Latest / EGGS! The Podcast / Eggs 465: Resilience, Action, and the Entrepreneurial Mindset with Jeff Amerine

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Eggs 465: Resilience, Action, and the Entrepreneurial Mindset with Jeff Amerine · EGGS! The Podcast

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to Eggs.
1:46
Today's special guest is founder of Startup Junkie Consulting and
1:50
the Startup Junkies Podcast. His name is Jeff Ameri.
1:53
And Jeff, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on
1:55
Ryan. I'm looking forward to it.
1:57
Absolutely. I'm thrilled to death to have
1:58
you here just in doing a little bit of research about you and
2:01
where you come from and you know, sort of your background.
2:04
It, it's very interesting to me. I, I come from, I'm living in
2:07
Salt Lake City now, but I come from a small part of southeast
2:10
Idaho called Pocatello. And Idaho, much like your home
2:14
base of Arkansas is kind of one of those fly over places that
2:17
sort of gets forgotten. And I was listening to a talk
2:20
you were giving a Ted talk and you were just talking about sort
2:22
of the Sam Walton and Walmart startup and how they sort of
2:26
decided to go to these little towns and stuff.
2:27
And I remember when the Walmart first came to Pocatello and, you
2:31
know, at that time, the concept of startups and, you know, new
2:37
business ventures and stuff like that, especially for young
2:39
people, didn't exist. And, you know, now I live in
2:42
Salt Lake City and it's a much more bustling startup community
2:45
down here. But the culture is kind of odd.
2:46
And as a guy from a small town, I find it a little bit hard for
2:49
me to fit in. So I'm really excited to talk to
2:51
you just about startup culture in general, but also I think
2:53
we'll have some similarities and the fly over state sort of
2:57
approach. So anyway, so let's start maybe
2:59
a little bit, just, you know, get your background out there.
3:01
Let's talk about where you come from and how we got here today.
3:04
Sure. Well, I'll try to give you kind
3:06
of a shrink wrap version of the last 61 years.
3:11
But feel free to take your time because it really is interesting
3:15
and some of the experiences you've got in particular, I
3:18
think really lend to the person you became.
3:21
For sure. I I think it's important to
3:22
cover that stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
3:24
Thank you for that. And again, thanks for having me
3:25
on. But but yeah, I I didn't come to
3:28
entrepreneurship as you know, waking up as an 18 year old
3:32
thinking someday I'm going to start businesses and have my own
3:35
business. I grew up in a military family.
3:37
So what that meant was I went to six different grade schools.
3:41
I went to two junior highs and once my dad retired, I I did go
3:44
to just one high school, but we were all over the world
3:47
literally during the kind of the height of the Cold War.
3:50
He was a multi engine pilot in the Air Force.
3:53
And and so I grew up in a way that I think developed a bunch
3:58
of resilience around having to make friends fairly quickly and
4:02
realizing that you needed to do that because you might not see
4:05
him again. And, and there was a certain
4:07
element of change and excitement in what's coming next that that
4:12
I think kind of stuck in some ways.
4:14
And so the family business for me growing up was the military.
4:17
My dad had been career Air Force, my brother was career Air
4:20
Force. My sister was an Army officer.
4:23
My brother-in-law was we were all military.
4:25
This is a long sort of and turns out upon further research, every
4:29
generation back to the Revolutionary War had served in
4:32
some capacity. So it was something that maybe
4:35
his epigenetic, I don't know, but that was kind of my
4:37
universe. And then my dad retired.
4:40
We that took us to North Central Arkansas, which is was a
4:43
smallest of small town. After being kind of a
4:46
cosmopolitan kid who had lived all over the world and all over
4:48
the country. We settled in the place of 7000
4:52
people in a county of less than 20,000 people that was rural and
4:57
cliquish and everybody had known everybody since, you know,
5:00
conception in that town. They were, they were, it was
5:03
really tight community and was strange being an outsider.
5:05
And I thought, well, OK, it's learn some things, learn how to
5:09
do some farm work and haul hay and take care of cows and rotor
5:13
till gardens. But I ended up leaving thinking
5:16
I would never come back. In 1980 I went to the Naval
5:18
Academy, starting my own military career, spent four
5:21
years there, had a great time in Annapolis, MD, then took my
5:24
Commission in the Air Force and spent 6 1/2 years in the Air
5:27
Force, thinking initially that was going to be a career for me,
5:31
I would be a 30 year guy, etcetera.
5:33
Along the way, it turns out I didn't have good enough eyesight
5:35
to fly, and I'd always dreamed about flying.
5:38
I got injured in the Special Forces pipeline about halfway
5:42
through my career. I spent the last 2 1/2 years in
5:46
research and development and in program management, which really
5:49
kind of an on ramp to industry. And I left out the part that I
5:51
was intercontinental ballistic missile launch officer during
5:55
the Cold War for four years and 165 days underground convinced
5:59
me that I needed something a little more active, even though
6:03
it was a really important job and way more responsibility and
6:07
accountability than a 24 year old should have with billion
6:10
dollar systems and nuclear weapons, etcetera.
6:13
But but anyhow, that was the on ramp to the commercial world.
6:16
I spent after that back in Annapolis, MD, Baltimore, MD
6:21
area. I was with Westinghouse
6:22
Electric. We built a satellite systems,
6:24
both commercial and defense oriented, got a lot of worldwide
6:29
product management business development experience.
6:31
And, and I falsely began to believe that I could run my own
6:34
business based on that time that I spent at Westinghouse.
6:38
And then for the next bunch of years launched a number of, of
6:42
tech or telecom related businesses.
6:45
Some work, some didn't work. I, I ran an international FCC
6:49
licensed telecom carrier in the precursor days of voice over IP,
6:55
did some pioneering work between here and Asia on that with my
6:58
team, a bunch of different things related to telecom and
7:02
software. And, and so much so that I think
7:05
the the total number of startups is 9 / a long career at 9:00
7:09
that I would admit to. There may have been some others
7:11
in there that wouldn't admit to, but but learned a bunch along
7:15
the way. And those were in kind of the
7:16
ugly old days in the, in the 90s and early 2000s before there
7:21
were really organized Angel groups.
7:23
There wasn't really mentoring. No one knew what an accelerator
7:25
was. There wasn't AY combinator.
7:27
This was you're an idiot. You left a great job.
7:32
You wanted to start something, you figure it out, and good
7:35
luck. There really wasn't any kind of
7:37
a startup infrastructure support system, not I always happen to
7:41
be in the East Coast for a lot of that.
7:43
There wasn't anything like what his was developing in Silicon
7:46
Valley at that time. It was still a lot of
7:48
conventional business people back there, but I learned a
7:51
bunch of things along the way. Every mistake you could make as
7:54
a startup founder, I made more than one time.
7:56
In some instances, spending money on the wrong things,
7:59
focusing on the wrong markets, hiring the wrong people.
8:02
That process of maturation is what has led me to what I've
8:07
done in more recent years. And so when when I left the East
8:10
Coast to move back to be closer to my folks, that's what brought
8:13
me to Arkansas. And we actually work for
8:15
American Freightways, which was a large less than truckload
8:18
carrier, rapidly growing, fastest growing in the country
8:21
between 1982 and 2000. And when I joined, they had just
8:25
been acquired by FedEx, became FedEx Freight.
8:28
And it was, it was an interesting transition to go
8:30
from being an entrepreneur who had spent some time in big
8:33
companies to being back in a big company that was initially run
8:37
like a startup. It was still family controlled.
8:39
And so we had a lot of ability to look at opportunities to take
8:44
risk and to deploy technology and to dominate the markets we
8:48
were in when the FedEx acquisition occurred.
