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How The Sinkinson Brothers Have One Leg Up on Startup Myth-Busting 10-3-24 · OneLegUpAlex Media

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's your host, Alex Garren.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Hybody, I'm Alex Garrett, and of course we always drive
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: to have one leg up and I have David Sinkinson,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: who's part of the Sigginson Brothers that got pitched to
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: me to talk about their own startup story. David, thanks
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: for joining me.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Hey, I'm super happy to be here, Alex. I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: really appreciate it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: You are your company, I believe was startup different and
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I want to start there.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Tell us your journey, Yeah for sure, So yeah, startup
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: difference what we're doing now. But I'm definitely happy to
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: talk a lot about Appurmer and kind of the experience
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: that I had. So basically what happened was I co
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: founded a business with my brother. My brother's name is Chris,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: and we actually started it and he's ten years older
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: than me, so it's always kind of like an interesting
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: sort of like age gap there. But it turns out
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: we actually worked really well together and our business was
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: in kind of this interesting niche space. So we actually
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: worked in the area of like public safety and particularly
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: at universities and colleges across Canada and the United States.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: And what we did was we made these mobile apps
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: that were branded to the school. So if you went
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: to like, you know, University of Chicago was like U
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Chicago Safe. If you went to NYU Safe, NYU went
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: to UCLA, it was Brewing Safe like whatever. And these
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: apps were basically a bunch of different tools that helped
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: both keep people safe, both preactively and proactively and reactively.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: So that is it was kind of this all in
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: sort of safety suite. And it actually started because I
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: was working at my alma matter and you know, sort
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: of in the right place at the right time. I
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: was sitting across from the ASSOCIADDA Student Affairs and we
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: had done this big audit of those blue light emergency
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: polls that you see on a lot of university and
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: college campuses, and it turned out that, you know, significant
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: percentage of percentage of them were broken. And so I
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: was kind of like, hey, well, you know what if
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: we had an apphere you could press a button and
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: you could call you camp of security at that institution
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: and they could see your position in real time. And
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: this was back in like twenty twelve, so like the
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: app store was like a year or two old back then,
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: so you know, I'm putting in context, like BlackBerry was
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: still a thing, so we were kind.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Of that's where the idea came from.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: And then we started working with different schools and yeah,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: it really took off.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it certainly did so much, so it all right,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: So you then sold it for tens of millions. But
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: let me ask you about the first million, if you will,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: that you made with app armored.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: Did you expect it to be that affluential? How I said?
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: The word that lucrative, I guess is the word I'm
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: looking for.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, definitely not.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: So it's it's a very niche idea, right, And so
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: a couple of different things are going on.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So, first off, was.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: In the in our really early days, my brother and
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I actually had a couple of different ideas on the
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: different products out there that did different stuff. Most of
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: them were mobile app focused because it was kind of
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: like a mobile app crazy back then, and you know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: we were generating a little bit of revenue from each one,
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: and app Armor was one of those as well. And
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: then we kind of got down to this point where
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: it was app Armor and another one and they were
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: kind of it was kind of a two horse race,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: and we decided to go all in on app Armor
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: because we aligned more with the mission we thought it was.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: You know, obviously it made a lot of sense to us.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: We were helping people know, be safer and in some
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: cases playing a direct role in saving someone's life. And
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: we were also just seeing a lot of mark attraction.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: You know, people were talking about us. People were very
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: positive about us in our sort of the schools would
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: buy from us, so the schools when they would talk
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: to each other, were very very positive about the experience
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: they had with us.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: And I can remember actually when we did hit our first.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Million and annual recurring revenue, and it was this kind
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: of like sort of surreal moment.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I remember we were in a co working space.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: There was a bunch of other companies around, you know,
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: with a handful of people, but at that point we
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: had about five six people, and they would do this
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: social hour where they'd have some beers for free in
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: the co working space. So naturally every company was there,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: and you know, we would just be chit chatting. And
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I remember I was talking to the owner of the
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: entire co working space and they said, well they and
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: she said to me, I'll never guess, she said, you know,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the first million is always the hardest, and I actually
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: think that's a good take it. It was this log
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: to get there. It was really really difficult. It was
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: incredibly satisfying to get there, but it was a lot
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: of work and also kind of surreal at the same time.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: I couldn't believe that this kind of niche product we
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: made and this kind of smaller market in public safety
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: was actually generating that kind of money.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, And you know, campus safety is so important.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I hate Zay because of all the shootings that have
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: been going on, So how are you guys able to
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: break into that space?
