Love What You Do

Rob Cancilla

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

1/12/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

you really really really need to love and be super passionate about whatever you're going to do because it is going to take away time from other things that you love to do i.e like your family or another passion whether it's golf or whatever it may be you're going to have to sacrifice and take away time from something that you love to go and build this because most likely you don't have the resources to just not be working and you know just build it as a full-time job so for me whether it was video or content creation like i've had to do it on nights and weekends i've had to wake up early or stay up late and so that takes away from things that i love to do and so to really be successful i think you need to understand the commitment that you're going to put in and be super passionate hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that has uh built several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with your patents and trademarks just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat with us now today we have another great guest on the podcast rob and cance or cancilla is that right yeah you got you nailed it i've heard multiple versions of that one but yeah you nailed it all right i did i it's not very often i nail it names or especially one that's not air straightforward to pronounce so i'll take it so so anyway rob um this is a quick introduction to rob so he has uh kind of the theme of his life has been passionate about video so he went and went to film school started out graduated in communications and uh then he was doing some things and uh or that happened his graduation came around it was 9 11. economy was taking it so he went to work for i think a reasonably early stage startup then went to harvard business school and worked on project management for a bit got an mba ended up going to do some consulting and then fast forward went over to recruiting for a bit and then when the pandemic hit started to go on to tick-tock and do content creation for resume platforms so a whole bunch of different uh pivots and different things all over your journey so it's a pretty good summary with that that's as good as i can get so that welcome to the podcast rob i appreciate the intro i appreciate the appreciate the time it's funny to hear somebody else tell my story but that's i think you need the nail right in the head there's a a lot of different career paths a bunch of different startups and an underlying theme of you know startups and video are probably the two things that have kind of interweaved throughout my journey if you will of of going through multiple different startups technology companies and then trying to build my own stuff whether that's you know my own platform or my own content and those kind of things so it's been quite a quite a journey over the last uh we said that graduated 911 so it's about 20 years now i can imagine and so all journeys are fun to go down so maybe now with that as the introduction and welcome you the the audience let's take a take it back in time a bit so you went you're going off to you loved video you had a passion for that you went off to the film school so maybe start your journey there and tell us a little bit about how that started yeah that's where you're at today i mean product of the 80s right like an 80s kid uh and then in the 90s you know in the 90s i'm in high school and i think the 90s was like this really big like amazing time for film there were so many great movies that came out in the the mid to late 1990s and i just got this huge passion and you know i was like i was fortunate enough that parents are like you know go and follow your dreams so i went off to film school to be the next martin scorsese and i quickly realized that that probably wasn't going to happen and that was like you know it took a little bit of a journey in itself right it was kind of like all right well maybe this isn't the exact path so i ended up graduating with a you know a communications degree to kind of give myself a little bit of a of a cushion if this film thing didn't work out right give myself some options if you will and so that worked out great and then all of a sudden uh graduation comes around i i taken the summer off to go find myself if you will and then 911 happen into the market you know as everybody remembers tanked it feels in a lot of ways very similar to where we are right now and so i talked to a lot of you know graduates right now that are struggling to find work and i was like i remember what that was like uh and so i went off and i found myself in a at the time it was called the dot-com we didn't call them startups back then they were still called coms uh but i found myself in an early stage startup in boston uh you know just working crazy hours all the time for like two to two and a half years three years uh we were kind of changing the loyalty program landscape with like american express and some other big players uh and it was a great opportunity i never really you know as a first job i think going into a startup is a really interesting point because you get to do so much you know and when you don't know what you want to be when you grow up it's a great opportunity to get kind of thrown in and be like figure it out and that's kind of what i did so now let me ask one question so first of all you're so you're coming out of school at 9 11 and you kind of mentioned you know different reasons different motivations different impact on the society but certainly kind a bit the same as what people are maybe facing today with hey you've got kovid you've had a bit of a slowdown in the economy you know people are nervous and all of those things so you know and you mentioned you also we're going into film and then you know