to your own thing it is far from certain and you're going to have those times where you feel like you're a success and times where you feel like an utter failure you're going to have both of them and you better be prepared for both of them because they both have their pros and cons but now as you do hit you kind of lose the house you lose the life savings so to speak you lose the cars you know you're kind of going through what would be a very you know low point in in entrepreneur journey you know how did you pick yourself back up and say okay i just got out of a carpet cleaning business it didn't go well i'm gonna start another one right out or you know start out and it was like hey i gotta earn an income it's out of necessity was it hey i still think i can do this right and i've learned the lessons i need to do differently or kind of how did you move on from that and start to rebuild you know i don't know it's weird because i never really i mean yes it was a low point i certainly didn't pick that outcome and that's not what i wanted to do but it never really i don't know it just i never felt like depressed or like oh i'm a failure i mean it was hard don't get me wrong um we actually had to move in with like my in-laws for like six months just to get back on our feet um but you know my sister after this all happened my my sister come up and she goes well um did you file for like unemployment or for welfare or this or this thing this i'm like i didn't know i could never even it literally never even crossed my mind and so i'm like no and she's like well why and i'm like well i i had a job i was i started coming she's like well i know but you can still get all these benefits this and this and this i'm like it never crossed my mind so i just i just never thought well i just got i just gotta go and so this ended and now it's time to go and you gotta move on you just i i don't know i just never even really had time to think about i just okay we're moving on we gotta go and and that's just my personal i was like hey you just gotta go and so it was like hey what can i do what do i know i said well i can start this up i still had some equipment so i just started back up i started marking i literally went door-to-door i i gave away my service for free just so people get talking about me to begin with um i just did i i i did anything i could do to just pick myself back up and within about six months we were able to kind of get back on our feet we moved out of there and got just a little apartment to begin with and then um about a year later and and while doing that i then sold that company that kind of gave us enough money to to move on and then i went to work for this marketing company just as a little bit more stable job but then i started another carpet cleaning business on the site as well so i've always had a carpet cleaning business because it's something i know and i do and and i'm you know pretty good at and and just a way for me to make a lot of you know extra income whether i had a job or not um and then i just really i just thought hey i'll be at this marketing company just for a year to just get my feet on the ground such a great company great people great guys loved working there they treated me super good um i moved up the ranks quite fast um still having the carpet clean business on the side um that was kind of my golf and travel money you know that's what i used it for really um it's a lot of fun trips a lot of you know i like to golf but um and i thought gosh i'll just but end up being there for 12 years um this marketing company was great just uh again great people and great experience well in 2012 well 2008 through 2012 they took a beating in their in their business and their profits and stuff and in about uh january 2012 i could kind of see the handwriting on the wall where things were headed it was it wasn't looking good and so i um i thought well i better make a plan b i had some savings i had a 401k had some money um not a ton but you know i had some and um we had a house and everything and thought well okay what what what what's plan b i better start i better start looking for it because i knew what's coming well i found this carpet cleaning van um online and it was kind of the setup they want it was kind of the full package it was real it was a beast it was it was a really good one and i i really wanted and so um it was about a two hour two and a half hour drive away from where i lived and i went and looked at it one one day and drove down like yep that's what i want i put a ten thousand dollar deposit down on it said hey i want it and this was in january about about a week and a half later it was a saturday it was a friday night and i said hey do you want to drive to fillmore with me that's where the van was at she's like fill more what more and feel more like you know the only thing about filmmakers there's a little dinky town that she actually had a couple cousins that live there and or something like that and she doesn't want to go over and visit her cousins i'm like no no um i wanna do that i'm gonna i said i i bought a carpet cleaning van and she's like you did what i said i bought a carpet cleaning van and has all the equipment and i was telling about she's like why did you do that and i said well just you know i wanted it it's cool and you know who knows we'll ever need something she's like well do you think we'll ever need it and that was the first time i actually broke the news to her that it was like there's a possibility we're gonna need a backup plan she's like really i said yeah and she goes well how much did you pay for this van i said i um between i put down and we took over his his lease on it and some things like that i said i was about 45 50 000. so i think i told her i said like 50 000 and she's like oh my gosh and again amazing wife she's like hey whatever another crazy idea this guy has and well you have a better wife than i do if i came in and i said i put down ten thousand it's gonna be about forty or fifty thousand my wife would have been like go see if you can get your money back and that will talk yeah she's amazing like lilly i couldn't do this without her and so i can't i can't say enough good things about her anyway she's like client whatever so we get in the car we drive over there and we get the van and on the way back it is an absolute white out blizzard like it took about two hours to drive there to get there took us four and a half hours to get home in the in the dark in the blizzard and so anyway we got this van and lo and behold about six eight months later july of 2012 about six months later the prediction came true and and um and that that career ended at that marketing company and and so um i said all right and i had a couple i had kind of some things going before then as far as the carpet business because again i just i started folks on a little bit more just like i could see again what was coming um but in july of 2012 we uh my brother-in-law who bought one of the other businesses that i had we partnered up his name's cody and so we actually partnered up created a company called power plus and we did carpet cleaning and restoration and and um little we and we bought another van we literally i invested i took out i cleared out my 401k cleared out my i had some investments cleared that account out cleared out our savings we maxed out two credit cards were 15 15 20 000 each so we put about 150 000 or so into this company just rolled the dice did everything but again and and what's weird is if if now that i'm sitting here saying i'm like what an idiot you know who would do that um but back then i i literally didn't even think about i'm like oh just okay we're gonna go for it that's what we do and we did and and we just we rolled the dice and that first year was tough we um i i think i think i think figured out from what i was making the marketing i was making you know a pretty high six figure income to what we were making we took about 80 pay cut for the first year um it was tough um a couple funny little things about that and i'm gonna make a point about this later but um we came home from we came home from thanksgiving um with my sister's house and the power was out and so we thought oh we'll just wait till the power comes back on well it didn't come on didn't come on the next day so we called our neighbors like do you guys have power like yeah or like oh must just be us well the power wasn't out they turned our power off you know and so that's what happens when you don't pay the power bill for like three months i don't know where they they actually just like everybody else somehow they want to get paid weird i don't i didn't understand that i guess but anyway we're like oh okay so for a couple days we just didn't have power and it was it was you know weird and it was i had we had six kids um from i think our oldest was 15 or 16 on down and so we're just like all right we just made do and um just to highlight i think one other thing that you'd skipped over that we talked a little bit before is you start so you went and bought this van you got this going and this was really i think he said in the bottom of the recession right it's 2012 yeah and you know financial markets aren't doing well foreclosures are at a high more you know all those things are at a high and which are not a good you know at least you know in conventional wisdom not a good time to go spend a whole bunch of money mortgage everything leverage yourself up and try and start a business you know worked out looking back but you know that so you know did that ever cross your mind you're just saying hey this is a good opportunity i think you can make a look of it it's the band i want and i you have self-confidence and just get going did it ever cross your mind that the timing was less than ideal well i'm sure it crossed my mind but it was more like what option do i have like you know what i'm saying it's it wasn't like oh this is a horrible time i shouldn't do this it was more like well i've got to do something what's my game plan and so that was it so it didn't really i may have thought about it but i don't ever remember constantly being like oh this is a horrible time no it's interesting you say that though because um before we actually you know started full time in july i was actually you know talking to a few people and i i had probably four or five people flat out tell me that and again where i live is in fairview and if you don't know where that is the town's about 1200 people um the county we live in sanpete's one of the poorest counties in the in the state we're all just a bunch of you know old redneck farmers down here you know and that's what we are i'm right there with you so i live in a small town i i like i like small towns so i i can just imagine because that's that's where i grew up as well everybody a lot of people want to come down here but um it's hard to make a living right and so you know it's the bottom of recession nobody has money it seems like and when i had i had no more than three or four people tell me that we will never make it down here they i mean literally like i had one specific guy that um i know really well he said he says yeah he goes you're gonna do that he goes my son came down here a few years ago and started a carpet cleaning business and he couldn't make it work because i don't think you can do it well and my partner cody um it was funny phenomenal guy and now he's he's the backbone of our company um he just he's he's at work and he's a workhorse but um i told him and this is this is just how my mind thinks um and again yeah if you looked at that you know in the recession we have you know no luck not we've invested every penny we've got we don't have a ton more we're not making very much to begin with this and that the other and he's like well do you really think we can make enough to make a living i said i said cody i i believe within four years we could we could be doing well over a million dollars and he laughed at me literally he goes okay you know no if i were to defend him it's good i think every entrepreneur i've ever met or any startup guy always seems they're going to be like we're going to be rich you know and so if i were to sell for because i've been there too and i told my wife and my and we've done well and i've done some businesses but every time i have a new idea or start a new business or do anything else she's like yeah this here's another crazy idea you say you're going to make a lot of money let's wait until they actually do it and then we'll then we'll talk so i get that i've been i've been on both sides of that conversation yeah well it's funny because he bought my he bought one of my other businesses before one of those ones i bought and sold he bought it and he'd been running it for you know eight ten years and he'd never even i don't think you know he he's phenomenal he's he's one of those guys that can do everything and so we had he had a lot of irons and different fires he wasn't just a carpet cleaner right but you know he'd never been able to make a big huge living on it just carpet clean he did good with all the other things he got going so down this little podunk town little port county at the bottom of recession you know it was it was i'm sure hard for him to believe it but i thought i said in five years we should i believe we could be do over a million dollars well it didn't take us five years took us four and so you know now that doesn't mean we're making a million that's just we did that in volume you know wait wait wait wait wait let me get this straight revenue doesn't equal how much money you take home in your pocket i know and i'm joking because i that's that's the conception is like oh you've done seven and eight figure businesses you must be just ready to reach i'm like no you you don't understand just because the business makes that much doesn't mean that's much how much i make yeah weird content i know i know it's crazy but yeah so so and you guys are still doing that right the business is still around you're still going gangbusters and still going forward yeah we're we're expanding um last year was obviously a little a little speed bump but um coming into this year we're we we're looking back at like the last two years previous to this even even the year before covid um we we're we're almost double what we were just couple years ago and our biggest problem honestly is finding you know employees we're just growing we're growing pretty fast and so um you know fourth fast forward now to today um we've got six or seven you know we we've got six cleaning bands out there we've got a full flood restoration business um we're doing you know well over you know almost double what we've what we ever hoped we would do and anyway um got other things happening stuff now we're looking at actually doing some franchising ourselves and we we've i've taken that chemistry background believe it or not and we actually worked with uh some really good chemists and developed a specific cleaning product just specifically for us that well you know that because we're working with you on the trademarks yeah i was gonna say full disclosure devron's an awesome client of ours so it's for everybody that wondered don't go take his trademarks because otherwise he'll have to come after you and and just so you know um the way i found out about miller law firm and devon is he contacted me to do this podcast he wasn't soliciting me for he didn't even know if i had anything to trademark he just he's some i don't even know how you heard about you you read her story on online or something yeah i think it was yeah i read the story online connected on linkedin reached out to you thought it'd be fun to have you on the podcast so i just love i just love sharing the startups and small business stories so it was a fun way to connect well it was funny because it was perfect timing because we were looking to get our our new product and our business and everything trademarked and it mattered it didn't even dominate took us like two or three interactions we're like oh wait call our ip lock oh wait you do you do ip oh wait we need a trick we're looking for some oh that's great so it worked out really good and now here we are but um fast forward to today and you know it's great because now as a you know i don't i don't actually do hardly any of the cleaning anymore i get on the van every once in a while when need to we're training a guy or things like that but really now i my my role as the my title ceo but we don't usually use a lot of titles here but it helps people understand that you take a managerial role you're kind of now looking for the vision and how to grow it and and improve it and franchise it and i certainly get that and it's always interesting because that's kind of where i've been with a lot of businesses you start out you're the guy that does everything you're everything from taking out in the garbage to doing payroll to marketing and sales to doing the actual work and all everything in between and then as the company matures and evolves then you say okay i only have so much time where is my time most valuable and then you start to focus that out and you become less of a generalist and more specific in areas you can add the most value so it definitely makes sense and you find the right people and that is key that is the absolute key to growing a business you cannot grow a business without having the right key people in place and and more importantly you just got to trust them um you got to find people you can completely trust like our our office um we have a man an office manager her name's sherry and we call her the general because she literally runs the company um and she is flat out amazing and and it just just allows all the rest of us to focus on what we have to you know and then we have you know managers that run this and the you know managers around that and and i trust them implicitly and what's great about is is when you give them that trust you give them that confidence they have a chance to shine and and even though you're still guiding and helping and you help portray the vision what what it allows them to do when you just give them the confidence and the power to run it it's it's incredible and they've all stepped up and it's cody and other people i have a son now that you know he does a role in and and if you hire the right people you can fully trust out there to keep your name and your reputation your brand and that's that's huge then you can grow a company and and we have an incredible team and that's and i i i assess a lot of our success to the team not just you know it might have been my vision but the team is what helps create it no no and i definitely get that because i get you know and it's i just have to smile because a lot of what you everybody's journey is different but it's always fun to see the commonalities and i always get the questions i run i do my own ip firm and i have a couple other businesses that i'm that i'm running or i'm technically ceo of and then people say how do you juggle all those and i said i got a really good team to where i give a lot of that oversight that vision i give direction i make sure things are done right but i also have a lot of people that are assisting me to make it if i didn't have the team there there's no way i could do it all on my own so i definitely get where you're coming from so well as we start to wrap up the pond and there's always so many more things i'd love to touch on that never have time to but as we start to wrap up the podcast i always have two questions i ask at the end of the podcast so we'll go ahead and jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it the worst the worst decision i've ever made um hiring the wrong people for sure um and we luckily we've we've hired for the most part really good guys um we hired we actually thought we decided to expand we're new to obviously we decided to we had a really good guy that um that wanted to kind of partner with us or work with us and he was in temecula california we thought hey we know this guy we trust me he's actually a family guy a brother-in-law great guy though um and the two things i learned from that was one we didn't make him invest anything and this is coming back to what i said earlier if you're going to especially if you're ever going to expand or partner or bring people on they have absolutely have to invest money not just time time is too easy to walk away from money's not um so we're like hey you know we started this we invested about you know we bought a new van we bought all the stuff we we spent about a hundred grand um got it all set up we did all the marking got it going doing really well and then you know um it kind of got to where the honeymoon phase of it were off and it was actually some work involved and you were like hey you got to be the guy on the ground you got we need to go and do this and this and this we'll do all the mark and anyway kind of got to the point where it's like uh i don't want to do this anymore and so he walked away um and there were a couple other things on our end that we need to take responsible it wasn't all his father want to blame it on on him but because there was no financial commitment to it um he you know he kind of walked away now we brought that van back we expanded we used it so all worked out okay we made it work but one of the worst decisions i made was hiring the wrong people for the wrong position and then we one other instant just to quickly help you understand this but we had one guy specifically he was a good technician matter of fact he had had the most experience he had the most um years in the industry he could do all kinds of different things that even i can't do in the company like he had skills that i did not even i can do so he was our most profitable employee literally he brought in more revenue than any other employee and and not even by by a large margin but what he did to our culture and what he did to our company as far as like attitude and things like that um you know we're constantly getting calls from people on the highway for we had a couple anyway i won't get into that but anyway it really damaged our brand as well um and it made it really hard and so we he's the only person that we've ever actually fired in the company because of that and it really did affect our culture and so i would say probably the worst decision was hiring the wrong people um really take a look at what is your culture does that person fit your culture can you trust them fully and if you can't do not hire them i don't care how much money they can make you it's not worth it no and i agree 100 you know and it's interesting i think everybody goes in there's always a couple misconceptions there a lot of people go into one and you always and when you first get into your own business or startup you always think everybody's going to work as hard as you are and it's i think it's one that you think that then you hire people and you're like wait they just are working a few hours they want to get paid for every little thing they're not invested they don't and it's one of those where you always you always think and then you always think that they're going to work as hard as us and they don't and i'm not faulting them it's much different when you're you know when you're the person that's founded it and you're putting in the blood sweat and tears and you're saying yeah i've got to make it work but it's always an interesting dynamic and the second thing i always think is is people always think they're a lot better at hiring than they are at least out of the shoot there's a lot of things that you think oh i can read people i know people they'll do this and they'll do that and i'm not going to make the same mistakes that i used to see my bosses make i'm going to do it great and it's it's hard it's hard to find the right person and you know you do interviews you try and meet them you try and get to know them but if you if you can get the right person they can make a huge difference and if you get the wrong person just as you said they can affect the culture and they can change things and directions they start to pull in it's usually that death by a thousand cuts to where they start to pull you in directions they say okay well i wouldn't do it that way i don't like it but you know and you make exceptions and you make more exceptions and it keeps pulling you into different directions so i absolutely agree that you know hiring the right people and taking that time and a lot of time and i'll and definitely let you chime in but one of the things i found is taking it and slowing the process down so that you know too often when you're especially start a small business mode you you're running you know running around oh we need somebody we need them now we've got to get this person in the place because we're we have too much work to get done so you go and hire someone you do it too quickly and then because you do too quickly you don't take the time to slow down and vet them and while yes you've got somebody quickly it's not the right person you end up spending more time than if you just slowed it down in the first place that's that's really true and and here's the deal don't don't beat yourself up if you do hire someone that doesn't isn't a perfect fit and they quit or they walk away because that'll happen no matter what um it just will that's just the nature of people when they see an opportunity come up they they go for something different whatever but um if you can if you like to say if you can vet if you can screen a little bit if you can somehow uh get a little bit of taste of who they are um and and what they what they're like on a on a integrity level um it'll go a long long way but again don't be afraid to hire you know when you need to hire you got to hire and and you can't always wait for the perfect guy sometimes you have to take what what what you get and then try to mold that by being the kind of person or the kind of boss the ceo the manager to help shape them into that kind of a person one thing we do is we a book and i've got it right here but um we have every one of our employees read a book called good to great if you haven't read it it's one of the most amazing books um really teaches people about that and the culture and also how to create the culture to help people want to be here um for your company and that can be a big part of it too but you know just try like you said slow it down if you can um don't be afraid to make some mistakes and hiring you're going to make some but i will say this if you realize that this person is wrong for your company wrong for your culture it hurts your other employees i don't care how much revenue it is if it's if it's a negative to that cut it you've got to cut it and it sounds it sounds vicious and it sounds mean and it sounds you know uh capitalistic or whatever you want to call it but it will it it can damage your company and your brand and your reputation so fast um it's it's almost scary absolutely so so now we're going to jump to my second question which is if you're just you're talking something that's just getting into a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them um i would say be fearless um it really does take that um i have talked to so many people i was a i was coaching football for my son just you know the little league football type stuff seventh eighth grade kind of a thing um one of my assistant coaches great guy still good friends to this day um he came up to me and says we got talking about busy like he goes i have got the idea that i know will make me a millionaire i just know it will and i'm like awesome what is it he's like i'm not gonna tell you you'll go do it and i said well one i won't but two and he i said i said fine don't tell i don't care what it is i said why don't you go do it he's like he literally said because i'm i'm afraid i'll fail and and i think that has stopped more people from ever becoming successful than any other thing and so if you're going to be an entrepreneur i actually taught entrepreneurship class at our high school um here for uh for for a while just saying i like doing i volunteered for and and uh they let me do it and stuff and i always told them i said look if in in business yes make smart edge make educated decisions get as much information you can and and try to make them educated decisions but at some point in time you've got to pull the trigger and it will never be a perfect time it'll it's going to be a a recession it's going to be 2012 it's going to be you don't have money you don't have this i had six kids you know um my my power got off and i was gonna tell you um that christmas um we lived out in kind of the booty so we're on a propane system not not natural gas when we got home for my sisters again on the 23rd and we didn't have any propane so we had no way to heat our house couldn't run our stove couldn't run our our um dryer we literally had enough we should we ran out of propane we didn't have any to buy anymore so come come christmas uh christmas eve we were just cuddled up in blankets and we made the best of it no we weren't crying about it and anyway we got some we ended up getting some that day believe it or not um someone heard about us and and helped us a little bit which was super nice but you know again you just got to be kind of fearless um and if you're not willing to invest money and most of all i mean money and time then just stop stop thinking about being an entrepreneur because it's not for you um if you're not willing to invest those things and have uh take some risk and be a little bit fearless it may not be for you and entrepreneurism isn't isn't for everybody it's true it's not it's it can be a hard road it can be scary it can be um you know again like i said i had an amazing wife that supported me but if if you're not willing to take some risk invest money and the time then just stop thinking about it just stay your job do what you do learn to love it be your best at it and forget it because if you if you go into it without being willing to do those things i i don't know if you'll ever make it no and i agree with you because i mean and i always laugh because to your point you get a whole bunch of people saying i got the world's best ideas it's going to change the world and then he's and then it's like you know what i've come to you know because i do a lot on the ip side and i hear a lot of great and there are a lot of great ideas but then it always comes down to it's the execution of the idea not the idea itself meaning you have the world's best idea if you never do anything with it guess what either one day somebody else will do it you'll say i had that idea ten years ago and i could have been that i could have been them and say well but you didn't like you have to actually follow through and execute so there's always the execution of the idea that it's a difference between someone that's always a streaming or the idea guy versus someone actually builds something so i think that there's a lot of wisdom to learn there well that that thing we're doing with you on the trademark we actually did a different version of it about two years ago we lost about 30 grand on that one um but i'll tell you what we learned what we learned was everything that we needed to do different what not to get to the point where we're now working with you again we're gonna we're gonna relaunch and repackage it and kind of reformulate it um you know so it was a thirty thousand dollar learning experience but um you know we had the money to invest at that point it wasn't wasn't very devastating at that point but you know again we still had to invest the time i had to invest the money we did at risk that quote-unquote didn't work but it prepared us for what's coming and we think it's gonna be a lot better and of course you know you have a little bit of a clue what that is but anyway sure no and i definitely agree with you i think that sometimes even if you even if it fails you learn a lot and you say okay now when we do it again next time we know all the things that we're going to do differently but if you never get into it you never try you're definitely never going to have those successes or you're going to have that opportunity well as we wrap up if people want to they want you to they want to hire you they want to have you clean their carpets 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 or find out more you know obviously for for any cleaning services um things like that our website's the easiest thing to go to you can get all the information we have some amazing before and after videos they're just fun to watch no matter if you meet us in our service or not there's really cool but it's just powerpluscleaning.com our website's on there i mean our phone number's on their emails on there um you know if you're looking for a good employment opportunity we you know we're always looking for uh the right people um we're not looking for good people looking for the right people and literally it's one of those things where we find the right person we'll find a job for you um if if you're the right person um we we do have opportunities for expansion if you want to you know talk about possibly getting into partner being a partner with power plus in an area or france it's not a franchise we call it partnership and there's details that we can explain but um our website's always the best place to go to find out the most information for us all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check it out whether it's looking for employment looking for a franchise or for a partnership looking for a carpet cleaner for any other reason because there's certainly plenty of reasons to reach out well thank you again to everyone for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show we'd love to share your journey two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our up awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about the awesome episodes 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 thanks again devron and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last okay thanks again devin will be talking to you soon absolutely [Music]

