Remain Curious

Coach Cam

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

10/20/20

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

remain curious um you know there's i think it gets so easy to try to pack a ton of like you know one piece of advice for someone starting you know curiosity to your point with your story with you know the pitch year one year two it was your curiosity you know from year one that got you back into year two right and so like to stay curious and like follow almost like scooby-doo like follow your nose as to where those next clues go even if the door is closed like [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups to seven and eight figure businesses as well as the uh founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and today we have another great guest on the podcast cameron campbell as i think you go more by coach cam but uh so uh coach cam he went uh or started out working for the texans in their marketing department uh went and worked for i think public schools in urban houston for a period of time started to use uh did a first business or a business doing sports training company uh morphed that over into more of a school program and now you're doing doing some hustles public speaking business right now doing some coaching you wrote a book and then your head coach of a charter school in houston is that about right about right yeah so you got like 99 of it right so i transitioned out of coaching um or formal coaching as an athletic a couple of years ago but the others you hit on the head man and just uh try to stay busy all right well plenty to stay busy so i gave a real brief overview of kind of the your journey and what you've done but why don't you take us back to the beginning and let's hear a bit more about your journey yeah so you know my journey as uh as an innovator really started for me um i guess as the entrepreneur started for me at like 9 10 years old and so really just tying a lot more to the back of a bicycle and you know before landscape business is really as formal as we know it now and just you know riding on the back of my bike and knocking on neighbors doors to to cut lawns and you know the innovator bug and kind of our conversation prior to to going live was really always hardwired in me right and so you know even from that just the falling in love with iteration and tinker and tinker and modify and so you know that was the summer of third grade and you know by a week i figured out that if i actually cut my neighbor's yard first and then rang the doorbell and said hey i cut your yard you don't have to pay me if you don't want to but i did it right turned into oh thanks for cutting it by the way what else can you do what else do you need i can wash your car so before you know it i had like a bucket of soap tied to the lawnmower to the back of the bicycle and you know just falling in love with like that i gotta stop just for a second so you tied a lot more to the back of your bicycle so how do you how do you pull a lawnmower and not have it run into the back of you or lose control and how does a lawnmower fall behind you as you're pedaling your bicycle yes i never said i was going fast [Laughter] no so i i i tie like a string like so from like the back of the lawnmower and maybe like a two-foot string to like the back of um to back to the back of my bike and just like you remember as a kid you just like sit like uh you just like i forgot the term used to call it but you have people like standing on the back pegs of your bike and then so you you like carry somebody i forgot what we used to call it give somebody a jump right and so like you have somebody like on the back of your bike and they're like standing like well at least where i'm from like you'd stand they lean on like your shoulders and then maybe you like give somebody a jump and they'd be like sitting on your handlebars but no you guys didn't do that out there i i i saw i apparently i was the the kid that was too risky first so i saw others do it and yet i was the one i usually i had a hard enough time not crashing without tying things on or having other people write on it so i was just lucky just to stay up on my bike and not have any issues so that was about the extent but i do know what you're talking about i have at least seen it on the movies and i'm sure i've seen other people do it man that's like even telling that story is flashing me back i used to like ride like dribble my basketball i was riding my bike and at one point i was able to cross over not multiple times but you like ride get your time in with your feet and like cross over and bring the ball to the other side and ride and yeah man it's your bicycle pedaling skills far surpass mine so i couldn't even i don't even think i could dribble let alone cross over let alone have a or a lawnmower add a bucket of a wagon with a bucket of everything to wash cars so mastered bicycling much more than i did so now let's fast forward a little bit she did bicycling kind of started that out as a kid now how did that transition as you were growing up and doing that starting to get into the business world you know the cool thing about that devon and even again like telling that story like kind of makes you flashback from a nostalgic perfect perspective but you know what it's what it what i realized now is what it taught me is like there really are no periods in life there are only commas and so like you take something you learn add a comma add something learn something else take a comma and learn something else and so you know even you know that what that taught me into like grade school was like you can do more than one thing and so i was a kid like as an athlete you know i lettered in two or three sports i had you know a nine to five or like i worked at a grocery store after school i was a president of student organizations i just i always enjoyed a full plate and i always enjoyed uh sort of rebranding myself but like not being one specific person to everybody right and