8:51
All that change. It was a lot more like working
8:53
for the government. I mean, process was slow, a
8:56
little more bureaucratic. You know, it was a 10X bigger
8:59
company now in total. And that wasn't a good fit for
9:02
me. So I ended up leaving doing one
9:04
more startup, which was Silicon Valley Base.
9:06
I happen to be based here in Northwest Arkansas.
9:09
I built the transportation logistics vertical, learned a
9:11
bunch of stuff, stayed with that through doing a lift out to a
9:15
one of our partners that was based in New Zealand and it
9:18
said, I'm done with this whole startup scene.
9:21
I've, I've done it, I've been there, I've had some fun, I've
9:24
learned some things. I checked in at the University
9:27
of Arkansas and help run their technology commercialization
9:30
function for seven years. And just your happenstance got
9:34
pulled into teaching new ventures in the Walton College
9:37
of Business at the University of Arkansas.
9:38
And I thought this is this is my terminal job, this is going to
9:42
be it for the duration. And along the way it became
9:45
apparent that the, the startup scene in Arkansas was not very
9:48
well developed. There was exactly 1 early stage
9:51
fund. There were no entrepreneurial
9:52
support organizations. There weren't a lot of new
9:55
ventures getting created. The state saw that Milliken
9:58
Institute did a study that said you're going to be dead last in
10:00
every category you want to measure.
10:02
If you don't do more things that are knowledge and technology
10:05
based, your your state wage rate is going to stay low.
10:08
You're just not going to advance as a state.
10:10
So they kicked off this thing called Innovate Arkansas back in
10:14
2007 and the guy and it was Win Rock International.
10:17
So Winthrop Rockefeller International, a big NGO that
10:20
was the prime for the state of Arkansas.
10:23
The guy who was running it said we got a couple of former
10:26
Stephens Bank investment bankers involved with us.
10:28
We don't have any operators. People who have made money,
10:31
raised money, been operators, you know, built companies.
10:35
And so he said, well, why don't you quit the university and come
10:38
do this with us? And I said, why don't I not do
10:40
that because I just got here. But maybe, maybe I can, maybe I
10:44
can do this on a part time basis because it could be accretive to
10:46
all the stuff I'm doing in tech transfer.
10:48
And that's the genesis. And this is a little bit of a
10:51
long winded wind up for what became Startup Junkie.
10:54
It was a completely accidental business with no plan, no lean
10:57
canvas, no customer discovery that I kind of got sucked into
11:00
just because of what I had done in the proceeding 20 something
11:04
years. And that was the beginning of
11:06
what has become an entrepreneurial support
11:08
organization. The Startup Junkie brand that
11:11
touches probably 2000 entrepreneurs a year, puts on
11:14
about 250 events, has presence in South Korea and Singapore,
11:19
and is rapidly growing one of the larger and more successful
11:22
entrepreneurial support organizations in central US.
11:26
And it's this weird business model, which would probably be
11:28
familiar to you, where all the services are completely free to
11:31
the entrepreneurs and 3rd party funded.
11:35
And the reason why that was important was because I learned
11:38
that customers with no money are really terrible customers.
11:41
And that's every small business and entrepreneur you ever met.
11:45
And yet it's so critical to the economic vitality of the country
11:50
to have the survival rate for startups improved.
11:53
And so we essentially sold to the federal government, the
11:57
state government, and places like the Walton Family
11:59
Foundation that if you fund us to provide these services, we
12:02
can show you measurable outcomes that will build this viable
12:07
venture ecosystem that will have all kinds of tangible benefits.
12:11
And so we've been at it with this unsustainable business
12:14
model we've sustained now for 15 years and are continuing to grow
12:19
along those line. Along the way, we got involved
12:21
with writing a book called Creating Startup Junkies, which
12:24
talked about how to build sustainable venture ecosystems
12:26
and unexpected places and fly over locations really anywhere
12:30
in the country where you don't have a history of it and, and
12:34
launched several venture funds along the way.
12:36
Because people ask, well, why'd you do that?
12:38
It's because no one else was doing it.
12:39
Somebody had to do it. So we did it and, and got in
12:42
that part of the game as well. But that's it.
12:44
That's kind of the from Genesis to current day.
12:49
Yeah, I don't know. That's it, man.
12:50
It really makes that seems much smaller than it is.
12:53
I think no, that's an incredible story.
12:55
And actually there's a ton of stuff that I, I want to try and
12:58
cover the, I mean, some of these are recurring themes on the show
13:02
that we're, we're really trying to get to the root of and figure
13:05
out how we can help our, our listenership to sort of engage
13:08
in some of these things. And one of the things I wanted
13:09
to maybe start about is that, well, actually I just wanted to
13:12
make a comment too. So I have a small marketing
13:16
agency and we have a team in Barcelona and we've been working
13:19
really hard to try and develop startup culture and things like
13:22
that in Spain because that just doesn't exist over there in the
13:25
way that it does here. So I'm going to have to check
13:27
out your book. Maybe there's some collaborative
13:28
future that we need to look. At absolutely would love.
13:31
That foreign countries because a lot of the the team that work
13:34
for us are a little bit entrepreneurial minded, but the
13:36
infrastructure doesn't support them and so, so maybe there's a
13:40
way to come around on that. So anyway, back to the
13:43
conversation here. So one of the things I, I really
13:45
took an interest in early in your life was you mentioned the
13:49
term resilience specifically. And it was something that you
13:52
think you developed as, as being a person who was a military
13:55
child and, and forced to move around.
13:57
And basically you, you translated that resilience into
14:00
being able to build new relationships in each city or,
14:03
you know, spring back from basically, you know, you get
14:06
comfortable and then it's all stripped away and they have to
14:07
start over again. And I think that that is a, a
14:09
huge factor for startup people, especially, you know, I mean, I
14:13
can speak from my own experience and being a, a probably not that
14:17
successful startup junkie, but a perpetual starter upper of
14:20
businesses, meaning I'm constantly starting things, but
14:23
there's a lot of them that just kind of fizzle and, and you
14:26
know, but, but I really enjoy the process of starting these
14:29
things. And so, so I end up doing a lot
14:31
of the starting, But that sort of try and fail mentality, I
14:34
think is something that's getting lost on kids that are
14:37
maybe, you know, coming up now or maybe a generation or two
14:40
younger than me, which is, you know, I even look at kids.
14:42
I, my oldest son is 17 and I'm looking at people that he goes
14:45
to with and like how devastating it is to fail at something, you
14:51
know, to the extent that they just won't even try sometimes,
14:54
you know, it's like they're so unwilling to risk failing that
14:57
they won't even give it a go. And, and so I wanted to talk a
15:00
little bit about developing resilience as a skill or as a
15:03
trait of your personality, because I think some people are
15:06
probably born with this and, you know, some people are thrust
15:09
into it through situations like what you're talking about.
15:11
But I think to roll this out more broadly to people and, and
15:16
really convince them, right? I mean, there's no shortage of
15:18
Instagram memes that say, you know, you know, fail forward
15:22
and, and all this kind of stuff. But I mean, do you have any
15:24
insights just maybe from your own experience or from people
15:26
you've worked with on how we start to craft a maybe a culture
15:30
of resilience or a set of characteristics that allow us to
15:33
be resilient through these kinds of?
15:35
Yeah, it and it, it, it's got a, it's, it's hard to get that
15:41
mindset by someone sort of autocratically saying you need
15:44
to think this way to some extent.
15:47
People I think need to be LED towards it in a way that and,
15:51
and I think there's an element of incrementalism to it.
15:53
And what I mean by that is failure is not a fun thing, it's
15:57
not a good thing. And you want to make the failure
15:59
small and kind of close together and not necessarily life
16:04
impacting. I mean, I had some epically
16:06
large failures in running businesses that were devastating
16:11
personally. I also had some great successes
16:15
and I think some of that built the resilience.
