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Bootstrapping Your Business: Jim Weldon on Customer-Driven Growth · Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Ready Set.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Collaborate with Wanda Pearson.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: This is where ideas spark, connections grow and collaborations fuse success.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Tune in for inspiring stories, expert insights and game-changing conversations.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Let's build, connect and thrive together.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Remember collaboration is the key to success.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Ready Set Collaborate podcast with Wanda Pearson.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I just want to say my guest, jim Felden Weldon.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know where did I get Felden from, you know.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go with whatever you say, wanda, I am not going to argue.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Ready Set Collaborate, the podcast where connection meets impact.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, wanda Pearson.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to introduce our guest, jim Weldon, a dynamic, professional entrepreneur who knows what it takes to build, grow and lead with purpose.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Jim brings a wealth of experience and a passion for helping others succeed Well, and today he's going to drop a few serious gems on us on collaboration, leadership and the entrepreneur journey.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: You're in for a treat, so let's get started.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: So let me tell you a little bit about Jim on his bio here.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Jim is a professional entrepreneur who has co-founded six companies and built sales teams that have generated hundreds of millions in revenue.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: With over 25 years of experience in data ecosystems, business intelligence, e-commerce and entertainment, he has served on the board of directors for over a dozen companies.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Wow, I'm here with a star here, an entrepreneur star.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to have you every time I go down the street.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have you in front of me with the megaphone and be my PR person, so thank you.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Wanda.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: But no, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it so glad to be here.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Jim say hi to the audience and we're going to get into some interview questions.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Hello everybody out there, Hopefully.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: She said we dropped some gems, so the bar is set.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Let's see if we can meet it.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, absolutely, absolutely.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Listen, I know we talked about the serial versus professional entrepreneur, and tell me a little bit about that.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: How do you become a serial?
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: or professional entrepreneur.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: It was about 10 or 15 years ago.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: A friend of mine said hey, you're a professional entrepreneur.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I'm like what's the difference between a professional entrepreneur and a serial?
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: So he went on to explain a serial entrepreneur, which is what I thought I was.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: They start a bunch of companies.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: They don't make a lot of money during the path and maybe they stumble over a winner.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, that's about right, that's how I recognize it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: I go.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Why do you think I'm a professional entrepreneur?
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: He goes.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: Well, here's the difference.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: A professional entrepreneur makes money and gets paid the whole time.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: They may not have exited and realized the enterprise value from the stock, but they sell enough and have a path to cash so it can actually afford their lifestyle and not have to go broke and go buried on their credit cards.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: They don't have to go borrow from family.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: They can live in their own home.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: We know a lot of entrepreneurs that are couch surfing into their thirties, which is horrible.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: That's not a badge of honor, that just means you haven't figured out the right place to go.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: So to me, a professional entrepreneur, bottom line is you get paid the whole journey and then maybe there's a pot of gold at the end.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: So that's the difference.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Anybody can start stuff.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Getting paid is a trick.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I felt kind of honored to be tagged in that category.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Listen, I would love to be tagged in that category too.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: You had a hell of a career, so go easy on yourself.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I did, I did, but I'm trying to be like Oprah.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Well, I can make that money now Like we said earlier, we're both trying to be Oprah, which is weird, but she's that good.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Well, it's helping others.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: That's what she's about.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So there's the bottom line Exactly, and that's what I'm about and that's why I started this podcast to really kind of educate and empower people to know the different guests that I have on, such as yourself, that can share their knowledge, their education, the education to educate us as well.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So which approach serial professional do you believe is better suited to today's fast evolving tech landscape, and why?
