How To Deal With Management

Angela Thurman

Devin Miller

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

 um definitely document document document um whether it's um you know keeping a schedule for your project and documenting the tasks that you're completing or keeping a tracker of you the life cycle of your contracts whatever it is spend that little bit of extra time to document the the work that you're doing the completion of these tasks because in the end that is going to save you so much effort and time money it's all going to be a huge savings um and and savings of frustration i would say [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups and seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great expert episode and we'll uh where we'll having angela thurman on and as a quick introduction to a little bit about what we'll be talking about is a lot to do with management now management can mean a lot of things so it's going to be more about contracts related to supplier management and contract life cycles and dealing with right-of-ways and supply chain management and flow charts and cheat sheets for contracts and uh probably there are several other things but with that much is a brief introduction what we're going to be talking about welcome on the podcast angela well thank you devon i'm very happy to be here thank you so much absolutely so i gave just a brief introduction as to some of the things we'll be talking about but before we uh dive into the topic at hand maybe if you can just take a couple minutes and introduce yourself a bit to the audience and let them know why you're an expert on the episode or on the area great thank you so i am the um principal managing director for thurman co i am um a uh sort of a a boutique uh project management firm in houston and i am a certified project management professional with about 30 years of project management experience primarily in aerospace and telecommunications so i had the luxury of being trained in project management early in my career at nasa by dr harold kirschner who is recognized in the community is probably the godfather of modern project management theory he literally wrote the book and i have that book on my shelf so very very lucky to be trained by dr kirschner and and then to apply those skills uh to project management in the um space station program um way way back in in my career and then since then i've continued to work in technical program management um in in telecommunications and in aerospace most recently uh 10 years for a major u.s aerospace company dealing in supply chain issues risk assessment and um i did apply a lot of that to contracts contract management and um risk assessment and um and and then of course the technical uh skills as i am a degree engineer so now no i think that's a great background and with that as much as an introduction let's dive into the the topic at hand so one question i would assume people will probably have is you know why do i need project management why do i need contract management hey one thing is i manage projects just fine and if i have a contract we review it and we sign it and that's the end of it right so kind of give people ideas to what they should be thinking about what they should be looking about and to a degree why they should care about this area of their business to make sure that they're it's done right sure so um so projects are are defined as a temporal uh event they have a start and a finish date in aerospace and in telecom however those events can last a very long time 20 30 40 years and so for both the project and the contract you're looking at something that can last for an entire career and oftentimes may be handed off from one person to another person it's unlikely that one project manager or one product manager is going to be responsible for that project for the entire time so you're going to want to have someone who has a good strong background in project management or contract management so that you are assured of having all of the documentation captured archived organized and easily accessible for the entire team as it gets passed along from one person to the next as rules change in the project team that would be one reason and then project management is is not an easy thing if you're going to do it well and that's why we have a very robust examination to become a certified project management professional in order to become a pmp you have to show a lengthy history of a project management um a skill and and then you have to sit for a very difficult exam that most people study for um for months and um so it's it's uh it's it's not something that you just decide oh i'm going to be a project manager and and then voila you are so um yeah it's it's um it's a rigorous um training now let me kind of follow up with one question because a lot of our audience is going to be startups small businesses people just getting into it they may not be able to go through all the training they may not have some you know have the bandwidth to hire someone at this point and definitely understand that as they grow and as they get bigger it's a great area that they should be convey you know they should be looking into but i'm here to say okay you know i i don't like project you know projects are hard to manage you know i don't always do a good job or i don't keep on top of things or i don't you know know how to go about doing this because i don't have that formal training what are the best ways to you know aside from hiring someone that's awesome and trained and knows what they're doing if you're at an earlier stage on what are some of the things that you should be looking about or thinking about or resources to be looking into or how do you get going with understanding how to at least at a minimalistic level pursue project management so there are some very good courses that are available um for free um that you can you can train um linkedin learning offers some really really good courses so um and and routinely they make these available to the public bonnie biafor is highly recognized and recommended as a as a project management trainer i would also recommend that you get connected with your local project management institute or pmi chapter and most um most chapters will have a a list of people that are willing to do a certain amount of pro bono work because every pmp member has a a set number of hours of professional development that we continue to work on um throughout our career and some of that is is in giving back to the community so maybe you can get a pmi member who is a pmp to um to help with a with a small project or to help you set up some templates or there are templates available for free from pmi or other resources microsoft has an excellent software tool um just called microsoft project it is rather complicated if you're not a project management professional but um if you um if you dedicate yourself to learning the tool um you can definitely um make your way and and that is is one good resource i would recommend there are lots of other tools available as well no i think that that sounds great and definitely it's always good to have those tools to have a place to start as you're learning now shifting gears just a bit and it kind of goes along with project management but there's also what you know people maybe at least vaguely familiar with which is supply chain management or you know those type of things where they're saying okay i have to not you know if you're in a business where you're using third parties you're using vendors you're having suppliers and that type of thing you're not only having to and it can be whether it's a huge business you have a whole bunch of suppliers or you have a couple of suppliers but you're you know having to manage that supply chain and you know that's where as you get into a lot of cobid you're seeing that that's that's had a major impact on supply chains right in the sense that you're suing everything everything from you know i was going into it as a complete aside but was going into having my bike fixed the other day and went into the by a local bike shop and they do an awesome job and i was talking with about them as they're they're doing a bit of tune-up and some work on the bike and you know asking them how the business going they say well the uh you know services side is going great we have you know a lot of people that are doing biking and needing or wanting things fixed up and done on the sales side we can't keep our bikes in you know even as us as vendors we order something it's probably two or two and a half years out before we're going to get it because the supply chain is so disruptive so you know that one's certainly a difficult thing that even if it's not especially if it's coping but even if it's not in the copic time period where you're having to manage your supply chain and make sure that you have the research sources you need to run your business so with that as a backdrop you know if you're looking at using other vendors you do have a supply chain you're not just purely a service based business what are some of the things how should you go about managing your supply chain what you what should you be talking or thinking about what contracts should you be thinking about if you're reviewing it kind of give us a bit of a an overview or a summary of uh what they or what people should be looking at okay so supply chain um assessment is it's all a and supply chain management is all about risk assessment so you have to consider your business your business model and your appetite for risk so um some companies and some managers may be more risk averse than others and so if you are a very risk-averse company then you're going to want to have redundancy in your supply chain as much as possible that may not always be possible so you're going to look for things like and some of it will depend on your customers and what the technical requirements and flow downs are and what sort of quality requirements and certifications they may have flowed down so in aerospace that's that's there are lots and lots of regulatory requirements that are flowed down in automotive there's also lots of regulatory slowdowns many many industries pharma food those are all highly regulated industries i'm hard pressed to think of an industry that's not um highly regulated today but um so those are some of the considerations in your supply chain management um you're going to want to think about what is the um the system that you have in place your erp system your mrp system that you have in place to manage your supply chain now for those just just jumping in for those artists really erp nmrp what do those stand for and what are them inner pot enterprise um gosh now you put me on the spot um even if you don't remember the acronym what are they or they are the they are the systems that the the um the company has in place to manage um inventory production purchase orders deliveries those sorts of things so they they may be from a company like sap or microsoft or oracle something like that there would be a big um the big core of your financial reporting and inventory management that sort of thing that makes sense so now one one additional kind of question or a question or follow-up to that is you know supply chains a lot of people if you're if you're a startup small business maybe this is your first foray into it you know you go everything for you google someone online you ask for recommendations you go to a facebook group you go to an alibaba and you know find someone that see that says that they can provide no is there anything that are red flags when you're looking for whether it's reviewing contracts or setting up a supply chain that you should be saying hey these are things that if it comes up you should avoid and or maybe on the opposite if there are things that you're saying hey this is a good indication that it will be a good supplier anything of that nature oh you want to be able to know can i can i visit the supplier can i go conduct a site visit and and view for myself their the the quality of the product that they produce can um can i see um their production line and and and can i evaluate for myself all of the areas of risk that are hot buttons for me so um if if on-time delivery is a is a big hot button for me can they show me a history of their on-time delivery for their customers and can that somehow be validated or if um if um whether or not they have um the the appropriate certifications to produce a particular type of product is crucial do they have those certifications and can i validate that those are the types of things that you would want to be able to to vet for yourself and and there are lots of um uh organizations that can help you with that information no it definitely sounds like those are some good points i mean it sounds like to a little bit make sure you can they can check in don't just take their word for it check to make sure they can actually deliver what they've done have they done certifications can you actually go and see the work do they let you come on site those are things that they're saying no don't worry about it we don't need to be certified or oh you know maybe we don't need you to come on site we'll we can send you pictures if they're uncomfortable then that sounds like those are a few red flags that you should be thinking about is okay these ones may not be the best supply or supplier supply chain and we may want to see if there are other options or better options to that yes yes if they won't tell you who their suppliers are you know counterfeit parts can be a huge issue so you you may need to be able to prove the uh origin of the parts throughout the entire supply chain um and so that might be something that you would want to investigate no i think that's a great thing especially when you're going forward and some countries are great and very strict if you go to the eu generally they're going to be better be going to some other countries you know they may be making the part for the actual manufacturer then they make it for you know make a knockoff that you can't even distinguish it but they don't have the rights of the license or authority to make those parts for to sell them to you and it can create a big big issue a legal issue for you as that becomes or comes about or if it gets discovered so i think that's another great point now one of the now one of the other things that we talked about shifting gears just a little bit back to maybe the contracts issue is another thing you mentioned is kind of to have you know a flowchart of the contracts and kind of keep a table now what is there you know if what is the reason because i could see you know it's definitely if you're on a bigger scale and you're a huge company and you know you have a lot of contracts and somebody leaves you're going to want to keep that continuity which definitely makes sense but it seems like a lot of that is even applicable on a on a smaller earth scale because even you know if you're a startup or small business a lot of times you hopefully you have a contract sometimes they don't even have one but if they have a contract oftentimes it gets lost or people don't know where it is or you know what it says and so kind of maybe to walk people through a little bit talk people through how they should be managing their contracts how they should organize them and what they should be kind of putting in that cheat sheet or that you know spreadsheet so to speak that helps them to manage you know they're having multiple contracts sure so i i definitely recommend something as simple as a spreadsheet to just maintain the life cycle management of your contract because if you do have a contract for with a supplier who is for a program um or project that's going to last 10 years or more and roles are going to change um there you know change is inevitable and it's likely that you're going to have additional scope or some sort of changes requested by your customer so maybe they've been ordering this box and and it's always been black it's always been black but now they're going to order the box um with a special designer brown version and so now you've got the scope change that in addition to the black that we're going to continue to order we're now going to offer the box in a designer brown so um you need to have um number one you need to have a part number for the brown box you need to start ordering brown paint so you've got to have an order to your supplier for brown paint and you're going to have to modify your contract with your supplier to to order brown paint so your contract needs to have some sort of amendment or some sort of modification to start you got to have a price for brown paint and purchase orders for brown paint now so that needs to be reflected in your supplier contract with the paint supplier somehow and so that you in your main contract uh cheat sheet whatever your cheat sheet is just have some sort of update that says you know amendment one we're now going to order brown paint and it's because the customer wants to offer designer brown boxes and that you know maybe that's all you need not a whole lot more but if ever someone um you know came on new to the team they would understand oh well that's what that amendment's for and it could be something as simple as that now lots of times it's much more complicated that's a very simple example but uh but that gives you a description of why you might want something like this no i think that's a great example because you know i'd almost both on the more complex hey why did they change this what is this even referring to i think that that is good to be captured because everybody always thinks oh we'll remember and sometimes you don't remember yourself but more even so you may change positions people come and go their side come and goes and you know you saw it can be difficult to remember why you made the modifications now all asking i know the answer is an attorney but i'll keep my my answer to or at bay for a minute which is you know give the the simple example you know we want to have a change in paint color the box color or the construction or something simple is that something if you're modifying the agreement that you need to go to an attorney every time and that you should you know because that's what the fear people have is oh it's a minor tweak or modification we don't need to adjust agreement it'll be fine everybody will remember i'm sure they'll pay for it and we're probably already covered under the agreement anyway and so let's not worry about it and we'll just continue on is that a i have my biased opinion but i'll ask you for is that a good frame of mind should they just not worry about it if it's a minor that is a foreign idea just remembering and hoping that everybody will be fair and remember to pay is never a good idea if there are any changes the best solution is to document it just just so you can you can have it in writing and you can um you can have it to go back to in the in the future and say oh well now we want blue well here's how much it cost when we had brown so blue probably is about the same so or maybe it's a little bit more but you can have a point of reference and yeah never rely on the memory of anyone especially if that person may leave the company no i think that's you know now that was going to be my biased answer as well but you know i get it on the one hand that people are saying oh i don't want to have to go spend enough money on an attorney and i don't want to have to redo it and have it resigned or updated or anything else so we're just not going to worry about it so it is a natural human you know tendency to just if it's going to be a lot of work and you don't want to do it then you'll just kind of pretend it's not there push it aside but i think that that you know one of the things is if you're having a good system that's already tracking your contracts and you have it organized whether it's cheat sheet in your spreadsheet and you know have a a document kind of repository then it makes it easy to hey we'll just simply go in make that my you know if it isn't or a major modification but even a minor modification to the agreement and then we're going to be able to use that same document you know we can have an attorney if it's changing the color box from black to blue or you know something of that nature you can probably change out that one word without an attorney sign it or review it but even if you don't if you have the repository if you have a good description what it is it reduce your quad or cost quite a bit because now you're not having the attorney review everything it's just that narrow part so i think that that's definitely yet another motivation and reason why people would want to track what they're doing manage the contracts and then otherwise have them in good order because it saves a lot of headache asking the ball which for every business that evolves over time people come and go people leave people forget things people conveniently forget things when it's not they're not favorable to them anymore and it's much easier to keep track of that and i one parting thought on that is i wouldn't leave it to people's memories and i also wouldn't leave it to an email an email is not the same thing as a contract it's better than nothing i guess if you're not going to get something in writing but you're definitely going to want to anything that's not in writing and agreed to people it does for legal purposes really doesn't count so now we've covered a few things i'll go ahead i could if if you're thinking about the costs involved to to make that modification yes there there will be some time spent on that but think about the cost you're avoiding if you don't do it and then two years later someone refuses to pay a bill and they're like well why why did this shipment of 20 boxes cost you know 15 extra and it you know that's more than we've ever paid before and we're not going to pay this invoice now and someone is having to chase down and they spend a week trying to find out why these 20 boxes cost 15 dollars more and and all the time that would be invested to recover the information that if you had just taken the time to make that modification all of that effort could have been avoided no i think that that's them and that's that's almost best case scenario in the sense that you may just take you some time save to chase down why it is and then people will say oh yeah i remember worst case scenario would say no we never agreed to that we didn't understand that and now you're stuck trying to either force them to pay what you you know the cost that you just ate in order to make the change or you're having to go to court or you're having to do something you know that's going to affect the business so i think that in all friends it saves time on the front end that you're able to easily recall it and it also saves you some legal hassles uh potentially down the road it supports the relationship exactly no i agree it makes it really makes your relationship better because now it's not people on their side now feeling like the tab is just running up or they don't remember why it on your side it makes it so you're saying hey we agreed to this remember and then like oh yeah okay that's that's fair we did agree to it so i i totally agree well we have covered or several topics and i'm sure we could talk a lot a lot longer on them but as we're wrapping towards the end of the podcast i always like to ask one question the end of expert episodes because you know we talk about a lot of things everything from contract management supply chain project management you know contracts all of those different things and you know you're going to listen to this and you'll say oh there's a lot of things i should be doing that i probably i probably need to be but i don't know where to start and i can't i can't do them all today so to speak so talking to that if there's one takeaway if people can only get started on one thing today that would make an improvement or make it have the most impact what would that one thing be um definitely document document document um whether it's um you know keeping a schedule for your project and documenting the tasks that you're completing or keeping a tracker of you the life cycle of your contracts whatever it is spend that little bit of extra time to document the the work that you're doing the completion of these tasks um because in the end that is going to save you so much um effort and time money it's all going to be a huge savings um and and and savings of frustration i would say so um definitely take that extra moment um invest that extra half hour to just make sure that um that you've documented um the work that you're doing all the good that you're doing um and and and make the most of it and if you need a project manager to do that then either become one hire one find one but it's it's really not something that is beyond the the capabilities of the average person yeah i think that is great piece of advice you know it seems simple on this but yet every time people get busy and then you don't do it and it is definitely worthwhile the investment i think that's a great great takeaway as to if you could just get started on one thing at least get a system in place document it and keep track of things because it saves you a lot of time and headache and potentially legal issues in the future so with that as we wrap up the podcast that people want to reach out to they want to uh be a customer they want to be a client they want to pick your brain they want to get more information they want to you know be an investor in a greater business you're going to start or or they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more my website is www.thurmanco.com so t h u r m a n c o dot com all right well i definitely encourage uh everybody to reach out contact you find out more and if nothing else make a new best friend so with that um as we wrap up thank you again angela for coming on the podcast now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell or your own expertise to share feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everyone else everyone else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time within the chat thanks again angela and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you [Music]

Aloha Leadership

Eric Jara

Devin Miller

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 uh it's called aloha leadership uh aloha as most folks know is like uh you know way of saying hello we're saying hi uh what i learned from la to enrich is that it's a lot more loving it's a loving way of saying hi it's not it's like a welcoming it's a feeling it's a vibe and they've always taught us that you know it's that kind of leadership that actually makes things happen so as any entrepreneur as any leader in whatever industry whatever field any artist creator entrepreneur you need that kind of leadership uh because if not you're you're gonna fail it just it doesn't work any other way if you don't care about the people that are working for you they're gonna leave if you don't care about the people who are working with you why would they work with you in the first place you know [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller rp law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast so eric jarrah and uh give you a quick introduction eric so in high school didn't think about being an entrepreneur went to college on scholarships um 18 years old at u of u wanted to i think if i remember i shared the kind of the money you made from scholarships and started a scholarship foundation um studied abroad in south korea for a period of time found or found out about a company that needed spanish speakers got a job doing data analytics or business and data analysis or sorry you got a data business and data analysis degree graduated when worked for chile as a consultant for a period of time juan do his own thing came back to you or came back to the u.s and then his brother and him started a business that was started out as a hobby for making music and then he started to go into street clothing and collaborated with artists um also decided to build a record label help or his dad left his construction job and joined on the crew and started business helping other people doing construction so i think with that much his introduction that's all i have but welcome on the podcast eric yeah thank you so much for having me i appreciate it so i gave the very compact uh doesn't give a justice 30 second version of a much longer journey but uh take us back a bit in time to when you're coming out of high school and uh when you're how your journey started from there yeah for sure um thank you by the way for the introduction it's i feel like it's a long long intro whenever you know folks ask me to come on and speak and stuff um i was recently called mr everything by a close friend of mine well you know starting to be a close friend of mine because he's like man you're just doing so much and i was like well you know i i try to do what i can and make history but um so yeah when i was uh leaving high school uh this i guess we'll start leaving high school i had no idea what this whole entrepreneurship building your own business type thing was about uh stereotypically mexican family we grew up saying oh if you're going to go to college or you're doing engineering you're going to be a lawyer or a doctor and that was it so it wasn't until i got uh to the university of utah to the business school that i was introduced to this world of business um i went to the u blessed super super blessed to be on scholarship so i didn't have to worry about paying for school and i'm blessed to be right here saying hey i graduated from the university of utah uh debt free you know uh all in a scholarship so i was super blessed about that opportunity didn't have to worry about paying for school one of the things that i told myself when i first went to college was one day once i graduate once i get a good job and have enough money i want to start a scholarship of my own because it's because of scholarships that i was open you know to this new world that i had no idea about um that came a lot sooner than expected it was my freshman year i was only 18. i read a book by grant cardone and the only thing i remember from that book like don't don't ask me about the book because i don't remember anything but i do remember one line that said there's never enough time there's never enough money you never know enough there's never enough resources never enough knowledge just go right now so i said okay cool you know what i'm not going to wait so i started the scholarship when i was 18. you know i was blessed to have wonderful wonderful mentors even like in my first year uh thanks to the scholarship that i was on thanks to one of the scholarships that i was on and i asked them like hey y'all are the ones in charge of this scholarship like can y'all help me create my own type of thing um they were very uh you know tied to the u and that's where their students were at but i didn't want that type of limit you know with my scholarship you know if there's a student anywhere else in the u.s you know in the world even uh i want to help them out as best as i can so i asked them how they got started pointed me to some great resources uh got myself a lawyer and you know because all the legal stuff again i'm only 18. i don't know jack squat about business or anything like that so you know it kind of pointed me in the right direction helped me start that get that up and going um i'm only 18 though you know my network is really really small so the whole uh everything that was raised for that scholarship in the first three years came straight out of my pocket um everything that you know that i had worked for i didn't need to put to school uh blessed that all the scholarships are covering my tuition my books my laptop my housing my food and even some trips so it was like you know i don't need to work for myself uh all the work that i'm gonna um do and all the money that i'm gonna make i'm just gonna put it back to the scholarship so the first three years that's how it was um you know i just tried i did what i could i didn't really know where to go um but you know i had something cemented i got three scholars the first year i added on another three so it was a total of six the second year um the year after that um we had another two so it's like a total of eight students each with two thousand dollars each uh you know a thousand for fall semester a thousand for spring and it was all just coming out of my pocket whatever i could make i just gave that like a hundred percent of like what i made it went straight to the scholarship um if i were to run the the math just out of curiosity because if i were to have eight students and their each two thousand dollars you're putting into this out of your own pocket as a student yourself sixteen thousand a year is that right yeah 000 a year that's that's the most that i had ever done after that year was kind of put on pause because i'm like there's a lot of money and i don't know if i can continue to do this um but yeah that that that is you know that's kind of where it all got started um just me out of my pocket because the name of the scholarship is the freddie scholarship uh freddie is the name of my little brother who when i was 12 passed away and i mean when i was 12 i had no idea you know that life was so short and that like you know any time could be our time so i said all right i'm gonna make sure that his name lives on forever too so that's kind of what kept me pushing because obviously as a second third year in college like there's no way i'm making that amount of money and just being able to do that but because i had that why that like reason to you know let my little brother's name live on forever that's what kept me going for it so that's kind of uh where my entrepreneurial uh journey started trying to figure out you know how am i going to do this sustainably because obviously the way i had started was not sustainable at all there was no way i was able to um you know do what i wanted to do because i wanted to keep that going have three three new students every year and keep the current students as well i'm like that's gonna be a lot of money really really quick um so you know it was tough but what has kept me going like i said is just for my little brother because there's nothing tied to eric jarrah when it comes to the freddie scholarship foundation there's really nothing you know i when i was 15 i started doing pro wrestling like lucha libre type stuff like you know the dudes with the mask and everything and so i did this and this was a persona that we had uh running the scholarship running the fundraising events meeting the students and showing their the students and their parents the resources for college and stuff it was this person right here so there was nothing tied to eric jarrah to me who i really am it was all about my brother my brother my brother and that's the name that i wanted to push forward so i think that that's definitely cool that you're you know not they're not only just trying to get your education but also trying to help others and doing it in your brother's name is definitely amicable so so now as you're coming out of college and you've got your degree and i think you studied in south korea for a period of time is that right yeah i was in south korea on a study abroad but ended up there also with an internship thanks to another really amazing person one of i consider him a friend but he's also a great mentor cesar sanchez uh he hooked it up with this company down there that needed spanish speakers for their business it was like you know they're just barely coming up another startup story that's really really cool in my opinion and he said hey they need spanish speakers because their product is for the latin mark market like latin america that's where they're targeting and i was like oh snap hey i speak english i speak spanish i can learn korean a little bit if i need to um but you know i got you let me know what i can do and hooked it up there um you know it's honestly my first real ex like business experience um you know working directly for the ceo they said hey we need a sales channel that looks like this can you make it happen and i was like well i can certainly figure it out uh stereotypically mexican we're the hardest workers in the room um in my opinion and you know we might not be the smartest sometimes because education and like mexican aren't always correlated um but you know me being in the position that i was at i'm like you know i can figure it out i'll i'll learn something if i have to do hours of research like cool i'll figure it out um so you know that hustle kind of got me uh there as far as that that internship went so now and so you would did that internship you went down to and then graduated and worked in chile as a consultant as well is that right um it was before i graduated actually so chili was before as well okay so yeah so you do the internships and you graduate now when you come out because i if i remember when we talked a little bit before you got into kind of the music industry as a hobby and doing clothing was that your full-time gig or what were you doing at the time or kind of as you're coming out with you get your graduate you get your degree what did you do after that um so all of my businesses i started during college um none of them came after graduation at least not right now you know maybe in the future i start something else but um the record label that we started me and my brothers it's because we just been doing music as a hobby since uh my senior year in high school so this was the game before you know just on the side we love making music and that was kind of like our thing and we decided just uh last year 2020 to make it official we invested we created our own home studio um you know just like a random storage place that we had at one of their houses and you know we decided okay how are we going to do this if we wanted to do this full time what would it look like and i'm like well uh we need money if we want to do this full time like this is not going to pay the bills right away obviously you know being in music being an artist it's it's kind of difficult it's a two-part hustle where you ought to create the art and then sell it so you know we just kind of dove in said all right you know what we'll figure it out as we go uh that's kind of always been my attitude obviously with the scholarship at 18 years old i mean you know that's that's kind of who i am so okay let's run it uh we'll figure it out as we go uh we've been selling uh beats selling you know the instrumentals and stuff uh as part of you know the record label to get some money coming in so we can pay for photo shoots and videos um merch and like all of that stuff that comes with you know being an artist because that's honestly the only way uh to make money as far as an artist we're not that big so we don't have like sponsors or you know things like that um so you know it's it's an ongoing process i feel um but yeah it was my last year in college my fifth year in college that we started the record label officially okay no and so see it started the record label and i think that's you know awesome taking you know one getting through school and then taking the opportunities to say hey i'm going to start businesses i'm going to try things that they're let things fail let things succeed and then we'll continue to evolve so it sets up those opportunities as you're coming out of school as opposed to just simply graduating and looking for a job i think that's great to utilize that time so so now you're setting up the record label that's a you know as you said a bit of a lift take some time to be able to actually get the money coming in so what are you doing during that time as you're as you're getting that up and going in other words how do you you know pay for you know pay for a living kind of thing um so at the time when i started it i had two part-time jobs i was doing 18 credit hours in school so my two part-time jobs were mostly filling in um you know most of the time that i wanted to spend uh to make that money that we can just reinvest into the record label um besides the record label at the same time actually the exact same day that we legally registered the record label we also legally registered the streetwear brand that we also started together me and my brothers um shout out ivan meza jesus mesa you know penthouse and lavon is like their artists names but um you know we started the a streetwear brand because along with the music we were like oh what do we want to wear in the videos okay cool what if we had something that you know we owned you know we're not wearing the supreme and the gucci that all these basic artists are using like in all of their videos like something new something different and something that we have you know a strong tie to so we started the streetwear brand as well just kind of as an idea like hey what if we had something to wear it ended up uh i kind of took over as far as like where the streetwear brand was gonna go um and i wanted to make it a little more broader you know not just be a merch type thing you know it's like just with our names on it's like no this will be like a legit uh streetwear brand that anybody could benefit from and it's not just like tied to eric jarrah or you know my brother's names um we turned it into streetwear brand for artists creators and entrepreneurs because we feel like that's what makes the most sense to us um coming up the way we did and obviously being in music like i mentioned a two-part hustle creating art and selling it it's like it's tough and a lot of times people don't realize that you know when they start doing anything creative as far as like art goes whether it's music visual graphic um you have to be an entrepreneur like there's no other way to go about it you can't just create the art and expect bills to be paid like no you have to know something in business you have to be very business-minded to get things rolling so um we want to respect that kind of hustle with the streetwear brand and you know we partnered shout out larabara uh we partnered with her she's had her art in a bunch of different places she's amazing great great artist great great person and you know that kind of boosted where in dice it was headed you know what better way to make artists or streetwear for artists than with an artist themselves so we did a collab um this is a second collab actually that we have currently going on um and it's all just like you know based on her vision kind of help her uh come up get known as well that way more people can recognize uh you know the art and the creative talents that she has but it was because of that that kind of pushed us in that realm of okay you know streetwear for artists creators and entrepreneurs to me all three of those words mean the same thing uh but i know certain folks define them a little bit differently which is cool um but tonight they all mean the same thing and you're doing and so now you're doing that and i think that's cool you know it definitely sounds like first of all a fun business and second of all sounds like you know had a great path towards you know to actually bring it to fruition and if i remember as we were chatting in kind of in parallel with that or you know in addition to that you also had your father that was in the construction business and he left it and you guys started to work on a uh construction related business as well is that right yeah this was same year covet here last year was like you know the year that i'm like you know what better time to start a business so i started all three that year the record label the streetwear brand and the contracting business because um yeah like you mentioned my dad uh he quit his job uh last summer again stereotypically mexican what we most what you mostly see us working in is like construction and stuff like that but there's another stereotype when it comes to construction is that your boss is a really big jerk they don't really care about people they don't really care about their workers as long as they're getting things done they say okay cool and they're always like you know on their back saying hey you need to do this you need to do that you need to do that and my dad had been working in construction for 27 plus years um i say 27 plus because i don't know the exact number but it's around 28 29 years that he'd been doing construction and he was like you know what i'm just tired of this i'm tired i'm done like i hate not feeling appreciated i hate when you know the boss tells me i need to do this and this and this and i'm like i'm working on it just chill um i'll get it done and so he quit and he came to me he said hey um what do we start you know our own thing yeah obviously still in construction because that's where i know a lot of things um my dad you know he started from nothing pretty much just being you know the the heavy lifter the one that makes you know that actually is putting in the work to you know more management type stuff he had seen you know what it takes to bid on projects he had a really really cool mentor shout out brian olsen um who taught him he brought him up he said hey look come into the office for this day i don't want you to be out in the field today i want to show you something and you show them like the plans he taught my dad how to read the plans um how to make estimates how to bid on projects and what the whole process looks like so he said hey i know the construction side of things you know the business side of things let's tag team and do something cool like you know in our vision and i said okay cool but the first thing that i want to focus on is making sure that we're good uh leaders i don't want the same thing i don't want to create just another you know whatever other construction companies i'm trying to you know throw shade and say their names but i don't want to be another one of them you know i want to do this right so we started working together and you know he's been teaching me the construction side like the processing and stuff and i've been teaching the business side the the mindset that you need to have and how to best take care of your employees because it's it's competitive when it comes to anything uh you know any labor type job like oh he's paying me a dollar more i'm going to go over there and it's like well you know if it's not in the budget to pay him more then how about you treat him like an actual human so we go get our employee our workers our partners um we go get them lunch every now and then we invite them to like our parties our families type stuff you know the whole mexican hospitality we just bring that to the business um and make that part of like you know kind of how we run that business because yes construction is like you know it's its own thing but we want to bring in your our own little flavor of hey we care about you and it's because of y'all that we're winning and that we're able to put the bills like why wouldn't we help you with whatever your own personal goals are or whatever you're trying to do like not just in construction outside of it like you know how can we how can we make that relationship a lot better and it's like well for us stereotypically mexican we love to have fun we love to party so it's like hey come over this is kind of like you know the vibe of what it means to work with us uh i don't like saying working for us i say working with us um this is kind of the vibe this is kind of what you'll get and it's just like you know an all package type thing that it's like hey it's not just clock in and here's your paycheck it's clock in here's your paycheck here's some bonuses because we did really good on this job hey let me go take your lunches one day don't don't take anything for lunch i got you for that one like hey come over uh we're doing this uh you know we're having whatever type of party because mexicans love to party there's no like you know one reason why we party is just like it's a bunch of reasons but it's like hey we're having this come over um or you know what else are you doing what are your personal goals where do you want to go with this and kind of treat it that way as far as the leadership type goes with that business so now and i think that definitely sounds like you know great way to do business i think that a lot of times people are getting in business with you know with other people as much based on their relationship and whether or not they can trust the individual and work with them and have you know all those and i think that having that hospitality mindset definitely can set you apart in an industry that oftentimes doesn't necessarily have that kind of feel to it so well that kind of brings us up uh to a bit to where you're at today so if you're to kind of say okay we've got you know the record label we kind of got the clothing brand we've got the construction business and all of these things kind of combined and all these interests and and working on them looking now kind of a bit forward looking to the next you know six to 12 months of business in your life and where you think things are headed where are you kind of projecting things to go um i'm thinking a lot of people that are working with me are gonna quit they're gonna stop working with me uh not in a bad way though um i was gonna say that you might want to work on that so not ever you don't you don't have everybody leave you no no i don't i don't mind that because see here's the reason why it wouldn't be like oh they're not they don't want to work with us no more um i feel like for them it would be like i've seen what you know uh eric his brothers and his dad have been able to do up maybe i want to start my own thing and with everybody that i've worked with i've brought up this conversation i said hey if you ever want to do your own thing let me know i'm happy to help because nobody helped me i had mentors point me in different directions but there was no one person that i that could just tell me you know this has been my experience this is my entrepreneurship life this is kind of how it goes um and even like laura parra who's the artist that we've collabed with she's told me she was like hey maybe i want to start my own clothing brand maybe i want to do my own and i'm like awesome i'm happy to help you out you know if indicive if the streetwear brand isn't where you want to be always that's cool with me i don't mind i'm going to teach you and i'm going to help you build what you want because i i don't like the idea of like i'm not going to teach you know the people that i'm working with me all the little secrets and stuff so that they can stay with me to me that's kind of selfish and my parents always raised me on like you know share whatever you have even if it's a little bit so to me i feel like in the next five six years a lot of folks they're not going to be working um not going to be technically like i said i don't like saying this word but if we're putting it in technical terms they're not going to be working for us they'll be doing their own thing or they'll be working with us as like a partnership type thing they're going to be at a at another level you know something higher something great hopefully even like greater than me like you know that would be awesome for me um our my businesses personally i feel like you know we just continue to do what we're doing um obviously continuing to learn and grow as we're moving forward because i don't know everything my dad doesn't know everything my brothers don't know everything and we're humble enough to understand that and that's okay um you know we'll learn and we'll see where it takes us but as far as like the people working for us which is my biggest focus um i don't think they're gonna be with us i think they're gonna be off doing their own thing and it'll be awesome to see them you know go from you know just working with eric to now they're on the forbes list or something like that like that would be that to me would be amazing and i'd be so happy if that were to happen well i think that that definitely sounds like that would be an exciting time and i like the idea of hey people probably won't work for me but for a good reason because they'll either be you know improving moving up or we'll have a different relationship to where they can you know be a partner or otherwise you so i think that that sounds like definitely a fun path to be headed down so well that was we've kind of caught up to where you're at today a bit where you're heading i um always a good time to kind of jump to a couple questions i always ask in the end of each podcast which is the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh easy worst business decision i ever made was thinking that i could do everything myself um this is based on the scholarship right remember i told you all that for three years it was just me and after those three years we had to kind of put it on pause and kind of hold and regroup and try to figure things out again that to me has been the biggest uh in my head the biggest failure that i had we had a really really big at least in my head what we had was this really really big event uh for fundraising right obviously catering to mexicans mexican culture we were going to have this big party um i had ads in mexican radio that were blessed to have gotten those for free we had ads on tv we had univision like the mexican news station that's big in the u.s i feel like it's not just utah um but we had all of them running ads and commercials and saying hey this is gonna be this party this is where the money's gonna go to uh we had raffles at the party we had food for sale um and we lost 200 bucks out of everything that i had invested into this event that i had uh put out of my own pocket we were down 200 bucks um worst worst decision in my head um you know trying to do everything myself um because i didn't really have a team i didn't build a team i said no i don't want to you know put anybody in that situation i have to struggle to make this event happen i'll just do it myself so boom there you go eric now your selfishness did this and now you're not able to fund some students for the fourth year and you have to put everything on pause and you have to say all right let me regroup and try to figure this stuff out when there's students that are still waiting on their scholarship it's like it's the biggest biggest in my head my biggest failure um that obviously i learned a lot from but it was just tough you know as a i think it was mike tyson who said it everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face well i got knocked out i didn't get punched in the face i got knocked out like i was it was bad um so that i would say is like my biggest failure so far no but you know i think it's one of those that it definitely a lot of entrepreneurs get into that because you're saying now i can figure this out i can do this not a big deal and you know and so you don't necessarily you don't want to rely on others because you think oh i can figure this out you know i'm kind of smart in that thing and i'm definitely of that mindset and i always you know say i always think people that are entrepreneurs are they're the smartest people in the room or they can do the best because otherwise they would never do it and yet until if you don't until you learn that hey why i may be able to do some things well or i may be able to hustle people or work them or come up with more creative ideas if you never rely on those they can offer the value that you may not innately have or not the skills that you might not have then you're always going to limit what you can do so i think that that is definitely uh you know an easy mistake to learn but something great to learn from on the second question i was asked is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them one piece of advice um this is coming from two really awesome mentors that i met through the university of utah through another scholarship group um rich kofusi and latu kinikini they showed me this concept which is has become my greatest advice so far uh it's called aloha leadership uh aloha as most folks know is like uh you know way of saying hello we're saying hi uh what i learned from lotto and rich is that it's a lot more loving it's a loving way of saying hi it's not it's like a welcoming it's a feeling it's a vibe and they've always taught us that you know it's that kind of leadership that actually makes things happen so as any entrepreneur as any leader in whatever industry whatever field any artist creator entrepreneur you need that kind of leadership uh because if not you're gonna fail it just it doesn't work any other way if you don't care about the people that are working for you they're gonna leave if you don't care about the people who are working with you why would they work with you in the first place you know and it sucks because sometimes in business you think you know it's oh it's all about the money it's all transactional it's all um you know i win you win but we have to go back and forth like there's no end to it and you know that that might work you know in certain cases but i feel like if you're thinking long term if you're thinking i want to stay in this forever yeah it might be slower growth um but it'll last forever uh having that type of leadership that love leadership that aloha leadership where you care about everybody you treat everybody as an actual human and not just a number no i think that is definitely great advice and you know it's a balance if you if all you do is treat everybody just like a friend and family and you'll never let them go never cut them you'll never force them to improve your business can suffer in the sense that you can't be friends with everybody but i like the idea that you know i think that too often it gets pushed to the other side of you just think everybody's you know everybody's just a number on a page or everybody's just kind of a you know robot so to speak after you let him go oh well type of thing because then it removes that human aspect of it so i love the ability to find that balance that will allow people to improve and become better be encouraged and also feel supported so i think that's great piece of advice well people were to reach out to you they wanted to uh be a customer or a client of one of your businesses they wanted to be an investor they wanted to be a your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more uh plenty of different ways i would say because of this platform and the folks who would listen uh you know to your podcast and everyone involved with you i would say linkedin would be uh you know the number one way to go about that end um because obviously i have like my social media um and you know my websites indicive.com the freddyscholarship.com uh but the number one way to really get a hold of me as far as this world goes the business world goes it would be linked in eric jarrah eric dara 300 like you know this this forehead and this mustache is very recognizable you look up eric jarrah and like yeah you'll see who it is so all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out contact you to find out more because i think there's um a lot of great things that you have going on you have a lot of uh it would be a great words of wisdom a lot of lessons learned um so with that appreciate you coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners out there if you'd like to tell your own journey we'd love to have you on the podcast just feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show also if you're a listener as you hopefully are make sure to leave a review on the podcast so other people can find out on all of our awesome episodes and also make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any of our awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with uh your patents trademarks anything else with your business feel free to go to invent or go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us chat we're always here to help well thank you again it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devon i appreciate you [Music]