did communications is a bit more of a background or a bit more secure whatever you want to call it um so you know how did you land that first job coming out of 911 the economy's you know economy slow and trying to navigate that how did you find the first job that you worked at honestly it was through a friend right i had a friend who had worked at the company actually had left but like was very familiar with it had a lot of friends i think i got connected to somebody in referral and those kind of things so i was familiar with the business model because of his time there as well as kind of got an introduction to it and honestly it was i needed a job to be honest i mean don't be wrong it ended up being this much bigger opportunity for me but i needed a job and i tell people like i'm doing a lot of coaching now for like you know students that are coming out of into the market and it's like you know there's this pressure that like you spent four years in your degree and like your parents spend all this money and maybe you spend a lot of money and it's like well i gotta go do my life calling now in my first job and it's like no you really don't and especially in this economy go find something that like at least you're excited about or you think you may enjoy or you know take that first leap but it doesn't have to be i mean don't be wrong if you want a school to be a doctor or a lawyer you should probably figure that out but if you went with a more generalistic degree like absolutely go get a job uh i had a mentor a long time ago say to me and and it stuck with me and i've shared with a lot of other people is your 20s or to figure out what you don't want to do in life right and so i think like taking a job out of school that may not be something that you you know you studied for four years that's okay you can check that off the boxes like i don't want to do that anymore and to me that's kind of what i was doing i was like this is a job that pays the bills it's a startup it seems really interesting and i know the brand let me at least take that leap and see what it's like so now so you just and i think that makes complete sense so you and you know she said first of all hey i need to make money i need to get a job and i think that you know that's the first thing if you are in a downturn economy you know not don't just settle or take what you have to get in the long term but if you have responsibilities you have expenses don't be too proud of hey i got a degree in this and this is the only thing i can be good at go take or take a chance find those jobs and you know make those pivots and then if you really are still passionate about what you do with your degree and the economy picks back up then circle back for that and get back re-engaged but don't sit there and just kind of wait for that perfect job to come along and miss opportunities in the meantime so i like that so you went to that works for the early stage startup and i think if i remember right you went to harvard business school after that is that right yeah and let's be clear i went there as an employee not as a student so yeah so i got a job at the harvard business school which you know honestly i didn't get a degree from there but i got one heck of a really good education right i spent a couple years working in the executive education department basically doing program management and project management and so it was an opportunity to work with all these different organizations and leadership as well as learn for some of the best strategy leaders in the world for almost two years uh and like i said it wasn't a degree but it certainly was a great education and it gave me a lot of direction in that one i wanted to go get an mba which i eventually ended up doing uh it gave me a lot of insight into how strategy leaders think about you know evaluating the landscape and looking at the competitive landscape as well as you know total addressable markets and all these kind of conceptual strategy things that i had never really thought about as a 25 year old and even being in a startup and all of a sudden i got this plethora of education on how to think about starting a business if you will um from again some of the best strategy leaders in the world hmm no and i think so and what made you just out of curiosity so you went and you went and worked you know as an employee not as a student but at harvard business school what made you decide to jump out of the the startup you originally started at and go over and do that for a period of time yeah i think the startup was uh i'd been there for almost a couple of years two or three years something like that i was and it was a i won't bore you with all the deals of the business but it was a 24-hour business so like operationally we ran 24 hours a day and i became a manager and i was leading this team of 30 and it became daunting it was like a lot of phone calls at like four o'clock in the morning from another country and i was like i kind of just needed a little bit of a you know nine to five uh and then somebody got introduced introduced me to this this opening at the harvard business school and i was like man to have you know i've always like thought about my resume as like what what is the brand that i'm putting out there and i thought well listen if i have an early stage company and i have the harvard business school on my resume in three years like those two things are going to be a really good one-two punch when i kind of figure out a little bit more of what i want to do when i grow up and so i thought it was a good kind of blend if you will of the of two different worlds that i could apply to where i thought i wanted to go no and i i agree with you and i think that you know it's interesting sometimes it's not in a resume builder first of all you go as you mentioned you got a good education you got to go and you got to work for a