16:17
The thing that I always worried about were people who had kind
16:20
of lived the charm life where they'd never failed in anything
16:22
because when they got to that first obstacle, and inevitably
16:26
you will where things didn't go right, they don't know how to
16:30
react. So I think educating young kids
16:34
that taking risk, qualified risk, taking small risk and
16:39
building up your confidence along the way and and asking
16:41
yourself the question, what's the worst thing that can happen?
16:44
You know, I'm probably not going to die if this business fails or
16:48
this venture doesn't work or this project doesn't work.
16:50
Even if I lose a job, if I'm in a big company and I'm taking a
16:53
risk on something I really believe in, if I'm good in that
16:56
job, I'm going to be good at the next place as well.
16:59
And so it's just convincing people to to have enough
17:03
confidence to actually go for it and do it in a reasoned way
17:08
where you're thinking about what's the worst case outcomes
17:10
that can be associated with this.
17:13
Some of that I kind of had to do because as a kid, like I said,
17:17
we were moving around all the time.
17:19
I was introverted by nature by some of that.
17:22
So I had to kind of work to get out of that shell of being
17:25
situationally shy and meeting people and getting involved with
17:29
stuff. And I still have to it still
17:31
kind of takes energy from me. Big group settings with a lot of
17:34
people. I don't know, but you kind of
17:36
push yourself through it. And I think that's where the
17:38
resilience comes from. It's it's a matter of just the
17:41
experience of doing it. And some of it is just that
17:45
element of confidence that realize it.
17:47
Hey, those people that have the capability of doing something
17:50
big or trying something big, why not me?
17:54
Why can't I do that as well? And I think as as leaders and as
17:58
educators and as motivators, we have to constantly try to
18:01
reinforce that, not in sort of this sort of superficial
18:04
mythological way that often comes from Silicon Valley and
18:08
elsewhere, but in a very practical way.
18:11
So you never know. You never know what's going to
18:14
happen unless you try. So you might as well try.
18:17
Doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared, doesn't mean you
18:19
shouldn't take qualified risk, but just have the gumption to
18:22
give it a go and start small. Start small and make it
18:25
incremental as you go through it.
18:27
Yeah, and I think, and I can speak a little bit from my own
18:29
experience, it sounds like I, I'm similar to the way you
18:33
described yourself, which was somewhat introverted and sort of
18:35
really had to push myself out. And I, you know, in my earliest
18:39
days, you know, before I was truly, you know, had a, had a
18:41
business of my own. I mean, I had toyed with it.
18:44
I'd freelanced on the side. I'd done all this other stuff.
18:47
But eventually it took a layoff for me to go to work for myself
18:51
and kind of go, OK, I've landed, wait a minute, nothing, nothing
18:55
bad happened. Like what's going on?
18:57
Like it turns out I actually had enough work.
18:58
I like, what am I doing? You know?
19:00
And so, but I was, you know, wildly risk averse.
19:03
I wouldn't have actually taken that step on my own probably if
19:05
I hadn't been shoved out the window, you know, sort of baby
19:08
bird style. And so for me, it really took
19:10
that kind of nudge, you know, but I think that nudge doesn't
19:13
maybe have to be as dire as a as a layoff.
19:15
I mean, it could be from a family friend, It could be an
19:17
opportunity. But that's I think why you hear
19:19
about so many like sort of startup hustler types that are,
19:22
you know, doing something on the side with the purpose of growing
19:25
into that position, you know, trying to move their way out of
19:28
maybe the company they work for, but they're kind of working on
19:30
the side. It's that hedging, right?
19:32
Yeah, it's a super good risk management philosophy and it's
19:35
something that's that's more readily available to do today
19:38
than maybe ever before where keep the day job, start the side
19:41
hustle, even build a virtual team on the side hustle.
19:44
And when it gets to a point where you've got revenues out in
19:47
front of expenses or adequate traction, you'll know when the
19:50
time is right to make that, to make that jump.
19:52
And it's it's more possible to doing that today than ever
19:56
before just because the infrastructure is there, the
19:58
technic, the technical infrastructure, people are
20:01
comfortable working on remote teams.
20:03
People are comfortable having kind of a portfolio of
20:06
activities and engaging with a new start that might be a side
20:11
hustle. So yeah, I think.
20:12
I think that the time is it's you're, you're more able to do
20:16
those sorts of things that were exceedingly difficult early in
20:18
my career today than ever before.
20:21
Yeah, I think that's right. Another sort of aspect of your
20:24
background that I wanted to talk about.
20:26
And as somebody who would categorize themselves as being
20:29
more on the creative side than on the discipline side.
20:31
Yeah, not to say they're mutually exclusive, but like I I
20:34
see myself as being a little bit more out here and a little more
20:36
wild than sure, probably as disciplined as I can be.
20:39
So I'm always saying, you know, I'm sort of creative 1st and
20:41
business guy, 3rd, 4th, 5th, right.
20:43
Somewhere down the line I do have to do business.
20:45
But at the end of my the rest of my day, I just really want to do
20:48
creative things. So as a guy with military
20:50
background, though, I mean, obviously there's some force
20:52
discipline in there. You know, coming from military
20:54
family, you probably had a little bit of family discipline
20:56
too. Sure.
20:57
And I think that there's a bit of that that, you know, kids are
21:00
probably missing out on generally nowadays.
21:02
You know, I mean, I'm sure there's a whole spectrum, but,
21:05
you know, but I think in general, if we're just speaking
21:07
in sort of generalities or the kinds of things that are
21:09
attached to, you know, the Gen. Exers and the Gen.
21:12
Z and you know, all the all the stuff you hear throwing around,
21:15
it seems that like general discipline towards business is a
21:19
struggle for some people or maybe general discipline towards
21:21
life is a problem for some of them.
21:23
So I wanted to talk to you about sort of just the balance of
21:25
discipline versus creativity, or as I'm calling creativity to
21:28
mean sort of this, you know, be allowed to just chase your
21:31
little butterfly around the work.
21:34
But you know, there's sort of a balance that I think needs to be
21:36
struck there. And I, and I'm wondering if in
21:38
your experience as somebody who obviously has a disciplined
21:42
background, but you know, has what I would consider sort of a
21:46
creative streak, which is you're applying your discipline or
21:48
you're applying your skills in a creative way, even if done in a
21:52
disciplined way. I wonder if you'd talk a little
21:54
bit about just sort of the value of discipline in your own life
21:56
and then maybe how important it is in, in, you know, the young
21:59
entrepreneur. 'S life, yeah.
22:00
I mean, it's, it's excellent. And a lot, a lot of times people
22:04
assume that the military person's persona is these are
22:08
rule followers, these are conformist, these are people
22:12
that, you know, always stay within the lines.
22:15
And there are those types of folks within the military that
22:18
if it's not written somewhere and it's, or it's in a Reg, then
22:21
that's what they're going to do. There's also a wide number of
22:23
very successful military people that are always on the edge of
22:29
breaking a rule, trying something new.
22:32
There's a famous book written by a guy that's now deceased to his
22:34
original commander of SEAL Team Six named Richard Marchenko.
22:38
And he said when he was in Vietnam, he's one of the first
22:41
SEAL UDT members, He had this thing where he'd say unless
22:45
otherwise directed, and he put it into an acronym.
