Go For It

John Vuong
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/26/2021

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

start doing and go go for it right like people are very i would say information overload um the reading the writing blog watching videos but they never aren't action takers right i would rather people go for it and learn from the mistakes at least you don't live with regret 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 into seven and 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 if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we've got another great uh guest on the podcast john boeing boing john and i knew that first name was easy enough to pronounce i got to last night i'm like oh i'm in trouble so uh john um just as a quick introduction parents came from vietnam um and he they grew up as a pretty tight family and he you know he worked like crazy in high school to help out and support the family um and then went to the university and while there did a whole bunch of different jobs to continue to support both studies as well as his family got a degree in finance and then decided he after uh graduating would take a year abroad in england um i think it was maybe as part of the degree maybe after the degree you'll have to remind me for the first uh and then after that went into sales and worked at yellow pages for a while and then decided after that to go off on his own and start his own seo agency that's focused on small businesses so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast john well thanks a lot devin uh for the intro and it was pretty much a summary of uh just highlights um and that was great because you know i can delve deeper uh for sure for a lot of your listeners to hear but it's been quite a ride um growing up it was challenging but for me it felt normal right because that's all i knew which was we were i was a family of four children my parents left the war for a better future for us children so next generation they sacrificed everything didn't know the language didn't have funds but they knew it's probably healthier and it's for the children right better education better culture better support system better resource and access and choice right so that's what they did growing up you know for us it was about family it was taking care of one another helping each other survive so i worked at a young age and i had many many jobs probably 20 30 jobs before i even finished uh university now let's not go through all of the 20 30 jaws give us kind of a a smattering or give us an idea of what were some of the jobs that you did or kind of what was the areas that you hit or that you did help out with the family yeah first was newspaper route i think it was like 9 or 10 years old i started doing that i worked at a library to you know pay the bills i i worked in factory line work i did landscaping i did um at every single restaurant as a waiter as a friar as a concession stand you name it i probably worked at all the major landmarks in my city and town where i was living because i mean it was a part of me being curious but also trying to survive right and take care of just having additional funds for support for the family as well as access to purchase and do things on my own so we didn't rely on any other medium of uh access of money so we just had to do it on our own um but i learned a lot of skill uh life life lessons as well right like how to get good interviews how to hand a job how to you know communicate with others right like life lessons that i think is a foundation of every human i believe if you want a good career or to be on your own you need these skill sets um to be positioned in the future no and i definitely agree so i think it's you know it's one thing it's definitely great to as you're kind of getting younger as you're younger to develop a work ethic understand hey you know things don't come for free you have to get the experience you have to get the skills you have to figure it out and then you just have to put in a ton of time and effort and then also you know looking to hey i'm big you know bigger than just me i'm looking to support the family and help out and i think those are all great lessons so now as you grow up in kind of that environment you're coming out of high school had a whole bunch of different jobs and kind of work to help support the family and you go off to university to school now you know remind us where did you where did you go and what did you study yeah so i went an hour and a half away from where i live so i'm in toronto like close to toronto canada um which is an hour away i grew up in hamilton ontario and i went to school in london ontario so university of western ontario i went there um it was funny because for me again i wanted to be like everyone else but i wasn't i didn't come from a lot of access and resources right so we had a student loan um i didn't have a vehicle like three quarters of the population and student that were there i took public transit i was working along the way and i was trying to fit in right like but i didn't know how other people were living prior to coming to university and living on their campus so me wearing different clothes acting differently i was just different right because again i never growing up i never had a sleepover i never even stayed at a friend's house right like birthday parties that was family cake event right once in a year we traveled to a festival but we didn't really you know now that i look at what my child is doing and how much information and choice that they have i want them to embrace the culture that we have available and that's what most of the students that were in university had like a a upbringing that allowed for choice freedom travel like real travel like flying to different countries and doing different things like i've never flew in my life until i i did that one time exchange program to london and i think that really was an eye opener to me because i was then able to not just survive on my own live on my own but why as well like i've never flown in my life i i never you know moved to a different country without my family nearby and i just had to figure it out i also worked along the way i also got more loans but i had to figure it out so it was great of a life experience i believe now remind me with that so did you go now because i mentioned it briefly in intro but i couldn't remember did you go to england why you were studying or did you take a year off after you studied yeah it was england in my third years of uh university studies and it was the exchange program so it was a great opportunity that the university allowed for and i took advantage of it so for me it was more a great life experience to embrace a new culture that allowed me to just live in a different country opportunities i've never even been able to travel before and then learn from other people that were also exchange students from all over the world so it gave me a really good breath of i used to live in a bubble in a government housing kind of landscape where everyone kind of knew each other and that was great at that time but as the world is now an open book and there's so many more opportunities so many different cultures so many people i i now you know want to travel more i want to experience different cultures different people and understand how people live differently so it was a great eye-opener for me and that actually transformed me to be better in just not just communicating with my friends and family but in all my career choices moving forward because now i'm more grateful for the opportunity that my parents endured during the that lifetime to pass it on to me and now i'm trying to pass on those skill sets to my child as well no i think that that's definitely i'm amicable and definitely as a great uh great endeavor to take on so so now you finished so you did the year abroad you finished up your degree i think you got in finance and then after you graduated i think you if you mentioned before we talked you went into sales and worked for yellow pages is that right yeah before i went to yellow pages actually so i i actually spent 10 years in advertising sales and five of those years was at yellow pages group but before you get into yellow pages group you have to be actually pretty good in sales because here in canada we were the only yellow pages was the only unionized sales force and it was a one year probation to get in and you had to be vetted because there's hundreds of applicants so what happened let me just one really quick point of clarification because when i think of yellow pages there i guess there's two technical things that it could be one is that it's the old actual yellow pages book that you opened up at everybody's business in the user sometimes it would have people's phone numbers and you would actually physically turn the pages i believe it evolved i haven't gone there in a long time to a to a website right where you could go and actually yellowpages.com or whatever and it was kind of the digital version of that i don't know if or which ones are still around or how well they're around so were you doing more of the physical book you know yellow pages that you delivered to the homes or was it more online so in canada we own both assets it's a brand and there's only one monopoly right and i know in the us there's yellow book yellow pages there's yellow and there's all these other variations but here in canada we had a monopoly one book and also online and we sold both right so it's the same company and so we had a sales force of over 2000 sales reps and it was very competitive not just to get in but also do well and so five years prior to getting into yellow pages i had to really learn how to sell properly and i learned from absorbing a lot of content going to conferences reading books just following the footsteps of great sales people within the organizations i was a part of and i wanted to get better i understood what it took in terms of work ethic hard work trying to just persevere be persistent try to just that grit mentality right like just keep doing and action taker try to show up earlier do things longer whatever it takes right and that's how i got these positions and i got better and while at yellow pages you know out of those 2000 reps now i'm now one or two percent of the popped here i was going on these trips and i was learning a lot right and i was getting better in sales now and during that tenure i worked with thousands of business owners and they just advised me like it was great in terms of life lessons because they taught me so much about how important running a business is what really mattered in life which meant uh family typically they do it they're small medium-sized business owners that i was dealing with and they were the hardest working people in that i can even think of it right like and they were not just doing it for a couple years they were doing it every single day for five 10 20 and sometimes generations being passed on so now so you did so no and i and i and i think it's great that early on in the career you can get kind of that mentorship or that guidance in the sense that okay you know hey i don't know what i don't know let's let's figure out how did you you know go through and be a good sales person how to you know look and see what others have done to build their book of business or their sales or network and get all that mentorship so you worked there i think it was for about eight years how many years i know eight years you've been doing your seo firm how long were you at the yellow pages five years also for you did that for five years now kind of as you reach the end of that five years and you know then you obviously started your own seo agency but kind of what prompted to leave or to you know want to do your own thing or start your own thing you're kind of how did your journey evolve after being at yellow pages for five years yeah like the last couple years those business owners just advised me they were not getting a good roi they were spending money that they no longer got good results from and they knew there was a behavioral shift in how people were consuming and searching for their type of business they knew there were people still seeking out their services and products but me myself was spending more time on online right digital and i was now you know out of smartphones were starting to pick up internet was faster people are now accessible real time speaking out their services digitally and with traditional media google kind of took off and yellow pages started to damper and therefore i knew i either had to go work at google or facebook or amazon or one of those big players or try something different and i knew there was a client base that was under service the small medium-sized business owners just didn't know where to turn to how to do it and who to trust and i wanted to hit all those major pillars so that i can serve them well so i went out learn as much as i can about seo even though i didn't know anything when i first started i got to learn it in the last eight years to make make sure that i serve them well know who i ideally want to service and work with and produce a really good return on their investment which is all about results um so we've worked and harvest systems procedures processes to ensure that we have a really optimal you know results and drive and it's like a whole system right in place so that we can do things better and grow now one thing i'll jump back just a bit in time because you know you touched on it but dive into it just a bit deeper is you know so you've been yellow pages for five years you know and they and i get they're saying okay things are slowing down people are going more digital google apple and others are kind of encroaching in our space and so it's going to be hard to continue to compete and i honestly don't know if they're still live or not alive i haven't used a yellow page usually like everybody else you'll google it but you know so that that's starting to wean down or at least they're having to pivot and evolve now how did you decide okay i'm going to get into local seo i'm going to start to kind of start my own agency was it a matter of this sounds fun and exciting it's a matter of hey i've got to do something and this job isn't going to be here much longer was it you know kind of how did you make that decision or that jump as to okay i'm going to be leaving like yellow pages what am i going to do next yeah i think it was and that's a great question because for me it was a pivotal time in my life and if you look at the lifespan of a human like typically there's career paths right and i just recently got married i recently purchased a place and i now had the decision to continue working at a corporation or pivot to a different company where i'd be kind of doing the same sales kind of role or try something different right so being an entrepreneur meant you just have to have clarity on what your vision and goals are and i had support from my wife so that really helped me make a decision and make me really pivot to being an employee to now an entrepreneur and business owner and do it fully committed and so at the early days it was challenging because i didn't know how to run a business i didn't really know how to do seo i didn't know how to hire people like all these things were thrown at you and then you got to figure it out just like how i kind of figured out growing up right and so when i look at the challenges i know it's hard it's hard for a lot of business owners but if i've already kind of gone through some hard challenges growing up it's just another hard thing that i have to endure and figure out so that's what i did i went out there seek good advice from other seours learn as much as i can read blogs watch videos go to conferences and then as as a business owner now i'm consuming a ton of content on business ownership how to absorb it how to run it properly operations management hiring accounting bookkeeping uh everything right and there's so many facets so now so so as you make because you did that so you decide okay this is what i'm gonna do there's a whole bunch of things to learn things i don't know but i'm going to dive in figure it out and you know get it and get it going you know was it a hey i jumped in i had clientele from day one and it was just the cash cow and making lots of money was it hey i took a lot of time learned it took a while to build a book of business was it ups and downs or kind of as you started out in the business because you know i've been doing it i think for about eight years right but you know as you started out how did that initial kind of diving in and getting it figured out how did it go so getting in right off the bat not knowing anything about seo i knew my biggest strength was sales as a skill set so i went out there and sold with a concept and idea on my smartphone with a laptop i was like okay i gotta make sure that there's revenue number one in any business is you need money and people paying you so i went out there got my first dozen or so clients paying me um with you know a couple thousand bucks where then i i knew i had an idea people want right so that's how i got the ball rolling then i started hiring i started doing things to grow the business but at the beginning i was spending so much time in the business because i had to learn everything seo how to run all these different pillars and operations and then after a couple years i started hiring more people to manage and then they were more you know controlling different pieces within the organization which is now someone in operation someone that is in accounting bookkeeping sales and marketing all these fun you know different departments that when you structure it properly then it allows you to then focus on the bigger picture about growth marketing things that really matter when you're working on the business so it didn't happen overnight like i didn't have money to grow start the business at the beginning i was bootstrapping everything i had to figure it out because i was like you know i just got married and bought a home so there goes all my money right so i got to figure it out um and as you grow and and you evolve and learn more um you appreciate what your team can do and you learn leadership skills how to delegate properly how to you know use you know learn about what triggers your employees to want to be excited and passionate about what your dreams and desires are and so i i really focus on building a really good solid core team that understands my vision and values right and that replicates and expands and amplifies my my my dream really no i think that's awesome and it's always fun you know you always think you know a lot about business until you start your own business and then you figure out all the things that you didn't really think about or did learn you know hey i actually have to do marketing i have to do sales oh i get new bookkeeping get into taxes who's going to be the janitor who's going to pick up after things who's going to do hiring and firing who's going to do you know managing people who's going to give direction who's going to you know or set up the office and blah blah blah you know it goes on and on you know that i think that's a lot of the fun and excitement if you take it with the the right lens so so now you've done all that and that kind of brings us up to today and now looking kind of the next six months six to 12 months kind of looking out just a bit into the future kind of where do you see things heading for headed for you for the business and kind of what's the next steps for you guys yeah it's exciting because you go through all these journeys right in terms of not just business ownership entrepreneurship but every day is i i'm as passionate and excited as when i first started it's just different challenges right and for me it's not even six to 12 months i'm looking at like a 10 year plan i look at it like what is my next thing and do i still wake up excited doing what i do and if not i have to change it so it's just a different pivot of what i need to really be inspired to do so we have a lot of different projects and initiatives and everything i'm doing has to be fun and exciting so for me right now we're in the works of not just growing in into different markets because we've been really focused in canada us is a different beast and i get it so that's a different marketing growth plan also then there's other platforms we're really heavy on podcasting we've been doing podcasts for two and a half years but really commit on doing it properly i've been working on a book so that's going to be another six months to a year plan we're working on the community and that's not another thing youtube channel speaking all these are big projects but i have a team now that is that gets me that understand why i'm above so i can allocate some people to on these projects and i can focus on all these passion projects that i think will elevate the brand more and it's a lot so i need to really allocate based on time and have fun and own it so everything i do has to resonate with my people my staff and it has to be a part of me where it personalize and customize what i'm trying to do right which is ultimately to give and bring as much value as possible to the audience members no i think that and i think that's uh that's a great way to look at it and the sentence said always you know i you hear a lot of people say you know you have to be you have to chase your passion find your passion i think that there's some truth to that but you know if you can be really passionate about something if nobody in the marketplace wants to buy it from you it doesn't matter how passionate are you are about it but where you can find the mix of that passion and where the market's willing to pay you for it that's where i think that that sweet spot is in that mix and then i think i like the idea of kind of reevaluating as you're going to always say hey am i still as passionate is this still exciting or do i need to adjust either the business or find something else to do or whatever that might be as you're as you're going along so well as we wrap up we're starting to hit towards the end of the podcast and so i always have two questions that i ask at the end of each episode so we'll jump to those now so with that um 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 yeah so eight years i've had a lot of regrets well not really but a lot of learning opportunities learning opportunities and that's the only way to pick yourself up and see if you can endure it right there's going to be a lot of bumps in the road um so early days i was hiring for the wrong geofence right i was hiring just on skillset and no personality no values and that was a big big mistake because at the beginning i needed people so i didn't know how to hire properly what to look for so i was hiring just on them being great seo kind of people right not everyone is created equal and as i i grow and learn more about how to read people and uncover like what really meant that makes me different is it's the personality my values and how i i was brought up and the family values and everything else so that was a big you know learning curve and it probably was six months of a lot of mistakes um and a lot of like stress right because you don't know what you don't know but you got to get your foot wet and do it right and the more you do the more you're going to learn and try to mitigate those mistakes moving forward no no like because i mean i it's funny because i think hiring is one where everybody has to go through and it's one where a lot of times everybody thinks oh i'll do it differently i'll be so much more better at it and i'll i'll make it better you know blah blah blah and most time you get into i'm like hiring is hard it's hard to not just find the right fit the person with the right skill set the person that will fit the culture that will work hard they'll get the job done that you can trust i mean there's a lot that goes into the mix and so i think that especially early on as you're figuring it out you know a lot of times the temptation is to hey i just need to hire someone that has the skills they're a warm body they fill the seat they get the job done and oh they'll work hard they'll fit they'll you know and as you get farther into it you figure out no there's a lot more to hiring and figuring out those people that are right for the business and the team that meets the eye so i definitely get how that's an easy mistake to learn but something great to learn from as you as you go along so now as we jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you give them i would say just start doing and go go for it right like people are very i would say information overload um the reading the writing blog watching videos but they never aren't action takers right i would rather people go for it and learn from the mistakes at least you don't live with regret most people will always you know over analyze a lot of decisions and as a business owner you have to be very decisive all the time and the first thing is go and live with the actions that you're to make and therefore i would have started earlier if i knew right and that's what a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners say if i knew what i knew today hey i would have started earlier in my life but i don't live with any of the regrets because i had a lot of experiences along the way and people that impacted my decisions at that time so after reflection after having a good perspective in life um i'm i'm learning i'm still growing i'm still making mistakes but i'm still doing and i'm still passionate doing and that's the other thing too like go move but be happy do things that make you and excite every action that you want to do because what brings you joy is what motivates you if you are just doing it for the purpose of money or some some other thing it's probably not going to bring as much fulfillment in your life no and i i definitely agree with that you know it's interesting i think we're coming up on 250 plus episodes now and i can't remember which ones have aired and which ones are still uh are going to be airing soon but out of all the episodes you know there's a lot of different answers people give i'd probably say the number one answer that people get more than anything else is some variation of get going just do it get started now i wish i'd started earlier because you know it's one of those i think that if you have that personality if you like doing your own business doing your own startup it's one where as soon as you get going on it you wish you started so much earlier because you enjoy it and you're so passionate about it so i think that that definitely resonates across a lot of different journeys well as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to be a they want to use your local seo services for their business they want to be a customer they want to be in 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 find out more and connect up with you yeah you can check out our website uh it's www.localseosearch.ca we also own the.com but originally we're from toronto canada slowly expanding across north america uk and australia and we are really passionate like we love what we do because we support the small medium-sized businesses and that's the lifeline of every community every city every neighborhood every country so if you are one yourself and you don't know who to turn to give us a call we're here to help and we want to add value in your life so that you don't have to worry about this whole digital space awesome i definitely encourage everybody to reach out check out the website see if you uh if they if you can utilize your services definitely an area where um comes in comes in handy for a lot of startups small businesses and even medium-sized businesses is a great resource to drive business so well thank you again john for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you the listeners if you have your own journey to share and you'd like to come on the podcast to share it feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener 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 everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you never need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help well thank you again john for coming on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you david you