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: And you know, let's just be honest here. I love
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: the public safety.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Folks at my Alba Monarch Queen's College, but public safety
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't have all the tools. And I'd be like, that's
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: why you got inspired to do this, right?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I think.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I mean kind of, like we said, our mission was
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: to help make people safer. That was like our overarching
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: thing that we were trying to do, and the way
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: we felt we could do that was trying to help
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: those campus security and campus police groups.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: I actually went to a school called Queen's University. It's
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: actually a Canadian school in the.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Great White North. This is just kind of funny, said
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Queen's College, because it's like so close.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: But anyway, and you know what we learned actually when
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I was working on that committee was that the reason
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: why those security groups exist, even though they're not as
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: in some cases they're not armed. In some cases they're
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: just kind of like an auxiliary force, the reason why
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: they're helpful is that their response time to something on
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: campus is materially faster than municipal police generally is it's
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: usually like five minutes faster, which in the event of
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: an emergency is a life saving amount of time.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And so trying to.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Equip those teams and make them more efficient, make them
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: more effective, sort of answer some of the first questions
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: that a dispatcher out of school would have, which is, you.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Know, where are you?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: That really seemed to be something that just on its
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: face provided a lot of value.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And then we also had these other tools.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: In the app as well that were about, you know,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: you could send your location in real time to a
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: friend as you were walking home at night. We called
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: that friend walk. We had a safety check in system
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: that would call you every once in a while and
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: if you didn't answer, it would actually page the campus
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: police or campus security and say hey, this person might
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: be in danger. Like, there's a bunch of tools that
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: we continue to innovate on to improve the space, to
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: make the lives better for the people who were responding
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: to these issues, but at the same time also helped
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: play a role in again saving.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: The lives of some people on campus.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: All right, let's and by the way, that is so important.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: And does that ever get into the high school space
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: as well, because obviously high school do the lockdown drill now,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, can you imagine we're in this era where
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: every kid has to go through it.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: You and I never really had to deal with the
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: only drones back in the day.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's just incredible that we have to deal
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: with that and kids have to kind of be traumatized
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: even from the droves.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: So did you guys expand in the high school space
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: as well?
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: You know what's interesting is, uh, we actually had better
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: success in other markets. And I'll get to that in
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: just a second, but we did try to expand into
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: high schools. But for one thing, it's a very complicated space.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: So on the one hand, there's a lot of companies
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: and some of them are really really big that are
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: in that space, and sometimes big companies, if they're in
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: a big market and they're pretty established, they're.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Really hard to uproot.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: We did have some success, We actually worked with some
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: private schools, but we found and this is kind of
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: the rub here, is that depending on the school district,
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: the amount of budget available for this sort of thing
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: was really really different. And to be honest, our stuff
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: was not crazy expensive, but when you consider all the
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: different priorities of the school district, you know, they need
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: education or excuse me, they need software for just the
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: grades or sending out report cards or attendance or whatever
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: it's it falls down the list pretty quickly, and so
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: it was actually pretty hard to get into that space
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: where we had.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Imagine the private see thing of the kids is also
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: a big yeah.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: And there are some schools who that actually ban smartphones, right,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: so and that's primary.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Like primarily like the way that we would be Like
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: one of.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: The powerful features of the app was you could receive
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: massive locations in one to five seconds in the event
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: of an emergency, so they could just blanket everybody with
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: a message really really quickly. But yeah, if you don't
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: have your phone, it's not gonna work, right, So there
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: are some complications there. And you're right too, the privacy
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: rules for minors is really really different as opposed to
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: somebody at a university or college.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about technique about getting the startup going.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: You guys say you forewent all the usual rules. Now
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm a I'm a podcast. I feel like
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: there's a small business type of law and drive this
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: podcast definitely, but.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: I just kind of did it? Are there rules to
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: do it?
