Work from what you know. And that is going to give you your edge over everyone else. As Jack Trout says, "differentiate or die." You need to have your product be unique. What sets it apart? If you start with your knowledge, you're different. Everyone is unique, so build that into your product. What do you do that is unique? What is it that sets you apart? Do that for your product. Don't stop there; always put it in front of the customer for feedback. Get it in front of your customers, get feedba...
Feb 22, 2021•32 min•Ep. 161
Keep going. Never ever ever give up. Always keep that fire, keep that passion awake. And always remember what is the purpose. What are you doing here? What is your potential impact? Why you are doing this for real. Keep that passion alive and, it's going to be worth it in the end. Keep going.
Feb 20, 2021•27 min•Ep. 160
You've got to get some experience first. There are so few and far between of the Mark Zuckerberg or the Bill Gates that drop out and create something amazing. Most people have gone and got whether it's experience working in a start-up or experience working in a big corporate entity, that experience is invaluable. It also starts to build up your network, which also translates into those soft skills that you need to run a business.
Feb 19, 2021•39 min•Ep. 159
So one of the first things we suggest for business owners that are starting to launch and grow is, at a minimum, start paying yourself a salary. That's equal to what you have to pay somebody else to do the job that you are doing. The first starter is to make sure the business is viable. If you had a CEO of a company, and what you need to pay them is 120,000 a year, and you can't pay yourself that, that becomes your first check that the business needs to grow and produce more cash flow.
Feb 18, 2021•29 min•Ep. 20
Be ready to keep trying and keep reformulating. Even though master Yoda says there is no try, only do, it's going to feel like a lot of trying for a while unless you are extremely lucky and/or skilled. If you are not coming at this already from having the full skill set and the full finances and the full social relations that are just going to guarantee your success no matter what. If you come from any background where you have to struggle to make things happen mainly due to financing, then be r...
Feb 17, 2021•28 min•Ep. 158
It's better to try than to talk about it. I have had so many ideas over the years that I never bothered to realize. They could have been great, ahead of their time. Who did not think of the iPhone, or this and that? Yes, everyone had similar things in their mind where they say: oh yeah, this could be great. The difference is always in the execution. So there has to be biased for action. Do it earlier. It does not have to be perfect but do it.
Feb 16, 2021•32 min•Ep. 157
Go work with either Score or the SBA- The small business administration and let them guide you. A great resource that will save you from making tons of mistakes that I had to make starting out thinking you know everything. Go ahead and get some people to help you know it. They are here to assist you. I would say to go and use your resources.
Feb 15, 2021•22 min•Ep. 156
It's just a sense of denial or not even a sense of denial. Being in denial about something very important to the business. And maybe as a founder or entrepreneur, you are not seeing clearly, So finding colleagues that can be brutally honest with you. Whether that's friends, family, business partners, or other partners, it's very important. I think you can kind of self realize every day, but that is a challenge. Having outside accountability is helpful. But constantly questioning yourself and bei...
Feb 13, 2021•26 min•Ep. 155
One we are boot-strapped so we are trying to get the most out of every dollar that we can get in the business. For us, we are always trying to look at different ways to market, sell and attract leads. We do the things that we can get the most out of every dollar that we can. We started initially with a digital marketing campaign but our messaging was incorrect. We had to change that. We had to pivot. We had to stop that and come back and move forward. Now we have started putting together some of...
Feb 12, 2021•24 min•Ep. 154
I would have to say cash. Make sure you really understand your runway. So you know where your money is spent. How long do you have? And aside from cash what is your personal runway? Because there is the money aspect and, there is your personal mental health being. Can I sustain these ups and downs for the next six months without a paycheck? Am I feeling depleted that I need to not be doing this or, I need to take a break? I think it's your personal runway and also your cash. Making sure you spen...
