Develop Grit
Manti Gleason
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey
Podcast for Entrepreneurs
1/5/2021
Develop Grit
Every entrepreneur needs to develop grit and practice gratitude. What I mean by that is with developing grit there is no easy business. If it was easy everybody would be doing it and nobody would be willing to pay you for it. You are doing something hard and so you are going to have days that are awful. You are going to have days where your partner is depressed and you are depressed and you don't feel like you can go forward. That's where I feel like you really have to take a step back and say ok I need to have the same Passion and excitement that I had on day one for this project right now in this moment. Because that is the only way we are going to get through this.Sponsored by findcourses.com and findcourses.co.uk
Also sponsored by Cereal Entrepreneur

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.
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ai generated transcription
every entrepreneur you need to develop
grit
and i think you need to practice
gratitude and what i mean by that so
developing grit there is no
easy business if it was easy everybody
would be doing it and nobody would be
willing to pay you for it
and so you're doing something hard
you're going to have days
that are awful you're going to have days
that
your partner's depressed you're
depressed you don't feel like you can go
forward
and you don't know what to do and
that's where i feel like you really have
to take a step back and say okay
i need to have the same passion and
excitement
that i had on day one for this project
right now in this moment
because that's the only way that we're
going to get through this
[Music]
hey everyone this is devon miller here
with another episode of the inventive
journey
i'm your host evan miller the serial
entrepreneur that has
built several startups into seven and
eight-figure companies as well as the
founder and ceo of miller ip law
where we help startups and small
businesses with their patents and
trademarks
if you ever need help yourself feel free
to go to strategymeeting.com
and now uh we have another great uh
guest on the episode
name is man here manti gleeson and uh
manti just as a way of a quick
introduction started his business i
think in around 2015
and it started as i think or out of the
senior project at byu so go cougars so
my alma mater as well so it's always fun
to talk to a fellow byu grad
um it was doing that uh and uh as it was
started i think as drones
and was looking at some battery
technology as to how to make batteries
work better charge faster be you know
basically more efficient and better
batteries
and out of that you know needing it for
drones kind of
evolved into what you guys do today
which i think still includes drones
but kind of as air is continuing to
expand your services and
how the batteries are what features they
have and all of that good stuff
so with that much of an introduction
welcome on to the podcast manti
great thanks so much devon great to be
on with you
so i did kind of uh a very quick or
quick and brief summary or overview of
how you kind of got into where you're at
today
but now take us back in time a little
bit let's hear you kind of were
doing your work doing your senior
projects at byu and how did you get into
what you're doing
yeah so i've always wanted to be an
entrepreneur all of the people that
i've looked up to throughout my life all
my mentors they've all been
entrepreneurs and
influenced me a lot i've started a few
different little businesses just
as i was growing up i i've always kind
of been self-employed just doing little
odd things here and there
um whether it was selling hay or
teaching horse lessons
i landscaping stuff i've done a bunch of
different
things there jumping in i know i just
interrupted but selling hay is an
interesting one so
did you haul hey or did you guys live on
a farm or just go randomly buy hay and
resell it
so i actually i we have horses and so i
got into it
just out of necessity we were buying a
lot of hay for our horses and i realized
this is kind of a pain for a lot of
people in the salt lake valley who don't
live
in a rural area to get access to hay for
their animals and so
just well i i just barely got my
driver's license and so i
recruited my two younger brothers and
said hey i'll buy a hamburger if you
come up to cache valley with me
we'll buy a trailer load of hay take it
down we'll store it in our barn until
winter time and then we'll jack up the
price and we'll sell it for
four times as much as we paid for it and
we should make a good good amount of
money and
started out just like that and it ended
up growing into a lot more
and that's that's actually how i kind of
built my savings early on for
for some of my other projects so it was
a fun little side hustle
i i i enjoyed it i
i don't miss bucking all the hay though
it was a lot i grew up
kindred spirit i didn't get paid i just
got to go and help out the family at
hall hay so
my grandpa was a farmer and he had cows
and everything so
when the season came around we would get
the hay cut we'd all throw it up on the
trailer and
and we'd all pitch in so certainly
understand that's the cool
hence why it caught my attention so
always grew up and it's fun to always
hear you know i always have the