Put In The Time 

Bill Poston
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/7/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

first i'd try to make sure they were ready to do it in the first place um you know i don't necessarily take my own counsel uh here but my advice to particularly younger entrepreneurs is you know you got to put in your time you know i mentioned earlier that i considered my 10 years at deloitte an apprenticeship um that's really what it was i i didn't i didn't roll out of bed um you know at 25 and start calypso right i i put in a decade learning the industry developing my own skills um developing a management model and a leadership philosophy that was the foundation of that firm [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 uh founder and ceo of miller ip law where he focused on helping startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always happy to chat now today we've got another great guest on the podcast bill um poston so right poston and uh bill is uh graduated an undergraduate in the middle of the oil bus in the mid-1980s in texas but did graduate and do everything you know everything right quote unquote graduated but there weren't any job prospects so he's figured hey why not why not go do something fun let's go to hawaii and work at resorts for a period of time did that for a little while and then came back to uh texas got an mba worked with deloitte um for a period of time and then left and start i think and started his own thing with the partner business partner they knew from deloitte and then wanted to get into consulting uh or to help people doing consulting and consulting firms with um a lot of the background they had with deloitte and eventually launched what they're doing now which is uh launchbox.com so but that much is a quick introduction welcome on the podcast bill thanks devin glad to be here well glad to have you on so i gave that uh kind of brief or quick walk through of uh of your journey but now take us back a bit in time to graduating in texas with the the oil bust yeah so it all starts uh back at the undergraduate level in texas uh you know i i felt like i had done all the things that you were supposed to do as a college student right i graduated with honors i had a managerial job working in hotels while i was an undergrad i was an officer in student organizations but you know probably somewhat similar to people that were coming out in the great financial crisis or maybe last year the prospects were pretty limited you know i got job offers making less money than i was making in my college job and so um rather than just kind of roll with the the market at the time i just said you know i'm going to go wait this recession out in hawaii so you can call it my working gap year that turned into four and uh turned out to be an amazing experience had a fantastic mentor in the business while i was there met my wife before coming back to texas to to go back to business school so that was a little a fun little aside so and and so four years was a fun little job what made you decide okay i've had enough of a break or i've waited a lo not long enough time i'll go back to texas and get the nba kind of what made the the prompt of that transition a bit i mean i had worked myself into a pretty big job um running an 800 room hotel and at 25 years old could see the top of that industry i mean it wasn't too far from where i was to get to essentially the top of the the hotel business i was probably three steps removed from about as big a job as you can have in that industry and just didn't really see the potential for me to stay there and make it a career all right no definitely makes sense and saying okay i've got to figure out what i'm going to do long term so you go do that and you go back and do the nba and you get that and you know now you're coming out of getting the nba and i think you went to deloitte after that is that right kind of doing was it finance or marketing remind me what you did at delaware i was i was a management consultant at deloitte for 10 years um worked helping our clients improve their product development capabilities um and that really became uh i i consider that to be my apprenticeship right but you go back to school when you don't know what you really want to do with your life and when you graduate from graduate school and you still don't know what you want to do with your life you become a consultant so and i figured that would give me the opportunity to have a diversity of experiences and learn a lot more than i ever could in a classroom and i just fell in love with the lifestyle i mean i fell in love with the the pace i fell in love with the travel the diversity of experiences you know every client every city is a new challenge you're continually learning continually faced with uh with new problems um definitely makes sense and it sounds like it'd be a fun rewarding and kind of a good opportunity to to learn quite a bit and see how others do it and gain that experience and so now you do deloitte and how long did you how long did you work at deloitte for i was there for 10 years so you do delay for 10 years get some good experience get it or get a bit of the lifestyle get a see a lot of things do a lot of things and kind of go through that now what kind of prompted you as you were leaving deloitte to kind of leave there go do your own thing and also pull in one or pull your business partner that you knew from deloitte yeah i mean my one of my six word memoirs is uh big decisions were made for me and i i felt like uh in the wake of the shake up uh in big five management consulting you know if you recall the industry transition where most of the the big integrated accounting and consulting firms separated uh in the wake of enron and worldcom and the sarbanes-oxley legislation deloitte remains an integrated firm and i felt that you know at that time it was uh about as as good an opportunity as any uh to go out and launch our own thing no so make sense and uh so now so now you've got that realization okay kind of the timing's right i'd like to go do my own thing and you know looks or looks exciting good to me now as you're kind of doing that did you have a business in mind did you already have it all lined up did you have no idea and you just figured you go out and do something you're kind of how did you make that transition or kind of decide where you were going to land or where you're going to go as you just shifted to go out on your own no but we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to do we started another management consulting firm named calypso and we were doing product development to work for our clients helping them improve their ability to innovate and bring new products to market we you know we were really worried about things like who's going to hire us you know how are we going to get clients who's going to want to work for us how are we going to attract talent those things turned out to be easy i mean we had clients from day one and never had a problem with demand we also never had a problem attracting talent it turned out that all the big things we were worried about we didn't have to worry about those were easy it was all the stuff we didn't know anything about that turned out to be really a major pain know and i just consider that the the administrative burden of launching and running a business right we got to have health insurance you know for us and our employees you know how do you set up a 401k plan who's going to keep the books state tax issues i mean it's just you know a mind-boggling mess of administrative stuff that keeps you out of the market right retards your ability to really focus on growing the firm by recruiting and selling and developing the business yeah no that that definitely makes sense so so now you you get there you kind of hey we have a pretty good road map was it when you were exiting was it or was the your business partner hey already exited have you guys planned it together were you know you'd already kind of or how did that work out that you're saying hey i'd like to pull someone in and and have them and someone to help to get this launched yeah i mean we developed the concept together um he uh had an opportunity to um leave deloitte before me just based on his circumstances and so he went out and started the business and got it up and running probably i think about nine months ahead of me so he was he was there keeping my seat warm no it makes sense so that that makes it nice to have the warm seat that you can just sit down into and uh get to work so so now you do that and then you guys are out on your own you're you're getting you're building it and you mentioned a little bit you know it was a things that you didn't know that you know or the things you had to figure out and you know and then i think everybody hits in there you have to figure out health insurance where are you going to have the building what the rent is going to be who are if you need to hire people where are you going or how are you going to set up payroll how you can do all those janitorial things and everything else and those are all the things you never really think about but to always have to get done but as you're getting that kind of taken care of and done you know how how did things go is you now have the opportunity to go out on your own kind of build things was it a raving success and just took off like wildfire was it a slow growth and kind of how did how did that evolve yeah i mean we with the with the exception of 2009 you know when the whole industry took a step back we were pretty much on a straight line trajectory up and to the right you know we grew the business year over year every single year we're financially successful every single year had phenomenal team and the ability to attract the best people in the industry to to work for it so as i look back on those early days where we were you know working our tails off and going at it seven days a week that's that's the nostalgic view of that is that was the good times right that was the fun building um and and growing this business and what i what i learned about myself is yeah i'm much more in the zone and and much more effective in that starting and growth stage than i am at you know running a mature business no definitely and you know it's interesting because i i think there there is a lot to be said for that and it's you know one of the one of my favorite books not like a lot of books was um it was on that it's called that never works by mark randolph that was the original founder of uh netflix and uh you know it kind of talks about how you know you start out a business and you need a lot of generalists you need a lot of people that are good at doing a lot of different things and wearing multiple hats and kind of doing things and then as the business matures and kind of gets out of the startup grow phase small business and into a larger business then you start to switch over from you know generalists to specialists and how everybody now has their specialized role and oftentimes a person that's great at or having the idea of growing and launching the business is not necessarily the same one that's now going to take the realm as it moves into an operational business and it kind of you know adjusts and transfers from that and it's uh it's interesting how often time that overlays with a lot of businesses is hey i've been great at starting a business it's exciting it's fun and i enjoy it and then as it gets bigger and it gets more operational and it's less of that exciting kind of startup mode how some people make that transition and love it and other people are saying i want to go back to the startups and do the fun stuff again and so it's always kind of that mix-up so now you did that for a period of time you did the you know did it with your business partner and then you got or you transitioned over into the business you're doing now which was where's lunchbox.com was that part of the same business was it with the same business partner did you go out on your own do your own thing or kind of how did you make that transition or adjustment so we we sold calypso uh in 2020 and my business partner stayed with the firm so he's now working same job with calypso but with the acquirer sold that business to rockwell automation at the end of april last year so almost exactly one year ago and the natural thing would be to go do it again right so we spent 16 years building a business we had no money at the start we didn't know what we were doing we had no experience so clearly we can just go do this again now that we actually know what we're doing and have the money to do it but as i thought about it i said why would i just want to start one new firm when i can help other people start firms so the that's really the notion behind the launch box is you know if if it took us 16 years to you know start scale and sell this business with no money and no real experience can we take capital and experience and and strategic know-how and help other people short um you know short-circuit that cycle and start and scale and sell a business in half the time uh and instead of doing it once let's do it 20 times right go find young ambitious entrepreneurs that have a desire to start a professional service firm and give them the freedom and the flexibility and the capital uh to go do that and kind of take the headache away of all that administrative nonsense that i mentioned earlier that that i had to do when we started our firm and just let them go focus on selling delivering and managing their people no and i think that you know that that sound kind of sounds like you know fun and exciting and bolson's in the sense that for the people that are wanting to offload some of that and not have to deal with that you know gives them an opportunity to focus on what they're good at and on the same time it gives you hey i can go and figure do that you work with a lot of businesses have a lot of impact and kind of get in there without rather than do as you mentioned one you can do multiple so that sounds like a fun uh fun arrangement on both sides so as you've as you've launched that and it's been about a year or so or at least since you left a clip so how has it gone has it been fun and rewarding has it been more difficult you know old question is oftentimes when you get into a second startup is that easier harder than what you do you know is it easier the second time is it about the same or kind of how does that turn out so how did that go for you yeah so it's really only been about four months i mean i i i played quite a bit uh in 2020 uh while the world was you know somewhat on hold um but we laid the groundwork for the launch box and you know put the plans in place but really started in earnest in january and we're off to the races we've started three new firms a cyber security consulting firm a marketing consulting firm and more of an advertising agency the three businesses that we've launched so far i'm getting accustomed to working again you know so you know when you go from 80 100 hours a week to 10 hours a week for a year or so getting back to 80 or 100 hours a week requires a little bit of a transition but unlike the first go-round where i was taking out the trash and making the coffee and keeping the books and selling the work and delivering the work uh i now have a luxury of having an amazing team to support me and it's been it's been a tremendous amount of fun um but a tremendous amount of work and um they're they're they're now screaming slow down um we started three firms and you know four months and or less than four months so they would like to let these settle in as they that's their their turn let's let these settle in a bit uh before we do another one um it's a pretty good pace so i don't know that i blame them as far as wanting to at least catch their breath before you jump on to the next one but at the same time that's that's some of the fun of it is to to uh try new things out you know get things up and running do it a different way do the your own way and have a fun time at it so i get both sides of the of the coin so well as we now that kind of brings us up to where you're at today and so now we'll kind of transition a bit to the two questions i always ask about your journey so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah well it's it's it's a perfect transition for my team saying hey let's slow down because you know as i think back on the bad business decisions that i have made over my career um they all are uh a result of wanting to go too fast right they're a result of seeking growth uh in somewhat of an unnatural way at an unnatural pace and maybe probably the the biggest most glaring example of that is when we were running calypso we made a decision to expand into europe early on so we were probably less than 10 million dollars in revenue um you know 30 or 40 people in the united states and we thought it would just be a really brilliant idea to go global um you know we looked at the eu market said yeah it's not it's you know the consulting market is probably two-thirds the size of the united states so let's go tackle it and yeah it's not that we weren't successful there we were successful but the management time and attention and distraction factor associated with trying to tackle what is not a market right it's a few dozen different markets it's just a mistake i mean if all that time and energy would have been much better um used growing the business at home no definitely definitely makes sense and uh you know it's always it's always hard in the sense that you see opportunities and say okay this can be great opportunity it's going to be a great market and sometimes it is and other times it's hey you know it's one where i don't understand the market as well or i have to adapt to it or it takes a lot more time to get you know understanding of it or come up to speed or to adapt to it so it's always one of those as to where to put the focus where to put the effort and where to build and so it's always an interesting one where sometimes it works out sometimes you learn good lessons from it and both times it's fun along the way so it definitely makes sense so now we'll drive to the oh that's learning go ahead learning to say no lesson is one that i keep learning over and over again i just i mean if i could learn to say no uh to more things i'd probably be happier and richer no and i but i think that that's a little bit of a lot of the entrepreneur's dilemma in the sense a lot of times you have a lot of great ideas a lot of things science there look exciting there's a lot of things where you think you can have an impact and make a difference and do it differently and so you oftentimes will have too many things that you oftentimes will want to do or you over commit or you don't say no and it has that drawback in that detriment but you know it's still it's still hard to say no so i definitely get that so now we'll dive to the the second uh question i always ask on the end of the podcast which is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i mean first i'd try to make sure they were ready to do it in the first place um you know i don't necessarily take my own counsel here but my advice to particularly younger entrepreneurs is you know you got to put in your time you know i mentioned earlier that i considered my 10 years at deloitte an apprenticeship that's really what it was i didn't i didn't roll out of bed um you know at 25 and start calypso i i put in a decade learning the industry developing my own skills developing a management model and a leadership philosophy that was the foundation of that firm so number one is you know be prepared but then once you leap go fast i mean i i work with a lot of people that um they are never quite ready right the product is never perfect enough um in an innovation we use the concept of minimum viable product and say you know get it out there we're not going to improve it in a conference room or in a laboratory we're going to improve it by making it work and you know fixing it in market no and i think there's a lot of i mean now you don't want to put out the crappiest product you can so you know you always have to balance a minimally viable product with a good product but i always tend to agree that is in the sense that most of the time you're always wanting to be perfect you're wanting to just have this one extra feature make it just a little bit better and improve it here and because it'll make a big impact and yeah you hold it off so for so long then one you're not getting valuable feedback from the market you're not you you know you could go put it out there see how people react and maybe you're way off or maybe you need to adjust things or maybe it's spot on and you could be making money earlier or maybe you get the funds that you can then you know reinvest and do a generation two and three but all of which until you get it out there and you start to overcome those excuses as to why it's not ready to introduce to the marketplace definitely it can hold things back so i think that's a great piece of advice well this is a reminder to the listeners we do also have the bonus question coming up after the normal episode where we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so for those of you that are interested stay tuned for that but as we wrap up the normal part of the episode if people want to reach out to you they want to learn more about your businesses they want to uh you know pitch you on a business they want to be in a client they want to be a customer they want to be an employee they want to invest in your business they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more yeah so uh the launchbox.com is the website i'd love to have anybody go there learn more about the business easy to contact us there you can also reach me directly at uh bill thelaunchbox.com awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to reach out make connections and definitely utilize the wealth of knowledge from bill so well as we wrap up um thank you again for coming on bill 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'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as a 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 a review so you know or others can find it and find the awesome episodes as well last but not least if you haven't had any ques or any help with patents trademarks or anything else or have any questions go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat so with that we it's always kind of a fun place to uh or switch gears a bit and talk a little bit about the area that i you know that i tend to er hopefully have a little bit of expertise and intend to enjoy and drill down on which is intellectual property so with that on the bonus question um i turn it over to you what's your uh or your top your number one intellectual property question so we don't really work much in the area of patents you know and products right but we do invest in brands quite a bit and it's always a bit confusing to me around trademark protections and what actually has to be registered in order to be protected and what level of protection you have simply by claiming it and using uh you know a phrase or a word or a brand or a mark um you know in in public uh yeah we spend a lot of time and money protecting these things but then i often you know have attorneys tell me well you already own it it's already yours just by virtue of using it which begs the question then why the heck do we have to register it go tell those attorneys they need to do a better job explain no i just kidding um there's some true truth so let me back up and answer a part of your first question what you can typically protect with the trademark has anything to do with the brand so that oftentimes falls into name of a company name of a product a logo a catch phrase or something of that nature something that is really people anything that is identifying a source of goods or services in other words they know when they see whatever it is that it's your product or it's your service being offered and in a large sense that's what can be protected with a trademark and so you know there are ones that you know as an example smell of play-doh that's been trademarked in the sense that everybody when they smell play-doh they know they think of play-doh that you know that's a product and you have colors that have been trademarked for different vehicles and sports arenas and different things so it does it kind of goes beyond that so if you're thinking of hey if somebody's associating with this brand when they see it they hear it they smell it whatever they think of our brand you can or generally protect that with a trademark now the second part of the question is more on you know what necessarily what can you protect or you know is it worthwhile to file a trademark so generally they they're right the attorneys that tell you that are right to a degree that inherent in using a trademark you have some what are called common law rights or state law rights and so when you start to use it if if you're the first one to use it for a given category or class of goods and you know for the type of product or service then you have those inherent rights but where it is is is a limited amount of rights based on your geographic location where you're using it so let's say it is an example you start up a business and we'll say it's a local restaurant this is an example and you go to chicago and you start the business and you you know you name it this you start to use it you're the first one to use it and you have the rights to that in that geographic location so in chicago or maybe it's only a few blocks maybe only service a few blocks but whatever that area that you're selling your goods or services to you that's where you own it now the problem is is if somebody comes along and they register the federal trademark or register trademark they are the presumptive owners of all of that using that mark outside of your geographical location meaning yeah you can keep doing it in chicago and keep selling it there but let's say if you ever wanted to expand or you wanted to franchise or you wanted to be a nationwide brand or anything else you're now stuck you're no longer able to expand you're no longer able to go anything and then you can also get in there and then it gets in the question of if you know there's a lot of presumptions that come with the federal trademark of who is using it first and who owns it so then you can also get into what is that geographication who started using it first how are you using it and so while there are some limited inherent rights to just by the fact of using it with common law rights they're pretty limited and most of the time when you get into it it's you know let's say you were a mom-and-pops or a local store but now you get into a point it grows you know expands beyond your wildest dreams in five or ten years and you want a franchise or you want to go sell it or somebody wants to acquire it and now they're saying well yeah do you have this protected well we got common writing and say well those are you know pretty weak and so it has a lot of those drawbacks so in a sense they are right but it's a much more limited set of protections that you have such that a d or for most businesses decreases the value quite a bit of the trademark yep super that's helpful so with that there's the number or answer to your number one intellectual property question if you or any of the audience ever has any other questions as i've already mentioned before just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we can go over anything else on your mind with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast thank you again bill for coming on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin you