Understand Your Financials

John Rhymer
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/25/2021

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

so i really think that the idea is to understand your financials more than anything i think that's going to be the key because when you start talking to people that are going to want to back you they're going to want to know that you know what you're talking about it's great that you know your idea it's great that you have passion for your idea but if you don't understand the long-term effects of what you're doing if you don't understand the business that you're in if you don't understand like those basic ideas then no one's really going to want to you know provide you with money because they're not going to trust you with it [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademark 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 guest on the podcast john rimer and uh john is began his journey as a systems engineer uh taking systems in engineering class at west point when he was or um i think was uh had to define the 21st century got into environmental science degree um and his interests are always kind of switching away from gun powdered weapons to other alternatives and we'll get into a little bit of is what he's doing today in that regards um then he graduated from west point went to fort campbell for a very period of time and went into the infield tree went to iraq served there for a bit came back got all the military um worked for uh natural science or national center for uh research for a period of time and then uh where he he got to illegally grow marijuana so that's always an interesting one and then uh a buddy called up to our buddy called up and uh indicated that there was a good opportunity i think it was in stevens transport but you can grab me where i'm wrong i went to work for oil gas for a period of time and then today is pursuing a prototype that he's been working on for quite a while that moves us away from our gun or guns using powdered weapons to an alternative and we'll dive into that so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast john oh no thanks devin i appreciate it so very much yeah it's quite it's been quite the journey for sure all good journeys are so i walked through kind of just a quick high level overview of kind of what your journey's at but take itself a little bit in time to when you were at west point and studying and kind of how your journey got started there yeah so we had a class and the basic you know general project for that class was designing something for the 21st century warrior and you know my classmates had all sorts of different ideas and ended up not picking this one thing um i think i picked reactive armor or something like that and don't quite remember the whole story but the idea that i gained from this class really kind of has stuck with me for the past 30 years as i date myself here and what i've done but the idea is is that how can we go from using gun powdered weapons to what will be the next generation of you know future weapons platforms for the military moving forward and always been something that people have stayed away from just simply because the technology hasn't always been there or the ideas just never kind of like came to fruition or there's always been other things to do i mean to be honest with you when you look at the military industrial complex the manufacturing of ammunition is a billion dollar business and there's no reason to stop it unless there's something better that comes along and so i think that that's really kind of where i started was that how can we transform this industry the way that not only do we hunt we uh we wage war we do the things that we need to do in order to kind of like move forward right and i think that with the introduction of the space force you're not going to be able to use gun powdered weapons in space so how would you be able to defend the the galaxy star wars movie or star trek or whatever but yeah i mean that's really kind of where this kind of idea came from was that as we move forward and put ourselves in position to you know explore the world put people on the moon like what are we going to do i mean is there a need to defend ourselves what are we going to do and so this idea just has been brewing in my head for 30 years so now it's interesting because 30 years is a long time to jump over so you went to west point you kind of got this right you did the class you know you kind of graduated you know kind of had this idea of percolating about how you might you know transition away what that might do but then you put that aside so to speak to put that down for a period of time and when before campbell went the infantry and then yeah is that right yeah absolutely and so really just kind of just set it on the side and you know just kind of let it percolate in my brain and i think that that's one of the the major lessons when it comes to the way that i process information is sometimes you just gotta be patient and i think that this idea has been just sitting in the back of my head for that period of time and i've learned a lot of things in my experiences whether it's been you know in the military itself um you know actually how we run integrations what soldiers are looking for what are the expectations of their weapons platforms what do they want done i think those are some lessons that i can take with me that i learned to be able to apply to to this situation because to be honest with these soldiers are picky especially when it comes to their weapons and they want them a specific way they want them to operate all the time and they don't want to fiddle with messes and they want to be able to as they say reach out and touch somebody whenever they want and i think that that's kind of what what i bring to part of the table and being able to really kind of put something together that's going to be a a quality platform for you know not only soldiers but hunters i mean i hunt so it's just one of those things that you really just kind of sit back and and you open up your your gun closet or wherever you're at and you go is there really something better that's out there and you know what what would it look like and i really think that's kind of where it started so now diving into that so you so you were third in iraq you kind of you know get that experience and and you you know got the understanding of kind of what you know whether soldiers are hunting or what you know what uh people that use guns on a regular basis with juan and you know kind of let that idea percolate so now you came back from serving a tour in iraq and kind of where did you where did you go from there and kind of yeah so it was just really working and putting the money together um so and that's really just been kind of where i'm at so along the way i work for the national center for natural products research i did i grew marijuana it was the only legal marijuana field in the united states at the time and that's a really cool job basically what we did was that we took non-native species of plants and they the pharmacologists were trying to develop them into you know usable drugs for the pharmaceutical industry so it was really fun it was exciting but i wasn't able to make the cash that i needed how did you how did you initially get into a job where you basically grow marijuana or legally grow marijuana there are plenty yeah so it was it was a weird thing so i was actually at ole miss to and the the job had kind of just opened up and my mom's a botanist my degrees in environmental science so i really kind of had the the background of being able to you know grow things kind of a green thumb i got my own greenhouse in the back right now there's no marijuana in it just for anybody to know but um yeah i just went out and saw [Music] the ed horticulturist and he was like you're hired i mean i kind of could walk walk through the place and say you know this is what we need to do originally just started like repotting plants and watering them and over the course of about three years i kind of grew into the head horticulturist once they realized that i didn't know what i was talking about um and then you know kind of start on that pathway to work through all that you know like pharmacology government um kind of rigmarole right i mean there were so many regulations and rules for what we were going to cut we used roots we used flowering plants we used seeds just to develop different things and it's weird how stuff like this can develop because on a russian licorice plant there's this super sticky stuff on the outside of the seed pod and that is actually what they reverse engineered to create the sticky substance on the back of post-it notes so it's weird stuff like that that really kind of just kind of you know put you in a position to go this is really cool stuff now you did that for a few years and then what made you decide there to get out of that or kind of where did you go after you grew marijuana for a few years yeah well it was not the cash crop that everybody thought it was at the time um so you know when ring being able to kind of like take my invention to the next steps and go from really kind of what was in my head to putting it down on blueprints i needed you know some some basically money and at that time right i got a call from a friend of mine that was like hey we have some room in the transportation logistics supply chain industry and do you want to join and i was like sure why not that was going to basically double my salary and i was going to be able to to do the work that order to kind of further what my actual goals were and that was kind of like getting this idea into reality and so i've done that for the past you know 15 years i ended up working um with my friend and then we started working in the oil and gas industry and that's really just been kind of what i've done just kind of working my way up the scale director level and supply chain world but always taking that time to decide and say hey i can work on this one i can off time and everybody has been super patient and being able to deal with my mad scientist ravings my kids get annoyed when i start talking about electromagnetic fields and um you know beings and things like that they're just like they just start shaking their head and walk away so so no i think that definitely you know the fun journey to take now as you're going along you know so you you take the journey you kind of get going on that you know you've done now the military you've got into growing marijuana you've got an oil and gas now how did that you know get into oil gas with a friend and then you always kind of percolating in the back of your head i have got this project i want to do this and kind of this is where i'm at now how did that transition to kind of where you're at today i mean so did you or worked through other jobs is it your full-time gig in the society gig which i always say sign game is really just a second full-time job because it takes as much time but kind of bringing us up to a little bit to where you're at today yeah so so right now it is still a second full-time job that i do um so i'm actually hoping that you know october 2021 my full-time gig uh that's my my goal date to be able to to make sure everything launches off but um that period of time was really spent in this journey of being able to go i mean i had the team of electrical engineering um i had to teach myself about you know materials engineering i had to research all these articles and that was a lot of what i was doing in that that journey to get to where i am and that was really kind of why it was has been a side gig for so long of being able to you know just really make sure that you know what i'm putting together is going to be something that's going to actually work um you know historically you know this type of idea has existed for i don't know 50 67 years you know people have put different things together and so i really want to learn from their mistakes uh kind of understand where their limitations were how could i push the envelope what what would be the things that would allow me to be able to you know create what i created and and that's kind of where i'm at and and so um hoping that like october will be the end date that's what i'm telling the family is that october i'll be free and clear and be able to do this full time and uh they're they're kind of excited for me and i'm excited for myself so no that definitely is exciting you know kind of fun to dream about us so to speak and to kind of think where we see where things were going to go out but then to actually have the rubber soda speak hit the road and start to actually pursue it and to go after it and bring it to reality always making sure it gives it a much much realer feel so that's certainly exciting so well that kind of brings us to where you're at today and so now we'll transition because we've kind of talked about you know how you got to or what your journey is how you got to where you're at today and a little bit of where things were headed out in the future jump to the the two questions always ask at 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 have you learned the worst business issue that i ever made was not trusting and verifying the people that i'm working with um you know especially with with what i'm doing being able and to talk to people about what i'm doing and and getting their feedback um there have been some people along the way that you know you know i presented this idea to them and said what do you think and i mean they were real quick to shoot it down uh really kind of like you know put that negative energy in there and and you just kind of put you in a position of going man that that's not a good place to be uh you start questing yourself you kind of you know pushed me back maybe a year year and a half to be honest with you and then the other people that i talked to were you know hey this is a group and come to find out they're doing something on the side that they're trying to take from you so it's it's been a little bit of that so i've really just been hard to trust anybody with what i've got going on because it is something that's completely different and unique and i really just kind of want to keep it close to my vest as as much as i possibly can so um you know the important stuff i i've been able to but um you know there there have been people along the way where i've had to you know cut ties with and and just say god it was a horrible decision it just put me on a bad path you know negative energy i think the the best business decision that i made is just to be patient um you know i could have you know rush this out you know about four and a half years ago and put myself in a position where actually the the actual design that i had didn't work um and it wouldn't wouldn't have worked the way that i would wanted it to it was not going to be something that was going to be viable in a long-term situation but i put myself where i had like really just kind of shot off really quickly and then faded away and i and i appreciate the idea that you know i took time to make sure that everything was right done to my eyes crossed my t's really just kind of looked at it and said you know what even if it takes me you know five or ten more years that's going to be okay because it's going to be the quality that i want and that i think people expect no i i think that is definitely you know kind of a mistake to make along the journey but also a great one to learn so it sounds like you know and figuring out who to trust and how to trust and what not to trust and all of that is also always i think a something that people have to figure out along the way because it is hard you know who do you tell who do you share with who's going to be on your team and who's going to say that's a great idea i'll run with it or i think i can do it even better and so i think that that's always you know a great a great list learned along your journey so now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup for a small business what be the one piece of advice you give them there's so many to give someone so i really think that the idea is to understand your financials more than anything i think that's going to be the key because when you start talking to people that are going to want to back you they're going to want to know that you know what you're talking about it's great that you know your idea it's great that you have passion for your idea but if you don't understand the long-term effects of what you're doing if you don't understand the business that you're in if you don't understand like those basic ideas then no one's really going to want to you know provide you with money because they're not going to trust you with it so i've been fortunate enough to to get some help along the way and really to be honest with you convincing my family and friends now give me a little bit of cash here and there has always been difficult simply because i you know there was kind of an expectation that they thought on their end that you know it was just a request from a friend and i didn't have to provide them with you know important information like financials and so being able to sit down with them and kind of like throw out a five-year plan and say this is where i'm going this is what i'm doing and this is what i expect and you know they're very appreciative of that being that open with what your financials look like and not trying to you know pull the wool over anyone's eyes and saying i need x amount of money for this shell or for you know why component or anything like that i think that that's that's been always helpful and being able to say i'm going to spend this money and it's always going to be earmarked for someone for something no i i like that you hit on there a little bit of you know kind of being open and transparent because i think that too oftentimes we want to over inflate it you don't want to make it sound better than it is so that it entices people and most of the time all that does is set it up belly because then you have elasticity expectation it's no longer hey this is the time frame here's a risk it's kind of oh we're all going to be millionaires and then you know 12 months and it's like right well you know for most businesses that's not the case and contrary to what you see on tv or shark tank with a movie it's not that quick of growth and so to say hey here's realistically where we're at what we think the potential is what we or it's going to be headed and then you know even being a bit conservative such that then when they when you either hit or meet or exceed expectations or you're on expectations or that they have at least been properly satisfied that's that's definitely some great advice well this as a reminder before we wrap up this episode for all of you that are all the audience we are doing the public question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so if you want to hear that answer stay tuned and listen to um john's top of our top intellectual property question otherwise as we wrap up thank you again for john for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell um 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 in your podcast players so you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with this chat so now with that now as we've wrapped up the normal portion of the episode it's always kind of a fun one that we get to switch the switch gears a bit and you get to ask the question and i get answered as opposed to how the normal exit goes so that i'll turn it over to you to ask your number one intellectual property question yeah so what what is the best way to choose between being able to put your intellectual property on a delay because i forget the terminology and you'll know so you can either put it on a delay for a year or just go ahead and you know bite the bullet and just put it in the in the patent office day one i mean where do you decide on that yeah i think what you're referring to and correct me if i'm wrong but you're basically you know is uh looking or referring to a provisional patent application correct the provisional patent patent correct yep that's the one yeah so and just for the listing audience basically a provisional patent application is one where you can submit it it saves your gives you date of invention kind of saved your place in the hall online for up to a year while you're going after why you decide what you want to do so the you know the and i just reiterate your question now with that background i think you know the question is when should you go for a provisional or when should you get that one-year placeholder versus when should you just go for the full patent application so i usually answer this question with the kind of the opposite of what or you know when would you go or when would you go for a provisional patent application if you don't fall into those cams then i'd i'd recommend going in for a non-provisional or the full patent application will get extended so with the provisional placeholder they're usually kind of two reasons why you do it one is for budgetary reasons and that's saying hey i've got a cool idea i've got a great invention you know i need a bit more time to save up the budget to be able to afford the full thing but i'd like to get something in place while away such that i don't have you know an issue where somebody else comes along and takes the idea so that's kind of one motivation or reason that you're saying okay if i don't have the budget today but i'd like to get something in place i'll do the less expensive provisional patent application so i have a year within which to save up for it another reason i guess there's a i said two but there's probably more three another reason is if you're in if you're not sure how the marketplace is going in other words you're saying hey i think this is a good idea i think it's worthwhile i'd like to take a little bit of time to explore the marketplace test it out see if it's worthwhile to invest before i go after the full one so even if you have the budget you may say hey i'm not convinced of the marketplace so i'm going to do the placeholder first and see how the market accepts it the third reason is is if you're saying hey what we're doing is we've got a really cool idea we're doing a lot of innovation a lot of testing and a lot of development but we're i'm not you know we're while we're not having a i don't know that we've landed on the final item for the full design the first design and we wanted to go to marketplace but on the other hand we've created a lot of cool things and we don't want somebody to come along and see all the work that we've done and copy it so while we're continuing to that r d and getting kind of that first generation product we'll save it we'll do a provisional and then we'll come back to the non-provisional within that year and give us a bit more time to fully flesh out the r d so those are kind of the three main reasons why i would do a provisional usually if it doesn't fall into one of those cams then i would say i'd go for a non-professional intensity let's get a fully fleshed out application it's one where it will have greater weight for investors or for you know people who want to acquire their licenses or anything else and then it also gets the process going for examination so you can get a determination as a patentability and get some more insight there so that's a little bit of how i weigh it it's always a you know a bit of a balancing depends on your circumstance in your situation but it gives you a bit of insight with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and now if you john or anybody in the audience ever has any other questions about intellectual property um feel free to grab some time with me just go to strategymeeting.com we're always happy to chat and always happy to strategize and help with your intellectual property with that thank you again john and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanksgiving i appreciate it