aspirations i hope my kids and i always
loved you know start small businesses
but my kids grow up looking for
opportunities to work and to
you know expand skills and figure that
out and always do that so i think that's
cool that you grew up in that
kind of uh you know environment as well
so now back to
so you did you know always an
entrepreneur growing up always had that
been knowing
you know did the different companies are
doing it now you're the senior project
and kind of having that same thing so
how did that
how did your senior project kind of or
take that same evolution
yeah so while i was at byu i knew i
wanted to
study business and i was really
interested in entrepreneurship just
because of
a lot of the classes byu had a great
program i think they were ranked number
two in the country at the time
while i was there so they offered
amazing curriculum
really awesome professors i had some
great mentors down there
and while i was there early on they kind
of
push you towards picking developing a
business and so
i started working with my friends on a
few different side projects
um some of those took off from my
friends some didn't
and then as we started going into this
drone started becoming more and more
popular this was
uh like i said early
probably yeah 2013
2014 2015 that whole time period so
dji drones the little phantoms they were
taking off and
we my dad and i my dad is a software
developer and does a lot of i.t
stuff as well and so he
he and i were talking and we thought it
would be super cool if we wrote
some software for one of these little
drones to follow my little brother while
he was on the football field so we
didn't have to film his football games
we could just have the drone follow him
and so we started working on that and i
figured hey maybe this could turn into
my senior project we'll do the software
spin it out it could be a really cool
thing then we realized we couldn't keep
the drones in the air
and you had to buy a bunch of batteries
to keep them in the air a bunch of
chargers they were really slow it was
hard to manage all the batteries
and so we started looking for different
options for
for doing that and then slowly as as we
started reading
up and doing a bunch of research we just
started pulling this idea here this idea
here and putting it together
until eventually we had a pretty cool
system that did
everything that your your manual would
tell you to do as far as taking care of
the batteries and
and what you can do to charge the
fastest and then we started doing
research on top of that
we reached out to a couple different
engineering firms and started working
with them
um just building out a multi-port
battery charger for drones that could
keep up with what we were trying to do
and it started out really rocky really
slow um
made a lot of mistakes along the way but
we built out a pretty cool platform
for these drones that allowed us to be
able to keep
the same drone up that was taking 12
batteries we could do the same job with
four batteries
and we were able to keep those batteries
healthy and lasting longer than our
batteries with our traditional chargers
just because we were optimizing
everything
we could to keep those batteries healthy
and
so at first our our idea was hey we're
going to sell these boxes
we started talking to and working with
some different drone distributors that
we had connections to
and it was looking like a great
opportunity and
it one thing led to another and and we
kind of got sucked into
feature creep which i'll talk about a
little bit
more later but we got sucked into that
and that
held us back from from really selling
the product at the time and
but but it also helped us expand our
vision a little bit more beyond just
a charging box and we realized that
there was really an opportunity here not
just for battery charging
but for battery care as a whole where we
could kind of look at it and say okay
these batteries right now this may not
be a big deal for
a hobbyist that's flying a drone or for
somebody who
just has a drill that they're trying to
put a few screws in
while they're doing a building project
but but
we could really see that this battery
revolution was on the verge of
taking off and and that's kind of where
we're at today where
we're seeing this battery revolution
where drones and
delivery robots and warehouse robotics
even i mean i was at the store the other
day and now you can buy a snow blower
that's battery powered and there's all
these electric vehicles
and so we started seeing this as we were
getting into this project developing
this first multi-port charger
and we realized there was more to it
that if we gathered all the data
from these batteries it would be really
helpful for managing fleets of batteries
it would be really helpful for
optimizing charge profiles so that
it wasn't just a simple algorithm that
we put in once but we could actually
learn from that data
and and we could also push out further
advancements for charging and battery
care so that these batteries
last longer they're safer and
you're able to operate with less battery
equipment so that's
that's kind of where we we've evolved
into now
where we have more of a battery care
platform versus just battery charging
so we do the charging the maintenance
and the management with the opportunity
of
implementing new technology as it comes
out
so now diving into that just a little