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Great question.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: You know I haven't really thought about it, but let me just react to it on the fly here.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I would say it's the same approach I take when I look at the internet.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Everybody says the internet's this new fangled thing.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: All it really was was a quicker way to waste your money.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: So if you think about it, in the old days, if you and I wanted to start a business, we'd either have to get a storefront or we'd have to get a direct mail piece.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: We mail it out, we get a phone set up, we take calls.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: There's no internet.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: The internet allows you and me to go nuts.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Put a credit card down on Google AdWords and we could excuse my term here piss away $10,000 in a week, and Google Ad would not have anything accomplished.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: All the internet did was speed it up.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: So the fundamentals are the same.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: You got to go after the right market with the right product, with the right offer and on the right terms.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about serial entrepreneur versus professional.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, you could go and use cursor and some of these AI tools to rapidly develop an application and throw it out there.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, one approach.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Or go do your darn homework and it doesn't have to be a long time using these same tools and could you get paid for what you know in that space?
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And this is one of my biggest things If I'm not trusted enough to earn a check and you know this very well from IBM Day's professional services IBM got paid a lot of money for their expertise, more than just their hardware.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: I think it's the same way when somebody builds in this new AI tech data world.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: If you're savvy enough to build the app, you're also savvy enough to consult people on how to potentially approach building it, doing it for themselves.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: So I think it's the same thing.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: You should be a professional app company builder today, because the only sustainable way to build your company is through sales and people need to stop getting off this.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go raise money.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I got a connection.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get money from my family.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get money from my bank account.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get money from VCs?
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: No, go get money from a customer who's willing to pay you, and I don't care if it's an AI app or not.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: That should be the tenant.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: So I think we answered our own question.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Is it's professional entrepreneur?
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Stay the course, pack the cash.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Absolutely.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I like that, I like that.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So now, and we talked about and let's get into the next thing about how you fund the company without leveraging a VC Now what does VC mean?
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Venture capitalists.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So we hear a lot about these companies in Silicon Valley.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: I think roughly 40% of all the venture early stage startup money is still in Silicon Valley, northern California, and that's pretty spectacular when you think about how big the US is.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Right, we're 335 million people and let's say, 8 million, and they're in the Bay Area Well, it's really Menlo Park.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: That's where all the venture, most of the venture firms are, and what I found was if they take a hundred business plans, they might fund one.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: Well geez, you're 99 times more likely to get turned down and fail.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: So why would that be your primary strategy for raising capital?
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: It should be.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Can I get somebody to pay me for what I know?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Then can I borrow a product from somebody?
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: White label it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Can I take that to market until I can build my own?
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: And we use customer driven sales to fund our development.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: That's what we've always done.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: That's awesome so yeah, because I remember my husband was in his own business for 25 years printing, and it was hard, when you got a storefront, to try to keep that business going and trying to get those big customers right, yeah, to be able to keep the business going.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: So it it really is hard and nowadays, today, it's even, it's even harder.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: I guarantee you, if one of the things we talk to your husband about is, I guarantee you he's a hustler.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: It's even harder, I guarantee you.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: If one of the things we talked to your husband about is, I guarantee you he's a hustler.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: One of the things I've found is people that have retail and I would consider it a storefront printing retail.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: At the end of the day, he's got to be able to shake hands.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: People got to be able to trust him and he's got to hustle.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: He just can't stand there and wait for them to come.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: He's got to network.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: He got to send direct mail pieces.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: He needs to ask me or you or somebody else.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Hey, do you know anybody who looks to print posters, banners, direct mail?
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: You just can't say, oh, I'll just, I'll run an advertisement in the newspaper, I'll run a display ad online and hope they come.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: That's not how it works.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what we do in our business now the Legal Shield business.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: You got to get out there.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: So I'm considered, like you said, I'm the networking queen because I get out there and network.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: And I joined actually when I left corporate.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I joined BNI, which is Business Network International.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: They taught me how to network and you got to network with people that you know, like and trust.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: So that's that relationship that you build with that client.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: To be able to trust and also to give referrals.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, absolutely.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is very important to be able to do that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: So how do you balance growth expectations when you bootstrap or rely on a customer revenue versus taking on venture capital?
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: What's the first part of the question?