prestigious school which is great to put on the resume but then you can also say this is what i learned this is what i did there this is how i got in i certainly think that you know makes it for that stepping stone so to speak now you the interesting i think did you go get an mba after you did harvard business school for a period of time yeah i mean i jumped around a little bit and moved around for one or two jobs i think but i eventually was like the goal was i got the itch to get my mba while i was at harvard and i knew like in the next 24 months after leaving there i was gonna go do that so yeah in i got my mba in chicago and loyola i did it part-time while working you know worked full-time and then did you know night schools and weekend night school and weekend for like three years and grinded it out uh but it was amazing it was a huge opportunity uh i actually got into consulting through my mba so i had a professor who was like an adjunct professor she was teaching like an hr 101 class right and i was thinking about a new job opportunity and i honestly brought her my resume is just like you know can you give me some feedback like you know i'm going to put myself on the market and whatnot and she was like yeah would you ever consider coming to pwc uh in their consulting practice and i was like would that be amazing now one question this is a quick aside but before we jump off so you went and got an mba now was how come he didn't go to harvard business school to get the nba and it could have been now all i'll freely admit i got a law degree i've got an mba degree i wouldn't have gotten into harvard now i think i've ever been as smart and can work as hard as they do but i didn't have the credentials i didn't have the background i didn't have the connections whatever you want to call it i wouldn't have got in so was it a matter of hey i didn't want you didn't want to go to hartford it wasn't available or an opportunity or kind of what made that or made you to go to a different school i would have loved to have gone to harvard after spending two years on campus and seeing all the perks and benefits i would have loved to now honestly my undergrad i had a great experience in my undergrad my grades were not great i mean i went to a really good i went to a good school you know had the brand and all that but uh yeah my grades were not good enough there was no way uh and so yeah to be honest and i was okay with that like i think again i i the time i had there was incredible but yeah there was no way i didn't even apply let's just put it that way and as i mentioned i'm in the same boat so dope uh you know certainly understand you know that and you can't not always get into all schools and you go where the opportunities are so now go back so i didn't i just was curious because that was an aside now going back to see you worked you asked your professor to look over your resume you ended up landing a job there so how did that job go and how did that kind of go along on the path to your path yeah and it was this the next part of this is probably the pivotal part right because now i have now i've got a startup i've got the harvard business going and i have consulting it's like to me like again i kind of built this like plethora of intel if you will um and and i took you know everything every move i make i like to think it's strategic and so what i did was i ended up in consulting and doing like competitive intelligence so basically i was looking at the market based off of things i had learned at harvard and you know and basically said okay how do i help the firm basically make strategic decisions about who we acquire what kind of talent we go after whatever that may be and so it was an amazing time i got to work with you know ex-government folks that have been in the intelligence space uh and again i applied this kind of learnings from you know the the strategy leaders of the business school and said okay here's how here's how i think about it now consulting is awesome is a fantastic i think it's it's something i recommend to mba students all the time as kind of a second education and a great stepping stone out of your mba but you kind of go through a crossroads where you are going to be like on the partner path and you're going to be a road warrior for the next 10 years or you know you kind of go back into industry and that's kind of the crossroad i ended up at it around three years okay no that makes perfect sense so so you now you've got consulting you've got an mba you've worked for harvard business school you've got your original communications degree and then i think that at one point you also went and worked for was a partner of facebook or facebook and pinterest i can't remember something along those lines yeah and so that's this is where the pivotal moment comes right so i go back into a startup it's called tongle it's you know uh basically helping brands crowdsource video content so all of these platforms that come out like you had instagram you had vine was a thing back then is now gone you had youtube was blowing up into brands were being challenged to create more and more video content but they couldn't do it at scale and so tongo was this early stage startup that was basically helping scale that so it was perfect for me because it was all about like working with filmmakers and video and brands and so i got to tap into like the business school mba side of me right and the startup side you know part of me as well as going back to like these this you know passion for film and video and so it was this three years of going from a series b you know 11 million dollar company to 30 million dollar company you know having multiple roles and honestly the most passionate i've ever been in a role because it got to you know left brain and right brain if you will right i got to tap into all of my strengths if you will or my passions uh and