How To Set Up A Business

Scott Williams
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/24/2021

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

number one is pick up the phone and have a consultation with an attorney most attorneys including my firm and probably yours too will will have an initial consultation of a certain duration at no cost to the client to kind of walk them through and ask the right questions and see if a further consultation or services are warranted a lot of people have the i can do it myself mentality and that's good up to a point when you actually figure out you don't know what you don't know so i tell everybody you know if you're preparing your taxes that's not a time to do it yourself and tell your cpa later what you did you should be consulting with a cpa in that early decision 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 the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and 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 guest uh expert episode we have another great guest but also for a great expert episode which is scott williams and uh scott we're going to talk a little bit about different things related to business uh generally about kind of starting a business what things you should should consider on entity formation partnership agreements employee employment issues especially in california employee versus employer contractors whether they should be employees or hourly or salary or how that would be setting up and maybe a bit also on the estate planning and succession planning so a lot of fun and uh interesting episodes or episodes interesting topics and so and i uh you're you're i'm already getting tongue-tied before we even get going but with that much as a as an introduction welcome on the podcast scott devin thanks to be here absolutely so i gave kind of a quick introduction about what we're going to be talking about but before we dive into that maybe just introduce your audi or yourself to the audience a bit take it a minute or two and let them know why you're an expert in this area sure we are the small business law firm it's the name of our firm and we focus on everything from a startup with nothing more than a concept and zero employees up to about a 25 employee company the big thing is most small businesses are looking for guidance they're looking for help someone to hold their hand they don't know where to turn they often go to a big law firm and they get one lawyer for contract somebody else for employment law and the lawyers start billing each other having these conversations and all of a sudden you know that they're in the wrong place so we try to be nimble and focused on really the entrepreneur the small business and helping them grow much like you do in the ip side no it definitely makes sense and now just is the audience how long has the firm be established how long you've been kind of practicing in this area sure we're in our 21st year in business uh growing every day uh two lawyers hiring a third and um most of our most of our clientele is in california although we do some transactional work across state lines awesome definitely definitely makes sense so now diving into a bit of the topic at hand which is kind of a lot of to do with starting a business how to format how to get it all set up and and kind of how to plan for that diving in a bit if you're to say you know had somebody walk in your office as an example and they have the world's best idea and this is you know i hear from the iep side but world's best ideas some of them are world's best idea others are just okay ideas but yeah let's say it was the world's best idea and they said okay now how do i get started you know what should i consider from forming my business from getting it set up and that type of thing and they're saying you know do i need an llc an s corp a c corp do i just do it on my own or what what or what would be kind of the general advice of somebody to walk in your door as far as how to go about starting to get a business set up or what they should consider sure the number one thing i look for in a new business setup is liability operating a business as a sole proprietorship or two or more people as a general partnership are the default entity choices and people don't often realize that when two or more people go into business together unless there is a clear written agreement to the contrary they have just formed a general partnership and a general partnership by very definition means that all general partners no matter how active they may choose to be are vicariously liable for every liability of that partnership and so i tell people do you really want to be exposing your personal assets to your partner driving down to office depot and picking up a box of pens and takes out a school bus and the other partner says well i wasn't driving the car and the law says we don't care it was in furtherance of a partnership a for-profit enterprise so there are only three real choices for most small businesses today to form a business entity for liability protection uh llcs corporations which are divided into either c corporations or s corporations and i'll address all three an llc certainly the simplest form of liability protection it can be formed with as little as one member or as many members as you want uh advantages of the llc they're fairly simplistic to operate you don't have to have separate meetings of directors or shareholders the members themselves can run it with one layer of management and typically they'll elect to tax the llc if it's a single member which means also a husband and wife in a community property state it'll be a disregarded entity which means you put it right in your schedule c of your tax return and no separate federal return is required uh the drawback of that is uh an llc single member following the schedule c it has the highest audit rate known to mankind so for a very small business not a big deal when you start making money you don't want to have your income on a schedule c a multi-member llc is going to be taxed as a partnership it'll file a 1065 federal partnership return and that's also fine when the business isn't making a ton of money but when it starts becoming very profitable at this point you start looking at the advantages of an s corporation and an s corporation very simply is it's still a pass-through entity meaning the s corporation itself doesn't pay federal income tax all of the income flows through to the individual shareholders on a k1 is reported on their personal tax returns but you can do a lot more with an s corporation in that you only have to take a reasonable minimum salary for your services and then everything else goes out on a k1 as a distribution on those distributions you do have to pay state and federal income taxes but you don't have to pay fica and medicare and unemployment insurance and disability insurance and all of these other junk taxes that can add up to like 13 15 percent so for a lot of small businesses the s corporation is the preferred choice of entity if they qualify to do so and in many cases the only requirements are that all of the shareholders be us citizens or u.s residents you have to have one class of stock and less than 100 shareholders all of whom have to be natural people it can't be other entities or corporations c corporations yeah they still do exist and they are formed occasionally uh although rarely does an entity want to be a c corporation nowadays just because you have to pay everything out to the shareholders as a salary uh so that the corporation makes no money and avoids double taxation no and i definitely think that makes sense now one one thing i'm going to circle back to is you talked about you know limiting your liability in the sense of hey you know if you're if you don't have anything set in place your partner goes they get in a car accident on company business so to speak and now you're on the hook that they can come after your house your life savings and everything else because you're equally limited if you didn't if all you were in is a partnership now the question would be is between you know s corp c corp llc um you know and then there's an llp and some other variations but really when you look at that from a liability perspective is there any real difference between s corp c corp llc or the from liability or about the all the same and then you're really looking more for tax or tax purposes or or how you want to set it up for investing meaning hey s corporate c corp i would do it shares and so maybe if i'm having venture capital or angel vests or angel investors or something come in i want to have them buy air get shares in the company because they're easier to do that as opposed to having to split the equity up all the time but liability wise is there any difference in liability so statutorily all three a corporation which is taxed either c or s and an llc are going to have the exact same liability protection that's assuming you run both of those entities properly llcs you can be a lot sloppier in your accounting and in your management because they don't have to have minutes of shareholders and directors and they don't have to have the same accounting paper trail because a single member llc is a disregarded entity for tax purposes with a corporation you do have to have annual minutes uh annual meetings of the shareholders annual minutes of the directors and you have to record those in minutes takes five minutes hold up a glass of wine to a mirror have a meeting with the shareholders it's not that difficult but you're supposed to document the stuff in in minutes from an accounting perspective any time you're borrowing or lending money to an entity other than your own you should be documenting that with a promissory note especially if that's going to be carrying over to the next taxable year not a big issue with a single member llc but it is with a corporation okay and that and that definitely makes it so far to maybe summarize from a legal perspective business as long as you run them properly as long as you have either the you know the board of directors take some minutes or whatnot or an llc is even they're more lacks or than that as long as you're following within what the requirements are for each entity you'd have the same from the liability perspective now on the getting into it a bit because one of the questions they have is you know let's say i'm a startup and i want to i'm going to seek angel investors or venture capital is there a preferred way another one in otherwise in other words are they looking for an llc are they looking for an s corp so they can get shares in the business are they looking for a c corp or when you're going out and saying you know there's a difference if i'm bootstrapping and i'm doing it myself and i'm just trying to reduce or keep it simple and keep the cost low maybe an llc works but if you're looking to say hey i'm going to be going raising a series a or series b or something in those rounds and i need to raise a substantial amount of cash should they be settings or doing anything to set it up initially sure so one of the challenges of an s corporation is it has to have only one class of stock which is common stock so if you want to have multiple classes of stock for what you're recruiting investors to buy one class but not all classes s corporations typically don't work that well they're generally when the ownership is established angel investors if they're coming in to acquire equity most of those investors don't want to be getting a k1 for the profits and loss of the business until they actually see some profits in in many cases they'll ask the entity to reclassify themselves for tax purposes as a c-corporation one of the advantages of an llc is you have the flexibility throughout the life of the llc to file an 8832 and elect to tax it as a c-corporation you also can tax it later on as an s-corporation by filing an irs 1150 2553 so there is flexibility with an llc to make changes later for tax purposes while still maintaining the original simple structure okay and that and that definitely makes sense and so you're saying hey if we need to do distributions if we want to have different classes of stock we'll look at whether it's an s corp or a c corp and i i'd read in i didn't know necessarily here but i'd read in there an llc from a investor perspective is typically they're not looking for an llc it's more of a corporation is that a fair summary they don't want to typically get k-1s for their own personal tax returns so they'll may they may want to see a c-corp or have the llc elect to be taxed as a c-corp uh during a period of which their their writing losses a lot of angel investors simply don't qualify because they don't have any material participation to write off losses um but that's more of a tax issue every angel investor is different okay and definitely makes sense so now shifting gears just a little bit so we talked a little bit about you know getting initially figuring out s corp c corp llc those type of things i'm going to get into one that i know a lot of attorneys dislike which is you know but i get why they're why on the startup side in the small business why they do which is illegal zoom or those type of you know type of entities because you know they're saying hey it's just a really simple llc i just need some standard stuff i just want to have it in place and so that i can have you know i can get a bank account set up i can have a brand you know maybe get an amazon brand registry or have you know very simple things or open a e-commerce site i don't really need anything complicated it's me and my spouse or it's me and my friend or whatever and i said i know attorneys are saying well you know when in some self-interested they're saying hey if i do that if i always say go yes go use legalzoom then i'm going to be out of business and yet and yet there's real drawbacks as to things that oftentimes don't get considered so if you're talking to someone that is just a small business just starting out bootstrapping what are the pros and cons of legal zoom when should when maybe is it acceptable or okay and when should you say this probably isn't a good idea so i often have clients walk in my office with a binder in their hand prepared by a document preparation service and i'll leave the exact name of the company off there but there's many variations of the name you quoted sure uh by the time i sit down with the client and show them what's missing from this binder and what wasn't done properly i usually get the takeoff of the commercial oh gosh i could have had a v8 because what they didn't get was the legal advice is this the proper entity for their business a classic example is um you know professional service providers in most states can't form regular llcs they either have to form a professional llc if it's even available in that state or in safe like california they have to form a professional corporation they cannot operate their business as an llc so i get a you know a landscape architect that says form an llc legalzoom doesn't ask the right questions they just take their money and run and by the time they get to me they have to start all over again so look i don't i don't want to knock uh those businesses that are trying to save clients money but by and large the conversation you need to have with an attorney to walk you through what is the best choice of entity for you the licenses you hold the type of business you're conducting i mean it's worth its weight in gold it's just simply a matter of apples and oranges so let's say i get luck you know so now i'll ask you the the probing question i was gonna i'll change my halfway through i'll change the questions gonna ask which is let's say i don't have much money let's say you know i'm bootstrapping it this is a side hustle we're fairly limited on funds is there any time when you would say it's oh and i know it's a hard question anytime you say it's okay or it's better you know sometimes in other words i'll say well it's better than to have an illegal zoom llc if you can't afford anything right in a sense if you're if your choices are i have a hundred dollars i can either do legal zoom or i could not do anything and do it as a general partnership is that an acceptable you know is there any way that they should say i just can't afford attorney services i certainly get that attorneys are worth what they what they charge but i can't afford it should they consider doing those type of things or give a little bit of balance there so my first reaction is if you can't afford a simple fee for incorporation of a corporation or organization of an llc with a firm like ours whose fees are really not much higher than a legal zoom you really shouldn't be in business i mean if you're so strapped on cash that you just don't have the ability to write the smallest check how are you going to make expenses in your business it's just a very difficult proposition so yeah i'd rather see somebody go to an online service than try and do it themselves and mess it up but you know you have to have a certain amount of cash behind you to operate your business unless you're simply a consultant with zero expenses and all you're selling is the brain cells in your mind well okay fine but if you have anything else at risk it's dangerous but no and i'm i said i'm playing a bit of devil's advocate so i'm just pushing back there because the reason i ask is you know starting as you're doing a startup let's say you have a few you know you have five thousand dollars set aside and i'm just gonna make up the number but then you have okay we gotta come up with a prototype we need to get an e-commerce platform because that's what we're gonna sell online we're going to be able to we we need to find someone that can actually build a website we need to hire it you know at least a part-time employee that can help out you know they've got all these things competing in their interests and so you know and and i would say and i'm absolutely the same way and i always look at everything well you need to have intellectual property because you'll kick yourself down the road if you don't have a patent and somebody rips it off or a trademark and they're always you know there's always more things to spend money on than money to spend as a startup and so how do they balance you know the kind of the follow-up questions what he said is you know if i'm just getting started i only have a few thousand dollars that i've saved up for over a period of time and that's all i have and i know basically once i spent through that if i don't start making income then the business goes out when should they start or when is the drop dead and i know it's hard it's a it's a depends question but when is when should they say by this time i should do it should they start out as a partnership doing it for a few months seeing if it's worthwhile to invest or get you know spend other money there should they should it be the very first thing before they ever get going to do an llc or you know a business corporation or kind of how do you balance that so so the number one concern i have is you mentioned the word website merely having a website that turns out is not ada compatible could expose you to tens of thousands of dollars in litigation fees just by having a website there are plaintiffs lawyers out there professional plaintiffs that go on websites check them out to see if they're compatible for the visually impaired and they just start filing lawsuits and the first reaction the the business owner has is what did i do wrong well you know you didn't do anything intentionally wrong but if you have a website and it's not ada compatible you can be sued for it i'd much rather have that website in an llc or a corporation where it has no assets where the worst case scenario is i start over again with a new llc than to give a plaintiff's lawyer ammunition to work with when they go to sue no and that definitely makes sense and i said i i would i always counsel now now that i'm not playing devil's advocate on the flip side is that you know it's always easier to your point llc's you can get fairly inexpensive it provides a high much higher level of protection it's always worthwhile so i like to push and play devil's advocate just to tell people understand why that is that you know you should be considering things earlier on now shifting gears just a bit one of the other questions is people start getting into a business formation is you know should i hire people as independent contractors as employees should it be hourly should it be salaried should it be you know um you know a bonus structure you know or something of that nature or so how do you start to figure that out for your business with your as you form your business how you should be setting up with employees or contractors or you know commission base or bonus structure or salary or whatnot any considerations on any of those sure so there are federal laws governing whether a person should be classified as an employee or a contractor and then there are state-specific laws the more restrictive of the two the one that pushes you into employment is the one that applies the federal standard is not a cakewalk but it's not very difficult to me basically if you don't exercise independent control over how the work is done if you simply pay people to accomplish a project and you don't micromanage their time schedule you can pretty much make people a contractor under most federal irs guidelines the problem is more and more states today are looking at the federal guidelines as being way too weak and they're all passing their own laws that tighten up the requirements to be a contractor so by default if you can't meet the test of a contractor that worker needs to be an employee and i can think of no other state that has a pendulum that swung to the far direction than california in california last year we passed ab5 and ab5 basically says you now need to meet a very stringent abc test in order to be a contractor you have to be free of degree of control that's easy it's the old test the new one the b prong is you have to provide services that are different than the employer provides and then c you have to be in an area that's customarily staffed by contractors so for example if you are a small business and you're in the uh you're selling dresses in a dress shop any sales person on the floor has to be an employee they can't be a contractor outside sales people have to be contractors i have to be employees if you if you hired a web designer to build a website for a couple of days and then they went away you could argue hey i'm not in the web design business therefore that person can still be a contractor you probably get away with that but more and more states today are passing laws like that and it's becoming more difficult to hire somebody and properly maintain them as a contractor the problem you have is at some point that relationship sours and the employee marches off to the unemployment department and says i'm filing an unemployment insurance claim the first thing unemployment insurance says is i'm sorry we don't have any reportable wages for you therefore you don't qualify for unemployment insurance and that's when the worker says oh i was misclassified as a contractor and the edd or the state agency that manages unemployment insurance then says oh we've got a special window for you step over here we'll get you taken care of out of our slush fund and by the way we'll start an investigation against the business that audit is very expensive it can result in you paying up to three years of back taxes in many cases workers compensation insurance for the people that weren't properly covered so it's it's always a challenge making people a contractor it's very state specific before you classify anybody as a contractor that isn't already an established business corporation or llc check with local employment council or business council in your state now let me ask because you hit on that at the very end so would it be worthwhile if i were to looking to hire an independent contractor whether it's one individual or multiple ones that i should simply require them to be you know in an ideal world require them to be our independent contractor for us they have to first form their own llc and then i engage with that llc as a vendor and independent contractor in that type of arrangement does that aid in it or is that there it doesn't really help much so that does help if you're paying a corporation or llc meaning you're paying a legal entity those entities cannot go on payroll because only individuals can be on payroll but that only works if they have yet to provide services for your business if they're already employees on payroll and you tell all your workers i can't afford these workers comp insurance premiums everybody has to go get your own llc the labor commission and your local state will see that as a subterfuge and they'll say sorry these people are still employees so in other words if you're gonna now here's the question and i i know it's always hard because especially when it's situation specific but let's say you know so one thing it sounds like if you're going to do that you would have to do it before you engage your services saying hey before i engage your services i only engage with or llcs or other independent or independent vendors that are have a business formation if you'd like to do it we'd love to hire you but go for your llc it's not very expensive go do a type of a thing now if you're in that process situation already meaning you didn't know that you already have an independent contract agreement that's with an individual not an llc and you know you're saying okay gosh it'd be a lot easier to go back and try and retroactively do that theoretically and i know it's harder in theory could you fire them or let them go not do work for with them for a period of time and then re-engage the llc if they formed one or is that going to not obviate any of the issues i don't see any benefit there the real test is is the is the individual incorporating their business or forming an llc for their business because they want to or because they're being told they have to that's the test that a labor commissioner is going to use how long ago they quit or whether there was a gap in work that's not the big issue uh you know if i'm forming an llc because i'm a consultant and i'm doing it because i'm marketing myself as a consultant to multiple businesses that's generally good enough for most labor commissioners but if the business is telling their their their workers go out and get an llc otherwise i can't hire you or i can't keep you it's never a good thing okay no definitely makes sense so well now shifting gears a bit and we i kind of brought it up but touching on it is there any considerations when you're doing hour hourly versus salaried as far as you know how you should pay people you know what considerations you might think of you know everything from hey i'll just pay them you know no matter if they work x amount of hours i'll pay the max amount of dollars versus i should put them on a salary thoughts on that issue sure so employment law is highly state specific you have federal law that has some pretty basic guidelines issued by the department of labor and there is a federal minimum salary that an exempt worker has to have to be qualified as exempt if they don't make at least that much money they have to be an hourly employee which means they're subject to at least the federal overtime guidelines of 40 hours a week many states have minimum salaries that are significantly higher than the federal government california even for a small business today the minimum salary is 54 000 a year and every time the minimum wage goes up that minimum salary goes up with it so in addition to meeting the minimum salary they typically have to meet a test that allows them to be an exempt worker as opposed to a non-exempt worker uh there's three basic categories to uh subs to summarize and simplify it they have to either be managerial which means that they're spending at least half their time supervising two or more employees somebody who has a title of office manager but also answers phones and files papers isn't going to qualify second is a professional exemption you know doctors but not nurses lawyers but not paralegals dentists but not hygienists architects but not drafts person they can qualify and the third category is one that's a bit more esoteric it's called the administrative exemption this is a worker who exercises a high degree of administrative independent decision making not somebody who performs routine tasks for example an executive secretary to a ceo of a big company could probably qualify for the administrative exemption whereas a receptionist answering phones could not hmm no it definitely makes sense so so now we do that so let's say hypothetically i i get my business formed and i said okay it's gonna be an llc and s corp c corp whatever and then i say okay independent contractors are too tricky and especially in my state i'll just go in employees and i'm going to just go salary because then i don't have to worry about minimum wage or all those other things and i get all that set up and then i say okay all good to go finally got everything set up and then i say okay now i'm now i'm gonna and i don't know that it's ever completely finished and you should probably be checking things in as the business grows and pivots and adjusts but get all that set up and now i'm looking to say okay now i should probably think about and probably should have thought about earlier estate planning and succession planning or anything of that nature how should you start tackling that from the especially as a business owner you know co-owner founder you know owner in the business how should you start to grapple with that or set that up sure so the number one thing that most business partners fail to do is establish a written partnership agreement at the beginning of the relationship i say the word business partner if you're bringing on a business partner partner being a generic word could also apply to a shareholder of a corporation or a member of an llc and that person isn't already your spouse you need to have a marriage agreement and a divorce agreement all rolled into one because what happens if there is a falling out and you two can't get along what happens if one of you passes away do you want your partner's heirs to become your new business partner and these are questions that have to get asked that no document preparation company could ever draft because this requires extensive questions and answers with between the attorney and the client to find out what type of relationship and what type of provisions should be in that agreement are you are you getting life insurance for uh to buy out your partner's interest or is the value of the business starting out so small it's not important there's lots of questions that need to be asked such as how much money is each partner going to take out of the business and it doesn't matter that your living expenses are high the general rule is that partners are going to have equal compensation and equal percentage of the profits unless they agree otherwise the last thing you want to do is start taking more money out than you should in creating a bad partnership no definitely makes sense and i think that to give that some consideration and i would say you know considering that earlier on when you're setting up the partnership agreement as an example are you you know if you die does your spouse can be able to take over and half years or you know that may be a good thing or bad thing maybe you want this spouse and you know but on the other hand if your partner dies and your spouse takes over or they don't have you know or the partner and the spouse die and now it's their kids or their other family members how does that work do you have the ability to buy out their shares or did you just get a new partner that you have no idea who they are or what they can contribute and oftentimes if you don't think about that even in the partnership agreement and then even more so now when you pass on can you actually give it to your family can you sell it off can you do other things and if you don't start to plan those in earlier on in conception you'll get me or months or years or put in a whole lot of time and effort and then find yourself boxed in as to what you're able to do well right i mean you never know what you're going to get for your next partner unless you're very careful about how you phrase it yeah exactly so so as you know always more things that we could touch on never enough time but as we start to wrap things up i always have one question at the end of each expert episode which is we talked about a lot of different things and probably people are feeling overwhelmed they're saying oh my gosh that's a lot to do to figure out to do a business or anything of that nature and they're saying okay well i'm gonna start today and just do just do one thing if i if i have to get started and i will only do one thing today what would be the one thing to that they should start to to work on or tackle to get get started down this road number one is pick up the phone and have a consultation with an attorney most attorneys including my firm and probably yours too will will have an initial consultation of a certain duration at no cost to the client to kind of walk them through and ask the right questions and see if a further consultation or services are warranted a lot of people have the i can do it myself mentality and that's good up to a point when you actually figure out you don't know what you don't know so i tell everybody you know if you're preparing your taxes that's not a time to do it yourself and tell your cpa later what you did you should be consulting with a cpa in that early decision what's the best form of business entity for me the same way you consult a lawyer um we're all saving for our retirement you know are you going to pick your own stocks are you that smart maybe you are but you may have hit pick bitcoin at the right time or the wrong time and who knows no and i i i think that that's a good point in the sense of you know picking up the phone getting that strategy at least knowing hey if i get started here's the things i should consider here's when i should consider them here's the cost i'm going to be looking at and so you can part start to build that into a strategy and even i tell a lot of our clients hey it may not be that you're getting going today but it's better to at least talk to an attorney understand what your options are what you should be doing such that that's part of your strategy so when you do get to that point you already know that that's going to be something you need to get taken care of well as we wrap up if 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 you know your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to your find out more so go to our website www.smallbusinesslaw all one word dot org org learn more about our firm again we're primarily a california firm for small businesses but we also do llc incorporation formations in all 50 states awesome well that definitely sounds like a great way to check you out find out more from information get things figured out and go from there well thank you again for coming on to 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 or your own expertise to share we'd love to have you on just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener 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 new people can find out about us as well last but not least if you ever need help with your patents or trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com and sign up some or would sign up for some time to chat with us thank you again scott and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks you