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: How do I balance?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you balance growth expectations, like when you're in a, when you're oh?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: shoot, you have none.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: When you're bootstrapping You're just trying to survive.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: And then, when you get venture, you make up numbers and then you hope you hit them.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: I swear to God, that's about the amount of scientific application.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: The other thing too is I see companies when they raise venture, they staff too quickly and they're more worried about getting the right people in the right roles, even though they don't have revenue to support them.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: So they incur something called a burn rate, which is, if I raised a million and I'm burning a hundred thousand a month, negative that means I got 10 months of runway.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Well, jesus, that's nuts Versus.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: If it's your cash and you're trying to bounce on a bootstrap, it's just you.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: You don't burn cash, you're just trying to pay your bills and hopefully you break even until you get a little bit of excess and maybe you hire somebody part-time as a contractor.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Then, if it gets really good, maybe I bring them out full-time or another outside firm to do the job six hours a week instead of 40.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: So the difference in the balance is, if you want to stay sane, stay married, stay financially whole in bootstrapping, don't set any expectations.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Just keep ranking the problem you're solving in the market.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And if the customer keeps paying you, you're on the right track.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Venture I hate to tell everybody, but it's a game of BS.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: You make up these numbers, the board goes yep, that sounds fantastic, go get them, and then you miss them.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: You miss them, then you fire that VP of sales because it's not your fault as the founder.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: You get to fire on average two VPs of sales and they look at starting to want to fire you as the CEO, just so you know.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: So the balance there is none.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Survival is bootstrap and make spin the wheel.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Guessing is venture.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that makes sense that I tell you because you're trying to make up those numbers with your venture capital.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, like you know, his business trying to get a loan from a bank.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another, that's even a harder.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: that's a whole other path to go down.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: For sure, because now they're looking at the predictability of the cash flows, the size of the customers, his bad debt.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: They're looking at their operating costs, their net income, and if the numbers don't line up, the bank will not lend.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: What's the biggest myth about growth that gets exposed the moment a founder starts selling directly.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: That's the biggest myth.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: It's going to be easy to get customers.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: This thing's so good, our product, they're going to be running at us.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: I always tell people, if you want to figure out if you're any good stand still, is anybody chasing you?
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Is anybody knocking on your door?
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Are you getting the message to the right markets?
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: So the biggest myth is and this is especially with technologists that build these early stage startups in the Valley is they look at it from the feature perspective.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: This thing's so great, I don't really need a salespeople.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: They're overpaid anyways and you and I both know from IBM.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: If it's a corporate, complex sale, my gosh, you need a team.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: If you're middle markets, you're going to need at least a couple of people.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: And if it's direct to consumer, you better have a website that converts and that's expensive, even if you go to Shopify and buy a template, the way it's set up, the call to action.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: So the biggest myth, I think, is if I build something great, they will come.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: The field of dream strategy if they build it, they will come.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: No, that's BS.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: It takes hard work and tweaking and listening, tweaking, listening, and if you don't have the grit and, by the way, the temperament to take that kind of really heavy, negative feedback.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: People perceive it as I do.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: The old Tom Watson piece on this, which is you know it's.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, sorry, edison, you know he found 10,000 ways that the light bulb didn't work and then he found the one way it did.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Same thing in business.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Hopefully you don't have to get to 10,000 experiments.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Maybe you can get to a hundred or 150, 200, but I'll tell you it's a number, it's not five.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I'm amazed how many people give up.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: We tried everything.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Man, bullshit, excuse me, it's like nah, you tried five.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Get back to me at 150, 200, then we can talk.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: So that's the biggest myth I would say is end of the day.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's good.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Actually, you said Thomas Watson, that is an IBM company.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: That was the IBM founder.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: That made me think about it.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: I was like hold it, it's.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Edison.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: So, after building multiple businesses, what's your goal to sales motion that consistently drives long-term revenue?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: You know, what's funny is our first company, brothers and I hit on something but we didn't know it, we didn't understand the power of what we had learned and it's answering three questions.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: And we it was interesting where we had this three-day tax business in the hispanic community because that's where three irish white guys are going to do fantastic.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: As you go to hispanic community and low-income areas of east la south, centro, central, san Jacinto, at the border, ventura, we're the only white things in those neighborhoods besides the lines on the street.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Here's why it worked we're Irish Catholic.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: A lot of the people we dealt with were Catholic because they're family people.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: And here's the other thing we learned they all are just trying to make a buck and take care of their family.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: So there was a lot of camaraderie and the things we learned building that business from nothing to 60 mil in 36 months.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: But no outside capital is.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: We had my brother had bought this green little diary book journal at Staples and we were sitting down and on the left-hand side we said, hey, what are all the things we're going to keep doing?