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I rule you didn't read the book.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: We have a podcast too, so I definitely know it is.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: It is absolutely business. It's and it's a tough one too,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: very busy market. But so there are kind of a
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: lot of like what I would probably say expectations, and
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: our upcoming books start a different The myth busting blueprint
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: for your multimillion dollar business.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: We talk about actually thirty three different.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: Myths that we bust and they range pretty significantly from
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: you know, on the low end.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It's like, you.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Know, the multi billion dollar companies just sort of show
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: up one day, and the reality is that's a lot
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: of hard work that took people a long time to
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: get there. It's usually a huge journey and quite the process,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: but sometimes it just feels that way, you know, social
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: media sort of like showed up one day kind of
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: felt like so you know.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Things like that. That's a really obvious example.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Another one is like, you know, you don't need funding
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: to be successful, and I actually for podcasters this is
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: kind of an interesting thing because you don't need funding
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: in any respect. Really, what you need is a microphone
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: and something interesting to say and maybe a decent camera
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: and you're on your way, right. But in software there's
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: definitely and in some other businesses, there's this really strong
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: allure to go and get funding for your business, but
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: to be honest, usually puts your business further behind. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: we actually have some stats on this in the book,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: but it basically seventy.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Five percent of all venture backed startups fail.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: So it's not as if it's like this incredible silver
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: bullet that's going to guarantee you success. In some cases
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: actually puts you behind. And that's just one of a
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: couple of examples. But for us, when we were building
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: up our business, we and you know, and I'm sure
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: you think about this a lot too, Alex as you
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: come up with good ideas, like all the time, and
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: you want to try them out.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And talk about, you know, reinvention, right every time, it's
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: about reinventing. And I feel like, since you sold at Barmor,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: you look to reinvent yourself through this new venture.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think you know what we're really trying
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: to do is I really think we're trying to pay
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: it forward. I think what I want to get them
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: I get the most satisfaction out of now is helping
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: people and going out there and saying like, look here
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: is And it's not just like, look at me, I'm
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: so awesome.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I pulled off this thing. It's really not that.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: It's very much like, here's a bunch of stuff we
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: did wrong, and we blew it a bunch of times,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: and that had really significant consequences as far as yeah,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: we had some cases where it went well, But in
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: any case, we're trying to put these lessons out there
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: to basically like help myself and my co founder as
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: if it were like ten years before. You know what,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: could I have taught myself ten years ago that would
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: have made it a better process and made me more
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: likely to be successful or even possibly more successful than
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: I am now.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: And I feel like you probably you have to be
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: doubled into like rules for reaching out to people to
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: invest in your startup and then to actually buy, you know,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: buy the product. There's gonna be rules for everything. So
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: let's start with, you know, getting people to invest. I know,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: for startups and for entrepreneurs, the investment side is such
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: a huge role. So how did you guys get people
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: to invest in your product?
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: Here?
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: So interestingly, we were actually totally bootstrapped, which means we
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: had no investors. But as we went through the process,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: we kind of realized like why we wanted to take
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: that route, and one was definitely about control and about
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: being able to control our own business and that kind
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: of thing in the direction of the business and also
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: not be tied to promises. We made an investor that
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: you know, and the investor is fundamentally different interest. They
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: are looking for basically a payout after about you know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: three to five years, and so for us it was
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: just a different path. Now some I will say though,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: for what it's worth, and I don't want to be
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: like mister I hate venture capital, because I actually think
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: investing is very important for some businesses.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: And there's two scenarios for that.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Like one is if you're like a really capital intensive business,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: so you make a product, you ship it, it's in
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: a warehouse, what have you. One of my favorite books
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: is the book by Barry Nailbuff and his co founder
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Seth and they have this book called A Mission in
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: a Bottle and it's all about the honest tea brand.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: I don't if you remember, but it was like a
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: tea brand in the kind of the early twenty tents,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: and they had such expenses like they needed money to
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: You can't. You can't start a big consumer brand without it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And then the other.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Circumstance where you might want funding is later on in
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: your business's life, like it could be once you reach
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: you know, like ten million of ARR in your recurring revenue,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: that you might want to get funding.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: That might be a time to think about it.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: But really our big thing was in avoiding investors early
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: till we understood and had credibility in our market.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: I always ask, being Avenger Kebble's, I always asked people
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: who have done these startups and our entrepreneurs and CEOs
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: of these, you know, not your usual corporate culture companies,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I guess say, were you in the corporate corporate world.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Then you decided I'm going to do my own thing,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: and your brother.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Said the same thing.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. So I was in.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: I worked for a huge, mega telecom firm who shall
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: remain nameless, and I, yeah, you know, I found that
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: I was just like really far away from the customer
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: and far away from doing anything meaningful. I did go
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: to business school, so I do kind of get the
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: corporate spiel on that side of the equation. I think
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: for me, it just found it felt way more satisfying
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: to be closer and more in the business and closer
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: customer and listening to people and making a real impact,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: whereas you know, the corporate culture is a little bit
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: different sometimes. Not to say all corporate cultures are bad either,
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: It was just it wasn't really for me.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: At all.