How To Have The Right Mindset

Byron Morrison
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/6/2021

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

in my experience this is why the bottleneck for so many businesses is actually the ceo it's because they're not making decisions opportunities are being lost everything else is being falling behind because they within themselves aren't showing up as the ceo in their business and that's why i'm such a firm believer that your business's growth can't outgrow your inner growth and if you really want to not just perform at that level but break through to the next you really have to evolve within yourself because you need that level of thinking the ability to control the stress and pressure and all of the mindset shifts in order to really actually sustain your success [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 you help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great expert episode that uh we're gonna and it's with uh brian uh morrison and uh brian's gonna talk a little bit about uh on a few different areas but i think a little bit about i interrupt you it's byron not brian byron oh now now i owe you i think a free cookie or a free candy bar or something i always try and do i'm horrible name just as a complete aside for everybody listening i always worry that i'm going to mess up days and usually i get them right but i always have that fear so byron morrison not brian so appreciate the correction um so byron is um we're going to talk a little bit about mindset mindsets and a bit of emotional shift things will be an interesting uh topic that is relevant to a lot of people kind of that journey that you take from becoming a founder to becoming a ceo which isn't always the same thing and they also kind of um you know how to deal with you know product and ideas getting them to the marketplace um entry level to success and you know how that leads to new problems from going you know as you kind of build and get become more successful new issues that come up kind of dealing with the pressures of of success because you always hear about the pressures of failure but there is also that of success how to delegate and build a team and dealing with a bit of imposter syndrome or getting confidence and we'll have a great discussion and i'm excited to have you on so with that much in the introduction welcome on the podcast buyer and not brian hey i'm i'm so used to that i think it's yeah people always see the name like they call brian constantly so yeah well i definitely i definitely don't want to be followed to that group so i appreciate the the correction so with that maybe before we dive into a bit of the conversation just take a two or one or two minutes just introduce everybody a little bit about to you and why you're an expert on this episode and why they should listen to you and uh and trust what you have to say so get maybe give a bit of an introduction sure so my name's byron morrison not brian and i'm a author of the book the effective ceo as well as being a speaker and a mindset and high performance coach and essentially what i do is help ceos take control of their role by evolving them into a more confident grounded and effective decision-making leader who can really handle the pressures of growing a business so that's very much focused around taking their mindset their emotional control and their performance to the next level so that they can grow within themselves to really change and impact the world as for why i'm an expert in this field to be honest life wasn't always this way um this all started a few years ago after my dad got cancer during his treatment he had most of his bowel surgically removed and he spent 25 days in icu mostly on life support and breeding through a tracheostomy and that for me was the wake-up call i had to change my own life so i went out on this journey of transformation i lost over 50 pounds i turned my life around i became a qualified nutritionist and personal trainer and eventually i took everything i learned and it went on to be the foundation of my best-selling book become a better you so i started my business of wanting to change the world and i actually found myself in a situation where instead i was spending my days putting out fires solving other people's problems dealing with never-ending demands to the point that i was just dreading getting up in the morning and looking at my calendar and what i had to face that day and eventually i reached a point where i didn't know if i could carry on doing it and i saw so many other business owners feeling like i was so i knew there had to be something going on so i really dedicated myself to learning everything i could about mindset psychology managing stress high performance and everything else in between to figure out what it takes to go from being stressed and overwhelmed to confident and in control and that's very much brought me to what i'm doing today once i got my own life under control and got that shift with in myself now helping other ceos and business leaders do the same well cool no i think then first of all it's a great introduction definitely makes sense and so now we'll dive into a little bit of the topic in hand and one of the ones i thought interesting is we chatted a bit before the podcast was the idea of you know the kind of the journey from being a founder to a ceo and you know sometimes that's a bit counter-intuitive because most founders are ceos or at least they give them themselves the title ceo right they're the executive officer but there is a bit of a shift from you know you kind of have an idea you you yourself or maybe you and a partner or somebody else but you have a small group and you start to build a company versus now as you as it grows and actually becomes their founded and you know and starts to take on a life of his own so to speak transitioning to that you know that ceo role where you're actually running the business rather than founding it so maybe share a little bit about kind of how that is with that mindset and that emotional shift what people should be aware of yeah 100 this is something i see all the time and clients i work with is i work with a lot of people who essentially start a business with a product or a service or an idea and because they're amazing what they do they've grown it but the problem with them is they're very much of that founder level mentality whereas when things take off they're unprepared for what it really takes to be a ceo especially when on top of focusing on growth they have to lead a managed team they have to keep stakeholders happy they have to overlook day-to-day operations it's a huge amount to stack on top which for i find for a lot of people leaves them feeling in over their head where they're stretched then they're overwhelmed and really don't know what they should be doing and in my experience this is why the bottleneck for so many businesses is actually the ceo it's because they're not making decisions opportunities are being lost everything else has been falling behind because they within themselves aren't showing up as the ceo in their business and that's why i'm such a firm believer that your business's growth can't outgrow your inner growth and if you really want to not just perform at that level but break through to the next you really have to evolve within yourself because you need that level of thinking the ability to control the stress and pressure and all of the mindset shifts in order to really actually sustain your success no and i like that because one of the things and i had to go through that same you know i didn't have use a coach so i had to try and figure it out on my own and i'm still learning every day but it was you know the idea was is you know i started i've done several different startups but take you know miller ip laws an example is one where you know i had a lot of expertise and experience in doing intellectual property patents and trademarks and yet now as i brought on more people's i brought on some additional attorneys brought on paralegals brought on marketing and other support staff yet you know even with all those people and i'm bringing them on i still had that wanting to control it because you know i knew i could do it you know how i did it that it would be done right that'd be done on time and yet allowing you know so i became a bit of a bottleneck and i had to start there's figure out where to step back and how to step back on some of the areas just because if not i everybody still had to come to me had to get approvals had to do everything had to review everything and they didn't allow the business to grow beyond a certain point because i only have so many hours in the day and i can only do so much and i'm now getting pulled away on things that i can't focus that i that other people can do to and that i'm doing versus the areas that i really have that expertise that specialty that other people can fill in the gaps and so i think that that's i like that i think it's important thing is to make that that mind shift but i'll follow up with one question kind of we talked about it's easier said than done in the sense that you did get most founders and at least my experience and all based on that is you know a lot of them are type a personalities they want things done a certain way they want to make sure it's done right they want to you know they're putting a lot of times their name and their stamp of quality on things and so how do you help people to make that shift or make that mental mental lead there's a few factors involved in it and the first one is really and i dive into this in the first section of my book the effect of ceo figuring out their zone of genius because the reality is like you said there's only only so many hours in the day and you really need to figure out where is your time best spent because while when you founded your business you could get away with doing everything eventually you're either going to get to a point where you can do a few things really well or many things mediocre or badly and this is where you really need to figure out okay where is the best use of your time where are you going to pull the key levers that are going to allow your business to grow and that really takes sitting down and auditing what you need to do what are you currently focusing on and where are you actually have the biggest impact in the business everything else needs to be delegated outsourced or even better removed altogether because for so many ceos i find that days are filled with tasks that really don't matter that may seem like a good idea but actually have a negative roi time-wise so that'll be my first piece of advice is figure out where you actually need media in the business the second is really figuring out who do you then pass it on to and the third step is just pulling the band-aid off because so many ceos have this fear that if they don't do it it's all going to fall apart and this is why i would really challenge them to think that if you're so worried that your team's going to drop the ball then you probably haven't done a very good job in surrounding yourself with the right people because at the end of the day you've brought them in for that reason so it's really being honest with yourself of do you actually need to do it do you need to do a better job getting the right people in or do you just need to face that fear and give it to them and just see that actually it's not going to fall apart and will be okay no and i like that and you know and i'll give my kind of personal role that where at least works for me that i found that hey if i can bring someone on they can do it 80 as well as i at least think i can sometimes i do it much better but at least if they can do it 80 as well as i think i can it's time to hand that off because you know they may not be able to do it exactly how i would do it or exactly what i think it always should be done but they're getting it done to uh 80 of the time or 80 of the degree that i would then it's something that i should be focusing on something that's they can't do the 80 and i think that making that jump you know it is hard one of the other things i think that always makes sense is you kind of you start to by giving them a bit of rope or you know a bit of a leash or whatever you want to call it let them start to prove themselves and as they earn more trust you should be giving them more and more responsibilities and delegating it out more and if by the other hand to your point if they're not doing a good job they're not doing what they're supposed to and they're not doing it then you should be hiring someone else that you can have that trust in them yeah to take it a step further i'd also challenge anyone listening to really figure out what is that time realistically worth an hour um i'll give you an example a few weeks ago i had a session with one of my clients and when we started the call he was really stressed and i was asking him what was going on and he said he had a big pitch coming up later that week but all he could think about was he had to book his travel because he had a flight to a conference next week and there was a few other things going on and he needed to book his hotel and these were again responsibilities that when he was a founder he needed to take care of because he didn't have anyone else whereas now as a ceo he'd hired an assistant to take over tasks like this he just hadn't delegated and thought of it which if you for simplicity's sake said that his times were a thousand dollars an hour he should not be doing tasks that he can pay his assistant 25 hours 25 an hour to do because sure it might only take 45 minutes but the amount of hours he was losing feeling stressed and overwhelmed and thinking about it was actually having a huge effect on the business because that was time he could put into preparing for the pitch doing revenue generating activities or whatever his superpower is that he was then losing out on so if you're worried about letting go or delegating think of the bigger picture of what is it costing you to still be doing it yourself no and i think that you know i've heard that kind of different er different ways but that analogy of you know to take about how much would you be paying if you were pay yourself your hourly rate or whatever your value is you know would you pay someone a thousand dollars to book a flight probably not because it's going to be more than it's more expensive than the flight in your example and yet how often do you do it yourself and again it's it's easier said than done because i think that people are saying to your point you're used to doing it when you got started you're wanting to make sure it's done right you have things a particular way and yet now you're it's it's bottlenecking or otherwise not allowing you to grow in the areas that make the most sense now as we transition or shift to kind of along those same lines but one of the other things we talked about a bit was um you know kind of as you grow and it kind of builds right on top of this you get as you reach new levels of success you also hit new problems so maybe talk a little bit about kind of what those problems are and what should people expect because you always hear you know it's always easy if when you're a failure you hear well then we don't have enough money we can't make payroll we're wondering if we keep the lights on nobody's buying our product those are always ones that you hear a lot of but you don't hear as much about some of the issues that come up with as you hit success so give us a little bit insight there yeah sure well one of the biggest misconceptions i come across especially in new founders is they have this idea in their mind that once their business takes off it's going to be this life filled with parties and private planes and just endless wealth whereas anyone who's actually reached that level knows it's a very different reality because your life essentially becomes putting out fires solving other people's problems and dealing with never-ending demands i'll speak to a lot of people who every single day it's just firefighting constantly where they'll have this huge to-do list of things they need to get done but then they have to solve someone else's problem and they'll get pulled into a crisis constantly being barraged by all of these different issues which is why it's such a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and i find probably the most difficult part of it is often they'll go to bed feeling like no matter what they did they disappointed somebody because there's only so many hours in a day there's only so much that they can get done and people are never happy and people also don't really realize how stressful it truly is to be a ceo and i find a lot of founders as well don't recognize that that's the life that they're entering this is why i'm such a firm believer in really focusing on your inner growth right now and really grounding yourself getting the right routines in place focusing on how you're going to deal with the setbacks and the stress and the overwhelming having those practices in place because if you suddenly land up in a situation where your business explodes this is where so many people get imposter syndrome or spiral out of control and yeah i speak to founders and ceos all the time who want to burn their business down it's got to the point where it's no longer fun they're just like why am i doing this because they're just completely stressed whereas if you really focus on getting those habits and behaviors in place now it'll be far easier to deal with it if and when it does get to that point no and i there's a lot of things to hit on there one of the things i always think is interesting and i can at least for me and i always speak from me because it's what works for me i i had to come to the conclusion they're always going to be more fires to put out than they're going to be trying to put out the fires in the sense that every day there's going to be more things i probably need want to get done or need to get done then i'm going to have to and so i always came to conclusion hey when time comes to or go home to the family have dinner spend some time off i'll put out as many fires as i can while i'm at work and then they'll be there the next day and i'll be fine if they're if they sit there for unless it's a major fire the whole building's burning down which is a much more the exception the rest of them i'll deal with them the next day because there's always going to be something more but the other one that you hit on that i thought was interesting was the idea that you know that you know i guess it circles back to you know as you hit success you're going to have new problems and kind of how you have to deal with it anticipating and building those up such that as things grow you know one of the things that was interesting and i can't remember which book it is i like to read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts and they all started to get jobbled up in my head but they talked about you'll kind of go through things to where okay i get so busy i need to hire some more people on and then i hire some more people on and it starts to grow and then i start to not enjoy the business and i want to just go back to when it was just me because i enjoyed it and it was fun it was exciting and so you'll go fire everybody and you go back to where it's you and then you start to and then you start to get busy again and you say well i probably need to hire some and you kind of have this up and down as this when you when you stay small because you get to a point where you're saying this isn't fun anymore and i'm too busy or too stressed and i want to go back to the good old days you go back to the old days and because you're you're good at what you're doing are successful then you keep building it so you kind of have that up and down unless you can break through that ceiling you're always going to fluctuate yeah i couldn't agree more it's such a vicious cycle and i think this is why it's so important to really audit what you're doing and really think about why what's the kind of bigger why behind it because i find a lot of people and ceos and entrepreneurs in particular land up in the cycle where they put their happiness in the future they keep saying to themselves once i hit this goal this milestone or the threshold then i'll be happy then i'll take time off then i'll spend more time with my family but then when they hit that goal we i call this the curse of the high achiever it's never enough it's then always on to the next one and this is why a lot of people become unfulfilled where they have all of this money in the bank but they're miserable and hate their life and this is why i'm such a firm believer that we need to focus on enjoying the journey we really need to start at the baseline level of who we are what we want in life and what matters most and really build our life around that and also keep it in alignment if your role evolves to the point where you're not enjoying what you're doing you're never gonna well what's the point really because you're just gonna be miserable so you might need to make some shifts in your responsibilities and what you let go of already figure out how you can divide your time between those key tasks but also doing things that you enjoy that's what i find is sustainable no i definitely agree with you there and you know fighting that sustainability you need to figure out what what excites you about your business what makes you passionate and then keep that as a focus you know that was the other thing in is shifting you're not shifting gears but going down just a side or a rabbit hole one of the other things i think is hard is as the business grows it's easy to have people push you in as a ceos or leader in directions you don't want to go but because that you bring new people and they have different perspectives and then you lose that fun and excitement of where you want the business to go and why you're passionate about it because you're trying to always please other people trying to take their input trying to go in the directions they're recommending and yet it goes in a direction you're like man i don't really like the culture i don't really like what i'm doing and it's not the fun and excitement so i think that having that kind of core of hey this is our purpose this is what i love this is what i'm passionate about this is where i'm good at and then keeping that even as you bring new people on such that you can make sure that you don't get pulled off to the side to where you're no longer being you're no longer doing the job that you want to do yeah completely and this also may mean scheduling in tasks that you enjoy i'll give you a perfect example a few months ago one of my clients was really starting to dread going to work his days like we spoke how was just firefighting he was dealing with all these demands and he was miserable and we found that he was no longer focusing on the things that excited him so the way that we solved it is he set aside two hours a week where he would just go and spend time in the lab business technicians were working on new products they were developing new ideas and because he came from an engineering background that was what he loved doing it was where he really thrived and even though it may not have been the best use of his time as a on a ceo level those couple of hours a week reignited that fire and reminded him why i was getting up in the morning why i wanted to build the business in the first place and it was a fun and creative outlet he did that a couple of hours a week and it's completely changed his focus on the business he's enjoying going to work again he's got that passion back all by making a simple shift and doing what i said about before really focusing on a foundational level of what you actually enjoy and ultimately what makes you happy no i definitely agree and i think that you know taking that time and i've done it in various fashions but i've found almost exactly what you said it i block out time that either i do i block out two different times one is if i know that these are tasks that i have to do each week that stress me out then i block out time then in my calendar this is when i'll do those and i'm not going to worry about those tasks until i hit that time i'll get them done during that time nobody else bothers me i don't schedule anything else on top of it and so then i don't have to stress out about it but i also like you know similar to that as i'll take some time and i'll block it out where i'll just have kind of fun or hey i want to dream a little bit again about the business where it's going to go what are the fun and exciting things where it's going to end up and those type of things because if i can give myself the ability to dream it tends to keep me a bit more centered as opposed to if i'm always stuck with the data you know not stuck in a bad way but always focus on the day-to-day tasks then i lose that center well as we start to write and there are so many more things i think would be fun to talk about the podcast and we always have we never have enough time to go down those and we're starting to hit towards the end of the podcast but as we were to do i always have one question the end of each expert episode so i want to hit on that now which is you know we've talked about a lot of different things everything from to a journey from going from a founder to ceo going from you know dealing with the issues that are come up success how to keep centered how to delegate we've hit on a lot of fun issues you know all of those things are great now if you're talking somebody that's in a startup or a small business that's just trying to figure out one thing that they can do today one thing that they can start to implement what would that one thing be the biggest advice i give to anyone listening right now is to get into the mindset of learning to focus on controlling the controllable because i find so many ceos and founders get derailed because they get pulled into problems focusing on things that they can't control so they'll beat themselves up they'll dwell on it they'll let mistakes get them into this high stress state the reality is though you're never going to be in complete control of what's going on around you but when you start really focusing on what you're going to do about it it'll completely change the game for you and this also applies to problems and mistakes because i find a lot of people let's say there's a setback in your business they land up in a cycle where then they'll start dwelling on the past they'll start beating themselves up second guessing themselves or whatever it may be the reality is though you can't change the past what's done is done and this is why one belief i try and instill in all of my clients is it's only a mistake if you don't learn the lessons from it and this is why when you're in those situations where there's a problem the problem's gonna exist either way so you can either choose to focus on what you can't control or you can ask yourself my favorite question which is what am i going to do about it which seems really simple but it's incredibly powerful because it shifts your focus from the past to the future and it gets you start really building momentum to figure out what are the actions and steps you need to take that's going to put you back in control so that'll be my advice to anyone listening figure out how can you always focus on controlling the controllable and don't let yourself be thrown off course by what you can't control no i love that and i think that you know too often we get stressed out about things we can't control we can't control what other people are doing what they what the world is what politics are doing what the economy is doing but you certainly can control your business the things that you're doing and those things within your control if you're trying to control the uncontrollable you're always going to be frustrated yet finding out those things that you can control and focusing on those are the ones that i think will give you a sense of power and a sense of confidence that you're actually going to do it well as we wrap up if people want to reach out to they want to find out more they want to reach out to you with some questions they want to be a client a customer they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you find out more so the best way to contact me is either go to byronmorrison.com or search for me on linkedin under byron morrison where i put out daily videos and guides and posts and everything else so yeah any questions or anything else you want to know feel free to get in touch awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to go to byron not brian byronmorrison.com or check out on linkedin connect up there reach out see if everything from becoming a client a customer or your next best friend you never know and i'm always waiting to see if somebody actually meets or mates there meets her nest best friend from the podcast so if it ever happens let me know but otherwise i've definitely encouraged people to reach out now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own expertise to share or your own journey to share um feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast a couple more things as listeners one click subscribe to your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and 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 just uh go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us we're always happy to chat thank you again byron it's been fun it's been a pleasure and i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the [Music] last you