bit because i think that's an
interesting because
it sounds i don't know if it quite
sounds like a pivot but an expansion
but was it you know simply that simple
hey we've got a platform now let's do it
was it
hey we want to expect you know and you
talked a little about feature creep and
we
dive into that minute but you know how
did you decide hey we're going to go
from
a drone you know first of all from a a
bit a bit of a hobby or so to speak to
be able to do your
you know brother on the football game to
hey we can actually do this as a project
then you said let's do this as an actual
company to hey this is more than drones
was you know that leap from hey this is
drones and we're going to start that as
a business to more of a battery care
was that kind of an intentional you know
development of the company was it a
falling into it was it a pivot or how
did you kind of end up at that place
yeah great question so it was definitely
something where
we developed that multi-port charger and
when we realized
hey we could keep this drone in the air
with a third of the batteries that it
requires otherwise which a little drone
that may not matter but we're not
talking double a batteries if
you start looking at some of these
batteries that are a thousand dollars a
piece and the drone needs
two or four or six batteries it starts
to add up
and so when we realized hey we can do
this and and we started looking at
what we were doing to be able to keep
those drones in the air we were
collecting a lot of data from the
batteries
we're optimizing the temperature during
the charge process
um we're optimizing the flow of the
current so rather than just pushing a
flat amount we were matching it for
certain times
during the charge making these
adjustments and we realized
that data could be just as valuable as a
hole
rather than just in the charging
situation and so that it kind of
we were kind of pushed that direction
naturally just as we started looking at
the assets that we were gathering
through this process for our first
little multi-port charger that we
developed
no that's i think that's awesome and you
know it makes it i think you know
batteries sometimes fail to be
maybe you know with the exception of a
tesla or someone that just had you know
adds their cars but a lot of times the
battery is almost an afterthought right
oh we
go find a standard battery off the shelf
we'll you know do that
you know in my world you know i would do
it from a different but one of the
businesses i you know i'm involved with
is on the wearable side and that you
know much you know different context
with the same thing as you're trying to
cram
as much power as you can into a very
small and confined space and any way you
can optimize that
is you know well worth the time and
effort and so i kind of you know it's
interesting to see how
you guys tackled it for one area and you
know how everybody is kind of dealing
with this power issue
and how if you know if you don't if you
treat it as an afterthought
it can make a sub-optimal product and
vice versa it can create a much more a
better competitive advantage
so now as you guys you're growing you
know you kind of figured out you got the
initially the drone system you're now
kind of looking to expand into other
areas
where do you see kind of the the next
six months to a year kind of where did
this continue to evolve for you guys
yeah so it's it's definitely had its
bumps in the road
as with anybody else with covid it's
kind of thrown like our supply chain for
example that's been
just so much fun trying to go back and
forth with
with different suppliers now amitskovid
but but it's also opened up some
opportunities just to look at
different areas that we can we can
approach like
there's there's definitely a lot of
opportunities
um in academia and within um
military opportunities that we're
pursuing right now we've we've made some
great partnerships we're actually
we just partnered with utah state
recently and we're helping them with one
of their
big drone systems that they have just be
able to
build a battery care system so that they
can keep track of their batteries more
effectively and keep those drones in the
air and
and they can use their equipment for
what they're really good at so they're
designing
some amazing um cameras and and software
and
different things for um drone
agriculture type stuff and and so for us
to kind of
be able to come in and complement what
they're doing to help them
do what they do best by us coming in and
doing what we do best with the battery
care that's been
an area that we're really excited about
and we hope to do the same with with
other areas
kovitz kind of put drone delivery and
and robotic delivery on on the forefront
of everybody's mind it's kind of
accelerated things which we're excited
about we feel like there's some real
opportunities there
long term we'll see how long that
that term is but um we feel like if if
we could help
cut down the the number of batteries
needed by
60 that could be pretty significant for
these drone fleets or for these robotic
fleets
and it may not be that extreme in all
cases but we feel like we have a pretty
good
value proposition for these companies so
that's kind of the the
area the vision that we have going
forward is
tapping in first with these these
academia
and and government areas where they're