Remain Humble

Yvan Demosthenes

Devin Miller

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 there's two of them make sure you got money number one everybody knows that but secondly i think an example that i can share from from what i just shared with the um uh dropping the ball and all those opportunities is remain humble [Music] 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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast ivan devostim as close as i can get to his name um and pretty good pretty good all right this is a quick introduction to ivan so ivan was born i think born in haiti um and migrated to the us with his parents at about six months uh or six months of age um and then grew up in new york till he's about 10 years old and then moved over to ohio and went into sales so i think it got into sales while i was in school doing something else and decided our sales was where he wanted to be um and then got a job at uh ge or general electric later moved over to career builder built up a lot of relationships ran into a guy started talking became his business partner and didn't know what they wanted to do but they were going to do something and that led to where he's at today so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast ivan oh my pleasure devon awesome job you take good notes hey gotta make sure that we give a good introduction for you so yeah i just gave the and i gave the 30 second kind of quick run through of your whole journey and you know pretty hard to take it into 30 seconds so why didn't take us a bit back in time to where your journey started in haiti and how he got to where you're at today yeah so i was a baby when i came over this was uh 1970 uh so the the uh disco 70s and lived in new york my my father who's a physician psychiatrist um uh decided he wanted to move to of all places lima ohio moved there diversity kind of became the forefront of everything i was because i went from a neighborhood and schools that was really the united nations of uh neighborhoods of communities going to a place where i stuck out like a sore thumb and trust me when i say devin there weren't a lot of haitians living in in lime ohio at the time uh fair enough i'll take your work there i lived in my word wow but never been to there so so now you've grown up yeah did you know i'll go ahead yeah so i went to school thought i was going to follow in the family the family uh legacy of medicine uh uncles and aunts all in medicine surgeons etc um but had the opportunity to to discover sales and out of uh college uh became very intrigued with the behavior of uh the sales process right uh the the the uh the uh uh relationship building the uh picking up on sales cues etc it was just fascinating to me so one question for that just because so assuming went to high school adam did you kind of go into sales out of high school did you go to some college and you signed sales this year i was graduating work kind of work i went to the universe yeah so i when i went to the university of cincinnati which uh since you you spent some time in cleveland you you know it's the uh it's by far the best university in the state of ohio let alone the country i'll go i'll go but i'll give you a second best yeah yeah second best yet uh but close close second but still second uh but go cats and um yeah i uh my undergrad was in natural science with a concentration in biology with uh with the hopes of going into medical school and following in the family footsteps and you know along the way you know we all have our own our own little journeys and i had a buddy who who uh was in the retail business he owned a chain of furniture stores you know kind of unusual for a young 20 mid 20 something someone to have a chain of stores but he uh he came from that type of background uh both sides of his family were in that industry so literally uh he's two three years older than me and uh needed somebody that he could trust to come on board next thing you know i'm working with him and he was great at sales he'd been living this his whole life i mean he he could zero in on somebody who had no intention of buying anything uh to by before they left they were signing their their name on the dotted line right um you know what brings you into the store today you're looking for anything in particular all these nuances you know reading the customer picking up on cues etc uh and building those relationships so those customers would come back right so a lot of repeat customers and as uh as my sales abilities grew i i ended up going to ge uh great company and uh you know so people just recognized my my abilities and then um suggested what yeah because one question because you know going from a smaller sales position to ge i mean ge certainly a big company has a lot of branches so how did you first of all what made you decide to make that transition over and then how did you accomplish it well devin that's a question not a lot of people have asked me in a very long time so you gotta imagine this was about uh 25 years ago you know over 20 years ago uh so my buddy like a lot of friends uh fell in love and decided to get married and uh it was now a family business rather than just one person's business and uh a lot of the reports that we had during work and after work didn't necessarily fly anymore so basically we weren't going to all the parties that we were going to before right so uh made sense to move on and uh had the opportunity at general electric and we were selling um it hardware and software at the time uh ge was one of the largest if not largest uh it software and hardware resellers in the world they had uh purchased several entities to to create one huge huge company within ge capital at the time and it was based here in cincinnati which was pretty cool to be part of all that and then uh my one of my supervisors came to me um he said that the only thing i was missing was was uh was the better business sense better uh you know more more acumen in business and he recommended that i that i pursue my mba which opened a whole new world to me i had no idea like the business world really existed even though i was in it i was so focused on sales but now i realize the true and full impact of sales i started seeing you know everybody sales person from the person behind the cashier register asking if you want extra socks to go with your outfits to the salesman at the at the car lot to uh professionals that are providing a service such as attorneys accountants everybody they need to make you feel comfortable right there's certain type of sales that goes to that you need to feel comfortable from somebody that you're uh seeking a service from and through that um i had the opportunity to get on board with career builder and really that was my my wheelhouse i feel as though i'm a people person so one one question on that so working in ge decided hey i want to get kind of a bit more business background or acumen or kind of whatever that might be so when i assumed that you went and did the mba full time and left ge is that right no i did my mba while i was uh still working on it okay yes yeah i'll go ahead i was yeah yeah so i would i was so i was a grown-up just uh trying to better myself at that point you know working full-time and the program that i went to was through a liberal arts college which i happen to adjunct their new uh upper level students seniors getting ready to graduate it's an advanced course and really a lot of the things that i learned along the way and through mba because i really feel strongly feel that good sales people are ethical sales people they're ethical people and they see the the uh impact that they have not only on their customers being a good advocate for their company as well and really when you're a good sales person you're really bringing new ideas new methodologies new thoughts new technology to organizations that they that without you they may never have the opportunity to even consider let alone try right so i i like to think salespeople make the world go around even if you don't have the title as a salesperson uh you you're bringing yourself you're selling yourself in in certain instances you're selling your products you're selling your ideas all those things so now one because so because one question to follow up on that so you were working at ge saying okay i'm gonna better myself when got the nba at what point did you decide to go to um you know switch jobs and go to the they're more of the uh recruiting side with the next you know the next step for your inventors hey you know i've gone as far as i can with ge or this is a better opportunity or kind of what my era caught you to make the switch yes so at that time if people want to look it up when uh ge made all these purchases to become this huge entity within ge capital they went from a multi-billion dollar company to 30 million dollars so billions to just a handful of millions it was um fortunately i was in a division where we were really the only things keeping the last few people afloat so we so i was in transition when the opportunity to come on board to careerbuilder uh presented itself as a matter of fact it was a friend that had recommended me to to uh careerbuilder because she had just given her resignation that day because she she got a job at procter and gamble they were starting a new pharmaceutical division at the time and she just got on board and said hey i know for a fact they're looking for someone because i gave my two weeks today be more than happy to to uh uh recommend and refer you and i'll tell you it was a great experience i made some great friends there uh the manager there himself i gotta tell you if if i didn't have that mba on my resume i don't think he would have hired me we uh we're great friends now we support each other's families i love their kids and he uh he's been over to every event family event here but i remember him looking at that he was kind of perplexed and he looked at the bottom and said oh you have your mba i'm like yeah and he's like you're hired right on the spot and uh taught me uh taught me a lot of things i i realized that this was really my my natural space in the human capital uh uh world because i love talking about people i love connecting people and focusing on talent acquisition really you know gave me gave me what the energy for not only my sales ambitions but to connect uh present uh provide and seek out relationships to grow my business my personal book of business and everything else that you can imagine so it was really a great fit for me and then as chance would have it monster came calling came on the monster continued to do that and right about that time i started putting some things together so all those things i mentioned to you before it's like hey you know i my whole my whole career i've primarily been transactional you know like these cold calls when i would get somebody on the phone although i'm a relational person always open to meeting people wanting to to share everything that i had to offer to them i was really transactional you know i really coveted that one call sale that one call closed uh or speeding through the process to deliver whatever i needed to deliver and what i discovered is when i did my best and when i when i when i really brought it home the big ones it was through relationships and solution selling right now let me so now you you know and it makes sense you know okay you get into love sales evolve in your business or evolving your kurdi you know to expand and to take on additional roles and you go through you know a couple companies come calling now maybe jumping forward just a bit in time now looking kind of at the how you got into doing you know startups small business working with the other individually doing how did that transition or how did that come about yeah so um you know pretty much with the relationships that i'm building right i learned how to hey we're not just selling these widgets they're i'm not selling a commodity yeah i may those may be what i enter or start the conversation with what begins the whole process so i started seeing how building these relationships led to multiple opportunities that recurred over and over and over again i like to call it being a trusted advisor right so my wife when we got married she would get angry at me because my phone was ringing all time all hours of the day and night and on weekends and i would just smile at her and i'm like hey if a client calls me on a saturday morning then i know i've got a great relationship with him so pushing that to where taking that to what you asked me i had the entrepreneurial spirit and ran into a gentleman called sean hamilton who i like to share with others that he is an air force veteran and as we started chatting getting to know each other we had a lot of similarities and our approaches to to business were very very similar um and he really wanted to find ways to to grow career-wise grow professionally and at the same time give back to not only those that he that he served with but his community and as much to the country as he could and one way that we thought that we could do that was you know through recruiting and providing opportunities to individuals that all these companies had to offer match them up right and with um and when um the opportunity arose we provide some diversity uh diversity recruiting because the military is and veterans and their family members to us are considered part of that diversity spectrum right you've got you've got they travel around they bring it they bring up different perspectives different global knowledge to whatever organization that they want and truly in my eyes and in my partner's eyes we view diversity as bringing deep diversity of knowledge and experiences to whatever group entity organization that that you're uh able to bring into so we created our organization hamilton demo around that premise and then we also certified ourselves as a certified veteran owned company in vbe within the department of veteran affairs which we're very proud of and with that we've done some pretty cool things so to my point uh we've started conversations where we're doing executive search replacement maybe filling a recruiting need that is immediate but from there we've helped consult around the whole talent acquisition or recruiting process within organizations we started off working with enterprise companies but over the past few years and we've been around going on our fourth year but over the past few years we've realized that the bulk of our revenue comes from small and medium-sized companies that are growing there's a lot of them out there and you know they they as they ramp up and as they grow they have a lot of uh recruiting needs not just only with human capital but with technology and processes as well and we've been able to integrate different solutions from strategic partners and and other resources that we have to help those organizations so we've become stickier we've become more valued we've become that trusted advisor where we help them with pretty much a lot of things outside of even talent acquisition right so it's been a fun ride so far uh got a lot of things on the deck that we're super excited about from uh a new clients to clients that we've worked with with um in the past couple years that have introduced us to uh other clients in uh everything from non-profits to uh colleges and universities and um also other growing companies and gosh devon um it's it's exciting i mean we're getting ready we're getting ready to embark on um some deeper opportunities for government sales as well so this is an exciting time for us well sounds like a lot going on and a pretty exciting time so no that was a fun walk through a bit of your journey and hearing kind of the the different pivots and transitions you make so with that in mind you know time that kind of leads us to the two questions i always ask the end of the podcast so we'll jump to those now so with a longer journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it oh wow so let me um this is a this is a good one so people share that you can drown from opportunity and i experienced that firsthand i never thought that could happen uh but we we uh connected with a wonderful person who who uh shared with us his his ability to help generate leads for us and we were like hey let's let's take advantage of this well devin and let me tell you this is one of the worst business decisions we made because not only because it didn't work it worked too well we were not prepared for the influx of leads that came that came to us we didn't have the internal uh infrastructure to support and to manage it and what that led to was a lot of confusion uh within our company to the point where we did not look professional at all we dropped the ball so many times it was really a bad experience and those clients that we missed out on that we didn't put our best foot forward i uh although although we may never reconnect with those individuals or companies uh we want them to know that we learn from it and we're better that will never happen again right no and i think that that that definitely makes sense and you know it's an is this one where you you think you'll never have and it's a good problem to have in the scentsy it's always better to have too much work than it is and not have enough work and yet people think oh you can get taken care of you can handle it but if in the other hand if you are now your quality is suffering if you're not able to make the deadlines if you're not meeting expectations because you have so much work then it makes it difficult and then people start to have a bad experience and they can actually have the reverse effect of people or you know you get a bad reputation or they give you bad reviews or they don't want to come back and and so i think there is that balance where you have to make sure as you grow that you can maintain the same level of service and you have the ability to grow with that so that you can make sure to keep a good experience for everyone so i think that's a great uh great or an easy mistake to make but something great to learn from yeah now as we as we jump to the second question which is um if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them so if i can use that same example that that i use there's obviously tons of examples um examples of advice that you can give um there's two of them make sure you got money number one everybody knows that but secondly i think an example that i can share from from what i just shared with the um uh dropping the ball and all those opportunities is remain humble because you can be humble but still not be humble i feel like i'm humble but truly as you're gaining success and you start to feel really good about yourself um i really felt like i could handle anything my partner felt that we like we were just things were just everything that came up to the plate we were we were knocking it we were knocking out the park so hey if you're going to generate us leads just send them over we'll we'll we'll make it happen well you know what uh that was probably an opportunity that hey even as good as we were feeling and the right we had the right to feel that way a little bit of humble pie may have allowed us to take a deep breath and kind of gauge things a little bit better so we would not have experienced that so i'd say remain humble and uh uh you know in connection with that too i guess i'm answering three questions giving you three answers but as you remain humble always try to do the best for your clients and for everybody around you i think if you if you try to to keep to that um seek success um and as you're being successful in growing and and attaining all these great things that entrepreneurship and being a business owner can give you you bring others up with you and make other organizations better there's no better feeling than that i think that's great advice and great answers to the questions so thank you so yeah my pleasure well as we as we wrap up but people want to reach out to you they want to hire they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more well i i love to share my phone number people tell me not to but i'm going to share my phone number because i'm a salesperson and every salesperson at their heart wants to give out their phone number and that's two five 513-257-9683-513-257 nine six eight three and devinal really quick story i said that number so often uh in front of my laptop on the phone that my kids memorized that number and when they were little at school they whenever i was late to pick them up they would recite that that number just the way i said it there so please give me a call also you can go to hamilton demo that's hamilton d m and you can find out all you want about us and my number is on the site as well or you can feel free to send us an email that email is there you can send it to ivan with the y y v a n at hamiltondemo.com or you can send it to admin at hamiltondemo.com or give uh or give devin a call shoot him uh shoot him a line he'll be more than happy to share the information with you absolutely i think that's great ways to connect and definitely encourage people to to reach out and do so yeah thanks again ivan for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on a podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com to apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players say no one all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everyone else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help thank you again ivan and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last yeah thanks man