Feb 10, 2021•32 min•Ep. 153
When you ask for money, you get advice. When you ask for advice, you get money. When I was doing my research interviews reaching out to centers of influence I was only asking for advice. I was letting people share with me what their feedback was. Those conversations have led me to other connections where if I was reaching out to somebody and said, hey, I am going to be doing this virtual reality event startup and I want you to either invest in me or give me some money. That channels how the pers...
Feb 09, 2021•36 min•Ep. 152
The best piece of advice is around time. Time is a constant. You can't mess around with time. Leave it to Elon Musk and Bezos to mess with space. But still, no one can mess with time. With time it's either for you or against you. When you first start, it's really important that you don't want time to be against you. The thought is as a side hustle, nights and weekends you have a salary, you have your health insurance taken care of. But, as soon as you leave your job to focus on this hustle and t...
Feb 08, 2021•36 min•Ep. 151
Surround yourself with people who inspire and challenge you. We are braver when we are feeling inspired. We are more committed when we are feeling challenged. You're going to run into hard things and, you're going to struggle. But when you do, who do you want in your constellation? Who do you want in the group of people that you know? Do you want people around you who say, I knew this was going to happen, or do you want people who say, come on, get up, you can do this take a second to breathe if...
Feb 06, 2021•28 min•Ep. 150
Save your money first. That was one of the big things we did when we knew we were going to start our own company. We set up the initial business formation in 2009 and did not quit our day jobs and go full time until June of 2010. We did not want to quit our jobs, start working and realize well crud I either have to say yes to everything because I don't have any money. Or I have to go find another job right away because I don't have any money.
Feb 05, 2021•36 min•Ep. 149
Focus on MVP-minimum viable product. We have all heard the term before but, when it comes to hardware it's particularly important. It crosses lines into all elements of a business. Whether it's a service or software, you need to think about how to make your best feature. The real innovation, that golden nugget that you thought about. How do you make that shine and nothing else? We have a motto that's plastered all over our design offices brilliantly simple design. Modern, clean, sophisticated, e...
Feb 04, 2021•43 min•Ep. 19
It's a marathon, not a sprint. We are in it for the long run. We are thinking about making that impact in the long run to make a big-scale impact. We both understand that if we want to make a big impact in the world it's not going to be overnight. Be ready to be in it for the long haul.
Feb 03, 2021•19 min•Ep. 148
Start with one thing and only one thing. Don't worry about whether it is working for you or not. The reason why I say that is, for it to even reap results, it will take you a good six months to know if it is your thing or not. It is easy to get carried by the noise that you see in the world today. Everyone is shouting at your ears to purchase their product. You have to spend a little time trying to figure out whether it is your thing or not.
Feb 02, 2021•27 min•Ep. 147
As a startup, you focus more on your product and strategy. This is very important because when doing a startup. If you spend too much time on your presentation of your idea you are just wasting your time. As a startup, your time is valuable. So focus on a small step at a time.
Feb 01, 2021•22 min•Ep. 146
You can lose your biggest account. You can have a new competitor come into town and start to take a bunch of stuff away from you. It's constant uncertainty when you own your own business. And when you are working for someone else, and you have a steady paycheck. It is a vast difference. So if you think ok, I don't want to scare people away from it. It's not impossible to do. It's a mindset where you go ok another body blow, so what. I'm still standing. Just get up and get going again. So if you ...
Jan 30, 2021•29 min•Ep. 145
Think about media. As Entrepreneurs, you think about advertising. 80%-90% of entrepreneurs do not even think about it and they are not familiar with a ton of opportunities that are even free with a little investment of time. Don't just put out press releases but look at some of those resources we talked about earlier to see where media is looking for sources where you might be a source. Don't be afraid. A lot of that is a mindset too. You are an expert as well. You would not be doing what you ar...