doing the research for this drone
delivery and and things like that and
then
transitioning more into the commercial
side as as the regulation permits that
um so no and i think that makes complete
sense you know so it almost sounds like
you're saying hey this kind of we
started out in almost
i'd say high-level hobbyist drones right
or in the sense of it was
hey it's the ones that you take the
video you can fly them around and now
you're looking at what are the
applications that really you know not
just nice to have kind of a thing but a
really a critical of the battery power
is such that
you know for the military for delivery
services for other areas
that they are going to be bigger
distances or have that
spec or particular need even more so
reinforced
that's kind of the areas of opportunity
that you guys are headed so i think that
that sounds cool well now
we are starting to reach and i left a
little bit more time just because it's a
and also a topic that i think is
interesting on
your biggest mistake and we talked just
a little bit before but i'll ask you the
question then we'll dive into the topic
just a bit more
but before before we dive in so first
question i always ask as we get towards
the end of the podcast is
what was your worst business decision
you ever made and what did you learn
from it
so i like i said i kind of hinted at
this earlier but feature creep and this
is something i know
all of my mentors and friends and the
engineers we've worked with and
different partners and
employees that they're going to cringe
because
i told you so and it's something that i
knew that we all knew
but it really is a trap that even though
i knew it
it's it's so easy to get sucked into it
especially
as an entrepreneur when you're getting
ready to to launch a product and you
feel like hey
we have one shot at this and we've got
to make sure that the product we launch
is the biggest baddest best solution out
there
so that we don't get trampled by the
competition and
that that fear of getting crushed by the
competition it forces you into this
cycle of
well if we just did this we would be
that much better if we just did this we
would be that much better and
and we totally got sucked into that and
that killed us that
i mean here we are five years later
and our product is amazing i feel like
we've developed it
out a lot more than from just the little
multi-port charging box that we had
but we missed out on a lot of revenue a
lot of opportunity that we could have
been taking advantage of
that would have helped us to grow our
team faster that would have helped us
get in front of more people and it
it was just a big mistake that we should
have avoided um
and looking back that's that's a big
regret and a big warning that i would
give to any entrepreneurs out there is
just
don't let fear paralyze you to the point
that
you don't launch when you have that that
minimum viable product and so looking
back
i think the way to avoid that is having
a scope for your project which we did
but really sticking to that scope and
saying okay this is the scope for this
product for
the first launch and then we'll set a
scope for the next one that's going to
have these additional features
so that that's something that going
forward we've definitely
implemented that into our business model
no and i think
and where i've ran into it and kind of
almost you know i think it happens
across a lot of different industries
um you know i i get harped on it by the
software guys that i work with and
they're kind of the same thing they're
like oh yeah here's a
i'm like oh this should be a simple
feature right we can just add this and
it won't take you
well that will only take us a month and
you know and this is why in blah blah
and you're like oh yeah that probably
does award a month's worth of work
and we'd rather do other things but it
is so easy because you have
especially if you're the inventor you're
you know the idea guy you come up with
that you can see so many pass and so
many things to add
and some of them first of all are just
bad ideas if you were to stand back and
say
nobody else other than me that thinks
that's really cool nobody else will pay
for it
or even if they're good ideas you to
your point you start to
you start to hold off your product too
long and you miss your markets and you
you know you miss a window or two i like
your point of you know it's almost
you worry so much that you only have one
shot if you introduce in the marketplace
and it is not the perfect product right
out of the chute
at least perfect in your mind that
you're going to you know
it's going to fail and you're never
going to be able to recover which is
seldom the case and hey you launch it in
there
and you get feedback from the
marketplace the feedback is valuable
help should even make it better helps
you to know where they're what the pain
points are what they're going to pay for
what they're not
and kind of i hate the term minimally
viable product but
and i'll give you my short reason why so
minimally viable product in my mind
always sounds like you're putting out
the crappiest product you can
as quick as you can i'm like well i
don't want to put out a crappy product
but i think you know more i would say
maximally viable product but more of
look at your constraints look at how
much time what your budget is
when you need to do it what the scope