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: So being a MythBuster in this space, I think of
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: the show MythBusters. Were you inspired by them? What they do?
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: I have to ask?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that show? Actually quick fits, they're so cool.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think maybe sometimes I think again,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: like the reason why we want to bust myths isn't
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: just because it's like busting myths, Like why do they
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: bust myths on MythBuster because they don't want falsehoods to
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: proceed to put to get out there.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And I think that's really what it's about for me too.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Is that when you're a founder, you're going to be
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: confronted with tons of decisions and they can push you
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: to make different kinds of They can push you socially
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: to be in weird situations where you make decisions that
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: aren't always in your best interest for your business. So
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: you know, you think, well, I somebody said, I remember,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: like we had this happen where somebody said to us, oh,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: you don't have funding, so you're not really a startup,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: which is like crazy because we're obviously, but you know,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: that's when you get this weird like, oh, man, should
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I be doing this?
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Am I doing this wrong?
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Like there's a credibility crisis piece that I think happens
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: for a lot of founders. And I really I think
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the reason why we're busting these myths is to tell
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: people it's okay, you don't need to do this. Your
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: method of doing this is entirely valid and legit, So keep.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Going, keep pushing, and you can be successful.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: It's it's it's not gentle parenting in the sense, but
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: it's gental sort of like you're you're being a little
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: more softer and understanding than maybe the average person. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: you know, I think, as someone who started up this
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: podcast fifteen years ago, believe it or not, on college radio,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: I've been going hard for fifteen years. But you're kind
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: of teaching me slow down a little bit, just enjoy
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: the process, right.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we uh, we've I've had the benefit
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: of speaking to some pretty interesting people. Actually, I met
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: this one guy. He's a co founder of a company
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: called ApplyBoard. It's worth four billion dollars.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: But he founded it with his two other brothers, so
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: he started to one up my brother and I. But anyway,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: and actually one of his brothers is a twin too.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: But one of the things he said that was really
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: interesting to me was, you know, it's enjoy the journey,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: like as you go through this, like that's the fun
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: and kind of being on the other side of this
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: now looking back, I missed those times. I missed the
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: time I got to spend with my people. I missed
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: the time I got to spend, you know, in the
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: business with customers, working on problems, you know, feeling super
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: productive every day.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: You know, that's that's a tough feeling to lose.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: And I do think that focusing on the journey for
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: anybody who's listening today, whatever you're doing, whatever you're pushing for,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: focus on the journey because a lot of the time
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: that is most of the fun.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're going song now, you're in Canada.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: You're just mentioning.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: So talk about the geographical differences between starting up there
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: verse here. The economics are very different in both, you know,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Canada and the US, aren't there.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: So, I mean like just getting Australia, like the United
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: States is the market of first resort, so every business
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: kind of wants to be there. It's a humongous market
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: for almost anything you want to do, and we were
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: no exception. What was interesting for us is that we
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: had a good client base. We had about twenty five
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: to fifty clients in.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Canada in our early days, and we.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: Had a hell of a time they getting into the US,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: and we knew we needed to get into the US
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: to be successful.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And so and so a couple of thoughts there.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: One is that for Canadian businesses, we kind of like
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: we can go down and we can look and watch
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: the United States and we'd be like, hey, what's happening,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: what are our competitors doing down there? Without being like
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: actively in the market, and then we can decide when
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: we want to enter. So kind of like interestingly, not
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: that many American companies come up here very quickly. They
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: tend to come a lot later in their life. So
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: it gives I joke that we're kind of like a
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: business incubator for the United States. We go with these ideas,
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: we do stuff, and then we go into the US
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: and we compete. And so then later on when we
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: did enter the market, we were in a weird situation
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: where we didn't have any referenceable clients in the US,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: and so we actually did something we called we bought
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: a customer.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So this is kind of an interesting thing, but basically,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: we just.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Gave the University of Florida the Florida Gators, like the
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: best deal ever, because we needed that Gator. We needed
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: a nationally recognizable brand that we could then take to
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: basically every single.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: National champion quite a few times.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Well, obviously one of my favorite schools, interestingly
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: is FSU joined like really closely after, so I have
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: the you know, I have a flag in my house,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: you know, the house divided and you've got the gator
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: in the.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Seminole and it's pretty fun.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so but anyway, doing that was it was
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: actually very challenging. But once we had gotten into the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: US market, established a little bit credibility, we were off
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: to the races.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, you know, credibility is key.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Now when I think of the word bootstrap, but I
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: have to think of cash strap as well. So for
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: those who want to do what you and are afraid
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: that they're going to be cash strapped and bootstrapped at