Don't Give Up

Noor Ali
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/23/2021

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

don't give up no matter how hard it gets and how many lows you have just get back up ignore everyone else and keep going do not give up ever no matter what don't give up 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 in the seven and 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 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 guest on the podcast uh it's doctor or i should have asked a name before or nor nor ally is that right yep yep that's right all right as good as i'm gonna get so um but uh nor nor is that right yes yep i keep seeing the two o's and it keeps throwing me off and so i want to say door but then i'm like well at doors anyway so all right so dr dr noor dr ali um grew up in uh new york graduated from high school and went straight into medical school so when i didn't know that was possible and she'll get into it a little bit more as to how that or how that occurred didn't have to go to undergraduate school i did six years of medical uh school and training and then came back to the u.s and took some examinations um there was a bit of a difference in experience between bangladesh where she got there got some the medical experience and the us experience and didn't necessarily match up so after uh looking around looking at the examinations doing a few things over a couple years the past examinations decided to go into health insurance and kind of marry the medical background with the health insurance background and that leads her leads her to a bit of where she's at today so but that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast thank you thank you so much dev and i'm excited to be here and have this conversation with you today absolutely so i just gave the quick run through and hopefully it was mostly accurate but i never knew you can correct me right wrong but i gave kind of a quick run through of you know your journey but now take us back a little bit and growing up in new york and then how you went from high school right to medical school yeah yeah looking back now growing up in new york is probably one of the like you know the most defining part of you know my personality and the way i am the way i talk the way i walk the way i dress so loved that part of my life and then once i graduated high school and from bronx high school of science i'm not some crazy genius woman who you know got an opportunity to skip undergrad anyone can do it actually if you choose to go to medical school and in the eastern part of the world and you meet certain pre-requirements and i did go to a high school where i did you can apply for the entrance exams and go straight into medical school so anyone can do it if you decide to go to high school medical school abroad oh cool so now you said and so did you i assume if if that was your decision you know you just you knew going out of high school that you were going to go into you wanted to be a doctor or you wanted to go into medical school is that right yeah yeah medicine was something i've always always wanted i feel like when i was like 10 years old it was kind of like this is who i am and what i want to do my grandfather was a big role model in my life and he was a anesthesiologist so i just wanted to grow up and be just like him so always having that goal in mind helped me to to just really pave my career trajectory so so now you get you so you graduate from high school you go into medical school and you do that i think for six years is that right yeah yeah yeah it was a six-year accelerated program so you do it for six years and then now talk to us a little bit so you you you finished the program you're graduating was the intent toys to come back to the us and to be a doctor in the u.s or did you want to stay in the in you know in the east and do practice there kind of what was the that part of the journey or how did you decide what to do after you got to medical school yeah well before i started the plan was always like well how soon can i finish so i can come back to new york and you know resume my life you know because i grew up in new york but as i was you know going through the journey i really just fell in love with uh really back to my roots my nationality is bangladesh as well and i found i gained so much from the culture from the education it's given me like you know so much uh but i did uh end up i got married like towards the end of my medical career and my husband lived in berkeley well i guess in manhattan at the time so i did come back to the states just to continue my my conjugal life so now you come back to the states and i if i remember right when we talked a little bit before you when after you you see you train medic or get go through medical school abroad and then you have to come back and still take your licensing examinations and do that in order to be able to practice in the u.s is that right that's right yeah so the education is accredited you know once you go through some you know accreditation processes you know you don't have to go through med school again but you do have to pass the licensing exams uh in order to practice medicine and i have a dual degree in medicine and surgery basically if i were to be a surgeon i need to pass the licensing exams that's the process so now so you come back to the us you start to i assume start to set your study for the exam and then if i remember you kind of you know either i can't remember you didn't pass exams decided not to take the exams or kind of fill us in yes once you get back to the states and trying to look at uh or utilizing your medical degree where did your journey go from there right so i did um start studying full-time studying i didn't work i just really devoted myself to studying for the licensing exams and i did that for about two years and it was quite difficult uh to go from being a practicing physician and surgeon to really going back to square one because the licensing exams you know it's it goes back to basic sciences things that we learned you know in in first second year of medical school which for me was seven years ago at that time so there was a big disconnect with you know practicing medicine and surgery and then trying to recall enzymes from the krebs cycle and whatever minutia is is involved in the basic sciences licensing exam so i did struggle and i ended up not passing by practically one question it was three points um so that really just made it was a turning point in my life in my career that decided well how long am i going to continue doing this you know i know i'm worth more but i wasn't getting accepted for any jobs anywhere because on paper i'm not a licensed physician in the united states so it was a very dark moment for me mentally personally to come to terms with the fact that i just spent so much of my life you know in a foreign land for me because i had grown up in the states um learning all of these skills and now i can't utilize them because i'm like in a in a professional deadlock so now one question just kind of as a side or i guess it's a side note or not a side note but you know so you take the exam you study for two years and then you also done medical school for six years at this point so you're eight years into that yeah how did you make the decision you know maybe it's an easy i would assume it's a hard one i could take the exam again i could study for i don't know how often they offer the exam but you know you could study for a bit more if you're that close one question away type of a thing hopefully you study a bit more you get a bit more prepared and then you pass if you can go be a doctor what made you decide you know how did you weigh whether or not you retake the exam again or whether you go and try to do something else i think it was just just born out of frustration like i just couldn't take it anymore you know not you know making any money because i wasn't working everyone just like rejection after rejection like it was really really tough and both situations were tough i didn't want to go back to studying for two years and go through that mental hell and depression again and i also didn't want to keep like badgering myself and reducing my self-worth applying to these companies where no one wanted to hire me so it was just a decision that was born out of frustration like i need to do something else that's not what i've been going through so so now you so you kind of come to the realization okay giving it my best goal so to speak i'm not you know my my expectations aren't matching up with them you know i'm not getting the opportunities i think that you know i was hoping for and so you know kind of come to that conclusion okay i'm going to go in a different direction now how did you kind of with that realization then figure out where are you going to go or what are you going to do next yeah and and health insurance isn't really something that people seek out so it wasn't like i knew exactly what i'm gonna do and where i'm gonna just kind of like not now looking back it looks like the universe kind of just placed these you know you know invisible stepping stones in front of me like go here do this and this connection is gonna lead to this opportunity so i suppose that's how it worked out you know i was in a time of my life where we're thinking about starting a family and all that so we decided to move down to florida and i was exploring career options and it's something that i just fell into health insurance and and the more i looked into it the more i was doing it i was like wow this is really working well because i i'm working now specializing in medically underwritten policies which allows me to tie my my clinical skills my medical background into entrepreneurship and starting this business and health insurance consulting where i really i can define my own self-worth and you know i don't i don't i can't blame anyone or point any fingers well you're not paying me what i'm worth or anything like that so it really became it just you know a natural decision so now you get into you know health insurance and say okay i've got you know the medical background it matches up well i can utilize you know all that i learned in school so it's not a washer it's not a waste so to speak and also have the job opportunity so you get into that now was it a great experience and you thought the health care or health insurance was just perfect and there was nothing to change and it was just a match made in heaven or kind of you know once you make that pivot you make that adjustment how did that you know that phase of the journey go as you get into the healthcare health insurance business yeah it was an entirely new learning curve it was learning an entire industry so in my country where i went to medical school and training in bangladesh there is no health insurance it's all paid for service so the insurance itself was foreign to me so i did have to learn an entirely new industry from scratch so that was a challenge in itself but hey it was easier than med schools i'll take it so it wasn't as bad as that so anything i mean after you've gone through mexico in a third world country with with no internet and no electricity and no running water everything is a cinch so the challenge was a mild one i got over it within like i don't know a couple a couple of months um and the more i learned the industry the more you know i was able to really offer a really unique perspective into this industry because i come from practicing medicine in the eastern hemisphere where we don't have insurance into a country now where everything is about insurance and we have you know a capitalistic economy and key private companies who have everything to do with how care is delivered and the health outcomes that come from it so it was a challenge but i really enjoyed bringing what i know to the table and offering a unique perspective so and so now you offer that unique perspective and you say okay you know you come up to speed you offer the new perspective then how did you kind of get into where you're at now which is also you run you know dr nora or noor health.com and kind of what what spur you know spawn that or kind of how did you get into that aspect of things yeah so now my brand and what i do now is i work with a lot of entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals anyone who really has to figure out health insurance on their own and i really just let them know what their best option is after assessing factors like income staging their business their brief a health evaluation a health survey um so so that's what i do now and that's what my brand is all about is working with founders and helping them figure out what is their best choice for health insurance where they're going to be least out of pocket and of course offer the best health outcomes and really also kind of playing the system like once you understand systems you can really learn to take leverage of of the situation that you're at to make that system work for you so now you've so now just including people in just a bit so if i were to go to dr nor held and that's nora with two o's um but you go to dr noor help um you know kind of what services are they looking for or what assistance would be the what would what would be the motivation for them to go check it out is it to get a better understanding of the health care system to get more specialized you know guidance and and thought or is it you know hate something else or kind of what would be the motivation if they're to say hey sounds like an interesting podcast episode i'd like to learn a bit more what would they what would they go and go there to find out yeah you can when you go to check out the website you'll learn a little bit more about me and the main service that i offer there is really going to be free consultations for for picking the best health insurance plan um i don't charge anything at all for my service even my medical services paid your free yeah sorry yeah um and really i just whatever health insurance plan you have i would love to be the one to do an evaluation and say hey you what you've got is amazing go ahead and keep it or i can kind of evaluate all your options for you and say you know what we can do better here given your income and situation this is going to be a more lucrative or a better health outcome health insurance plan for you and i do that for free and if i can help you get on a better plan you just you know pay for the benefits you sign up for that's it so now so they come to you and i think that's a great because i mean first of all health insurance is always complicated there's a lot of moving parts you know you know it seems like there's only a it feels like there's a one size fits all when there really is really not a one-size-fits-all and so it definitely there's a you know a place in the marketplace to help people understand what are their best options what should they be considering what should they not be considering and how to navigate things so now as you kind of so you've gotten into the medical industry you've also you know you got your the website they can come get they can get some guidance they can get some advice they can get some direction so where do you kind of see things going in the next six to 12 months for you as you continue to evolve yeah so right now i'm definitely working on growing and scaling i've got a wonderful team that takes care of my brand so i'd really just love to increase my reach and you know talk to more people across the country i'm living in florida right now but i'm licensed to consult for health insurance in over 34 states so my goal is really just to to reach as many uh female founders small business owners and entrepreneurs as much as i can to let them know that hey you know you're probably in the wrong plan or you know you're in the best spot possible but let me help you kind of guide you through that your options for health insurance no it definitely makes sense so so that kind of brings us up to a little bit of you know where you where you so to speak came from you know where or how you or how you got to at this point you're journeying a little bit where you're looking in the future so with that we'll kind of transition to the two questions i always ask at the end of each podcast 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 uh worst business decision i ever made was not delegating soon enough um i think as entrepreneurs we find that you know a great sense of pride in going from an idea and concept to actually a profit-making venture and it's really difficult to let go of of control over every little process that goes into uh you know keeping that venture running and all the train on the wheels and cogs moving smoothly but i did not want to relinquish my control over every little cog because i created it from scratch but as soon as i really just let go of that control and i like and allowed a team to and gave them some responsibility over my brand that's when i felt my that i could really project out into a longer term vision and things started to really pick up and i started to grow faster no and i think there's you know i think that's the dilemma that every entrepreneur especially as you just dive into things and get going is is i want to you know it takes almost a certain type a personality you know i have to get you know i have to get a lot of things done i didn't need it done right i want i think you know i think every entrepreneur right or wrong thinks that they can do the best otherwise they wouldn't be going into being an entrepreneur and so to then say take a step back and say okay now i have to relinquish that control i have to trust somebody else and i don't know if they're going to do it as well or they're going to get it done right or anything else this is a scary moment so i definitely understand you know kind of saying hey it's a lot of times you tend to hold on to that you know control so to speak longer than you probably should because you want to make sure it gets done right yet it can sometimes hold back the business because you're not you're you're doing all the things that other people could be doing rather than focusing on the areas that really you're you're the most expertise or can have the most value exactly yeah you're absolutely right and it's hard it's really hard um but i find i i'm sure everybody will agree like those who have done it they'll find that that's really where you can spread your wings and and fly because you've got a big weight taken off your shoulders now so you can do what you do best absolutely so so now we're going to dive to dive into the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what be the one piece of advice you give them don't give up no matter how hard it gets and how many lows you have just get back up ignore everyone else and keep going do not give up ever no matter what don't give up and i think that's good it's simple advice and yet often times is it's the most difficult to do and because you know you get into it every uh i think every startup or every small business you're going to get to a point where it gets hard and it's going to be you know you want to give up it's going to be does this really worth it do i really need to push through i've invested time money or effort and all this does it make sense or should i just go do something that's quote unquote easier and so but i think it's the difference between whether you're running a successful business or whether or not you don't often times is whether you give up doesn't mean you keep doing this so the same thing you're doing you may have to adjust and pivot and do different things but it's that idea of not giving up and continuing to or forge for or forge ahead that makes that big difference so well as a as we wrap up and as a reminder to the audience we are going to do the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so if you are interested in that definitely stay tuned to hear us chat a little bit about intellectual property and uh nor's uh our number one question but uh otherwise if you're not interested definitely understand sometimes intellectual property is interesting other times it's not um but if you as we wrap up the normal episode uh first thanks for again for coming on nora has been this fun it's been a pleasure 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 is listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so 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 last but not least if you ever need help with your patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go grab some time with us to chat and go to strategymeeting.com so now with that we've wrapped up the normal episode this is always kind of a fun time for me because you know during the normal episode i'm always asking the questions but i never get a you know impart any of the things that i'm passionate about and i don't want to take over any of the things that you guys are passionate about but it's always kind of a switching places a bit and getting to talk a little bit about intellectual property which is what i love to talk about so with that i'll turn it over to you nor to ask your number one intellectual property question yeah and i'm actually going to be asking this question on behalf of my husband um and his friends he had this question before so it was i honestly can't even remember where we got this thing devin but it was a soy sauce that was in these little packets that look like fish and the concept was you know when we we tear a packet of soy sauce it drips all over the place and it's it's quite runny so that thing was in a little it comes out one drop at a time it's a tiny little shape of a fish with a red cap i don't know if anyone knows what i'm talking about you take off the cap and you it's it's a drop it drop releases a drop at a time and you can put the cap back on so wherever we we found that or got that my question is it doesn't exist in the united states from what we've seen if that's something you know we'd like to start up here and source what's the first thing or what's the next step like this is not something that we want to do any work for just introduce this product into the united states yeah and that's one that it comes up every so often you say okay i see something that's a great idea that's outside of the us i think it's a great opportunity i love to kind of bring in the u.s expose it to a new market or new to a new culture and so you do that and you know i break it down into two questions one is is a good business opportunity and i i don't know enough to give you enough of an answer in the sense that i know what the market is i don't know how many people will buy it i don't know what the price point is and all those so i'd leave that as a separate question as to whether or not it's a good business opportunity but i'm diving into the intellectual property aspect so the biggest problem you'll get into is whenever you file a patent there's kind of two requirements one is called novelty one is called obviousness novelty is basically anybody else previously invented this and obviousness is just an obvious combination of two or more things already out there and so the first the biggest problem you'd have on the patent side is if you're importing it in other words you're taking an idea that's in another culture already being done and just bringing to the u.s it's been invented before in other words you didn't invent it so you're not able to get a patent around it so that would be kind of the first thing you say okay probably doesn't have a path forward now if you modify it if you make it better you improve it you adjust it you say i like the concept the idea of it here are the three things that it doesn't do well you or solve those solutions then you can go after a patent but it will make for at least a con assumption in this conversation that no it's going to be hey we're going to import it exactly how it is and start selling it then you probably can't get a patent or the protection around it the only avenue you'd probably have is more with a trademark than if you're going to build a brand around it in other words you probably can't get a proprietary somebody else could do the same thing they could also import it in or into the usu so now what is going to be the differentiator well the same thing as a differentiator between pepsi and coke and the knockoffs not a lot of times they don't taste very similar the same but one has a much bigger better brand they know that hey this is going to have the right quality it's going to be the standards it's going to work well it's going to have the right taste i want it's going to be consistent and all of those are represented in the brand and so probably if you're going to start as far as the avenue of protection would be more building a brand and a reputation around it as you bring it into the u.s so you can protect that aspect of it and then or hit the market as quick as you can as hard as you can such that as you build that brand and that reputation that others trying to come along you've already dominated the market or already consumed a large portion such that it makes it harder to for other people to compete cool wow yeah that's super helpful took a lot of notes there there's a there's your intellectual property overview in a nutshell and it's always a lot more to discuss than we always have time to answer in one question but if you or any of the viewers have any other questions about intellectual property as i've already mentioned before feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time to chat we can dive in deeper and make sure to get you taken care of so thank you again noor for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next layer journey even better than the last thank you so much devon thank you for your time this evening i really enjoy talking to you [Music] absolutely

Lee Taylor
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/22/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

