Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - He Built an Eight-Figure Business Without Raising a Dollar | Chris Smith - Curaytor Co-Founder & Author of The Conversion Code

Transcript

Lessons - He Built an Eight-Figure Business Without Raising a Dollar | Chris Smith - Curaytor Co-Founder & Author of The Conversion Code · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how entrepreneurs can choose the right business
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  by aligning opportunity with long-term goals.
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  Discover how different growth stages demand different strategies and leadership,
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  understand why building for longevity often requires resisting short-term pressure,
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  and uncover how the best founders embrace hard problems as the path to lasting success.
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  Okay, so a lot of corporate experience all makes sense.
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  Now I heard something that is interesting to me that's a great entrepreneurial lesson.
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  You mentioned some businesses are not the right kind of businesses.
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  And we'd argue like if you can build a business to a hundred million dollars,
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  that's a great business, but it wasn't the one to go to a billion.
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  But let's let's shelve that for now.
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  I have a different question.
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  When you're starting something new, what is the right business?
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  So if you're an entrepreneur and you're getting into it for the first time,
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  how do you decide where to spend your time?
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  For the person starting it, it's the business that accomplishes their goals at the time.
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  Austin's goal is to run a billion dollar company.
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  So he started Picasso and accomplished that goal.
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  But that was a realistic goal.
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  So to sort of have this hybrid between realism and surrealism, it's like, yeah,
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  I know I could build a million dollar company.
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  And even now it's funny you mentioned Austin because with that,
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  I'm sort of at a similar point with Curator, my own company, because we basically sprinted
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  to a certain size where private, so the numbers are not out there,
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  the way venture capital backed are, but we're private, we're profitable, we got cash,
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  we do a million a month in, in MRR, like we're a great business.
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  But the way that it is built today, it does not lead to a billion.
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  Because commission zinc and tiger leads in Boomtown, we've seen the comps for what we've built.
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  And the comps are at about 350, 250, maybe 500 million.
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  That is the highest.
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  Then we looked and we said, okay,
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  who are these brokerages that no one's heard of, that everyone makes fun of,
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  that kind of suck and they're kind of new and they're not even really doing things that well.
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  How are there like six of them worth a billion?
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  And there's not one SaaS platform worth a billion.
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  So I'm swimming in the wrong stream.
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  But I can't become a brokerage because all of my clients are with all the brokerages,
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  you know, I'm Switzerland, it's important to me by the way.
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  So it's hard and so to pick the thing up off the tracks and go build the business of tomorrow,
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  while you're working on the business of today, it's a lot harder than it sounds.
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  And the key is just having great people around you.
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  We were never able to look too far into the future when we were caught up in the weeds.
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  Okay, so now let's sort of walk through the entrepreneurial journey.
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  And when you started, when you started a curator, when Austin started Picasso,
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  there's playbooks you deploy.
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  There's playbooks for your product market fit.
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  First 50 customers, first 100 customers from zero to one million from one million to 10 million,
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  from 10 million to 100 million.
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  So walk me through the playbook for getting a company off the ground.
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  I want everybody to get the best advice possible.
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  I've built a company like that.
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  I have great opinions on it, but there's a guy named Jason Limkin.
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  He is the, I believe, the smartest person when it comes to growing a SaaS business from zero to
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  10 million in ARR. Because the reason I say that is as I'm on this journey with Jimmy and as I'm
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  working with Austin and going through all these ups and downs, I feel like he's speaking directly
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  to me and he's never met me. He's talking about my problems. He's talking about my issues.
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  He's basically like reading my diary on Twitter. I'm like, dude, how do you have my PNL? What are you doing?
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  And he showed me that he knew me. And so I then really latched on to him because he could get me
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  where I knew I could get next. See how I'm saying? But what I love about him too is he's like,
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  I ain't the one that gets you from 10 to 100. And the person that gets you from 10 to 100 is probably
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  not the one that gets you from 100 to a billion. So don't get romantic about the who or the how.
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  And so for Jimmy and I, we are not driven by financial gain, which ironically allows us to play
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  this sort of Simon Sinek infinite game. And so as opposed to some of the other founders I've seen
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  sort of sell, move on, you know, leverage to level up. We've chosen to pivot. We're like Ross
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  on friends. We're pivoting. Pivot, pivot, pivot. Because we know that we are talented enough.
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  We know that our team is good enough. We know that our ideas are smart enough that we can be
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  bigger and better way bigger than we are today. When we see companies that are bigger than us and
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  founders that aren't as good as us, we don't stop. We just keep going. You know, but that's how we're
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  driven. I can promise you 98% of the people that started Curator would assault it already. And they
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  probably be like building an island somewhere, you know, like, but that's not how we think of success.