that's really when i started getting back into video in a in a different way and thinking about like there is an opportunity to kind of mesh these two things together uh meaning you know my my job and my life as well as my passions and so uh that was 2014 to 2017. now one thing i think you mentioned along that journey when you're working for i believe it was pinterest that you said that you know that wasn't as good of experience or didn't like it as much or it was something that there was a drawback or something maybe dive into that a bit more yeah so i went from uh so i went from tongo that early stage company to facebook and then ultimately to pinterest and i think honestly both facebook and pinterest again was kind of helping brand scale video in a different way for me though i went it was the moment when i realized that working for large organizations like facebook and pinterest these are massive organizations now you know ten 000 employees got hired at facebook of the year i was there i'm the favorite person i like to be in a company where it's less than 50 people it's less than 100 people you know i want to get on a well now i want to get a zoom call i guess and see the entire company but i like to walk in the office and see most of the people i want to wear multiple hats and so the joke that i make all the time is uh if i'm if i'm working for a company where there's meetings about meetings then like it's probably too big for me right like that's that's my that's my breaking point if you will i i've been in those companies i've been in those meetings you're like you know and the this old saying or the saying that i always used to joke around with this hey some companies if they could be if they can make money by are holding meetings they'd be a rich company so i'm certainly you know there's certainly some truth to that so and i'm probably the same way i don't know that you know if there's a good reason to have a meeting let's have the meeting but if it's just a meeting about meeting to plan for a meeting about another meeting then you're like i'd rather just get to work and actually do something so yeah i mean that's that was really for me was for me i mean you know the the technology side of it facebook and pictures are both fantastic companies they move fast they're very innovative and all those things worked really well for me but again i was just like i went from a 40 person company like i said to facebook which was 10 000 people got hired in the same year i was there and i was like you know i really want to get back into an early early early stage company uh and that's been the kind of theme for me the last three years now is working for an early stage recruiting company trying to build my own platform on the side creating content on the side and you know i tell people all the time my side hustles have side hustles right now so i kind of keep finding new things to keep me going and excited about yeah and i'm i'm the same well i always used to joke but there's a lot of true to it is that you know people say what do you do for a hobby or what do you do for a fun night i'll do a startup like that's my that's my fun or that's what i enjoy doing so i think that there's i certainly get where you're coming from so so you did now facebook you did pinterest you've done all these things so now you know i think that that transitions into after you did that for a period of time you get into you got into recruiting and doing that and going yes i pivoted i had been in sales for like seven years and so then i pivoted into recruiting which is you know kind of a natural parallel they're very similar kind of uh muscle memory or dna or whatever skill set whatever you want to call it or all of those above uh and so i i've always really been fascinated by the talent space i had built teams globally on multiple companies that we just talked about and so i was always really fascinated by it and uh this early stage company was utilizing technology like you know nobody had really done before and was thinking about it in a different way as well as i was re the recruiting we focus on venture capital firms so we focus on startups so i was like again got to like play in all these spaces that are very similar to me and feel natural and allow me to tap into strengths uh and so yeah that's where i've been the last couple years and then i just started building my own things on the side i realized there was some opportunities most recently i built a video resume platform called vivio which is a free platform where you know job applicants can upload their resume it kind of looks like a linkedin profile but it has a two-minute video where you can either introduce yourself or talk about your skill sets or show a portfolio depending on where you are in your your your phase of your career or what you're doing but it gives you another kind of way to stand out i think like i tell people on your resume before we die before we dive too deep and then we absolutely will one question have it so you know you have so up until then at least a path in my mind makes sense in the sense okay we went to communications hey first job you took was you gotta you know apply to the jobs that are of interest but take a job you can take during a down economy you'd harvard business school hey it's a great resume builder it's a great place to get experience and then you go do startups because you're passionate about it you do tongle you do some of the kind of the technology realm of facebook and pinterest and those things now you jump over recruiting in the sense that you know one sense that makes sense you know as far as hey you know a lot of times when you're in those type of jobs and especially if they're a fast gross growth company like facebook or pinterest they're certainly always recruiting and you have to go through that process and figure it out on the other hand