so like the student council guy for those people the football player for these people the fca guy the you know the christian athlete not that i was inauthentic in either of those roles or any of those roles but just understanding that you know as an entrepreneur you can serve many people you know in many different ways no i i that's good lessons to learn so now and so let's fast forward a little bit so you go to go to i think college or you went to university um study for a bit what it or doing that what did you transition out what did you go into i think you mentioned you went to work for the texans and marketing department or how did you make that transition or what or what led you down there yeah so uh i was also kind of to that point i leveraged like every internship that i had right so like i played football then in the winter i interned in the sports marketing department for basketball right so that kind of i began to get my toe wet into the internship space and so i interned with the texans first in the equipment department which coming as a former athlete is extremely humbling i mean you know i was never the guy who threw dirty jock straps at the equipment guy's head right but you you understand that there are people who do do that right so for to go from one side of the game to the other and i enjoyed it i learned a lot i think that so many so many young entrepreneurs think that you can't work in corporate america like i have to start off i can't work for the man you know if i can learn and make mistakes on somebody else's dying and not that that's why you're going to you know starting your business or working for yourself but you know you're going to make so many mistakes especially as you get into the workforce right and so you know the cool thing about working for the texans was you know it was a safe place for me to make mistakes but it was a deeply deeply competitive work environment right so my colleagues with a cohort of you know guys who you know we came in together you know you were scrappy you were competing against each other and you know you worked so many hours and i think that that was the beginning of the transition for me excuse me into full-time uh entrepreneurship was like man i'm working 70 hours 75 hours a week at minimum wage um and but i'm producing you know either my colleagues are working 75 hours a week and they're producing 40 hours worth of production and getting paid the same or i'm working 75 hours a week and producing 80 85 hours a week of production and my checks like wait a minute this isn't this doesn't make sense no i get that so so now you do that so in continuing down your journey so you did worked with the texan for texans for a period of time did the marketing got or say hey i'm going to leverage what i learned i'm going to utilize that i'm going to soak up all the pieces of knowledge that i think you mentioned that you went to public school after that or kind of what was the what was the motivation or transition or what how did that take care for you yeah so i transitioned out of that and i that was as i was leaving the texans what i was beginning to start my public speaking career and so you know just again being being you know young dumb and not knowing much you know can i step out on my own and do this public speaking thing which i answered was pretty quickly no right so it's like yes it's a hustle it's something you can add to you know your your cap and be a resource but you know you can't you know live off of that especially first starting off so i slid into you know the public school space and and started my coaching career and for a charter school which was a really cool experience um serving some really really at need kids and doing very purposeful work and i transitioned out of that you'll appreciate this story so um my first year they hired a spanish teacher who got caught in immigration and customs she was coming from mexico and they weren't able to get her over so they asked me to come like stay in her class the first day of school sure no problem that lasted like two weeks so now you kind of get past the first day of school you're not really teaching and you know i have to actually teach you spanish oh boy so they they've never hired anyone and i ended up teaching spanish for like two sessions a day the entire year and it was i assume you knew spanish or did you learn a lot with the students or how did that go piquito you all wanted to quito i'm from houston so of course i know like a little spanish right but you know like i wouldn't teach your kid i don't know you personally but i wouldn't teach your kids spanish i wouldn't do that to you you know what i mean like that's not that's not in that kid's best interest and that was kind of the second you know awakening for me was like you know in the corporate space court the machine will always move in the machine's best interest like they they had a salad they had budgeted you know resources to hire someone right but it was in their best interest to you know kind of double down and and i get it but it's like you know we're talking about you know the welfare of kids here and and what they need to be successful for their future so um that's when that that was when i really became disillusioned with you know working in the corporate space and i started five star academy and and that quickly morphed from me training kids you know for 60 bucks an hour 50 whatever i was charged at the time 50 bucks an hour you know for two or three hours a day in the sun in the texas sun which you know 150 bucks you know mid mid 20s like cool that's not a bad day until hey that's not a bad day today i'll take that any day so right exactly right and so it's until you take a step back and you get the houston rain and it's like oh it rained for two weeks and so now not only can i not train because it's raining but now it has to dry up it's dry now it's humid and so very quickly that morphed into well if instead of charging one kid 50 bucks one-on-one why don't i train small