How To Deal With Conflict And Work Relationships

Jerry Fu

Devin Miller

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 the clearer and more specific the plan you give uh when you start to notice that expectations are starting to slip uh the more likely you are to actually act on it because now you have a clear plan like you know like lighted steps forward to be sure that to say okay i need to engage and i i feel scared and i'm going to default to comfort and avoidance if i don't have something but if i light this staircase up and i like you know have that exit ramp lined up for me okay now i'm more likely to actually engage in in the behavior i know i need to do for the benefit of me my relationships and my company [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's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we are always here to help now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast and this is an expert episode so um the guest is jerry fu and uh we're going to be talking a little bit about the thing that people always try to avoid which is conflict resolution work or work relationships how to fire someone or how to deal with difficult bosses or employees maybe a bit of romantic relationships and all the things that are always uncomfortable that you're trying to avoid but you need to know how to deal with so with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast jerry hey thanks for having me devin so i gave kind of a quick introduction as to what we're going to be talking about but maybe before we dive into that maybe just give everybody the audience a one or two minute introduction about yourself and a little bit about why you're the expert or why you know what you're talking about yeah sure you know i i tell people i am uh one beggar telling other beggars where to find bread you know it's like i'm not the artful dodger who avoided all the major mistakes that people make in terms of conflict i am the guy who you know uh got my face pushed in the mud and you know decided to figure out how this tastes and how i can get used to it in terms of [Music] how to help others and so the reason some of the things i dealt with i got fired from the job it came to houston four so that was a wake-up call i've had to fire people uh so you know hearing some of the things i used to say before i got fired from other people was uh definitely a wake-up call i've had to evict a roommate that was a fun situation i had to confront another guy when i was a church class director when i found out he was sexually harassing women in the class i had to kind of you know fall on that grenade and so yeah between uh dealing with you know conflicts with my parents as to my career path and you know my own uh romantic endeavors that got shot down you know we all deal with it but uh i believe that in my path to go from being a pharmacist into a leadership and conflict resolution coach that uh you know i've i've been down this road and i want to help people uh have an easier path to success when it comes to conflict resolution well that was a that was a great introduction sounds like a certainly a fun journey and someday another day we'll have to dive into a bit more of that journey um and chat about that um but now kind of diving into you know the the topic at hand which i'll start out with maybe the one that the most that make people or a lot of people probably not me so much i don't mind conflict nearly as much my wife hates it and most of my friends hate it i'm like i like to debate and i like to argue and i don't have a problem with it but for most people conflict resolution in other words especially we'll talk about it within the work setting if you're having marital strife or relationships or that at home those ones will be maybe for a different episode or a different podcast but if you're at work and you're having conflict and this could be usually kind of it i can see it taking a few forms one can be if you're the boss and you're having conflict with your employees another could be if you're an employee and you're having a conflict with the boss and the third one be is if you're an employee having a conflict with another employee but kind of as you're looking to tackle that and kind of figure out depending on the different circumstances what are some guiding principles or how do you start to deal with conflict resolution when you get here get to work yeah yeah the first tip that comes to mind is to realize that conflict never actually goes away and so people think and i used to think this too if if i fired this person or if i wrote this person up or you know i and that's good you have some degree of closure uh that's the first thing is to say okay i'm going to choose closure over my own comfort because if i stay comfortable i'm not the problem won't go away on its own that's really a big problem when people think oh well if i just wait long enough maybe they'll figure out why i'm upset with them that doesn't work right um but to recognize hey you know there's always going to be some kind of conflict uh whether it's healthy conflict or unhealthy conflict that's you want healthy conflict that's okay when people realize hey we can disagree on the why and the how uh you know of of certain things of certain programs or such but then when you have unhealthy conflict when there's mismanaged or unmet expectations uh now you now you have to make some really important and difficult decisions as to whether as maxwell says right do i train this person do i transfer this person do i terminate this person um and too often right we don't like simple answers like that but really there's those are the only three options you have if you're an owner right so let's dive into that a little bit because so i'll we'll go with the first scenario which is the owner you're the business owner you're the ceo you're the founder you know the person in charge or the boss type of a thing and i guess you don't have to always be the owner you could be a supervisor of some kind a supervisor a manager or something but you know the person in charge at least over the employees that has the ability to let someone go to fire them or to try and train them how do you go through and make the determination because you know easiest and some and i don't know if it's easier so i think it's just some degrees is to let them go now it's not fun to let people go i've done it before it's not a fun circumstance you know sometimes it's needed but how do you start to say okay is this a training problem i haven't trained them properly is this a they can't get along with people this is i should let them go or kind of how do you work your way through you know do i transfer them do i let them go do i fire them do i train them or you know kind of how do you work or start to make those decisions yeah yeah i think the first is just to you know i like what brene brown talks about or what other people say when you have to assume positive intent right when you want to say hey you know what they're doing the best they can so that can be taken one of two ways either that's if they're honestly giving the best effort okay well let's show them a little grace and at the same time if they are still coming short of standards then you know you still have to realize if that's if you can't give what you don't have and you can give me five but the job requires ten like i have to let you go right because if you don't meet 10 the company dies right or the company will suffer needlessly so the first thing you know i'm sure you've heard this before and maybe audience you know maybe this is a good reminder right you don't hire for skills you help you you hire for attitude right because you can teach skills right if the person uh as henry cloud talks about in necessary at least he says there's wise people there's foolish people and there's evil people right wise people right if assuming that they are good at what they do and they're competent and and they've earned your trust right if they do something wrong or if something's not going according to plan right all you have to do is just maintain a level of maintenance of preventive maintenance right just say hey here's some feedback and they internalize it they don't take it personally they say hey this my boss is telling me this for my good and the good of the company let's make some adjustments i demonstrate that i've taken this feedback seriously and i implement that and it's done easy enough right i'm going to jump in just i'm going to give you a real-world scenario that i wanted to ask you guys i'm not going to get into the details because i have no idea but we'll give a kind of a generalized scenario one that i've dealt with before so if you have an employee you know i'll say i'm the boss but you have an employee um that has a habit that drives you nuts so it's not detrimental to the company it doesn't harm the company you know it's not it's not creating strife within other workers but it just drives you nuts and you talk to the employee a couple times say hey this needs to change it really bothers me and you know it creates some friction and you know they'll change for two or three months and then they go back to you in the habit and then you'll have a second conversation they change for a month or two go back to the habit and you kind of get to the situation where okay i either have to accept it or i have to let them go or you know you kind of lose hope you know in that situation when you are in the managerial or the boss position how do you start to deal with that circumstance yeah that's a great question and i mean a real life example i'll give you is uh punctuality at my uh my day job and it's like you know where we've been we've been open for four years and yet somehow like you still forget like what time we open or what time is acceptable to be here on time and so this falls into kind of the realm of foolish people i wouldn't say maybe i would call them foolish but it is like well-meaning but ultimately like no follow-through people right it's just like oh yeah i know i need to be on time but there's no follow-through and so with people in this second category right you need to establish very clear and airtight boundaries right you need to give clear consequences for what happens when they cross those boundaries because on one down kind of to your point right is this a pred is this a problem with my preferences or is this a principle problem right like if if it's just this person just has like this really annoying high-pitched laugh and you're just saying well you know i don't i think it sounds smart me when they're talking with customers but they're not actually losing business because of it you might just drop that one right you're just like okay i could split hairs over my preference as to how they should address customers but ultimately you know if as long as they're building good relationships that's not up to me to get in the way of that but if it is something like punctuality and you say hey you know the team is resentful and they're unfocused because you're continually late okay you have to set boundaries to say okay if you are late four times you know in the next five in the next week or so i'm going to write you up and then here are three here are three write-ups uh and then after three write-ups you have probation and probation you know at any point if you just if i decide i'm i'm done with you you're done right flavor just a little bit i think that's great great advice and as an attorney i love to play devil's advocate so we'll take it one step further let's say it's not punctuality where you're not always able to always monitor you know punctuality is a little bit easier you can see are they showing up on time or they're not do they clock in time but let's say they're spending an abnormal amount on water breaks you know where they're sitting around the coffee table you know the water cooler or in the you know break room and they're you know everybody else takes 15 20 whatever the number is you know depending on 30 minutes for lunch break and you know 15 minutes throughout the day and this person's taking an hour break a day you know so it's more than what everybody else has expected but they are a great worker you know they do a good job and they you know everything else you like about the employee but you just have this one thing where like you know they it feels like they're taking advantage in that one area is it one you know so you're kind of caught because you like the employee they do a good job on the other hand you're saying it feels kind of like they're cheating me on some of the time that i should i'm paying them how do you deal with that one yeah no that's a good one i mean the first is just to get curious right right can we assume positive intent to say hey okay well are they still getting work done okay sure all right but yeah let's talk about this to say hey you know i've noticed right that you seem to take 30 or an hour when everyone else is taking 30 minutes you know and they're like well yeah you know i i you know i have extra family issues or things like that and i need a longer lunch in order to doubt about it you say okay well thank you for giving me a clear picture of that and you know what kind of effect does that have what do you think that effect has on the rest of the team right like that so now it's not just about how they're affecting you you kind of shed light on hey how does this affect team dynamics and morale when they see that they feel like you're not pulling your weight because you're taking long lunches oh you know that's ideally you know hypothetically right that's oh that's maybe that's not good because there's some employees in real life they'll be like well i still i'm still fine like i don't know why this is a problem right they're gonna do that and to say could you you know are you willing to you know experiment with the idea of taking a shorter lunch and then dealing with some of these personal issues like after work or before work so that it's not affecting your perception and i mean because the approach i've taken this is real life advice guys like i tell people i'm like look um you know what kind of reputation do you think you've established here right and then they're like well i think i'm you know and then they start to realize oh well i'm not on time a lot and you know i'm not focused a lot and i realize oh you know people say oh you know she's always kind of she's always kind of you know flaky in the head it's like okay well how are you going to change that right like how do you want to affect that change so that people aren't always you know dogging you for being late or you know taking long lunches right and now you start to empower the person and realize hey you know what um i didn't realize that this is how this comes across and to say hey you know what even if you think you're right about the situation how do you want to change things for the better so that people aren't resenting you behind your back possibly for what you're doing so that's no i think i think that's great advice now i'll push one last question then we'll jump right in the conversation let's say you have that whole conversation and they you know and kind of to almost the original scenario they make an improvement you know they do good for a couple months and then you see them oh you know they're starting to take long lunches again and they're kind of reverting back to old habits which you know people generally we we're creatures of habit and you know while you try to make change that's why a lot of times people try diet and then you go back to the old way that you're eating because you enjoy it more right the same kind of thing there is so if you try and you know and then you have a conversation with them maybe a second time you say okay i'll give them another chance you know help them and you know same thing month or two they make the change and then they go back to old habits you know what point is it do you continue to give them the benefit of the doubt versus what at what point do you kind of say okay i've done my best i've tried my hardest as a manager as a you know person i you know i i got to do something else or what do i do here type of thing how do you deal with that yeah yeah and that's in coaching we talk about coaching with compassion or coaching for compliance and unfortunately guys like this is no one likes to hear what i'm about to tell you but you sometimes you have to you have to coach for compliance in this case because it's just to say hey look um and part of it is having not just annual reviews but like quarterly reviews right so you can give this regular feedback to say hey look you know we over the first month or two we were talking about this you've been great with punctuality but then i've started you know you can look at the clock in time so that way subjective evidence to say no you're starting to slip again right or something to that effect and then you can say hey look you know whether you want to tie it into their bonus you know or things like that to say hey look you know i'm going to have to give you a lower score and that's going to affect your bonus right you want to give them consequences when they don't not just from like a like a value-added standpoint with that you can't really quantify right but to say hey look you know um i've given you six months to improve on this and you're still not consistent so now i have to step up my standards uh and to say hey look if you are not on time for the next like two or three months i'm going to we're going to have to go down the write-up and probation path because i've used everything i've exhausted everything else i can to appeal to your innate desire to be a good employee and those are those are no longer working right so you want to play in the space up here first absolutely and exhaust that whole toolbox before you start to resort to um step across this line and you sneeze wrong and you're done right that's those aren't you know and and that's that's the ugly side of leadership that people don't tell you about until you have to do it and so it's like all right guys let's expose this ugly underbelly because uh if you don't give leaders like a real picture of the challenge they're gonna face and real ugly tools to deal with ugly situations um you know they're not going to sign up because you you were lying to them to begin with so yeah no and i think that that you know that that is great advice you know it is one that's hard you know some i've seen some leaders you know just they continue to give them chances and basically just keep up and say well it's i'm i either got to decide whether i'm going to fire him or i'm just going to have to deal with it and then you make that determination as to is are they the value that they provide to the company worth keeping them or is it saying hey this is just creating too much of a issue within the company even if they do great or great work it's having negative error consequences over here some people just say i'm i'm tired of it i'm gonna let it go but i think that there's that i think that's a good balance so now let's switch gears a little bit on the conflict resolution to now if you're in on the employee side and you know if you're dealing with a another employee we'll we'll quit picking on the bosses for a minute but you're dealing with another employee that you do have you know conflicts with and that can be everything from their you know they're you know i i think there's a difference if they're being you know sexual harassing you're being abusive that one's you know that one's a pretty clear cut turn them in you know if they if the company doesn't do something you should probably leave but if it you know if it's not harassing but it's just the employee is you know rude or aggressive or you know belligerent you know something that doesn't arise to the level of you know abuse or you know something along those lines but it's just you continually have conflicts you know they are you you can't get along with them you know everything you do you want to do one thing and they always oppose you and do the other or whatever that is how do you deal with conflicts between employees yeah um oh yeah i could pull from i've had so many examples because basically my my failure was the fact that there are employees who are conflicted diverse they would be upset with you know another employee and they come to me and say hey jerry can you go talk to them about this and i'm just like no like he i made the mistake i basically got caught in putting too many roles on the line and then like they would kind of contradict each other and then they would all get mad at me for being a bad referee and i'm just like no like this is not uh this is not a good system so i would tell them i'm just like okay um let's say if i'm talking peer-to-peer with somebody i can tell them i'm just like hey look uh that's usually the easiest to say hey look i'm just looking out for you right this is what i'm seeing from my side do we agree on a solution uh you know do we agree that this is what's best and it's like yes it's like hey so here are some things i'm concerned about in terms of trying to reach this goal or this result right this one i've seen from you this is how it makes me feel right they can't refute your feelings like i feel hurt when you know you're abrasive in the language you use towards me and other people you know even if you don't mean anything malicious by it um you know can we talk about how to better communicate in a way that people both both sides feel respected right um and so i the question that i'd like to always ask is how do you shift from uh confrontation to collaboration right how do you move from opposite sides of the table to the same side of the table and when you affirm hey we're teammates we're looking out for each other um hey let's like here are some obstacles i'm noticing in in terms of uh establishing a good relationship with you uh let's talk about let me hear from you as well to say what can i do better as well to make sure that you feel respected and appreciated um yeah those are i think those are a lot of fun actually fun for you maybe not for the person yeah yeah i know right no i'll i'll watch one for a follow-up question you get a wide range of people that are willing to deal with conflicts in other words i don't mind conflict i i'm you know i'm an attorney i probably like to argue i like to debate but even there's still conflicts you know even with the need that i i just don't like to deal with you know at some point you've been saying this is still not fun everybody has those points and there's people like my wife that just she hates accomplish she would rather you know put it aside or deal with it or ignore it or whatever because she'd rather not have conflicts and so if you're more on the side that you don't want to hit it you know your tendency is to just avoid conflict to ignore it or otherwise not deal with it how do you work up the you know the guts to do it or whatever you want to call it to actually do a conflict if it really doesn't need to be dealt with oh yeah so what's funny for you is right usually it's the opposite problem where like the wife is upset and the guy's like i gotta hide because i don't want to do it this upset woman i i was saying at work now home is different but at least no no no no no that's fair but well so i mean because i was i'm i was conflict of voice for the longest time just due to cultural norms and things like that but uh the i guess some of the turning points for me and speaking of someone who is tends to conflict avoid like upon first like reflex the first you have to ask yourself is um you know how much longer will i tolerate this like what is the cost of inaction right because if you're already upset right uh you realize that just trying to suppress your frustration and just hope that again people figure out why you're upset with them and fix it on their own unless you say something they're not they're just gonna assume that the default is fine right if a technician types up a prescription wrong and i fix it for them right they're not going to realize that they did it wrong but you know maybe i give them one benefit of the doubt maybe they just had a busy day they just slipped up once it's not a consistent pattern sure i'll fix it in the interest of time or so but if that happens again and i refuse to do something about it now the problem is on me right because i didn't say something to fix the issue so the two initial tips are yeah number one ask yourself um what is my hesitation costing me you know and then number two uh you know or no two and three so two is how where can i find 10 seconds of courage because you don't need to be superman you'll need to like you know get into like superman or wonder woman remote before you finally charge your head you just need 10 seconds to be like hey can i pull you aside for you know just like 10 minutes right you just need to have 10 seconds first to like fire off that text or pick up the phone or send that email and just say hey look i i'd like to talk to you uh third is remember to sell the benefits of this conversation you know um what what what can i gain by having this conversation oh i can reset expectations i can go back to enjoying being around this person again hey okay yeah this is a conversation worth having i'm willing to get past my initial discomfort in order to have this because the closure is is is really uh more enjoyable than just sitting in my comfort zone um i think that's really kind of the bonus tip right there it's just to realize that closure is always better than comfort because yeah when i evicted my roommate for defaulting on his lease i can assure you like the comfort zone i was staying in was terrible uh it is the closure that came from finally get convincing him to move out before i called the cops where i could finally just exhale and just say oh i'm so glad i'm past that right no i i think that's all a lot of great advice so now i am going to switch gears just a little bit to a different you know another kind of related conflict i guess or has the potential for conflict which is relationships of the office you know and how that one can be you know some some companies are oh we're fine if you have a relationship as long as it doesn't bleed into work don't worry about it you can do whatever you want you're adults now they're just saying hey we've had way too many whether it's sexual harassment suits or have had way too many conflicts and people getting mad or employees leaving because they you know they break up or whatever and so you know maybe we'll go from the employer perspective first of how do you deal with relationships at the office should you take a more lenient should you take it more aggressive or how do you how do you start to set that or set those boundaries hmm yeah i think uh it's just there's so much empirical evidence one way or the other but and plus every company is different but i mean so i hate to say it depends but i mean the question is to ask yourself around what if you are a owner right and you have to ask yourself what is your comfort level like what is your instinct telling you right to say okay if i find out that two people you know are starting to date and they're like you know canoodling in like the break room right and instead of getting work done it's like okay no like that's a problem right if you maybe lay clear boundaries just to say hey look if you choose to like attempt to date a co-worker any personal relationship related you know activity or news needs to stay off the clock right like you can have a relationship so long as it does not affect company productivity as soon as it does though and you have to be able to be flexible with that policy because if like two people start to be like break up and now it's all awkward for everyone else in the office it's like okay nope never mind like i gave you that chance uh at this point we are just better off saying hey no dating at all period and if we find out then you know or if that does happen hey what if he's gonna have to transfer you know or move on to another company you know what's that going to be because yeah realistically i haven't rarely have i seen a situation uh where uh personal relationships don't complicate like on on on the clock productivity so that is my personal preference to say hey you know what um i know some every rule has exceptions i'm sure everybody will push back that's like no well she's hot and it's just like well just be honest about that right i want to date her i was like all right man just as long as you know what kind of territory you have to navigate uh but yeah the simple answer is uh probably not just don't deal with fish yeah i mean that's probably i mean it it opens up a pandora's box i mean everything from you know then here same ones ones that one's a supervisor and one's in furry inferior then it opens you up to potential for you know hr problems or for sexual harassment problems even if it is consensual because breakups tend to not usually go well with most people you know especially if your work you sought to see the other person and while it may have been good intended at one point i think it can evolve and shift and then you know it's hard especially if you're in a relationship out things outside of work you know i'm married and even i don't my wife doesn't work with or work for me but even when i have a bad day you know at home with you know when everybody has good days and bad days with a marriage and so yeah but i think that i'm you know it it carries into work and now if you had to do that you know when you're at work and yet at the same time i get people you know attorneys are terrible we work a whole bunch of hours we always you know we we never stop working type of thing we work you know where the office all the time and so you're saying well if i don't date someone in the office you know it's going to be hard to find someone so i do think that to your point it does depend a little bit but i think that there's a lot more potential issues then there are a lot more benefits at least your side i agree with that yeah it's like the you can but you should probably shouldn't that's i think that's the simple coverall answer exactly all right last and this is a fun conversation i could go on for a long or much longer and i'm sure we'd enjoy it but it'd probably go beyond the attention span of everybody else so you can do a part two later it's fine that's right question or one other question so one of the hard things i think that every person that they they think they'd be better at it until they actually get in the situation which is firing somebody or letting someone go and everybody thinks oh you can just tell them you know just fire them just couple them in your office you're not doing a good job and let you go and yet every time you get into it you know especially if they have a family and they have kids and they're or they have a wife or they just moved there or you know they're doing they're not doing well forever you know not doing well financially and everybody i never say there are scenes that when at least people that i've hired that have said oh yeah that'd be easy to let them go they'll land on their feet they have a job lined up it will be fine they won't have any issues and so you know when you do get to that situation what is that if you have made your determination okay i need to let this one go on this for what you know this individual for whatever reason how do you go about letting someone go and firing someone yeah i think part of it is just having empathy for the person that you're about to let go right treating them with dignity and giving them like the the the best case scenario is to say hey look you know at the end of the day you are not meeting expectations whether there is a legitimate reason for this or not uh you know at the very best this job is not a good fit for you because if we're saying these are their expectations and you're only realistically able to meet about half of them like this cannot continue right the cup if we keep you on the company we'll die like if we want to like basically give that trajectory if we only if we settle for people only giving half of what the company knows that it needs to survive uh this company will not survive uh and so the best thing i can do for you is to let you move on so that you can find a company better suited to your needs and preferences and skills right and i mean that's that's the at the very least i mean don't get me wrong that's i probably in my mind i'm just like you know i'm much more frustrated with you than what i'm letting on but that is now is not the time to take cheap shots at you or you know unload my own personal frustration because it is like i know how upset uh my bosses were with me when i got fired and i do my best to remember hey as upset as i am to hear victim statements and blaming and lack of responsibility whenever someone pushes back when i'm upset with them as a boss at the end of the day i need to let them move on to a job that would actually suit their preferences and that's fine hopefully they're out there if they are great if not they need to change but not on my timetable any longer yeah and i think that one thing if you're on the employee side at least 99 of there's probably one percent out there bosses that like to fight people for 99 the boss doesn't want to do it anymore or the manager the supervisor doesn't want to do it any more than the person being let go it's not like it's a fun thing when i've done it you know most of the time as a boss you're saying ah we'll give them one more chance or wait a little bit longer and you try and give them probably more chances than they deserve just because you have sympathy for them and you want to or you know you are a human yourself and you understand their situation and so usually they're coming into dreading it as much as the employee but i think to your point i think where i've come is most time is saying hey there's usually a reason why you're letting them go and it's a lot of times it's because they're not happy with their work they don't enjoy it but you know it's not fair or it doesn't suit their skill set or you know any number of things and it's probably better for them in the long run even though in the short term it sucks to let them know hey you know this this position probably does not fit with what you will want whether it's you don't you know you have aspiration in the future that we're just not going to be able to help or you know or you don't like the job responsibilities or you know your skill sets you you just you know this isn't your skill set you need to find something you're passionate about and i think that that's the least for me is work better if at least trying to go go with the thing of we're we i want the best for you this situation for both of us is not the best for you and so let's see what we can do and then a lot of times i'll say you know if you need help transitioning finding something else i'd love to help you out unless they're just really bad you just don't want to give them a recommendation you know give a recommendation or look at your network or give connections i think is a good way to transition out yup yeah it is and yeah when you just don't cut them and then just say good luck trying to swim in this giant ocean like give them resources uh you know a book i would give now like even to people whether i fire them or not there's a great book called designing your life and even designing your work life as a spin-off just to say hey look how do you create a job in a career that you would actually be excited about right um and then now they you're trying to empower them to realize hey you know what yeah we we have to end this chapter and this is your opportunity to start a new one and it's up to you no and i think that i think that's that's great advice so well we've now er got towards the end of the podcast and maybe we'll have to have you back on part two sometime i think that would be fun definitely a lot more things that we could cover but you know we we've covered there are several different things and you know always at the end of each expert episode i always want to give people at least one takeaway you know listen to this for half an hour and there's a lot of things you could start going most of the time you won't start going or get overwhelmed or anything if you're talking to somebody that's you know the founder co-founder manager boss you know of of a business and they can only get one takeaway one thing that they should be doing today or should get going on today what would that one thing be yeah um i guess for some reason the thing that comes to mind is simply to ask yourself if you are dealing with someone who's underperforming uh what kind of like tripwire deadline do you want to set for yourself uh to say okay if this goes on for you know three months okay i will initiate a conversation like set like script your key uh deadlines and timetables and and key phrases that you want to be sure to address like this the clearer and more specific the plan you give when you start to notice that expectations are starting to slip uh the more likely you are to actually act on it because now you have a clear plan like you know like lighted steps forward to be sure that to say okay i need to engage and i i feel scared and i'm going to default to comfort and avoidance if i don't have something but if i light this staircase up and i like you know have that exit ramp lined up for me okay now i'm more likely to actually engage in in the behavior i know i need to do for the benefit of me my relationships and my company no i think that that's absolutely great takeaway and definitely something people should to take to take to heart so with that as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be client they want to hire you to give that you know all the training in the world and be the greatest coach in the world for their business they want to be an employee of yours they want to get trained by you they want to be an investor if you take on investment dollars they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more absolutely yes um if you want to connect with me on linkedin i have a profile there that is the one social media profile that i have otherwise if you want to engage with something more professional and intentional my website is adaptingleaders.com there's a free pdf download uh framework for having difficult conversations and you can also schedule a complimentary 30-minute call uh just to tell me about what you're working on or tell me your story or if you have hey jerry i got a situation i need your help with a no strings attached you know just give yourself a free sample to help if that's all you need great if you want to uh invest more hey i got plenty of coaching packages and you know you can figure out what works best for you or your organization all right well i definitely encourage people to take advantage or any of all the above and definitely a great resources as you're building and growing your business or starting your business so well thank you again jerry for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell or you want to have your own expertise to share um feel free to apply to be on the pod podcast just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as listeners uh one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players you know on all of our awesome episodes to map and two leave us a review so everyone else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you have if you need uh help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business let's go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well thank you again jerry it's been a fun it's been a pleasure a lot of great knowledge and uh wish the next day of your journey even better than the last thanks devon have a great day everybody you