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the same time, what's your message.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's short term pain for long term gain. So
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: it's it definitely sucks for a little while your standard
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: of living is going to be basically the same, potentially
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: worse if you had a more cushy job somewhere before
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: that and you made the leap to doing that.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: But it's worth it, is what I would say, because
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: you do get such an amount of control and you're
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: the master of your own destiny. You can decide where
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: this business is going. It's not that you don't listen
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: to other people, like mentors or other folks who are
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: going to give you quality.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Feedback and good market insight.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: But you're just not beholden to an investor or somebody
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: else who's frankly just going to be misaligned to you,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: like they're going to be looking for a different kind
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: of return. You know, one of the big things that
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: those businesses do is or excuse me, those investors do
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: is they have this like get big fast strategy, which
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: is another myth with that we bust where you know,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: they want you to get.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: As big as as quickly as possible.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Their ideas, if we put money into your business, that's
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: going to happen because then you can hire a bunch
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: of people, you can do a bunch of things.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And the reality is that just some markets aren't ready
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: So if you do that and you get two million
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: dollars of funding and then you blow it over a
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: couple of years and you've hired a bunch of salespeople
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: and you're just not getting any results because the market
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: isn't educated well enough yet.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: It's not there yet. Like if we got money in our.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Early days, we would have had this problem for sure.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: The market wasn't there yet. And I think paradoxically, it
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: can actually be a really net negative thing for your business.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: It would have definitely tanked us if we had gotten
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: invested investment in the early days.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: You just mentionthing very interesting in like different markets, right,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: So let's know about the rural schools because a lot
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of colleges are highlighted, you know, the big tens, the
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: big twelves, but there are a lot of rural colleges.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: You guys tap into that market as well.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, So putting this all in context, I remember
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: I already said the United States market at first of zort,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: So Canada is one hundred and fifty higher education institutions.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: United States says over seven thousand. So you truly you
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: got to be in there, and you've got to be
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: able to cater to schools of all different kinds of shape,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: sizes and places, you know, everything from your two year
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: community college to your you know elite you know Ivy
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: League private colleges and uh yeah.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: So our product was interesting because.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: We weren't like one mobile app like I mentioned earlier,
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: we were we were branded each school. So we actually
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: did a good job of making this like assembly line
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: of mobile apps effectively. And when we went to market
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: to these smaller rural colleges. We kind of had an
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: idea based on other ones that we worked with, like
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: what features would work for them and what were what wouldn't,
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: and we would tailor the app to their needs. So
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: kind of, you know, I don't want to say it's
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: like mass customization.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It kind of is, though. It is like we had
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: this tool, we would put their logo on it.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: We could change the buttons and all that stuff in
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: real time using a content management system, and so that
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: whatever that school was focused on, whatever its needs were,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: they could change the app.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: We could do it with them.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, they were going
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: to have something that worked really well for their particular institution.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the toughest part of all this,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: which is you sell your baby. Okay, yeah, I mean
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: that's your baby, that's you and your brother's baby. That
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: had to be a difficult decision at first, or what
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: was the decision process?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it's actually kind of interesting.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: I've been on some other shows and this is obviously
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: a common question. And the funny thing is we actually
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: the company that ended up buying us, they're called Rave
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Mobile Safety and they had a big investment firm behind
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: them called TCV, and they actually approached us a year
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: before we ended up selling, and they made us an offer,
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: and the offer was worth twenty million dollars, and so,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: you know, it's not every day that somebody offers you
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: that kind of money, but it had a lot of
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: strings attached to all of the things that we weren't
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: comfortable with, a long earnout period, big sales targets we
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: had to hit and all these kinds of things, and
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: so we actually passed on it, which was kind of crazy.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: It felt really really weird, and so we said, hey,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: come back to us in a year. You want to
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: do this, but we're just we think we can do better.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: So we bet on ourselves. We went back into the market,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: we had a banner year, we boosted our numbers, and
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: they ended up doubling the offer to forty million dollars.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: And so that was when, okay, it was like, okay,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: we're definitely doing this. Like that was kind of like
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: the the offer you can't refuse kind of thing. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: it so on the one hand, it's super jubilant and
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: due diligence and how difficult it was to actually like
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: go through the process of selling the business.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Lawyers and accountants galore.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that, you know, on the one hand,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: it was really jubilant because it was this amazing thing
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: that happened.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, Yeah, it's it's sad.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: It's it's legitimate identity loss. You know.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Now, you know, you say ten million, but then both
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: companies get sold to Montarella for five hundred and fifty
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: million dollars. I want to ask, did you guys get
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: a cut of that at least?