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: On the right side we're like what are the things we're going to stop doing?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: And we did that every month we were in business and all of a sudden we started.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: These three questions came out for leverage, which was one who has our customer?
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Well, it wasn't enrolled agents, it wasn't CPAs, because we were in the tax refund business.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: That's where we thought they were Cause we're like well, if you want to get an average order value up, you got to go with clients that are low-income clients and tax preparers.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: So who has our client?
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Tax preparers, will they give us access to their clients?
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Right, because they trust us.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: We didn't know.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: And the last thing was is by how they gave access?
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: Did they give an implied endorsement?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: So what we were able to do is, when we answered those three questions, we're like holy smokes and people go that sounds like a reseller program.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: And what we found was, when you do a reseller program you know this better than anybody at IBM it's a program you have to have.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Here's my FAQs.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Here's the program overview.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Here's the sandbox.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Here's the market development funds.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Here's your program manager.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Here's your partner manager.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Here's your free samples.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Holy, if you're IBM, you're making 30 or 40 promises before the reseller even makes one prospecting.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Here's what we told them to the tax offices hey, listen, wanda, if you go ahead and offer this to all your clients.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: We guarantee you could double your profit in your business.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: They're like what, yeah, if 10% attach because there's no extra fees, you could double your profit.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: And we showed them on a piece of paper and they're like holy crap.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Well, what we found out was is 80% of the clients wanted it and they were able to 8X their net profit in their business without adding a customer.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: So what helped us in this whole process?
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Long-winded answer is we learned leverage in our situation.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: That was the thing that made us so successful on that.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: That's good, yeah, and leverage makes a big difference, because we didn't have any money, so you had to invent a capability to extend your reach and leverage business.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: We call it LBD, leverage business development.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: It's not a partner program, it's.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: You know how do you do something so simple?
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: It allows you to go ahead and absolutely ramp your growth and go to market strategy yeah, which, by the way, was your question.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: That was a long arc, I'm sorry.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: No, and then you explained it a lot better here.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: So let me ask you so what's the moment in your career where you realized the business you thought you were building wasn't business?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: You were actually in?
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: Every single one about anywhere from three months to a year in.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: They're called a pivot in the business world where we come from in the tech side, and the joke is you usually don't survive the second pivot as a founder.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: So one of the things we did, out of the first six companies we had two of them we raised what they call institutional venture money for and you get two pivots and then you get hit, eject, they move you aside and quote bring in the real CEO, this last business we had built.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: We pivoted three times in two years, intentionally because we got better feedback, the market was better, we could see the path and we survived it because we were the investors, it was our capital.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: So we didn't as the four of us, we didn't have to answer to an outside firm.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: But yeah, when do I realize it?
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Here's what I realized when I start is not where I'm going to wind up.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: That is the rule of thumb for the last 20 years and I've never been disappointed.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: We always think we have it figured out right up until we don't.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: As Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, and that's tech.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: You all have a plan until we go, try to sell and then we're like, oh, that's not going to work.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: So, I'm doing it right now with the company we built.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: We've just pivoted it for the second time in two years and I'm glad we did.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: We rebuilt our platform three times, which is insane to do, but we hit on the right tech stack approach.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Now we're like oh man, we got something now, but we took our time.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: We didn't have any, we had a small team and we didn't have unreasonable expectations.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: You have to get to five or 10 million sales and we're like let's keep talking with our partners, let's listen, and that's what we did.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And it really makes it this when you listen, and also trial and error.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So you try it, you pivot, you get it right and then you try it and you see what works here.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: So how do entrepreneurs get better at recognizing their true value for their firm before market?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Teaches them the hard way, like consult get paid before building a product.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Hopefully I can remember the three buckets entrepreneurs come in.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: So are you the person that's going to bring the dollars?