Outsource To Experts

Heather Cox

Devin Miller

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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 outsource to experts whenever possible whatever you don't need to be involved in outsourced to experts because if you don't have time and money to do it once you for sure don't have money to do it twice [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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller iq lab where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast heather cox and to give you a quick introduction to heather so she grew up in southern california performed in a circus growing up which sounds kind of interesting and i don't know i think we may have had one other person at least i think there are a circus rodeo or a cow or a circus clown in the rodeo but close enough but that's i think the first full circus person um parents uh they're said not to uh to go to college or that uh she shouldn't go to college and rather go take a year off and then go to spain which would sound like great parents came back and decided to go to uh university of austin or university of texas in austin and majored in spanish um and then went into hospitality management for a period of time and then went back to california went into recruiting in sales took some time in israel also met her husband came back got back into recruiting himself had some kids asked a lot of entrepreneurs questions and started her business which is what she's doing today with diversity certification so hopefully i got most of that right and with that as much as an introduction welcome on the podcast heather thanks it's not to correct one thing my parents were for sure making sure i went to college they just said not this year they were like no question if it was where all right so it wasn't that they said never gonna cause it no this is taking a little bit more time to get ready yeah my father would like roll over in his grave if you heard someone say like he didn't want me to go to college all right always a good correction so well thank welcome on the podcast so i just gave a quick 30 second introduction to a much longer journey so maybe take us back a bit back in time to growing up in southern california and how your life got started in the circus so we moved from to southern california when i was little i was like four i think my sister was two and a couple years in it was a little town called redlands which is in the 909 people you know we all stick together the ie people over there and um we there was a youth circus that had started in redlands by a gentleman named roy coble who was who created the circus for wayward boys to give them something to do to get off the streets so but then it expanded and you know everyone kind of joined and so when we when i was about six years old my parents took us to the circus and i was mesmerized i mean there was sparkly costumes and there was cool people floating through the air and there was like ponies and elephants and like no there's no animals it's about european style circus yeah there's no animals it was just but it was kids like my age and they were like styling and they had the cool costumes and i was like dad i have to do this it's like you want to be in the circus like uh-huh like there was like no question in my mind that i was going to do this so they signed us up it was kind of like an after school instead of soccer gymnastics we did circus and then my sister joined a couple years later when she was about six also and we stuck with it until we graduated high school so you know there was a couple years we called the dark years when um the it lost insurance and so they couldn't perform so we had to get rid of some of the aerial acts but you know my parents got very involved they were president of the booster group and so we were part of it our entire growing up so we would go to school we'd go to and we'd go to the y for like four hours a day and you know and became like our other family and so um we you know that was like what we did growing up and then even in high school we were both cheerleaders my sister and i i was i was did shot put and track i wasn't very fast but strong so probably all those years holding people in the circus and so you know we did all of that but we still afterwards we went over and then when we graduated high school you know i went to europe to study spanish for a year and then i went came back and went to the university of texas at austin so yeah the circus was amazing and you know it's really interesting because i think that's why i'm not afraid to get on stage now when i speak at conferences and events because i was on stage all the time growing up it was kind of like a second nature thing for me um but i do not like heights at all but the coolest acts are in the air so i was like i have to do this and so in my head it was like 50 feet in the air i think it was like 10 in reality but when you're six or seven that's really nice i seem really hot and i would cry every single practice i did not want they like it was called swinging baseballs or swinging wise and would swing back and forth and you lay back and i would cry every single practice and then they said and cuts this is back in the day when they actually made kids like actually have cuts for things like if you weren't good enough you got cut not like today when you get a trophy for losing which my kids don't do by the way so uh i'm right there with you i i'm not a fan of participation trophies no no no there's a there's a reason for winners and losers like i'm saying like you'd be good it teaches good sportsmanship they're like that's a whole different podcast in itself but that is a whole different tangent we could spend a much longer time yeah so um they said you either do it you either do the tricks for the you know do the act or you get cut so i was like oh you are not cutting me so i did it and so and i just did it but then next year i would cry every practice again it was like the dumbest thing but and my mom was there and she's like yeah you gotta do it or you're not gonna be an act that's like there's no like oh my daughter's special no it was like you either do it or you don't that was like the extent of my mom's like pep talk so now so you do this you know you so you get in the circus you're successful you're wonderful now i i don't maybe there's a career in the circuit are there still circumstances can i tell you yes so then one summer um after ninth grade or before ninth grade we went to this thing called circus marcus back east we did like a trade so six of us or eight of us from our circus went and performed with the circus in new england right and so some i'm still friends with some of those people and some of them they're like six figures walking the tightrope i'm like my parents totally lied to me but yeah there are circus performers but no i was like gonna go on you know i wanted to so i went off to college i went to europe they went to college and i was gonna do international hospitality because now i have this love of traveling my mom and my parents have traveled their whole lives now let me just jump in really quick because one because i got it wrong in the intro but i thought it was an interesting point so i think when you can correct more and wrong yeah when you're getting coming out of high school your parents saying we want you to go to college but that was not the right time you need to go and maybe get to take a break for a year is that about right yeah so i did applause i pledged a few schools my dream school was university of texas at austin and here's why it was my dream school my father went there and which is not why it's my dream school my father went there and he was like you can go to any in-state school the only out-of-state school i will help you with is the university of texas in austin i was like i am out of here so that was like my dream i wanted to go far away that was my dream school so yeah but they were like you know what we're not really sure you're ready i didn't get an ndut the first time i applied it only has a five percent out of state acceptance rate at the time and uh so they said you know maybe you're not ready for college you know we don't want to pay all this money and then you just bail out so we're gonna send you to spain for a year because that's the safest thing for a person who's not focused to do something that's right little girl a high school student that just graduated hasn't gone to college it really hasn't been on her own and send it to a different country and tell her just to go have a good time yeah totally so i did but i will tell you i learned so much that year probably more than i learned in my four years in college right you learned a lot there and i was in a place i was in sevilla in the south there was not a lot of english speakers there not all my roommates we i lived in a house that was like what they did for a living is they hosted all these foreign exchange students and none of them they all spoke like broken english so we were speaking spanish and i would hang out in the bars because when you're 18 you're like this is super cool to hang out in the bars i can't do that at home and i just talk to people and when you are um when you have uh cushioned your fear of talking with by self-medicating with what sangria and spain you know you're not afraid to make those mistakes and say the stupid things when they laugh at you like that's not what you wanted to say i guarantee it but you know you don't care and you learn so my spanish was but not i came back fluent basically i was dreaming in spanish when i came back so when i went to uc austin i started working in hotels and um my spanish came in handy right cause you're on the front desk of a hotel and i was like talking to all these the guests that it was i loved every second of work in a hotel it was so except for the fact that people kind of lose all sense of like normalcy when they go to hotel they'd be like can you believe it's raining outside i'm like i'm really sorry i'm not sure what to do so now you came back so you've had a great time and experience in uh spain and you had you know learned a lot of things got that experience probably better than college but then you did come back and you studied in college i think you started in spanish and then went into hospitality is that right no i was always my degree was in spanish right and so and my minor was in french and so i did some i did a summer in france also um but the whole time i worked at hotels the entire time i worked so i had to support myself all through college so i worked in hotels the entire time i was in college and i loved it i loved the whole hospitality industry my mom had been in travel my entire life so i was like yeah i'm just going to do an international hospitality i'll use my spanish and my french and i'll live all over the world and it was like amazing and then 9 11 happened so i'd already been accepted to an international um hospitality school in switzerland and i even bought my big winter coat because you know in southern california and in texas you don't really need those codes and we were like all excited and then everyone got a little scared and i don't i honestly don't remember why i didn't go to the school i don't know if it was because i got scared my parents got scared like the hospitality school pushed off the year i can't remember why i didn't go but i ended up going back home because i ended up getting laid off from the hotel all the assistant managers in the hotel got laid off after 9 11 because no occupancy dropped way down so i went home and that's when i ended up my and my grandfather passed away not too long before so i ended up living with my grandmother and helping her out in the valley in southern california and that's when i got into sales and recruiting just because i was like looking for a job and i went to interview this recruiting place and they're like you're fun you want to work here hey that's a great way to find a job hey just be the best or the funnest person in the room and you'll get hired totally now so you go in you do the you do the uh you know you get hired on you do that for a period of time now you switched and went into at some point to do recruiting in sales and then went to israel is that right yeah so after a little bit of time i had like then i had recruited myself out into into um enterprise fleet sales and i did that for a little bit and then a company recruited me out to do some sales management for them for this like mlm type company um but not not like super amazon just like sorta mlm tangent you know tangential or whatever so um then my grandmother passed away and i was just kind of like oh i don't know like is this what i want to do i had kind of started like learning more about my roots and my heritage and everything and so i was like and someone offered me a scholarship to go to israel right so i was like i think i need to find myself again so off i went to israel to go find myself at 20 whatever years old i was so now so you you said okay i got a free scholarship why not go have another you know a good time do some learning along the way see a different part of the country go study there and then you also met your uh future husband and your spouse right yeah so my um we were actually set up from a matchmaker but sorta because my really good my roommate at the time a really good friend of mine she went on a date with him she was set up with him from a matchmaker and she called me and she said i went out with this guy i did not like him but i think he will that's what this kind of sounds like you know was you when you're eating something you're like oh this is horrible do you want to try to try it i know but i want to try something horrible but it sounds like it was a good idea well you know it's really funny because she is a very uh like specific her she doesn't have to i laugh at every i'm an easy laugh like i love like to laugh at things that's for me it's very therapeutic and i just i find a lot of different things entertaining she is like very in the box humor like you'll tell her a joke and she'd be like i don't get it and my husband likes to be the funny guy so like i could totally see them on a date he was probably like be like wait for her to laugh and she's like i don't i don't get it anymore i don't get it if she's like and that sounds like my mom she's always like i get it it's just not funny you know it's not funny like it's funny everybody else is laughing yeah so he then we went out and we're like i'm like laughing he's like and then we even joke because on our first date he even like he saw some girl like in the lobby we're like in a lobby of a hotel it's like a typical israel dating situation and uh i have to say lobby if you just say hotel then it sounds a little bit more a little less um above the board right so um and he was like i think i know that girl do you mind if i could say hi like okay like i tell people the story and they're like that should have sealed the deal like you two knew you were meant to be together at that point so anyway so six weeks later we got engaged and um and about uh 12 seconds later i was pregnant so i was like let's um i did not want to give birth overseas in a country i didn't speak the language and so we moved back to the u.s when i was about five months pregnant and and i still was like what do i want to do because now i'm pregnant which you know is really like the best time to look for a job by the way is when you're obviously pregnant because people are super willing to hire you yeah i can see that might be a bit of an issue but nothing i mean now i would like now that's like the best because there's no one looking for jobs so like you're pregnant you're like don't fight go get a job no problem they're just looking for someone to hire so totally right right so uh so we came back and um we came back in 2008. now honor if you remember 2008 as an attorney my husband's an attorney was not like the best time for attorneys who didn't have any real world experience yet he like taken the bar and gone to israel so we expected you know like we got married we were like yeah we'll go back he'll get a legal job in new york and it'll be great and then no yeah yeah actually so i graduated 2013. so i was going into law school about a year or 2009 i did uh two degrees but i remember even 2010 and 11 when my friends were coming out a lot of those were still just like yeah there's just no jobs and it's slow and like nobody's hiring and everybody's waiting and so by the time i graduated luckily it caught up i definitely remember like a lot of people that were smart and great attorneys were still struggling to find jobs just because of the 911 and then yes and then what happened was you know like there's all these attorneys with tons of experience taking entry-level positions and so then if you're really entry-level you couldn't get a job so it was like a little bit brutal for us like we're bradley brandy married he can't get like a real law job i'm pregnant looking for a job it was like super not stressful for newlyweds and um i was working at this non-profit and this and but i would i would tell everybody like if i need something i have no shame when i was looking to get married and something i'm like i'm looking for a husband i'm looking for a hug but look at you know whatever but i'm looking for a job i'm looking for a job i'm looking for a job looking for this right so i told everybody that i was looking for like another job like i needed some we needed some more income so i was um someone mentioned to me that these uh two women were looking for something at the same time i was trying to figure out what i wanted to do with my life so i was like let me just talk to them let me start interviewing people because i didn't know i knew that corporate america wasn't great for mommies like it's you know it's not always super flexible and unfortunately kids like don't get sick on the weekend they get sick monday through friday and nine to five maybe it has something to do with school not wanting to go and you're not feeling good on the weekend i still want to play right so um yeah so i started meeting all these women and they were like these amazing entrepreneurs some are entrepreneurs some are executives whatever but the entrepreneurs to me were amazing they were just like had all this energy and they were passionate you could see like their type a personality coming through and i love big personalities i'm very attracted to big personalities and so but somehow in the conversation they'd be like and there's this application i have to get and i can't figure out how to do it and i was like what you run like a 20 million dollar company or you run like a 250 000 whatever it is you run a company and you can't do an application what so then i looked into it and you know what something it's very detail-oriented it's very time-consuming what something's called in new jersey is not what it's called in texas it's not what it's called in california so if you're looking for a document that's not even called that in your state right is it articles of incorporation or certificate of formation is that you know do you have like maybe you never maybe your accountant did your your formation so you don't even have bylaws or an operating agreement or stock certificates right happens all the time so i was like ah and this is even before i understood the massive pull on your time and your bandwidth as an entrepreneur this is just just general human difficulties right so and most entrepreneurs like are not the most focused people they're driven right but they're not good at you know like the paperwork the detailed stuff they're visionaries and so they you know they have these big pictures but they're not the workhorses necessarily so um my natural inclination is more like a workhorse type person right which is why i like to partner with visionaries and i've kind of grown into that visionary role a little bit throughout my last 12 years of being an entrepreneur but you know in the beginning i was very much just the workhorse so that was like a perfect opportunity for me to say let me do that project for you um i think when we chatted before he even started out kind of just i'll help you out i'll do this as kind of one-time gig and that and then you started to build a little bit of referral base or reputation and started to actually say there's an actual business opportunity around here and i can actually you know create something so as you're figuring out you know how did you go how did you go about because you know today it is is a little bit more i don't know for the right words in vogue or popular you know it's more important or emphasized or whatever the word you want to choose to you know to have diversity trainings or certificates and to make sure that that's the focus of the business but i would imagine you know that's a bit more recent when you got started you know how did you how did you get or get people understand the importance well so the you know the the fire diversity world really started as an offshoot of the civil rights movement of the 60s and it was like the 70s where it became like the you know corporate social response but it was really more public sector though the 80s was corporate social responsibility it's the right thing to do and it really wasn't until the 90s that people started seeing that oh wow if i use diverse suppliers they bring me into new demographics and then into the 2000s when it really became oh this is a good business decision so you are absolutely right i had come into it when it was now starting to be seen as like a good business decision but you know like nmsdc which is the national minority supplier development council has been around for like 30 30 40 years we bang which is the women's business enterprise national council has been around for over 20 years so they had some so and i was very fortunate to meet one of these women that i spoke to who had already been certified and she kind of took me into her wing as a mentor and she introduced me to a lot of these large corporations who would then introduce me to suppliers and then they just everyone started telling each other like we really until this year did very little sales and marketing it was all just word of mouth and the first you know like seven years of the company was just me it was just me doing it and then i was like oh i well well the first five years it was just me doing everything that i'm like oh i probably should build my customers huh i had a bookkeeper you know which i wish i had done way earlier and then um there it you know then we did and then it kind of just kind of grew and grew and grew and then about six years ago or so the corporations realized that you know to have a conversation with your supplier and say look diversity is very important to us we recognize you as a woman-owned business we'd like you to get certified here's a resource it's a very different conversation than hey we realize you're a woman-owned business and diversity is important to us it's so important to us we've retained our resource to support you and so that conversation is a much more powerful stance for the corporations to take and so that is that's when they started going oh we can retain certify my company and we started hires now we're a team of five about to be six um and because we just like the corporations are now really realizing that it is a very powerful message you know it's one thing for you to tell your spouse like it's important for me for you to shower every day i mean i'm not going to and i'm not going to pay for the hot water heater but you should really shower you should really consider it no i think there's that great so so now you've said okay we've you figured out your business opportunity and figured out what you know how to where to where you where to focus on how to find the people and you started to build a team which is all exciting so that's the hardest part and the hard part but it's kind of fun you know it's always for me it's always that getting the business going is also the most work the most difficult takes the most time but then once you know after a while once you get the business established it evolves and it changes so you're no longer kind of figuring it out and coming up the ideas and trying things out that you don't share work now it's kind of going in they're kind of different phases so there's always kind of fun parts of each phase but now as you're kind of making that transition looking at the next kind of six to twelve months kind of where do you see or see things heading right now so right now i am very excited that we're moving back into in-person events because for us in-person events are where i do the majority of my business development with the large corporations i am much better in person than i am in zoom i am easily distractible plus you know my kid's school's a mile down the road so if there's an issue and one of my kids has a lot of issues so if there's an issue at school and they call me they're like hey you know can you come pick your kid up or deal with the situation and i'm like i'm at a conference they're like no you're a mile down the road you need to come get your kid but if i'm out of town i'm like i'm out of town call my husband so you know so that is a hard part for me also like my phone rings the team is calling me like i'm very easily distractible i will always come back to what i'm doing you know i'm able to refocus but it's just a matter of getting so easily distracted that i can't focus on the conversation as well so i like these in-person events where i can go and talk to people and really demonstrate um our passion for what we do because i do think that is one of the biggest sellers is that uh well i love what i do i get to work with entrepreneurs every single day i get to work with diverse businesses every day and if there's one shiny sequiny glitter of like you know rainbows and sunshine they came out of 2020 and this whole pandemic situation we've been i guess 2021 now at this point is that people but after 2020 people really saw how powerful and necessary small diverse local businesses were to the economy the reason everything was hit so hard is because the small diverse local businesses were hit so hard right so i think that people saw that and they're like oh and corporations saw that and then you know we had a lot of racial tensions at the same time and so all of that confounded together a lot of the corporations made very public proclamations so i am looking forward to getting back to events back on stage back to meeting in person with our companies and doing trainings and you know i love my entrepreneurial events that they know nothing about supplier diversity they're like oh you do like grants and stuff i'm like nope totally not at all not what i do so just you know like because there are less than one percent of the diverse businesses in the united states are certified there is so much business to be had and i get calls all the time especially if you're like in the r d in the healthcare industry if you're in any of those type of industries manufacturing they are searching for these kind of companies that are diverse owned qualified capable and certified no and i think that there's definitely an opportunity and i think that that'll be a fun we'll have to have you on and maybe just on an expert episode and then and go through a little bit of more what's the process what to expect what are the benefits why you might consider and also if you're you know if you're not there should you be moving in that direction so i think those are all fun things to hit on but for this episode as we start to wrap up to the end or towards the end of the podcast we'll jump to er as we've kind of now gone through your journey i'm looking a bit into the future now we'll jump to the two questions i always ask the end of these podcasts so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it i think not outsourcing like my bookkeeping earlier that is my biggest business mistake because now if people ask me all the time what's your number one advice for other entrepreneurs i'm like outsourced to experts whenever possible whatever you don't need to be involved in outsourced to experts because if you don't have time and money to do it once you for sure don't have time money to do it twice so i you know doing the bookkeeping thing was i was like i wanted to save the money whatever but you know what it took me so much longer same with like creating ads or whatever it might cost me 250 bucks to create an ad but it would may take me eight hours to make a crappy ad right so i can pay 50 bucks up someone do it very well and they do it much quicker because you're not paying for someone's actual time you're paying for their 11 years of expertise right so i agree with you and i mean one of the things i had to learn is you know i think most entrepreneurs and i absolutely clump myself in there um you know think that oh i'm the smartest person in the room i can do it the best you know if i have to turn it over to somebody else i'll have to train him anyway and it's gonna take as long you know whatever the excuses are and so you always kind of keep things you know all to yourself and you think i can do it all myself and even if that's true which i don't think it's ever true that you can do everything but even if it's true then you never get you you never get everything yeah there's a business you don't have the growth and you know if you can pay some even if you can do it better if you can have somebody that can do it 80 as well as you you should be focusing your time and attention on the places that you can drive the most value that people can do it at 80 as well so i think that absolutely that's definitely a lesson that i had to learn as well and i think a great thing to learn from second question i always ask is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them outsource the experts as soon as you can because as i just said i think that people again and same thing with like certification or even like your legal work right you could do your own like certain things and some things yes are just simple processes whatever but you know what you don't want to make a mistake right you may want to get your partnerships agreement your exit strategies all those done before there is money involved on the table because everyone plays nice until there's money on the table right so all those type of things like make sure you take care of those early on and outsource it to people who know what they're doing no i like the one that you know even it's always interesting people always like i'll just get the business going and then yeah sometimes maybe someday if it's worth anything we'll get all these things cleaned up and at least you know and i'm speaking the bias their perspective but on the legal side you know usually when money's involved it's a lot harder to clean those up because when it's not worth anything people like oh yeah you know whatever the ownership is or whether the payment is they're a lot more flexible and reasonable when things are worth money then they're saying no i i contribute all these things i should get better compensation or have more ownership and inevitably with every business creates more conflict so i definitely that's a great takeaway as we wrap up um you know if people want to reach out to you they want to hire you to you know be a client a customer they want to hire you to help with the diversity training they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend and you're all of the above what's the best way to reach out contact you find out more so you always go to certifymycompany.com my email is heather at certifymycompany.com we're on all the socials at certifymyco and you can find us there that's the best way to reach this is one of those many avenues all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out contact i think there's a lot of a lot of benefit to your service and definitely worthwhile to make that connection so well as we wrap up thank you for giving or coming on the podcast now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey telling you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast please you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else to business feel free to reach out to us just go to strategymedia.com we're always here to help thank you again heather for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you

Innovate And Adapt 

Where Are They Now?

Forrest Tuff

Devin Miller

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 my greatest fear is running out of innovation to me innovation is what keeps us afloat you know it keeps me going every day and sometimes that worried me like okay as i grow older will i you know get more out of touch with what's happening in social media new apps coming up you know how much do i want to keep up with because technology continues to advance and so as you grow you wonder how much of this technology do you need or how much can you handle and so my fear is not being able to adapt because i think once i stopped adapting that's when i'll stop growing and then it'll be time for me to hang up 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 and seven and eight-figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we have startups and small businesses with their pads and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast forest tough and uh just to give you a bit of introduction of forest so uh in high school lightered in three sports track football and i can't remember the third one still have to remind me and uh while he was growing up he was also kind of a geeky kid in his own words so he collected cars played video games and got his scholarship in basketball had dreams of going into the nba but then got injured and that ended his career aspirations of the nba so graduated in sports management and went into or worked for foot walker for a period of time while he's in school did some internships at the clinic and then decided to start his own business um went after he got into doing some videos with birthdays and music videos and everything else so that will lead a little bit to where he's at today if i'm also doing some professional speaking coaching and mentoring and whatnot and with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast for us wow devon that was a great 20 second recap of a life that was awesome awesome job man awesome job now great to be here so glad to be back this is uh awesome to sit here and chat it up with you again yeah so kind of with that in mind uh walk us through a little or tell walks you a little bit of your journey you know kind of i gave the 20 you know 20 second overview of a much longer journey so tell us a little bit about uh what you have or how you got to where you're at today well that third sport that you were mentioning was basketball that was the one that i settled on and went to college and you know couldn't finish due to an injury but that led me on a journey to kind of figure out what's next you know that was my passion basketball was a passion it's like being a doctor you don't have a plan b you know i didn't have a plan b i really thought i wanted to go pro and it didn't happen so i found myself you know working in retail in sales and so that sales background i think really helped me out when i started on my entrepreneurial journey so in 2004 i started my business and sales was one of the things that really stood out it was in media production of course because over the years one of the things that i probably told you in our conversations that i always had a camcorder so i was always recording my life from the time i was in high school until i was an adult but it was more just about the you know the stories of just you know having fun with my friends and things of that nature but that's what turned it into a business and so my background and sales and customer service and retail is what really helped me grow my video production business so later on it kind of branched out into you know media production and branding and we began to work with government agencies and corporations and so now 17 years later i've been an entrepreneur for 17 years right and so now i'm branching off into other things such as film and public speaking and you know we do a lot of community service so that in a nutshell is kind of where we are in terms of how it's evolved over time no that sounds great and just as a as a reminder just for those that didn't uh catch it uh as fortune mentioned so we had you on a few months ago um chatting about your journey kind of what we just talked to and this was giving people a bit of a refresher it's a bit of your journey and so you know with that in mind you know as we are you know kind of now reminding everybody and bringing people back up to speed you know give us a bit of a just a refresher kind of the audiences too you know six months ago kind of where were you at what was going on uh what was what was happening and then we'll hear a little bit about what's happened since then yeah maybe give everybody a bit of a refresher so yeah six months ago i was kind of in the heat of this thing called the pandemic gary are you familiar with that but i may have heard of it yeah that pandemic had happened so i think we were all trying to figure it out you know it was the start of a new year and the pandemic had happened of course in march of 2020 but there was this rebuild of different things and so to give you a backstory here are some areas that i'm focused on i focused on my business which really works with small businesses and government agencies and non-profits i'm also a film producer so i was making films at the time and i had started my journey as a professional speaker so i had these three things that were really my bread and butter of what i was doing well of course when the pandemic hit my first thing was to step back and sustain my company because i was really the lifeblood of all these other venues that all these other things that i had began to get into the film industry had come to a screeching halt so i didn't have to worry about that i just had to kind of hold my own on projects that i had and continue to market projects that i had completed before the pandemic but i didn't have to worry about new productions because we weren't able to do anything and public speaking had changed i had gone from talking to audiences and people and getting over that fear to now having to talk to a little bitty video camera and try to motivate people and and get a message across on screen so that was the challenge that we were faced with at the top of the year is how we now going to make things work so that gives you a recap now here that's a great recap and it definitely leads to a question i have because i mean that is difficult you know that's the kind of the all venues people that were used to whether it's crowds or public speaking or mentoring or you know doing seminars and all that you know are now looking and saying the business model at least for a period of time has shifted you're not able to do those crowds you're not able to get everybody in the same room or get them together or if you are it's in a much reduced setting and so as you're doing that looking in that and that's kind of the setup you've had how did you kind of look to tackle that you know kind of as you're going through that you know was it just one where hey we'll wait out for a period of time we can't wait anymore and we have to pivot or early on you saw this was you know this was going to require you guys to pivot so you made that decision early on or kind of walk us through how that went one of the things that was good that i really wasn't aware of is my company had been structured already for a virtual environment you know we provide a lot of post-production services and then again there are contractors that started to get out so my company actually thrived we picked up a lot a lot of more a lot of business and so we had a great quarter and things were really swinging that way so to my surprise the company flourished the film as i told you stop but public speaking is where i now had to kind of dig in and try to figure out how to tackle that monster so i began to as i'm a member of toastmasters i you know started working more with the organization a lot of virtual speaking opportunities came up a lot of them came that were free i took as many speaking engagements as i could free and paid because i wanted to continue to hone the craft and get better so over time i've become more comfortable and i've also been doing podcasts which have helped because there was an influx in podcasts during the pandemic and so that gave an opportunity for you to really get on the screen and talk with somebody and actually hone your message in so for me that process was more about getting out and doing it not so much worrying about oh am i going to get paid to do this event or i'm so used to a crowd it was like listen there's a new environment get used to it right get over it and get used to it because in business that's one of the things that we always talk about is you have to be able to adapt and so for me that was the change that i had to do in order to continue to grow and even as a public speaker is adapt to the new environment and embrace it now one question you know as you're adapting because i think that you know easier said than done or at least it requires a higher degree of changing at least a mindset because you know at least my limited you know public speaking and doing other you know talks or presentations and that is you tend to feed off of the crowd right in other words it's easier to get them to engage they're more willing to or you know to answer questions that you can you know you can gauge how the audience is receiving things and everything else and now as you're shifting to video and online and doing it remotely and everything else it kind of removes a lot of that ability to engage and to work with people in that way so you know was that an easy change was a difficult change or kind of how did you adjust or adapt to that for me would work it was a challenge it was a challenge adjusting the mindset but what i had to do is i had to rely on skills that i personally had and everyone has different skills that sometimes take you to sit down write them out and figure out what is it that's happened in your life that could prepare you for this change and i realized that i've had an active imagination you know i'm a filmmaker i'm a storyteller i had to find ways to envision that people were enjoying my talk that my talk was giving them the fulfillment as as it would in person you know i had to imagine that when i cracked a joke or if i said something that i thought would be a little catchy that they responded i just believe they responded whether they did or not and i proceeded in that same manager man in that same manner and i had to focus on my energy so one of the things i would do is i would set up a zoom call with myself and i would do a presentation until the point i got comfortable doing that presentation by myself so i no longer worried about what the crowd did i just responded as if i knew the crowd responded a certain way and whether they did or not i think that the crowd would start to feed off of your energy because even when you speak people feed off of the energy you give them you know if you give them this energy like you're uncertain or you don't know what you're talking about they tend to feel the same way but i tried to show confidence i tried to show energy enthusiasm about what i was doing and hoping that it would transcend through the camera so that was my process of doing it and i'm sure there are many other ways that could help others you know get through that same process themselves no that definitely makes sense and i think that you know it's either one where you have to figure out how to adapt your process and you know imagine it kind of you know in your mind's eye practice it a lot get that confidence and doing it or you're going to you know if the venues aren't there you're going to just your business is going to wither and and you know not going to succeed or that so as you're now making that transition doing that you know going more online doing more remotely and uh in kind of a adjusting or adapting or pivoting you know what was the success like was it well received did your business rock it up and it took off or did it you know kind of took a while and it was you know leveled out or took a bit of a downturn he had to adjust you know and all of those are kind of different ones that people are facing you know some of them are saying hey this uh covet has been you know while it's not been a good for the you know feel better feel for a lot of people it's been great for our business other times it's been tough and rocky time so how did that work out for you guys well in terms of are we talking about speaking business right now yeah in the speaking business there was a little bit of a downslope and so you know budgets are cut off and people are trying to figure out what's next so for me i said like i said devin i began to take events that were free you know i wanted to spread my wings as much as i could i would have the ability to speak at other clubs in other countries so i was actually able to further my blueprint because now i had access to people that i might not have had access to you know companies that were like yourself you know look we're talking we're in two totally different states i might have never met you in this situation so my footprint became broader became wider and so therefore i began to create relationships that were setting me up in the future for other opportunities and so i began to as a resurgent started i began to book more speaking engagements and things are picking up and i still continue to work with other organizations and and hone my craft and become better because now things are getting hybrid so some are like hey come on in and some are like let's do it virtual so it's now another adjustment to get used to that balancing ballot balancing act because once you get used to doing it in front of camera now you have to get back in front of people and get acclimated to that again so it's always a learning curve i think that's the part that i really enjoy is the challenge of continual growth and not just being stagnant at where i am now that definitely makes sense now to kind of follow up on that i think in addition to some of the public speaking you also got into a bit more of film and tv and community service and a few other things in addition to that or on those fronts as well so maybe tell us a little bit about you know how that worked out well i started a show called tough talk show it was something that i planned on doing and since i couldn't go out i decided to start it virtually and the idea came after i did a few podcasts and i said wait a minute i could go ahead and start a tv show the only thing with my tv show is it included psas and there was a lot of production value so the show had a lot of editing in terms of graphics and things like you would do a normal tv show except the interviews were just on zoom and so i created this production we were able to finish 10 episodes for a season and the show did really well we won several awards and we also you know went in for an emmy we didn't get the emmy nod but it was something that i felt was an opportunity so i tried to look at everything as an opportunity and not just see it as like oh this is just something we're doing i took the tv show serious it was similar to a podcast format but as i said there was a lot more production to it so that was something that we were able to do and i think for that season it worked really well because it it was a part of the branding and marketing strategy it kept myself and my company in the forefront you know we didn't fall off and that was one of the things that i was concerned about is not letting the company just go stagnant during this time no i think that definitely makes sense and you know there's uh i think some people started out saying oh we got to hunker down we don't you know this will just be a temporary thing and as it became more you know more people being again understand it's going to take longer it's not going to just be a you know a shorter temporary thing yeah just definitely adjust and adapt and i think those that can figure out how to adjust and adapt and how to leverage things and you know take advantage of the change in the marketplace and the ways of doing things those that can figure it out first are going to be the one successful it definitely sounds like that's kind of the direction that uh you went and the success that you found so now as we you know as you're kind of talked a little bit caught us up as to what you've done over the last six you know what where you're at six months ago what you've done over the last six months now looking a bit into the future you're kind of saying okay to a degree depending on where you live and which state and whatnot you have some there are some states that are pretty or well opened up you have some that are going back into way mass or lockdowns and they have somewhere in the middle so as you kind of are dealing with all that where do you kind of see things headed in the next you know six to 12 months for you you know how did that how does that look to plan or play out for you well one of the things that's helped is i've been able to reach out with new contractors to work with my company so there are there are contractors that are willing to go out and be more in the field and so with that being said it's created an opportunity for us to continue the work you know right now this hybrid work is is really working and i am you know for me there's been the concern of my kids you know last year i had two of my children here with me and they were in college so now they're actually gone they're back in school and i have a young one that's still here because she's not in school we decided to keep her still at home so there's that dynamic of now working from home with my wife with my kid every day and that balancing act because you know that's one of the things that also makes a big difference when you're running a business you also have to be aware that now as a person who has a family that dynamic plays into how i can run my business and how i balance that thin line between working too much and you know having too much fun with my family so i can see myself in the next six to 12 months sticking with this model because i feel like you know there's a new variant that's coming out and now everyone's kind of unsure and even in georgia you know georgia is just wide open but you know there are things when georgia shuts down it shuts down so i feel like with this variant coming there's going to be some things that shut down a little bit unfortunately but i think it's necessary because if we're going to thrive we have to be aware of what's happening and we have to now look at this model of a hybrid or even virtual as something that will be a staple for what we've done and i'll make this last point my daughter was in the first grade so now she's in the third and she's been virtual since first grade this is going to really affect the way that age of children do things you know in the next decade or so and also the way how many of us look at how we do business now as entrepreneurs and business owners no i i agree with that all friends so now you know i think that that definitely makes perfect sense so well now as we've kind of talked a little bit you know where you're at six months ago walk through your journey where you're heading in the next six twelve months and as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast you know normally on the the normal episode of the first episode that we had i have my two questions always asked on the where are you at now episodes i always ask a different question so we'll jump to that now and before we dive to that we are doing a bonus question where we talked a little bit about intellectual property as well so for those of you that like to stay tuned and hear us talk a little bit about patents and trademarks and other things definitely stay tuned but before we get to the bonus question on the end of the or the last question i asked on the podcast is you know now as you got into you know continuing on your business you've had to adjust adjust you've had to pivot you've had to do different things as an entrepreneur and as a business owner what is your greatest fear and how do you deal with it my greatest fear is running out of innovation to me innovation is what keeps us afloat you know it keeps me going every day and sometimes that worried me like okay as i grow older will i you know get more out of touch with what's happening in social media new apps coming up you know how much do i want to keep up with because technology continues to advance and so as you grow you wonder how much of this technology do you need or how much can you handle and so my fear is not being able to adapt because i think once i stopped adapting that's when i'll stop growing and then it'll be time for me to hang up to get up and maybe find something else so that's my greatest fear hmm no i think that you know it's in that that opens up a bigger a much bigger topic and probably a topic for another day but i think you know technology and first of all how it adapts how it or how it uh continues to evolve how you use it should you use it you know there's a question of is it too intrusive in your lives is that you know on the one hand it's great you know as the pandemic came along and as you're having to go to online and do it remotely it's been you know it has those benefits to allow businesses to continue on the other hand you're also saying now it's you know it's hard to find that balance in the sense that you're you can be working 24 7. you always have your phone with you you have your emails you can you know it's hard to disengage sometimes with technology so as it evolves and as it continues to and benefit our lives i think there's that definitely that balance that makes sense that we have to find so definitely a fear understandable fear and also something that has to be dealt with so with that before we dive to the the bonus question as we wrap up the normal episode if people want to reach out to you they want to uh watch yours or watch your show they want to hire you as a public speaker either in person or remotely they want to have it get any other coaching or other feedback or just want to be your best friend they want to be an investor they want to be a employee they want to do any or all the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more well you can reach me at forcetuff.com that's forestuff2rs 2ts 2fs.com and you can reach me at 678-754-2882 that's my direct line and just contact me that way and let's have a conversation and see where we can fit all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect and uh and make and explore things further so well thank you again for us for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you listeners and now for all of you listeners if you have your own journey to tell them you'd like to be a guest on the podcast definitely feel free to reach out to us just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show we'd love to share your journey uh two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe to your podcast player so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review so everyone else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help so with that now as we've talked a little bit about your journey how things are going where things are ahead of the future your fears and everything else now we get to shift gears a bit and we get to talk about that you know one of the topics that i love talking about as you can probably guess which is intellectual property and so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask your uh your top intellectual property question all right so 2020 december i trademarked the term filmpreneur so now i own that mark and so as i'm ready to now go back out and brand i want to ask your expertise on how can i use that mark if this pat if it's trademarked for anything that relates to the film business how does that actually relate now if i want to get into apparel or other things of that nature is there something else i would need to do yeah so there's a couple kind of questions within that and i'll break it down okay the one question that often comes up you know as a general question is people start a business whatever it is service product business whatever and then one of the first things they want to do is or get or start to sell what i'll call swag you know whether it's t-shirts is you know or bags or is you know hats or other things socks or you know a whole bunch of different types of swag and they say well do i need a trademark for those things and generally the answer for swag type of bottoms or promotional items or those type of things is that the answer is no you don't need to get a trademark for those and the reason is is trademarks are set up to be source identifying of a brand and so when you're putting it on like a mug or you're putting on a t-shirt it's not it's not identifying a brand that's selling shirts it's really identifying your brand as a services you're providing as a coaching or as a tv show or whatnot so generally if it's the kind of swag type of items unless you're starting a new clothing line or you're starting a new mug line or you're starting whatever line and you're actually selling those products swag usually you don't need to you can it usually doesn't provide a lot of value and it's not typically worthwhile the other question that i would hit on is now let's say it's not the swag type of items but rather let's say as a kind of a made up scenario the original trademark was only for podcasting it was you know it was a description of goods and services which hey i'm using this trademark for podcasting but now you've branched out and you're going to write a book and you've also done a tv show and you're going to start a whatever you know services or products and so you started doing branching out so what your original trademark doesn't cover those goods and services then you're gonna what you have to do is file a new trademark for the same word or the same logo but for those new categories or the new areas that you're expanding into so if it's swag probably wouldn't worry about it if it's other areas that are new services new products or other things that you're doing then you'd have to file a new trademark application given that or that the other one has already been written or filed and registered great advice thank you so with that we'll go ahead and wrap things up and if you or any of the listeners ever have any other questions about patents trademarks or anything else business as i've already mentioned you go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and then in meantime thanks again for coming on for us and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks so much for having me devin it's been a pleasure absolutely you

Look For The Right People

Where Are They Now?

