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Lessons - The One Thing That Kills Every Startup | Captain Hoff - Advised 1000+ Companies · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore why work remains essential even when survival no longer depends on it.
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  Discover how purpose and community drive people to seek meaning beyond financial need,
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  understand why true fulfillment comes from creation and contribution rather than wealth,
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  and uncover strategies for turning bold ideas into innovations that thrive in a competitive market.
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  If you didn't want to work in theory, there's so many in most in most Western countries,
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  there's so many social welfare programs that you could sit on your coach all day and not work
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  and still find a way to get money from somewhere to be quite honest and some people do that.
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  But I think the vast majority of people would much maybe it's because society imposes,
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  you know, like these ideas of what you should do and you know, you mentioned like you have to
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  provide and whatnot, but like for most people you're not going to be rich, but you don't have to work
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  to live day to day. But people do choose to work. They do it because what we value more than the job
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  is we value people are social animals. Like if you think about human beings, you know, in the hunter
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  gatherer for, you know, tens of thousands of years, they just hunted when they needed food or gathered
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  stuff when they needed food, but most of the time their value wasn't on, their value was on how they
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  relate and what they give to their community. And fundamentally, we all live in this community,
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  this social structure, and that social structure is informing us how to feel about ourselves,
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  and that social structure will change with time. And it will free people up to do things with their
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  time. Like right now you're saying, some, most of the hardest people I know, the work the hardest
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  are like super rich, but like they, they could stop working tomorrow, right? Yeah. It's like they
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  aren't working for more money. They don't need more money. Like you look at any of these rich people,
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  they work like Elon Musk. Does he need more money? No, he has no need for more money. Bill,
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  you know, Bill Gates is working like crazy, but now he's working on his philanthropy like crazy.
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  But he says he puts in the hours. He's putting in hours. These people work. We don't work. We work
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  because what are we going to do, right? Work creates meaning in our life. That's why we don't work
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  for the money. So the people who think that the welfare is going to make people lazy. I just don't
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  believe it's true. I mean, if people are going to be lazy, they'll be lazy, right? They'll be lazy
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  on the job or off the job. If they're the type who doesn't want to do anything, then that's how
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  they're programmed. You're not going to change them. And if they're the type who are going to,
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  if they're the type like us who just love doing stuff, love creating stuff, love, you know,
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  it doesn't matter. We're going to we're going to figure out something to do with our time. Yeah.
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  And we're going to do it. Yeah, I think my, I think my, my issue is I always try and figure out.
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  I always try and take on too many things as, as hobbies. And I have to remember that sometimes
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  they're obvious. You had no day job. You would, I guarantee you, you would be busier than ever.
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  Because you'd be like, I want to do that. I want to do this. And I think most people who want to be
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  busy will be busy. And those who just want to sit around and, you know, play games or watch
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  television, they could do that, right? Yeah. They'll do that now. Every chance they get, they'll
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  still be the same thing. People do what they do. Yeah. I want to ask a question. Just the first
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  book that you wrote, Make Elephants Fly. What is that? What is the book about? And this is not a
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  plug. I didn't plan this at all. It was curious about the title. Why you chose that title.
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  The elephant, well, I like fun titles. So the elephant, it's called Make Elephants Fly. The sub-title
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  is what it's about. It's called the process of radical innovation. And radical innovation is
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  an innovation, not incremental, like not a little innovation, but a huge leap forward. So how do you
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  get there? So the elephant for entrepreneurs, it's your big idea. It's your dream. It's like what
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  you want to do, but it's an elephant. How elephants don't fly? How can you get this huge idea off
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  the ground? So the book tells you how to come from an idea all the way to execution. How to take
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  that idea and make it fly. So let's speak about that. Let's speak with that. Because let's speak
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  about it in the context of I have a hobby. I'm working, you know, I'm working full-time and I'm
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  using myself as an example, but a lot of people have these side hustles right now. Yeah, even,
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  especially even more if you have more free time because you're stuck at home and you don't have
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  anywhere else to go. So people are starting. I've never seen so many live Instagram sessions,
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  live Facebook sessions before in my life. I feel like everybody's just starting something new now.
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  So it's good. But okay, so you have an idea of a side hustle. How do you take that and you turn it
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  into a flying elephant? So this is all about the process of innovating, right? Figuring out
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  where your idea meets reality. So it's in a way a process starting with the idea. There's a lot
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  in there about ideation and how to create ideas. But once you have these ideas, how do you know which
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  are the really good ones? Because if you're anything like me, I have a million ideas, right? A
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  million ideas. And I think they're all great. When I first think of them, I just get excited. I'm
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  like, oh my god, that's the best idea in the world. But you know what? Like 99% they have a flaw.
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  99% are actually ideas that will not work. And most of them, maybe not 99%, but most of them are
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  actually terrible. So they're not great ideas. It's just in my head. So how do you go into what is a
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  process through which you go into the real world? You test out an idea. And also I go through this
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  thing called the innovation loop where you go through a process of discovery with each new idea.