me and i think for most people is understanding who you are understanding your personality understanding um what type of things that you know you're going to fit well with i mean some people you look at the garyvees and the grant cardones they just grind through it it doesn't matter what it is you know they're they're just going to outwork and oh you know and and fix it that way and for me that's torture um i i can't imagine just you know pushing pushing pushing or you know i just don't enjoy that i'm much more of the work smarter not harder mindset um so you know really understanding who you are and what fits you well hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller a serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and 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 so if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast lee taylor and lee graduated from high school and there's a quick introduction to lee he graduated from high school uh went into college did the mechanical engineering but didn't enjoy the studies for that degree changed schools with his uh went with his girlfriend now wife switched to a business major and degree as he was uh changing schools i went off or took two years off at school then went back and finished realized that uh or that a management degree would be useful and the win uh and went in that direction as well as in finance got an internship at an insurance company or insurance investment company after college wouldn't work for a bank um didn't decided that the bank wasn't for him went to trucking industry which is a good change um that also found real estate investing for a period of time did that for a couple of years transitioned into construction and renovation and then as they started out as a hobby went into disc golf for a period of time and decided to incorporate that hobby into more of a business and more in the retail side and uh since uh leading up to his journey now is uh we dive into that area of the journey so with that much of the introduction welcome on the podcast lee hey thanks for having me devon so i just gave a quick run through of a much longer journey so why don't we go back just a bit tell us a little bit about graduating high school going off and starting up mechanical mechanical engineering and how your journey started from there yeah absolutely um so really entrepreneurship for me i remember as an elementary school student teachers you know said what do you want to be when you grow up and for some reason i like the idea of entrepreneurship and the pushback i kept getting from teachers at the time was well what do you want to do with that i said what do you mean i want to be an entrepreneur like what do you mean what i want to do and like i didn't understand what they were asking and um i was naive at the time but as as all we all know as entrepreneurs you know that's the beauty of that is you can pursue anything you want and go in any direction and be in any industry in any type of business um you know so going to high school i didn't really know what i wanted to do into college i thought about teaching at first i liked the idea of actually being a coach and you know the in 2004 when i graduated high school really the only way to be a coach was to be a teacher and back then teachers didn't make very much so the idea of working hard to get about 24 000 a year um just didn't really interest me at the time so i looked at my other skill sets and things i enjoyed doing and i was good at math and like analytics and logic so i decided to go through the engineering path and like you said got into school love school you know a college was a great experience but didn't particularly enjoy the study side and then ended up moving over to business because i like the idea of going back to the my thoughts as an elementary student of entrepreneurship and business and just unlimited earning potential unlimited potential in general just being able to kind of rewrite the script and have freedom to do things and then you know it took me a while to kind of navigate through different industries and different companies to decide that i really like the idea of controlling my own destiny versus going in and punching a clock or working 60 70 hours a week to help make somebody else else's dream come true so you know a lot of things happened the right way to help me realize that and kind of get me to where i am now and um so you jumped over a bit of the journey and i'm gonna go back or go back and just hit on something so you first of all went into mechanical engineering and then you know you how to or how did the girlfriend now wife play into the you know was it moving to school that prompted you to switch the degree or were you already looking to switch the degree and then that just happened to coincide with moving with her following the girlfriend now why how did that all work out it was mainly from the move um so he had a scholarship that i could go to any school that i wanted to and she did not so it made sense for me to move to her school which was in a different state versus her move into my school and i mean i would have if i would have stayed i would have stuck with engineering probably um i mean it wasn't something i couldn't handle i just didn't particularly enjoy it but you know looking back i didn't really enjoy much about school at all from high school or college so um yeah i mean mainly moving to be with her was the the really the factor because the school didn't offer an engineering program so all right so now so now as we walk through the journey so you said okay gonna go to a different school gonna follow the girlfriend now wise so it sounds like it was a good decision in the long run or you couldn't tell me about your investment so um and then you so you switch into different majors and say okay this is what i love this is kind of more where i want to be and you dive into that area now as you dive into that and you know you switch that school you come out of school you with the uh more of the business degree and you get into and i think initially you it was an investment banking and then moved over to insurance is that right yeah i did an internship in college with the insurance and investment company it was basically just the sales position is what it amounted to um and really the people that had success success there they already had a network or their families had a network of individuals that were successful and doing well and with my background my family was the opposite you know we did i don't come from money and we didn't you know we're country folk you know we don't have um rich family members or anything like that you know for me the idea of success was owning a three-bedroom two-bathroom house like that was hard for me to fathom you know coming out of high school um you know looking back now i realize how small those dreams were but you know you don't know what you don't know at the time so yeah i didn't particularly enjoy that part of it um i liked working with people and helping people and that helped me you know just kind of figure out what i enjoyed doing in life and then yes after that i graduated college then it went into basically retail banking i was i was a banker just at a bank in pennsylvania and it was more the same basically you know just doing um retail sales but in the banking environment instead of working in you know a store so didn't enjoy that at all and uh i mean the hours were decent but uh that was about the extent of it definitely makes sense and you know and i think that you know banking on the one hand if you can get the that network and you have that those individuals can be beneficial on the other hand it can be a big slog and much more difficult and you know and road to host so now what so you get it here you go from banking out of trucking which that seems like a fairly big jump between two or not that similar industry so what made you decide to get into trucking and how did you get into that yep so the biggest factor there was just the ability to have some upward mobility to work in a company that aggressively promoted people and i had a friend who was already working for that company so that kind of gave me some insider knowledge on what the opportunities were i mean he graduated a year or two before me and i mean he was making over double my salary and um i just couldn't understand how i did like i didn't realize that was an option and then found out you know talking with him kind of his journey what he did and started out with and realized that i could do the same thing so really it was about the income potential and um the opportunity to grow and you know have have more through a traditional you know job instead of it wasn't business or anything like that it was just um something different no it definitely makes sense so so now you switch over to and do that and i think you're in the trucking industry for about six years is that right yeah six or seven years then something around that time frame now what made you you know so you have the the better income potential maybe is a bit more enjoyable you know i've always there's always been an aspect of me i've never done it so maybe it's one of those things kind of like lawyers that you romanticize something oh it'll be so fun i'd watch a television show and i'm like kind of fun to do trucking get to see a lot of parts of the country i love listening to radio and podcasts and that and give me an opportunity never done it but maybe someday i will maybe when i when i uh or fulfill all my other dreams we'll get to that one but you know you get they're doing the trucking industry now what made you switch kind of from the trucking industry to getting into real estate real estate investing yeah so uh you know being in the industry i was in management and uh it offered a lot of upper mobility i think we i promoted six times in seven years and we relocated five times in seven years and i was there so um offered a lot of positive change for our lives um so it checked all the boxes there the company got bought out and um the basically the leadership came in and the whole culture changed so going back to you know being wanting to run a business and being able to control those aspects i had no control over the culture the decisions coming down from the top you know my hands would be forced in the way i was able to lead manage a lot of the times i couldn't do the things i knew that my team needed me to do and the way i needed to be there uh regardless of how i felt um just because of the directives that we were being given and my boss was under the same pressure had the same issues and felt the same way um you know hours were getting longer job was getting more stressful it was a thankless job you know nobody's ever happy when something is delivered on time it's always the issues when things aren't there when they're supposed to be and so basically my job was putting fires out dealing with people that were unhappy internally and externally and just finding creative ways to get through every day as best we could all while managing a multi-million dollar operation and the p l with that and the vendors and non-payments and the new accounts and existing accounts yeah almost summer is that you got worn out of it after a while yeah um you know i'm in my 30s and i wasn't seeing a lot of my wife or my kids and it wasn't really the the husband or the father i wanted to be just because of what my job was demanding and um yeah i found the the opportunity with real estate investing and really enjoyed the potential there and so jump you know really transitioned over and took a leap of faith into that um you had a little bit of a savings built up with 401k and we had just gotten a bonus so i was able to utilize those two things to give me the opportunity to get involved there you know was very heavily active um kind of the same thing like i started off good and i enjoyed it because it was so different and then over time realized that it wasn't exactly what i wanted to do forever so i started looking at other ways to transition out of that the construction and renovation company was kind of part of what we were already doing because we were doing flips and things like that that involved rehabs and construction so we had the infrastructure in place i looked at the needs that we had as well as the needs of the marketplace with other investors and on the retail side with the traditional homeowner and saw that there was a high demand you know housing in our area is very strong so uh any type of skilled labor in working on houses in any capacity is always in high demand so we we try to get in there um same thing you know there was opportunity it made sense the further we got into it the more challenges we face the biggest one being is hard to find people um because you're talking about skilled trades um you know growing a company and you know part of that of having a business is being able to automate and scale and the biggest challenge with that was being able to automate and scale it's doable but with what we had and the resources we had available it didn't really fit and it was you know like pushing a boulder uphill you can do it for a certain amount of time it eventually gets heavier you get tired so that didn't really work too long and then like you said you know found disc golf as a hobby i really enjoyed that you know was still doing other you know real estate stuff and renovation stuff on the side um you know in the back of my head i kept looking for that way to take my passion for business and put it together with my passion for disc golf and you know just through being open and thinking about it came across the opportunity of the retail side of things you know once coveted hit the disc golf industry started booming um you know participation more than doubled across the united states new courses are going in and you hit on it let me just dive in real quick you hit on it just briefly but disc golf started out kind of as a hobby interest you know just kind of you enjoyed it did it with friends family so to speak you know you know how did you kind of as you're saying okay i can only push the boulder up so so long you know and i've done the uh real estate and i did investing and i did renovation and you know that kind of thing and it was fun at the time and now i'm kind of wanting to move on to something else how did you decide to go to disc golf and how did that transition from a hobby to something that's an actual business or something that you enjoyed and built or built a business around yeah pretty simple actually i was uh was working with a life and business coach and uh through working with her we were able to do a lot of like timeline therapy and personality profile digging and just helping me kind of understand who i was um you know one of the things was doing the enneagram like i found that incredibly helpful and beneficial to figure out how i was essentially programmed and how that worked for me and then being able to understand why i felt the way i felt when i was in certain roles in certain positions so understanding you know okay that's why i enjoyed this that's why i didn't enjoy this like certain things felt light certain things felt heavy and then being able to um look at that you know with being able to put disc golf in that bubble and looking at okay what would i enjoy doing well i wanted to take my passion and figure out my purpose was and my passion was definitely disc golf my purpose was being around people being social you know being an influencer in the space and so doing the retail side of things you know that was the logical because i'm not you know competitively it's not good it's not going to happen for me but as a retailer i get to be around all the people competing and working with them and helping them out and being able to support the community and fill in all the checking all the boxes that for me for my personality are the things that fill me up no that's cool so so now you do that and say okay here's checks all the boxes make sense want to do it you get into it you get into disc golf and kind of running it you know since you've launched it has it been a hockey stick straight to the top and it's been fun and enjoyable and it's all worked out has it been bumpy and you know you regret it and you wish you go back to real estate or you know anywhere in between but how's that kind of done as you've launched it and got into things so he said again devin he broke up just a little bit on me sure i said you know so now that you've dived into it you've actually you know got into the business you've worked on getting it going you've you know got it up and running has been a raucous shipped to the top and this has taken off like wildfire has it been one that's been a slog and you wish you could go back to real estate or is it been somewhere in between you're kind of how's it going as uh as you've started to build it yeah so um there's a lot of unknown there was a lot of unknowns getting into this business mainly because all of the companies on the manufacturing side as well as the retail side are private so there's not any public information i can't go look at balance sheets or financials i can't look at earnings reports or go back and listen to investor calls those things don't exist so i had to really build my business plan off of the knowledge that i had about the industry getting feedback from other people just you know really that intuition of seeing what's happening what type of inventory retailers had like like i said just you know really trying to look at pieces of the puzzle that were scattered all over the place and you couldn't quite see the entire puzzle you had to try to put them together to make as complete of a picture as you could um you know basically ran some numbers on through my business plan to try to figure out what the opportunities were did a lot of market research with the manufacturers to figure out what my costs were going to be knew what the sales side would be the good thing about the disc golf industry is the pricing is pretty standard so there's not you know i don't have the walmart effect of having to compete with somebody cutting lower and lower and lower that's not really an option so i knew what my baseline would be on a on an average cost per per item basis i knew what my expected margins would be you know i factored in shipping cost packaging costs um just the other you know fixed costs for running a business with website and whatnot um you know ran the numbers and um the numbers look good honestly so um i took the leap forward of you know we sold a few houses had some startup capital to be able to get in to get it rolling that way basically for buying inventory was the big thing right when i started buying inventory that was when the manufacturers in any industry as a whole it was in super high demand super low supply so everyone was facing the same problems they couldn't get product to sell manufacturers were making things as fast as they could but the demand was so high that you know everywhere they had product was basically selling out so i try to get everything going as quick as i could and quickly realized that the website i was using i needed to develop that and upgrade so um i kind of you know didn't really slack off on pushing revenue but i focused more heavily on investing in the longer term so to kind of answer your question about the revenue side of things it was not what i anticipated but it has not been it's been in between you know it's been a steady steady growth um right now we're you know we're still growing you know long term i see a much larger potential and upside than where we're currently at um but for now it's it's kind of meeting the the needs and um you know i'm continuing to grow and develop the business uh as far as what we carry the amount of inventory we have but more from uh the functional side you know because my my product is not actually the products i sell the product that i have is the business itself is the experience it's the website you know my focus is on the online side of things um so you know the products i have are the same products everyone has you know what somebody's going to come to me for and choose to shop with with disc golf america is going to be from the experience from the level of quality they get from the packaging from the customer service experience just all those intangible pieces that you know and that's where my market research uncovered that i felt that a lot of other companies were dropping the ball most companies did many things well but what i found is every every website out there struggled or they didn't prioritize certain things and i wanted to put together that complete solution for the customer so i focused my business from day one on checking all the boxes and meeting all the needs that myself as a consumer knew were important and i felt other other businesses were neglecting or not prioritizing and you know that's what's been great repeat customers people speak highly of the business every time i meet someone when i travel like oh i know disc golf america i see you guys on facebook and on instagram or you know my friends talked about you or whatever so building that organic growth um has been something that's important but it's also shown that it's working and i know long term that will have a nice residual impact and with some exponential growth um it's just you know right now we're still here on the exponential growth and we're getting closer and closer to that climb so looking forward to when that happens and i i trust that through the actions that we're taking today you know you'll we'll see that growth happen and get there sooner rather than later no and i think that that sounds like it's a fun place or a fun direction ahead and it's definitely a lot of opportunity in front of you so well now as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that we'll dive into now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made what'd you learn from it honestly probably the worst business decision i've made has been to i got into partnerships and the idea of partnership was not really the issue but we thought we had everything clearly defined and figured out and the roles and who was doing what um but you know it didn't really shake out that way um i mean these people were friends and they still are friends you know business and friendships and you have to keep them separate to keep it healthy um but you know having people and myself included in roles and performing roles that um feel heavy like i mentioned earlier you know things that we don't do well and don't enjoy doing um that was a looking back it was a mistake and you know i wish uh i don't really wish i could do it differently because if i didn't go through the things that happened i you know i wouldn't be where i'm at you know looking back everything has happened just the way it's supposed to happen when it's supposed to happen and it's my job to learn from those experiences and then to take that and grow and develop and not make the same mistakes or or you know not do the same thing twice but to make sure that i'm growing and developing and moving forward so it's been a struggle in that area but um when i went into this golf america i was very adamant about maintaining 100 ownership not giving up equity and i was able to raise funds to do that without giving up equity which you know you ask most people that's that's hard to do but um you know that those are some of the things i was able to learn and take into this business venture that have been beneficial so far and i think long term i will look back and look at those as being yeah those are very key components of being where i'm at today and not uh you know giving up too much to get there oh cool i think that's definitely a good lesson to learn from and definitely make sense so now let's dive into the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup for a small business what would be the one piece of advice you give them a couple things you know one feet one one piece of advice is tough but i mean really for me and i think for most people is understanding who you are understanding your personality understanding um what type of things that you know you're gonna fit well with i mean some people you look at the garyvees and the grant cardones they just grind through it it doesn't matter what it is you know they're they're just going to outwork and over you know and fix it that way and for me that's torture um i i can't imagine just you know pushing pushing pushing or you know i just don't enjoy that i'm much more of the work smarter not harder mindset um so you know really understanding who you are and what fits you well and then surround yourself with with the right people and that doesn't necessarily mean in a tangible standpoint i mean the same way i found you dev and it was through a podcast where you shared things about uh intellectual property and trademarks and patents and i had no idea about any of that but listening to that podcast episode and hearing you talk about that i was able to understand the need to protect my brand because once again that that brand was my is my product um and you know going through the process with you that we've done for my trademark application has been fantastic and it's one thing i don't have to worry about now i go to sleep at night not worrying that a competitor or somebody who's you know trying to take me down a step or completely out of it is going to be able to do that because you know we're protected obviously somebody can try to do something but i know that we've got a leg to stand on now because we went through the proper channels to do that um you know but having that podcast you know as a resource is is what i look around look at for having good people i mean 2021 and the amount of information that's available for free is absolutely incredible um so for people to sit back and not take advantage of those opportunities you know that's not hurting only you it's gonna hurt your future generations you look back just a hundred years ago and the amount of information that was available was is minuscule compared to what we have now um yeah so and i definitely ground and i think that there's a lot of wisdom that they just kind of covered and i think that makes a ton of sense and so i think you know there's a lot of things to learn from business and i think those are some valuable lessons so as we start to wrap up if people have any uh if they want to be a customer or client they want to buy some disc golf they want to be an investor in your business if you ever have take on an ambassador they want to be a um a employee they want to be your next best friend any or all the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more yes so uh obviously the website disc golfamerica.com we just launched our new website as well so that's up and running and feedback's been positive there we're on facebook disc golf america on instagram disc golf america store so those are our main two social media outlets where you can follow us and see what's going on and then obviously you can message me through instagram or facebook through the disc golf america store to get in touch with me or you can email disc golf america store gmail.com is the easiest way to uh to get in touch so awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to reach out find out more support disc golf america because it's a fun fun uh it can be a fun hobby or a fun business and definitely worthwhile to check out well thanks 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 uh inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you have any um need any help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go to um strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat always happy to help thanks again lee for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next legend journey even better than the last thanks devin with my pleasure

Write Down Your Ideas

Jesse Yarger
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/21/2021

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

was uh the people a million dollar ideas every day um they just maybe don't necessarily have the um experience or the networking or uh the know-how to get it started or up off the ground or maybe even the motivation but um there's so many times that people have these million dollar ideas that um i i think it's it's really valuable to write those down and then you know maybe later nine months later when your friend texts you and says hey there's desks for sale or whatever it might be you you can get those off the ground and get running but um i think there's a lot of value in not forgetting uh what some of your ideas are when you're motivated and inspired 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 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 we're always happy to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast uh jesse yeager and jesse is a brief introduction planned on being an english teacher took a psychology class loved it switched in that direction and then went to or after doing her studies went to work with kids in autism after graduating um and did that you know started a couple clinics for kids with autism and was working with the one or one time with the client and had an idea and i won't or take still too much of his thunder but had an idea joking around said oh it's not really a joke it's not a bad idea thought about it for a while and decided to circle back to it and actually build a business around and get it going so um you know he'll you'll get a bit more details from jesse but it's a fun journey to tell and with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast jesse hey thanks for having me so i gave kind of the real brief run through kind of a bit of your journey but uh maybe take us back a bit in time to originally envisioning yourself as an english teacher how your journey and then how your journey went from there yeah so i i wasn't i was the smartest kid in school and i i usually got pretty good grades on uh reading and writing assignments and that was pretty much it so i kind of pigeoned myself my pigeon holding myself into uh into that kind of field and profession and um and i really grew to love it uh right before i graduated high school though i i took a psychology course uh and it kind of changed everything for me and i decided to kind of pursue something in the human services field rather than you know my my plan to to be an educator so so you take the psychology course and kind of directs you to in a new direction which i think it sounds like it makes sense you know follow you know find the thing that you love and then find who will pay for it and i think that's the best mixture of it so you went into psychology now how did you so you and you got the degree you graduated now how did you kind of get into working with kids with autism after you graduated yeah so i uh i moved out to california for a year um and just kind of did some stuff out there i got away from where i went to high school and needed a job went to a job fair and the first place that called me back was a an organization that provided in-home services for kids with autism um fast forward a little bit i moved back to utah got some more experience and really kind of fell in love with with that work and that population and decided to continue my education to get my master's degree in behavior analysis and really set myself up to be able to work with a diverse group of people but primarily um kids who who have autism and related disorders so now you get into that and you know did the job search find hey this is one that's an opening i think it sounds interesting he did that and then it sounds like you know you again found a bit of passion because you stayed with it um you opened up a couple you know clinics or whatever you'd want to call them um to help kids with autism and so it sounds like that was uh and it still is a bit the direction where your your path or your journey has continued to head yeah i love it um i think i'm kind of at the the point in my career where i really enjoy mentoring people who want to do what i've done in the past and hopefully do it better and learn from some of the mistakes that i've made and so i'm kind of at the point where i want to um expand on that and uh and i think that's kind of where the idea for some of these these desks um came in as well so uh we can kind of provide other supports or additional supports to uh to the population that i've grown to enjoy working with so much so now so now you just touched on it and you know that kind of dovetails into what you're doing with business today but tell us kind of how that idea came about what you know and what or what you're doing at the time that um arose there kind of spurred that idea that now is uh evolved into an actual business yeah so uh my business partner i will say her name is rebecca and she is uh she's completely type a so we uh we were worked together um with with a couple kids actually and we're working with one and uh the mom just happened to be really uh nervous about sending him to school for the first time he was about uh you know to come up on his his kindergarten year and um you know he had this toy that he really uh really enjoyed working with and playing with and we used that as a motivator for him and a lot of different things and you know we kind of joked around like oh if he could just take this toy to school with him uh everything would be fine and he would be you know really successful and and all that and so that kind of got the wheels turning a little bit and rebecca and i uh you know joked around thought a little bit about um you know creating this desk uh that just had sensory stimulate on it so things that are you know visually appealing uh while still being minimally distracting uh and also uh things that are you know tactilely pleasing especially for kids with those sensory needs like so many kids with autism have so now you you have that idea and you do it you know you kind of you know and i always love because i've been the same way you have an idea like that's kind of a stupid idea that's never going to work then you start thinking about such a bad idea you know you kind of go through that and so you guys you know had the idea i said okay you know there's that maybe there's something to it but then i think you mentioned that you kind of either got busy or shelved it for a period of time and let it sit there and you know linger for a bit before circling back is that right we did yeah so it's man it was probably nine months later uh pretty much all of quarantine had come up and and there are so many kids who weren't even in school anymore and they were doing online school and then just randomly one day uh rebecca texted me and she said you know she saw some some really inexpensive desks online uh that one a local university was getting rid of and she's like hey remember that time we had that idea and uh and i've had so many yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah that's one of one of the consequences of being all over the place sometimes but um but she she uh you know sent me a picture and i was like oh yeah that we should we should still do that that sounds like a good idea let's just buy some uh and see what happens they're very inexpensive and i've got a basement that's not even close to being done so just throw them all down there and uh you know let it sit for a little bit and we we completely destroyed one of them trying to figure out how to most effectively create this um this desk and uh after that we were able to kind of figure out what the best way to kind of put it together was and how we could use it not only as a as a tool to get kids to sit down and be motivated to learn but also um to not be distracted because that we knew immediately that would be one of the the biggest barriers that we ran into so he did that because you know and i think that that makes sense in the sense that you want to you want them to have something to fidget with but it can't be that the whole class is now hearing them fidget with it or you know playing with it and it distracts the whole class and so i think that makes sense to kind of find that balance and you know that's kind of you know i like the idea of you know oh you remember this idea we had several months ago that we didn't do anything with i found some deaths that are really inexpensive that we can try this out let's do it and it kind of reinvigorates the idea that you've had that you kind of sit there and linger but it also kind of points to you know the time he has to be right the opportunity has to be right and you kind of have to go through that exercise so now you guys get the desk you kind of play with them you kind of get a prototype you kind of see what works what doesn't work and you start to build that into a business so help us you know give us the audience an idea is that business launch can they go buy it is it still no prototype stage have you had sales or kind of where is it at now yeah so uh so we have a website that's launched um and we are an official you know uh started business uh we um you know it was interesting uh one of the things i think is so important is just knowing people and um through my experiences with the autism community which is a very uh very tight-knit community and a very supportive community i was able to um you know remember some of the contacts that i've made five six seven eight nine years ago and reached out to them and they actually have a grant system so we applied for a grant and we we actually you know won that that award and uh we're able to be approved essentially to provide 20 desks to schools throughout utah and support our special education classrooms so we we completed that grant uh and now we are um really just in the business of uh figuring out how to work with schools um work with uh parents and you know other caregivers and really make sure that we're um these these supports uh these customized uh unique looking desks to um to motivate kids to to learn and sit down instead of spending so much time and energy and resources trying to get like redirected back to a seat so you know these these kids who are oftentimes very energetic uh a little hyperactive can um can then you know be motivated to sit down and get some of those needs met while they're um learning and going through instruction so teachers can uh can spend more of their time and energy educating rather than redirecting oh cool so no and i think that uh definitely you know it's kind of it's fun to see how an an idea starts to take shape from hey we had a crazy idea we didn't do anything with that okay we found some desks now we're going to start to build it we build the website and it's kind of fun to see that iteration and that growth and our hope that it continues to grow and build or build uh further out so so that kind of takes us a bit to where you're at today now looking a bit into the future you know the next six to 12 months where do you see things headed where do you know how do you see things working out and kind of what's the direction you guys are going yeah it's a it's a great question um we have really ambitious goals um to to get you know at least 50 desks out by the end of this year you know we're at that 20 mark right now um the other thing that i that's really important to me is figuring out and ensuring that these work we want to make sure they're they're effective and we have some data we want to get some more data some more people who are willing to um you know track how how often kids attend or um how much they're on task during uh instruction time um the data that we have are really positive uh for for example the first kid that we use this with uh he went from 24 percent attending to like 98 attending um and staying in his seat and just learning that way so um we want to make sure that that's not just a one-off we want to make sure that you know these uh we're getting good reliable data um to show that these actually can be effective teaching tools or um assistance to uh to our tour educators as well so i'd say those those are really are our big goals get more just evidence that these are effective and get more of them out there well cool that sounds like it you know it is fun i think that the best thing is hey proof is in the pudding let's get them out there let's show that they're effective that they work the people are going to want them and that it is beneficial to the kids you know with autism that gives or gives them that to something to to play you know to play with her to deal with as their as they're learning to aid them so excited to see how things continue to go for you guys well as we kind of wrap up or wrap up your journey we hear a little bit about kind of how you got to where you're at today and where you guys are headed you know um always have two questions with the enemies podcast so we'll go ahead and jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was your worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah so i think the worst business decision uh that i made uh was just poor time management in in general uh so um it's really difficult to to start a business while you're doing another business or while you're you know have your full-time job and i think it was it was really hard to just uh stick to a schedule of spending one two maybe three hours a day i'm developing these desks whether it was our like intellectual development where the actual manufacturing development for these deaths so the worst business decision uh i think that that i made was just um delaying uh or not prioritizing spending the time on these desks because uh it sounds so easy on paper uh and and very very fast uh very very quick and uh that's that's not the case at all so um it is now it wasn't then so um i think that was definitely the the worst business decision uh that i made and as far as what i learned from it um scheduling i think organization has always been a pretty strong suit for me but i think that was um that that became even more needed uh as i as i learned to really like allocate time towards towards these projects no definitely makes sense so cool well then now let's jump right to the second question which is if you're now talking to someone that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you give them yeah this is this is tough i uh i talked about networking i can't stress the importance of that there are i i really feel like if you um if you don't learn something from everybody you've talked to then then you've almost done yourself a disservice uh so that's kind of like my like 1 1a my main um i think point is going to be uh to compartmentalize um it can it can sound so stressful to just be like oh i'm gonna i'm gonna be a business owner now i'm just gonna start a business and it can be really overwhelming um but really uh when you when you break it down and when you say like i'm just gonna start my business like i'm literally gonna go to a website i've done this a million times before uh i've gone to some some sort of website it takes like 30 minutes depending on what you're offering and what state you're in uh it might even cost less than 100 bucks and and let's let's be honest you're going to spend 30 minutes scrolling through instagram before you go to bed anyway or you're going to spend you know 100 bucks on something stupid on amazon so um so just being able to break it down and just say like all right i'm just going to do this today i'm just going to get this out of the way and then i'll at least set myself up for success or for opportunities to further develop businesses um or whatever the business idea might be um in the future and i also uh i know i'm going long on this i have so many uh so many ideas but i think the the other thing that um is really valuable that i heard on a podcast once was uh the people million dollar ideas every day um they just maybe don't necessarily have the um experience or the networking or uh the know-how to get it started or up off the ground or maybe even the motivation but there's so many times that people have these million dollar ideas that um i i think it's it's really valuable to write those down and then you know maybe later nine months later when your friend texts you and says hey there's desk for sale or whatever it might be you you can get those off the ground and get running but um i think there's a lot of value in not forgetting uh what some of your ideas are when you're motivated and inspired yeah i i love that and i think that makes sense i mean the thing i would probably add to that is there's a lot of people that have million dollar ideas the difference between it being a million dollar business versus a million dollar ideas execution in other words you can oh you can have a lot of ideas but if you never actually execute never build on and never do anything with it it will stay in an ideal stage it'll never go anywhere so i think that you know the thing i'd add to it is now once you have the idea execute on it try it out figure it out and make sure that it works and you know if it doesn't work then you learn a lot of lessons and you are able to you know take or get takeaways and take that to next business and if you do make it work then it is certainly worthwhile so i would say you know not just have the idea get out and execute on it so well as p as we wrap up if people want to reach out to you they want to be a customer client they want to buy a desk they want to be an investor in your business they want to be an employee and help out they want to volunteer they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more yeah i uh so there's two ways um first of all i'm into all of those i love volunteers i'll have best friends uh the the first uh way is our website it's www.sensoryintegrationdesks.com the second way is just through our email it's just sensory integration at outlook.com and um the other thing we we have you know some products on our website that families can buy or the individuals can buy but we also really stress the importance of um you know if schools want to reach out and they say well we want 20 desks but you know we don't want to we don't want to buy 20 desks we can go in and repurpose existing desks as well and we'll work with them on a a reasonable quote as well so we can go in and get those done over a weekend or something like that but ultimately we just want to get these out there and we just want to help kids and so anything we can do to uh you know customize or make it work or fit for a specific school or a district or a family we want to hear from you so we're we're always willing to work with people and just make sure that it's the the best fit and increases educational opportunities for for students all across the educational platform awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect up find out more and support and use a product if you have a kid in need that would be beneficial to well as we wrap up thank you again for coming on the podcast now for all of you that are listeners love to if you have a journey to tell we'd love to share it uh just to apply to be honest as a guest on the podcast just go to inventiveguest.com a couple more things of the listeners or two more things one make sure to click subscribe to your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now we do have um just as a reminder as before we wrap up we also have the um our bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so stay tuned for that otherwise as we wrap up if anybo if you're not going to listen to the bonus question don't have any or what don't or learn about ip thanks for listening and appreciate you coming on the podcast absolutely okay so with that now we get to go right i dive right into the bonus question because it's one of my favorite things because it's kind of fun uh we get it i always get a chance to uh you know i'm always the one in the driver's seat get asked the questions don't have to answer anything but now i get a we get a flip gears flip the table and i get a chance to talk a little about the thing that i love i'm passionate about which is intellectual property so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask what is your number one intellectual property question yeah so um man number one question i think i think the biggest question that uh that both rebecca and i have is um how do we um prevent this or how do we make this really ours so right now there's not a patent there's not anything like that so what's the best way to take the the thing that we've built and make sure that you know uh like a major company with a lot of resources that we don't have just you know doesn't buy one for cheap and then you know replicate it over and over and then send us uh back to our other jobs no and i think and that is always a hard because i mean it's a fair answer you know startups and small businesses are always i would say it a bit of a disadvantage as opposed to a big business when it comes to intellectual property because and i think that's generally life in general the people that have more time money and effort especially money are able to you know take advantage of that and utilize that and leverage it to their advantage and so if your startup or small business a lot of times with uh with you know having a great idea a great product you know you always worry you know what is somebody else says hey this is a great idea and now they come along and replicate it so you know part of that is intellectual property part of it's done we'll touch on help or touch on those just a bit you know on the intellectual property side you what you need to do is figure out what's part of your business what is the thing that makes you unique and differentiating gives you that competitive advantage and then see if it's protectable and you know and that can be hey if it's an invention you know you guys this is a physical desk you know that can be anything from it see how you make the desk what do you integrate in are those different unique are they going to be something that is going to be patentable or protectable and sometimes it is and that's great sometimes it's not the other thing you can think about is on the on the patent side is you can also go by what's a design patent so now you're looking at are you making a unique looking desk and it has something that's kind of design wise maybe not in utility and functionality unique or different but it has a unique look and feel such that hey if it looks like this we want to protect this you know we put in a ton of time and thought and effort as you where should this be placed what should it be how should it look what's you know what is that aesthetic nature to it and all those and so those are always a couple things for tag and also sometimes you get to the end of it and you say you know what we don't really have anything that's patentable but what we're going to do is build a really good reputation and brand we're going to give a really good story you know this is how we came we work with kids with autism all the time and you know this is why we came up with this product and this is why it resonates with us and here's our mission and that and you build that kind of that story and that following in that brand and that can also be very valuable and you can protect that with a trademark so those are always you know and so that's what you kind of the process you go through is what is essential or core to our business what really makes us you different and then how do we protect it now on the other kind of or side of your question which is okay so let's say we figure all that out we still have the question or you know what ends up a big business comes along and says yeah that's a great idea let's copy it all or let's just make our own how do you protect that and you know a couple things if you don't have any protection if you're not able to say hey we don't have a brand or we haven't built it yet don't have anything patentable it's gonna be you need to be you know first to market you build it and then you continue to innovate you know keep ahead of the competition sometimes you know bigger businesses they have a lot of benefit time money and resources but they're also a lot more slow moving it takes longer to make decisions to iterate through products to listen to customer feedback to roll out new programs and that can be a benefit to a smaller startup for a small business is to say hey we can we don't have the timeline and resources but we can pivot we can adjust we can listen we can enjoy we can continue to innovate and keep ahead of them the other thing is if you do have it let's say you had let's say you went got a patent or a trademark and you you know you were to secure it doesn't mean that the big business may not just say hey we're going to spend them under the table even if we do infringe we're just going to simply rip them off then you know there's a few options one of which i think is always a good one is every business has a competitor he doesn't you know samsung has apple or apple has samsung pepsi has co ford has chevy you know any business you go through they always have a competitor and there's very seldom any business that doesn't have somebody that's a competitor so a lot of times what you're saying is okay maybe this competitor comes knocks us off but we have this or you know valuable intellectual property we're gonna go to this other business their direct competitors say hey we've got a good following got a good brand we've got a good you know patents and that to cover this now would you guys like to acquire us to license from us or otherwise do it and it gives that competitor that advantage where they can go and enforce that they can utilize and leverage what you've done and there are a few other ways you can go about it as well so i think that you got to kind of start to look at the landscape what do we want to protect how do we want to protect it what's the business overlay can we protect it and then how what are our options if somebody in his uh if we need to enforce it or otherwise do that so that's a much longer much more summarized discussion to something that i could talk about for hours but it's a great question definitely one that's interesting so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast now if you or anybody in any of the listeners have any other questions about patents trademarks or anything else and we didn't answer it on this number one question feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with me to chat and always happy to help otherwise thanks again jesse for coming on to the podcast and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last awesome thanks so much i'm sure we'll be in touch absolutely have a good one