you know it's it's not the same as on technology it's not the same as you know recruiting and finding people and finding those looking for jobs and making those matches is a bit of a different thing so how was that as far as you know was it scary to make that jump make that transition was it exciting was it time or how did you say hey i'm going to kind of leave my comfort zone so to speak and go try something new that's a great question it was but it was nerve-wracking like in the idea of yeah this would be like a you know this would be a pivot in my career right again hadn't really formally been in the recruiting space uh but it felt as natural of progression as i think i could find right and so you know there was there were some personal reasons too like in sales i was on a plane all the time i was traveling and so there was motivation to be kind of grounded in one place but tap into these skill sets that i had but i won't lie i mean taking a career change which had been the second time i really made a career change is always nerve-wracking but if you can find those areas where you can tap into the skill sets you already have and you don't have to like relearn everything right so for me it was very quickly i could very quickly jump in and say here are attributes that i bring to the table that are very transferable and here are the parts that i need to learn but like the learning curve is a lot shorter than if i went off and i don't know went to law school and as you said you got a law degree in mba like that that would be a learning curve i would probably not jump into you right now in my career now that i'll give you the one it just complete side note nothing to do with your journey but you know the interesting so my undergraduate now talking not stealing your story was um you know i did undergraduate and electrical engineering in chinese and so those are you know they don't necessarily make sense but i served a religious mission for my church in taiwan so i already learned chinese so i added that on but i came out really with an engineering mindset you know this is how you tackle problems this is the kind of test you take this is how you study for them and then it went out to law school and i'm now competing against everybody that did non-engineering that did like you know poli-sci or pre-law or anything else i go into you know the first i'd say the first year really of law school it took me a little while to figure out how do i how do not that i couldn't learn i didn't understand the stuff but how do i put it in the format that i can compete with my peers that's what the professors want and everything else and there was definitely a different change of mind and learning curve and i always use the interesting and uh you had the law school in the mba school right next door to each other so they were you literally i'd walk across the sidewalk and i was at the other building but i'd do law and it was very analytical and you wrote it to a specific way and then go to mba school i'm like half of this is fluffy stuff like it's a kind of a feel good i'm like nba had about fifty percent that i really liked and fifty percent i just felt as fluff so i get the absolute change in mindset in china kind of changing gear and you're having to relearn or figure out new ways to apply the things that you know no absolutely yeah it's funny about the law school in the nba where i got my mba half of my classes were in the law school building and and so like i was like is it is it always strategic that every mba program has the law school right next door to it i don't know maybe so maybe get the marketing people and the people that are building the company that they get the lawyers right now next to them to say don't do that because you'll get in trouble so who knows so so now you now jumping to you so you left facebook you left pinterest and you said okay i'm gonna do my own thing which is recruiting and you started to do that and i think it was a bit more not putting words in your mouth but a bit more traditional or kind of going that down the recruiting route and then you had kovitz or kind of covet hit and you had to make a bit of a pivot and i think you pivoted to tick tock with video is that right yeah so no a couple of things uh so yeah so i'm still recruiting right let's see uh but so i'm recruiting for a company that's not mine and then i'm building this video resume platform on the side right into it's something i'm passionate about and i'm trying to figure out if the market is there for it and then covet happens and i'm like well this is an interesting opportunity to kind of really test this idea a bunch of people are going to be looking for work they're going to be looking for ways to differentiate themselves you know my platform it seems like a really good opportunity so i'm also leaning in towards a younger audience it's video so i'm thinking this has to be you know probably going to lean into a younger audience is going to lean in so i do my research i know the social media platforms for my time on facebook and pinterest and i'm like alright well tick tock is is kind of blowing up right now let me lean into the idea of that audience and talking to them about video as a way to get a job and so i started going on tick tock i started creating content and i didn't want it just to be very self-righteous and just content about this platform i had created so i started doing broader content and it started expanding out now and more and more and more and just doing job search tips and career advice and whatever and then that just took off and then now it's you know kind of a massive audience that i have where i kind of help educate this journey that i've been on through you know consulting and startups and all these other things and then you know just come into it now it's coming to a content and so now i'm literally talking about two