Pick Good Advisers

William McGuire
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/5/2021

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

uh surround yourself with really good advisors i know that said really well but let's talk more about how to pick advisors i would say that as a founder define your philosophy for how you're going to grow your company how you're going to treat your people the people you're going to support and find advisors who are experienced in the area where you have gap go to accelerator programs go to your local co-working space go google spaces if you don't have any in your community and search out people that have had success in the areas you'd like to have success that you're not very good at and then offer to comp them well for being in the company and in that relationship over a couple conversations you'll figure out if they're just trying to get equity or get compensation or if they're really in it for a mutually invested interest and the vision you're trying to [Music] drive [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast uh william mcguire and uh william uh went initially went to school at uh in north carolina state and uh went into i think aerospace and business and then did the charity fundraisers for a period of time um as well as i think grew hops for beer and also did some programming in i.t work um as well as uh some event productions and the charity er and the charity events um then worked for a staffing company uh for a period of time and did some i.t work for them also went to work uh for did some media work in general for a while moved to another company and then moved to an investment and uh crowdfunding company uh founded in in in now i'm going to pronounce right and colo is that right that's correct all right just look and wanted to make sure i did produce pronounces so better than colo and uh working on the founder on the founding community for companies to help to grow and to make exits and um and to make the companies investable and whatnot and he'll dive into a lot more of what that all means but with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast william i appreciate being here thank you devin so i gave kind of the the brief high-level introduction or run-through of your journey but let's go back a bit into uh to where your journey started and kind of tell us how you got going in college and how it went from there that's pretty good i mean you covered it so i don't know if i need to i'll cover it a little bit so when i was in college you mentioned uh street festivals yeah i was doing aerospace engineering at time minor in entrepreneurship and i had a lot of friends that we were with engineers without borders and we decided hey what would it look like if we shut down one of our major thoroughfares uh hillsborough street for all day street festival and raise money for charity so we did that two years running had 40 000 people second year show up uh became a kickoff for street construction that people can still see today and there are many other groups now that do street festivals there so that's fun and then when i was in college too we were trying to in our entrepreneurship class work on a project together so we said what about a beer production because at our time there are only 34 micro breweries in the state now or then i don't even know how many it is now it's probably over 400 or something but we're like north carolina was looking for a cash crop and we said what about hops for beer production we got lots of agriculture space so we looked at that and then i was application programming uh with some buddies um and just doing that while i was in college so it was a lot of fun and then that flash forward uh i followed my wife who is in ministry and i said well as long as she doesn't get a calling to alaska then i can do all three of those at once i can do event production i can do you know grow hops and can still program so luckily she got a call to virginia we moved up there i worked for a group that was a founding b court member so for people that don't know what a b corp is it's basically a company that wants to do more with their profit than just give it to the man and so people probably recognize ben and jerry's patagonia newman's all those types of companies that those are b corps so i worked with a founding b corp member that was part of that whole movement and management i.t consulting and then uh moved over to i was it was 2016 and found this whole world we call investment crowdfunding and all that is is that now anybody can be an investor in early stage companies or be an investor in their backyard and companies like main street or you know apartment complexes or anything that's going up so it's it's a pretty cool world and we're trying to find a way to get back down to north carolina and i thought i was supposed to get a job but i was sitting in the innovate raleigh summit downtown raleigh 2018 and i was listening to about 800 founders complaining about a lack of access to capital and this was this was two years into after my wife and i had been investing in this world for a while and what i couldn't understand was that there had been 120 million raised i think at that time been several hundred founders who had gone through the process and i think a total of 10 founders out of north carolina my home state had raised capital in this way i could not figure out why so i did a long story short and some other personal things going on in my life that i could share a longer story on that was going on with my dad my mom and a couple other things i found i was supposed to be an entrepreneur again so i moved out of being a consultant and i'll call it more corporate america or for corporate america to be an entrepreneur again and trying to get find a way to get all the resources a founder needed to build an investable company which i define and say look even if you weren't raising capital people want to put money in your company and then helping the founder understand all the different ways that they can potentially get funding into their company whether that's offer revenue or off these new models so that's my journey so now i'm going to go back because you jumped over a couple parts i thought were maybe or at least questions i had along your journey so you you know so you graduated you got into hops you got into i.t got into event planning and said hey why not do all three as long as my wife doesn't go to alaska i should be fine you did that for a period of time now if i remember and we chatted a bit you also when worked for a staffing firm and did it development for a period of time is that right that's right yeah right before i jumped into the the management i.t consulting firm i worked for a company that got sold to a global company similar to it or ceo of our company was dying of cancer at the time and so he was looking for a match for people to sell a company to and uh found this company they he sold us to and ended up working for them across uh one of the largest media companies in the us that went through berkshire hathaway's acquisition a part of their assets that hence at anything it's working for a merger and acquisition for mainly coordinating their website development and then also working for the largest renewable or hydro renewable energy company in the us and canada and it was a lot of traditional management i t consulting work worked with a lot of great people and like the management iit consulting firm that i moved to after that just better aligned with my values for the way they were conducting business and the way they did things wasn't there is anything necessarily wrong about the previous company it was just more line from a vision perspective so it was really it was a nice segue um so now so you do that for a period of time and then i you know and it worked for some of the companies and you touched on it briefly but you know what got you into investment crowdfunding making companies fundable helping them to grow and doing your own going your own way in other words you'd work for other people for a period of time that you know you had success you'd managing multiple things what made you decide okay i'm not going to do consulting anymore not going to work for others i'm going to work for myself ken what was that was it a trigger point was there something that just stood out to you was it more of a slow evolution or kind of how did that evolve well it was it one of the one of the triggers for that was when i was in the innovate raleigh summit in there and i went back home and i was concerned with my wife you know we're personally benefiting from this knowledge we have of this industry i mean we've had several exits off the founders that we've invested into on these public models um at the time we had it because everybody was still questioning whether or not this world was going to work or not and it's working really well but uh there was also this this thing i had in the back of my mind that maybe i'm not supposed to be an employee anymore so one thing that's happened with my dad and mom at the time was that my mom and dad were traveling from wilmington to johns hopkins university johns hopkins hospital because my dad had pancreatic cancer and he kept going past all their expectations of oh you're gonna live three months so you got six months to live he ended up living two and a half three and a half years through that whole process but it was the weekend that i got on the innovate rally summit and i came back it was the last weekend that my dad and mom needed a place to stop halfway our house was halfway in richmond virginia on that drive that's the last time they had to do that every three weeks and it just all clicked at once i said hey liz if we really want to represent and be authentic to our values with our kids and so we're really trying to create a better world the management i t consulting firm i was working with they had an awesome model our equity was gifted as a for-profit entity our equity was gifted to two public foundations so upon a dissolution event that became seed capital for other companies i said well that that's impactful that's super impactful because it impacts people picking and choosing where that capital goes but i said what if in the investment crowdfunding industry where literally anybody can put money into a company um imagines might have had the opportunity to put a hundred bucks in uber when they first get started when they went ipo i mean 100 bucks in uber or a thousand bucks and numbers worth 1.5 million even after dilution and everything in between you know nobody in the stock market where people are trading on robin hood or anything else had access to uber until they were valued at 80 billion so the majority of the wealth the size of the private markets is about five times larger than the stock market if not larger than that the majority of the returns are made in the private market so i said what if instead of having a centralized entity pick and choose where they're going to you know potentially drive impact in community if we just democratize the the ability for the community to invest in these companies if we make them aware this is even a possibility i bet people will put part of their returns back in to carry on on areas that match with their proclivity and i said my child you know our two children have different proclivities and my wife and i have different interests for where they want to give back you probably do with your wife and children everybody does but if you just make them aware there's this this this market that's been there for 80 plus years they haven't had access to or we're not aware of and allow them to choose how they want to participate allow them to choose how they want to make impact and so that's a long story for kind of where it resonated in my philosophy but that that was why i started the company i wanted my children and other friends their friends and other people on the way to have access to capital and have the ability as you know not only americans but as humans to basically choose where they want to drive impact and have more resources to do it with so now you have that kind of idea and they say okay i want to go do my own thing i got a bit of the you know the mission what i want to change and make improve and make better so you go out and you start that now did it you know you started it took off like a rocket ship and it was just all you know all upward trajectory was there bumps and you know ups and downs along the way was the figuring out did you have to pivot any or all the above oh yeah absolutely so when i first started out uh back in 2019 uh the industry was still pretty young i'd say it's still pretty young now and i thought hey look if i just go make people aware i make founders aware that they can leverage these funding models and just provide them education around here here's how you can go after it then they'll just do it right because it's amazing it's working california and texas and boston that's not how things work every year people people have to see it happen in their backyard they have to see their friends do it and even then like three or four people have to do it before they're even interested so instead of chasing after founders and letting and trying to convince them how great this new model of funding was and also seeing there's also another combination there was a lot of what i call offerings on platforms that i was just like those companies don't seem like they'd ever return any money they're just not structured properly you know i really wanted both if more people are getting to the model how great would it be if people had the opportunity to put money into companies but those companies have a high probability of potential return or higher probability than they would be not not the one in 10 model that the 8 and 10 model are successful so in early 2020 we pivoted to only working through partners those people that are invested in the long-term success of the founder community and we also found a way that it's not just about people raising capital it's more about the founders ability to grow a really successful company while having access to race capital or to fund their company in any way that is beneficial to them so as a result of that pivot i haven't done sales ops as i would traditionally call them all of our founders that we work with come from referral partners they all come from other founders that found success in the model and we've had far more founders have actually ended up growing off of revenue and through partner channels and sales channels and they have offer raises and to me that that's an ultimate success story because a founder can find the needs they need for their company in a way that resonates with both their philosophy and their strategy that's when a company's successful not just trying to drive them towards an investment rate so that was a big pivot i'd say that's kind of like a big pivot in our model but it was a it was a major pivot in philosophy but it was a it was a minor pivot in in practice if that makes sense no it definitely makes sense so so now you know that kind of brings us up to today now looking a bit in the future you know what is uh what do you look and say what does the next six 12 months look like for you guys that's great question i mean really we're doing two things we're just helping surround founders with the resources the community the experts they need so they can basically do what henry t4 did where he had a push button on his desk and if he had to question something he could just push a button and find an answer to it because there's plenty of other stuff to guess at than having to know everything and then making sure that founders are aware that they have this ability to grow their companies seek investment get funded however is beneficial to their company so in that i mean we took on we uh performed two acquisitions of two companies december 31st right after closing out private round rebranded from crowdfundingceda and koto all in a quarter and we did that all for the benefit of the founder community so now we've got expertise and verticals around marketplace founders like the next ubers airbnb you know gig economy founders of the world we have a pretty industry agnostic approach to how we help founders gross go and exit one of our one of our last founders right now they have a 90 profit margin on the software they sell and we helped them put in a sales strategy model for that and they've already deployed it and they're drawn like crazy it's only been a couple months and one of our other founders just launched his first location for a commissary kitchen back in december it became profitable in february so everybody's like how do food premiers survive during copenhagen and it's you know he's helping them do that as well and grow and scale their businesses and he's opening up second location so it sounds like when i talk about what the founders are doing it sounds like a lot but it's really centered around just four primary ways of drawing a successful company and we just hold in on those with the founder community and make sure that founders have plenty of founder to founder interactions and experts that they need to find those resources so they're not guessing so they can really just focus on growing successful companies so it's a lot of fun that does sound like a lot of fun sounds like a fun trajectory to be on so well now that kind of brings it up to where you're at today you know a little bit where you're heading in the future and we'll transition to the two questions i always ask at the end of each podcast and just as a heads up to all the listeners we also have the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property as a follow-on to that so if you'd like to hear a little bit about that uh let's make sure to stay tuned but otherwise the first question i was asking in a podcast is if a longer journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it oh great great question um trying to build a business without a sales and marketing team was probably my worst decision ever so my one of the things that's common in some companies but not all others but as a entrepreneur i tried to build a company and i thought that if i had a good technology stack that would build the company nobody buys tech they they you know people sell because you have something of value to provide them and you're able to generate awareness around that android so that that company completely flops so that's probably the worst business decision ever made with a partner but from the learning of that have been able to incorporate that knowledge to a lot of founders and save a lot of founders tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars because they take a technology for you know first approach to building something i'm like why am i just going to test this out real quick and it might cost you 30 bucks and they find out within less than a month whether or not they can sell their product or service and then they can spend money on tech no you know it's always funny you know it's kind of the old movie you know if you build it they will come type of thing you get so enamored with the technology say oh if i make the world's best technology of course people will buy it you know we never learned from betamax or we'd ever learn from the you know the a-track or cassette or anything else that just because you know we have the superior the better technology isn't the only aspect of it yet you know it's funny how often you kind of start to drink your own kool-aid and think how cool it is and people would of course pay me for this and yet you have to get it out there and you have to get the word out there and convince them and help people to know what it is and why they'd use it how they've used it why it's better and why they should pay for it and if you don't you know it's it's certainly a heart much you know they're i'm sure there are occasional successes there but it's a much harder road or road to host so that definitely is a great lesson to learn absolutely i mean i think at the end of the day even if we look at the bigger companies of the world that we buy from and you know everything's pushed above and by it we're still effectively buying from the relationship we see with the people their own platform not not necessarily the product or service the tech provides so it's an interesting psychology that gets incorporated absolutely so now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh surround yourself with really good advisors i know that said really well but let's talk more about how to pick advisors i would say that as a founder define your philosophy for how you're going to grow your company how you're going to treat your people the people you're going to support and find advisors who are experienced in the area where you have gap go to accelerator programs go to your local co-working space go google spaces if you don't have any in your community and search out people that have had success in the areas you'd like to have success that you're not very good at and then offer to comp them well for being in the company and in that relationship over a couple conversations you'll figure out if they're just trying to get equity or get compensation or if they're really in it for a mutually invested interest and the vision you're trying to drive and that's you know that's probably one of the biggest pieces of advice i would give no and i like that and i think there's a ton of wisdom there you know and that can it may not always be equity surrounding yourself with knowledgeable people that are that want to see your success and are willing to help out and that can be in the form of everything from a good board and a company to a good co-founder to good employees to mentors to people that you know that you can bounce ideas off of a good spouse you know there's a lot of forms but i think you know getting those people that are one that are in your corner that want to see you succeed that are willing to help out and provide that invaluable advice definitely can make a huge difference so i like that as a feedback well as well i was going to say that's a great extended list there devin absolutely so now as we wrap up before we jump to the bonus question um for all those the normal listeners don't want to listen ip and sometimes they don't blame you but now if you if you uh if you for people who want to reach out they want to be they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be on a board member they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more uh just reach out to will at i incolo.io c o l o dot io all right that kind of has a nice ring to it i n c o or c o l o dot io you said it a lot a lot nicer than i did but no that's great i definitely went in color code just said when we're at the beach we can do a special event or something anyway that's funny all right well perfect well i definitely encourage people to reach out find out more now 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 make sure to one we uh click subscribe in your podcast player so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever have any questions about patents or trademarks or anything else with your business feel free to grab some time with us to chat just go to strategymeeting.com now now we get to go into the transition into the bonus question which is always kind of fun because one i get to talk a little bit about intellectual property which i always have a fun time doing um but all in in two is it flips the tables a bit and now rather than me asking the questions i get to answer the question so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask your top intellectual property question sounds great well i i sourced wisdom from my team on this one to see what question they had top of mind and i imagine a lot of founders do too with the rise of nfts these non-fungible tokens what do you think is the do you think they'll actually stand up in terms of people's ownership over those like what what are the biggest ip considerations around nfc in your opinion yeah and give or people just for or people that don't know as much about what an nft is it's an or none non-fungible if i can say it or without getting or a non-fungible token or sometimes you know assets if you wanted to broaden it out but non-fungible tokens and that can be everything from it gets tied towards oftentimes cryptocurrency and kind of how that works but even you can broaden it out and sometimes that you know it's digital art you know one of the things that people oftentimes will do is digital art or digital collections you know trading cards are now or maybe your digital or video game virtual items or another one they know it has a broad thing and it's a very evolving and unknown field in the sense that it's just if you look at the legal field in generally it always lags behind you know and there's a little bit of irony especially as your patent attorney it lags behind but the law is always slow to catch up with society so usually you'll have things that come about things that you know had or weren't initially considered in the law and then the law has to figure out now how do we deal with these things and i would put nfts in there in the sense that you know in one sense it's certainly an asset you know if you go buy an original work of art whether it's a painting and it's on the wall or whether you buy an original work of art that's digital or if you go by unique tokens in a video game you can own that or you know you should you you're somebody still had to create that there is still a intellectual property or to that but on the other hand it makes it more difficult to if they're easily copied that they're easily met or you know or reproduced then how do you know artwork is and will stick on artwork just as an easy one you know artwork there's only one of a kind you know i paint each painting by brush and everything else but now you're doing that how do you have that exclusive nature so it's interesting when you get into that whether it's cryptocurrency or other things how you deal with that with the intellectual property and the short answer is i don't know i don't it's the one where they're there's starting to get or case law around it about how you own it about how you can or keep it or it can keep it unique and different to everybody else and how you value that how the law do it but the short answer is there isn't a good how that's going to be treated as intellectual property now i think that you know it should be treated similar to every other type of asset where if you create it if you own it if you pay for it then it ha all the same or laws hold to it but i don't know it's a it's a fun question and it's one where i think that it should evolve into or similar to all other assets but it's one where it's the law is lagging behind it i don't there isn't a definitive answer so that wasn't a probably a fulfilling answer but it's the best one i can give so any more precedence that is what i'm hearing that that's good what can i throw a second one at you absolutely all right so i get this one from founders a lot too um i guess this can go both ways when when a founder hasn't trademarked their assets like their name i'm going to give i forgot but i'm going to interrupt your question just because i did have one interesting example of what i thought was an nft that was by nike and i don't know if you're aware of it so they just as an example and also for the listeners they had a what they call the cryptographic which was a digital asset for footwear so they would actually start to incorporate in their shoes that it was a digital asset so you'd have you know almost different icons you can do and then you pay for exclusivity to have certain digital things you know certain things displayed on your shoot that would have a little screen that would look cool and they actually did go get a patent on that and so it was interesting and i was going to mention then it slipped my mind was that you know that one's an interesting one where they the way that they authenticated the way they integrated into a shoe that was part of it and then it was also the nft that was on the it was a digital asset that was in a shoe that they only sold so many it was kind of that collectors items you know almost the michael jordan's but now it was a digital or an nft so there is some precedent and i didn't want to say there isn't any but there's certainly less much less precedent than what's out there so now i didn't mean to interrupt your question go ahead with your second one well now that now that gives me an interesting follow-up because we actually have a couple people that were doing like shoe arbitrage so i'd be interested to see what those shoes are trading for but anyway i haven't followed up but to see how much it's worth or where they've got or how much they've implemented it but i know at least on the patent side they went down that route of actually having that or that integrated in to make it a digital collectible or collectible version of a shoe so now you're going to talk or ask one other question he had about uh trademarks yeah i was curious when uh when a founder hasn't trademarked their brand their asset their uh you know just their name or their logo or anything what um what happens if they don't do that but it's been in use for a while how how does ownership get treated if somebody else comes in and tries to copy that for a similar industry yeah and there's there's i'll give you this standard lore answer it depends which is always how lawyers answer the question but there's there's some general i mean and it does depend you know this is general advice and so it does vary a bit situation situation but in general let's say i'd gone out and i made devin's restaurant now i'll you know i had a much catchier name which i can't think of often on my head one of the previous uh podcasts there that i was on um they talked about scooby dooby dooby doo what's their restaurant so maybe i'll use that as a name but let's say you went out and you started that as your restaurant and you got it going you know you you were doing it and then you and you didn't necessarily get a trademark on it but you were you've been around for 10 years and then somebody and then somebody else came along and let's say you were in chicago i was choosing a random place and you were doing that in chicago and then somebody else in california san francisco decided to do the same thing and you're saying hey well they're copying my brand you know what rights do i have and let's say to add on to that that part or that place in california now wouldn't did file a federal trademark on it so they did get that protection they went through went all the way through the process well then what happens is is because you are the first person to use it you have some common law or state law rights that go along with it generally common law rights that allow you to continue to use it in the geographic location you've been operating in but it stops you from expanding outside of that area in other words we if you're in chicago doing it in chicago first and you were you know and before the the other place in san francisco started doing it you can continue in chicago but you can expand out so now let's say you want to sell off your business you want to franchise you want to license you want to do something else or let's say you pass on your kids take over they have bigger aspirations or someone wants to merge or acquire you anything else it severely limits where your trademark coverage is to the current geographic location you're in so you can continue to use it but you can't expand out same thing with a person in san francisco they basically now have the rights to everywhere in the u.s except for chicago where you have those original common law rights so it kind of gives you limited protection but it can create a lot of headaches so once you have a brand go grab it that is that is a short take away from it if you have a brand that you are ever wanting to do anything with especially beyond just a local area or you know mom and pop shop serve the local community which are all great com businesses but if you're ever wanting to do that or you think anybody else will ever want to do that with your business make sure to grab the grab the trademark for it makes sense all right well with that we'll wrap it up for there and that was those were fun uh fun questions at chat about intellectual property thank you again william for coming on the the podcast it's been a fun and a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last i appreciate them thank you for hosting me this was a lot of fun [Music] absolutely