Find The Right People

Ravi Patel
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/19/2021

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

is commit like commit to what your goals are commit to what your visions are and then find the right partners find your right co-founder find your right resources because it's very hard to build something alone compared to with a team i think the chances of success and the timeline gets much shorter when you have a co-founder and a team that complements the skills that you have so that's the number one advice i would give to somebody [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the 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 and we're always here to help now today we have another uh great guest on the podcast ravi patel and give full transparency ravi is an awesome client of the firm and so we've uh i already know or have a relationship with him he had some really cool technology come some cool things he's working on so hey you would be a great guest on the podcast i invited him to be on and absolutely excited to have him here so this is a quick introduction to ravi so he went to high school and college in india did a master's at nyu and got an engineering degree also met his co-founder at nyu and both of them had engineering and business backgrounds um i think they're either when you and you'll have to come here wrong either roommates when they met or roommates after they bet uh but then they decided that you know they were always kind of bouncing ideas off of each other what would be a fun idea what would work in the marketplace and they kind of landed on murphy beds for apartments and so they looked at that and there wasn't really any good options out there and they were all extremely expensive and they didn't work very well and so as they graduated and they or ravi went off and worked for a consulting company and they also decided to design and work on doing murphy beds on their own so went through the several features of what they wanted what would be cool what would be different about the design process design process took a while went through a few different manufacturers to figure out one that could manufacture the complexities of what they wanted and that's kind of led to where he's at today so with that much is an uh brief introduction welcome on the podcast ravi thank you thank you david it's a pleasure to be here so i came kind of the quick run through of your of a journey that took him much longer in time than the 30 seconds that i went through it so maybe take us back a little bit in time to doing high school and college in india and how your journey got started there yeah yeah absolutely so i as you said grew up back in india did my high school and college in india where space was not necessarily the problem for for my growth where i grew up but uh you know we always had enough parking in a space but then after the college moved to new york city started attending new york university for my masters and as you said that's where my co-founder today and a very good friend met and it was an instant spark between our personalities and you know we started hanging out a lot together during college we weren't roommates but we always visited each other you know stayed over at each other's place and always always talking about something that we can do outside of the college and getting a job and the usual route so we spent many nights talking through what can we do and uh unaware of the fact that the problem was right in front of us in our new york city apartment shoe box now one question i'm going to dive in just because i'm curious before we dive into the final solution you guys landed on what were some of the crazy ideas or some of the ideas that you guys came up with that you didn't pursue or you didn't or you didn't end up going after yeah so i mean as long as the maximizing space and making it more functional is concerned and our motive was to be able to host friends without having them sit on our bed right so we were like what what else can we have like if we get five chairs that's not gonna fit so the only viable option for us was was the humble murphy bed right and uh we we really didn't land on any other solution to just you know make the space more open other than the murphy bed and we always knew that there is a product like this that exists we never looked for it but we knew we can't so you know to be able to solve our problem and that problem actually we couldn't see it it wasn't right in front of us but we couldn't see it so we were just talking about what else can we do what else can we do so to your point we started a management consulting firm before the murphy bed uh development or was conceived and you know a year or a year and a half into the firm we were like you know now we are in a position to really get started with this vision that we had years ago and you know when we had the vision years ago obviously we went out to look for that perfect murphy bed and we were very disappointed to learn that the murphy beds available out there there the design is kind of stuck in the 70s and the appeal factor is not as strong especially when you compare the price tag that comes with it so it's like two to five thousand for a regular murphy bed and we couldn't really justify the appeal factor to the price factor and then when you add delivery and installation in the mix that's usually third parties that the buyer has to get involved and just the buying cycle and buying experience was not appealing right so we had to kill our dreams of owning a murphy bed back then but then as i said a few years later we were in a position to start developing one of of ourselves and you know the way that journey started was we wanted to one question just curious because you touched on it you said you know we weren't in the position to do it back then and definitely understand but there are a myriad of reasons it can be hey the timing's not right we're busy getting married having children graduating from school starting our consulting or was it more of hey we don't have the funds this is going to be an expensive endeavor kind of what was it that made the timing not right then that you guys held off for a period of time before deciding to pull the trigger yeah so that time was when we were actively pursuing our master's degrees right so i mean you know that for a fact that pursuing a master's degree is not an easy feat so and we knew that developing something like this would take full-time dedication and commitment on top of the resources which is time money and people and you know we didn't think we was fresh off the [Music] india and just a couple years into the united states so we were still learning and even even the language i would say back then right we were still learning and uh trying to meet the right people making the right connections so back then we were just too early i think and we still wanted to graduate make our friends happy that hey we've graduated you got a job now we can do something else no go figure how crazy is it they want you to graduate actually uh you know be able to uh utilize all the time and expense to go or to go into school so no that definitely makes sense so so now you guys get into that for a you know period of time you do the consulting firm and i think if for you can correct me where i think that's still active and still going um but if not but you know so you're doing the the consulting firm for a period of time and then you know what was it kind of what triggered you guys to kind of re you know go after again um the the murphy bed and the concept that you guys said hey we think there's something here but we the timing's not right what kind was that trigger to jump back into it yeah so a year or year and a half into the consulting firm i mean you know consulting is a services business and we wanted to help other businesses so we started the firm but then outside of services we wanted to think of a product in the mix just for our long-term planning as me and my partner in our careers and companies together so we could have come up with a 10 50 product but you know we didn't really have any ideas the idea we had is this big old elephant that takes two years to develop and a much bigger lift than a ten dollar product so the idea was always there and we wanted to expand our you know expertise portfolios outside of the service and then help individual people because a product like this you've seen it it can change lives and we wanted to change lives of people no i think that's cool and and the timing definitely makes sense so so now as you guys are kind of jumping in you say okay timing didn't make sense then we did you know water under the bridge took some time now timing does make sense and you guys are getting that going you know as you're getting it going you know how was it to dive into what was a i mean i don't think maybe i'm wrong you tell me where i am but you guys didn't have necessarily a ton of experience in murphy beds as far as manufacturing and mails and air you know manufacturing and prototyping and marketing and sales and doing all you know and doing all of the concepts and then some of the areas you had more experience than others but kind of how was it as you guys dived in and got that going yeah so you're right we had zero experience in the furniture industry especially when it comes to design and development and then sales and marketing we had some experience and obviously those are the things you can learn but to your point design development was completely uncharted water for us and the the process we started was just a piece of paper where i put down list of requirements in black and white that i would like in the murphy bed so no visual per se again no design experience but just a set of requirements off of looking at different murphy beds available in the market that hey this is missing this feature so reading light ambient light switch panel storage desk these are like key features we need to have so that was the type of requirement list i put together and then we started looking for a designer who can take that set of requirements and put it into a visual so i reached out to to my high school friend back then uh and you know she gave her the vision gave her the requirements and she loved it and she got to work and i think a few weeks later she came up with a few drafts of the design no that's cool and it's always interesting a lot of times you know as you're getting your business started and up and going oftentimes you'll turn to your friends one because you know that they're talented they're reliable you have a good working relate you know good connection with them relationship so it's interesting how often times as you're getting a business going that's naturally who you turn to versus hey who do we know that can help us here as opposed to you know going here shooting in the dark so to speak so it definitely makes sense so so now she you know your friend comes up with the design says okay and it takes a few weeks you get that and knocked out how was it as far as you know now figuring out how to actually make and manufacture this thing that you guys have come up with you know on the on the pen and paper as a design yeah yeah so you know after the design up until the design we were never really worried about how we're gonna develop it how long it's gonna take we just took it step by step that way the first thing is we come up with requirements second thing is we put a visual to the design now that the design is ready let's look for manufacturers who can manufacture this for us now when it comes to the murphy bed that we have come up with the design it required a hundred percent custom development it wasn't an off-the-shelf product that you make some changes and you know it turns into our design now so you know we got turned away from i think three or four manufacturers because it was they knew it was gonna take a long time for them to perfect our product before they see some money coming in their way so a lot of them didn't really take up the challenge to to develop our design but then we landed on the last option that we had and we got lucky the guy is really good and he he accepted the challenge he was like you know robbie and team you have designed something amazing i've been doing this business for five decades manufacturing the beds but this is really something cool and i would love to take on the challenge to develop this for you guys and and then it was a process in its own that we'll get into no and that that definitely makes sense and sounds like it was and so you know one other kind of question just diving into because it's interesting journey you know as you're finding you know a lot of manufacturers saying hey this is too complicated it's more work than is worth we don't want to die or we don't want to take on the project how did you find the the manufacturer that would actually do that you know were you flying out meeting with a lot of people were you sending out emails were you asking your network or kind of how did you go about finding that manual or that initial manufacture yeah so i did everything i could it was it included everything that you said calling people that i know in the industry them calling their peoples a second circle then flying out writing emails everything but i think what really stood out was the second circle because when when you call the people that you know and you can count on and they call further that really speaks volume because number one they believe in what you're trying to do so that's that's the introduction relationship that they have with the other person and that that's what really got us to where we are so so now you get the manu you know you go from design you go to manufacturing and then you actually get it how long was this process kind of from there when you originally started with the idea to where you actually had something manufactured that you could start selling yeah so i think it took about a year and a half to two years from that requirement list to a prototype or three prototypes that we could actually market and sell so now you get the prototypes you can market and sell you put you know and that's always you know first of all it's a lot of time it's a lot of investment both on time and and money to do all of this and you put it out in the marketplace you know you actually put it for sale or to start taking you know trying to take purchase orders how was it was it hey we had a flood of orders and people loved it was it hey it was a slow build and we had to figure out the marketplace hey we did a lot of trade shows the timing was horrible the timing was great kind of clueless into how that went as you were getting things up and running yeah so we are still in the process uh the the website is is work in the works so we haven't really started the full-blown sales efforts but we have tested the market you know we have reached out to different businesses some direct customers they've reached out to us on our instagram page and they're like hey guys this is beautiful can we buy it so we haven't really opened up the doors to everybody for sales yet uh but to your point we know it for a fact that it's gonna take a lot of dedication right reaching out it's not going to be an easy sale even with a product like this which is something that people have never seen before it still takes a lot of education and awareness brand awareness and on top of all that like it's not just the murphy bed as a brand we have to educate them that you know oklahoma is more than a murphy bed and how how can we back that statement and that then that goes into our design process and thinking and what type of things we considered in our design no and i think that you know it sounds like it's one of those you know it is one of those where you have to do that iteration that kind of go along that path and figure that out so that brings us a bit up into where you're at today but now you're looking saying okay we've got some of our prototypes we're working through things or you know getting the website up and running we've had some initial positive feedback where do you see kind of the next six to 12 months going for you guys next six to 12 months uh we see quite a bit of sales coming uh manufacturing ramping up supply chain delivery installation so all the operations we are looking forward to it it's gonna be a lot more than we expect but we are ready for it well that's cool so and one of the things i think you mentioned is you also you know and we've chatted a bit and back and forth but in and out of the podcast is you're looking at different manufacturers different avenues who which country to manufacture in which you know what is the right price point and kind of all of those as you're continuing to go out in the marketplace so how do you kind of go about looking now as you're looking at to ramp things up to further sell things to get it on the marketplace how have you kind of tackled all of those of hey should i go to china should i go to india should i go to south america should i go to the u.s for manufacturing and how do i you know sales and do we take pre-orders or do i wait till we have products ready to ship and what type of inventory kind of how have you guys tackled or how are you guys planning on tackling those yeah so i mean in the past we knew that a product like this cannot be manufactured in the u.s because it takes more than one one professional to come into and then figure out the engineering of it it's not just a wood and metal furniture it's an engineering behind it because it's a moving product so the the precision that you need is a millimeter to millimeter you can't be off for a single millimeter or your product doesn't work so we always knew that manufacturing in the us is gonna take a longer time and a lot more money than compared to if we got it done in asia so you know we we got started in india india has a lot of good manufacturers that does this job and you know we were lucky to find the white one who took the writers with us i mean which manufacturer sticks with you for a year and a half to to see the money right so we did find the right partners in the process well that's really cool that's awesome and exciting and i'm excited as you guys continue to further push out in the marketplace or you know look to make those sales look to make that big splash definitely a fun uh journey that i'd love to see how it continues to play out for you guys well as we start to wrap up the podcast i always have two questions i had asked at the end of each episode 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 that's a good question i think the worst business decision was to choose the wrong partner i mean they're not with us anymore and when i say partner it wasn't a co-founder per se in my my case it was just there was a manufacturer a very good friend of mine he thought he could develop the product for us i i trusted him and just a couple months later the true color started to come out so i think that was a bad decision on my part that you know i got carried away in a relationship that that thing could help me but i should have looked at the business and my goals and vision from a broader perspective before picking the right partner um no i think that is one and it's hard because you know especially if unless you've been once you've been doing it for a while you find out which are the right partners and the right people but that also comes with you've been doing it for a while and you figure that out and it makes sense and so you know as you're getting into it it's not that easy or that straightforward to say oh yeah here's the right partner here's a person do it and so i think that you know definitely makes sense how you can you know have that stumbling block or make that mistake but it's also a good one to learn from because you also as you do that you'll learn who is the right partner or which ones do make sense so definitely it works error works and makes sense on my end so yeah well with that and this now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i think i can i can think of one but the first one i will start with is commit like commit to what your goals are commit to what your visions are and then find the right partners find your right co-founder find your right resources because it's very hard to build something alone compared to with a team i think the chances of success and the timeline gets much shorter when you have a co-founder and a team that complements the skills that you have so that's the number one advice i would give to somebody all right and i definitely agree i think one of the things that you know building the team that one you can trust you can you know that uh is going to do a good job that you know that you can that are going in the same direction or have the same vision all of those are definitely an important one it can have a big impact on your business and so building that right team and getting that core foundation of people is a big deal for any business but especially a startup or a small business so well as we now start to wrap up but people want to find out more about your product they're looking i need to have a murphy bed i'd love to buy yours if they want to be a customer or client they want to be an investor that say this is a great opportunity they want to be a employee they say hey i'd love to work for this company they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you and find out more yeah the best way to reach out to is just text my personal line uh you have it you can put it in the the list but it's 201 736 1784 or you can find our brand okla designs on instagram and there you have you can be ms it comes straight to me and my team i always keep an eye on it so there are a few ways to get in touch with me and i would love to hear from anyone who's interested to be in touch with me awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out connect up to you find out more um because it's you know i think it's a cool and innovative product and certainly one that uh where uh be useful for a lot of individuals well thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on a podcast to share it we'd love to have you just go to strategymeeting.com and apply to be on the show or sorry not strategy me that was a little bit later go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show i'll talk about strategy you mean just a second um now for two more things as a listener one um is a listener make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review so other people can find about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if now if you need any help with your patents trademarks or anything else with business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat well ravi thank you again 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 thank you david for the opportunity was a pleasure [Music] absolutely you