other businesses that may stem off of tick tock which all just started because i wanted to educate an audience about a previous business so it just happens it kind of evolves now one question on that because and there's a question that i think people you know whether and it can be podcasting like i do and or tick tock facebook pinterest and a lot of things but you're trying to go organic when you take to the the tick tock audience you're saying okay i'm going to provide a bit of an educational value to younger you know younger demographic that may be looking for jobs and downturn in the economy you know how do you monetize that in the sense that you know it's it's one thing to put out a lot of content mate you know if you get a viral video and it has millions or billions of views like the shark song or whatever and i i don't ever listen to that one but you know you get enough views and you can actually monetize it but for the most of the videos and most of the content you're not going to monetize it to a level they're able to make a business around it so as you're starting to dive into tick tock put out that content help the younger audience is it just a pure altruistic i'm going to help them out is a way to drive people to your business and using you as a recruiter or other services or kind of was there a thought or what was that kind of platform or how did you engage that yeah at first it was more just education and trying to get people to like use our original platform and test it and learn from it and then it evolved into whatever it's about to become and right now i'm evaluating that on a day-to-day basis of you know is it a coaching business is it a coaching business and something else is there another technology play how much of the video resume you know video are we going to lean in on so there's a bunch of things that we're trying to figure out the good news is when you build a large enough audience and you start to learn from the audience the monetization part actually kind of starts to come organically you start to figure out like what do people want what do they need what value am i creating today and how do i take that value and expand it out into my monetization monetization strategy and so honestly that's like evolving in real time uh but it is fascinating to see you know one taking that video part of it right and and you know starting with vivio which is a video resume platform and then expanding it to what tic toc is today and seeing where that's to go tomorrow is just kind of day-to-day but it's pretty amazing and it gets me it gets me up every day and it gets me excited in the entrepreneurial spirit it gets me excited because it's video and uh and it gets me excited because i like finding i like helping people find jobs i mean i've jumped around in my career we just talked about it i've had a lot of jobs you know so not only have i been a recruiter a lot of the tips i give are like this is how i pivoted my career to three times this is how i got a job at harvard at pwc at facebook like these are proven theory like like practices these aren't just like made up stuff that i read on linkedin like this is the stuff i've used and you can use it too no and i think that completely makes sense and you know it's interesting so you know as with a lot of people you start out your career you're you know you do your own thing you know you work for another company never really think about recruiting you're never on the other side of the recruiting table now as i've you know shipped in my career and start my own firm and sell my own companies and startups and that and we've been hiring and doing different things it's always interesting the things that you look at on resumes and the things that you look at when you're recruiting is to the tips yes that's a a good thing or no i'm not even going to entertain them one of my things you know this is an insight that i found you know that for me is if somebody if i'm if somebody's reaching out if i if i post a job and they and they express interest and i reach out to them and they blow me off or never come back that's an automatic no for me if i'm saying if i'm even trying to hire you before i'm even trying to hire you you're not showing up to the interview on time or you're not being responsive you're not actually responding to emails then i'm not i'm going to hate you as an employee because it's never going to work out so it's always just interesting it's kind of a side note of how you know the simple things that can get you in the door or not get you in the door and how so many people don't think about that and you don't realize oh if i'm 10 minutes late i'll give you my my best one that i had to do either i just i simply just said i'm not going to hire you know i was a little bit nicer but i said this is i had somebody that i thought was a good candidate on paper they actually you know looked good on paper yeah and i was interested in so i'm reached out we set up a time you know it was during covet or that so we did i did the initial interview as a video and it was via zoom and i you know so it was whatever time it click we'll say 12 o'clock comes around and i said okay sit there waiting waiting waiting in about 10 you know i usually give people about five minutes like you know sometimes it takes a little bit technology or to get set up or whatever five minutes in i give him a call and says you know are we still doing the interview are you still interesting he says yeah i'm just finishing up the round of golf and i decided that i didn't want to i didn't want to i didn't want to wreck my golf game or give that up so i'm just a few minutes late to finish my golf game and then i was gonna give you a call and i'm like okay that's a that's a definite no like there's no way i'm gonna hire you if you're saying that i'm trying to hire you for a job that you say you're interested in