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, what was that like?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the negotiation when Raven Wile Safety purchased
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: US for forty million dollars. During that negotiation, we were
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: also talking to the folks of their investment group at
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: TCV and I sort of said, hey, I'm betting you're
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: gonna spin this thing around like and sell it in
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: like a year or two, and they were like yes.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So it's like okay.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: I was like, well, if we're going to do this,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: then we want a little cut of that as well.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Now it's nothing not we didn't get another forty million
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: dollars I'll tell you that much. But we did definitely
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: participate in that. In that process, we were part of
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: the due diligence and sort of like the convincing of
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Motorole Solutions that it was, you know, good idea, all
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. Sure, and yeah, so we definitely participated.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Talk about making sure you're selling your company that you
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: started into good hands.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: That mattered a lot, doesn't it.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: I think so that the million dollar question, like literally
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: is you know, what is your business worth? And it's uh,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: there's there's two and I'll get to the other intangibles
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: in a second. But so the what is your business
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: worth question is super difficult because on the one hand,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: you don't know when a global pandemic is going to happen, right,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: came out of nowhere, and then you, on the other hand,
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: you don't know when like uh, this is the analogy
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: I like to use, but when like Taylor Swift's gonna
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: like you wear a T shirt that's got your company
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: logo on it, right, like you just it's hard to
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: predict the future in any capacity. So what you have
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: to do is you have to find a number that
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: you're happy with and for us that that was a
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: big number and then locked in sort of like the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: generational wealth that we were sort of looking for.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: The other part of this, though, too is what are
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: they going to do with you, your people, your technology,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: and your customers. So for us, I wanted to make
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: sure that, you know, we were obviously part of the transition,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: but I didn't want to be there forever. I wanted
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: to make sure that none of our people were getting
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: like fired or let go or hoold departments, you know,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: got just just right.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: And then also the value system didn't change when you
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: sold them over, right.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Like The thing is, they're purchasing as much as they're
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: purchasing like our financials and you know, our revenue all
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: that stuff, they're also purchasing like our culture and our
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: and our processes and our systems. And it was very
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: important to me that they understood that, and so that
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: those were our three other pillars that we've tried to
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: focus on, which was our people, our technology, and our customers.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: I also didn't want our customers to suddenly have their
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: prices you know, doubled or tripled on them, or just
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: generally not be taken care of. So I try to
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: make that super clear to them, and they've been amazing
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: to be honest by all accounts. Of course I don't
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: work don't work there anymore.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: But but did you bring them over into sort of
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: like your startup different business?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: Are they part of your world now?
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: There?
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: No, it's totally saparated. I mean startup Different is like,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: you know, we're paying it forward to founders and other people,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: but a lot of the.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: You know people have one leg up in other words, right.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly one hundred percent.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: That's actually why I want to come on show because
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, this guy's going to get it
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: for sure. But like you know, I think again, we're
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: just trying to pay it forward and help people do
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: better than us.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And yeah, and I.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Hope that with you know people we have on our podcast,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: in our book that's coming out and all that good
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: kind of stuff that we're doing, that that we're actually
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: delivering that value for people.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe i'll be well talk about this, but I'd
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: love to maybe go through each myth after the books released,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: give him give readers more of an insight through this podcast.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: If you like do that, that'd be all.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that'd be cool.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of myth but I'll definitely
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: I think there's a I'm sure we could get a
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: top five.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah that would be great.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like one of you every week or like a
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: serious basically yeah, yeah, that'd be cool.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: Our all kind of MythBusters, you know. But where you're
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: on your brother this entrepreneurial.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Growing up, like, did you know this kind of you
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: know life and this kind of you know business world
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: you'd be in.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Is that Were you an entrepreneurial growing up?