22:48
And so you'd go out and take the initiative on things within the
22:50
rules of engagement unless otherwise directed by higher
22:54
headquarters. The reason why U.S. military
22:57
historically has been successful, and I'd see this is
22:59
all the way back to the Continental Army, is the ability
23:02
to have centralized planning and decentralized execution, which
23:05
requires people on the ground in the moment to be creative in the
23:09
way they, they do things. And so my bias was always a
23:14
little bit towards, I'll follow the rules, I'll show up on time,
23:19
I'll do what I'm supposed to do. But when I'm not directed
23:22
otherwise, I'm going to be creative, you know, I'm going to
23:24
be pushing the edge of the envelope and everything that we
23:27
do. And I would say I largely
23:28
applied that in business. And that didn't work especially
23:32
well in large structured businesses.
23:34
It actually worked a little better in the military because a
23:38
lot of those organizations were all about not wanting you to
23:41
take chances, not wanting you to take the initiative, wanting you
23:45
kind of to stay within the line. So I was always a little bit of
23:47
a rogue cowboy or a rebel in large organizations.
23:51
So I would say it was for a lot of former military folks, it was
23:57
this balance of, yeah, I'm going to do what I have to do to stay
24:00
out of trouble and to accomplish the mission, but I'm going to
24:04
take as many liberties as I possibly can to accomplish the
24:07
mission. And as an entrepreneur, I think
24:10
that the interesting thing that brought is I wasn't afraid I'd
24:14
show up on time. I had the interpersonal skills.
24:18
I also will say that I wasn't, I'm not particularly good at
24:21
developing processes. I'm not a point A to point BP
24:24
person. Kind of an inspirational book
24:26
for me was written by Gino Wickman called Traction, and he
24:30
talks about two personas, the visionary and the integrator.
24:33
I realized early on, and it's kind of like you said it, I was
24:36
good at being a starter, good at the vision.
24:38
If I was going to build a business at scaled, I needed an
24:41
integrator. That was a good point A to point
24:43
B person that was very much in the details and building
24:47
processes. I think entrepreneurs need to be
24:49
introspective about what are they really good at and if
24:53
they're not really good at that role of integrating and detail
24:57
and process, they need to have somebody who is so that they can
25:00
do what their best at. So I brought in, it turned out
25:04
to be my son who was an Air Force contracting officer.
25:07
When his final commitment was up, he was thinking of getting
25:10
out. He wanted to go work for big
25:11
consulting companies. I said, come help me build this
25:14
business And we've been working together now for 10 years
25:17
because he very much had those skills I didn't which was point
25:21
A to point B, process oriented details, etcetera.
25:25
And so to the, to get back to your original question of
25:28
discipline versus creativity, I, I stay on the creative, the
25:32
vision, the new business side. He folks, he does some of that,
25:36
but he focuses a lot on the details around the discipline of
25:39
making sure things are getting done on time.
25:42
And so I think the key there is you know what you got to do, you
25:45
show up on time, you got the skills, but the important thing
25:48
is if you're not great at that, have somebody on the team who is
25:51
that can help actually build a business that scales.
25:54
Yeah, I love that as a distinction because I think
25:56
there's a lot of people and, you know, again, I probably would
25:58
project my own experience onto a lot of this stuff.
26:00
But I mean, I think that there's this feeling among sort of, you
26:04
know, young founders and people who are trying to go it alone or
26:07
maybe start their own new business that the onus is on you
26:11
to do everything right. I mean, there's always these
26:13
comments about we have to wear lots of hats and we have to do
26:15
all this stuff and and, you know, to some extent you do.
26:17
I mean, you can't necessarily start off with a giant team,
26:20
right? You've got to build a lot of
26:21
times. And so, but I think the, the,
26:24
this distinction that you're making is right, You know, I
26:27
mean, you can even, you know, compare it to I, I don't know,
26:29
finding a, a good partner in life, like a, you know, whoever
26:32
you marry, for example, for sure, you know, often you're not
26:34
marrying somebody who's exactly like, you know, you're marrying
26:37
somebody that has a, a set of characteristics that are
26:39
different than yours or somehow better than you or, you know,
26:43
fills voids where you don't or something for sure.
26:45
And, and those seem to be the relationships that, that work
26:48
best, right? The people who are sort of
26:50
living in a little echo chamber or whatever.
26:51
I think eventually get tired of hearing your own thoughts coming
26:54
back to you all the time. I think sometimes you gotta have
26:56
somebody challenge you. And especially if you want to
26:58
grow, whether it's in a relationship personally or or in
27:01
a business relationship, I think it's valuable to hear, you know,
27:04
some feedback and get some pushback every now and then and
27:07
then on your, on your ideas. So one of the things that I
27:10
think, and maybe this isn't, isn't right, but I think a lot
27:14
of people who are young entrepreneurs who are sort of
27:17
looking for the where to go and how to get started.
27:19
So maybe this would be the customers that come to you and
27:21
you can help me understand if this isn't right.
27:23
But my assumption is that they're coming to a person like
27:26
you, a consultant or a, a somebody, you know, in any realm
27:30
of sort of startup consulting or education or anything like that.
27:33
And what they're looking for is the way, right?
27:35
So I think a lot of us have this notion that there's a path that
27:38
you can follow if you wanna be an entrepreneur.
27:40
And maybe there are some truths along the way that are gonna
27:43
work across businesses or across whatevers.
27:46
But I think generally what you discover, and it's certainly
27:49
what we've found in doing this podcast across 360, some
27:52
interviews with different startup founders and CEOs and
27:56
things like that, we've discovered that there truly is
27:58
no way. I mean, so you can go and ask
28:01
and you can hunt and you can look and try and find the way,
28:04
but there isn't a the way. There just is a way.
28:07
And so in your way is different. So I wonder if you could talk a
28:10
little bit about just how the startup that might come to an
28:13
organization like you and you know, is looking for support and
28:17
maybe looking for that, How do you help them uncover sort of
28:20
their way? Yeah, Yeah, it's a great
28:22
question. It's a great question.
28:23
And and this is one of those things that's really
28:25
confounding, particularly for students.
28:28
And I teach AI, teach a lot of undergrad and and grad students
28:32
and they're expecting it to be the sort of rote, you know, it
28:36
was written on the tablets type of way and it isn't.
28:39
I mean, there's more than one right answer.
28:41
Now, having said that, there's some really interesting
28:43
frameworks that have developed over the last 20 years that
28:46
we're big fans of that are particularly useful in new
28:50
venture development, in new product development and new
28:53
service development. And they're used from K through
28:56
12 all the way through, you know, the Fortune One company
29:00
has bought, bought into a lot of this thinking and all it really
29:03
is. If I could summarize and if
29:05
Steve Blank or Eric Reese or Ashmore were on, they would
29:08
chastise me. But it's really this idea of
29:11
applying scientific method to validate or invalidate your
29:15
assumptions about what's going to drive your business.
29:17
And all that is captured within a variety of different books and
29:21
the lean startup methodology and in customer discovery.
29:24
We're pretty big fans of that, quite honestly.
29:26
We teach that, we believe that we use some AI driven tools that
29:30
have been developed around that philosophy.
29:34
But but all it is, is exactly what we all learned in the 6th
29:37
grade. Come up with what the key
29:39
assumptions are around your business, around what problem
29:41
you're solving or unmet need, around the customer segments,
29:45
around the unique value proposition and the benefits of
29:48
the solution, the cost structure and the revenue structure and
29:52
how you're going to measure progress with key metrics and
29:54
channels, your unfair advantage. Come up with those guesses or
29:58
those assumptions and then develop a really good set of
30:02
open-ended questions. There's a book called Talking to
30:06
Humans by a guy named GIF Constable who was at NYU Stern.
30:11
Ask good open-ended questions that avoid confirmation bias.
30:15
The the fallacy that all of us who are idea generators have is
30:19
we fall in love with our own ideas.
30:21
We don't want to hear that our baby's ugly, right?