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: As you and I know, Wanda, there's people in our lives that, no matter what they do, they can raise money.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Then there's other people you and I know that can bring deals in.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: They're not.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: They don't know investors, they don't shine well in front of.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Because people assume because you and I can close a customer, we can close money.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Those are two different things.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: So in a founding team, somebody has to be able to handle the dollars raising money, Somebody has to handle the deals.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: And then in my world, because it's technology, it's development, do we have the capability of somebody to develop?
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: So if I look at the mix of and go back to your original question, just so I answer it correctly, I'm sorry.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: How did you get better at recognizing their true value?
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Prop.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, so real quickly know what bucket you're in as an entrepreneur.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: So are you doing dollars, deals or development right?
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: So, especially in the tech world?
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: And then the goal is recognizing.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: So go back to the value of the question.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: I just wanna make sure I get it right.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: A value prop for their firm before market.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Teaches them the hard way, right, right?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: I just want to make sure I get it right.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: A value prop for their firm before market teaches them the hard way, right.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So if you don't know what bucket you're in, it's going to be really hard to understand how you present yourself to the market.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: So if you're the person raising money and you're trying to go out there and talk to people on the development side, that's ridiculous.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: If you're in development and you're not listening to the customers, with the salespeople, it's going to be super hard to understand how to get, how to be successful and get the market to respond.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: So what I found was is there is no one way or path is I guess the net of it it's understanding your perspective and how you interact with the market.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: I would say that's probably the one of the best approach I would do yeah, that and that makes sense here.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: we're winding down here because I mean, listen, we've got so many questions I want to ask you here I got a few minutes, so whatever you want.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so how should early stage founders think about incorporating LLMs or AI?
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Because AI is now taking over a lot now.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So how do they incorporate that into their business?
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: I can share our experience on how we did it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: So we're like everybody else going, oh, this is going to be awesome.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: We didn't even know what the hell it was.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: We were caught up in the hype, right.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: So then you start, you get your free chat GPT account and you put in a question.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: You're like, oh, that's interesting.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Then, when we started doing, we started going, okay, so it's a really good answer question answer machine, an LLM.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: And then we said, hey, can we get better at the prompting piece?
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Or like, oh, if you're a great prompt engineer approach, it's going to be helpful.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Then we started going, hey, we really don't know what the heck all this is.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So then we started listening to podcasts like yourself and listen.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: By the way, instagram has some unbelievable resources online of people that have really dissected the meta models for this.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: So first thing is, I'd say it's a force multiplier.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: If you're not using LLMs and then LAMs, large action models, and then educating yourself on where this could go, you're going to hire too many people.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: You're going to miss out on the speed with which you can get answers.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Content.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Up a funnel prospects.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Build SDR sales development rep content.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Apple funnel prospects.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Build SDR sales development rep, agentic AI models.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: We're doing all that stuff.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: So it started slow.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: We were just kind of you know, hey, kind of cool, so we went from novelty to how do we use this every day, to how do we make this core to our business, and then we don't have to hire those roles.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: So I'll give you one example.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: We looked at about I don't know seven or eight different web development tools that are AI based in this LAM and or LOM and LAM space, and what we found was Cursor is incredible.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: It gets us 85% of the way there, and then we spend the next week or two fixing the last 15.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Well, normally that project would have taken us three months, two weeks.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: So the speed is back to your point.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: How would I incorporate it?
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Put away the time every day, an hour and a half, build a little Google sheet, put the tabs on.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: Does this help me with content?
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Does this help me with images?
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Does this help me with display ads?
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Does this help me with my SDR top of funnel?