Jan 29, 2021•23 min•Ep. 144
The number one slide that every investor spends time on is the team slide. Who are the founders? Who are these people? The number two slide is the business model. How are you going to make money? After that, it goes down very significantly. All those slides about how this is going to be a giant market in five years. What I tell people to do in their presentation is to focus on the funding window, and what you are going to achieve. You should have a slide in there that shows in five years it's go...
Jan 28, 2021•39 min•Ep. 18
It's going to cost you more than you ever thought it was going to cost and, it's going to take more time than you ever thought it was going to take to get where you want to go. That being said, have fun. If you're not having fun starting a business, and that includes all of the angst that comes with it, you need to back up the truck a little bit. When it stopped being fun for me, that's when the juice starts going out of it and I needed to reinvent myself.
Jan 27, 2021•30 min•Ep. 143
It's really important to surround yourself with great people by being a great person yourself. By that, I mean something that has been super beneficial to me is I have put a lot of effort into being a life long learner and being hungry to learn, and being humble to learn. I think sometimes we love our ideas as entrepreneurs saying this is it. I think as I have had the mindset of this is an awesome idea and, I am excited about but, there are so many ways to go about this and collaborate and creat...
Jan 26, 2021•22 min•Ep. 142
There's a lot of noise in the world. There are many different coaches, books, and self-development things telling you what you should or shouldn't do. While some of that might be helpful, sometimes what it does is brings your mind into multiple different directions. There is so much conflicting information that you don't know what to trust or believe. Then you try one thing and it brings you down one path and then you are going back. So it is creating more space to trust your intuition. Know tha...
Jan 25, 2021•33 min•Ep. 141
My advice is to just never give up. If you have researched to know that this is a good product that people would buy or even if it's not a consumer product. If it's a business you know that people are going to use or a service that people need, just don't give up. You never know. It might be the tenth time you get knocked down that you get back up again and turn that corner and take off. You can't let yourself stay down. You have to get back up and keep pushing forward with it.
Jan 22, 2021•35 min•Ep. 140
I think it is important to know this is not a one and done. Legal compliance is a continuing thing that will rise with your business. As you scale and grow there will be new issues that will come up. There will be new opportunities to kind of enter into strategic partnerships and those will bring there own separate issues around all of this and what kind of agreement you want to engage with a potential business partner to create a new offering or to pitch a joint offering. Those will all involve...
Jan 21, 2021•25 min•Ep. 17
I hadn't gotten any attention from VCs. So these who invested in me, some of them as many as seven or eight times, I have to honor those folks, I have to give them a great deal. They have been with me since 2014. Hearing out the idea of what we wanted to go after as a market was easy. Building the tech was harder. We founded in 2014 so we are looking at year seven and just now looking at monetization and talking about exit plans. So I have to honor those folks. I have to make sure they are rewar...
Jan 20, 2021•28 min•Ep. 139
If the market is telling you something, don't ignore it. You know the story about PayPal and eBay is there was an anomaly where people on eBay were starting to use PayPal. They saw this anomaly in their data and then pursued it. Then PayPal exploded because it became the go-to solution for buying stuff on eBay. But itinually it was just a blip in the data. like what was going on over here with eBay and why are people over there using PayPal. So I say look for those anomalies and look at why they...
Jan 19, 2021•20 min•Ep. 138
Being able to adapt to changes is very important. For us, the pandemic changed people's habits from housing to communication to transportation. This means we had to move fast to serve the people in the housing market. We started in the Bay area and right now we realize people are moving to Austen and Idaho Falls. So we have to figure out how we can help those people. It is challenging for us because we are in the real-estate sector and it's a local business.
Jan 18, 2021•24 min•Ep. 137
In order to make a very successful company, in addition to what I said before with focusing on a bunch of different things marketing, development, and all of those things. You have to have a passion for it, and you have to put in the work for it. If you are just going to say I want to make a trillion dollars on the first day, it's not going to happen you need to put the work in. It's going to be a lot of hard work. But as long as you are passionate about it it will be worth it.
Jan 15, 2021•18 min•Ep. 136