groups and charge them 30 bucks per head and train three to ten kids so now i'm making 150 to 300 bucks an hour well you know that works but then kids go back to school so then everything declines so now you've got to try to build up this you know preconditioning camp for basketball and it kind of turned into like truly a hustle as he described and it's like wait a minute this is not sustainable and so um after maybe a year or so i i can't remember but after a little while you know you take a step back you're like oh i'm tired i'm drained i'm you know it's hot outside and so you look around it's like well what i've found a pain point there there's something here to this training thing but how do i begin and i didn't know much about scale at the time but how do i automate it can i systemize it so i began to plug and i found that the best fit for that was for me to become a certified vendor and i began to do contract work for school districts and isds and counties and nonprofits and so instead of charging 50 bucks an hour or 30 bucks an hour i could build at 100 or 110 bucks an hour and staff that with somebody else and then you know that was my first introduction to like passive income and you know again i'm you know it's always easier on the other side but it was you know the the challenges of uh the trade-off of can this person do a quality job you know you're on edge from three o'clock to six o'clock waiting for your phone to ring like this kid break his arm or did this little boy touch this little girl i mean just all these little like you know subtleties that you don't think about until you're in the moment and it kind of um you know so that was that was a pretty unique experience for sure so so as you know and that's that's i i can see that's an interesting experience and so now as we continue down your journey um you know so you've done you started out in a marketing department with texans worked with public school for a period of time did your then you transition to sports training that kind of morphed into a after-school training program and then like it sounds like kind of in addition to that or you're also building kind of your side hustles which were public speaking and coaching and then you wrote a book so how do you where's your how do you focus or where's your focus now or are all these competing interests do they all go together or what he kind of is saying hey this is now as i made these as i've gained these experiences as i've done these different things this is now where i'm focused or this is where i'm headed exactly and so you begin to add even more hustles to the plate and another coaching job and you get to a point where it's like wait a minute this is this is not sustainable one but then two none of these can scale with me as a bottleneck and so as a natural creative um you know i began to kind of morph into understanding that if i could understand and learn process that would process i can scale and so i wrote my first book last year alpha redefined and that was my first actual i'd say product space or experience and you know writing it obviously was a labor of love but once i finished it you know i was like wow this is a resource that i can pack in my garage build a sales team around even outsourced to handle logistics and shipping and so that kind of sent me down the pathway of uh you know trying to figure out what other products i can create to provide a great experience for people and that um i had a doozy of a time last winter in e-commerce and you know the blessing in getting my butt kicked in e-commerce was as i came off of my my book tour and kind of doing some promo around my book tour i launched my online course when the first quarter of your day and you know the experiences and the setbacks that i had in e-commerce last winter allowed me to step over those mistakes um as i began to to you know ramp up this digital product and so um that's where i am now so uh win the first quarter of your day a playbook for wealth health and success it's an online course uh kind of steeped in the best practices uh that i use not only in my life but you know one of the cool things about writing this book was i was able to interview you know dozens of people but over 12 millionaires and self-made entrepreneurs and i was able to kind of aggregate all of that content and best practices of what they do to start their day no i mean that's that's that's awesome and it certainly sounds like it'd be an insightful and insightful book and be able to one that you can certainly learn a lot from well as we start to head towards the end of the podcast well why don't we jump to i always ask them a lot or two questions towards the end of the podcast so let's jump to those now so the first question i always ask is what was the worst business decision you ever made so the worst assist business decision i've ever made um it's that's so in 2015 um again side hustling just kind of working and i'm i'm ubering and i'm lifting and um it's not moving as well as or as fast as i like it to i'll say that and so i'm sitting in front of a high-rise building and i was like waiting for the phone to kind of ping you know so i think to myself self you know you don't drink coffee but you know people who do is a starbucks kind of like on the first floor so i said i wonder if i go into this high-rise building and just knock on doors of these office suites and just ask for folks you know hey i'm making a coffee runs anybody wants starbucks and i'll charge you three bucks to order whatever you want you know you know bring your order back up and when i say devin that took off like he wouldn't believe and so you know within two weeks i was just i mean i was literally like bogged down just going up and down flights of you know stories of buildings taking people's starbucks orders at nine o'clock in the morning eleven o'clock and two o'clock kind of that you know kind of mid-day slump um and it worked well for me right and so i'm a very transparent person um i was you know i was