30:23
Well, we've kind of put people in the mindset of being a
30:27
consultant to their own their own venture that they're trying
30:29
to create and try to kill it as many different ways as you can
30:33
by asking really good questions of customers, subject matter
30:38
experts and other, you know, sort of influencers and really
30:42
listening to what to what they say.
30:44
And then see where those patterns are, something we'd
30:47
call qualitative inquiry, customer development or customer
30:50
discovery. And then validate before you
30:52
build anything if there really is demand for what you're doing.
30:56
So Long story short and all that, there's no one right way
31:00
to do it for very early stage, brand new.
31:04
I've got an idea. I think Lean Canvas and customer
31:07
discovery is kind of as good a process as has been developed in
31:11
the last 20 years. And there's a lot that's been
31:13
written on it. There's a lot of great tools
31:15
that support it. We're big fans of Ashmore and
31:18
Running Lean, and I already mentioned talking to humans, but
31:21
I I think those ought to be templates or guides that most
31:25
startup or small business owners get familiar with.
31:27
Yeah, No, I, I like that and I think both of those are great
31:30
resources. I wanted to ask you though.
31:32
So one of the things you mentioned sort of at the top was
31:34
that Startup Junkie Consulting was sort of spun out with
31:37
neither Lean Canvas or customer discovery.
31:40
And maybe innately you understood who the customer
31:42
might be and some things like that, but you didn't maybe go
31:44
through a formal process. And this, I think, goes back to
31:46
this notion that there isn't necessarily a way to start a
31:50
business, right? I mean, there's lots of ways to
31:52
do this. And so I wonder if you'd talk a
31:54
little bit about just your experience and spinning up the
31:56
new business and, you know, basically starting from scratch.
31:59
I mean, obviously you've come quite some ways.
32:01
And then maybe tie that into, you know, I don't know, for the
32:04
young startup entrepreneur, you know, or young entrepreneur
32:07
maybe in a place like, you know, Bentonville used to be or like
32:10
Salt Lake used to be, or like Pocatello ID, where I grew up,
32:13
where maybe we're looking for, you know, opportunities to start
32:16
to build a culture around the startup that maybe I want to
32:20
launch. Maybe I want to start a company
32:21
and I need to build a support system.
32:23
You know, can we talk about, you know, how that might happen or
32:26
sort of how all those things work together?
32:28
Yeah, yeah. And, and so the startup junkie
32:31
experience was, was such that I knew a lot at that point about
32:35
conventional business planning because everything I'd ever
32:37
build up to that point was you write the 50 page business plan
32:41
and executive summary that nobody wants to read.
32:43
You come up with the fictional, the fictional forecast, which is
32:46
based on scaling large business assumptions down to a small
32:52
business. And then you try to go out and
32:54
get people interested in investing or interested in
32:56
working with you on it. Everything I'd done up to that
33:00
.15 plus years ago was kind of based on that we started.
33:05
And so when I launched into Startup Junkie, I was like, this
33:08
isn't going to be a real business.
33:09
This is kind of like a fun ad hoc side hustle.
33:13
I didn't even have an LLC created in the beginning.
33:16
It was all Schedule C stuff that that I was putting on my income
33:20
taxes in the beginning. And then it was just one of
33:23
those circumstances where there was such a Greenfield here at
33:27
such interest, and I was one of the few sort of seasoned
33:30
operators that was available. That stuff started flowing on an
33:35
inbound basis to say, well, we'd really like to do an
33:38
accelerator. What do you know about running
33:40
accelerate? Can we get some federal funding
33:41
to run accelerate? And I was like, yeah, we can
33:43
probably do that. And we probably ought to focus
33:45
on supply chain and retail because that's what we have
33:47
locally. And so we got some funding.
33:49
And the Walton Family Foundation said, you know, what you're
33:53
doing statewide is great. We need more focus around
33:56
Northwest Arkansas. Can you help build a series of
33:59
events? And so we're like, yeah, OK,
34:00
we'll do an elevator pitch contest.
34:02
We'll have a little Angel forum where people get together.
34:05
We'll start trying these things because we had heard from Brad
34:09
Feld and others, you know, this needs to be entrepreneur LED.
34:12
It needs to be event driven. It's like, OK, I have no idea
34:15
how to do events. I'd never done any events in my
34:17
life, but I can probably figure it out.
34:18
And just a funny aside on that point, one of the first pitch
34:23
contest we did, we called Gone in 60 Seconds, 62nd pitch
34:27
contest, a little bit like Gong Show meets American Idol.
34:31
And we were so unsophisticated. We were going to do it in a
34:34
barbecue joint. We showed up with the projector,
34:36
which was just going to be a way of sequencing the pitches.
34:39
So we knew who was going to present.
34:40
Nobody brought a screen. And so we had to snatch one of
34:43
the tablecloths off the table and hang it on a window.
34:46
And that was the freaking screen that we use in that first pitch.
34:49
So Needless to say, over 15 years, we've kind of grown into
34:53
an event management company. But all of that stuff was a
34:55
sequence of events where we figured out how to say yes to
35:00
fill gaps that were in the market.
35:02
And we had the good fortune of there being large organizations
35:05
that wanted to fund that activity.
35:08
And they were tolerant in those days that we really know what we
35:11
were doing, but that we were going to continue to grind our
35:14
way through to make these sorts of things happen.
35:17
And so in that instance, would we have been better if we'd been
35:21
a little more thoughtful, if we'd used a lean canvas
35:23
approach, if we had understood our customers more?
35:26
Yeah, we probably would have been a lot better.
35:28
We it probably wouldn't have been as much trial and error,
35:31
which is why we're big fans of that approach now and doing the
35:33
customer discovery. So it was a right place, right
35:36
time, a fair amount of luck associated with it and the fact
35:39
that I was just maybe uniquely positioned based on my
35:43
experience and a lot of other markets to be able to do
35:46
something like that locally. So I would say, having said
35:49
that, being able to say yes to things and then grinding my way
35:53
through to figure things out, doing something's wrong and and
35:57
then quickly getting better. I think it was Guy Kawasaki that
36:00
famously said at Apple, we deliver garbage and we make it
36:04
much better really quickly. So it was that idea of I'm going
36:08
to roll out this minimally viable offering, whatever it is,
36:12
and get better really quickly. And so we were doing things that
36:16
were very similar to what the Lean Canvas and what Spiral
36:19
methodology and what Agile says you should do without knowing
36:23
what to call it. Yeah.
36:25
No, I think that's right. And that probably comes a little
36:27
bit from not having that formality of program.
36:30
You know, in, in Silicon Valley, they probably already had this
36:32
concept in place, but in a place like where you were coming up
36:35
or, or developing this business, that's how it was.
36:37
And I think you're right. Or, I mean, I think your story
36:40
even exemplifies, you know, some, some of the topics we've
36:42
talked about, right? This resilience, this
36:44
willingness to raise your hand, this, you know, being able to
36:47
push through the, the, you know, fails and the, you know, yeah, I
36:50
mean, all the way down to just, you know, what seems trivial,
36:53
you know, using a sheet as a, as a screen.
36:55
You know, it's just that that trait or that characteristic or
36:59
that willingness to think of on your feet and go, OK, well,
37:01
let's just hang a, a, a curtain or a tablecloth up and we can
37:05
make that work. Improvised depth and.
37:07
Hailing and walking out the door upset because you didn't have
37:09
spring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
37:11
exactly. And to your other point, you
37:14
said, well, what if you're in a smaller area and where, where do
37:17
you even get started? And so this is great if you're,
37:20
if you're an entrepreneur and you're in a smaller area and you
37:23
want to get something started. We, we think about there being 4
37:26
pillars to consider when you're thinking about what's going on
37:29
locally. One is what's the available
37:31
talent pool? You know, do you have the
37:32
entrepreneurial talent? Do you have the tech talent?