and the specification are
and then give their product best product
you can within that spec or within that
scope
but make sure it doesn't hold it up yeah
exactly and
and that's something that we were just
so excited we figured hey we're going to
have the first battery charger that has
an app
that's built into it so you can see the
individual cells while they're charging
and
but our early customers wouldn't have
cared about that it wasn't
necessary for for a product that they
would be happy with so you're right it's
not a minimum viable product it's not
like we were
gonna push out a crappy product but our
customers would have been totally happy
with
with what we had we were just trying to
put even more frosting on it so that we
would look good
compared to the competition and it
wasn't needed yeah and i
think there i think i like that point as
well because i mean and the reason i
harp on it and left a little bit more
time because i think that it's one that
it happens to almost everybody i like to
your point it's like you know
we you hear about it and everybody's
like i'm gonna be different i'm not
gonna fall into the same traps
and most of the time you fall into the
same traps you have to learn the lessons
sometimes the hard way
because i think if if i remember now
diving into the details i think where
you guys said you made the mistake was
is that you had one battery that was
built for the original battery system
they phased it out wasn't that part of
it as well
another kind of issue that you ran into
is as you put all this time and effort
to do that
and now they change the system on you
and all that time and extra effort
first of all that people weren't paying
for but second of all you can't even
recoup it anyway
yeah exactly we we had focused all this
time and energy on this
this drone we had done all this market
research and these were the drones like
these two drones were the ones that
were dominating and then right as we're
getting ready to roll out our product
that we were so proud of
the drone manufacturer rolls out their
next model and it totally sets us back
and so
it really forced us to take a step back
and it was a painful step
but it also helped us to look at our
system and say okay how can we avoid
this going forward
so that our product doesn't get phased
out
every year when this drone manufacturer
or that drone manufacturer pushes
something out how can we make it
a little more dynamic and a little bit
more of a product that
that really fills a need so that these
manufacturers want
our technology to work with their
technology
no i i think that there's a lot of
wisdom in that in the sense you know
what's always the hardest is anytime
your product is dependent on somebody
and everybody's to some degree is but
some certainly more so than others
you always have that kind of
interdependency and the more robust you
can make it that you're not either
emboldened to just one
individual or one provider and or that
you can much more flexibly adapt your
product i think gives you the the
strength that you're talking about
so i always even look at you know
sometimes when you do like apps with
that
you know and going almost back to the
phone apps on the phone and then apple
or
android or anybody comes out makes the
updates and now your app is no longer
relevant you have to put in all that
time money and effort again to update it
or to
revise it or to do a new one it can be
that kind of that never-ending cycle so
i think you know certainly
like the wisdom of sharing that you know
make it see
take the pivot introspectively look at
and say
how can we make this so we don't get in
that same trap again
yeah with that now we'll jump to the
second
question i always ask is um so now if
you're talking to someone that's just
getting into a startup or small business
what would be the one piece of advice
you'd give them
yeah so i would and and maybe this is
just the season that we're in but
the thing that keeps coming to my mind
as i've been thinking about this
question
is every entrepreneur you need to
develop grit
and i think you need to practice
gratitude and what i mean by
that so developing grit
there is no easy business if it was easy
everybody would be doing it and nobody
would be willing to pay you for it
and so you're doing something hard
you're going to have days
that are awful you're going to have days
that
your partner is depressed you're
depressed you don't feel like you can go
forward
and you don't know what to do and
that's where i feel like you really have
to take a step back and say okay
i need to have the same passion and
excitement
that i had on day one for this project
right now in this moment
because that's the only way that we're
going to get through this and i think
it's important too that
your family your partners your spouse
they need to have that grit too because
an entrepreneurial experience is going
to be
on all hands on deck for everybody it
doesn't matter what phase you're at
it's it's taxing on your family on your
partners on your employees on you
and so making sure that everybody that
you work with
has that understanding has that grit
with them will will definitely help
carry you through those down days
and then the practicing or the
practicing gratitude side of things the
reason i bring that up
i feel like it does a lot of things for
you as an entrepreneur