Nate Zeleznick

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 i i want to always over deliver and the fear that i won't be able to do that how i'm handling it is i'm actively looking for the right people to help me do that because i know i can't do it all myself and my team can't do it all ourselves and so we're on the uh we're on the hunt for the right people [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 in the seven eight-figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat always happy to help now today we have another great guest and this is a guest that's already been on we're doing a where you at now episode where we get a catch up and hear a little bit about you know where they are since last we heard from them where are they at now what's been going on how's the business going and so we have uh nate zolednik if i don't stumble over my words um back onto the podcast and uh he'll talk a little bit so he is the founder or co-founder you'll have to remind me if i can't remember if there was a founder of vibration and uh he will talk a little bit about kind of where we were at six months ago a little and then what's happened over the last six months has a lot to talk about everything from sold out events to travel to training to covet shifting the business to more virtual to um you know how to where where to focus on things how to do online courses doing training and have a great conversation so with that much is introduction welcome on the podcast nate thank you devon for having me back it's honored to be here and um yeah so much has happened in the past about what's been about seven months something like that and um so much has happened that it's really a different world than we were at and it was a great world then and that's just getting better so thanks for having me hey we're excited to have you back on always fun to catch up you know you always kind of initially meet the the person with the guests on the podcast kind of hear what they have going on if you're like kind of open to them so always kind of fun to catch up so with that before we dive into what's been going on take us back about seven months kind of where things were at we might give the audience a bit of a reminder what we talked talked about less than what you were doing at that point sure sure so uh when we when i was first on your podcast i really got into uh my story my the hero's journey of how we were able to bring this breath work and consciousness expansion exercise program from the royal family of central java indonesia here to america originally to benefit blind people but now to benefit all people and so where we were at at that time you know was when covet came in and everything shut down i think it was march 13th right it was the day friday the 13th everything shut down it put us in a position where we had been running a martial arts school in ogden utah for the past 20 years and teaching people of all walks of life all ages and also the inner power and meditation secrets of the royal family of java well when kovid came upon us and we had to restructure everything and start teaching by zoom and seeing such a high attrition rate as most martial arts schools did because martial arts is a contact sport most people know that and so six foot distancing and masks and then mandatory closures and lockdowns that didn't really help the martial arts industry and around from what i read about 8 000 martial arts schools closed just in the first four months of covet because martial arts is not traditionally a high-income earning profession it's something people do out of love for helping the community and seeing people grow and carrying on and carrying on a tradition of honor respect discipline solidarity and so for us we had to think quickly and you know for the past 22 years when when we decided to bring vibravision to america martial arts was a backup plan we were not actually planning on opening a martial arts school but humanity really wasn't ready 22 years ago to hear oh yeah people could see without their eyes we could train blind people to do things that they never thought would be possible and we can prove it to medicine and science so we can measure it it wasn't really at that time it was like uh no but now we're in a different we're really in a different era of humanity of as far as what science is showing us humans are possible or capable of doing and what is possible and so now we're in that stage where we're measuring it where we're quantifying it where we're proving that we're more than society has given us permission to believe and we could do things that we thought were only in the movies like star wars uh you know there are superpowers but i don't think anybody's teleporting or levitating or anything like that and if they are they're not talking but we can develop extra sensory abilities that allow us to live a more expansive life and so in the past seven months we have gone from working on refinement of our five-day immersions to now failing immersions months in advance where even into november we're about halfway full for our november level one and we're starting to do more private immersions for doctors and biohackers scientists people who are wanting to come in and study what we're doing and learn it not just for the scientific aspect but for their own personal growth because that's really what it always boils down to is the old adage or the old saying know thyself or to thine own self be true but a lot of the time we're humans doing we're not a human being and we're not paying attention to who we really are and what we can do and how we really feel and most people don't even know who they really are they identify as their name or some people their car or their job so you ask what are you i'm an accountant okay so that's how a lot of people identify themselves or even as their name but they don't really know themselves and so that's one really cool thing about meditation and breath work of any kind is people it's an internal practice so you get to know yourself a lot better and so what we do is from everyone who's gone through no matter how their amount of experiences it's light years beyond any other meditation or breath or practice out there it's also difficult you have to push it it's like the gym if you go there and you're like i'll take the escalator up to the gym all right but if you're running stairs it's a little bit you know you're going to get a lot more if you take the hard route and so this is a very intense method but people get results almost how many followed just uh yeah too you know back even when we talked and coveted already i think you know have been in in a reasonably full swing but there but you know there's a bit of a lag and you're trying to figure out what you're doing and how to shift and how to navigate and you know kind of how to pivot and so you know kind of a follow-up question to something you hit on was as you guys were i guess first question is you know when did you come to the realization you had the pivot and then how did you land on kind of how were we going to pivot in other words go online and offer those classes because you know in theory you're looking back and can be one oh yeah go online figure it out offer classes and yet you know looking back you can sometimes be easy but on the other hand you're saying this is how we've been doing it since the business has started and this is how you know everybody does it and how do we adjust and how we pivot so a little bit of insight as to how you guys first recognize need to pivot and then how you figured out what to pivot and how that worked out okay wonderful questions so when we first recognized that we needed to pivot was uh something that i i was like we need to do this now and that was in early october of 2020 because of the lockdowns or the guidance for the state of utah we couldn't really bring new people in because we weren't allowed to have even more than 10 people in an 8 000 square foot building and so our attrition rate was high and people did not really like learning martial arts online and you know that's if kids are kids let's be let's be honest so we'd be sitting there teaching a martial arts class and see kids you know eating their sandwiches and playing and like being mean to their siblings somewhere like uh so it wasn't the same as an in class in person environment so we made that decision that we were going to pivot just to doing vibe revision and offering some online courses of the breath work which had never been released like in human history never released in a digital format for people to go and enjoy it would have always had to have been anderson either here in utah or if you're indonesian and you were in indonesia you could learn it there but still to the state they don't train non-indonesians there so our mission devon our mission was not to train a few people in utah our mission was to revolutionize human consciousness and our ability to perceive as we understand it that's always been our mission and so yeah follow-up question too because i mean that's everybody was looking to pivot to online or especially in-person things and you know if you were traditionally in that way but there's a difference between recognizing that you need to go online and actually having a successful business i'm sure you guys are my guess is you weren't the only people that had had a martial art studio at one point and were saying this yeah but as i think we talked a little bit about the before the podcast a lot of them didn't make this shift transition very no transition shifted successfully a lot of them in their closing doors are coming figured out so how did you guys kind of figure that out as to what that model would be or how you can make a success of it okay so first of all i just want to say thank you to the federal government for the ppp programs to help us to help tied us over we're one of those fortunate businesses that had some financial assistance from the stimulus packages and so that really helped us as well so as the number of martial arts students went down the increase in interest in vibration kept going up and so finally i read i read a book called the one thing now many of your listeners or viewers out there may be familiar with the one thing and there's also another book by adam markell or markle who called pivot when i read both of those they inspired me that you know our mission has always been vibration that was the original mission so we need to go back to that because that's the way that all circumstances are pointing us as that's what we need to do because that's where we're getting our increase in interest martial arts is waning and that's just the situation so when it came down to it when push came to shove so to speak we made that decision that we were going to take we were going to start offering some online training because of the success that we had been having on webinars when we would teach and i i this may have been after our first podcast devin but my brother mike and i my brother mike is the chief trainer for vibravision i'm the ceo we did a webinar with about 150 people on there for breath work and there was a lady on there who had a nasal cannula in an oxygen tank and so we did a about a 15 minute intro to a certain breath work breath hold pattern in a certain body moving movement pattern and after then we just did it for like three minutes and at the end this lady was sobbing and my brother mike asked what what's wrong she said i've had long covered since april i haven't been able to breathe without my oxygen tank and my doctors don't know if i'll ever get better and this is the first time in nine months that i've been able to breathe right and that's something after three minutes steven it helped her that much it's that's how revolutionary this is it reforms people's lives in minutes and so we just went you know what if we could do that in three minutes we really need i mean it's i mean people are dying from this respiratory disease and we have something that can help people strengthen their respiratory system we need to release some of it so some that over in indonesia is pretty common knowledge so let's release this for the public and also educate them on the dangers of improper breathing because a lot of people don't know this that improper breathing and we are the only animal on the planet that does not have a correct way of breathing for their health we breathe actually very we cause over 200 diseases are caused or 200 different health conditions are caused by improper breath and one in eight people according to the world health organization one in eight people will die from air pollution related disease one in eight because that's just where we're at you know as far as our environment now so to educate people on the importance of proper breath and how to breathe properly because their breathing is not breathing it's like running is not skipping is not walking it's not crawling it's not speed walking is there's a lot of differences in how we can motivate or move our body there are a lot of ways that we can breathe too and some are better for us than others so having programs that can teach people how to do that properly and notice an immediate difference in their health and in their energy in their clarity but then teaching them also in a more advanced program how to build their internal energy and feel it like actually feel this energy that makes us up that is us well there are a lot of people who are interested in that and we have other programs we're going to be releasing so we did it for a benevolent purpose but also to help our business survive and then with the immersions the immersion events here in utah those are high like upscale events where we have people coming from all over the nation in canada as well to learn this and we have had a 100 mind-blown rate 100 of people that come through notice a difference in their whole life from then on out so one question because i intended to follow up on all of that that we talked a little bit again before the podcast was you know there's a couple ways that you can kind of pivot and shift to online one is to do you know one-to-many or you can do one-to-one right one-to-many is that you have a large you know whether it's a webinar or seminar you have multiple people you having almost a class online so to speak where everybody can kind of go through the class together and you can all and you know one-to-one is basically what it sounds like where you have you know one-to-one where you had specific training or a specific conversation and you have a much more intimate setting so as you guys were shifting and you guys continue to shift and off you know say okay we're moving online we're going to do the you offer these classes do we need to make that thank you for the government for tidying us over for you know helping out small businesses for a period of time and as you're kind of shifting through that did you kind of gravitate to both you won or kind of how did you figure out if it's more of a one that we can teach you know people um you know via the internet in maths or via training videos or does it need to be one-to-one specific yeah that's great so neither it's not one-to-many and it's not one-to-one these are evergreen courses that people purchase them they can go through and watch over and over again because it's not necessarily us for these programs it's not a one-on-one requirement it's that you do them with proper alignment proper movement proper breath hold proper intention and when you do that you will have an amazing result amazing result as long as you have a body if you don't have a body i can't help you but if you have a body you process socks you need carbon dioxide to release that oxygen and you're able to really envision yourself being healthy powerful strong energized it's you do it right it's gonna work so that's where we're at right now but we do offer zoom classes for our more advanced students so that they can come on and we can train them but the vibravision method is such a precise method it's you know there's a lot of breath work out there and it's like let's just hyperventilate until we get high that's pretty much what it is this is not that this is based on hypoxia so breath holding has been shown to eliminate certain kinds of cancer i mean the nobel prize in physiology and medicine was one two years ago on the health effects of hypoxia or low oxygen environment so we're actually doing something the exact opposite of most breath work that you'll see out there it just has to be done in the right way and it is more strenuous and it must be you know um yeah do it right or you won't get the same result so we have the evergreen model right at this point but we have not done as well with the evergreen model as we have with our immersions but that's about to change because we realize that we've had some inconsistency in congruency in our branding and with you know we had a certain firm working on our website and now we're bringing in other people who are branding experts who can help that with the seo with the branding with the look with the functionality uh with the speed of the website with everything that needs to really take this into a 21st century of well a modern day right now functional website we've got the new people starting to work on that next week so things are really going to change that way as far as our public presence but i mean we have almost 200 videos on youtube that people can go and they can learn our story and they can see the most amazing demonstrations of conscious mobility that you just won't find anywhere else there are some other people in the world that teach this blindfolded skill but they teach it a different method a different way and most almost all of them only teach people 12 and under so for you and i that's not an option um but for us we trained you know we just had people that were in their 60s in our workshop that ended just a couple days ago yeah no i think that's kind of fun to catch up see a little bit you know kind of how you got to navigate how you adjust how you figure things out it definitely makes sense i mean i think that the different models and the different ways that you can reach people having some evergreen content and having some ability for as people advance and they go kind of beyond that evergreen content to kind of have that one-on-one ability or to have more intimate setting definitely makes sense so now as you were kind of again almost no we've kind of caught up to where you've been you know the last six months seven months for what you've been doing and what you've learned um you know if you now kind of look again out to that next six to 12 months and kind of where you things see things now headed wherever that or where do you think things will take you whoa okay uh to the moon not back just to the moon we're already on that um the line we've already launched so yeah what we would like to do is we would like to be able to help at least in six months with this new um advertising and web team i would like to be able to help at least 10 000 people learn the different uh breath work techniques that we have in our evergreen course we're averaging between 25 and 30 people per immersion so we have one two three four five six seven more immersions coming up in the next six months so i would like to help a minimum of 200 people through our immersion process because that's the real deep dive where people i mean they they walk out a different human being than they came in everybody does and so yeah that's really what we're looking to do is really maximize our reach and our impact in people's lives who want to actually learn like i have a superpower i want to become superhuman i want to become more and use this in their daily life because you know it's neat to put on a blindfold and walk through a course and be able to sense everything around you but that's for a blind person that's the most amazing thing ever right that's a a new way of seeing in the world but for you and i who have eyesight the majority of people who come to us are there they see the value of that but they don't see the value of being able to you know that's not the reason they would pay thousands of dollars to come learn from us so they can walk through a obstacle course blindfolded it's when they turn around and they are asking their intuition about a business decision or which way to turn on a road or how to relate to and connect with their spouse or their children or people at work or how to stay in a good situation and out of a bad situation based upon what your intuition tells you and having that be a reliable function of your psyche rather than hit or miss or i'm making it up so that's the majority of people come to us now for that well it sounds like a lot of uh a lot of exciting opportunities a lot of great goals to work towards in the future so now as we wrap up and you know always always fun to catch up and always more things i'm sure we could uh chat about because we're at the end of the podcast you know i always shift a little bit for my normal two questions i asked for the original episode two for the where are you at now because as you get further into business you also you always find out a little bit more what do you fear what keeps you up at night what are you thinking about what is the worry of what are the concerns and kind of what are you going to do with next sure with that or a question i was asked on this episode is what is you know how's it related to business your startup small business as a founder co-founder what is your biggest fear and what error how do you deal with it okay so that's i love that question and the biggest failure as far as one to me right now is i've never had this issue before devin of having too many people want what we have and not being able to service them all and that's you know we're we're right there as far as our we're doing really well we're doing really well but with what's about to happen as far as our advertising and marketing is concerned it's about to get a lot more um a lot more and so how am i handling that um hiring virtual assistants is one to help out my admissions team i am actively looking for a ceo who can help like our project manager who can help us as far as our different divisions and keep track of everyone and also a cfo somebody help us really be able to navigate and plan for the success that is coming in is actually at our doorstep and walking through our door right now so i would say the fear is not being able i want to always over deliver and the fear that i won't be able to do that how i'm handling it is i'm actively looking for the right people to help me do that because i know i can't do it all myself and my team can't do it all ourselves and so we're on the uh we're on the hunt for the right people that's awesome that's definitely a place to be and you know it is one where you know it's always one of those well that's a good problem to have you know you're growing and you're expanding and yet if you want to say hey we want to keep the same level of uh you know quality we want to help as many people we don't you know we want to make sure we're not just focusing only on the money and you know getting the income but we want to actually accomplish our mission then as you grow it is a fear of how we're going to grow not just grow but grow right or grow correctly such that we can continue to offer that so i think that's definitely a fear that uh certainly understand and one that uh as you grow as any business you have to figure that out so definitely i wish you the best of luck on the on on that as well as your business so now wrap up if people want to they you know want to find out more about you they want to again be a client they want to be a customer they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out contact you find out more for sure so visiting our website at vibravision.com is the best way to find out what's coming up next and also to see the changes that are going to be taking place with our digital platform the platforms and then also we have a free gift at the bottom of our any of our website pages people can put their name phone number and email in there and get a free workout to actually be able to feel what we do and actually experience it it's the same exercise that the lady i was telling you about who has long covered that helped her breathe right again it's the exact same work and so people do it they feel a difference and then a lot of the time they'll either want to apply for an immersion which is very selective and you can do so right on that website you can fill out the survey but then also a lot of people are not able to travel to utah or they may not have the financial means to come for a full five-day immersion but we do have a couple options the first one is our breath awareness mastery course and that is you can find that at fibrevision.academy and on our vibrovision.academy site we have our breath awareness mastery course which helps people understand their breath and get better at breathing properly and avoiding those bad health conditions that come from improper breathing but then also we have our energy expansion program and this one is just imagine putting a jet engine with a supercharger on your lungs for your lung function your supercharge your immune system being able to feel your energy and be like if you remember at the end of the matrix where neo goes into agent smith and blows them apart and then he just goes and the walls go whoa it's it's a really cool special effect so next time you watch it i know that's an old movie but that's what you feel like every time you do this for five minutes a day you feel like you're like bending space and time you are extremely powerful and it takes five to ten minutes a day and it's amazing what it does for people and that's our energy expansion program awesome so i definitely encourage people check out the website check out the free content check out the program definitely also if they're looking to support or to otherwise get engaged definitely make sure to reach out to them but thank you again nate it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you the listeners if you have your own journey to tell or you've been a previously guest on the show and you want to tell us where you're at now feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show we'd love to have you two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast please you know when all of our awesome episodes come out until you leave us a review so other people can find out all of our awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever have uh or need help with patents trademarks or anything else in your business feel free to go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help thank you again nate and wish the next lady of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devin everybody have a great afternoon and yeah appreciate you thanks so much

What's Your Why?

Tygh Walters
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
8/2/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

 put your goals in front of you and your fears behind you there's so much that has to happen in a business and it takes a long time it's years it's a marathon so you you have to find a source of motivation a source of inspiration and two of those sources are goals and fears if you can be motivated by those simultaneously i believe it's a powerful combination to keep doing whatever you need to be doing i think it's it's the stereotype and cliche that businesses fail because you give up or you quit and and there's truth in that but i think to make it easier on on yourself as a founder especially really get clear on you know why you're in it 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 in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller rp law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast ty walters and ty finished up a master's degree in uh 2020 or 2012 i'm in exercise science and uh blinded to a uh to academy or to academia and went on to get a job and work and as he uh went to do that um learned or do it on his own and one to work hard started out as a i think planting trees for a landscape company so a little bit different than exercise science and then moved and did a similar job and worked at that for a while before kind of getting uh worn out with the grind and then going off to do business at transcendental marketing for a period of time i grew that but just uh was just getting by and decided to learn code and learn more about e-commerce and started a business about four years ago with that and has been doing it ever since growing the team and having a great time at it so hopefully with that it much is a mostly accurate introduction welcome on the podcast hi thank you so much devin really great to be here sharing my story and excited to dive in absolutely so i just gave the 30 or 30 second run through to a much longer journey so maybe take it back to you know 2012 wrapping up your master's degree and kind of how your journey got started there absolutely in 2012 that had reached the end of my academic career as it was and as anyone knows as you know i know you have multiple degrees it's such a long journey the the school since kindergarten really every year and of course it changes and morphs but at that end and that point in my life i was feeling um like i was sort of missing out on the real world whatever that meant you know outside of academia where there's there's tracks and there's and there's fields and there's certain ways on how to do things and where to study and how to apply your skills i was more interested i guess at that time of like you know my father he he's uh he has a job out you know in in industry and commerce like what is all that so that interest led me to divert away from pursuing a phd degree or even a career in in that field at that time and uh to say the least i was naive just like most young people are that step out into the marketplace for the first time i was full of the confidence and bravado i'd outperformed my peers on every other measure stage available i thought it'd be easy and and it's quite a different challenge uh but you know i eventually kind of found my way after a few years and and i really feel like i've figured it out to a degree of course it's a journey but sort of cracking that code and figuring it out after school was was a challenge for me it was a crossroads and i had to jump in myself and and kind of learn those tough lessons myself tough lessons being struggling to get a job as a wait staff with a master's degree or not really figuring out you know how can i make the connections in my network to really build my professional career some of those things i had underdeveloped to say the least um but but what had happened through my academic career learning about kinesiology exercise sciences i was really interested in health and wellness because that's you know the the most important aspect of longevity and how how happy and healthy are we right and and part of involved in that quest is self-actualization realization so just a personal curiosity of mine is sort of the philosophical concept so like why am i doing this you know what is life about and how should i be applying these skills and these privileges i have you know i can almost do anything i want i was raised in a very supportive environment with family and community to believe that so those kind of questions were on my mind back in 2012 uh one thing led to another i found myself sort of um not at the bottom but at a crossroads again where i felt like i was learning so much i wanted to get into horticulture and kind of sustainable agriculture in terms of how it related to wellness and i was learning so much but i was sacrificing other areas of my life namely my financial well-being and fitness and you know one question is to get exercise signs and then you get into planting trees or horticulture and those type of things seems like a little bit of a departure from your you know what your degree was so what made you decide to do was hey this was the job that i can find and i thought it sounded interesting it was decided after i got graduated that you know i didn't want to be in exercise science and that happens with a lot of attorneys that they decide they don't want to be a but kind of what led you to kind of getting into more of that aspect of things yeah um so twofold probably one was the degree i pursued was a master's in kinesiology it's a little bit less versatile than say a nursing degree or medical degree so that's point one i struggled a little bit to find an application uh number two was in my time intellectually learning about kinesiology i became less maybe interested in the the principles and practices of that of kinesiology but more interested in maybe the umbrella topics of health and wellness how how does our diet and environment and our exercise all fit into how we are as a family as a person it's sort of more of a holistic viewpoint so at the time i guess i saw the expression of that focus on holistic wellness not as a narrow focus on exercise but how should we be living our lives what should we be eating how should we be treating the earth and that's how i've stumbled upon agriculture and horticulture how can we be raising the types of food that we need to be you know in harmony with nature around us restoring the earth things like that it was heady philosophical ideals but it's part of the entrepreneurial part of the entrepreneurial dna that i believe is within me is to think big and to to take massive action to realize goals like that i had realized um you know in sort of the the process of trying to explore that what did that mean that i had a lot to learn and and i realized that i could apply some of that uh some of that thinking some of that problem solving to other areas in order to help me maybe realize those goals faster in other words no i think that definitely makes makes perfect sense so now you get into you know planner horticulture you get into landscaping you get into planting trees and other things and you do that for you know a period of time and then now you're saying okay i've done i've done that and you know what made you decide to shift a bit to get out of that and go more into you know marketing to go work at transcendental marketing so i think you started or that was your own business or you started that kind of what made you decide to shift in that direction yeah let me speak to that um so we've all been had difficult points in our lives and low points and i was at a point in my life it was lower because i felt like i was doing so much work and had so much energy and effort to give and and but it wasn't really paying off in terms of increasing um my my standard of living i was living for a period of time without health insurance because it couldn't really make ends meet or afford that bill and and sacrifices like that not being able to seek medical attention when you need to not being able to maybe like buy the amenities or purchase the type of lifestyle that you want so that type of struggle of realizing that hey i'm i have i have a long way to go if i can't even really afford my own health insurance what am i doing here i know learning these lessons about how to run a nursery and how to how to make like holistic wellness a reality is a thing but also i need to be able to watch out for myself so i think the pragmatic you could say like aspects of life kind of started hitting me a little bit and and i realized i needed to pivot or refocus in a way to take care of those because i started to see those more as a responsibility as i grew older gained responsibility so to speak but as a young single person we have a little bit more freedom and flexibility to go without those things starting to realize they were important i became a little bit more systematic on how i designed my efforts namely creating transcendental digital which is my first like digital marketing freelancing activity developing all the way up to what we do today which is outsource customer service for e-commerce companies so we run a service agency and but the goal in that has been the same of how can i you know take myself out of this low and dark place when i feel like i can't even really feed and protect myself what do i need to do to put myself in a better position to gain some of those things and worry less about them no i think that definitely makes sense so you kind of started out saying okay it's a grind i'm tired of just getting by i want to have a bit more you know doesn't mean i have to have all the money in the world but definitely being a bit more comfortable or at least having you know life taken care of so to speak until you started transcendental marketing or you know that the marketing firm and that grew and i think as we chatted a bit before you saying hey it was one where the business was growing but it was still felt like you're just getting by so to speak a bit and so it sounded like he kind of expanded services or pivoted and just a bit more to learning code and also e-commerce side of things absolutely so coming from a non-tech background i was starting to build websites for my own projects and that kind of caught on and that's a very typical entry into freelancing building and designing web pages websites things like that and it was my introduction i really loved it it matched my personality and and the clients i worked with were really appreciative and i was able to charge a higher rate than i was working at the plant nursery so i started to see this like okay this is nice but as with most freelancers quickly you learn time in exchange for hours is uh it has an end game to it there's diminishing returns you can only accept so much work with a full-time job even if you go full time into it so i started to see the stress of that a little bit and knowing i could only do so much and elevate myself so much out of that and i started to you know read and consume entrepreneurship materials and and the advice is always you know how do you scale your efforts how do you how do you think in processes instead of what i as the specialist can do how do i leverage my team and processes and technologies to to do this for me so that type of you know transcendental digital got me into that freelancing mind state how do i run an llc how do i file my taxes and then optimizing it from there okay i want to run a service business now with 10 people and a co-founder but the step up from a solo single member llc wasn't that far it was sort of the the graduation of the process no i think that all makes perfect sense and so now you kind of pivoted to tonight you know i think it makes this an actual transition a lot of things are going online so be able to code to better understand e-commerce definitely kind of expands your ability to in your offering as far as what you're able to marketing with digital marketing and all that so you kind of continue to go and down that road so that kind of brings us a bit today so if you're to kind of now look just a bit into the future where do you see things headed is it kind of continuing to just bring on staff grow they're going to go into new areas offer new services or kind of what's the next you know six to 12 months look like for you six to 12 months uh we're in e-commerce and and that field is dynamic and changing especially since uh kind of after covid and how it's affected everything so we're absolutely all in on the current venture seller smile there's a great need and it's exciting we're talking to very interesting brands every day small business owners that we're helping run their customer service there's a there's a bright outlook and we're really fascinated by it and it's really entertaining and energizing us as an organization i think what we see is like i mentioned going from kind of the freelancer single person hustling to the team i'm thinking about what's the next version of that we're trying to develop ourselves you know we have right around 30 clients when we go to 40 50 60 what does that look like not so as sort of the ceo kind of drawing that vision how are we going to be able to absorb stages of growth as you know demand increases and as the business grows i'm not sure how that looks and i'm not sure how much we're going to involve technology in terms of software or or just people but yeah that's where my mind is thinking growth but i want in that growth not just growth i want efficient growth and if it results in a new process or a new way of running things i think that's better no i think that's a fun and exciting place you know kind of figuring out what that looks like in your business and where it will evolve and figuring that out along the way definitely has a lot of fun or fun things to figure out so well that kind of is you know takes us a bit to your journey to get to where you're at today a little bit of looking into the future and definitely it'll be fun to see how that continues to evolve but with that we'll transition to a couple questions i always ask for the end of each podcast so the first question i would ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it the worst decision i made in my business was i worked without paying myself and this was two years after the business had ramped up its income to the point where it was supporting me we ran into a few issues in the business we lost a few clients uh some other concurrent issues and i decided to not take a pay anymore and looking back i read the book profit first by mike malkowitz and i was convinced at the time it was a heroic effort i was saving my business i was sacrificing this is the startup way i was earning my stripes come to find out after reflection it probably was a little bit of a short-sighted decision the easy way to fix the cash flow issue versus looking at the processes looking at our business processes rather how we screen clients who we add how we charge them how we screen and hire new team members so i think if i would go back i would definitely not stop paying myself but be much more rigorously focused on the root cause of the cash flow issue no and i think that you know that one's definitely it's one where it's easy to it's easy to you know to want to pay yourself last because you know in the sense that you're going you're saying i just need to get by a little bit longer i just need to you know get this up and running and you know i want to make sure that my team's taken care of and i think that those are all valid and definitely good reasons why you're going to um why you're going to delay getting payment yet on the other hand if you're not careful you're going to forever be paying other people and you're going to be running a business that you're saying you know you're always waiting to make that profit to be able to pay yourself but it can cause those issues to where it's not intentional but you're going to i think sometimes build a business that isn't going to work long term so i think that that one definitely you know makes sense as to why you make the mistake but also why you would you know what the the motivation is as to you know how how you got there and why you do that you know what's interesting we also had uh mike on the show several episodes ago he was on an expert episode and it was fun to kind of get his uh input on that as far as kind of you know some of the things that he learned and diving into a lot of the business so it was you know just as a complete site but i like love the the profit first book as well so couldn't recommend it more and awesome that you got them on not to take a listen that's just a short plug you haven't listened to all of our expert episodes they're great we've got a lot of great content but though um definitely as was a fun person to have on i think it's a great person for a great book and a great lesson to learn so second question i always ask is if you're now talking to someone that's just getting into a startup for a small business what would be the one piece of advice you give them put your goals in front of you and your fears behind you there's so much that has to happen in a business and it takes a long time it's years it's a marathon so you you have to find a source of motivation a source of inspiration and two of those sources are goals and fears if you can be motivated by those simultaneously i believe it's a powerful combination to keep doing whatever you need to be doing i think uh it's it's the stereotype and cliche that businesses fail because you give up or you quit and and there's truth in that but i think to make it easier on yourself as a founder especially really get clear on on you know why you're in it if you're listening to this podcast you're likely interested in jumping into your own business and you likely have reasons why you want to be doing that don't lie to yourself be very clear take time to reflect and get in a quiet place whatever you need to do because if you don't figure that out it's going to come out later likely and it's going to be a larger issue to solve perhaps so really figure out what are you afraid of what are you going towards and are you doing that with this decision to start a business if not and if through that questioning you come to a different conclusion being an employee at an organization is completely fine there's so many perks you know the grass is always greener but just think about ways that you might be underestimating the jump because it's more than just doing what you're a specialist at it's running an entire business and some people don't really contextualize that at all no i think that that definitely is a great piece of advice and i would i definitely encourage people to take it to heart well as we wrap up and just as a reminder we are going to do the bonus question where we talk a little bit about intellectual property and uh your number one question but before we get to that point if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to hire you they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out contact you find out more you can go to sellersmile.com that's our business's website and i hope it's not uh wrong to say this but we are hiring we're growing so we have a join our team link take a look uh but yeah hit us up there uh or if you want to reach out to me directly that's thai t-y-g-h seller smile dot com no absolutely no or no no words about uh sharing and if you're hiring and uh people are listening and they they think they'll be a good fit definitely encourage them to reach out so with that as we wrap up appreciate him on the podcast and we'll still jump to the bonus question but otherwise uh for the listeners out there if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in the podcast players you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and do leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes and last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now we've wrapped up the normal phase or the normal part of the podcast and now we got to jump to the bonus question which is always fun because we get to talk a little bit about the topic that's always near and dear to my card turn it over to you turn the mic over to you so to speak what's your top intellectual property question my top intellectual property question has to deal with trademarks more specifically a word mark we deal with word marks regarding our clients usually they're physical products sellers so we're involved with them in that way the business we have today is called seller smile it's on the shirt here and the way we found it it way we started is it's one word seller smile although they're two words so we've combined two words to make a fictitious single word when we're thinking about filing for this word mark for this trademark should we be thinking about filing for this fictitious word seller smile as one word because does that leave us open to someone creating a business called seller smile with two words since it's different enough should we be filing for both of those to protect us how would you approach that yeah and that's i'll generalize it just to the audience a bit as well you know the question is because it comes up quite a bit there's kind of a few different questions that would really be in there one is you know if you have one word versus a space is that going to matter and answers it can matter and i'll get into a bit more and then the other question is also kind of whether or not you have you know you go for the design the logo versus the word because seller smile for people that are looking at the audio or look it up afterwards it also has you know the emote you know the semicolon with the the you know the smiley face type of a thing and so that's also has a bit of design our aesthetics and so the question also should you go for design versus go for the word so with that the easiest answer is go for what is the most valuable for your company in other words if it and how you're using it meaning if you're never using it with the space you can't get a trademark for the space because they're going to require you to submit specimens evidence of how you're using in the marketplace and if you submit it a trademark application with the space in it and you always use it without a space you're going to reject the specimen saying well you're not using it as how you filed so the one thing is is file how for everybody however you whatever mark you're actually using that's what you file on and now the question is now what but the hesitation everybody always has yeah but once if somebody does put that space in is that going to allow them to get around our trademark and then we missed out on that short answer is both of the time and 99 or whatever person i don't know 99 that sounds like it's fair like always but most of the time the answer is no it doesn't allow people to get around it because the the standard for trade what a cut or trademark coverage is what's called confusingly similar what that basically means is if somebody out where now the marketplace a customer or client were to see your brand and somebody else's brand it was a competitor that was using that would they be confusing to who is offering the goods and services so if you had seller smile and yours was all one word they had it as two then with you know likely very high likelihood of somebody on the marketplace wouldn't think you guys are two different brands they would likely get confused because they're gonna say it looks like it's the same company and they're especially if you're offering the same or same or similar types of goods and services so with rare exception you know whether or not you have a space or not or don't have a space or a dash or you don't have a dash for those type of things most of the time that confusingly similar standard unless they can make a very strong argument that customers would think that there were two separate brands and there wouldn't be any kind of confusion you're likely covered so it also could be the same thing if one's if they have a very minor spelling variation ones that they call you know they spell cellar with one l or something slightly different most of the time again it's going to be confusingly similar second part of that question and then i'll pause and see if you have any other follow-up questions is um if you're going design mark versus word so design mark for all of you out there including uh you know you as well is basically the aesthetic nature of what you're doing in other words the look and feel of your logo usually it's a logo or design that doesn't just it's not just a word but it has design aspects so you think of the nike swoosh that's a that's the design mark you think of starbucks with the mur you know the green mermaid on the side of the cup that's going to be a design mark you think of even your seller smile with the emoji here you know the emoticon on there that would be a design and so that one is one where you you can protect the design you can protect the work now the question also comes up is which one do i protect first now if you have the budget i would usually say you protect first and it gives you the broadest level of coverage if you're saying i don't have the budget to protect first which one should i protect simple answer again is whichever is the most valuable to your business in other words if everybody is really identifying you based on your logo and that's what you're pushing that's what everybody sees and it's more of you know the starbucks mermaid or the nike swiss where they're more identifying the design aspects not necessarily the word then you protect that most of the time people are going to associate it with the word of the company in other words if they're talking if they're writing it out if they're talking about it if they're you know looking at the url or they're searching for it they're going to search for the word and so most of the time word the word mark provides the broadest level of coverage for your trademark if you're happy to decide between one or the other so that gives you a little bit it's a much it's a great it's a fun topic to talk and i could talk all day about it and i'd probably be the only one that enjoyed it but i would enjoy it but that gives you a little bit of insight as to uh it's the trademarks and how you might deal with them and how you go about approaching them does that all make sense any questions on that that makes sense and it confirms what i suspected the word mark being maybe a little bit more of the first choice if we're just going for general protection and um and using in terms of creating confusion in the marketplace i think that's that makes it clear to me if someone used the space i think it's clear that it's confusing so yeah thank you so much absolutely so well if you or anybody else any of the listeners have any questions anything else comes up and you'd like to grab some time with this chat just feel free to go to strategymeeting.com schedule some time on the calendar and always happy to help and answer any questions you or any of the listeners might have with that we're going to we'll wrap up the podcast thank you again ty it's been fun it's been a pleasure to have you on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you devon [Music]