Just Do The Research

Eric Erickson
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/4/2021

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

just do the research you know so many people they they have an idea they get excited and they automatically turn to marketing and how much money and they start spending money on marketing i would just highly strongly suggest that you do the research identify is your does your product product or service have competition is it is it or is it innovative you know look see what other people are doing how what what niche do you fit into where do your customers hang out at they're just some small things to really start thinking of before you just automatically start jumping into trying to make money 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 uh 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 grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast eric erickson and they give you a bit of an introduction so eric's always been a bit of an entrepreneur i'm always uh in his words uh looked to make the the quick buck so to speak and so in high school uh was uh doing or doing various jobs and uh was paying or wanting to pay for clothing or anything else he wanted he had to figure out a way to pay for it um got off to college and did the same thing so it was um got into when i was in college of doing i think a bit of importing exporting and then also became an ad manager for uh what's now known as uvu here in utah and then one out or out of the day while i was in college got a call out of the blue and uh somebody recommended them to into another business to help them to figure out what they needed to do in order to improve the business and so went down there worked for the business found that he loved it and then after graduation uh got into consulting and uh when i became the on the board of uh several different companies and then uh went from there so that kind of builds his business and he'll get into somewhere the more details from there so with that much as an introduction welcome on to the podcast eric hey thanks so much devin it's good to be with you today absolutely so i gave kind of that quick high level run through of of your journey but let's dive in a bit and tell us a little bit kind of starting as being a kid and an entrepreneur and how your journey started from there yeah like you said i've uh you know i i grew up not having a lot of money but a lot of people that i knew hung out with had a lot of money and so in order for me to keep up with the joneses so to speak i would have to go do various activities to make some money and i found out that i enjoyed selling things and making money and and i think i kind of caught that entrepreneurial bug if you will and that went into my high school and college years and and uh not really understanding or knowing what a business consultant or a coach was that that experience that you ex that you explained really opened up my eyes it uh i went from uh away from like this this this thought of always making money wanting to make money to actually having a passion for for business and for helping others and seeing other people succeed so it was it was quite a drastic 180 for me when in my in my uh later years of college so so you did that or you started out as a young age and entrepreneur and so you went to high school and you know kind of figured out odd jobs or jobs in order to pay for things and he went through college and so how did you while you're in college get into i think you started out as kind of doing importing exporting and kind of what was that or how did you get into that yeah it's interesting i i um there was a couple of things that i usually when a lot of things kind of fall into place kind of like the stars align so to speak you what you wonder okay maybe i should be doing that and so i i got a magazine in the mail um to be able to buy um bulk products from asia and then i also um met a guy that in the newspaper room and in college i was selling advertising i met a guy and his parents owned an import export business and so there's a bunch of different things that just have to think oh maybe i need to try this maybe maybe the uh there's something in the stars and moon wherever you want to come whatever you believe that that that's prompting me to to uh to try out import and export and i made a lot of mistakes um uh lost a lot of lost a little bit of money but uh found out learned a lot the hard way of how to how to do import and export and and really uh really enjoy doing and still do a fair small amount of it even today um no that definitely makes sense so now you see starting next importing exporting is a kind of way to further have spending money support yourself during college and go through that and then i think he also got into ad management a bit for uh uvu as well and so as you're kind of going through and doing that then how did you get you know how did you get how did a friend or you know the a business kind of out of the blue call you and kind of how did you get connected up with them and working with them to help on their business and kind of what prompted that and kind of gives a bit of details on there yeah it's super crazy so yes i was selling i was selling advertising i was an advertising manager i was i worked with i don't know hundreds of businesses in the utah valley at the time and uh and then when this this call kind of came out of the blue uh it was interesting to me i was caught i was kind of cut off guard and i can't remember if i actually asked them specifically to tell me uh who that person was or who that business was that recommended me but i think i was just saw so ah ah shocker that uh you know i was more interested in saying okay i'm this sounds like a great opportunity and and so i use a lot of my entrepreneurial experience and and picked up a few college books that i've been that i had been using throughout my college years and and i went down there and analyzed this business and and i just kind of caught that bug you know that that just like it's like i told you things kind of changed for me it's like wow i really can help people i can really help them to show them what they need what they need to do in order to improve their business and i just had this knack for being able to see patterns and print patterns and processes and systems and and being able to explain them to people better and help them to use patterns processes and systems to make their their business more productive and efficient so so you started out and so you did that for and just that and i you may have touched on it briefly but you know what was it or maybe if you know what was it that kind of that that friend that connects you up with the business was it hey this guy is really sharp he has experience he can see patterns and others don't kind of what was it that kind of got you introduced or got you started with the the friend introducing you to him well so i i so i to this day i don't know i don't really know who it was i don't know if it was a friend i don't know if it was because i was working literally probably almost a hundred small businesses in the utah valley in provo or that whole valley area and so i i don't i don't know who that person was to this day and i'm grateful to whoever they were because it was certainly a blessing in disguise for me so so now you see now you get into that you say okay hey this is fun i enjoy it it's my passion it's my drive and my love type of a thing so did you finish up college and then you know go from there and then if so kind of how did you what did you do when she came out of college did you dive right into doing your own business and consulting and helping other businesses or did you go work for a big business or kind of what was that transition as you finished up your degree yeah so when i is when i graduated actually just a couple months before i graduated i had i put on this they call them student fairs i would bring in 60 or so businesses from the valley into the uh what is now the utah valley university campus and uh i ran this one gal and she was in telecommunications and uh kind of one thing led to another and i got into telecommunications and and there was a a business that was doing business with them and they heard about me and some of the things that i had done and they brought me out it was it was a small telecommunications startup and which allowed me to uh to help you know help them build their their telecommunications platform and also do a bunch of traveling around the united states and europe i learned how to do mergers and acquisitions i learned how to you know take smaller companies to multi-million dollar companies really quickly um i i just i i was able to to rub shoulders with some you know some big big ceos um club car international uh uh who was the other big one uh uh motorola and so it was it was actually it was it was a great experience so now if and i may have missed it again but it was it were you doing this as an employee as a contractor so you're coming out of college you kind of know you know this is what's enjoyable so it's fun this is what you want to do but how did you get into that meaning was it referral and you worked with one company that referred you to another company yeah on a contract basis or was it hey you started out with one company they post you away and you wouldn't work for another kind of how did you once you figured out your passion figure out who how to get clients and how to actually get business or build a business around that yeah so that that was that was referral that was this gal that was that worked for this telecommunications company she referred me to this to this uh to this other company and and uh they they um uh saw what my what knowledge base like experience i had already had and they they actually brought me on as a the vice president of operations for their for their their telecommunications startup and that's been most of i would say most of my my journey is um people just say hey i heard i know i know eric i know he can do this or i heard of this guy his name is eric he knows so and so um you know you should probably talk you'd probably talk to eric and see if he could help you and that's that's i've been very fortunate in that regard so now you do that so you start up your consulting business you kind of get word of mouth hey you know one person refers you to another you keep doing that you know along the way now was it all you know success hey i just worked for one business they referred me to another and i was so busy i could never keep up with it and i was always getting referrals as flooding it in or was it that ebb and flow and sometimes it was busy sometimes it wasn't or kind of how did that all work out to where you know you're you're did it work out that it was just a success from day one and you're always building or was there follies and you know downs and ups or kind of how did that go i would definitely say there was there was follies follies is a good word to use i wouldn't say that i was always uh super busy um there were a couple of economic uh things that that happened along the way um there were some uh there were there was a time where i um i probably got my head a little bit bigger pie a little created a little bit of pride and a little bit of uh thinking that i could conquer the world and and uh ended up making a seven figure uh mistake and and so um that uh yes i would say overall just to answer your question yeah it's been i wouldn't say peaks and valleys but it's definitely been some significant roadblocks and bumps in the road so now you know because you mentioned and definitely if you don't if it doesn't don't feel comfortable don't feel any obligation to answer the question but you know a seven figure and maybe that's your biggest business mistake we should wait till then but you know seven-figure loss along the way is certainly one that's gonna hurt a little bit or a bit of an ouch to a business so how did that how did that come about or how did you kind of find yourself in that situation yeah i was uh i got into the i got into the real estate business and uh i i guess i i guess the really the best way to put it is i just i was not paying attention i was not paying attention to people i was talking to the people i was working with um i wouldn't say that at the end of the day when it was all said and done tonight and i know i had to file bankruptcy that uh i i went back and said oh gosh you know i maybe i this is some things i need to change in my life i need a change in my processes and systems and how i do business so i don't let something like that happen again but i think that's i think that's it's it's it's been a lesson to me and this was back in 2002 uh when it happened but certainly it was a uh a business experience something that i was able to to eventually twist into into positive no definitely definitely you know it's one where you have to be carefully you know is the old saying goes you don't get over your skis or you don't you know think you know more than you do or you get so excited about an opportunity or a position that then you're not able to determine whether or not that's a good opportunity because you're so excited about it so always having that ability to step back a bit and look at that opportunity always makes air always there is always a good path to take so so now you did that and you've been doing that for a while um you know is that basically in in reality it's been you've been a consultant for the whole time is that what you're doing today have you transitioned to doing something else or kind of give us a little bit of you know bringing us forward to today a bit how does that interplay with what you're doing now or what are you doing now and kind of how does you know how have you leveraged or where you've come from yeah so still i still care stupid i do a fair amount of consulting i still do a fair amount of take on opportunities where a very large company would want me to come in and have a very specific task for me to to do i currently do a fair amount of training and development for a fortune 200 company that's in the media research business and then i also uh do uh the opposite of the spectrum i guess i i'm working with a lot of the small businesses and people who have that that idea that they want to see if there's any validity or marketability um for their that product or service uh i i actually i actually own another business as well uh i for the last 14 years i've been manufacturing distributing an organic pest control product made out of cedarwood oil and so we we get orders uh through the internet and then we we fill those orders and we have we have customers and all over the u.s the the united kingdom australia japan mexico canada so it's been a great ride well sounds like it sounds like it's been a great a very exciting and fun ride so so now looking a bit into the future so you're saying okay that's kind of where you're at today kind of the where you know what's led up to today what do you look for as far as what is there what's coming next in the future where where are things planning or headed is hey i'm going to continue to chug along with what we're doing going to expand going to contract going to retire going to bring out more employees kind of where do you see the next uh six to 12 months headed for you yeah so i i'll share my i'll share my my big my big ginormous goal with you um by the end of the year it's my it's my hope to only be working 70 hours per month uh it's something that uh that i put a lot of thought to i i've examined it researched it but i'll have a bunch of different models of how i'm going to do it but uh still wanting to be able to help those those businesses that that that need that i need that experience they need those tools that they don't have that i can that i can help them with and uh i i'm thinking about venturing into more uh i just learned this word a few months ago i guess they call it fractional so fractional c-suite business i know if you call it an industry or a business or just a thing i'm not sure but there's a lot of businesses out there that that they want to hire uh a ceo part-time just to help them with leadership help with with strategic problem solving and so i've been venturing into into those uh on those into those roads as well well that's awesome that sounds like a uh a fun path to head down and uh a exciting direction to go in and you know learning you know a fractional you know ceo cto cfo kind of doing that fractional economy or you know fractional in the is one that's in austin times for start-up small businesses are great options they're saying hey we don't have that ability to bring someone on full time to keep them busy all the time but we do need that assistance and that helps let's take a fraction of someone's time that they can work for us while leaving them the ability to go and pursue other clients as well so it sounds like a great idea so well now as we wrap towards there towards the end of the podcast i always ask two questions at the end of these podcasts so we'll 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 so i guess i can go back to my 1.6 million dollar mistake and again i just i just uh you know that just comes to just not doing the research not preparing not knowing who you're doing work business with those are all you know obviously should be common sense things right absolutely no i think that you know that that's definitely something that it's common sense but it's also easy to you know i would say is a lot of times as entrepreneurs you get so excited or enamored with a given idea or give an opportunity that you oftentimes don't do you know take a step back take a breather explore the opera explore what is all involved and whether or not you should you actually have the expertise you actually know you're doing and whether it's a good opportunity so definitely make sense to both the mistakes of made and also learning from that so now as we 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'd give them just do the research you know so many people they they have an idea they get excited and they automatically turn to marketing and how much money and they start spending money on marketing i would just highly strongly suggest that you do the research identify is your does your product product or service have competition is it is it or is it innovative you know look see what other people are doing how what what net niche do you fit into where do your customers hang out at they're just some some small things to really start thinking of before you just automatically start jumping into making trying to make money no i think that that that definitely makes sense and that's a it's a great point of advice so well just as a reminder to the the audience and if uh we have the bonus question on this episode where we're gonna talk a little bit about intellectual property and the top question there so if you have interest there make sure to stay tuned to the episode but otherwise as we wrap up if people want to reach out to eric if they want to learn more about what you're doing they want to hire you on a fractional basis they want to be a client a customer an employee an investor your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more yeah my website businessatitudes.com that's attitudes with an s and that is the best way to get a hold of me all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out and get ahold of you and find out more well with that and and remember to stay tuned for the bonus question but otherwise for those who are uh in the audience that aren't intellectual interested intellectual property thank you for joining and uh thank you for joining eric now 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 we'd love to chat with you and have you as a guest on the show inventiveguest.com to apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe and podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now with that as we wrap up kind of your journey and talking a little bit about the sharing a little bit about that we get to have the fun bonus question where we get to flip the tables a bit and rather than me asking all the questions i get to take a chance to answer a question so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask your uh you know or your top intellectual property question yeah so um i'm i i think this and i hope this fits into the spectrum network that we need to be talking about but uh i would say one of the uh most uh common questions that i get is around patents and people think that a patent needs to be like a physical product something that like it has all the pieces of together and and there and it's it's one it's just one whole piece that's that they're going to sell to the marketplace and i know that's not entirely true so i guess my question for you is that what other what other things are are patentable yeah no and that's a it's a good question i would say you know it almost is an easier question to ask what isn't patentable in the sense that you know you could almost go and supreme court justice you know said what's er anything under the sun's patentable and there's a lot of true to that with a few exceptions and so kind of what is or what is impactible couple things that they just said are not patentable perpetual motion machine patent office said that's not patentable can be done or you know goes against the laws of physics now if you can come up with one i am sure they'll still grant you a patent but you're going to have to definitely have your ducks in a row and be able to prove it but otherwise that one's not patentable the another one that's not as a cure for cancer and they just said hey while cancer can be treated there isn't a cure cure is impossible again if you come up with a cure i'm sure you can get a patent on it but you're getting you're going to have to show that so those are a couple beyond that really almost anything you know you're going to look at something that has to have a utility functionality and so that's where you're gonna when you're looking at patents as to what you want what you can patent think about does it do something does it have a does it perform a you know a service does it do something that has an end result and if so can we patentable now a couple things to draw or to think about as well one that more used to be patentable and it's really falling out of vogue and is incredibly difficult is on a business method in other words just doing a business a certain way conducting a business you know offering good customer service or doing a you know training this way or you know having your employees do something a certain way is very difficult to pat it's not impossible but it's incredibly difficult another one the question that often comes up is on the software side is can software repatent and the short answer is yes but there are a bit more requirements when you get into software and the main one is that you can't just take something that somebody does in their head or on pen and paper and you know put that on a computer put it on the phone or put down an electronic device do the same thing and try and get a patent on it you can't take two plus two as equals four everybody's done that in their head or in pen and paper all you do is put down a computer and say hey look i did it on a computer now it's you know now i should get a patent you're not able to do that but if you're if your software does something it takes inputs it does analytics you know it provides an end result it does something where it's improving on that where it does need to be tied to that technology in order to do it you can absolutely get software so that's kind of if if i take the reverse of your answer what's not patentable or those two things everything else is really a pretty fair open field you know you can't you know with that you can't patent something that somebody else has done or just an obvious variation of them but beyond that it's a pretty open field and allows you to really get a patent on as long as it performs a functionality and has a utility to it feels pretty wide open cool yeah that's great thanks so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and if you if you eric or anybody else in the in the audience ever has any questions on intellectual property again you just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time to chat always happy to help out otherwise which as we wrap up i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks so much [Music]

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Scott Knudsen
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/3/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