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  So I liken being an entrepreneur to being an explorer. Now an explorer, your job is to find something
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  really valuable, but it's very dangerous. You're going to go into uncharted territory like the
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  explorers that came to the Americas. You're going to meet hostile forces, whether it be nature,
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  that's going to kill you, natural things, whether it's going to be other companies or tribes that
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  are going to come after you. But what you have to do is a figure, you don't know what's there.
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  So when you first go there, it's all this black wilderness. And your job is to figure out your
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  way through that wilderness as quickly as possible without getting killed. So getting through that
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  wilderness without getting killed is not an easy thing. Most startups die over 95% from idea,
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  from conception, all the way to being profitable or selling your company is 95% do not make that.
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  So what are the, it goes into detail on like the pitfalls along the way where startups go wrong.
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  What type of what is wrong thinking? It goes into the fundamentals of business model.
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  Like there's certain business models that are really lucrative that like make a lot of money
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  and there are others that are doomed to failure. But on the surface, you might not even recognize
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  which is which. I can give you an example. So there are a lot of people out there who will put up
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  these Kickstarter projects. And the Kickstarter projects are pretty cool. Like they are like a super
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  cool gadget that, but what they don't realize is that that that gadget that they're putting out
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  there on Kickstarter is there's some problems with it. Number one, maybe the market is too niche,
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  right? There's just not enough people out there who would buy it or that people think it's a nice
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  to have. It's something they would like to have, but they don't really need. And even if they get
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  enough people to like give them their initial Kickstarter target, doesn't mean it's going to be
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  a successful product. Because the most successful products out there are products not that you sell
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  once to a person. Because as a small company, when you sell to get a new customer, let's say you make
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  a gadget, the profit margin isn't that high. And you start off maybe with if it's really novel,
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  you start up with a reasonable profit margin, but as soon as people in China and other countries start
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  copying you, that margin starts to shrink, right? It goes really, really low because they didn't,
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  they'll just sell it for whatever they can get away with selling it for. That's low as possible.
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  And if you have to acquire new customers, which is the biggest job for any entrepreneur,
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  like you acquire new viewers for your show or whatever it is, acquiring new customers is expensive.
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  And if you don't have a big profit margin, you can't afford to advertise. You definitely can't
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  afford to call them up and do direct sales, right? Like person to person and you can't afford even
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  to market on Google if the profit margin shrinks, so that will just kill your business ultimately.
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  So you have to recognize that. Now the companies that really succeed well, like Microsoft, Google,
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  Salesforce, Apple, whatever they are, they don't sell a product once. Once you buy into them,
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  you are continually giving them money. So whether it's on your iPhone, whether you're giving
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  the money through the App Store over and over and over, you're locked into their ecosystem,
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  you're buying their upgraded phones over and over and over, whether it's Amazon, which they
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  may take a commission off every sale, whether they sell it or whether their partner sells it,
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  they're giving them money every time you go back to Amazon, whether it's Uber. The reason it got
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  the big valuation was because once you have that Uber app, you keep using it over and over and over.
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  So the recurring revenue, when you can get recurring revenue, that is the type of business model
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  that really scales. Facebook has the same thing. You're going on to Facebook over and over,
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  every time they're getting a few pennies from you, you know, you view an ad, but you're going over
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  and over and over and over. So the thing is, you know, I go into detail on the book like how you can
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  get a customer and never let that customer go, never let that customer go. And then how can you make
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  that customer as valuable to you as possible over their lifetime? I love it. That's very smart.
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  It's a very good takeaway. And I think that, you know, it's funny. I've always worked in
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  organizations that focus on recurring revenue. My background was in Telecom and now so obviously
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  they're very profitable. And also now I'm in SaaS or software, right? So it's always about
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  recurring revenue. But I think that a lot of industries haven't haven't woken up to that fact
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  and now they're getting hit hard, especially when if they're selling physical products or they have
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  physical storefronts or brick and mortar. And like that's this killing them. If they haven't expanded
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  and they haven't taken their their store online or expanded their products into the recurring
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  revenue products, you know, like that's why people are really hurting now. But that's what I think
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  is going to fuel. I just tweeted this yesterday. I think this will be a benchmark in the fourth
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  industrial revolution and it will push people to look at digital in a new way. And not just as that's
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  my opinion at least. I don't I don't know if it's going to change everyone's behavior. But
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  I already know it's changing some people because you know, now it's like all the people that
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  were told, oh, you can't work from home. Well, now they're all working from home. And they're
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  probably working harder because they don't know when to shut off. And you know, so like now all the
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  people that had all these work life balance issues didn't want to commute an hour and a half. Now
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  they're all working from home. So now what does that do to the to to, you know, all these cultures,
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  these office cultures globally that didn't want it before. Like there's so many changes that
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  are going to happen because of this. But also just tech and you know, modernization in general. But
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  it's very interesting. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.