looking for another penny so i could have two opinions to rub together at that time right which i'm sure at some point every entrepreneur gets to that point and it it worked so well for me that i actually got a cease and desist from starbucks and so uh so starbucks was like hey thank you for you know the support and patronage or whatever but we're gonna have to ask you to stop you cannot uh pro you can't deliver our hot drinks as hot as we would provide them to our customers and you can't you can't deliver our cold drinks as cold as we would deliver so the cold drinks would kind of begin to melt the froth stuff on top and i'll have to order the hot drinks extra hot so they could remain warm by the time they got to the customer so you know the biggest mistake i'd say this is 2015 as a point of reference so you know ubering in lyft was super new but there were no post mates grubhub uh uber eats right and so um while i'm not gonna like say i started that or i'm definitely not taking credit for that um i'd say the biggest mistake was looking at that coffee concierge is what i called it but looking at coffee concierge as a stop gap where i probably with better perspective could have launched that into i could have systemized that and then sold that to lord knows who right and so um you know that could have been my first my first you know super big win so i said that's that was probably my first mistake is you know getting out when i probably should have stayed in a little bit longer i think that so it is a hard hard decision to make in the sense that sometimes the side hustle is just that it is just a temporary job to make a little bit of money until you find the next big thing and other times side hustles are the things that become the make the big business or the things that are become rewarding i mean i remember the first business i started was when i was in mba school i was doing my law degree in nba did you studying both of those in my country i started i entered a business competition with a few other people and that was just kind of oh this sounds like fun i like to do startups and i think this sounds like an uh thing and you know so we entered and the second first year we entered and didn't go anywhere second year we entered and it was one that i was passionate enough i said hey this is enough more than just a it's more of a better idea than just to do it as a business competition let it go and i was on the opposite side to where all of the people on my team are they were all graduating they were all moving elsewhere and they didn't have any a very very big vision of it so i bought them all out bought the or continued to build that company came to i think it's i'd have to look see their seven or eight figure business now but it all started from this fun side hustle kind of business but on the other side you can say hey this is just that it's a side hustle it's not going anywhere but i think making that balance or decision isn't the thing is something that i'm it's my stop gap or is it my next big thing is i think always one that's a hard decision to make for sure so now we'll jump to the second question so now if you're talking to people are just getting into startups or small businesses just getting started what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh remain curious um you know there's i think it gets so easy to try to pack a ton of like you know one piece of advice for someone starting you know curiosity to your point with your story with you know the pitch year one year two it was your curiosity you know from year one that got you back into year two right and so like to stay curious and like follow almost like scooby-doo like follow your nose as to where those next clues go even if the doors closed like it did for me in e-commerce last winter you know last winter kicked my tail i mean i i i would not tell you how many thousands of dollars like went down the drain and i didn't have much to show for it but then you fast forward not even six months later seven months later you know all of those losses um i've probably 3x you know the money that i lost last winter um because i was able to fast-track that into you know producing an efficient and high-quality product in this um online course all right no i think that that's uh good advice and and uh good things for them to take away so well as we wrap up people want to get to whether they want to read your book they want to use your courses and find out more about your online resources connect up with you otherwise make a connection what's the best way to reach out or connect with you so on social media you can find me coach cam cares on instagram on youtube uh i think i have a a facebook page i mean i don't know if people still use facebook uh on twitter coach cam cares maybe i never really got into the first place so i'm not the good person to ask yeah like i don't i don't know and then um uh the course uh my book i have a complimentary digital magazine it's called crown and glory all of those can be found on coachcamcourses.com all right well i i and certainly encourage everybody to reach out uh connect up with you and any or all the platforms you're on and uh certainly uh you have a lot of things to share and you've done a lot of interesting things well i appreciate you coming on the podcast it's been fun to hear your story now for all of you that are listeners if you have a in a journey inventive journey of your own to tell feel free to reach out to us at inventivejourneyguest.com to apply to me as a guest on the podcast if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you get this notifications and when this episode and all the new episodes go live and lastly if you ever need any help with patents or trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller ip law well coach cam it's been fun to have you on it's been a fun journey wish you the next best leg of your journey and thank you again see you soon you English (auto-generated) All Related From Miller IP Law Recently uploaded