"As a small business owner like me I rely on leads. There is a good mentality called the two, ten, forty mentality and principle where every day you want to be talking to two prospects. Every week you want to talk to ten and every month you want to talk to forty. I use that guideline of if I need to meet that quota what am I going to do? These are people who want my services and they want to talk to me. I want to make sure I can integrate and literally connected with them within a second."...
Oct 15, 2020•33 min•Ep. 7
Know Your Business. Any kind of business that you want to do, you MUST know the business. You must know the customer. Otherwise, don't start the company, like, just looking at Twitter and saying "Oh, ok, that company has raised that much, I can do that!" Definitely know your market, know your technology, and know your business. That is definitely what I would advise to you.
Oct 14, 2020•22 min•Ep. 84
Don't care what anyone else thinks of you. Get clear on your thoughts around giving a concern about what anyone else thinks. That will create fear in your life and that will keep you small. What anyone else thinks has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. I mean, if there is someone in your life who has exactly the career path that you want, and you want to go to them for guidance or advice specifically around who to be as this type of a businessperson, that's one thing. But to ...
Oct 13, 2020•29 min•Ep. 83
My experience is, always, intellectual property protection. When you have a piece of intellectual property & a protection, that gives you a lot more leverage. To negotiate a market share. To negotiate cause of production. To also carve out your own niche. That gives you an opportunity to slow down your competition, or to fence out the knock-offs, the copycats, or infringers. If there is an opportunity, if there is creativity, try to file legal protection....
Oct 12, 2020•36 min•Ep. 82
Get customers first. If you can find customers, you're going to find investment. So many times, I talk with start-up founders, and they're like, "If could only get the money, if I could get 10 million dollars, I could build this thing and we could go get our customers." In every pitch contest that you ever go to, if you ask any judge or anyone that does any judging, "Why did you pick the winner?" It's always "They had an existing customer base. They have already proven it was..." So if you can g...
Oct 10, 2020•32 min•Ep. 81
There are inevitably people who have trod the path that you are on beforehand. And, whereas it may feel like an exciting adventure that you are on alone, there are people who have made mistakes which you don't need to make because they can tell you what they are. There are people who have had successes that you won't understand until they share them with you. So the role of advisors and mentors and board members, however they have come into your company, it doesn't really matter. What does matte...
Oct 09, 2020•29 min•Ep. 80
"Done is better than perfect. I think a lot of business owners get in this perfectionist mode, and they hear an outside voice tell them, 'Well, you're not posting, what you're posting isn't good enough, ...' from their families, or their friends, or some guru they see. "No. In the beginning days of your business, you've just got to get started. You just have to do something..."
Oct 08, 2020•27 min
Find where you can bring value, something that you enjoy (because you're going to have to do a lot of things that you don't enjoy), find where you're strengths are, and something that's monetizable. Get all them together, and find what's in the middle. There'll be something in there for you that you can do, that will bring value to the world, will get you paid, that'll be something you'll enjoy, and something that you are good at. In that nexus point, that's what you want to do.
Oct 07, 2020•30 min•Ep. 79
As a start-up, your weapon is speed. You are not corporate, so you don't have the bureaucracy, you don't have to have board meetings, you don't have to take 9 months to make a decision. But corporations are bigger, and they have more money and more resources. So the only thing you are competing on is speed. So move really, really fast. If you have an MVP, if you have an idea, just put if out there. Even if it's just on a landing page, get some feedback, get some free signups, do whatever it take...
Oct 06, 2020•28 min
Be patient in the growth process of what you intend to build. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it WAS built. So lay the groundwork of the company. Create slow but steady systems and processes within your company that you can apply every day.
Oct 05, 2020•33 min
Don't do it alone. Find a coach, find a mentor. I'm not talking about your brother or your mum or your dad who has a business. Find someone who has been successful in that type of business. For example for yourself, in law practicing. So, if I was to sell in a business in law, I would come to you. I would come speak to you. You know? If I were to sell, you know, get my business to 7 figures, I would speak to you. You've been there. You've done that. So it's about finding someone who can mentor y...
Oct 03, 2020•36 min
Passion is an entrepreneur's mistress. Don't fall SO in love with your idea that you don't test it. Just because you think it'll work, [doesn't mean it will]. Make sure that the market wants it. I mean, beta test that like a son of a gun. That's what I find. People bring an idea to the marketplace, and the marketplace has no interest.
Oct 02, 2020•30 min
Oftentimes, you give other people too much credit, and you don't give yourself enough. I wish that the credit strategy that has been in my head for 10 years, that we just started a year ago, I would have started 5 years earlier. The amount of success that we are having now would have been incredible to be 5 years further. We plan, and God laughs, and so here we are. No problem. Right? So, originally, I wish I had done that. I wish that I would have personally given myself more credit earlier.
Oct 01, 2020•35 min
If you have a business partner who is an expert in something, and you're not, which was the case for us (like, we're both good at the opposite things), let that person be the expert. Just because someone initially came up with the idea, or just becomes someone thinks they have a good marketing idea, doesn't mean that it IS a good marketing idea. In our case, my co-founder is a brilliant designer and a brilliant marketer. If there was one thing that I could be like "Zach, just go back and shut up...