listen find a problem and and figure we were in the hospital once i broke my back and it was a family doctor owned hospital and it was family so my wife and daughter there my daughter was at 10 at the time great hospital and she said hey i like milkshake and they said we don't have one we don't have milkshakes so they called down and and they had a chef at this one at the kitchen so he made her a milkshake the next day they had milkshakes on the menu for for the kids of the family they fixed that little problem and they made it and i think it's fixing problems it's looking for solutions and then it's just listen listen to the people around you put them in your in in your sphere for a reason you know you you hire your attorney you get your bookkeeper you have to listen to the people around you then you ultimately have to make the right decision [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast scott knudsen first of all i have to say he has one of the best backgrounds and the best outfits i think of any guest we've had on here or if not if not if that close and i may be a bit or a bit partial because i'm a small town guy and i like rodeos and cowboys and everything else so this is a if you're watching it on the video he has a great outfit and a great background but that was a bit of a quick introduction to him so he's uh by his own words has bounced around a lot throughout his career and done a lot of exciting things so he graduated from college with a business degree um worked for a fortune 50 company and sales for a period of time um always was doing that they're doing things on the side love to innovate love to create he was in rodeos for part of the time as well i think he said or died three times had some concussions maybe even got hit by lightning and he'll clarify for that um and then also there was during a longest journey there was a bad drought that happened about eight years um had to uh start to thin his herd that he had on his uh ranch or on his uh on his ranch and uh turn that into an opportunity to do some international branding um and to take the horse horses overseas as well so turn that in also did a non-profit with his uh daughter in the theater and was doing it as part of that started his own brand which is a cowboy entrepreneur a couple years ago and has been doing some speaking with running non-profits writing a book doing a show and a whole bunch of other things so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast scott hey devon thank you so much for having me on your podcast man it's a great show for sure absolutely excited to have you on so i just gave you or gave everybody the quick run or 30 second run through of a much longer journey so take us back a little bit in time to kind of coming out of college getting the business degree and how your journey started from there absolutely so coming out of college i had a business degree and i love business and i've always been somewhat involved in business different things even as a kid man i loved it i loved figuring out uh situations where maybe i could do something to maybe make a little bit of money and and uh and grow from that and in business you know when i graduated from tarleton state that's where we started we we stayed we rodeo we trained horses we were on the road a lot with that worked for the fortune 50 company in sales and sales management and just took it from there but it's been a great journey there's nothing more fun in business so so now and that jumped over a whole bunch so i'm going to unpack that just a little bit so you know you came out of school and you worked for the fortune or fortune 50 company you did sales how long did you do that for 14 years 14 years and i loved it man i worked my way up and and we did we did great i enjoyed it but it's something whenever i'm speaking out you know i talk to the to the younger guys and people wanting to get into business go try something go learn and and and get your get your foundation see what you like network and then get out there and start your business so no and i totally agree on all that and i think you know even if you're doing a full-time job if you ever have any aspirations of being an entrepreneur doing your own projects start doing it don't wait to you don't you don't have to be full time on your projects to get going on them try it out sometimes you'll find out hey i don't like being an entrepreneur it's not fun it's not for me i don't like reading everything another time just say i love this and this is what i want to do but until you get going you'll never know either way so you so now you were doing the sales of the fortune 500 or fortune 50 company were you doing other i assume what were you doing other projects on the side were you doing the rodeo at the time were you doing other businesses or kind of fill us in was that did you start your entrepreneurial journey after the fortune 50 company or while you're working there definitely so we started voting even before college and we started training horses for other people before school as well and then we had an education company a franchise we we grew to a couple of towns in texas and at the same time we started doing the fortune 50 come it was a great opportunity so we took that job fair is a great way to learn it was a great way to network it was a great way to see the systems in place for a fortune 50 company which is on the inside out it was great great learning opportunity and at that time you know we didn't have podcasts like cures and other ways to learn you know so i figured we just had to get in there and learn different systems and that's what we did and implemented some and maybe not some so and no one i think that's cool now one i'm going to take as short as i know it's about your journey but you did rodeos for a period of time and i think you mentioned you died three times is that right i did it man i did um you know just part of part of that world you know um uh and we were hit by lightning down at the born and we've uh died you know three times so you gotta help me under how did you die three times because that's not part of my world that i don't know anybody else just died three times and lived i didn't want it to be part of my world either but nobody it just happened and uh but all three times i learned from it you know i learned um uh just so much but you gotta tell me how did it happen what part of the so how did it happen or give me an example of how you died just because i can't let you go without understanding how you died and came back to life absolutely so one was the lightning strike of course one was the broken neck um i had a horse flip over on me and the last time you know i try to be fit you know i think that's part of the journey is to take care of yourself be fit me mentally confident as best you can so when you're doing your job our job as an entrepreneur is not eight hours it can be 12 15 every day and you know i wanted to be fit so i carried this water bottle with me and plastic water big jug and i cleaned it out and drinking that water working out well i was slowly killing myself because i wasn't bleaching it i didn't know to and i got the e coli and some other things and and it it got me and you know i wouldn't do anything silly i thought i was taking care of myself but it kind of backfired on me but um so you tried to be healthy and it killed you so maybe that's maybe the takeaway is don't be healthy just do whatever you want because it's going to kill you either way get you some chocolate pie and just enjoy it all right for the listeners i don't really recommend that but that is funny so yeah and then now last question that i'll get back to your journey when you died each time did you see the walk towards the light and all of that or is that a true thing because i've never been ever had that experience so i was kidding or was it just simply a black and then he came back to or came back and realized man that's a great question no one's ever asked me that um there was something especially the third time um there was definitely something um i could see some things um but you know when i came back man and you know we were in the hospital for a while after that one as well you men you just love on everybody man you just look at everything a little bit different always was that way but now you just appreciate every day and and you know the conversations whether it's business or family it's you just enjoy it so much more like heck i was looking forward to doing this show just because um you know you just enjoy every moment so it changed me for the better i mean i was always someone that loved people but this just helped me get through you know uh more no and that and that is cool and i said i think that it that's a great way to look at it is you know now i am all the more appreciative for what i have and what or what's going on with life and to be here and be with family and everything else and so sunday the whole concept you know you know in our world in our business world things happen all the time maybe not that severe but stuff happens and when we got hit by latin we embraced it i mean once we could um write and read again we embraced it and that became the the brand of the ranch and that became the brand on horses on the trucks and that's kind of our story so that was our brand and you know branding is so important our business i figured that's a true story it means a lot and and we didn't want to run from it and and i think that's so important when you make a mistake it's okay and that's what we talk about and that's that that's what our vision is you make a mistake learn from it tell other people so they don't hopefully have to fall into that trap and go down the road and that's what we did well that's awesome and i like the approach of learning from it because i i don't know that most people are probably gonna get struck by lightning or die three times or anything else but i do think that you're going to hit the bumps and the the speed bumps and things that you don't expect and don't go your way and you can either learn from it and take it or you can you know get down in the dumps and let it get you get you down but either way you're gonna hit into those so you might as well take it as the opportunity to learn so now getting back to your journey just a bit so now you did sales you know with the fortune 50 company for you know or 14 years or whatever you mentioned now at what point did you kind of say i'm not i'm going to just go out on my own do my own thing do my own entrepreneur thing build my businesses kind of was there a trigger there was a kind of a slow hey enough of what we're doing is taking off that i want to do it full-time or kind of how did you transition over to kind of doing your full-time gig yeah you know it's just a natural progression um i i just love what i do and i just want to do more of it and i had a lot of support from family and friends and and in the business world and like you said the beginning you know some of the like the drought that really could have set us back we just found another market to go to and it just happened to be international and once again it's kind of you know hitting those bumps on the road as an entrepreneur you just have to figure out a way to be creative and work around it it makes sense yeah we love it man so so now you make that and it's kind of a grand gradual transition away from doing that you know working for others working for yourself now what was kind of the initial hey this is my full-time gig this is what i'm focusing on what was that initial entrance into running you know doing everything on your own it you know the initial one it was a little bit scary for sure i mean everybody gets nervous you know even when i was doing my own thing riding you know you'd always get a little bit nervous but i think it wasn't scared i think it was more just adrenaline which that's a great thing and and i had that and as i saw the success and people were telling me you needed to do this more and more we we just listened you know we we had a good business plan and we had the right people around us and uh we did it um so and and now what was that first business is that curiosity you know uh so we we trained horses we boarded horses we we showed horses we did we did a lot of that and then it transitioned over to the cowboy entrepreneur a couple of years ago and it's still in the nucleus of the entrepreneur that's our main thing now and but it's branched out where we write for a magazine we're working on a book we've got the network show we go around the country speaking so we have that nucleus we don't have a bunch of different things we have the one main thing that branched off and that's what we focus on so if i were if i were to summarize so you're working with this doing sales fortune 50 company you're starting out doing kind of rodeos doing ranch on the side you know or really i always say a side gig is really just a second full-time job but you know you're doing all of that and then you say you kind of gradually say okay we've got enough business in place we can support ourselves we'll kind of this is what we're passionate as drive is we're going to use our own thing so you started with that nucleus of kind of doing the ranch doing the horses and then it built it out from there and kind of continued to add on whether it's the the book and the show and the speaking gig and other things it kind of build out from that nucleus is that a fair summary that's perfect yeah it just kept growing and it always evolves any business evolves just like a life you know and as it does the right people come into your life and you you cherish those and listen to those and the ones that aren't uh maybe the best you kind of call them out a little bit you just grow your your brand that that definitely makes sense so now i'm going to you know so now remind me because we chatted a bit before the podcast you also got into helping your daughter do a non-profit with theater or kind of how did that fit into everything or is that just a psychic thing or how did how did that come into play absolutely yeah my so my daughter she she's loved to act and sing and dance forever and they asked me to volunteer at the community theater i don't know anything about it and i got into it it was kind of fun you know we do the p l's and we get the actors which are kind of like your employees and you put up a show and you market it it was kind of fun it intrigued me and i was doing that and i became president of the board and i said why do you have to have starving artists i don't understand that why does a non-profit have to be a non-profit why do you understand the tax purposes but why do you want to run it that way so we ran as a business you know we we raised the price of tickets we put out a better product we marketed it right and all of a sudden we start making more money during cobit we stayed open and we did it safely and we um we just kept growing and now we're going to expand the theater to triple the footprint we hired more staff you know that's a lot of fun one theater of the decade of the whole region of texas so it's a great deal but we just ran as a business and now when i go around the country talking i talk to non-profits in the horse world you know that are rescue and horses and we talk about you know fun ways to make more money or get your brand out there as opposed to just trying to make it because it's a lot more fun if you have a bottom line that's in in the black and not red no i agree i mean you know it's kind of the old saying is you know you know money can't buy happiness but i always look at it as money if you don't have any money money you're not going to be happy and so there's there is a diminishing return meaning once you make it so far you know money doesn't have the same return of happiness but if you're if you're a non-profit you're always struggling you're never having ability to grow it you're never do what you need to to take care of it you're not going to be happy and it's not going to be a successful business so i agree whenever you're going to do something figure out a way to combine your passion with making it profitable and giving a product that people want and then you'll have the best of all worlds that's right devon i mean that's so important plus when you have that income coming in you can do so much more with it you know if we didn't do that at the theater there was there would be a lot of people not having a job during cobit and we even added people during code so by running it like you're saying the right way at risk for profit we were able to help a lot of people so so now that that kind of watch you know and there's a whole bunch in your journey that we jumped you know went through in quick fashion but it kind of brings us up to where you're at today if you're doing cowboy entrepreneur and for i think it's cowboyentrepreneur.com you also um you know doing your speaking gigs during your show doing your books doing um running the non-profit as as as a for-profit so now you know looking kind of a bit into the future you know the next six to 12 months kind of you know crystal balling it where do you where do you see that heading or where do you see where do you see things going for you i just see it getting larger and just bringing in more people to help us grow and as we grow the company grows and the people get to enjoy the benefits of that as well you know hopefully we're out on the road a lot more during covet we weren't as much but we figured out different ways to do it which that helped us i think is going to help our brand down the road i do see more speaking gigs i do see a lot more writing the articles the book i can't wait um network tv so um there's there's a lot of exciting stuff going on and that's the fun part about business man that's what i love it's the energy and as you bring on more good people around you um everything just travels faster and you don't know where it's going that's what we're thinking but somehow our roads it's not a straight line of success like that ladder of success it's kind of windy you know it goes up and down and back around all of a sudden you're like how do i get here you know and that's what's so fun about it so that's our plan but i'm willing to change if it's going to help the help the brand all right and then i'll ask you kind of one follow-up to that any new different or exciting business ideas that you're looking forward to adding on either to the nucleus or kind of like the theater that you're going to go in a different direction that you're saying hey here's something that i just can't i can't not do and it's a fun or exciting opportunity in the future you know there is um the theater is running great and and my time is almost over i hate to say that because this one's taking me away so i want to be fair to everyone but i love getting the youth involved in our business and learning and having mentors and i'm trying to be out there for them to just ask questions and and and like in the circles i am now i might not know all the answers i don't know all the answers but i know people that do you know so i love working with the youth and i love speaking at universities and having interns and and uh just helping and and and some of the interns aren't youth i mean they're older people you know and they they they're ready for their their journey and uh but that's what i love i want to do a lot more that for sure no i think that sounds like a fun you know i it's always fun when you can find a way to be impactful with the people that you're you know that you're on the journey with in the sense that you know if you can not only first of all i always say you know we need to if all you do is chase your passion you're not gonna be successful and if all you do is chase money you're not gonna be successful you have to find a way to combine your passions with something that people actually wanting and willing to pay for and then you've got the best of both worlds and then even more so if you can then find a way to make it impactful so and then you kind of get the trifecta of you know is it's you're passionate about it you enjoy it it makes money and you're able to affect other people for the positive or all fun places to go so so now as we we kind of gone through your journey and looked a little bit into the future it's a great transition to jump to the questions i always ask at the end of the podcast which 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 man i made so many uh you know but i think that made me better so uh i think one of the worst ones i try to do everything whenever i started my business all of them even the education business all of them i tried to do it all and that was i was running like crazy in just a lot of different directions as opposed to focus on the business and growing the business and i should have you know hired a bookkeeper had an attorney there to help me and had the right people and you know when you start out you can make excuses in your hand like i can't afford it well maybe you find other attorney in another book keep starting out maybe y'all can trade favors you know maybe there's a way to be creative and and you know like i said back when we started there wasn't a podcast you know we read books to get better so there's a lot of ways to get more educated so um definitely surround yourself with talent that's going to save so much time because no and i like that you know if you don't know quickbooks or how to be a bookkeeper or whatever and you're over there at night trying to do that well that's some time you could be doing watching a podcast or reading a book and getting more educated and setting your plan for tomorrow or the next week so it kind of sets you behind when you think you're trying to help yourself no and i absolutely agree with that now you know it's one of those where it was one of those where i think it's the most entrepreneurs and mostly you know somebody does a startup a small business you have a bit of it more than a bit of a type a personality you always want to get it done you want it you want it to get done right you think you can do it better you you don't want to spend the money because you're in startup mode you don't have the money to spend so you're always trying to yourself and yet more often than not you know there are areas where you can do yourself or even if it's not perfect if your marketing is not perfect maybe you start out into your own marketing or you do you know that but there are areas where it's much better even early on to get that expert advice because it's going to pay much greater dividends and it's going to avoid those issues not only that i like to your point that it allows you to grow your business because now you're focusing on the areas you are passionate about i don't like to do taxes i don't like to do bookkeeping and so you know if i can find someone else to do that it frees it up for my time to spend it on the areas that i can drive the most value into the business absolutely absolutely so now i'm going to 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 listen find a problem and and figure we were in the hospital once i broke my back and it was a family doctor-owned hospital and it was family so my wife and daughter there my daughter was at 10 at the time great hospital and she said hey i like milkshake and they said we don't have one we don't have milkshakes so they called down and and they had a chef at this one at the kitchen so he made her a milkshake the next day they had milkshakes on the menu for for the kids of the family they fixed that little problem and they made it and i think it's fixing problems it's looking for solutions and then it's just listen listen to the people around you put them in your in in your sphere for a reason you know you you hire your attorney you get your bookkeeper you have to listen to the people around you then you ultimately have to make the right decision no and i think that that is it's it's easier certainly easier said than done because often times you you know it's harder to listen than you might think in the sense that you just want to go out and do it you think you know what you're doing and yet if you take the time to slow down listen to what the market is telling what others are telling customers are telling you and everything else then you're going to find those opportunities from because most people don't take the time to listen so i i definitely like that slow down listen and then take that feedback and sometimes people's feedback is not always helpful but you're going to get a lot of good feedback a lot of helpful feedback that makes your makes your journey a lot more successful absolutely well now as we wrap up the podcast and always a lot more things and someday i still want to hear what happened on the last type that you died or what that journey is maybe off the podcast sometime we'll have to chat but if people want to they want to reach out to you they want to find out more they want to read your book they want to hire you for a speaking gig they want to get a horse from you they want to be an employee they want to be a customer they want to be your investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more oh thanks devin uh website cowboyentrepreneur.com and we're on all social media sites under cowboy entrepreneur and they can find us there and they can message us and and text us and we we respond to every single one we make a point of that so it's important if they're spending their time to get a hold of us we're going to get back to them well that's awesome well i definitely encourage people to check out the website check out the socials reach out find out more because there's a lot of i think a lot of lessons to learn a lot you guys are going on that you can learn from and a lot of fun things just to check out so with that we'll uh we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast thank you again for coming on scott it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you want to share it feel free to apply to be on the podcast just go to inventiveguest.com we always love sharing your journeys two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about all the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need any help with patents trademarks or anything else for the business just go to strategymedia.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help thank you again scott and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you devin i appreciate it was so much fun having me on i appreciate it so much absolutely

You Are Alone In This Game

Sam Gupta
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/30/2021

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.

How To Use AR And VR With E-commerce

Michael Agustin
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/29/2021

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.

Start Small & Measure Everything

Mickie Kennedy
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/28/2021

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.

Be Open To Learning On Your Journey

Chad Price
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/27/2021

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.