and golf is more important you probably have a different priorities than what i'd like an employee so completely especially the interview process if you're if you're if you're making me stand a priority in the interview process imagine what happens when i'm paying you and i'm like at least lie better like just say hey i had something come up i was a few minutes late i profusely apologized but i'm definitely interested now don't tell me that you're going to play golf and that's the reason why you're standing me up is because you want to play one more hole of golf rather than do the job interview so there's my complete aside in my rant but now going back to your journey and um so you take now so you've got tick tock you've got covid you've made the pivots next six to 12 months where do you see that taking yeah yeah so a couple things uh so probably gonna go pretty i'm gonna go into this coaching business is kind of one area that came out of tick-tock i'm gonna redo video the video resume platform we're gonna kind of play around with that a little bit more we've taken a bunch of learnings from it and we're gonna try to revamp that a little bit uh and see where that goes i'm teaching a little bit so i went back to my mba program i did a class for them last uh last quarter as like a one-time thing and now they're like come and ask me to come back and do some more part-time teaching so i'm gonna start to take all these things and put them together and say okay what are what are some of the you know what are what can happen in like six to twelve months ideally i'd like video to take off and as well as this content business as well uh kind of take off but i think it's gonna be rooted in content creation and helping people find jobs it's kind of the underlying theme i would say that i'll be going through no i think that makes uh makes complete sense so first of all good luck on the next six to 12 months now as we reached and because i think it's a bit it's hard to even know what the the next six to 12 weeks are going to look like let alone type of a thing as things but i think that the common theme and i think it's kind of been throughout you was being willing to pivot being willing to understand the marketplace and where you can apply your talents and how you can apply your talents i think leads to success no matter the marketplace because i think you know i always you know talking with a lot of starters in small businesses the one thing i always talk about is you know the thing when any time then the market changes and it can be whether it's coveted it can be good bad or indifferent but if there's a change in the marketplace it reveals a change in the armor of the competitors right what they're not doing well because if it's a good if it's a good economy good marketplace everybody kind of all all ships rise and you don't often see what the things that you could do better things you weren't doing as well because everybody's doing well but when you have those changing say okay this is why they're not surviving this is what they're not doing well it gives you the opportunity to say you know should i go on tick tock should we be how do we appeal to the younger market how do we do recruiting in a new in a different way and i think that's a smart thing to take with all of that so now we're going to as we wrap up the podcast and we have i'm sure a lot more rabbit holes and things that drive me mess with recruiting process that we could talk about maybe for another day but as we wrap up the podcast i always ask two questions at the end so we'll jump to those now so the first question i'll ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah so uh so vivio which is the video resume platform i think when you're starting out uh you want to name the company right like it's like this weird starting point where you're like i know what i want to do i want to build this video resume platform but like what is the actual name of the company in the brand it took us forever me and a friend of mine started it there's a text thread somewhere that's like 200 text probably that's just names back and forth and then you're also trying to figure out like how do you get a dot com or a dot io like how do you get a name that you can put into a decent website right and so we came with vivio which is this play on like video and bio kind of thing and we're like that makes sense we did a ton of research there's nothing really out there so we're like good we get the i o video dot io we get the website and then we go build it and we're working with a designer and an engineer for like 60 days and all of a sudden one night i get a slack in the middle of the night and the engineer is like hey are you familiar with the other video and i was like no no so quick google search uh and the first thing that comes up is uh when sex meets tech and it was like uh like a like a bluetooth vibrator company called vivio and i was like you got to be kidding me so if you google video you should scroll down to the us version uh video resume platform not the other one and yeah honestly like i don't know if we could have avoided that mistake and maybe we just kept checking because when we first they must have launched in between the time we got the name and before we got to market but man like you know you try to you try to build a brand with a name and you start there and for us it was a map and so we literally were like should we change the name or like yeah who knows it'd be maybe a funny story or maybe we won't even make it it won't even matter so we're like forget it let's just keep it and go with it so yes my video resume company shares the name with a vibrator company out of the uk all right that that is one of the top ones i like that mistake this because it's a unique one and a memorable one so who would who would have thought that you would have come up with the just randomly