How To Set Up Operations

Alicia Butler Pierre
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/17/2021

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

i my team and i recently discovered as of a few months ago called notion n-o-t-i-o-n dot s-o if you're looking for a a creative quick way to store and and capture your processes look into that tool it's basically a wiki um that unlike dropbox or google drive yes you can document all of these things devin it but what i find is that when you're using some of these platforms even sharepoint or you know again google drive evernote and things tools like that they're great because it's stored in the cloud notion is also a cloud and web-based app but it gives you the benefit of being able to see everything and and not have information hidden in folders and you can quickly search for things hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur it's grown several uh startups in the seven eight figure businesses as well as a ceo and founder 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 and i'm always happy to help now today we have another great guest and it's an expert episode which i love because we get to talk about a whole lot of fun and exciting uh or fun and exciting things is alicia butler pierre and i'm trying to make sure i'm working on not or mispronouncing people's names so hopefully i got it right but as a quick introduction so a little bit about what we talking about is a bit more on the the operation side of a business and kind of how you go about what is operations why do you need operations kind of what do you identify with that sometimes why do operations take a back seat with startups and why they shouldn't but why it happens and what you can do to avoid it as well as a little bit on you know maybe covering a little bit on processes and looking at assets on the balance sheet and how to set up those operations and infrastructure and maybe even a little bit of ip we'll see if we get there so a lot of fun conversations that i'm excited to have and with that much welcome on the podcast alicia thank you devon and you pronounce my name perfectly all right well i you know that doesn't happen very often so i'll take that as a big compliment because i'm usually like i think it's this way and then they always come back and hear about it i always have to apologize i'm like it's really no intensive and offense intended it's just that i for whatever reason i i tend to slaughter dave so glad i got one right so with that what before we jump into the you know talking a little bit of operations and whatnot maybe give the listeners kind of a bit of your background one or two minutes on kind of why you're an expert in this area what are your experiences and why they should listen to what you have to say sure well thank you for for sharing your platform with me first of all just to give i guess a really quick quick and dirty description of my background and why it makes me an expert my career actually started in chemical engineering devon and that's where i was first introduced to process engineering so for those who may not realize it many chemical engineers when we work in chemical plants and oil refineries we're really called process engineers and what that means is that in the manufacturing of a particular product in in in my case my very first job was at monsanto so i was making roundup and if there was a batch of roundup that was created and for some reason it didn't meet all of the specifications as the process engineer i had to figure out well what went wrong in the manufacturing process that caused that final product to not meet the specification so i knew i didn't want to be in a plant for the rest of my life or an oil refinery so i actually went back to business school and and there's i i should also say i quickly realized devin i would say maybe several months into that very first job as an engineer that i didn't understand the business decisions that drove our day-to-day production schedules and we we each i remember each each group each unit within the plant was assigned its own accountant and every month we would have meetings with that accountant and i'm sure you can appreciate this with your your ip uh you know your law background it would be like you coming and speaking to me and i'm like what on earth is he talking about copyrights and trademarks and and infringement and intellectual property laws so that's what it was like listening to these accountants i i didn't understand the language of business and that's what accounting is so that's what prompted me to go back to graduate school in business school at tulane and so i would work full-time during the day go to school at night and by the time i graduated devin you know i i had this feeling i needed to get out of new orleans that's where i was living at the time and i just abruptly quit my job i had my newly minted mba and i relocated to atlanta georgia where i knew one person and i thought wow you know coca-cola is headquartered here delta airlines home depot all of these all of these companies that had a corporate presence here and i just knew for sure they were going to be banging down my door to hire me and that did not happen so you know again to kind of fast forward this story so what i ultimately ended up doing was through a period of soul-searching and self-reflection and introspection started to really reflect on what what am i naturally really good at and is it possible for me to build a business around that and devin even when i was flipping burgers as a teenager no matter what job i had even into my you know young adulthood i was always good at those jobs because i was organized not necessarily because i was the smartest person in the room but i was very organized so i started my company equilibria 16 years ago oh my gosh it's so hard to believe uh but 16 years ago and it actually started as a professional organizing company and what i quickly learned was that many of the people that i worked with i would say a good 90 of them were business owners who were operating home-based businesses and it wasn't that they were hoarders or chronically disorganized people they just needed systems and processes so that's where my process experience working as an engineer came into play and eventually over the years the language shifted from providing professional organizing services to business infrastructure services and so after working with hundreds of clients speaking on many stages having that that engineering background that my friend is what makes me an expert i think awesome well that was a great run through and it was fun to hear a little bit of your journey of how you got here as well as is all the experience that drove you to here so now with that with that introduction let's dive into the topic at hand a bit and the first question especially if you're a startup or small business it's going to be a simple one but what is operations or what is that kind of thing what does that mean and what should how should they interpret that as far as you know because sometimes you'll hear ceo or chief operations officer or some variation of that and say well that sounds good we we probably have that we we do operations we sell stuff we make stuff but what is when they're looking at kind of what operations is and why they need it kind of what does that mean i'm really glad you you started with this question because i take for granted that many people still don't really understand what we mean when we say operations so the most simplified definition that i can give is if we were to compare this to marketing marketing is are the activities that relate to your company's products and services being seen and operations is refers to the activities that aren't seen but are experienced by your customers so marketing involves obviously the sales the branding the the personal branding the promotion the publicity of the pr the customer facing things that you do social media podcasting all of those things that you do to generate awareness about who you are and what you have to offer in terms of goods and services operations is the stuff that goes on behind the scenes that nobody sees your customers would never see but they definitely will experience the impact of those operations for example just just to use i guess something that's fairly recent for us as of this recording the blocking of the suez canal right so that's that's totally operations focused customers just know oh my gosh i'm waiting on certain products to be delivered to me what the heck is going on what's taking so long they just know that they deliver on amazon exactly you just know as a customer regardless of what company you were you know you ordered something from you just know that there's a delay but you don't realize what's going on behind the scenes that's contributing to that delay so now you have a bad experience and you know that that retailer that you have purchased something from and you're waiting on delivery from now it impacts your relationship with that retailer so marketing is the scene operations is the unseen that's the simplest way i can define it no and i like that i mean it is really kind of what happens behind the scene in the sense you always see what happens on in the front end you know you see the videos you see the marketing you see the podcast but even taking the podcast as an example we have people that will go you know after we do the recording and we'll do do some processing we'll add in the intro add the extra we'll post it on different sites we'll do the you know the description and all those that happen so that you can see the end product we oftentimes don't really think about it because to your point is kind of like the amazon prime hey i i expect two days shipping i don't know how it happens or even one day's shipping sometimes now i don't know how it happens but it gets done and i get frustrated when it doesn't happen because i've been promised something they didn't deliver on so i think when that with that idea you know operations can have a big impact because you get a lot of customers you work a ton on the front end on marketing and sales to get them in the door but if they don't have a good experience if things don't happen if they're not delivered on it doesn't matter how good of a sales team you are you have to have both sides of that coin that is that is perfect and i love the fact that you mentioned the word promise because that's another way that i define the difference between marketing versus operations so marketing is all about what is that promise your promise is to provide a podcast for example every week you know and then operations is how you actually deliver on that promise so to your point what are all there's so much that goes on behind the scenes and putting together a show and but people just listen they just know okay i subscribed to the inventive journey and i know when to expect a new episode but they have no idea what's going on the things that you have to do to to to find to book guests you know collecting headshots creating custom cover artwork all of those different things that go into creating a great listening experience no i i definitely agree with you and so it's interesting so now now shifting gears just a bit on that so let's say okay so somebody's listening or they're starting some business and say okay you convinced me you know my front end is great we do a lot of great marketing but our back end is it's horrible or you know it could be improved or it's disorganized which happens you know a lot of times especially to start for small business you're oftentimes running it you know running as quick as you can to get the income in to grow it you don't often you kind of mix things together you duct tape it together such that yes it gets out but there isn't a lot of operations or a lot of forethought that goes into that if that's the case you know how do you start to define or identify how to fix or make your improve your operations or what should there be those operations is it do i go hire a ceo and have somebody else just offload it and take over for me is or should i be doing it myself or how do i tackle it or if i don't have the money to hire a ceo or someone to manage that kind of how do you go about tackling that or figuring out how to start improving or fixing your operations it all starts with asking a simple question what work needs to be done and believe it or not devin from there that's the answer to that question can literally set the foundation for creating what i call business infrastructure when you mention hiring a co some of your listeners may not have the funding for a co maybe not even a fractional co suffice it to say that many of us as as the entrepreneur we are the visionaries we're we're thinking at that 50 000 foot level right and some of us don't have that ability to get into the weeds to get onto the ground level roll up our sleeves make sure that everything is documented every eye is dotted and every t is crossed if you know that that is not in your wheelhouse definitely get with someone who is maybe you might have to consider bringing on a partner if you can't necessarily afford to pay to your point for someone to function as a chief operations officer or if you maybe you might even get an office manager sometimes a really good executive assistant possesses those skills the point is get as much information out of your head and onto quote unquote paper because until you start to document things you cannot have a baseline or it would be very difficult to figure out what your baseline is so that you can know what and where and how to improve so now and i think that's great i do think you know a lot of times even just an executive if if to your point you can't afford a you know a fractional co or a ceo or you don't you know what wherever position you're at you're saying you know good executive system that even keeps you organized keep things moving can oftentimes help to fill that role at least initially as you grow and get bigger so now let's say okay so now i got i i get my you know i first of all you convince me i need to get my operations in order second of all i go and hire my administrative assistant or my fractional ceo or if we have the money the full co you know what is now the steps because there's a lot of things that go you know take is and i'll just take the law firm as an example because it's an easy one i can make there's a lot of things that go into it it's everything from client generation finding new clients getting new clients making sure that their process is good making sure everything gets get things filed on time making sure the quality is good making sure that you know everybody's doing what they're supposed to getting billing out getting invoices paid getting payroll and i can go on and on and that's really what i've described as almost any business and that's a lot of the operations and you can't necessarily tackle it all at once or you get overwhelmed in the sense if i tried to go and improve every one of those systems all on the same day i just want to stop because there's no way i could accomplish it no matter how many even no matter how many people i have on board it's just not it's not going to be possible do good so how do you start to identify which portions of your operations are most critical or the ones to focus on first that will have the biggest impact well even i would say before we even get to the point of improving because so many people like to just jump right into that first documented so remember how i was i mentioned the question what work needs to be done that's so critical because your answer to that identifies or helps to identify every single task or activity to perform in your company no matter how mundane or how complex so even if it's checking the physical mailbox and and distributing mail is something that's relatively mundane compared to something more complex is actually helping one of your clients file a patent application but you want the idea is you want to get again all of that information out of your head and and who whoever else you have on your team get the information out of each other's heads onto paper once you understand all of those tasks that are involved the next step that i recommend is to group those tasks into departments most of us small businesses we don't if we ask if we're asked the question what does your company look like on the inside we're unable to answer that question so before you can even start talking talking about processes what does this company look like does it have a legal department accounting marketing i.t hr operations those are some of the basic things and then you can start to figure out now that you know your departments the tasks to perform in each department who are the ideal people or resources to perform these different tasks not you even though you may be doing a lot of things current day current state it doesn't mean that you ideally should be performing those tasks and that a year three five years from now you shouldn't be performing those tasks then you're in a position to figure out which processes need to be documented within each department the reason that's so powerful is because what i always recommend doing next devin is creating what i call an inventory it could just be a simple table in microsoft word it could be a spreadsheet sheet that you could create but you might have a tab for example for every single one of those departments that you've identified in your company with a listing of every process to document and then you and your team get together and say where is the lowest hanging fruit which processes if you if you could identify the top three which we know that we want to improve all of them but we can't to your point we can't do it all at the same time but what are the top three where if we were to improve these top three processes over the next 90 days it would significantly impact our bottom line in a very positive way that's an approach that i would use you know go through the rigor of figuring out what what work to needs to be performed how to group that work into departments and then ultimately processes then prioritize those processes tackle the top three first and then from there just kind of put the rest on a schedule no not like that because that's kind of even even when i get into you know intellectual property which i think there's a bit of overlap it's kind of the same thing as you can oftentimes you know you have patents and trademarks and copyrights and business formations a lot of things to tackle and as much as you want to get it all done you know at once or all the same time because they you know especially if you're type a personality or a bidding or 10 of you're a startup or an entrepreneur you know type oriented you want to get it all done and you want to get all done now and yet you're going to burn yourself out you're not going and even if you try to get all done now you're probably going to end up cutting corners and not getting it done as well as you should because you're trying to tackle so i like the kind of let's do it figure out first of all what are the departments what are the areas break it up get it on paper and then choose those kind of those top areas that are going to be most impactful the business and the other thing that i think the people oftentimes overlook is a lot of times where you should do it is what's going to drive the biggest roi or return on investment meaning you know let's see okay we have 20 different tasks and they're all going to be important but some of them are going to improve the our customer experience some of them are going to make it so we're on time better so we ship more quickly so we get better quality in whatever the areas you're lacking let's do that because it will have the biggest impact on your business and then those other ones that you still want to really get to but aren't as impactful then let's move those down on the list until you have the ability to get to them absolutely absolutely and i if if it's okay you know i if i could just share really quickly in my book so that's what i just described as part of a framework that i've created speaking of the inventive journey that's that's a framework that i invented back in 2008 and it's it works every single time devin regardless of industry regardless of well i will say this it tends to work better for established companies because when you're a startup you're still trying to figure things out you don't know what you don't know but once you've been in business for at least two to three years you've kind of started to work out a routine for yourself even though you still may be figuring a lot of things out i think you're just in a better position to be able to identify processes that that need to be documented but the name of my book is called behind the facade how to structure company operations for sustainable success and so it literally tells you step by step how to do some of the things that you and i have been talking about so far awesome no i i definitely i'd encourage people to check the book out to get in for more information because we're starting to wrap towards the end the podcast and there's always so many more things i want to talk about than we ever have time but that does give us a good transition to we'll we'll jump to the last question and then we'll chat a little bit about that um as we start to wrap things up which is a question i always ask at the end of each expert episode is if you're talking to someone that's you know in just kidding whether it's bootstrapping just getting in a startup just getting going and you know there's a whole bunch of things that we covered a lot of things we talked about a lot of things in your book they can only choose one thing if you say hey if you if nothing else walk away do this one thing to get your operations in better order and better plays what would be that one takeaway or one thing they should get started on i so i i would say buy my book but but if i could recommend a technology if that's okay so there's a tool that i my team and i recently discovered as of a few months ago called notion n-o-t-i-o-n dot ion.so if you're looking for a a creative quick way to store and and capture your processes look into that tool it's basically a wiki that unlike dropbox or google drive yes you can document all of these things devin it but what i find is that when you're using some of these platforms even sharepoint or you know again google drive evernote and things tools like that they're great because it's stored in the cloud notion is also a cloud and web-based app but it gives you the benefit of being able to see everything and not have information hidden in folders and you can quickly search for things so i definitely encourage your listeners go and check out that that website sign up for a free trial play around with it see if you like it because it it could really revolutionize the way that you capture and store and share your information awesome well i definitely encourage people to check that out i always like tools that we can use because uh if you find the right tools it can make life a lot easier so you already hit on a bit with the the book but if people are wanting to reach out to they want to be a new client a new customer they want to be an employee of your team they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any role of the above what's the best way to reach out to your find out more i welcome all of you above uh the best way honestly is to connect with me through my personal website and that is alicia butler pierre.com so that's a l i c i a b u t l e r p i e r r e dot com and when you're there it's like a hub for everything that i have going on so if you want to find out more information about the book you can do that you can find out about my podcast the business infrastructure podcast as well as my consulting firm equilibria and there's links to all of my social media profiles there as well awesome well i definitely encourage people to check out check out the website check out everything alicia has going on plenty of good information a lot of things to connect up on so well as we wrap up thank you again for coming on the podcast now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own expertise to share or your own journey to share feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as listeners one uh 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 new people can find out about us last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business reach out to us at millerip law just go to strategymeeting.com thank you again alicia it's been fun it's been a pleasure appreciate you coming on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last oh thank you so much devon i really appreciate it