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: We do that.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: So just use a Google sheet and we put the URLs with the description in, and then what happens is, after a month, you probably accumulate 50, 60, 70 links that you've personally have experienced.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Then you start going hey, here's the five that really helped.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: So that's how we did it and it's been fantastic.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: I mean the stuff we crank out.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Here we go Simple, one job description.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Remember what a pain it was when you had a new hire at IBM?
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to give HR your job description.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: They'd have to approve it, then it would go to legal, then you'd go to the compensation people and then you'd run a newspaper ad.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Well, now you can run Indeed or you know one of the job boards.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Well, right now it takes me about two minutes to write a world-class job description through ChatGPT.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Here's another one we were doing.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Hey, here's our current different ads and our website.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: What can we do to make more compelling display ads?
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: It rewrites our ads, gives us 10 versions.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: We test them.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: They're better than everything we did.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: So it evolves, is the question.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Here's what it is not.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: It's not a silver bullet One.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: There is no one magic platform.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: It's a compilation of tools.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: So get ready to use five or 10.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: And it has to be something that you enjoy, because it's going to take some time to learn.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: And that makes sense there.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: So now, what is the name of your company?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Again, jim Prospect, so like you're prospecting prospectdeskai.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, good, good, good, definitely.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: And I love what you just said because, yeah, I've been taking some.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Well, actually, we had a speaker on AI and how it helped, and when she put stuff in, I said, oh my God, wow, as long as we'd be thinking about stuff, and I said, here it perfects it.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, you put what you want to say in there and then it perfects it for you, which is what I love about that system here.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's, it's taking over the world.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: So I've never heard a LAM and you just explained the language action models.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Large action.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: So there's large language, Large action, Large action models.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: So think of them like, if you know, Zapier, that tool that allows you to move data from one system to another.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: They call them ZAPs In the old worlds when you and I were doing ETL, which is, you know, extract, transfer, load.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: A large action model ties together multiple AI tools so they can work in concert.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: That's what a large action model is.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was looking at the next inflection point of SAAS.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I remember IBM had that and we used to have it in our thing and I said what is SAAS?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: So spread it a little bit to me about what SAAS.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I still never understood what that was.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: You know, SAS is just cloud-based application.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: That's all it is.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yep, Now I recall what it was.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I said yeah, it was cloud-based.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Everybody just laughs now because, remember, that was a term we all didn't know.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: And Salesforce set the tone for everybody.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: It became the largest SaaS software company in the world.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: They sure did.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: They sure did.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember it all would be because I was actually helping the marketing rep with a lot of stuff.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: And then we had ELA's, the software for big companies that ran their computers and stuff.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I've been into all of that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: I never knew what it meant.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: So listen, jim, tell people how they can get in touch with you so we can know more about what you do.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Absolutely Go to our website, wwwprospectdeskai, or you can go jim at prospectdeskai and just reach out to me directly, since anybody who's on your podcast and wants some insights or clarity on what we spoke about, I'm glad to email them back.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely Absolutely so.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Wow, what an inspiring conversation with you, jim.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Jim's journey as a professional entrepreneur reminds us of the power of perseverance, vision and working together to create impact.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: I hope you've been leaving this episode with new ideas that Jim has shared and fresh motivation.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Don't forget to follow, share and leave a review, and stay tuned for more stories that spark collaboration and growth Until next time.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: This is Wanda Pearson signing off with Ready Set Collaborate where we connect, grow and thrive together.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Thanks again, jim, for being on my podcast and make sure you also subscribe.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: It's going to be on YouTube as well, so you can see Absolutely, we're excited for it.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Wanda, thanks for having me on here.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Excited for it.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Wanda, thanks for having me on here I really appreciate it, thank you.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Thank you, jim, have a great day.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: You too, thank you.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: That wraps up another episode of Ready Set.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Collaborate with Wanda Pearson.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to help you build meaningful connections and successful collaborations.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, share and stay tuned for more great discussions.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep collaborating and making an impact.