Start-Ups Are Marketing Projects

Jeff Seckendorf
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/31/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

believe there are two reasons to build to do a startup one is you're passionate about something you want to do a company and you're willing to ram your idea down the throats of potential clients that was utd the second reason is you see a niche and you fill it and that's coach me strong so i've had the opportunity to do both of these right be passionate about something create a new product try to market it be open to a niche create it fill it and then try to market it the commonality between those two things it doesn't matter which one you do if you're if you're willing to go the long road for either one the commonality is business startups are marketing projects [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours let's go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast jeff second door and is a quick introduction to jeff so jeff was a what he would say is a child photographer so he all throughout his younger years love photography and works for a local newspaper starting at 17 and then moved around with a couple additional papers i moved over to television news and did also learn how to do uh move from photography to cinematography uh moved into commercials on their commercials on film and i think that over a thousand tv commercials had an opportunity to come along um or had an opportunity to come along to do scooter and get into scuba i thought that sounded fun and interesting built a business with a friend for a while they ended up splitting up for a bit and then also learned a lot on the i.t and technology along the way um and then had a friend that got into parkinson's and also had with opus shut down so i moved over to scuba i moved from scuba training into parkinson's exercise regimens and then now is running i think both the scuba business as well as uh exercise regimen and parallel so but that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast yeah great thanks devin great to be here so i gave kind of the quick second run through a much longer journey so why don't you take us a bit back in time to starting out as uh with your love as uh photography as a child and how your journey gets started there yeah i was a kid photographer right so my uncle gave me a it was a hawkeye brownie camera when i was a kid and you know i played with that we built a dark room in my house so all through my childhood i was doing photography and uh and like you mentioned earlier ended up on a local newspaper moved on to wire services upi worked for the new york times newsday all that kind of stuff and then at some point shifted it over to moving pictures through tv news and then went on to do commercials from commercials i went on to do movies now slowing down just a bit because of that into quite a bit of your journey so you know you started out just kind of as for fun as a kid as a photographer you know doing photography and then at 17 worked with the you know started i think he said is a newspaper as a photographer yeah so i assume but you can fill me in that you went straight from graduating high school right into the news industry is that right yeah i wasn't even graduated well all right um now did you graduate high school i did graduate high school yeah i did finish it um you know i massaged that to my own needs a little bit but i did get a high school diploma out of it and then um but i was basically going to like high school in the morning and then driving to my job as a newspaper photographer for the rest of the day and i did that for a couple of years well not a couple years until the high school thing was over so high school now high school finishes you said okay i already know what i want to do already kind of know my passion why you know college isn't going to working in the work world getting experience and going down that path is probably the you know the better suited path for you so you get into newspapers and how long did you work for newspapers um i had a still photography career for about 10 years it was a little more interesting than that too because i was accepted at syracuse university in the photojournalism school and so i got on my little motorcycle and i went to syracuse which is i don't know three four five hour drive stayed with some friends who were there toured the uh the journalism school and um they told me that your first photography course will be in two years and i'm like at that point i didn't understand that photography courses was the least important part of it so i turned around i went home i went back to work and i kept my career moving that way if i skip ahead a couple of decades when i was teaching filmmakers at the rockport college and the main photographic workshops they would always ask me where should i go to film school and my initial or my always answer was all they're going to teach you in film school is how to make movies in film school so if you want to go to college and make movies do something that's productive to become a visual storyteller at that point so that would be you know go get an art history degree go get a you know bizarre european philosophy degree learn to think learn to see how the world thought throughout history and then apply that thinking that process of thinking to your own storytelling and that's i think that's the road to filmmaker better than you know learning how to put film in a camera and learning you know that kind of stuff um no that makes sense so so you now see you make have that realization you start get into syracuse you're going to go down that path and said well i don't know if i want to wait two years to actually get any experience if this makes sense so you got into did newspapers for quite a while now what made you switch kind of from doing newspapers over to television news and then to doing commercials so that was that followed a lot of what happens in my career which um is basically serendipitous so i was um kind of looking for a job you know i've been freelancing for a long time i was kind of looking for a job something to do some t you know i had a journalism background you know i worked for upi and all these other papers um and so i just stumbled into my local tv station in albany new york and they hired me i was kind of the last photojournalist to get hired to become a news cameraman at that point and from there they were taking people straight out of journalism school but um so i did that for a couple of years and was just bored every day just couldn't get interested in it somebody along the way asked if i could shoot a commercial for them and i had all this video experience and editing and stuff like that so i said yes i did this little commercial went pretty well and from there i moved that into a few more and a few more and eventually i was able to leave the tv station and become a full-time freelance basically a production company in video and then the switch to film was really simple because i had this huge background in film as a stills photographer big background video as a news photographer putting those two together and starting to shoot commercials on motion picture film was a very small step and then that of course led to this long career in commercials which led to boredom which led to before you dive off the commercials any just for the listener audience or tangentially or related to your journey any commercials that people would recognize or remember or have probably seen so this was in the 80s all right so for the people in the 80s i did you know i did crest toothpaste i did saranac beer i did uh the new york city ballet um tons and tons of regional cars and banks and you know we did the big honda dealer group that was in upstate new york so things like that i had a a really solid niche in big regional commercials most make the most money have the less the lowest stress right for a pretty stressful that sounds like the perfect mix more money less stress stress and get to enjoy it more so yeah now you did commercials and how long did you do commercials for i did that for about 10 years um and then i kind of stopped carrying what kind of soap you use so whenever you did as many commercials as would get you excited you get to the end of the ten years and say okay all the commercials that i used to find exciting probably aren't exciting so at that point as you're kind of worn out or you kind of reached the end of the interest level there how did you decide what you're going to do next or kind of what that next base was was that hey i'm just going to take a year off take a sabbatical go enjoy life for a bit was it kept doing it but started to look into different things or kind of how did you decide yeah yeah it was it was so first of all the trigger to get out of the commercial industry there was i i remember this like it was yesterday even though it was i don't know how many years ago starting to do budgets and only caring about the bottom line you know i'd get storyboards in i'd build a budget and i'd look at the thing and say okay my profit is going to be x and that's cool and that's when that started to drive me other than the creative development the working with the advertising agencies the energy of being on set all that when that shifted to uh just being able you know just saying well all right so here's a hundred thousand dollar commercial i'm going to net off this how cool is that that's when this it triggered off and um so then there was another complete left turn and i was in the middle of building an airplane in my garage i'm a lifelong pilot and flight instructor and so i went to the people who made the kit of the airplane i was building and i thought why don't i just go sell airplanes for a couple years and that company was relocating to bend oregon i went to bend visited didn't see myself settling there turned around came back got home got on the phone called a friend of mine who i had done a short film for during my commercial stint and said hey i'm thinking about just getting out of commercials and into movies and he was like good timing so that led to um a movie that had a huge fabulous history called judy berlin that we made with director eric mendelson with and and that so that was my first feature film and i was the director of photography on it it was madeline khan edie falco barbara berry bob dishy it was a huge cast it's a small independent movie we shot it in black and white it won the director's award at sundance it was it can it movie went everywhere and so that kind of kicked off again this this right place right time which i know is frustrating for people to hear because how do you get in the right place right time but i think if you do enough stuff and you do it with the idea that you know if you do what you love the money will follow those right times and right places showed up and that happened to be now the thing about that movie was of all the movies i've done i did subsequently that one was the hardest not only because it was my first and the budget was small and the cast was amazing so the the the need to be perfect was high but it was just hard it was like it was like a bike race hard it was just hard so none of it none of this work came easily even though the jobs kind of came the work was never easy and i think that's a really important piece of it that if you're going to do this especially today right where there's so much help and technology and and maybe even a little reduction in quality overall of creative work that's being put out i think you just have to be willing to say okay i'm just going to work as hard as i can possibly work i'm going to ride this bike race as hard as i can possibly ride this bike race no and i like that i think you know the right place right time i also think it's everybody can you know every it always sounds like you know right right place right time like you just fell into the one you know a couple things to hit on is one is that you're cultivating different interests and always there you know been doing things outside of just your normal employment we weren't solely focused on that to the exclusion of everything else such that you had other you had interests in airplanes and then you were also networking talking with people seeing what else was out there i think you know when those opportunities come along if you're prepared then it seems okay i was just right place right time whereas if you weren't prepared or you didn't have that willingness to explore and other interests and always they're working on you know other things you would have never been even at that right place right time to come along you wouldn't have been prepared and you wouldn't have done anything with it anyway so i always say that why right place right time you know does have a part play a part into it it's also that preparation and within being open to it as well and i think the other thing is to go through life never burning a bridge right because you know we had a joke in the film industry that said be nice to them on their way up because they're going to hire you on your way down and and it's kind of true right i mean i ended up working for a lot of people over the years who i helped their careers at some level throughout and then you know they turn around and they bring me back on so so that um no and i and i love that because you know it's one of those where it's always easier you just especially if it's you're not partying in good terms or it feels like they you know they leveraged you and you know or they you know they left you in the the you know left you behind or anything else it's always there's always that temptation to have that self-gratifying moment where you just tell them what you think can you tell them off or anything else and while it feels good for that slight amount of time it always burns the bridge and you can it's much harder to ever rebuild a burned bridge if you even can then if you just swallow your pride or you move on or you congratulate them or you continue to support them or anything else because you never know how things will connect later on and it's always easier to have those connections as you said when you're going up or they're coming down or either you know whichever direction people are going if you leave that bridge intact even if you think you've been wronged or you you know you it wasn't fair or anything else i think it always preserves a lot more opportunities especially now because the world has gotten so small i mean you know what happens in vegas shows up on facebook so it's like you know you can't dodge a burnt bridge any longer it's you just can't dodge it no i completely agree so so now getting back to your journey so you've done you know all up until now it seems like you know they kind of all made sense he did photography then he got into television he got into commercials he got into a bit of movies which all kind of have that cinematography that artistic the ability to you know create something and to bring it to you know fruition and then you jump over to scuba diving which does seem like a fairly drastic jump from what you were doing so how did you go from all you know all of the creative side to and i'm sure there may be creative in scuba but i don't think of it quite as much how did you get into scuba diving kind of what triggered that and then how did that kind of or work out for you so throughout all of these things i've done up until that point every iteration of my career had an educational component so in the film business in the film industry i was teaching i spent 24 years teaching um at the rockport college and the the main the main workshops and it was a vital part of my life for you know a couple of weeks or a month or two every summer to go up to this place and teach film workshops and teach up and coming filmmakers how to really you know do the best job they can most efficiently and i i moved that into a mentoring company in the film industry that i had for many years it's still open um called one-on-one film training and we were basically um we were basically training emerging directors on visual storytelling and that worked out to be another educational element and that sort of pushed me into the mentoring coaching world i've been a lifelong flight instructor so i had that element and i was teaching air competition aerobatics and coaching coaching and pilots and uh and i was also a scuba instructor just because i mean we can start we can talk at some point about the master's journey right the master's journey to me is a very simple road right it's discovery training practice and teaching right it's four elements to any journey so in order to get to the end point the most important thing is to find a way to teach in any industry or any any discipline to actually get to a point where you can explain things properly bring people along create retention in the film in education and so on so that journey happened to me over and over and over it happened in the film industry right discovery training practice teaching happened in flying discovery training years of practice flight instructor it happened in scuba discovery training practice scuba instructor now scuba instructor trainer so when you look at any of these industries that i've been in or any of the journeys that i've taken or you know anybody who's taken who really wants to get to that point giving back teaching bringing people along is always wants to me be a huge part of the progression to get to the point where you get this this mastery level so when i was trying to figure out a way out of the film business to go back to your question and i did had one producing partner said to me one day that you know you spent 20 years trying to get into the film business in 20 years trying to get out um because you know that for for 95 of the people in the film industry your full-time job is looking for work and your part-time job is working so i wanted a real job or a real a more real job so um i had i was working with this guy and he was a high-end scuba instructor and you know through a lot of machinations and conversations and craziness we decided to start a scuba training and certification agency which is still that was 12 years ago and it's still maybe 13 now it's still running it's called utd scuba diving formerly unified team diving and for me it was didn't matter that it was scuba it could have been rocket science brain surgery auto mechanics i didn't care i wanted a company that had a big strong education component to it i like scuba good at it an instructor and it seemed like the place where we could really make a difference by taking a traditional scuba training model putting a completely different spin on it making it a boutique agency with a different mission than most scuba training agencies and then build that out as an education program so so i brought in a lot of the education component my partner brought in a lot of the scuba intellectual property and and uh it ran well for for pretty long time and then i call it that question follow the question maybe you touched on briefly but what made you decide to get out of the film and i get the educational aspect and that's kind of a commonality throughout but what made you decide okay i'm kind of done with movies and film and photography and i want to switch over and do something different still you know the educational and having that aspect but what was kind of that trigger what you know was it something planned it was something that came along they thought would be fun kind of how did you make that change you know it was the same as as kind of everything else right it was a serendipitous moment where this opportunity presented itself you know where the stars lined up for that but um you know i done photography and cinematography and directing for i don't know how long right since 1973 until we started this thing in 2008 so i was kind of like ready for something else right i mean i was having fun it was good and i was just ready for something else so when this came up i mean of course there was an overlap right i was still making movies and still you know doing the education thing but yeah it just seemed like an interesting target to see if we could pull this off as a startup and it turned out to be yes so now you get that in and you had your partner and you worked with them for a good period of time now i think that at one point you know so you build that up and i can't remember eight or nine ten whatever amount of years and you're working with the partner and then what kind of made you guys decide to split or go different paths and how did you decide which path he would take which path you would take and kind of how did that all work out so the company had two divisions it had a training scuba company a training division and an equipment division i i was never a big fan of the equipment division i think when you take a company like ours that had an income stream that was completely passive right we're basically a digital publishing company and you add in stuff it complicates things right because you know if we ran out of this one thing in a size medium and we had an order for one we had to order 50 or 100 or 200. so the cash flow issues associated with maintaining a small company with a big equipment catalog became challenging and taxed heavily the training side of it so um you know i gave some thought to should i exit the scuba company and you know i looked around for someone to buy my half of it and so on and and um you know looked at other opportunities was it a good exit time was it not a good exit time zone so we got to a point where um you know my partner was going through some changes also and we had the app you know we had lunch and it was like why don't we just close it you know let's just close it and be done but a lot of people were relying on it right a lot of instructors had left their other agencies to work with us and it just didn't seem like a responsible thing to do to the people we've impacted over that decade so we came to this agreement where i would take the training company you know it's no secret i bought it for a dollar and he would take the equipment side and there's no secret he bought it for a dollar we separated them out it was pretty amicable and um you know we did a bunch of legal stuff to create new companies new corporations and um and it gave me a chance to clean the slate on technology so i was able to start the company run it the way i wanted to run it focus on what i wanted to focus on um build it the way i wanted to build it and uh yeah just kind of move it forward and that was just a year and a half yeah just a year and a half ago january 2020. so the company was kind of reborn rebirthed and you know i'm having fun i'm still doing it i'm having fun i love it you know i i dive a desk a lot more than the water but it's okay because it's fun and i know and i think that's and i think that they're you know a lot of times you get in there with the business partner huge have different strains so you can leverage different things that you can do but you also sometimes say hey as a business grows and it starts to go different directions different you know different founders their partners have different ideas and directions and you can either kind of continue to butt heads and sometimes uh head butting can make their business grow and you know it can push it and you know you have someone to really back in so to speak but other times it's just saying hey we just want to go through different directions it's probably better to amically split past rather than continue to have that internal consternation within the company that sounds like that was the best decision for you guys now the last part of your journey is also you got into what would be parkinson's exercise regimens which how did you get into that because that you know that at least seems like it has the same teaching aspect to it but part you know cinematography to scuba dive parkinson's are all fairly desperate so how did you get into that that aspect of the of your business yeah there's a thread there for sure and again you know you have to be able to say yes to the universe when something drops in your plate i think that's the most important thing right so and we talked about this earlier that you know serendipitous doesn't mean magic it means you've worked in a direction for a long time and when an opportunity comes up you recognize it and say yes so what was happening on the parkinson's thing is um i had been doing quite a bit of work for the local parkinson's association through friends and and so on and um so i'm doing their website and i was doing their email distribution a little bit of marketing and and uh quite a bit of a video production for them because i still keep my hand in that on little small projects so there's that piece of it and then on this corner there's that i'm a long time bicycle racer and and a coached athlete now in the masters division so i race a bike at the on the track at the national level and have had coaches now continuously for i don't know 10 12 15 years as i've been getting you know better and better at this as i get older and older so i have that piece of it i understand how to be coached i had the training and mentoring program so i understand how to coach and i was at a parkinson's association in san diego board meeting and one of the right when kovitz started and with with parkinson's you have to exercise it's the only known therapy to slow the progression of parkinson's uh so with covid the gyms closed the programs closed and people were just literally left in their homes and told by their doctors their movement disorder specialists you have to exercise but at that point nobody really knew how because there was they were going to pilates and boxing and this and that and the other thing now there's nothing right so all of a sudden people are walking 20 minutes a day calling it exercise and getting worse symptoms worse and worse and worse and worse so i was at this meeting for something else and i and i have to back up just a tiny little bit i took in scuba one of the things i did in scuba was i created a coaching model to supplement teaching so you can do a in utd you could do a scuba course or you can take on an instructor as a coach and they'll take you through scuba training over a long period of time with lots of peripheral stuff to it and i used my athletic training model for that in the parkinson's association meeting i said look i have this model set up in the scuba company for coaching i have this experience for decades as a coached athlete why don't we put it together we'll make a coaching program for these people who don't know how to exercise don't have gyms it'll all be online they can exercise in their homes and you know that crowd of people were like yeah do it just do it so i grabbed a partner um from the parkinson's association good friend of mine has parkinson's was not a chronic exerciser but knew she had to and you know we discussed how to make this how to create a program for people that would give them all the benefits of athletic coaching without the stress of having to compete because parkinson's you're competing every day right you've got to train it's the only thing that will stop or slow these symptoms over the course of a lifetime so we came up with this very simple really simple model the same model that endurance athletes have been using with coaches for years there are a couple of pieces of software out there that manage this we came up with a name that i still love called coach me strong uh we grabbed one of the online training software packages called today's plan which is a fabulous piece of software and an amazing company more importantly than the software they're an amazing company customer service development attention to detail all that's been incredible so i took a third party piece of software put it together with a what i think is a great name a solid partner and a built-in constituency and we built this thing out in like six weeks website software i got coaches who had worked with parkinson's patients for years physical therapists exercise physiologists kinesiologists we train them on how to do structured training to give them the the workout part the clients sign up they pay a monthly fee they get an online calendar they get an online communications thing with their coach they talk to the coaches every day and people started getting better and it was awesome i mean it was awesome to see it go so you know the company has been doing really really steadily great since may of 2020 when it opened and um now that gyms and stuff are starting to open here and there we have no sign of slowing down we're just incorporating those facilities and programs back into our clients training we've expanded it to three different constituencies so parkinson's is its own constituency it's kind of where the roots are and then we we also have a constituency constituency of other neurologically challenged people so that would be ms alzheimer's traumatic brain injury stroke things like that again people who need to exercise but don't know how and then the third constituency was based on care partners but it's really anybody who is kind of getting older who again needs to exercise wants to exercise but doesn't know how and that's the constituency we're calling geno w it's kind of the baby boomers but i hate that silent generation that's 1929 and prior we have clients that old i it just needed a name for it there's gen x gen y gen z's and q's and whatever so i just came up with geno w for generation older wiser hey i like that no i think that's very just that sounds like a lot of uh fun opportunities a lot of fun things that you've been able to accomplish and continue to be able to work on so that kind of brings us to up to kind of where you're at today and kind of what thing or how your journey got to where you're at today and always tons of more things that would be fun to talk about and never quite have time to but as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that i that i ask so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made i wanted to learn from it so unfortunately that's an easy one when we started the scuba company we couldn't find software to run it that met all our needs right education delivery system certification tracking and so we made it so we bankrolled um a giant software company which again you know the utd didn't really have the money for it but we did it anyway and we put personal money in it and we built this huge huge software package at a time when software was fracturing right people were going to very specific things that's education that's certification that's calendar that's communicating we just put the whole thing in one giant package and it was like building you know a 600 foot long truck on a volkswagen frame it just didn't work we spent so much money so much time it was such a disaster i didn't know anything about software development it was a train wreck we called a train wreck with a capital r when i rebuilt utd so now you're asking what i learned from it when i rebuilt utd a year and a half ago when i took it over i went 100 third party software and it's amazing so if you don't know what you're doing buy it don't build it that's my advice no i think that's a good it's a hard one it's a hard balance sometimes you know and it's an easy mistake to make because sometimes you're saying oh the sock rather just it's terrible or doesn't work or doesn't it calm what we do or clients aren't going to like it as much and so there's a temptation to build and sometimes building it can be lucrative you can build something that really makes sense and really works but other times as you found out it can be one where it's a money pit that it's always taking longer and you get to the end and it's really not that much better or it's not doesn't have the value for what you had to put into it or software evolved so quickly that people already moved on or they're better third-party things and so it's one way you always have to balance i think to your point of do you build it or do you buy it a lot of times if you can buy it it saves a whole lot more um you know time money and effort than what you can get out of building it so i think that that's definitely a great takeaway second question if somebody were just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them so if you're getting into a company we talked about this before we actually before we did the recording right i believe there are two reasons to build to do a startup one is you're passionate about something you want to do a company and you're willing to ram your idea down the throats of potential clients that was utd the second reason is you see a niche and you fill it and that's coach me strong so i've had the opportunity to do both of these right be passionate about something create a new product try to market it be open to a niche create it fill it and then try to market it the commonality between those two things it doesn't matter which one you do if you're if you're willing to go the long road for either one the commonality is business startups are marketing projects they are not widget selling projects they're not publishing projects they're not scuba training projects they're not coaching projects they are marketing projects if you're not prepared ready prepped and educated on the marketing side you can make the world's best company the world's best product the world's best gizmo and no one's going to buy it if they don't know about it so i think going into any project you have to look at every single thing as a marketing project it's why i screwed up in the film industry in terms of uh that full-time job is looking for work and part-time job is working because when i was looking for work i didn't realize that i was the marketing project no i think that there's a ton of wisdom in that you know everybody thinks i'll build a better mouse chat but build a great product which you definitely need in a company if you don't have something to sell then you're not going to sell anything but if you just simply go and naively thinking oh if i build it they will come and if i make a cool product they'll come banging down my doors and you know i think you get that kind of when you watch the television show they're shark tank or in the movies or anything else because that's how it is always portrayed oh you build it they fast forward and now you're a big success but they always leave out you have to launch it you still have to make it you'll have to actually do something and i think there's a ton of wisdom and you have to be prepared to market your own product you have to be prepared to figure out who to sell it to and how to sell it to them and how to get do all that aspect otherwise you can build the best product and it will still never go anywhere yeah yeah it's interesting right these are things that you know maybe if i went to college i would have learned that but i think there's plenty of people who went to college and still never learned them others didn't go to college i learned them a lot better and vice versa so it's one of those where i think that you know a lot of times we get help you know and i'll give you an example attorneys are the worst of this because i think oh if i can just a really good attorney that's all it takes to make it in the you know in the legal industry because everybody just wants my expertise as an attorney you have to be willing to sell you know you still have to be even as attorneys selling all the time you have to be figuring out how to find new clients how to bring them on how to keep them happy how to land new business and those are the attorneys that are more successful than just the ones not that you don't need to know the law but if all you know is the law and you don't figure out their other aspects it's going to significantly hamper your your career path so i think that there's definitely a great aspect there on that note this is a reminder we are going to do talk just a little bit about intellectual property after the we wrap up the normal part of the podcast but before we do that if people want to reach out to they want to find out more about you know your scuba training they want to they have parkinson's and want to find out about the exercise regimen 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 contact you find out more yeah so the two companies it's coachmestrong.com and utdscubadiving.com pretty simple all right makes as simple as that well i definitely encourage people to reach out find out more and a lot of a lot of great experience uh whether it's for any of the or for any of the businesses you offer or any of the knowledge that you have well thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show we'd love to have you two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you have any help patents trademarks or anything else go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now as we've wrapped up the normal part of the episode we always get to switch gears a bit and you get to take the driver's seat and ask a question so with that i'll turn it over you to ask what or ask your number one intellectual property question yeah so it was really interesting when you presented this as as an opportunity for me to get a little free advice out of this thing um i'm always careful about free advice because i know how i know how valuable free is you know we always called free the other f word but um i have a question that has haunted me for many many years both in scuba and in even the coaching business is if i trademark something or if i patent something knowing that i don't have the resources to defend it what's the point no i i think that's a fair question is one that a lot of startup small businesses often grapple with because you're saying okay let's say i go get the world's best pack or the world's best trademark and it's very valuable but i'm still sorry for small business and i have the the goliath come along right and they're going to come along and they're going to just simply run over the top of me they have the money that they can exhaust it in court and even if i'm in the right it's still i'm still not going to be able to enforce it which i think there's a a ton of truth to that so there's a couple things if if that's the only reason you're going to do it is i'm going to take on the big guys i would say you're probably better at this point to hold off or to invest in other places because that's probably not going to give you the return on power now with that said there's a couple other areas that i would look at one is you know not all businesses are going to compete with you are going to be big businesses you know you may have another startup for a small business or a competitor let's say you're in california and somebody down in florida starts to scuba you know scuba business and they're also a smaller small startup but they start to infringe on your name well for the smaller businesses you all you're in a much better position you can you know you can get them to whether it's a cease and desist or you can start down the road of suits and they're not going to want to get into it anymore than you are because they don't want to spend all their funds on that either so it does have some value on that end um another one you're always looking at is with start or with big businesses let's say a couple things one is that there's always a competitor to a big business you know apple has samsung you have uh nike that has adidas pepsi has coca-cola and so almost indefinitely you're gonna have a big business to have the competitor and if one big business comes and starts you really knock off what you're doing a lot of times what you do is you leverage that and say okay i'm gonna go to you go to their competitor and say i'm not in the position to enforce this but your competitor is finding that we have a lot of value in the system or this brand or whatnot why don't you take it over you acquire your license from us and then you do the work of enforcing it because they're looking for that competitive edge another thing that you can always think about is it also is building in an asset to your company so you know one thing you're always thinking oh this is just the ability to protect it but if you're putting in a ton of time sweat and money and effort to build something whether it's a brand whether it's a patent then you're also going to say well now what about in five or ten years when i go to sell it or i go to get acquired or i do a merger or an acquisition or licensing and they come and say well that's great you build a good system now what is where's the value of your business is it in the brand that you built is it in the product that you build is it the customer loyalty is it in the customer list you know kind of what is it a lot of times you're able to monetize and say no here's our asset we built a good brand we have the protection there and as you so many mergers you know wants emergency acquire you you want to sell your business you want to retire you can get a better evaluation as an asset not just as a something that protects you so those are a lot of them across the board but i hopefully give you at least a little bit of an insight as to other ways that you're going to leverage your intellectual property aside from just protecting it from a much bigger competitor yeah i think it's interesting devin i think that that's probably the clearest i've ever had that explained to me and we have had that exact experience where people have just basically taken our scuba standards and procedures put their name on them and opened up a scuba training agency and you know it just feels like you know between international law and everything else it's just such an overwhelming weight to say how do we fight this thing and you know we try we try you know simple letters and things on our own but um that's an interesting it's it's been an interesting uh conundrum for me for many years so it gives me some more food to think food for thought in in terms of how do we know i think it but i think it highlights definitely you have to think about that and plan for it ahead of time all you're doing is saying well somebody told me i needed a trademark and i'll go get it just because they told me to and you don't have any idea how you're going to leverage it why you're going to use it or what it's going to be good for and then you probably shouldn't get it at least not to the point that you understand it and then you should be saying okay here's the point of our roadmap where it's going to make sense as an example if somebody else were to file a trademark first you know when you use branding and they come along and say hey this is you know this is a good brand i'm going to file on them first and then they box you out of your own business so not it's not only just protecting you mothers competing but now somebody else is stopping you from using your own brand and that's a much longer discussion but then you have to say okay i've got to also look and say if i had to rebrand if i had to do something else would that be easier or more worthwhile or would i'd rather be able to have that protection so even if somebody does come along copy they're not boxing me on my own so there's a lot of strategy but i think the point is is to kind of get someone that can help you explain it understand it be able to work your way through it is as much value as anything else so with that we're going to go ahead and wrap up the podcast and it's been fun to have you on i've had it was a great conversation and uh if you or any of the audience have any other questions now or down the road if you ever want to ask any other questions about intellectual property go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us at chad always happy to help in the meantime wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last you