37:35
What's kind of the status of that, so to speak?
37:37
The next is capital access. What's available on the debt and
37:41
equity side, Are there venture funds, are there Angel groups,
37:44
etcetera. So an assessment along those
37:46
ideas. The third piece is what's the
37:49
existing entrepreneurial culture?
37:51
Are there events, are there activities?
37:52
How are people getting together? We've discovered over many years
37:56
now, the only way you reinforce the realm of what's possible is
38:00
having this regular cadence of events that will drop people
38:03
out. And you can be intentional as as
38:05
they say at Google and other places about creative
38:07
collisions. And in the fourth pillar is
38:10
community engagement, flagship enterprise engagement,
38:13
university Community College engagement.
38:15
Getting those folks to understand that this is really
38:19
crucial. Small business and
38:20
entrepreneurial vitality is the one thing.
38:23
It's kind of like the moneyball play.
38:25
Rather than trying to buy lottery tickets, which is
38:27
typical economic development is we're going to attract in a big
38:31
plant, we're going to try to attract big companies.
38:35
What we do in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems
38:38
is you're taking your destiny in your own hands.
38:40
What are our assets? What are aspirations?
38:42
What are the constraints? What can we do?
38:45
And you can do it without building buildings or having a
38:48
center or all that expensive infrastructure.
38:50
Just start getting meetings and activities and people together
38:55
to talk about what they're doing.
38:56
I can remember more than 15 years ago, there was a coffee
39:00
shop here called Big Mama's Coffee Shop.
39:03
I'm not even sure if it's still there, but it was near the
39:05
university and a bunch of the sort of emerging aspiring
39:11
entrepreneurs I would say would get together on a regular basis
39:14
talking about their hopes and their dreams, what they were
39:16
working on and their side hustles.
39:18
And I was kind of an old guy in that mix.
39:20
And we just started showing up and that became a regular
39:24
practice where and it was actually a precursor to things
39:27
like 1,000,000 Cups and other nationally organized things.
39:30
But those those sorts of meetings and gatherings are
39:34
hugely important. And if you're in a small area,
39:37
that's one place you can start right away.
39:39
Get the people together that are small business owners or
39:42
aspiring entrepreneurs on a regular basis to talk about what
39:44
they're doing. Figure out how to help each
39:46
other. No, I think that's right.
39:48
And they want to lead into a question about sort of the
39:50
importance of mentorship and finding coaching and things like
39:53
that. But but I think you make a great
39:55
point there and I just wanted to sort of use, you know, the
39:58
example of you creating, you know, startup Junkies consulting
40:02
as a, you know. One of the needs that you saw or
40:05
that you addressed in your area was the lack of these little
40:08
events and and I mean for, you know, a more simple term, lack
40:11
of community around entrepreneurship.
40:13
That's right. And so in what is also just by
40:15
coincidence, A entrepreneurial move, you started creating the
40:19
events, right? You started doing the things.
40:21
And I think that that can be sort of a model for somebody in
40:23
a small town or in a community that's, you know, got a maybe a,
40:27
you know, a burgeoning entrepreneurial community, but
40:30
it's not there yet, right? You know, taking the initiative
40:33
to go out and actually start throwing these events and start
40:36
putting on things or, or partnering with national
40:38
organizations like 1,000,000 cops or any, any of these types
40:41
of things. You know, you can start to not
40:44
only, you know, from a business standpoint, start to develop
40:46
your name, your, your reputation, your, you know,
40:49
place in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but and you will
40:52
learn a ton from it and you'll start to get it, you know, build
40:55
a network of people, which I think is for a lot of
40:57
entrepreneurs where they really thrive.
40:59
But I think that just by virtue of creating those events, you
41:03
know, you're sort of doing the entrepreneurial thing.
41:05
And I think that that's really important.
41:07
But what you mentioned just there at the end about sort of
41:09
this group of guys that were getting together at the coffee
41:11
local coffee shop, I was trying to come up with it.
41:14
There's a an organization here in Utah that's basically a bunch
41:17
of retired ex fortune whatever CE OS and stuff like that.
41:21
And they get together, you know, once every couple weeks and they
41:24
do these Zoom calls and they'll have politicians on or they'll
41:27
have business people on or they'll do whatever.
41:28
And then they have they have a weekly meet, right?
41:30
And that moment of spending time with them is maybe kind of what
41:35
you described, which you were the older person in the
41:37
opportunity in this group. But what you brought to that
41:40
group was you've got a bunch of, you know, anxious minds or
41:42
hungry minds here that are ready to do something exciting.
41:45
And they've got those hopes and dreams.
41:46
And then they can leverage the your experience to try and
41:49
figure out how to materialize those things.
41:51
And so I think that then takes me back into this idea of
41:53
mentorship and just how important that kind of thing is.
41:56
I think, you know, we, we touched on it earlier, but a lot
41:59
of entrepreneurs tend to feel kind of isolated or solo, like
42:02
it's all on me to do this. And you know, I, I personally
42:06
have employed coaches and worked with different people.
42:08
You know, even this podcast to some extent is a, a way of
42:11
networking and developing relationships with people.
42:14
And you know, so I wonder what your thoughts are around sort of
42:17
mentorship and coaching, you know, as one sort of vertical,
42:21
but then just sort of the value of community in general.
42:24
Yeah. I mean, it's it, it's crucially,
42:25
it's crucially important and and a couple of couple of ways to
42:28
think about that. One is there's so much that can
42:30
be gained from the peer-to-peer networking as well, because what
42:35
you find out is all the entrepreneurs and small business
42:38
owners are likely, even if they're in completely different
42:40
segments have are facing similar problems, but they all have
42:43
different networks and they can all be connectors for each
42:46
other. So a good degree of mentoring
42:48
can come on a peer-to-peer basis.
42:50
People that are kind of at the same stage, mentoring, where I
42:55
like to separate mentoring also into the idea of there's mentors
43:00
and then there's subject matter experts, mentors.
43:03
The best mentors for a small business owner or startup are
43:06
people who have actually walked the walk, maybe not in that same
43:09
space, but they built things, right.
43:11
Mentors are not typically people have spent their entire career
43:14
in a large company. They are going to have a context
43:17
of subject matter expertise that can be hugely valuable if you
43:20
want to know something about that space.
43:22
But you got to be really careful not to take their advice on what
43:25
it takes to build the business because they don't know, they
43:28
haven't done it, it's they've had a legion or an army of peace
43:32
people working with them versus being in an entrepreneurial
43:35
context. So understanding that difference
43:38
between mentors and subject matter experts is important.
43:40
The other thing I'd say is when you seek out mentors, it's good
43:45
to find people that want to help just to be helpful, particularly
43:49
in the beginning. They're not looking to make some
43:51
percentage. They're not necessarily looking
43:53
to get paid. There's plenty of consultants
43:56
and coaches that you can pay to do it, but a lot of mentors are
43:59
going to want to do it because it allows them to vicariously
44:03
relive that part of their life where they were an operator
44:07
without having to take all the risk.
44:09
But they, they see the, the value in what they're doing
44:12
right. I mean, there's a lot of people
44:13
that want to that want to engage with small business or startups
44:17
just because they want to be helpful because they remember
44:19
how hard it was. So seeking them out is really
44:22
important. And some of them, if they're
44:23
really good and you want to have a more material commercial
44:25
relationship, they won't even ask for options.
44:28
But if you offer it, there's going to be a lot of
44:30
ingratiation that will come from that as you think about stock
44:33
options and whatnot. But it's hugely important.
44:36
It's hugely important. Now one thing I would say about
44:38
that, we've been lucky enough to be part of a number of mentor
44:42
driven programs over the years. And we we we participate with
44:46
the University of Arkansas on one called the Venture Mentoring
44:49
Service, which was based on an MIT platform.