the same name as a completely different company completely different industry completely different country yep so yeah all right so now careful what you name your company that's what you should just take away from me be careful why you name your company and do your research in due diligence that's right there's a very good lesson to learn there so all right second question i always ask is so talking to someone that's just getting to a startup or small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them yeah this advice has probably been given but i think it's worth mentioning again is like you really really really need to love and be super passionate about whatever you're going to do because it is going to take away time from other things that you love to do i.e like your family or another passion whether it's golf or whatever it may be you're going to have to sacrifice and take away time from something that you love to go and build this because most likely you don't have the resources to just not be working and you know just build it as a full-time job so for me whether it was video or content creation like i've had to do it on nights and weekends i've had to wake up early or stay up late and so that takes away from things that i love to do and so to really be successful i think you need to understand the commitment that you're going to put in and be super passionate about it because there's going to be days and nights when you're like i don't want to do this or i'm too tired or i've got other things to do and you got to kind of find a way to push that through and i think if you're you're really excited about it and it moves you then it's a very different thing than saying well i just want to make more money or i just wanted to go do this and so you probably heard that before it's probably a little cliche but i do think as i've been going through the last six months if i didn't love video i would not be creating a video every day like that would it would then there's days i don't want to create a video but you know it pushes me through and i find a way to do it no and i i always i always kind of talk about you know i think that one is to find your passion but you have to find a passion that people are going willing to pay you for right in the sense of too often here they cliche oh follow your passion follow your passion i'm like well yes follow your passion is a good thing but if you're you know if i'm passionate about you know i use the example passion about basketball it doesn't matter how passionate about basketball i'm not going to be an nba player i don't have the skills i'm way too old and list goes on and on i can be as passionate about playing basketball as i want now you may be able to find hey my passions about basketball now i'm going to go into sports analytics or i'm going to go into trading you know trading cards and i don't do trading cards i have no idea if they're still valuable or not but those type of things find where your passion meets something that people are willing to pay you for and then that's i think where the sweet spot is but i i like your your feedback on that or you're you're not i think i mean i think that's spot on right to your point like your passions you do need to recognize the market and see where it is i mean for me it was like recognizing that tic toc was blowing up and that video was still very much a medium that people are are leaning in on but i agree with you like you can be super excited about something and if the mark the rest of the market isn't then yeah you're probably not going to monetize it it's probably going to be a challenge or the road is the journey to that monetization is going to be so long that by the time you get there you're going to be like i don't actually love this anymore so and so you have to figure out what that happy medium of is like is this something i'm super passionate about can i monetize it and can i get there in a reasonable time without it and you don't always know you have to test and learn but like you got to be willing to do that so no and i completely agree so now as we wrap up so people want to find out more about you know your business they want to watch your tick tock videos they want to use you as your recruiter they want to get more information they want to reach out to you they want to be an employee they want to be your investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to connect up with you yeah probably linkedin for this uh certainly you can follow me on tik tok and both are under my name rob cancilla rob underscore cancella on tick tock but either one of those will be the the best linkedin obviously you know has got a much better kind of communication channel in the sense of networking and and all those kind of things so highly recommend going that route all right well i definitely encourage everybody to link or follow you on the tick tock watch your videos reach out to on linkedin use your recruiting services so anybody especially if you're looking for a job or looking for how to land your next best job certainly reach out to rob well thank you for all for coming on now for all of you that are now the for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell feel free to reach out to us we'd love to have you on the podcast just go to inventivejourneyguest.com and apply to be on the podcast if you are a listener also make sure to click subscribe so you can get notifications as all our new awesome episodes come out and last but not least if you uh ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business feel free to reach out to us at miller at key law by going to strategymeeting.com and grabbing some time to chat with us so thank you again rob it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks all right have a good one you English (auto-generated) All Podcasts Sales From Miller IP Law Recently uploaded