Commitment And Perseverance

Kelly Githens
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/30/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

this ranger instructor looked down at me and he goes he goes are you committed and I looked at him and I mean my face is money I I got in my eye I'm trying to get out I'm hacking up stuff and I said what do you mean what do you mean sergeant and he goes look a chicken is dedicated because it gives an egg a pig is committed because he gives bacon he goes you understand the difference and I said yes I do and I've never and I've never forgot that and those are kind of words that I that I still did this day I love mine [Music] everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey I'm your host devon miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown 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 if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast kelly giffins if I if I can pronounce it right and just to introduce you a little bit to kelly so he was born in portland Oregon went and got an undergraduate degree in from Oregon state in business and also played a bit of basketball for a couple of schools while going through college then enlisted in the army rose to an officer level um and then was reassigned in 85 did some work in saudi arabia and then in the 90s I got into stocks into real estate wanted to become a millionaire and figure that was a way to do it um and then started out doing appraisals to learn the ropes um frust or got frustrated about the meltdowns of the market wrote a couple books on that and then was talking with someone else about the real estate markets and in far away markets and decided to take a look into how you start go about or go about evaluating the different properties and created a tool and that kind of leads him to where he's at today so if that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast kelly thank you devon so I gave kind of the quick 30 second run through of a much longer journey so maybe if we can go back in time a bit tell us a little bit about how your journey got started in business school and the basketball in the army and we'll go from there I was going to say you pretty much summed it up I think the interview is done isn't it well if that's if that's the total extent of your whole journey in your whole life then 30 seconds is a very long time so well why don't we dive in and we'll expand a little bit more on things you got it my background tried to try to encapsulate it I'm a portland Oregon boy um grew up grew up in portland high school undergrad degree was at Oregon state before that my journey was primarily I think my major was chasing girls with minors in basketball and a distant minor in business to that effect to try and get through school I kind of scratched around like everybody did everything from a commercial fisherman to tro truck driver to bartender spent a year in Australia working on a sheep and cattle station that didn't work out real well um and then finally that dawned on me I had an epiphany after the Australia venture and that was like I'm never gonna have a job worse than that and oh by the way I think I need my degree so finish that up was influenced by the people that that surrounded me and I looked at my peers and I decided to pad my resume I would become an officer in the army and had some super interesting jobs there and had a real crisis of faith at the at the nine year mark and that's basically where they take out part of your brain and give you oak leaf major clusters and yes a couple of the jobs that I had there that were just super interesting um I was a general's aide I got to um I got to command a rifle company which is basically leading 128 shooters and the last job I had was super interesting I worked at a computer center in Texas and unlike al gore I actually did get to work on the the backbone of the internet at that time it was called the defense data network sponsored by darpa and I was a telecommunications officer and system security officer um for the facility and then things led onto things and I wound up not really by choice but more by accident spending a couple of contracts in five years in saudi arabia came back and finished up my masters and at that time I was trying to figure out what to do with the next stage of my life and I read an article in the wall street journal about at that time was about the savings and loan crisis and they said they were having a hard time finding qualified appraisers and so I kind of kind of tied that together with being the best investor I could which was kind of a glaring flaw in my logic but now let me just ask one thing because so just there are a couple curiosities just with your journey sure when you went into the army to get you know kind of had the resume get additional leadership opportunities and get experience looking back on that was that did it provide kind of what you were looking for to provide that you know resume building experience and was it a worthwhile journey or was it something that you enjoyed in but it didn't work out the way you thought just kind of curious because you said that that was kind of the original original reason you went into it well the original reason I went into it was I took a look at my peers and I saw what they were doing you know kind of the mundane stuff entry level positions and things like that I took a look at my adopted dad and my foster dad both of them were career military guys and I just kind of came up to a snap decision that that that said yeah this would be a good good way to pad my resume and get some great experience I don't know if that answers your question or not I yeah for the most part now my follow-up to that would be is that was the original intent now after you got out of the military and continue on with getting the degree and going into you know the other past with your career was it a worthwhile in other words did it help to pad your resume was it a worthwhile endeavor or would you have done it differently well I think each individual's journey is unique and everybody has to travel their own path that being said I firmly believe that we're conditioned we're cond I firmly believe in operant conditioning and we're conditioned by our surrounding set of circumstances and the people that influence us so to me it was natural for somebody else it would have been a real struggle um I think to to to answer your question yeah for me it was the right choice and I got experiences and which is what I think a lot of life is about I got a lot of unique experiences that guys are never they couldn't imagine um and I in the end now that I look back retrospectively I just enjoyed the out of it hey well that's the that's one of the most important things if you do and you love it then that definitely makes it worthwhile so so now you did so as you wrapped up as you mentioned you you know wrapped up the military decided you're coming out went up finished the master's degree and started to get into kind of looking to get into stocks and real estate and went into being an appraiser to learn the ropes so I guess the you kind of hit on it but maybe just diving in a bit more what kind of drew you to stocks and real estate was just simply the allure of money and you know make turning a quick buck did you think that was an interesting thing to chase down or kind of what took you from going be in the military to go into that path well I I'm pretty goal oriented and basically work off a punch list and things like that and so that it seemed like a like a natural thing to do to set a goal to be a millionaire um I made a lot of money in the tech bubble and I wound up giving it back because I thought I was the only only person that could read a business plan and didn't pay attention to chairman greenspan at the time what he said about irrational exuberance and so like I said made a lot of money like in excess of six million and then wound up giving most almost all of it back um to that effect just accurate giving it back to who in other words losing it or giving it to charity who did you give it to I gave it back I rode a couple of securities all the way up to all the way up to to the pinnacle of the evaluation and then thought I was the only one that could read a business plan and and believed believed when I shouldn't have believed and listened to my broker when I shouldn't have listened and um you know major major error in logic so now you see you kind of wrote it all the way up and then wrote it back all you know wrote it back most of the way down and so one point you were a millionaire you gave it back and then now you're kind of writing that back and forth you know where did you know and I also think you wrote a couple books in the meantime as well on kind of all of the ups and downs of the market but kind of as you're writing that back down and figuring out what to do next or where to where to head next kind of where did what how did you figure out you know after you been in the pinnacle and then down at the bottom what to do next well I think the only analogy I could give up that you know your listeners will probably get a kick out of I don't know if it applies to you or not but I don't know if you've ever been in a bar fight I I for better or worse I've never been in any at least there are no physical fights anyway um well it's like I don't know I think it was tyson that said well it could have been a military strategist but it's like once you've been punched everything changes and that the tech bubble thing was like yeah I got punched hard and then um I still had a portfolio in real estate and I turned into what is called a shoebox condominium developer I morphed tried to morph from an appraiser into an investor into a developer which is a natural sequence and then the tech bubble hit so I got punched again um so that being said I wrote those ebooks out of frustration and just like to use the basketball metaphor it's like I needed to see the ball go through the hoop so I did it and I got stuck in my chain of logic one of the books that I wrote was about how to value real estate in distant markets and I had an idea but I couldn't execute and I kind of copped out and I gave all kind of ambivalent answers and I just kind of threw the book on the shelf and I by the way I've never published or never even thought about it but a little while back less than a year ago I was involved with this real estate wholesaling program and this dude's concept was he could comp properties comp properties means find comparables for properties using third-party sources well a light went on and I went back to the e-book that I wrote and I said this is the final chapter to that book and you know I just had an aha moment and I said well wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute so I had a cigar and a glass of wine and a long think with myself and I came up with the idea of creating a tool a tool that where I could I could teach layman which is the hardest part of it how to simply punch in some identify properties from third-party sources and get a valuation estimate not only from a sales comparison approach but also since they've got things called rent-o-meter and rents from zillow I could create a rudimentary gross rent multiplier and an income approach and then from there it started to spin out of control in a good way and what I mean by that is I said man I think I'm onto something here so I flesh those out and I've created a tool where I can I can give a superficial I can help the layman create a superficial valuation from the income and the value and the sales comparison approach or I've given them grids where they can go and they can refine the valuation as deep as they want and what I've done after that is I've turned the tool into something that an investor can use which is primarily oriented where I've got pictures I've got budgets I've got all the financial metrics any lender could conceivably want in fact one of the modules is the lender slash underwriter met an underwriter model module where I've got every conceivable metric that I could think of and the people surrounding me could think of that they would want so in the end to present to a lender or a broker could use this a portfolio manager could use this anybody that wants to take the time to learn to learn this would have pictures of the of the subject and comparables they'd have all kinds of metrics they'd have the valuation I've created modules where you can throw stuff into a repository and keep all your tools your investment tools and um to summarize it I think it could be for me it's definitely going to be a game changer because I'm using it for two primary purposes the first the first and probably foremost is to approach accredited investors and say hey I know what I'm doing invest with me and look at what I've created um the second is and I'm more perplexed and I'm not really sure how to do it is turn this thing into a shark tank product and monetize it and that was going to be one of the the questions I had because I mean there's always a difference I think that you know there's an inventor side and a business and marketing you know kind of side of every business yeah you can create really cool products and tools that will definitely benefit people but then finding it monetizing it bringing it to market and otherwise seeing who will actually be willing to pay for it and use it and reaching those people is always kind of that different hurdle so kind of give you know maybe the audience just a bit our you know where along that process are you having built a tool if you launch it are you having you know people use it are you looking for people to use it or kind of where you add along that spectrum well the first thing I'd like to address is and I've had plenty of time to think about it is what is my market you know kind of doing a swot analysis um and and the answer comes back um anybody who wants to know the value of a house and they want to do it whether it's a one-time or a consistent basis that's that's my market and that is huge because I mean I'm an appraiser and they people they pay me to go out for a single job they'll pay me you know for a house for 500 and I'm saying I can my big challenge now is to convert what I have up here and pass through the eye of a needle like christ said about a rich man going to heaven and how difficult it is it's like passing through the eye of an eye of a needle and it's like my challenge now is to communicate succinctly so I don't bury my audience alive at minutia and give them tools that they that they can use and they can learn easily and they can use easily or if they don't want to they can turn it over to an assistant who can learn it and by virtue of that I think I think it's I think it can be a solid winter and if you take it a step further I'm working with over a lot of overseas people and I query them as to whether they have the same type of mechanics that we do with respect to third-party sources like zillow redfin trulia and realtor.com and I'm thinking wow if this methodology works why couldn't I take it globally um I know I've glossed over the first part of the question do you want me to address those again yeah I mean I think that you hit on a lot of it I think the the main you know kind of this point of interest which is mainly on you know because I or how far you know so you sounds like you've developed the products you have you know you've done a pretty good analysis you understand who the market is or who who the potential customers are and what that benefit would be to them and now it sounds like fair to maybe put words in your mouth so to speak is it looks like you're now looking to launch and see how to monetize it and actually get it out there to people so they start using it is that about right sort of it's like if you had a flow chart you'd have two arrows going in different directions the first I believe that we are overdue for a correction in the real estate market and I want to position myself with deep pocket investors to take advantage of this that's the first part the other area goes it's like a question mark right now um and I'm right at I'm right at the point where based on your advice I am finishing up the review of the provisional patent we've got um an overseas lawyer looking at three separate trademarks um and I've just commissioned a coder to take it from an excel based product into actual software so I've got those three things are you know to me they're going very slowly but in real in the reality like I told my co-conspirator in canada it's like we're really going at warp speed no I think that that definitely gives some some insight on on everything so well as we've now kind of brought to you a bit where you're you know what your journeys in or been and where you're at today always a good place to transition to the two questions always why did I know that was coming go figure um so with that you know the first question I was asked is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it well I've got three of them and one is kind of ambiguous as trust because I trusted somebody when I I actually resigned my commission based on trust and going into a vocation that was really lucrative and I put my trust in somebody and that didn't work out real well so I had to dance on my feet hence the two contracts in saudi arabia the second was not listening to my inner voice and then the third one goes back to the mistake that I made during the tech bubble in in thinking that the hubris of thinking that I was the only one that could interpret a business plan so you got you got a three for no I think that they and and the more the merrier so I appreciate that definitely plenty of things to learn from so now we jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business what be the one piece of advice you'd give them um gave that one a lot of thought and it goes along with the story too um a combination I I take I took a look at most all of your interviews and the conclusion that I came to is the people that you're dealing with they have more than a monika of intelligence so we're not talking about raw native intelligence what we're talking about that separates the smart people from the the really successful people I think is a combination of um commitment and perseverance and to that effect it's like one of the life-changing stories in my life was I was in ranger school blah blah blah blah in the in the swamps down in Florida and I had to we we had to pick somebody to climb up this this embankment and we're we're we're all hunked up we're all messed up I mean this is like most of the way through it and we're just we're just physically and mentally a wreck and they pointed to me and said go and it wasn't my turn for a leadership position so I started climbing this this embankment and I must have slipped four or five times and you know it's like 20 25 feet tall and just slippery as and it was that had to and I finally got up there and this ri this ranger instructor looked down at me and he goes he goes are you committed and I looked at him and I mean my face is money I I got in my eye I'm trying to get out I'm hacking up stuff and I said what do you mean what do you mean sergeant and he goes look a chicken is dedicated because it gives an egg a pig is committed because he gives bacon he goes you understand the difference and I said yes I do and I've never and I've never forgot that and those are kind of words that I that I still did this day I live by I like that I think that a lot of the difference between success you know successful businesses successful entrepreneurs and startups and those aren't as the level of commitment because it is going to be you know climbing that hill is going to be difficult it's not going to be always fun and there's a lot of things that you're going to have to navigate but if you're committed and you're going there to making work I think that that is often the turning point towards success I love that as a feedback well as we wrap up just as a reminder to the audience we are going to after the normal episode chat a little bit about the intellectual property which is always my favorite topic so if you want to hear a little bit more on that make sure to stay tuned after the podcast to hear us a bit of a discussion on that but otherwise as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to find out more 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 contact you or find out more my website is kdgland.com kdg land dot com um best email is kelly at western equities another email is kelly gith gmail.com and I think I think that pretty much covers it all right well I definitely encourage everybody to reach out connect up find out more and if you're if you can use a tool it'll be beneficial definitely use that as well so with that thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com buy to be on the show two more things as a listener um one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast please you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review so other people can find out about all the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else their business just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help so now with that so now we've done talked through your journey got some of your advice and it's always kind of fun to switch gears just a bit and talk a little bit about a topic that's always near and dear to my heart so with that I'll turn it over to you to ask you your top intellectual property question yeah I think this is ubiquitous and it travels along a lot of different levels is like what is your best advice for somebody like me that that has a really really good idea that's two reallys maybe three really is really really really good idea but they're working on a shoestring budget and I realize I I've done my homework take a look at your website and you have your snap products in place so I'll shut up and listen to what you have to say now yeah I mean there is a range range of differences between startups you know but the I'd say the commonality within all startups and small businesses there's always more money this there are more things to spend money on than money to spend and so with that you're always kind of balancing the where do you spend the money where do you get the best return on investment what makes sense and then you know when that kind of setting up your question the question is let's say you're at the end of the spectrum where you're you know very you know on a shoestring budget your self or financing or otherwise doing it you don't have a lot of funds to do it you know you always have one is that you say hey this is work I would I would back up just a bit and say first of all why are we going after doing the or what is the purpose of going after the intellectual property why do we need it is it because we want to protect against others we want to be patent pending is that we want to do um could use it to leverage to get a better valuation for investors or money because you're going to have a bit of a different flavor as to what is the the motivation as to you know how aggressive you want to be as an example if you're going to go after investors best answer is is save up the money and have an attorney because they're going to go through they're going to evaluate your intellectual property your patents on that and they can either them or their attorneys can pretty easily see when it's self-drafted or whether it's self-done and it has a limited value to them because they're generally going to want to see an attorney do it now if on the other hand you're saying hey I just want to get protection I want to get patent pending I want to just be able to have that demarcation in the sand so that if anybody comes along after me I can show that I was the first inventor those type of things then you can a lot of times start out with a provisional patent application again I still recommend an attorney but if you're looking and saying okay I still can't afford and afford an attorney or at least not at this point it is always better to have something you know something rather than nothing or something in place so if you actually have zero dollars I would just write it yourself you know fire you can it could be a bit difficult or not as straightforward but you can figure out how to file yourself get an account set up with the patent and trademark office and go from there so I always kind of you know look at it as that is the bare minimum you can do now you mentioned and on the some of the snap legal stuff that we offer is we're trying to kind of bridge that gap because I always kind of look at it as there's kind of three tiers if I were to kind of go to the real estate analogy you know you can get it go out and you can pitch a tent technically that's a home that's a dwelling you could live in it may not be comfortable may not be big but that's kind of when you when you file it yourself you know if you prepare and follow yourself it's better than being out in the cola and having no protection nothing over your head but it is of a limited value we kind of then you know on the other side you've got a nice house you have the builder that you know goes and does it for you that they have the experience they know how to make a nice house it will be weatherproof they'll be heated and their condition have all the amenities and that's a lot of times what you're doing with the with an attorney in the middle is kind of where we're we're positioning with a lot of the snap legal stuff is okay you want something better than a tent you can't afford the the nice house with the experience builder so why don't we kind of give you that something in the middle to where you can have a re you know maybe a small house a bit more of a shack but something that gives you a bit more of protection that gives you a bit more of um comfort and it gives you somewhere to be long term and that's where snap legal comes in so that that's where it kind of gauges to what are you looking for what are you going after and then match up your budget with whichever one that you're looking for does that make sense well I kind of walked right into that one didn't I that was a great pitch [Laughter] yeah no you you really answered it well so well awesome well definitely if you or any of the audience have any other questions we only get a few minutes to talk about intellectual property I could go on for for days on that topic but if you if you or the audience have any questions if you ever want to chat feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time we can chat one on one and dive into any questions that anybody has in a bit more detail but thank you again kelly for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much I I appreciate being here absolutely

Start Right Now

Wen Zhang
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/28/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

say someone who have not yet started well start do it do it do it do it the world need you need your idea need your vision whatever you have is your beautiful vision do it if not now when we all can die tomorrow [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey I'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur who's going several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast I'm gonna kill the the slaughter the name but I'm doing the best I can but when was from china it was from china a small town and went to high school and I realized that she didn't fit into the mountain community um where predominantly women stayed home and and they're at home and wanted to go out and learn English so I went and learned English for about four years came to the us went to university did a couple startups um they failed but enjoyed every minute of it um and did this for about five years and then decided to go get an nba duke moved to austin for about three years ago and worked for dale sells team and then with kovit decided to try her hand again at doing some startups and small businesses and that brings us to a bit where she's at today and she'll let her and she'll give us a bit more details there so but that much is a is an introduction welcome on the podcast thank you so much devon for having me and hello everybody super excited to be here so I just gave a quick run through of a much longer journey but take us back in time a bit to when you're growing up in a small time small town in china and how things got started from there yeah so when I say small town I do want to clarify they do have a million of us so people wise population wise we are huge but when this is small I mean more like geographically is you know literally a town on the mountain where you had to go around the mountain drive around seven eight hours car ride to visit any near the city and plus we don't grow up with cars so nobody ever left and at that time when I grew up internet is not available we don't have a computer word in that way so literally it's isolated all the mounting and small in the sense of people's mentality about I think this is the world they don't see what is beyond that and my mount in my mountain town like you said you know women are meant to be a mother a wife and it's beautiful choice if that's what you love to do but in my hometown that is the only option for women and and that just never really fit in with me as much as I think you know I think that's the toughest job in the world I of course agree with that but I just felt always this telling curiosity to see what is beyond the mounting line I'm just so curious about the world outside of the mountain that we just live and breathe every day and funny stories today you know my friend will be like oh my god one let's go hiking this weekend and I'll be like no I think that's so weird because when I grow up I go to school I hike I go home I hike so I hide every single day and I didn't understand why people think you're such a such a funny you're doing a leisure time but yeah that's how I grew up um and you know my my entire family our high school dropouts and already go to school or college um but I just just always curious you know what is what is I just felt it always more I don't know what I is so I want to explore and that curiosity of wondering what is beyond the mounting is inspired me to actually discover a cassette machine in the library and that is you know how I decided to teach myself English um and like quickly mention it took four years because first of all is I of course sucks um it's not that easy to just follow the question machine but anyhow four years um I didn't just fail one time just fail twice it's not three times not four times not five not six not seven not eight or nine major failures in total in the fourth in a four year time and all the you know sprinkle of all the stuff in between and in that period of time where everybody thinks I'm crazy everything I'm out of my mind I think who are you like oh my goodness like all those moments oh they are not easy but I should tell myself well girl you have big dream to go so so that's how I you know really he just keeps um keep moving forward and that's how I came to America 2011 August 8th and that's how I first played in America tonight I said okay you know I'd like to come to America like you know studied English which props to you to you know find a cassette tape learn English and be able to kind of get that or pursue your passport is to you know take a different direction I think it's very commemorable um but so now you come in you know you learn English you come to the u.s I mean you decide okay I'm going to go to you know school for a bit so kind of as you're coming to the u.s if you already have a plan this is what I want to do this is where I want to go or just hey I'm going to get here and I'll figure it out from there kind of how did you decide once you've learned English come to the us what was the next step in your journey yeah that's a great question and first of all you know career counseling it was not existing where I come from which is no one had a career neither do I know direct neither do I have any role model to look at to so I don't really know what is a weight in front of me neither have any idea that I need to have that information so really I just show up and I remember like still remember the day when I showed you airport with four suitcases because there's a maximum you can take the international student I didn't I still remember that day that moment I think I'm just staying in the middle of a airport if you know where I'm referring to it's a huge airport and there's so many people they are moving you know fast and I was just stunning by wow first of all I actually made it and wow this is actually America and lastly I have no idea what what I'm doing I have no idea how to find the exercise I have no idea how to speak exit even this word and I never speak to any human being in a real lifetime besides my cassette so I just remember excited by shot mostly and just standing in the middle of the swallow people they all going places and I'm just like shot just don't know what to do and yeah so that's how I you know first came to a university of Illinois I wanna champagne for my first master's degree and you know finally you asked me my plan I thought gonna be a great time I thought gonna be you know your land you're gonna party life is good um but honestly the first three months first six months ish I hated everything I hated everything I hated it that I could not know how to order food I I was so embarrassed whenever I went in a subway line because just oh my god all the vegetables those names it's like so much pressure just water cucumber tomato in my head I know they're chinese name I could not speak fast enough and then people wait in front of you oh god oh goodness so I don't know I don't understand the culture the food the people I don't make friends and in in a classroom where I remember this one moment I I I take a conscious notification around me it's a small classroom discussion I know I noticed all my classmates are so excited and participating they always say hey I'm thinking myself is it just me well the only one person who do not understand what's happening right now like I literally can't do not I did not understand anything at all what's happening around me so you can imagine time so diving in just like now you've come to the us you know you kind of have language barrier learning all these things you know do other people understand things I don't understand and definitely I've been on the flip side and I've lived in taiwan for a couple years and on the flip side of kind of learning that language and wondering if people are understanding what you're saying and trying to understand them but you you make it through your school you get your undergraduate degree and you come out and you try and do a couple startups is that right yeah so that's my first master's degree and yes so now what was that what was the the because you mentioned you did it you know before we chat or we chatted before the the podcast you did a couple startups and they both ended up failing in the in the end but what were those startups and kind of what was the ideas and what did you try and do yeah okay got it so fast forward um two years then spend get my master's degrees um just figure it out and my first startup was a service-based business that was about eight ten seven years ago it's called internship desk it doesn't exist anymore but at the time the idea here is because I was an international student and I actually see this huge opportunity for those students who have experience where they travel abroad and have those business exposure so essential we do our ideas we help if you from say minneapolis for example you want to see oh I want to see how business work in china for example would buy the platform maybe you'd go to china say the fancy city like shanghai beijing having a summer internship summer immersion experience to learn about the business the local culture spend the whole summer and then come back so vice versa if you found china if you're from japan you want to come to America for the summer spend you know two three months in chicago learn about u.s business etiquette we provide a platform for that so we have china israel and us three locations happening um in the in the in the program structure so either idea me and my um um friend probably right we start together and oh my god like it was so fun because at the beginning you know even though you don't make much money but who cares like you're learning to start I felt like at least I felt like it's my full heart and soul into this business I'm super excited and I felt I'm truly making a making impact making a change I'm really really excited um well what really you know kind of you know well I'm first I'm still very proud of at the time from the idea to build a business become one of the largest service providers in chicago in the midwest area I'm very proud of it it's I it's one of the best times well why fail is you know at the end you know me my co-founder slash friend um we're gonna have a different direction here's the way the business is going to go and and that just really um did not run really well so um that is the first startup still a lot of fun though still anytime I think about it I just feel like oh my god like what a good time so now you so now you do that you know you have your friend co-founder do the startup do it for a while grow it at the end you know that you guys decide hey we're going different directions didn't work out startups and failing yourself having to set it down now where did you go to for the the second startup or kind of how did you you know what part of that journey was okay first started didn't work did you come did you already have another idea did you go you go different direction you go on your own with a different boundary kind of what was that like yeah so I I just you know kind of after that the first one and then I joined the second like a startup but I did not co-found I joined it when it's already eight nine people and at the time the premises of second businesses it's a software business and I I I discovered that they have a lot of press in the united states they actually have no cluster international so I thought you know what that would be a great opportunity for me to really take you know all the information that I incur like you know just the marketing the go-to-market um the knowledge expertise I have helped them to launch the business in international asia pacific specifically so that is a premises that's intention so so yeah that is um so then the following year I'd really just literally do exactly that I you know it's a software business I had to help cash cash management for hotel for luxury hotels so I saturate do not help them to open up the entire asian market um in asia yeah it was a lot of fun it actually took them five to ten years to even establish the base in the united states and took me one year in china which I'm very very proud the invite is one of the only only vendor actually to join their international um controller once a year I can control the conferences for all the fancy hotel but I'm only going to be invited so I got a chance to exclusively speaking all to the marriott hotel which is just so much fun and you know I I love you're good no I was gonna say so now you do that second startup and it's you know you join that you know small business you get you have some success you grow it you you know over the period of a year bring out a lot of partners and to make a lot of connections now what did you you know did that start up fail did you decide to move on was it not paying well enough decided to go different direction or trying to how did you transition from that startup to the next phase of your journey yeah so one thing that made me always happy javen is I always want to make sure I always growing whether it's today this week or this year and for me you know in the startup platform at the time I helped to open up the market which is so exciting so I wanted to grow so then I transitioned my role from just you know leading the entire market from business development perspective into like oh software implementation so I need to enjoy the entire market everything that the company has to offer I do all that in the asian market so I kind of you know really getting really exposure about every single piece about the business in asian market which is you know really grow significantly since I joined I joined however you know at year two mark I realized everything I can do in the company already done them and there's no nothing more for me to do the year after besides just more account besides and I I don't like the idea and I thought to myself you know devin when I stuck in a little mountain town the promise I made to myself is I'm going to go see the world now I have sense that I see startup world I want to see the bigger world and I will see what is world beyond just the startup scenes and that intention brought me to duke and that's how I got my mba for foreign two years and that's I'm moving to austin Texas 2018. join dell del computer company and be part of their go to market team now what just out of curiosity what made you decide to first of all go get the you know the nba duke and then go to Texas was it you know you mentioned a little bit hey I saw the startup scene wanted to do something different but what made you decide to get an nba was still intend to do your own business still wanted to be an entrepreneur or is it more just wanting a business experience or kind of and then how did you decide to go to her to toss her to Texas was it more that was where dell the job offer was or that's where you wanted to go see a new part of the country kind of fills in a little bit on those details yeah yeah devin for sure first of all you know not to be stereotypical but I'm asian I love to learn and I I I think I you know I think I have you know decent understanding about the business how I work based on my experience in startup world but I felt they have bigger you know more comprehensive business knowledge I would like to acquire understand really how business run in this scale and I felt empower myself with a degree with experience with the network I think will really help me to go to next level so that is at the time my logic about go to business school why choose duke well domino bran I think if anyone thinks about business well do you bambi is one of the best in my personal opinion just because I really love not just about the academic not just about you know the professor and all the incredible award all that but most importantly the culture the people truly will win my heart and I and I remember what day and I want to visit the campus I walked in there I just it's a weird feeling you just felt your home like even though it's not I see this student body people have the dining hall there's a ping pong table people drink coffee people talk about project I just felt so welcoming so sense of belonging there and you know that in the next two years honestly it was one of the worst time and the best time in my lifetime which is so hard to describe it to people where it's such an intense two year in my lifetime but yeah one of the best times where I actually see what I'm made of you know with all the incredible pressure we've been through and but I also gained incredible friendship as you know as and and you know we embodied they called a team field spirit and really we collectively as a team is a community we hold each other accountable and lift each other up and you know truly I felt is a transforming two years for me so so that is a logic about an nba duke regarding why Texas well I mentioned I was in chicago before and that's actually how I met my husband and I love chicago I think you guys amazing city however my husband he was like oh my god is winter getting cold when it goes somewhere warmer and I was like okay warmer so I look in your south and there are of course all the wonderful cities and I think about well taxes or my husband really wanted he kind of really want me to put it into taxes because summer is very hot so looking at taxes I actually don't know any of those cities and I thought wow our thing sounds a lot cooler and hippie and I think I'm a hippie so well in heart and I love all things you know if you guys don't ask me other things um slogan is called key absent weird and I interpreted it as I mean we are weird you are weird I am weird she is we are heard we are because we all unique and we're in our own way and I love that slogan so much and I almost felt when I visited city it's almost the same when I visited geocampus I fell home and I felt I can be who I am I can be this weird funky or fun or whatever I wanted to be that day that moment I can be that and still be part of a city and I can call it home so that's how we kind of decide location on the Texas austin and that's how I moved into austin three years ago and also part of adele as well but yes also job offer as well no that definitely makes sense so now you go down to you know Texas sounds like a new and exciting place you know maybe a bit more of a different type of culture that you can get experience too as well as a good position within a great company and you're down there you do sales for a period of time and I think as you mentioned no one chatted before but then as you're going through doing the sales for dell topic came along and that necessitated you know people being let go or work slowing down or layoffs or whatnot and that kind of reinvigorated um doing kind of your own thing or going back to entrepreneurs is that right um yeah so you know I'm part of dell go to market so I help manage about 320 million dollars portfolio go to market north America channel sales I work with 400 sales teams across the entire north american region I have tons of fun through a lot of strategy and data and all the things which is exactly the global exposure I was looking for so in really providing a great platform to learn and grow and you know it's a fantastic company fantastic culture it's all they check all the boxes I guess you know what they made me to think about is you know when pandemic hit when you know somebody like myself well extremely extrovert and suddenly have so much time on my hand it just gave me some space to think about okay now I checked pouring coach at other boxes I got degree I got another degree I got you know started like a corporate right now what do I really want what is really true when what is you what kind of impact you want to live in a planet and what if I die tomorrow what would I have in a regret so those questions just kind of really surfaced to me and gave me a lot of time to think about and I thought about it society writing those questions that I think about literally ten years ago when I you know came to state when I truly made my dream come true when I become I believe one of the millions you know the chance of me a mountain girl ever come this far is just beyond imagination even to myself I thought that moment really means so much to me I realized I would love to help others maybe your dream come true as well and that is kind of like where you know it could um derive the idea come from and that's how I start my consulting business how I've not not went so today we have startups specifically with a pitch um help them to pitch through the the pitch that services help them to grow and skill their business and I love help supporting entrepreneurs specific helping them to grow and skill and their dream their their vision because I think entrepreneur our biggest dreamer so if we can if I can support entrepreneurs and think about the community the customer the the partnership he going to go out and build and create I think um anybody everybody if you have a dream if you have a vision whether it's start a business start a bakery start a family whatever thing is for you if you just go out to do whatever you want to do I think the whole world is better it's a brighter place it's like you are the light bulb on the light bulb if you're one pixel rider the world is a brighter place so that is what I want to support and that's how I decided to start my consulting business and help people to do exactly that so now and I think that that kind of brings us a bit to you know through your journey where you're at today and kind of what you have going on and where your focus is so I think that was a great walkthrough of your journey so thank you so now with that you know as we wrap towards the end of the podcast I always have two questions that I'd like to hit on so we'll jump to those now so the first question I always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it so I just you know skipped a couple steps so in between me and my husband we also started another business called evergreener so that was actually our first taste to start business together and we we actually have been married for eight ten nine years now so I would say if I have a hindsight I didn't know what it take to start a business with a partner and it's it's really not easy I like I we we talk about business in the daytime and evening in the day in the weekends like it's just so much and at the part where no it's just hard to differentiate me and my my husband versus business as a partner so if I'll evolve in the high side I can do it again I would like to kind of have the clear boundary and clear separation and clear defined about role and responsibility so we can really um not jeopardizing anything and really still go out and build the business yeah well I think that's you know and I think whether a spouse I think that's a whole other level of complication because you know with the normal business partner you go home after the end of the day you get to get a break apart you know you're not with each other all the time when you're doing it with the spouse but even without a spouse it's still a lot of time together a lot of strain on the relationship a lot of frustration and stress but now you got the addition of having a spouse and now it's not only that when you go home your business partners also your you know your your spouse and that and you're now dealing with family issues and you're even you know if you have a bad day at work and trickles the home or if you have a bad day into work it can be a great thing I think it can provide a lot of synergy and leverage and you know the person you're working with and you're trying to be successful together but I think it does add that extra layer of complication so I think that that's definitely one to something I would not do that again for sure so now second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them what depends what stage they are right if they just about to start a business were they already in the mix of business what are they about to grow and explore their business I would say someone who have not yet started well start do it do it do it do it the world need you need your idea need your vision whatever you have is your beautiful vision do it if not now when we all can die tomorrow well somebody who already started business in the process of skilling well will they know really think about what is the next step what's next level for you whether it's you know seeking funding whether it's seeking partnership maybe it's go to market is whatever that piece is and I think I think you know maybe myself and also other can felt the way when you start your business especially when you just begin whether it's one person two three person you file your day forward all the tasks all the activities and I think it's really important to really prioritize and one tip I want to share is um you have all the lists are all the things you need to do and on the right hand side you pick two pans one is green one is red think about is those activities revenue generated activity put in the green pans if it's just like nice to have if it's just not um anything that's revelated make a rat and especially in the early stage if your goal is to grow and whether it's a cash flow whether it's no revenue expansion if that's the case focus on those revenue generating activity first before you go to the other piece whether it's infrastructure whether it's make a nice logo all the wonderful things I think that's very important at the beginning to really launch your business and really help it to be sustainable before you can be you know be consistent and have a true beautiful plan no I love that I think that's a great piece of advice so now as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to be a client they want to be a customer 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 contact you or find out more yes um well check out my website is if not now when dot com and you can find my information there and yeah love to hear from all of you and once again thank you so much devin for having me very honored super grateful for the opportunity absolutely it's fun to have you on and appreciate you sharing your journey now for all of you the listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast to come on and share it feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe to your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and do leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always happy to help well thank you again for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and what's the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much devin I I really appreciate you you