AI GENERATED TRANSCRIPTION

look at it as a continuous journey you know there's no starting into it you know it's a it's something that you learn every day you get better at every single day so you know i i equate it to sports just because you know i played sports and in business athletically you don't have to lose anything you know your mind can just get sharper and sharper and sharper and i know now based on my experience in having made decisions the decisions i could have made better earlier in my career and there's no way for me to to improve on myself if i'm not a continuous learner uh throughout the process so yeah my number one advice would just be completely open to learning for the you know for the rest of your life or as long as you want to be an entrepreneur not not not getting stuck in your own brain [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we've got another great guest on the up or on the podcast uh chad price and give you a bit of uh introduction so chad played college football at rice university always wanted to go into business so got a double major in a couple different things that he'll touch on um then worked for construction also played a bit of ball after graduation and decided he wanted to go into business for himself started a business with a couple friends and he'll talk a little bit about what that is and i believe it's still going and you can correct me if i'm wrong um and then kind of got to understand different types of stores and different types of niches so in addition to the the company with this friend which is i think kettlebell kings and todd goes about kettlebells also got into a bit of different brand building different contents different markets and expanded into i think living fit was another business you're in i'm starting doing interviews and other fitness and lifestyle products launched an app also got into i think a bit of cbd and uh hem company and uh is also i think partnered with that company with george foreman iii so all sorts of fun things lots of uh lots of fun parts to talk about his journey so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast chad all right thanks for having me so i gave this kind of the brief quick run through but maybe now going back a bit in time tell us a little bit about uh playing college football and rice and then um how or how things started from there sure i mean uh yeah well you know when when i'm still in college you know even at that point kind of in my life i i knew corporate america was kind of going to be a pit stop for me i i wanted to see what it was like to uh to work for a corporation but i i kind of knew in my heart that i wanted to own my own business um nobody in my family really owned their own business i did have an aunt who who owned their own business for a while who i worked with when i was younger that kind of motivated me to to choose that direction um but i hadn't seen anybody do it to the scale where you know someone's building a global brand or a recognizable brand and so uh even at that point that was always kind of one of my goals um that journey through rice just kind of helped me see uh you know different industries different um different paths in terms of corporate careers um as well as different types of businesses that you know could could could be a potential for a business that i could start um so you know after i graduated from rice one question before that just so because you were you were doing the college football and a lot of you know dream and not all or a lot of people don't make it but it's you know you play college ball and you go professional or you go do something with that as you're going into football was it hey i that's my dream or hey this will be a good way to be able to get into the scholarship or otherwise fund my you know fund my degrees or kind of you know going into that how did you decide between kind of the sports that you you know to be in a college level even if that is a great accomplishment and a you know big feat so how did you kind of decide i want to do business when you're also doing football well i mean i think that's a great question i think if you go to rice you have the mindset of kind of doing both you know i don't think many many athletes go to rice on full scholarship and don't think about what their career is after um you know i think it's a education focused curriculum and education focused system from the very beginning with that being said i think you know every every football player basketball player every athlete dreams about you know the the olympics the championship the super bowl whatever whatever that may be um so yeah i did have you know i did aspire to to you know play continue to play football uh but quite honestly you know even at that point i knew that was a temporary pit stop for me so if it was corporate america if it was football it was still going to end up with me having to you know do something to you know build for the rest of my life and in my mind that was always you know some type of business i didn't know what that was going to be but that that's kind of where where my thought process was at the time no definitely makes sense and so now you graduate you're coming out and i think you've got a double major is that right remind me what you got the degrees in yeah so yeah at the time rice didn't have a formal uh business degree they had basically it's managerial studies and then i also have a degree in sports management which is basically a you know a business degree in in sports and so it just talks or just focuses more on the uh professional sports and the marketing around that industry so now and so now you're coming out of school you've got your degrees you're saying okay you know i may need to get a bit of experience really my heart is in entrepreneurship and so i think after you graduated you had a short stint in kind of construction and doing a little bit with ball afterwards before deciding to get into business yourself is that about right yeah i think that's a good summary um construction's probably one of my favorite jobs i've ever had actually um interesting interesting enough it's it's hard work but it's rewarding work you know you get to you get to go from project to project you get to see something go from the beginning to the end and start over and so you know no two days are really the same especially if you're working on on larger projects so um i really like that part about construction when i was still kind of transitioning from you know what do i want to do full time with my life i wasn't at a point where i wanted to be tied down to a corporate job either and construction allowed me to kind of travel in and basically go from project to project versus you know clocking in nine to five uh you know 360 days a year or whatever no i think that definitely makes sense i mean for me i've never gotten to construction i've only been on the side of having a house built or other things seeing the construction but there's definitely i think would be you know a rewarding aspect of hey we see something it starts at nothing builds it up and you can say hey i helped build that and hey you know you can kind of point to that as something as an accomplishment would certainly be exciting now you're doing that for a period of time enjoying that now when you got into or how did you make that transition decide okay you wanted to go into business yourself was it just uh kind of i've decided i didn't want to be construction forever or i had a good opportunity or a good idea kind of what prompted that that shift a bit um so even when i was in construction you know i was working as a you know as a project manager so i was basically running a small crew basically from project to project so you know whether we're doing seating demolition [Music] remodeling you name it i worked on quite a few different things in construction but the the actual owner of that company was the dad of a guy who i played football with and so he was a small business owner um you know another good another mentor of mine from that's in that sense where i i really got to see what a small business was like being run at that level so you know even though i was doing the day-to-day work of a project manager for construction company i was on site day-to-day um i was still learning behind the scenes of how everything worked from a small business perspective um and at that time i you know i actually thought that i was gonna construction would be you know my my choice of business um it ended up not being that once i partnered with a couple of my buddies and looked at just the land general landscaping the potential behind um what i wanted to achieve but yeah it still allowed me to kind of see a small business from the inside out and and learn and learn and gain that experience no that's cool so now so you got it and that definitely makes sense so now you got into initial i think the first business you mentioned as you kind of went on your own as you got with a few friends and you started the kettlebell company is that right yeah so after i uh i worked in construction for a little bit i actually moved over and i started working in oil and gas and i was working as a gas controller um basically working working shift work you know 12-hour shifts maintaining a gas pipeline and in doing that you know that was a very traditional kind of corporate job you know great great pay great benefits um but it was you know a commitment from our standpoint and it was it was a long-term commitment if it was something that you know i was gonna do uh for the rest of my life and so during that process i had a couple other friends who were kind of in the same similar situation um one of them actually was working with me at the oil and gas company and another one was a friend of our uh he's best friends with a guy we went to college with and so it was very kind of tight circle um we kind of made a pact that we were going to start a company didn't know what that was we had a good reference of what e-commerce was because my friend was working at big commerce at the time so he had a very good insight of you know what makes it successful business he had you know he had a good chance to see you know companies come on board and go from nothing to something kind of overnight you know really studying studying niche markets and different opportunities for trying to create your own uh you know basically trying to trying to be noticed in in such a crowded space of e-commerce and so we felt like we had a little edge in that sense of really understanding how to do that um and we just started naming companies and so kettlebells was was one of the products that we wanted you know we at the time we were talking about uh so so many so many different things all all different types of fitness equipment um you know sleeping companies um you know basically any niche market that we could think of we were trying to go after kettlebells was just one of those things that at that time crossfit was becoming really big and we could really see the potential of this is you know this is a thing that's here to stay and it's going to be growing over the next 10 to 15 years and it's only going to get more kind of ingrained into fitness and into into what people consider a workout so kettlebell kings being so kind of literal was almost too good to pass up so to speak no it definitely makes sense now one question question on that is were you guys hey as you did your research was it you were you looking for something you thought was a good opportunity was it something you guys are familiar with was it something you're passionate about you know as an example did you like kettlebells were you using it for workout was it more of just hey this is a growing space and a little bit we don't care what this space is we just want to find something that we can drive and grow and that type of thing or kind of how did you land on kettlebells yeah i think it was you know it definitely because it was a growing space uh you know that that was one of the the driving factors but then also with um you know our background in sports and fitness at the time we were we're all trying to find our routine for you know what is my health and wellness routine look like after sports right i think if you if you play collegiate or professional sports it's a much different workout regimen than you know this is my daily life so this is my you know monthly lifestyle type of workout routine and so me personally like i didn't like going to a gym so i i hate going to 24 hour fitness or you know any of these gyms where it's just a bunch of people there waiting on machines jumping over people you know people working out at different level of intensities that's just not my you know my speed for for working out and so homework i became a big thing for us and in kettlebells and minimal space workout was kind of one of the trending uh things that was happening kind of just in the fitness industry in itself and so we we really like that personally i think that fit our uh our personal you know kind of goals for our own health and wellness but then i think we saw that to be kind of the future of health and wellness is you know it is much more of a personal journey the minimal space space athlete you know i think you've seen or we've all seen kind of with covet that kind of your home fitness workout is the core of your health and wellness what you do you know in the space that you are that you have available to you is is more important than you know where you go or what what you know big pieces of equipment you have available to you and so we really want to create a lifestyle and community around that no i think that that definitely makes sense i mean finding something that's a good opportunity that you're interested in that you're you know use a product yourself and as an up-and-coming market all makes sense now as you guys started this out were you guys doing it as a side job or kind of a side hustle getting it started and did it is it still a side hustle or did you guys kind of transition as it got as it grew to be a full-time gig yeah i mean the first year and a half um i was still working full-time so you know one of the luxuries of working a shift shift work is you know you work 12-hour shifts rotating shifts and you know sometimes you're working 12 hours during the day sometimes you're working 12 hours during the night so 12 hours during the night used to probably be the the best time for me to get work done because i could work during the day after i got up and then you know at night it's a lot more peaceful in the control room and so you can do a lot of research and reading and and just kind of all the the the my new things around building a business you know i was able to do that uh you know over those night shifts and things like that and so after about a year and a half of us having something and really seeing okay we have sales you know we we prove the concept of kettlebell kings we see the trajectory going up going in the direction that we like you know someone always has to kind of just jump in there and kind of go go full throttle and so at that point i quit my job um you know went to do this full-time you know we were still shipping out of a storage facility like a 10 by 10 storage facility but it was enough to that somebody had to go over there every day someone had to you know deal with customers every single day and so about six months after that um we got to the point where it was and it was almost too much for one person um and so my business partner did the same thing as well so he quit his job and yeah from there we just kept going so you know we're at probably eight employees right now uh and growing up probably eight full-time employees and still growing um and so it's just been kind of a never-ending growth process since that point hey that's always a great place to be to be in that growth and to have things expanding going in the right direction is definitely exciting now and i i think as we chatted a bit before the podcast you know you know you have kettlebell keens but then you guys kind of started i don't know and i say you guys maybe it was you your your partners or otherwise he started to expand into other areas was that kind of out of a diversification and or you had other opportunities or excited about other things or kind of how did you start to expand into additional businesses and growing other things yeah i mean about three or four years ago uh once we really knew kettlebell kings had you know it we had a branch you know we were getting globally recognized um you know we're going getting quite a few quite a bit of attention from uh you know other companies and just kind of in our space we were one of the one of the most credible companies for kettlebell so um a lot of that was because we knew we had that solid now we need to diversify and a lot of our revenue was generated through equipment sales um at the time and still right now people were talking about you know the trade wars with china um trade wars in general you know economic bubble whatever might happen to put a damper on our supply line for equipment sales we needed to figure out okay how can we diversify and sell things that don't require that supply line digital products became an easy and easy target so kettlebell workouts you know we knew people were selling kettlebell workouts kettlebell programs that became became low-hanging fruit but we wanted to expand on that and be more than just a kettlebell so living fit not only does kettlebells but it also does battle ropes dumbbells nutrition resistance bands and it'll it'll continue to keep expanding almost into every single fitness category so what we're forming now is not only the work outside so if you can think of like your peloton-like experience it's also an educational side to it as well that allows trainers to earn certifications and earn specialty uh credits towards their uh whatever certifying body that they're using for their personal their personal training certification they can get these specialty credits through