practicing gratitude it will help you
make and save so many relationships
because
you're going to strain a lot of
relationships when you're going out and
you're
you're starting a business and you're
you're doing this early on you're asking
for free advice or you're
you're working on a project and it fails
or
or you're bootstrapping and maybe it
doesn't work out
just right and you don't pay your
investors back as quickly as you wanted
to
everything that you can do to show the
people that you're working with that hey
i'm in this i am so grateful for your
help it'll help you a lot
and it'll also keep you in a positive
mindset where you can take a step back
and you can be teachable
because if you're not teachable if
you're always defensive and
well this is why i did this and you're
wrong for this reason
you can't you can't learn from your
mistakes and you can't go forward but i
feel like if you have that
if you practice gratitude and even when
somebody's
ripping you apart or has some feedback
if you practice that gratitude and you
you look at it a little differently and
say hey
yeah maybe they just ripped my pitch
apart or they just ripped
my whole technology apart you can learn
from it and you can say okay
they ripped it apart because of this
what if we change this
and now all of the sudden our product is
much more
robust we have something that can really
make a difference in the world
and it it just started with that
principle of gratitude where
you have that open mindset you're
willing to thank somebody for ripping
you apart
so that you can learn from that and i i
feel like
if you can develop those two things
you're gonna make it
no and i like both of those i i agree
grid is one that i think sets you up and
it is you know
however cliche it is or however overuse
it it really does come down to
everybody thinks that there are a lot of
people think that you know the dream is
to run your own business or to do your
own thing and
a lot of people get into and they find
out hey this isn't for me it's not as
fun it's not
it's not the e it doesn't look it always
looks a lot easier when somebody else is
doing it right in the sense that
whenever you see the tv shows or the
movies or the you know whatever it is or
you talk with somebody oh their business
is just so easy
for you to know almost every business
requires a lot of grit and to your point
there are days you know your business my
business that you just have crappy days
it's just not fun
and you're saying you know whether it's
how to make payroll it's how to deal
with employees it's how to
do with product development it's how to
deal with clients it's how to deal with
investors
not all of that goes right all the time
and so if you don't have that grit
you're just not gonna have it
i like the gratitude you know one of the
things that i think even if
being grateful or showing great
gratitude even if you disagree with
someone is something that i think is
worthwhile and you know that when i and
the ip firm
we work with a lot of clients and you
know some clients are awesome to work
with
and others are less than fun to work
with i'm not going to name which one it
is but
you know some of them are just they take
a lot of work and so you know and
sometimes you just get frustrated with
them or they and they and then they come
and yell you even though
you've written off time you've done a
whole bunch of work because they're
expectations
but just showing that extra level of
gratitude putting your the client first
saying hey i'm grateful for your
business this is what we're doing and
those type i think it goes to your point
a long way for those that are along with
you supporting you whether it's a client
whether it's investor
whether it's employees or anybody else
to show that gratitude as opposed to
taking the defense so i like both of
those i think they're great both great
points to hit on
was we wrap up if people want to find
out more about your business they want
to reach out to you they want to be a
customer they want to be a client they
want to be an investor they want to be
an employee they want to be your next
best friend
any or all of the above what's the best
way to reach out to you
yeah so they can reach out to us on our
website we have a contact page
architectcharge.com or they can reach us
directly
my email is manti architectcharge.com
i'd love to answer any questions or
talk to anybody that that needs
needs an ear all right well i appreciate
uh appreciate coming on i
certainly encourage everybody to check
out the website reach out to manti if
you ever have any
anything that he can help you out with
um now if you're a listener
make sure if you uh if you have your own
journey to tell we'd love to have you on
so
go to inventivejourneyguest.com apply to
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your journey
if you're a listener make sure to click
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get notifications as all our new awesome
episodes come out and last but not least
if you ever need any help with patents
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here to help just go to
strategymeeting.com and grab some time
and we're
always happy to chat with you well thank
you again manti fun to have you on been
a pleasure and wish the next leg of your
journey even better than last
thank you you too have a great one devin
you