Make Time For You & Your Family

Jason Gillikin
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/27/2021

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.

Get In Contact With The Guest

ai generated transcription

Make sure that you carve out time for yourself and your family. When you're running a startup, you can get so focused, and so in the weeds of running that business, and it can be mentally all consuming, and you can't lose track of what is truly important. So, carving out that time to go for a run, carving out that time, or a date night, carving out that time. That is super intentional for your kids. That is going to be beneficial to your family, but then also for your business, because it'll give you that time away to relax your brain so that you can come up with better ideas for everyone, this is Devin Miller here with another episode of the inventive journey, I'm your host Devin Miller serial entrepreneur, growing several startups and seven eight figure businesses, as well as the founder and CEO of Miller IP law, real startups and small businesses with their patent and trademark, you ever need help with a strategy meeting, grabs. Now, today we've got a another great guest on the podcast Jason Gilligan. I'm always, I always want to say Gilligan so I always look at it I'm like I know it's not killing it, but I still think it'd be elegant so, anyway, with that quick introduction, and Jason so he grew up in Michigan went to college, I think, North Carolina, and didn't go back to Michigan wanted to stay in North Carolina did medical care, medical malpractice, and then worked at the Edward. Edward Jones I made some time today as a financial advisor for a little while as well. Also did professional books and things. That sounds exciting. And then I did SEO and SEM for digital marketing, for I think about 15 years or so, and then started to get the entrepreneur by fell in love with podcast started his own podcast company wife also started a podcast, helping her with that and then beginning a time of entrepreneur thing and see if we can make that much as an introduction. Welcome to One A winding journey, that, that you listed out there. But thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Absolutely. So, quick 32nd or 45 seconds every second run through of your journey, but I wanted to take this a bit back in that growing up position, getting a college in North Carolina and oh yeah absolutely so, like you mentioned, grew up in Michigan right around Detroit. So just north of Detroit Southfield area. Still a very sad, Detroit Lions fan den in my lifetime. The Lions have one exactly one playoff game that won Super Bowl my new one playoff game. Still, still managed to root for them. But on that note, see I'm in Utah, so we have the jazz. We don't even have the only one that ever had was when I went to school in Cleveland, Ohio. And that was the you know the Cleveland bear or Cleveland Browns crown, and I don't think there were any better. So, the only one I've ever had the opportunity to report didn't have any better or didn't have any better odds of yours. Yeah, what are we doing with our lives like we need to come up with better teams I think it's so yeah I grew up, I grew up there, Michigan, and went down to Carolina so UNC for college. And for me it was just a chance to get away and go to somewhere new, somewhere warm somewhere not so great, it's not so full of potholes. Honestly, at the time as a 17 year old guy was 60% women. When I did my two are there, I was like oh my gosh this is amazing here, and that a good business program as well. So yeah, I fell in love with, with Carolina, and you know man when I, when I thought about moving back or where my next place would be, or after college. There was just no way I was leaving this triangle area in the triangle area is Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill. There's no way I was I was leaving North Carolina got the beaches, we've got the mountains. It is gorgeous. And there's a great tech business community here as well. So now he said okay, let's just go here and lives in North Carolina, and then do that for a while now, how did you get into Medicare now. Yeah. How did you get into it. Yeah, so I actually knew a guy that went to Duke, and Carolina and Dude, we've got this fierce rivalry but you know we hang out sometimes. And his dad ran a medical malpractice insurance brokerage out of Houston. So, after school, we went down there for three months to train in Houston, and then came back to Chapel Hill, to start up that branch of medical malpractice insurance services. And so our job was to call on hospitals and doctors and say Hey, who are you using for your malpractice insurance, we can probably get you a better rate can be quoted for you. And this is, you know, free Salesforce free like massive databases that we could get into. So I just created a big huge spreadsheet of all the hospitals and through the risk managers were who the CMOS were for all these different places, and, and just call them the circle calling them and we were successful at it. And we did that for I think that sounds about right as a long time ago now Devin but yeah that sounds about right. I did medical malpractice for a bit of time and then remind me where I need to go from there. After that was Edward Jones. So, I always wanted to get into the financial industry from an early age, you know I was interested in stocks and things like that. And I think I didn't realize with being a financial advisor, it is predominantly a sales job, I didn't realize that at the time, and I like sales a great I love sales, but I kind of thought I would be a financial advisor but it was literally going knocking on knocking door to door and that's the average junk models, and say, Hey, my name is Jason And mind you, I'm 2324 year old kid. Hey my name is Jason, if, if we had ever Jones have a trade or a stock or a bond or something, you might if I give you a call and that's how you got your call is what's going door to door, and doing that so it didn't work out all that well for me. Mostly because I started to get distracted by what would be my next career path, which was playing poker online, one question before we do that because I think the largest, most, most jobs if you're successful and good at it, have the sales aspect. I don't care if you're a dentist or a doctor you still have to get a good recommendation. If you're you know almost most jobs. If you haven't asked. Now some have more than others. Now let's not get from having the ability that allows you to prosper and a lot of. Now, isn't that in mind. I don't know if I can make that same argument for posting I guess yourself until you're putting your whole face on but it's a little bit of a stretch. How did you get into doing a professional poker thing going from Edward Jones, financial advisor to saying this is how you risk your money and how you save it, how you multiply it and say, take a very high risk approached by money and seemed like an out winner out play on people. You make it sound like it was a bad idea, period, two ends of the spectrum. It is two ends. Yeah, I just got hooked in the, the Rounders movie and you know you watch, I don't know if any of your audience remembers this way back when, but you know the Chris moneymaker. Megan, winning the World Series of Poker and the fool of TV, and everybody was going on, it seemed to the, the online poker sites right so PokerStars Party Poker. And I found out that I could win some money doing that if I play discipline, and I played my game that could win some money, and so I was distracted with my job at Edward Jones by playing poker, as I was making more money doing that. And I decided okay you know what, this is what I'm going to do for a little while now, mostly played online. It was a while back then, I mean it was just a lot of money coming in from people that were just looking to have fun. Wednesday to to Vegas 1520 times to play in some some tournament out there, including the World Series of Poker a couple times which never really cashed in that but you had a chance to sit next to sit next to artists and and saw Phil Hellmuth do a rant. Even with the cameras off. He is that guy that will be the poker brat and jump out of his seat and rant on whoever he thinks is playing poorly. But yeah it was it was fun. It wasn't the most healthy lifestyle, because you're kind of staying up all night and you're on your computer all the time and you just don't really realize what time it is sometimes. And yeah, if I was going to move on in my life, and have a wife and a family. I had to get serious about my career, definitely makes sense that no one this kind of curiosity and it gets to personally connect me super curious, you know because I read it, there's kind of those you know we have them become out or you have something funny like counting cards and playing, you know, playing blackjack and other things, glamorous and can you make as much money as money out of people go broke or kind of, how was it for. So, you can make money. There are people that made a ton of money on poker. Is it glamorous. No, I mean, you're, you're, you're spending hours at a table or at a virtual table and just within your own thoughts, Like, it is hours of boredom, followed by moments of terror. Right. So no, I mean it's not glamorous by any means and most people do lose money, because that's how the casinos make money, so like, 90% of people that are playing, are going to lose money. So now you said okay I tried this, not a healthy lifestyle probably not conducive to a family. I'm not going to be rigid the people on TV, probably not. And so, you know, then where did you go from there kind of how did you decide, what would your next, or I guess two questions. Try not to calm down. What made you decide to give up poker and just the healthy lifestyle and went to a search engine optimization, firms with the were the world's largest SEO firm, and we were told to say we had a 98% retention rate for our clients. And this is back in 2006 Something like that, where he was very much. Seo was like a voodoo practice, you can say anything, and they trained us to say anything. And people would believe it and that particular company, so I worked at that company for less than a year, that particular company, that ended up going public, it was like 200 people, and Devin I kid you not, if we hit our sales goals. Everybody would line up, and the exact pass out $50 bills to everybody. So, as an attorney you're probably like that is not tax. Tax healthy right there. But at the same time that's what happened and like, you know, we played basketball all the time, you know, total bro culture total, total growth pro culture, but the company had gone public and the company that, that, while the company that took it over essentially realized that it was all smoke and mirrors and the CEO, literally, ended up getting dragged out. And so that was, that was fun to see. After that, anyway. One of these days I'll write a screenplay about it or maybe I'll do like a narrative podcast about that. I can get some of some of the guys involved from there. But after that, I want to hit on one of my biggest. There is a place for SEO for social media marketing and all those. And yet, I think for the general public, it is one of those. It's so hard to know whether you're getting a stellar job it's absolutely worth the money, or whether he gets someone that you have to give me a call months before you can deal and see any results and then you know you might see some results or it will take longer than the last four months. And so that was, I think that's kind of you mentioned that the biggest price with the industry, there is a lot of even today I think even more so back then but even today it seems like the new normal changing your analytic methods, it's so hard to know what were what is, what is accurate and what is when is difficult service. Yeah, it is really hard, and that was a challenge and I stayed in the SEO industry for a long time went to a bigger, not a beer company, not at all bigger companies but a much better company. In my 12 years with that company and they were doing things that they said they were going to do, actually getting our clients ranked. And so it was, it was a company that had those, those morals that you don't always see in the SEO industry. That makes sense. I think if you can get that good reputation or not just focus on it by trying some time and I loved them, as hard as you are doing that is doing that. I think for five years with one company. And then along the way you've kind of got the entrepreneurial thing and kind of a steady, slow thing was the kind of you know like oh I want to do this and I'll try something out on the overnight and you kind of have that. Well, always looking for the entrepreneurial win. Like, I'm just that anti guy, that that is always looking at where where's the marketing inefficiency, how can I make some money doing this or that, like, Okay, so my wife started a company back in 2010, and she's a wedding planner, and I was very involved in that and helping her out and making sure her rankings were good, on Google to that she would get the leads, you know, help her out with payroll and all those things, and her company continued to grow, and as she was doing that she was bringing in more people that you know I became less and less relevant. So, you know, I got some ideas like one was a marketplace for couples and vendors, it was, it was like the Uber for the wedding industry, where we were developing technology and we developed it, it worked. But we didn't reach the marketing challenges there, where we had to market both couples, and two vendors. And we didn't have money to go about doing that. So, had that idea had an idea for kind of invitations where if you just send a list for night invitations, but thank you cards, so if you sent out a list of your gifts, and the people that got them for you to this company, which are called the grateful, which I don't know why but that's why I call it that, that it would then spit out it was send a thank you cards for you so write these nice thank you cards for you and send them out those cool idea. I didn't know how to run it, run that particular kind of business, but so these are all things that I was, was working on. All the while doing my job. And then I found podcasting. Nice podcast and felt like you're not putting more developers kind of wonder, as you're trying to stumbled upon and so to speak, kind of fell into sound like I wasn't necessarily going to go out. This podcast. It was sound like it kind of started era supportive of what you were doing and then it became really focused Is that about right. Yeah, so 2016 2017 just fall in love with the storytelling aspect of podcasting right influence was how I built this by Gyarados. Love that podcast. He's just the greatest. Interviewer And by the way, if any of your listeners have kids out there, the podcast that he does with Mindy Thomas Caldwell and the world is amazing, like it is a cartoon in audio. They take scientific scientific research, and turn that into a cartoon basically on audio, where they go to place all these things, and my kids just love it. Anyway, so started falling in love with podcasting around 2016 2017 And I went to my bosses and said hey can I start a podcast for our company. I'll do it, I'll do all the hostname, whatever else, literally mine, I'm sure, go ahead. It'll keep you happy for a little while longer. Yeah, it'll keep you happy for a little while longer, why not. So I did that and it was like a how I built this before our clients so we sold the e commerce Store so we I interviewed them about their journeys in developing their e commerce companies. It was called my digital story and we did 10 episodes, I wanted to take it further and interview other e commerce companies not just our clients, just for networking purposes. They didn't really share that vision they want to be just about our clients which is cool, like that's that's their prerogative. I think it was a mistake I think it could have been a great networking opportunity. So, 2018, I convinced my wife finally to start her own podcast so as I mentioned, she's a wedding planner, and I've been bugging her to write a book about all her different stories about the wedding industry and the mothers of the bride outbursts from brides and grooms or whoever, like she's got amazing stories to tell. And she's like no no no I can't do that I would have to do have to be my last year in business basically, you know, to be able to write. Because you know my clients wouldn't want to think like I could one day share their stories, like well what about what about a podcast, where you get other vendors to share their stories. Fine, I don't even listen to podcasts but I'll go ahead and do this thing. So we started weddings for real, and it is three plus years and she's at episode 143 And what we start to find and what has happened to her career, is she has gone from wedding planner to industry thought leader, speaker, and online educator, so she now has a platform, an online education platform where she trains, the next generation of wedding planners and a better wedding planner, and she's got 350 members in this in this membership site, which is awesome, and all started from that podcast. I started to see how effective this can be for building personal brands, and for building companies. And, like, Okay, I'm falling in love with this I'm, I've spent too long at this one company jittery starting to think about my legacy. What am I doing with my life and you're proud of, to produce out there, and I wanted my own company. And so I did in 2019. Finally, the company that I was with, and started out on my own and then started building up. That's awesome and I, I think that, you know, one of the misconceptions. I think that we would kind of, you know, three podcasts not overnight. million downloads on our first episode and everybody else, or maybe if you have a marketing budget. Maybe, but even that I think is one where I think it's kind of started. It is a great way to connect people make connections with network. Non, or even more much more easily reach out to people that probably otherwise wouldn't be able to get a chance, because you're offering value, I think it's a great platform and it's also one where people love, I love to listen to a podcast, podcast there, and beyond and Dr. Kelsey was a podcast. That is, you know, kind of 19 year old business and you know that kind of future kind of thing within Europe, as well as you know the industry in general, where do you see me. Oh wow. So you hit on it quite a bit is, you can't expect a viral sensation at all, unless you are a celebrity already and you have that opportunity to have that viral sensation is worth so much more than selling ads, like, if that's your goal, or your podcast. You don't want to, you don't want to do that like your goal should be top of funnel marketing, right. And so creating something where people can bet who you are. And this person knows what they're talking about so that they can amplify their expertise is our tagline is also to create that content. So the podcast can be repurposed for social media or books, or blog posts for so many different things. So you've got that topical marketing, you've got the content creation, and then some networking is the networking and business development, so like, you know when you're reaching out to somebody to do your podcast, maybe it's somebody that you feel like, could be a client of yours, like I had a, I have a client who hadn't even put out a podcast that was just reaching out and saying hey you want to come on my podcast. They have a $30,000 piece of business because it starts to spark up a conversation. As you look back at 10 years ago, going round of golf with a prospect, right, is treating them to that. Well, I feel like I passing you from the new golf, instead of let's go for a round of golf is hey do you wanna come on my podcast, you have a real insightful conversation. That's not so sales oriented, and yet it's got that that business development focus or that business development goal for you while creating amazing content. So you asked where the industry is going. It is these niche podcasts, it is, you're coming up with, like, everybody should have a podcast. Every business should have a podcast and every personal brand should have a podcast because of all those things, and you don't have to have a huge audience to connect with the right people, you can connect with who you want to work with. That's what's important. I think that's the right I mean I think you can have a much smaller. Now the nice thing about podcasts and most people don't say you never very seldom you know the audience, people getting started with people who have a million followers we have five followers, which is nice for the podcast hosts in the sense that it gives you a much lower very good interest when people reach out to people and they're just excited to tell which worries somebody wants to hear they want to be on their share. So I think that it gives you a lower barrier to entry and just get started. Get going. And then you find that right group that is important to you and then he lashes out so now. Now as we start to reach the end and you're always somebody deveined, we'll have to have you back on Simon's next topic. But as far as your journey, we've kind of reached out into creating your journey not where it's at today and it's time to transition to the two questions that we left. Bonus. In last a little bit about that. More than companies in the last few questions. First question I was asked, Along your journey. What was the worst business decision ever made. Only guy. I keep making the same mistake but in the realm of the same type of mistakes, and what's really hard as an entrepreneur and a solopreneur initially, is you have got to wear so many hats in your business, there's this great book called The startup hats by David Gardner and he talks about the 11 startup hats that you have to wear so maybe one hat, one hat is the marketing, you know one hat is HR eventually one hat is all these different things, there's 11 has to do at all you have to do every single thing, including all the BS work, then the challenge becomes, if you, if you get to that point where you're, you've got demand for your product or service or whatever, then the challenge comes. How do you take those hats off, like how do you hire the right people, how do you come up with processes so that you can hire the right people and, you know, if you want to take a hat off, that you have in place, and I keep making the same mistake of doing the business rather than growing the business. And I have to focus on that, every single day, every single week, is my role as CEO of this company is to grow the business, not to do the business. And yet, you know, I like we have clients and it's all great that they're paying clients. But, you know, we're not rich enough yet where I can hire for everything, so like that, that continues to be a mistake that I'm making is not focusing on the growth, but rather on the doing of the business, I think, if for anybody listening to this, you've got to quickly figure out how to get to that point where you can grow rather than do now and I think this is a hard balance, especially with small businesses start out as the owner or founder whatever you want to call it, you're filming sales and marketing, you know, doing the website, firing firing all those and as you grow you know you can add you have revenue bringing other people in it's that balance. What do you what do you give yourself, where's your best your best return on your efforts to know because you still have to get done and so it's always hard. A lot of things would be great. Things are gonna be the most impactful. Just gonna want to get to that mistake that's easy to make and everybody. Second question I always ask is if you're talking to somebody just getting into a startup or small business, what do you want. What's a really good question. I mean, one piece of advice that the one piece of advice that I would give to them is, make sure that you carve out time for yourself and your family. When you're running a startup, you can get so focused, and so in the weeds of running that business, and it can be mentally all consuming, and you can't lose track of what is truly important. So, carving out that time to go for a run, carving out that time for a date night, carving out that time. That is super intentional for your kids. That is going to be beneficial to your family, but then also for your business, because it'll give you that time away to relax your brain so that you can come up with better ideas for the growth of your company. So as busy as you are, as busy as you know you need to be for the startup to be successful. Make sure you carve out that time know and I think, I think, if you wanted families. If your family, your kids or your wife, that are being paid attention to failing there is going to have a big impact. You want them to feel to be able to remove yourself or you know, your own business when you're there because you're always worried about, like your failures and vice, and vice versa, if you're doing well, it has positive effects on the other one you can on things you know having that time to decompress and eat I always joke that, you know there's laundry. The office was great I think got another idea or something we wanted to start with podcasts at 99, or 90, very little podcast for a run, listen to podcast I don't have emails coming in I don't have anything else in this community. Think about the things that I normally don't think about during busy day. I think both of those are a great way to make sure that you have those times to give her the support, have a good family, and also have a time to actually on your other great piece of advice. Yeah, I love it. Now as we wrap up before we do the bonus question that people want to reach out to they want to be a client they want to be a customer they want to be an employee, they want to be an investor, they want to be your next best friend, any or all of the above. What's the best way to reach out to them contact. My next best friend, sure. But, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Jason Gila Kim di l li k i n, and then your fluence.com. So if you got your phones, calm, the contact form for you can always just email me directly Jason at your ruins.com. All right, well I definitely encourage everybody to reach out. Find out more as I'm like, their networking program. Definitely reach out. Thank you again for coming on the podcast like to share your podcast. This might be on the Genesis one mixture podcast. All of our previous reviews. All our last strategy meeting.com And now we've just wrapped up the normal time when I get it, we get to switch gears a bit and talk about the air go over and talk about that subject that is near and dear. Fingers whatnot that alternate over you ask your number one intellectual property. And I appreciate that. So, we just made. T shirts, and we've got a couple mottos that we put on T shirts. One of them is just press record, so there's there's a couple meetings there. One is for all those pod curious out there, I tell them just press record and see what you have, like, just, just do the thing just just start podcasting, do what you have, it's not live, you can always throw it out. And then the other meaning is for all the producers, editors out there. Remember to press record, anyway, so we put that on a t shirt so just press record, and then your phones on the back, the other one we did was record drunk edit sober, which means that you don't have to be drunk Sure you can, but you just want to be loose right when you're recording something you want to be able to dig in deep and say, Hey, We don't have to air this, but I have to ask, or this can be off the record, but I have to ask. Just, just be loose with everything and be comfortable, and then when you're in the editing process, that's where you can cut things out so record drunk edit sober, we put that on T shirt as well as an IP attorney. Do I need to be concerned about this like I haven't looked into trademarks or anything like how does that all work with that and especially when you get into coding. So there's typically two ways that you can protect, if you remember was. I'll get to how you protect it before you get to the question is, most relevant we should you know the word worthwhile. I would look at that as kind of given part of your brain and it's something critical to your brand and something that you're building it around to where it is something that identifies you at your business, where somebody else will be knocked off. That kind of urge know that when you're getting on cash rates like that I wouldn't, I would definitely have that value to your friend. On the other hand you're like Nikes just do it, and everybody associated with melting your mouth on your hand, you know, whatever, make you whatever you're, you know got mail. Whatever your catchphrase is, you're going to say okay that is a big part of the business, and then you're going to want to protect. So, first thing is, see whether or not it works. The second thing, and let's say now you get the point okay it's worthwhile to be part of our brand, then there's kind of two ways. One is if there is a unique look into this field, meaning it's not necessarily the branding part and he just created a cool looking shirt as assigned to it as you know, graphics, that's going to be on your copyrights anything it's kind of on that creative side where you just make something with the unique will look and compare predictable profits copyright basically allows a player to put on their own shirts on their website, it gives you ability to stop. The other one is on trademarking anymore for the brand is now that is the difficulty when you get into clothing lines. Most of the time when you see a cool t shirt, and it has a cool thing on it, you don't think about that being part of the brand using that's what he's saying. But he sees your, I'll give you an example, my favorite teacher is the simplest teacher but I always love it and it's just kind of fun to write by otherwise by the Buddy. Buddy shirt for his last favorite shirt. I love the shirt binding crowdfunders I have no idea whose brand it is and it has nothing to do with branding, and sometimes the problem is, trademark brand itself is tough to miss identifying associated with your brand name you can protect your trademark. Funny catchphrase clients can't really do. It's not really part of your trans, two avenues, both of which can give different points of attention, depending on the design is more tied to the brand. With that, that's my answer to your pop intellectual property advice from them if you were any of the audience has any other questions or want to grab some time with Mr. Jeff, feel free to go to strategy. COMM And sign up here. It's been a pleasure, and reach the next leg of your journey possible. Thanks so much.