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I would say so yes.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: I think my brother was definitely like he's a he's
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: a software developer. He was always just like fixing problems
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: that our dad actually had his own business. He had
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: he ran a photocopy or dealership, you know. And and
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: so we we all worked there at some point and
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: kind of we have another brother as well. Uh and
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: then we all we all worked at that that same company.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: It's actually it comes up occasionally in the book.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: But it's I think so.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: But one thing I want to be careful with is,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: you know, I do think that entrepreneurs generally are made.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I think that we can bias towards the people who
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: are more biased to it just naturally, but anyone can
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: be an entrepreneur. You can actually do this if you
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you know, if you.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Think about it the right way, you attack it systematically,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: like you can be an entrepreneur.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And I have people and I talk to you like,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: oh that's just not me. It's like it could be,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: like it really could. You can do you can develop this.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: This is something that you know, Oprah didn't start as.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Oprah, Like you know what I mean, Like you can
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: get there, and I want people to believe that they can.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: Where can we follow your podcast by the way.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so anywhere you get your podcasts, you'll find us
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: to search startup Different as our website startup different dot com,
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: and yeah, you can follow us obviously. Please leave comments
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: that we're biggest on YouTube. Actually we have a pretty
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: good YouTube series.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you just hit on something about anybody
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: could do this, and I just think of the those
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: who might have these entrepreneurial efforts as a side gig.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: How do you turn the side gig into your full
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: time life.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Oh that's an awesome question. It's hard and it's scary.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: So I would say, one brick at a time, don't
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: obsess over making a crazy amount of progress in like
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: a six month period, Like give yourself time.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: We I side hustled app Armor for about three years. Okay,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: so like it takes.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Time for the market to develop and get there. Then
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: this is the scary day when you tell your boss
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: you're quitting. And when that day happens, you know, you
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: hold your breath, plug your nose, and hope for the best.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But you know, good entrepreneurs.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Take calculated, big risks. These are not just it's not reckless.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Don't do it if you only got like twenty grand
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: in revenue for your company.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Make sure you're in a way where.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: You can support your lifestyle and support your family to
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: maybe it's not perfect, but pretty close to what you're
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: doing at that company job, and then make the jump.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: So the pandemic, and of course this week is nine
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to eleven. So tragedy does happen often in our world.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: How do entrepreneurs like yourselves navigate through tragedy? You mentioned
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: that you were dealing with this through the pandemic as well.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think this kind of ties back to
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: the importance of obviously a strong support network. I know
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: for a lot of founders. I'll tell you one thing,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: that's really important. It's having a co founder, and that
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: kind of sounds interesting to some people because most people
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: are like I can do it myself and whatever.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: But there are so many both.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Tangible and intangible benefits of having a co founder. So
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: for me and my co Fanner happened to be my
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: brother too, which was great, but you know, he basically
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: acted as like chief psychology officer for me and me
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: for him. You know, like we had times when we
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: worked together and we really needed each other, like we
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: really did the highs and lows.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Of I mean again with the podcast.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: You know, there's highs and lows, and managing those peaks
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: and valleys with someone else is really really important.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: If you're a.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Solo founder, make sure that you have a support network,
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: whether that's your family or a mentor or whatever. But
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes, particularly as men, we like to like
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: hold some of that in, like I'm gonna push through whatever. Dude,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: you need to talk it out because it'll actually make
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: you better at whatever you're trying to do business wise,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: and also.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You'll just want LifeWise, you'll be less crazy.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the things, because we're talking about this
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: security on these campuses, I'm just saying, are you guys
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: consulting still for different campuses?
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: Are you still in the consulting.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Well, actually, because of the sale, we have a little
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: bit of a period where we can't really do anything
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: in public safety. And that's pretty standard. Usually you're not
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: allowed to participate in the same market for a little.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: While, So that's fine.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: I also, you know what I would be a real
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: expert in is consulting on technology for those groups, not
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: as much like the actual public safety element.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: But then you can you can answer this because I'm
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: gonna have someone else on this as well who's also
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: in the tech space. But I want your thoughts on it.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: The Mayor of New York's trying to get Mayor Idams
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: trying to get through this cell phone ban in high schools,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: but it's not really going What are there pros and
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: cons to that cell phone ban?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Or have you been following that kind of story totally?