Sep 30, 2020•33 min
Don't believe all the crap rules they tell you. Most of it is made up. Ask for whatever you want. My job title is "Head of Equitable Design" which was NOT the job that they were hiring for. I have a history of literally making up my own job. That's the thing about tech. It calls itself very innovative, but it's actually a very risk-averse industry. And so one of the lessons that I've learned is that there is a lot of facades about what is possible, and what you are told is possible. But if you c...
Sep 29, 2020•27 min
Know the problem that you're trying to solve and fall in love with it. Don't flirt around it, don't think about the money, don't think about any of that stuff. Think about what you're trying to solve. Be really, really, really good about that. Go very narrow. Think about it, go broad, but really narrow in on one thing that you can be really good at and solve. The moment that you lose your focus on that, you start to run into problems.
Sep 28, 2020•31 min
There are people out there that really want to help. I have a couple of advisors, just people who have worked in business, that have been so helpful for me. I didn't have a mentor when I did my podcast, but I do have a mentor now. Even though I am accomplished in many areas of this "business" (quote-unquote). So I think it's really important to have a mentor.
Sep 26, 2020•33 min
I know I know a ton about that, but I am a first-time entrepreneur, and there is a lot that I don't know. So the biggest thing for me was "I need to figure out how to be vulnerable." I had to be willing to ask people around me, to learn, to be open to learning every day. To understand that it's ok to say, "You know, I've never written code. How should I evaluate people who write code, for my company, so that I don't get screwed? How do I make good decisions on who I am choosing." By being vulner...
Sep 25, 2020•32 min
It comes down to "You don't know what you don't know." I mean, you have to assume that everything is wrong, and you hope that everything will end up right in the end. From your perspective. You've developed the business plan, you're hopefully working on what we'd consider a minimally viable product
Sep 23, 2020•32 min
As Entrepreneurs, we always think, widely to some extent, that it's up to us to make a decision. The buck stops with us. We have to make a decision. We have to stick with it. Hey, that's life as an entrepreneur and a leader. Having said that, a lot of times, the right decision when you are genuinely uncertain about something is to test the alternatives. As an analytics person, we tell our clients all the time that the best way to make good market decisions is to test the alternatives. To A/B tes...
Sep 22, 2020•32 min
Be ready. It's never as easy as it looks. It's something that you learn to manage time like we were talking about earlier, and you commit to the effort...
Sep 21, 2020•27 min
It doesn't work as you planned. It's just like life. I mean, as much planning as you want to do, you start, and it's totally different than what you expected. So you have to adjust. You have to be very flexible. You need to be ready to burn money. You need to realize that it takes a long time, and it costs a lot of money, and you're going to have to navigate through that in order to get to the other side.
Sep 19, 2020•35 min
Network. Network as much as possible. Let's say you're a lawyer, let's say you're an electrician, let's say you're a medic, let's say your ANYTHING! It doesn't matter what you are. Or what profession you are in. Speak to viewpoints outside of your bubble and get a better understanding of what their pain points are.
Sep 18, 2020•34 min
Getting into a startup is exciting, but it's also scary. Like, when I did it myself, when I was the actual Founder, the Owner, the CEO of the company, responsible for everything, and all of the money, and how your build the product, and all that goes in, it becomes scary. You're no longer that right-hand person because you always have someone taking care of it, you are THAT person...
Sep 16, 2020•28 min
Be humble enough to ask for help. You know? That's twofold. Being humble and humility goes both ways. So ask people for help. Don't ever think that you know everything. You can always go out to your network and ask people for help. That's the first thing about being humble. Then the second thing about being humble is: be able to take criticism in terms of what you've built and poking holes at it.
Sep 15, 2020•31 min
It's a long road, and you have to be resilient and passionate. Otherwise, you burn out. It's just as simple as that. Being an entrepreneur, having been in different startups, you can't survive unless you have that mentality. View video: https://milleripl.com/blogs/inventive-journey/resilient-&-passionate
Sep 14, 2020•26 min
Make sure you are ready for it and be prepared because it's a long, hard, tough road. But be incredibly stubborn. There were at least a half a dozen times at Simple that I was ready to just give up & just be like "We can't do this!" like "This is just undoable!" There are so many [moments] where you think that everything is fine, you have it all figured out, and out of the left field you just get this massive shock and you're like "Everything that we've spent the last 6 months working on, th...
Sep 12, 2020•33 min
I think trying to get multiple perspectives on something [is important]. It sort of contradicts what I said earlier. In a way, you don't want to be distracted. At the same time, when you are building plans and when you are basically looking at everything and deciding whether this project is something that may grow into something big, I think various perspectives from people with different backgrounds, particularly a business background, are extremely helpful.
Sep 11, 2020•23 min
The more focused you get, the better. Something you NEVER want to say is "I want to just podcast about everything and I want it to be for everybody." If it's about everything, it's about nothing. If it's for everybody, it's for nobody. It's the truth, the more focused you can get, the better. I had somebody that I've done some work with, and her name is Vanessa Edwards. She has something called "The Science of People" which is her company. When she first got started, she said that it was for "re...
Sep 10, 2020•35 min
I'd just go back to my slogan that "Easy is Hard, and Hard is nearly impossible." Where, if you're going at it with a small group of people, you want to have something competitive. However, if you overdesign and overreach on features...
Sep 09, 2020•33 min