this same type of app and program no definitely makes sense and so now as you launch you know the the next kind of expansion or you know where our business is kind of expanding on that original idea going into the additional verticals and kind of keeping that fitness lifestyle doing all that was it the same you know was it the same experience and it was just kind of building what you had or is every startup different you had different uh opportunities different difficulties or kind of how was that kind of starting that over again or building that up again for a second time in a different area um i mean i think every everyone is going to be different so it's definitely a huge difference between you know selling digital products instead of selling physical products um you know luckily for us we've only gotten more and more attention on our surprise on our products so demand for us has just increased since since we've since we've you know been in business um but for the digital products is not the same so you know you're you have to work quite a bit harder to make those sales compared to uh you know kettlebells which are kind of hard to find right now um and so i think that's that's probably the biggest difference in just in the shift of the actual product itself for a lot of the other pieces of equipment like dumbbells um because it's the same industry it's all it's it's honestly it's easier because more more people are looking for dumbbells than they are kettlebells so i think it just it just varies on you know what what product that is no definitely makes sense so now and now as you expanded you also i think is mentioned before you got into a bit of cbd or hemp and you got partnered up with george foreman the third was that an extension of your business or different opportunity how did you kind of or add that into the mixer grow that as part of the diversity uh sure yeah i mean so that that's something i branched out on my own and started you know i i have a vision for this company you know of being kind of a natural uh you know i want to source basically the natural the most natural plant products that i can so whether that's supplements um you know salves creams any any product that we can source from from plants or from mother nature uh is the way we wanna you know kind of build the company so the community that we're trying to build there is is fitness focus but i would say it's more health and wellness focused um you know george george foreman iii actually went to rice with me as well we weren't you know super close at rice uh i think we had a couple classes together but he after we graduated he got he he actually went into the fitness industry as well and was um he basically founded a boxing certification and boxing gym that he was that he was working on i believe it was called everybody fights and so he was doing that and so there was a lot of overlap just kind of in our experience in uh where we were in our careers and so you know we just kind of touched base kept kept in lose contact and once he found out about the the life girls green opportunity um we just kind of went into discussions about how you know both of our networks and experience could work together to really really build this into something we both kind of had already kind of visualized no that's cool and you know it's always interesting the connections we make whether they're close connections or not close connections how you know commonalities whether it's going to the same school taking a few classes together being in similar industries how you never know how those connections will come back around and that sounds like it did it there as well so analogy kind of you know that kind of catches us up to a bit of where you're at today kind of now looking in the next six to 12 months where do you see things headed where what are the opportunities that they'll look to explore to continue to explore or explore into um quite a few so um you know i think one of the the biggest things or the biggest challenges for any company when you're trying to scale to you know from a single million dollar company to multi-million or 100 million dollar type of company is really trying to find capital and strategically um make the right decisions so that you're you know you're maximizing your equity but you're also helping the company grow as fast as you can possibly grow it um so you know right now for living feeding cattle kings you know we're doing a fundraise right now to try to raise funds to continue to build our supply lines here and here in america uh like i was saying we're expanding into different so many different categories uh you know we only had kettlebells you know we need the same amount of room for dumbbells barbells um you know weight benches you name it every other kind of category has to have that same amount of capital inventory uh or initial initial capital to build that inventory so that you're able to just support a demand so we're in we're in fundraising mode pretty hard for that um and then the same thing for my other company um you know we're in fundraising as well where we have everything established kind of online uh and we're really looking to make a push nationally with kind of a sales and marketing approach with george coming on board and uh really going after the kind of looking at the cbd or the hemp derived product space uh from a recovery and wellness perspective and really going after that niche initially uh and trying to take that over okay no sounds like a lot of fun opportunities a lot of opportunities to grow and to continue to expand the business so with that as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions i'd love to ask at the end so we'll go ahead and jump to those now first question is is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it um the worst decision i've ever made probably not bringing on experts early enough um i think you know when i think when you're an entrepreneur in the beginning you have to have this kind of i'm gonna do it myself attitude i can get anything done myself and once you really have something and you really have proven your model out you don't necessarily know how you don't know the lack of efficiency you have and how much that could affect the growth of your business and so you may be hammering something out yourself that you know you should prepare professionals to do because your business would grow a lot faster and you're actually um bottlenecking your growth versus helping it by you know doing it the mom and pop way of doing it a stubborn way so if i could go back and you know learn it would be you know things like at what point to transition from owning a warehouse and sending out every single package yourself and going to a fulfillment center like like different examples like that of when to make those transitions numerically and kind of uh from a business perspective rather than a um a personal or ego perspective of just trying to kind of earn earn your way there so to speak no i i think that you know there's a lot of expertise and even just you know offloading things as well all too often as an entrepreneur you think hey i've got to hustle or i got to do it myself because i got to make sure it's done right or you know i don't want to pay someone else to do it because we need to save every penny and you know sometimes that there's some truth to that and you some you know you don't always have the ability to start out to pay for every expert and hire everybody you'd always want but at the same point if you don't at some point as you reach the ability to do that start to offload it to your point i think you can hamper a business or hamper the growth a bit or keep it from growing as fast as it could because you're not bringing on those people that can help bring it to the next level so i definitely think that's a good lesson to learn well the second question i always ask is you know if you're now 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 um look at it as a continuous journey you know there's no starting into it you know it's a it's something that you learn every day you get better at every single day so you know i i equate it to sports just because you know i play sports in in business athletically you don't have to lose anything you know your mind can just get sharper and sharper and sharper and i know now based on my experience in having made decisions the decisions i could have made better earlier in my career and there's no way for me to to improve on myself if i'm not a continuous learner uh throughout the process so yeah my number one advice would just be completely open to learning for the you know for the rest of your life or as long as you want to be an entrepreneur not knockout not getting stuck in your own uh in your own brain or in your own way no and i think that that is a great you know i like the idea that you really as an entrepreneur you don't you don't have to you don't maybe at some point you get old enough and you get you know at some point but for a long period of time as opposed to you know sports is you look at you know even at the highest professional level they they only last a few years most of time before they're having to step back because they're not able to maintain the same level whereas the fun thing about entrepreneurship is as long as you're taking that attitude as you mentioned that you're continually growing that it's not just a hey we reach this level when i'm done but rather it's continuing to improve and to make it better and to grow and diversify you can always have those opportunities as long as you're working so i love that piece of advice well as we wrap up just as a reminder to all the listeners we do have the bonus epis or bonus question on this episode we're going to talk just about a little bit about intellectual property so if you want to hear a little bit about that uh that top question stay tuned for after the normal episode but as we wrap up otherwise if people want to find out more about your businesses they want to be a customer or 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 um several different ways so you can reach you can find out more about me at chadpryce.com um just talks about my journey if you you know want to do business get in contact with me that's probably the best way uh checkpoints.com um but then i also have the several different websites you have kettlebellkings.com living.fit and lifegrowthgreen.com so any of those companies you know their health and wellness companies cbd related companies um generally towards any anything that's trying to be productive or put growth into today's society so all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check out any or all of the websites reach out to chad if you have some i want need a kettlebell you need sportiness or sport gear you want to invest you want to find out about cbd lots of different things chad has going on definitely worth reaching out well as we wrap up thank you again chad for coming on stay tuned for the the bonus question but uh thank you for coming on now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell um feel free to go to inventiveguest.com 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 leave us a review so new people can find out about the podcast as well last but not least if you ever need help with your uh patents trademarks or anything else the business just go to strategymeeting.com so now as we wrap up the normal part of the episode we get it you i said the fun part for him at least me because i always get to be in a bit of a driver's seat ask the questions and you have to respond now we got to flip the tables a bit and you get asked me your number one question and i get to talk a little bit about something i'm passionate about which is intellectual property so with that i turn it over to you a bit what's your number one intellectual property question um do you do on there do you deal with international intellectual property that's a simple question for me then how how do how do you build an international portfolio and how do you kind of how do you gauge what things are worth investing in and what things are kind of just paper i mean i think that at the end of the day that's suggested yeah and that's a great question it's a hard one especially to start up small business is you always have aspirations of going you know going international being worldwide and selling it and yet the cost of doing that is substantial i mean if you're going to go into multiple countries you have to file whether it's a patent or a trademark in each of the individual countries that cost adds up and it can be it can be a great benefit if you have it but it can also be a big killer if you don't if you spend all of your money there such as to detriment the company so generally what i would advise is where you start to look is where it's going to be the highest the biggest concentration where is your marketplace going to be so here's an example of hey really 90 of where we're going to and foreseeable future we're going to sell into is going to be in the u.s and sure there's going to be a little bit in europe or china but 90 percent of our marketplace is from the u.s i'd probably say focus your intellectual property on there because you're protecting your biggest market and the other ones that you are going to be much smaller you simply don't go and protect you know you simply go and compete without intellectual property and let that be in supplemental income but if somebody comes along and knocks off or otherwise competes in those marketplaces it's probably not worthwhile the investment on the other hand let's say you said okay europe is a huge market everybody wants you know i'll use example kettlebells 55 percent of our market they're 35 percent in the us and 20 in canada i don't think i have my math added up i think i had over 100 but then i would start to say okay then we probably want to protect in those few countries probably makes sense because those are big enough markets we are going to sell into enough that we're going to want to actually follow in protection so when you get into international it's one where you can spend a lot of money and not get a good return or if you're careful and you look and say now it's as much as making a business case because you ask a typically you ask an intellectual property attorney and if they give you a legal advice is yeah we can file in all these countries here is the cost it's going to be you should file on every one because you never know where it's going to be but i'd really take a step back and say there's a much more of a business case that you should be looking at where's our market where do we see us growing into what is where's the what where do we want to protect our competitive advantage and that's where you invest in and then you just simply say we can't afford it to go everywhere we're going to protect our biggest markets and then we'll just simply other opportunities where we could have filed into we'll just compete without intellectual property does that make sense yeah no that definitely makes sense is i think just the way the way my mind works is i'm always trying to make that into a number and when when you're thinking about you know what's worth protecting right like so what what's what size you know or what volume of uh whether that's revenue profit however you want to cut that how do you how do you equate that to to a number so you know if you have a company that is doing a million dollars in a country is that worth it is a hundred thousand dollars worth it when you're talking about protecting your irp how do you really you know justify what threshold you make that decision yeah i mean it's always a bit of a business i mean because if you say a hundred thousand dollars in revenue versus profit hey if you're only making five thousand dollars of profit for revenue then it probably doesn't make sense but i would put it as giving an example most countries you know and there's exceptions higher low but on average to go and get a patent internationally you're probably looking on the low side ten thousand dollars on the high side up to twenty thousand that's a pretty big range i would usually say fifty or twelve twelve thousand dollars if i say country by country to get through all the bases so if now you're saying okay we're doing a hundred thousand dollar net profit or we're doing seven figures a million dollars in that country then it probably makes sense because you're gonna have okay for that smaller investment twelve thousand dollars we can protect what we're doing proprietary keep us in or and it could be a trademark as well if we have a really great brand and we wanna protect them then you're saying you know trademarks are even more so because you know to get the trademark in a given country you're probably anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars as an average and so you're saying okay i would look at it as if we're you know you're getting to where that is if you're saying ten percent of the and this is a hard question but ten percent of the net profits is going to be in that country or we see the next two or three years that's where the trajectory is headed i'd probably say you're getting into that range of 10 to 15 of net profits if you reinvest in that would probably give you a pretty good range okay sounds good all right well with that it was certainly a fun question to talk a little about intellectual property and certainly the international and the the foreign scene as well appreciate you coming on the podcast again chad now if anybody else any of you anybody else out there have any other questions or if you chat even have any other questions later down the road feel free to go to strategymedia.com grab a bit more time with us to chat always happy to answer those questions now as we wrap up thank you again chad and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you i appreciate your time today you English (auto-generated) All Sales Recently uploaded Watched

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