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: So I have kids, and you know, I'm thinking about
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: this too and all the time. So on the one hand,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: I think that there's a lot of data that phones
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: in classrooms is bad for children's learning, and it's distractions.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: It's all kinds of different problems, And it's like, even
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: if your kid doesn't have a phone, if another kid
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: has a phone, everybody gets like sucked into it.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And so I think that there's a lot going there. Now.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Conversely, yeah, you're right, there's a public safety angle here
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: that does come up sometimes. I read a piece in
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: the New York Times about this just the other day,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: and the piece there is that, yeah, if there is
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: an emergency, if there's an active event like kind of
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: you mentioned, or maybe even just a bomb threat, it
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: would just be like less intense for a second, even
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: though it's still pretty intense, Like you need the phone
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: because you need the message. You need what's called a
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: mass nottification. And that's also what we did a lot
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: of in our business. So I'm of two minds. I think,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: if we're talking about educational benefit, definitely no phones, but
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: maybe somebody has to have a phone in that room,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: maybe the teacher does.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Considering in just last week, this Georgia shooting, I believe
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: kids were texting their parents, Hey, this is what's going on, and.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: This is the other thing parents want to know, right,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: like you imagine, like you would want to know is
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: your kid okay? Like my god, So there's this other
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: angle too, like parents needed really need to be in
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: the know.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: When something is and when something like this comes down
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: from the mayor's office, parents should have saying this as well,
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: shouldn't they?
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Oh of course, I mean, like, uh, I don't think
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: you're gonna get too far, like you know, dictating solutions.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I think, broadly speaking, we're looking for collaboration and input
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: and expert analysis.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Nevertheless, though, this is a tremendously difficult decision for lots
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: of different reasons. You know, there's all these other there's
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: actually other public safety issues right to even having the
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: smartphone and being on social media, Like social media is objectively,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: you know, bad.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: For teens' mental health.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: It's like there's a lot of data that's starting to
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: come up about this, and it becomes one of these
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: complicated situations. You're like, man, there are benefits on both
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: sides and there are drawbacks on both sides. How what
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: is the correct solution here? I don't think it's unreasonable
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: for kids to not I don't think they should have
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: phones in the classroom.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe they should.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: They could have phones at school, maybe the teachers locky locker,
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: sure something talk you.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Mentioned empathetic leadership in actually one of your topics here,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: So empathetic leadership, I'd say that kind of ties in
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: in with.
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: The cell phone band.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe it doesn't look as empathetic toward parenting and whatnot.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: But from your angle in the business world, how important
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: is empathy?
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Uh?
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: And and did empathy help you launch and grow at Yeah?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: So I wasn't good at this at first, and so
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: this is why it's kind of a big lesson for me.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I think when you go to business.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: School and they teach you you want to be like
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: an alpha and whatever that is, and you're banging your
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: chest and you're like a gorilla in the market and
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: and kind of a bully basically. And I think what
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: we found worked a lot better was when we just
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: actually took time to invest in people. And I don't
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: mean money, I mean like emotionally invest and understand our
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: people and work with them and try to be collaborative
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: and how we solve problems as a team, and how
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: we tackled even internal issues. And to be honest, it
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: worked a hell of a lot better. I think after
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: we got to a certain level of staff I want
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: to say, like six or seven people, which is pretty small,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: but early. That's really the things only got better. Our
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: customer service got way better because they were more empathetic
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: with the customers they were with. Our sales team got
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: better because they were more interested in understanding the customer
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: and working with.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Them and collaborating with them. You know.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Our implementation to everybody got better. All the software developers
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: got better. Everybody delivered. And there's actually data on this
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: that the more empathetic you are as a leader, the
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: more you understand people, the more you invest in them,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: the more you support them, the more likely those people
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: are to be six test to foil their drops.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Well, there you go. Thank you so much, David singingson
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: and hopefully get your brother on at some point too.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: We'd love to talk with him as well. That'd be great.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: He's the chief Nerve NERD officer, so I'm sure he'd
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: have some good tech things to drop for you.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: That would be fun. But David, thanks for your time
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: today on the one lay up Network.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Ox I really appreciate being here.