44:52
We did another a bunch of work around something called Mentor
44:55
Camp which brought in mentors globally to engage with high
44:59
potential startups. We've got an active set of
45:01
mentors and SMEs that we use in all of our programs.
45:04
The thing I think is really important about all that is for
45:08
the founders to develop a really well defined filter.
45:13
And, and what I mean is there's an opportunity to get mentor
45:16
whiplash. You've you've seen all these
45:19
experienced people and they're all going to give you different
45:21
insights based on their experience.
45:23
The best founders are the ones that can take all that input in,
45:26
be very respectful, ask good questions about it, listen well,
45:31
but then they filter and synthesize what the real truth
45:34
is based on all those inputs and the really good ones.
45:37
There's there's a guy named Ryan Frazier that now runs arrived
45:40
homes who's an entrepreneur that came out of here.
45:43
He's running up to large VC backed venture in Seattle now.
45:49
He was fantastic at taking in all those inputs and then
45:52
filtering out what he heard and then getting back to those
45:55
mentors to say, this is what I heard.
45:58
This is what I learned now this is what I'm going to do because
46:00
ultimately he was the one accountable to actually
46:04
implement and execute and to be successful.
46:06
But that's that's a healthy way to think about engaging with
46:10
mentors and subject matter expertise and understand and
46:13
understanding the difference between.
46:15
Yeah, I think that's smart. And I like the distinction of
46:17
trying to find somebody who walks the walks.
46:19
My my wife and and mother are both teachers.
46:22
I come from a family of educators and the and they hate
46:26
this phrase, but there's this kind of ucky phrase out there
46:29
that is, you know, those who don't do or those who can't do
46:32
teach, right? And so, and I think that
46:34
sometimes, especially we were talking earlier about just sort
46:37
of the ready availability of almost anything and everything
46:40
nowadays due to the Internet, that this has spun up a lot of
46:43
people who actually can't do, so they're teaching.
46:46
And so you've got sort of this extra filter that you need to
46:49
look at, which is the, the, I guess Internet mentor that, you
46:54
know, has spun up a course, done whatever, but it's not really
46:57
based on anything in particular. So I think that there's a little
47:00
extra filtering that has to be done these days.
47:02
And so, you know, finding a good mentor by virtue of either
47:04
having walk the walk themselves or by a good referral or
47:06
whatever I think would be a good way to do something A. 100%
47:10
agree. Yeah, 100, you have to, you have
47:12
to be discerning because there's a lot of people out there with a
47:15
book or a program or a set of slides that maybe haven't,
47:20
they've been on the fringe, but maybe they haven't actually done
47:22
it. So that's really.
47:23
Good. The next thing I wanted to talk
47:25
to you about a little bit and, and I have some theories about
47:27
why this is, but one of the things that I think is sort of
47:30
the perpetual plight of the small business person is there's
47:34
sort of this looming imposter syndrome or something hanging
47:38
around over their their shoulder, right?
47:40
Sometimes they're not that confident in what they're doing.
47:42
They know they want to do it, but they don't know the way.
47:44
They don't know the path. And not to focus so much on the
47:47
imposter syndrome, but I think what it spins up is this
47:49
activity where we feel like reading every book and watching
47:52
every video and doing everything.
47:54
So we do a perpetual ingesting of new things, but we never
47:58
actually act. And so I wondered if you had any
48:01
insights or, or, or things that you could share in terms of
48:04
actually making action out of the things that we've learned.
48:06
And you sort of alluded to it a little bit with this example
48:08
that you were just talking about where he was able to, you know,
48:11
take in all the things these different mentor types would
48:13
would give him, but then he was able to apply what made sense
48:17
or, or formulate his plan based on what he's learned.
48:19
And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that
48:21
moment, that tipping point we get to between we've learned
48:24
enough and now it's time to act because I think it's just a
48:27
matter of fear and we'll kind of kick the stuff down down the
48:29
road. No, I'd love that.
48:32
I'd love that question. I love that question and for
48:35
lots of reasons. In fact, the second core value
48:39
and our core values is take action.
48:41
So I mean, number one is do the right team.
48:43
The second thing is take action. We always try to have a bias
48:46
towards action and what we do. And, and part of that is driven
48:49
by the fact that regardless of how well researched you are, and
48:52
it's great to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the
48:55
area that you're trying to build a business in, but at some point
48:58
you have to take action. You're never going to have
49:00
probably more than 70% of the information you need.
49:04
And you're going to learn so much more by actually doing
49:07
something and engaging with the customers and taking that step
49:11
then you will by continuing to be caught in sort of the
49:15
analysis paralysis mode of it. Now it is good to benchmark and
49:20
it is good to read the, the, the sort of Seminole works and it's
49:23
good to be a, a sort of voracious consumer of
49:26
information. But there's no replacement for
49:29
taking action. You're going to, you're going to
49:30
get immediate feedback from the market by doing that.
49:33
And the one thing I'll say about markets and customers is there's
49:36
sort of a ruthless level of efficiency there.
49:39
You find out about a bunch of stuff.
49:42
If you go ahead and take action, if you go ahead and launch that
49:46
beta product you have, if you go ahead and try the service, if
49:50
you go ahead and put that event on, it's not going to be great.
49:53
It never is great the very first time you do it, but the whole
49:56
point is then you incrementally and quickly iterate and get
50:00
better based on what you learn. I think it's the only way to be
50:04
successful. And I'll further this response
50:07
with just a little bit more. When I was at Westinghouse and I
50:11
was a system engineer and a product manager, we had digital
50:14
designers that would never release a new board because they
50:19
were trying to get 1/4 decibel more performance out of it.
50:23
They've already met the requirement, but they were
50:25
aiming at perfection. Life, to use a mathematical kind
50:28
of analogy, is asymptotic. You never quite get there.
50:33
It's always aspirational, but you have to take action or you
50:36
never will even approach that level of perfection.
50:40
So I, I mean, it's a really good point you brought up.
50:43
You just have a bias towards action.
50:46
Get as much information as you can and then act and you're
50:49
going to learn. A ton I love that so the last
50:52
thing I want to get into just, you know, in these closing few
50:54
minutes is is sort of around in the notion of choosing a path.
50:57
I think that there's a set of entrepreneurs, maybe not
51:01
everybody, you know some people come from a family business,
51:03
some people have have a passion that they've landed on things
51:06
like that. But I think a lot of times, and
51:08
maybe this is just sort of Internet culture, but we're sort
51:10
of prompted to act on our passions and move on the things
51:14
that are, you know, a really deep and emotional to us.
51:17
And, and I don't think that every startup necessarily has to
51:20
be that way. I think that, you know,
51:21
obviously it's good to have some, you know, at least care
51:24
about what you're doing, you know, and I think it's important
51:26
to be. Interesting.
51:26
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I think a lot of people
51:29
spend and maybe this is just one of these procrastination
51:31
techniques where they spend a lot of time trying to identify
51:33
what their passion is. And then the the worst part, or
51:36
maybe the the other side of that coin is the people who are not
51:39
necessarily chasing their passion, but they're chasing
51:41
somebody else's passion by virtue of, hey, I've seen the
51:44
guy with the yacht on Instagram and I want a yacht.
51:47
So what's he doing? You know, so let me chase down
51:49
his path instead of, you know, living my own life or trying to
51:53
figure out my own way. And I think that's especially
51:56
common nowadays and sort of, you know, especially among young
51:59
people who are up to their eyeballs on social media and all
52:02
this sort of culture of, you know, wealth and things like
52:06
that, that we put on social media.
52:08
And so I think people are in this position where they're
52:10
having a hard time delineating what what's actually their
52:14
thoughts from the thoughts of others.