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  We love the work. I heard a story. Let me tell you a quick sports story. Yeah, go for it.
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  There's been one flagrant foul in the history of the NBA All-Star game. And it was Dwayne Wade
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  accidentally fouling Kobe Bryant across the face. He broke his nose or broke his cheekbone blood
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  was gushing out. And you know, it's the All-Star games. You guys are half of these guys are friends.
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  Well, two nights later, the heat played the lakers. And so Dwayne's a little nervous because he never
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  really got to tell properly that he was sorry. And Kobe comes out and he's got this mask on,
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  you know, the sort of mamba mask. And Dwayne goes up to him, you know, before the tip off as the
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  games about the start, he said, Hey, man, I'm so freaking sorry. You know, you know, it's an accident.
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  But I felt like I just needed to say it again. And he said, Kobe looked at him dead in the eye. And he said,
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  I like it.
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  He likes it. He liked the twist that he had to play injured.
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  Because that's different. And it's unique. And it's experience now that he can go through that other
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  people haven't that he can learn from that he can go show his highlight films, just like LeBron were in
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  the mask on the heat. We've got some Kobe mask games. People that reach the ultimate scale.
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  They are fascinated by solving problems. So if you're building your situation where you're
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  problem free, it's tough to get all the way to the top because you have to be willing to tackle
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  problems. People won't or that they aren't. And so for Kobe, he's just like, this is cool.
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  Time I am behind my back. You know, I'll close my eyes on a free throw, right? That's a new challenge
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  because the regular game is easy now. And so I'm trying to level up from there. Leveling up from
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  where Kobe was was shit like playing with a broken face. You know, now you made an interesting
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  point. You said when you're building out curator, a lot of people would have sold it before now.
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  There's a lot of people that would have built it to sell. So when you're building a company and
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  you want to build something that has some longevity and lifetime and legacy to it, it seems like
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  that's what you're doing right now. And you want to test out different things. There's a lot of
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  pressure from external stakeholders because a lot of entrepreneurs they bring in VCs, venture
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  capitalists, investors. And there's a timeline is a ticking clock before they have to have an
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  exit event. So you want to build something long term, doesn't investor have that same shared
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  opinion? And I guess the question would be for a founder, if they want to take that pressure off,
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  they want to build something that could be more of a lifestyle, have some longevity to it.
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  Should they work with venture capital investor outside money that's going to put all of that
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  pressure to expedite everything? No, you know, I wore this sort of anti-silicon valley anti-venture
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  capital hat for a while similar to the guys from base camp where it's like, hey, there's another
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  way you don't have to do it this crazy way that Silicon Valley does it like be proud of, you know,
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  being profitable as an example like things like that. And simple stuff. I actually, as I've gotten
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  a little bit older, I just it's kind of back to that example we just gave. There's a lot of ways
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  to do things and I don't know how to do it the Silicon Valley way and that actually now bothers me
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  Scott. I'm now basically saying the thing I made fun of for 10 years, that's actually the thing
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  that I need to understand better if I'm going to continue to be the best marketing sales
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  professor in the world because it's incredibly difficult to keep up with this stuff. I got to
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  push alert yesterday. Google optimize going away in 2023. I'm like, dude, that's in my book. I can't
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  unprint my book, but I know that going in. So anyway, I hope that makes sense. I wanted to follow
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  one point about who to onboard though, you know, how do you onboard? Who do you off board?
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  Is a really interesting question too because there's these people that like push you up the
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  mountain top and they they follow you like a disciple. They really do. When you have a great culture
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  and you have a great mission and you have, you know, founders that are passionate like it's sort
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  of a good cult, right? It's awesome. There's words, there's colors like they're like it's a real
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  thing. It's amazing. It's hard to replicate, but that startup phase has to change to continue to
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  scale. So all of a sudden, you've got these people that pushed you up to this huge mountain that
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  you're grateful to have ever seen the top of and you're starting to realize that they're the wrong
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  people to help you go up the next mountain. And so that change management is tricky.
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  You know, because you've got all these people that got you there, but you know, they won't get
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  you here, but you're not going to just lay off all your rest people. It's hard. And so to me,
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  you need to have some sort of unemotional line in the sand where we are going to be, you know,
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  founder led, service led, passionate. When we hit these numbers, we are going to then go find
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  experts like this to help us do this. If that was clearly defined on day one, people would know
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  which exit ramp they wanted to take, but who knows what's going to happen with a company,
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  we could have gone bankrupt several times. So like, they don't even, like, they're buckling up,
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  but they don't know for how long. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.