52:16
And so I wonder if you could, if you've got any pointers or any
52:19
insights. And obviously, I mean, a lot of
52:20
start-ups probably come to you with an idea in hand.
52:23
But I mean, you know, do you have any thoughts either from
52:25
your own experience or from people that you've met along the
52:28
way where, you know, maybe they they are entrepreneurial and
52:32
they do want to do a thing, but maybe it's not really their
52:34
thing. And by virtue of conversation or
52:37
coaching or whatever, they're able to actually uncover what it
52:39
is they actually care about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:44
And there's been a lot of discourse around, you know, the
52:50
mythology of pursuing your passion because sometimes that
52:54
doesn't have any overlap with what a viable business can be.
52:58
I mean, it there, there might not be any intersection there.
53:01
I think being introspective about what am I good at?
53:05
Sort of what, what am I? What do I, what brings me energy
53:08
and what am I good at? And then the other aspect is
53:12
what would people value and actually pay for?
53:15
That's kind of another important part of it.
53:19
I think looking for that kind of intersection is important.
53:24
And realizing that the business you're working on today might
53:28
not be the business that you're going to work on forever, But if
53:32
it's a means to an end, you know, for, for winning, however
53:37
you define it. And winning is seldom piling up
53:40
a big stack of money. Winning is at the end of day
53:43
feeling like I had some kind of impact.
53:45
This was purposeful. This meant something.
53:49
This solved a problem for a customer.
53:52
This had a ripple effect in a in a positive way to a lot of
53:56
people that I didn't even know by virtue of what we did.
54:01
It's not easy there. There's a lot of iteration
54:04
that's required to try to get there.
54:07
The last thing I would say about all that is the most unhappy
54:11
people I've ever met in my career are the ones who were
54:14
100% one dimensionally focused on how much money they could
54:19
make. The happiest people I've ever
54:22
met are the ones that said we solved a big problem and it
54:25
turned out we made a bunch of money, but we started by wanting
54:29
to solve a big problem that we cared about, that the market
54:32
cared about, and that's how we pursued it.
54:34
Guy Kawasaki, Guy who's written numerous books and was the chief
54:39
evangelist at at the Macintosh division, said make meaning and
54:44
the money will follow. He said that in the art of the
54:46
start. I really believe that.
54:48
And again, it's not, that's what I'm passionate about
54:51
necessarily, but it was meaningful.
54:53
There was a purpose behind it. There was a vision that made
54:56
sense. The other thing I'd say too is,
54:59
and this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's
55:01
important, a lot of people in the startup in the
55:04
entrepreneurial world get caught up on the less than 1% prospect
55:09
that everything has to be venture capital backed. 6/10 of
55:12
1% of all companies are actually successful in getting venture
55:16
capital. There's a ton of great companies
55:18
that never raise institutional BC money.
55:21
They might raise Angel money, they might not raise any.
55:22
They might build it on the based on customer revenues.
55:26
We should dissuade ourselves and we should actually not even
55:29
celebrate raising venture capital.
55:31
Nobody celebrates getting a loan.
55:34
Typically it's a it's a necessary evil.
55:37
And so I think if people focus on building a fundamentally good
55:41
business that solves a problem that they care about, that
55:45
people actually pay for, that's pretty good orientation.
55:48
Fundamental economics, fundamental economic thinking,
55:51
figuring out how to get revenues out in front of expenses and
55:54
sustainability and understanding your customer and delighting
55:57
your customer. Those are the kinds of things
55:59
that that I think people need to focus on if they're trying to
56:02
build something that they feel good about and that that, you
56:05
know, ultimately they might make some money in it, but it they're
56:08
going to feel good about what they.
56:10
Do I think that's right? And I think it's a really good
56:11
point that that concept of making meaning, I think there's
56:14
probably some sort of just like universal human truths out
56:17
there. And it's really easy for us to
56:19
go, oh, well, you know what, I just want to make money.
56:21
I just need to, you know, I need the biggest house.
56:23
I need the whatever, you know, And so I think it's really easy
56:25
to focus on that or get caught up in that.
56:27
And that's maybe sort of a, I don't know, an immature approach
56:31
or a novice approach to business.
56:33
It seems like because I think what you start to discover, and
56:36
this is something too that we've sort of have discovered through
56:39
this show, just as even growing entrepreneurs ourselves, nothing
56:45
happens overnight. Everything is layered on.
56:48
There is no shortcut. You can't just get to the end
56:50
and learn something that you're going to tell me today, I'm
56:53
going to have to Add all that stuff on top of my layer cake
56:56
and eventually I'll get to the knowledge that I needed to do
56:58
the thing I wanted. But it seems like for most
57:01
people who are sort of established in business and
57:03
who've been doing this for a long time, what it ends up with
57:05
is something like what you're describing.
57:07
I was impactful to the lives of my employees.
57:10
We did something great for the community.
57:12
We, you know, made an impact globally that did XY or Z, you
57:15
know, like, but you never hear them go, Oh well, yeah.
57:18
But I also cashed out those stock stock options and I got
57:21
that sweet Bugatti. Like it's almost never that.
57:23
And so there's sort of this, you know, contradiction of of things
57:27
going on in society right now, which is sort of the posturing
57:31
and the flaunting and the pretending we're rich or putting
57:34
off images that aren't necessarily real.
57:36
The the Instagram version of life where you know, everybody's
57:39
on vacation all the time and, and everything seems great.
57:42
And then there's sort of the reality, which is you actually
57:45
don't feel good if you're doing that stuff.
57:46
You'll feel much better if you're doing this stuff.
57:48
Yep. So I think that's an
57:50
interesting. Insight.
57:51
Yeah, well, and, and again, not to get overly philosophical, but
57:56
I, I think it was Gandhi that said to find yourself, lose
58:00
yourself in the service of others.
58:02
And you can do that as an entrepreneur and you don't have
58:04
to be a social entrepreneur, doesn't have to be a nonprofit.
58:07
But if you think about are we doing right by those clients
58:11
we're serving? Are we making, are we empowering
58:14
them? Are we inspiring them?
58:15
Are are we changing lives? That's the kind of thing that
58:19
will drive you to continue with the grind to put in the late
58:23
hours, etcetera. And I think that we need to kind
58:26
of get back to that the superficiality of, you know, how
58:30
big your bank account is or what kind of car you drive that is
58:33
fleeting. And nobody's going to remember
58:35
that it's it's short term gratification.
58:39
But if you can point to the fact that you really did something
58:42
that changed lives, that move the needle on in society and you
58:46
built a business, whether you call it a social venture or not,
58:50
that did some of those things, I think I think that's a better
58:53
orientation. I think you're right.
58:54
Well here Jeff, in the in the closing minutes, let's where can
58:58
people track you down online? How could they engage with your
59:00
organization if they so wished? Yeah, yeah.
59:05
So you can find us@startupjunkie.org.
59:07
That's the the primary location. If you want to learn more about
59:10
the book Creating Startup Junkies, there's a site called
59:13
Creating Startup junkies.com as well, or you can find it on
59:17
Amazon. And, and if you're, you're
59:19
interested in what we do in the venture capital world, you can
59:21
find us@catroncapital.com as as well.
59:25
And that's, and I'm all over LinkedIn all the time as well.
59:29
So definitely look me up. I I'm happy to help anybody.
59:33
We'll share all those links in the the show notes so well.
59:36
Thanks so much, Jeff. I really appreciate you taking
59:38
the time today. It's been an awesome
59:39
conversation. I think we learned a lot.
59:42
Hey thanks for having me on it was great talking to you and
59:45
best in luck with all your future.
59:47
Thanks so much. I appreciate you and thanks to
59:49
everybody who tunes into the show this week and see you.
59:51
We'll see you guys next time.