Be Sure Of Yourself

ONeil Mbakwe
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/16/2021

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

be sure of yourself and reframe your thinking to where it's not trial and error but it's trial and inevitable success once you have your focus on what you're doing in your goals and your goal for your business or your startup that conviction will allow you to see whatever error or mistake you make along the road as a lesson to be learned towards that inevitable success so i would just have when if i was speaking to someone i would just let them know that everything is trial and inevitable success there is no errors there is no mistakes only lessons to be learned so keep progressing and don't expect perfection [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 into seven and eight figure businesses as well as a ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and train marks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast o'neil mcbuckway if i can say this that's as close as i'm going to get to it but o'neil i grew up in dallas texas and went to baylor university and got a mechanical engineering and went into and also in the pre-med i think it was in the third year of school dropped out of pre-med because he found out he wasn't passionate about it i realized he liked the analytic analytics more than medicine so graduated in 2018 winton works for i think samsung for microprocessors uh was there for a couple years um or when he graduated he kind of knew that uh nine to five or serves a purpose or wasn't his long time our goal so with that began to do real estate investing also found some mentors including his aunt that helped to get into that started on the whole sites or wholesale side wasn't as passionate about the wholesale side but it gave him some good experience after doing wholesale for a couple site or a couple years shifted over to uh rentals and uh or to hold rentals make money off of those and also has gotten into a little bit into podcasting so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast thanks for having me devin thanks for having me so i gave this kind of the brief run through of a much longer journey and i condensed into 30 seconds so let's go back a little bit in time to growing up in dallas and going to baylor university and how your journey started there yeah so i was born in dallas texas specifically carpel i was raised with four of my siblings and growing up it was always i was always interested in how money works you know how people make money and how people accumulate and save and invest so from a young age i could just remember myself anytime i would make money i would literally save it or just take care of it like it was a child like literally i would be ironing it and just being so fascinated with how money works uh so that really was the starting phase of me being interested in entrepreneur entrepreneurship and just making something for myself now i had the opportunity to go to school in nigeria for about two and a half years from middle school to the beginning of high school and that gave me the opportunity first of all to get a different perspective on culture and how different societies work but it also gave me uh it made me grateful for what i was leaving when i arrived in nigeria when i came back from nigeria my mindset was like all right everything that is here can't be taken for granted so i'm just gonna do what i can to the best of my ability and proceed from there so moving with that mindset i was able to graduate from high school uh went to school uh university at baylor university and started off with mechanical engineering with a pre-med discipline and the reason i did that was just because growing up in my household it was either you're a doctor an engineer a lawyer or we'll have to talk about that later [Laughter] but i couldn't choose between premed and mechanical engineering so i chose to do both fast forward to my third year in baylor at baylor i decided to drop pre-med because as you said i had no passion for it and that in that stage it started making sense that all right i need to gather what my passions are and move forward because i was already a senior in college i was getting ready to graduate and move into the the real world um so i graduated in 2018 with a degree in mechanical engineering and i was able to get a job at samsung austin semiconductor so that's why i am currently right now working as a mechanical engineer where i do a bunch of data analysis troubleshoot equipment and just make sure the manufacturing process of semi prop semiconductor chips is completed uh successfully and efficiently um now before i started working now one question just out of or yeah i come back just a bit into your journey and we'll get into samsung but as you're going through you know you know it's going through school you know you get into pre-men you know and you kind of you know mentioned that you know and there's a lot of a lot of different families that hey you know a doctor a a lawyer an attorney a dentist you know some of those you know traditional professionals or what you know kind of having vision for their kids because it has the appearance of success and so that's oftentimes where it's pushed but now as you get in there how did you kind of when you just when you figured out hey pre-med is probably not for me it's not what excites me it's not what drives me or makes me you know excited to get up in the morning how did you to kind of decide where to go or kind of what to go into at that point yes so when i decided that i didn't wanted to continue with pre-med um i was already like pretty far ahead in my college career so i either could re re-direct what my whole degree was and stay a bit longer or just graduate with my degree in mechanical engineering but that was my decision in just letting go of pre-med and just finishing off with a mechanical engineering degree with not going forward with pre-med it was all of a matter of time i felt like a lot of time would be committed to something that i wasn't very passionate about and yeah i can make a lot of money or i can make a good income as a doctor and have a good reputation but i'm understanding that there's more ways than that you know there's more ways than just going to pre-med getting a high paying salary and then living a life like you can be fulfilled in what you're actually passionate about and have that pay you as well so why not take the time to do it while i'm at this age and by the time i would have graduated to be a doctor which was probably 32 now you know when i'm 32 in seven years who's to say i won't be doing what i want and making money off of it that's right no that definitely makes sense so now you graduated 2000 you know made that shift graduated 2018 and then as you mentioned you went into um sam you went to work for samsung did some microprocessors and you've been there for a couple years now you also mentioned in addition to that you're saying hey you know nine to five serves its purpose it's not necessarily long-term goals still want to do my own thing want to be able to continue to grow and expand and you know be able to have some control and be able to do that so how did that you know i get was that always a plan when you graduated hey i'm going to work the nine to five it serves its purpose but i also have long-term goals was that kind of something you knew coming out of school was it something you figured out as you're working or kind of how did how did that uh factor into your journey yeah yeah that's a great question so when i graduated and then knew that i was going to be working nine to five at first i wasn't in the mindset that it's serving its purpose i was in the mindset of i need to hurry up and get out of here like this sucks you know i hate having a boss i didn't i haven't even had a boss yet and i was like i hate having a boss just because you know it's what i heard around me but when i was able to sit in the position that i was in and see everything that's come of it it made me understand that it's serving its purpose and let me embrace it and continue to let it serve its purpose until i move to the next thing and with having a 95 it's also given me the opportunity to dive into other things especially real estate that's been something that has been embedded in my mind for a couple years now due to my aunt who's a real estate investor and real estate is a great way to build wealth right so what i started to do while i was off my 9 to 5 was wholesale and basically what wholesaling is what is you get a property under contract and you sell that contract to an end buyer or investor and you make a spread off of it so in my journey with wholesaling while working at nine to five i was able to one find mentors who helped me and uplift my real estate iq and two i was able to make additional income from my nine to five and three it allowed me to save enough money to put a payment on my first investment property and uh just going through different stages in my entrepreneurial journey i understand that everything is serving its purpose like having a job giving me income serving its purpose because it allows me to venture off into other things that i'm truly interested in so so now so now you have kind of that hey you know figure out certain or that serves a purpose you know that you know you can continue the nine to five chase your dreams kind of do one as you know it's always kind of you know people say it's a side hustle i always look at it it's really more of a second full-time job because it's as much work or more work to do the side hustle or the as it is to do the full-time job but you get into that and you started out i think you said and wholesaling of um of real estate and then transitioned over more into the rental business is that right yes yes yeah um so maybe what made you decide you know what made you decide again to get into wholesale and then what uh what what caused the transition over into the um the rental business yeah so what caused me to get into wholesaling was i felt like it was the easiest way for me to transition into the real estate industry and it allowed me to learn more about real estate and it forced me out of my comfort zone to where i was now making calls every day to both sellers and new investors and in doing that it allowed me to expand my network of real estate investors and some of those relationships are still being nurtured today and still being still being in effect today so with wholesaling it's allowed me to first learn a lot about real estate see different aspects of real estate like multi-family and rentals and industrial and three learn how to network and to maintain a network um so now so now you know and i think that definitely makes sense to kind of say one is i think it seems like it's there's kind of a common thread throughout a lot of your journey of hey i'm going to get the experience or you know experience in different areas whether it's a nine to five or gives me a bit of financial basis gives me some experience out in the working world as well as it allows me to you then pursue you know some of the other things and passions and dreams so then you do that for a period of time with also getting into real estate and say okay wholesale may not be where i want to be in the end but it gives me the opportunity to get some experience and again kind of build on top of that and then you get into the the into the rental side of the business so um and then i think he also mentioned kind of in addition to that you're starting to get into a bit of podcasting is that right yeah yeah i am so that started at the end of last year i'm always i'm always a fan of like using my voice for creativity for information and education and having a podcast allowed me to have a little outlet you know there's a podcast that i have called master of one and it basically talks about my journey about what i'm going through and how though i juggle and balance different things at the end of the day i'm the master of one which is myself so everything i'm doing is in my hands and everything is my choice um initially it was just for you know my legacy you know one day i'll pass and it'll be for my grandkids or whatever and then someone from brazil just hit me up and was just like thank you so much for what you're doing i've been listening to your podcast for some time from now and it let me know that it was more than just me that i'm not the only one who thinks this way so i need to continue working to expand and scale and reach the people who it needs to reach well cool awesome well now now that we've kind of caught up to where you're at and as far as today now looking kind of to the next six to twelve months where do you think that you're see things headed are you gonna continue to kind of do the side hustle with real estate or the second full-time job and work with samsung do you want to move into real estate full-time do you want to move into podcasting full-time or are you looking to get experience in these areas and go to different directions so kind of close into what's the next six to 12 months look like for you yeah so the next six to 12 months for me seemed to be more towards my podcast and my real estate um in terms of my podcast i would like to i'm intending to have more guests and actually being in a setting where the guest is in the room with me you know sort of like a ellen degeneres or uh oprah winfrey kind of scene um just to have things more intimate and connect with the user the the fan base and the audience uh better in terms of my real estate journey right now i'm actively just analyzing different multi-family properties in austin and san antonio and waco and just looking for my next position where i'd want to invest in so everything is a continuous process that i go through every day it's just being consistent and continuing to do it oh cool well that's certainly exciting and uh and sounds like a fun uh fun path ahead so now as we've kind of caught up to where you're at today a little bit looking into the future as a i always uh transition over and ask a couple questions at the end of these podcasts we'll kind of dive 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 uh yeah i already know which one that that stung a little bit uh the worst decision business decision i ever made was during the time i was wholesaling there was a house that i had under contract that was probably going to be one of my big my big biggest deals at the time and it required me to do a lot of research make a lot of calls a lot of digging to find out um more about the deed of the property what it was truly going through and i realized that it was um had had gone through like a lawsuit or something like that so i reached out to the lawyer who i won't mention his name um just to see if i can get some more information about the home because i was looking to sell it and what after i went to the lawyer he was basically like you know what i can do this myself um you can stay out of this and i was like but i've already done all this work and he was like all right it's whatever this is this is business so he ended up taking taking the home back and um just putting himself in position to sell the home himself and it just allowed me to realize that as much as you want to trust everyone that you have to be cautious and you have to move with caution in terms of how you do business and the decisions you make in your business now caution doesn't mean fear it doesn't mean um to be fearful of your decisions it just means to truly think about every angle and decision that you're making so that was the lesson i learned from um one of my worst decisions well i think that that's uh it's an interesting one because you know it's not one that you're saying oh i've done all this homework i've done all of this and it's you know if part of a bit of the the takeaways you know you have to as you get in the business world you always you know and i'm this absolutely the same way you know you have the hey everybody's trustworthy everybody will do a good job everybody will be you know you know treat me fairly and some and most people do and i'd say the vast majority do you always have to and that's kind of whenever somebody asked me hey you know should i get an nda should i go disclose this to individuals my always my first thing is well you need to gauge the whether or not you're able or you know your level of trust or your level of risk when you're talking with this individual if it's someone that you know that you can discuss things with and discuss them openly have a high level of uh trust with them that's one thing and if not then you want to make sure to adjust how you what conversation you have and what you discuss with them based on your level of trust with them so i think it was definitely a a mistake to learn from and then one that's definitely understandable so now as we dive into the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i would tell them to be sure of yourself and reframe your thinking to where it's not trial and error but it's trial and inevitable success once you have your focus on what you're doing in your goals and your goal for your business or your startup that conviction will allow you to see whatever error or mistake you make along the road as a lesson to be learned towards that inevitable success so i would just have when if i was speaking to someone i would just let them know that everything is trial and inevitable success there is no errors there is no mistakes only lessons to be learned so keep progressing and don't expect perfection no and i like that because i think the one of the differences between somebody that's successful as an entrepreneur as a startup or a small business versus those that don't make it you know there's certainly something that goes into do you have a good idea do you have you know good you know good business plan everything else but i think those that are willing to have the mind frame of inevita you know at some point i'm going to be successful i got to keep at it got to gain the experience kind of learn the things got to learn what to do what not to do and keep at it those are the ones that are eventually will find the success and those that hey i tried this for a week and it didn't work out and i didn't i you know i put up a website and i put some facebook ads and i'm not a millionaire yet kind of a thing is not though there are the individuals that are never going to find that success because they're not the ones that are going to say hey when i hit that first road bomb i'm going to i'm not go i'm going to say well looks like i failed and then go back to it so i think that that's a great takeaway from everybody yeah 100 well if people want to reach out to you they want to be a client or customer and you're in a rental space they want to be on your podcast they want to be an investor in any of your businesses they want to um you know be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach you up contact you or find out more uh the best way to reach out to me is through linkedin uh just o'neil bockway o n e i l m is mary b as in boy a k w e and there should only be one of me so it should be too hard to find all right well i i certainly can't say that with my name so that's a great one one of or the only one with the name so that's awesome well awesome well i appreciate you coming on o'neil it's been fun it's been a pleasure to have you on 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 feel free to apply to be on the show just go to inventiveguest.com and and apply two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people 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 uh go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help well thanks again o'neal and uh wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devon take care you

Get Out Of Your Way

Sandra DeMaria
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/15/2021

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

get out of your way because when i get out of my way and i actually open myself up like i have a business coach we use now and i actually open myself up to allowing someone else to give me some advice and say hey sandra this like you really need to go down this route like hold back on this do this it really opens me up for great things to happen and i mean that's really what's been happening now for us with tidy spaces is like when i get out of the way all these things start to happen and it's unbelievable [Music] hey 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 ceo and founder 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 and we're always here to help now today we have another great uh guest on the podcast sandra de meria maria maria maria i i was like oh i'm gonna slaughter this i was close with that you were a class so um we'll just go by sandra then then i'll make sure to do it but uh give you a quick introduction to sandra so i didn't go to college right away i wanted to go into uh the olympics with horses which sounds really interesting um and then kind of things fell through with the horses didn't quite end up working out so then end up going off to university i went to the north carolina got a degree i think it was in germany german and psychology if i remember right and then went into sales started out i think with copiers and then got into pharmaceutical cells and then biotech and then took a bit of time off to figure out what she wanted to do after doing sales for a period of time started a company helping public speakers booking gigs and kind of started that business with a few other partners and then those some of those partners fell through closed that business after a few years and then went into more of the event venue business with another or helping other businesses um did that for a couple years as well and they decided to go out and do her own thing or that which is what leads her where she's at today which is with the tidy spaces and she'll get into a little bit more about what that is and and how that's going so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast andrea thank you so much for having me i'm so excited to be here so now i have to ask just because i messed up on the last name is it sandra or sandra which one do you prefer sandra is what i prefer i will answer to either hey i got it right the first time but i'm like you definitely got that right definitely got that right so i gave kind of a brief run through of your of your journey but let's go back a bit in time to where you were going to your plan was to do uh horses in the olympics so tell us a little bit about that now your journey got started yeah so i rode horses uh since i was seven years old it was just my passion and my love um when i was in high school i had a horse that was definitely olympic material and that was kind of our goal our plan and i graduated high school in 1992 and instead of going away to college i took three four years off to try out for the olympic team um and unfortunately it you know it didn't work out i gave it my best um things don't always work out as planned and because i was a good student i made straight a's you know there was this i had um other adults that i rode with that were doctors lawyers teachers and they were like sandra you can always come back to horses they'll always be here but go to school get a degree because you got to have a trade to fall back on because very few people make it in the horse industry it's an extremely expensive sport it's a very risky sport i've had several friends with major injuries that have not been able to come back and it's like one percent of the people really do it to make a living i mean the people that like do the racehorses and own them they're making millions but that's a whole different sport than what i did i did three day eventing um so i decided to go to school and go i got a degree actually in biology and really quick so what is for those that don't know myself included what is three day eventing with horses or what were you going to do in the olympics with horses i i i'll plead my ignorance i didn't even honestly know that horses were in the olympics i'm more than curious as to what what you do with horses in the olympics well on the olympics they always keep the equestrian like 200 miles from the action because especially you need a lot of room for them you need places to board them and then you need all the arenas to show them in so three-day venting it was it's basically like a triathlon for horses the first phase is dressage it's your basics it's flat work the second phase is cross country which tests their their endurance and speed and your bravery because you're like running around the field with your pants on fire jumping like like these huge things it's crazy but it's fun and then the third phase is stadium jumping so that's a lot of people are familiar with show jumpers that's kind of like a smaller version of that um so it it it's tough and um it usually takes place over three days hence it's called three-day eventing so that's all right interesting i just was curious and it's it's it shows a bit of an ignorance my wife isn't doing the olympics a lot more than i am so she'll probably tell me how how i should have known this but i appreciate it so now that that fell through and you went off to college and you started insane you got german in psychology is that right biology biology isis it's the science of biology fair enough so once you got those now how did as you're coming out of school how did you take german and biology and get into sales so um i always wanted to be in science that was my science and math were my two favorite subjects in school and i really was going down a pre-vet or a pre-med route and i worked at a country club during college i went to coastal carolina small private school down there in conway south carolina and i worked with all these doctors and after talking to them they're like don't go to medical school they're like the amount of malpractice like you know they're filling me in on all this stuff and a lot of them have already been sued like three times and they're like unless you go into a specialty the money's not there anymore like you should have heard them they all would have done it differently and i'm like really and so they're like you need to go sell pharmaceuticals you have the right personality you're such a good sales person you're smart enough you'll learn all the you know the pharmacology stuff and they like you'd be foolish because you'll make great money you'll have a life you won't get food you'll have your weekends off like you shouldn't lawyers they ruin everything so i basically um you know i started having second guesses about do i really want to be a doctor this that and the other and i kind of went and talked to other people in other careers and you know that did sales that did different things and i just realized that this was something i really really wanted to do and like because the thing about going to medical school it's a commitment and it's a ton of money you can't do it halfway and if you have any little bit holding you back like that to get into that kind of student loans and that kind of you know you're talking i mean most people i know that did medical school it's a half million dollars or more they're paying back it's ridiculous so i was like well i can always go back to medical school it's not that hard to you know apply and try to get in so i decided um i came back to greenville south carolina and went to a job fair i talked to a couple of pharmaceutical companies and they were like well you have no business to business sales experience when you do that for two years come back and talk to us and i'm like well what do i need to do and they're like either go sell cars cell phones or copiers so at their job fair was a company called at that time it was called quality business systems they sold digital systems basically copiers and um i went for an interview and got hired on the spot and that's really how it all got started and um the guy that hired me is still my mentor and friend today and i was that was back in that was 21 years ago 2000 but and i like the point of the er it was a small point of the story which is they said go sell one of these three scenes he said he took that literally okay all pick copiers just it was there and i was like how hard can this be to land the stuff and it and it's it's hysterical because i go in for this interview and i'm thinking you know this like i'm looking at all these other people around me and i don't even think they care i had a college degree they asked me a couple questions i don't even remember what it was um you know i that that's a that was so long ago but they just like we're looking for somebody and i remember my boss told me this years ago um he said you just had this hustle about you you had something like about like an edge about you and i just knew that if people told you no you weren't gonna care and he's and he's like and i knew nothing about sales nothing about the process nothing about copiers i mean if i could plug it in we were doing good um and so that's how my sales career got started and to this day i still use some of the things i learned from that job which is just unbelievable you know when you think back 21 years ago it's like oh my god i still do some of the stuff that bill taught me um and i'm so great his name is bill canamere he has a company in charlotte and he's just so great and i'm so grateful for everything he taught me years ago and um and he's a really great person and um has done very well for himself so yeah so so you do that now for a period of time now what made you you got it you did copiers and then then did you get and then i think if i remember right you did get into pharmaceutical sales is that right yeah i did copiers for two years and i mean it really was a great way to find out if you're made for sales because it's a ton of rejection you have to and this was back when cold calling knocking on doors was how you did it now it's so different and i mean literally i would just go in and be like hey do you want a copier i knew nothing i had no skills nothing but they but he taught me and trained me everything i needed to know and all i did was i had the hustle and the grind and the grit that a lot of people don't have it was something he couldn't teach and i would just set up these appointments and demos and then i'd bring him in and he did his thing and i don't even know how we got what we got eventually i learned what i was doing but the first few months i just was like i set seven appointments for tomorrow and he's like great let's just and a couple of them were like bogus he's like why why do you have me in here i'm like i don't know they said they wanted a copier like you know what else are you coming if they said they wanted to buy it that's what i was told to do so but then like over time he finessed me and i got a skill set and i it got to where i didn't need him i could go close my own deals do my all my own paperwork but it was a lot of fun it was hard because the money like we got nothing for a salary it was the commissions you made the money on and then while i was working for him i had a pharmaceutical company at that time it was um a contract company called cardinal health and they hi they did an interview with me i actually went and met the boss the manager for lunch um bill paisley unfortunately he passed away this past year um and he called me up and he's like i like you i will have we're like relaunching a product we're gonna have a couple new territories i will have a job for you in two to three months and i was like okay he's like just chill out and hang doing what you're doing don't take any other offers and i had other i had two other people that knew this manager they're like yeah he wants to hire you you're good and three weeks later he called me and said somebody just left the company the territory is an hour away from you but you can at least get started with us we can get your training going and i got in with cardinal health they got bought from a company called bar laboratories and then bar laboratories later on down in through the years got bought from teva pharmaceuticals teva is still in business today i believe they are the top producer of all generics i mean what are they like a six seven billion dollar company um they're big and we i did all women's health called on ob gyns so now he did pharmaceutical sales for a while and he went back and forth between a couple of the the various companies now once you got you know then i think after that you took a break before doing public speaking and helping others to do public speaking or tell us a little bit what made you decide to take a break you know so you did you got the degree and then you said okay sales is the path to go then you went and sold copiers got the experience then you got into pharmaceuticals which is what you were shooting for what made you decide to you know go a different direction and take that break and uh and then eventually get more into helping people do public speaking or book public speaking goods yeah so gigs yeah so i did pharma and then i did a biotech for about two years after and so i did a total with all that about 12 plus years and at the end of it unfortunately i'm probably in trouble for saying this you know these pharma companies they're very greedy um you have you know it got very over inundated with sales people you had all these pods and you know the way they they had too many people selling the same product and it's a lot of money they're spending but they're also spending a ton of money in on drug and research and um and samples and all of that and it got very unethical like i had a manager one of my last managers that i worked for um i mean he's a nice guy but he just wasn't for me he was a bully and he wanted you to sell off label with which the fda and the department of justice would not be okay with and you know they're threatening your job they're threatening you like you need to do this or you're not going to have a job now i was in the top five percent of my company for about four years straight i was always at 123 of my sales i was untouchable so i of course pushed the envelope like i'd talk not talk back to him but i'm like no i'm not going to do that because it's not legal it's not ethical and that's not okay like you cannot sell a product off label that is so wrong on so many levels um i don't know if anybody saw that movie love and other drugs that was written by an actual farm farmer rep for eli lilly and there's things that happen in that movie and of course it's hollywood based so things are taken over the top but there are some things in there that yeah you really can't do like that's not okay so they had we had like a lot of layoffs going on like something like a 60 layoff and i just called the company and said um if you're looking for volunteers i'm ready to go because i was done i i literally i believed enough in myself to know i could find another job i could do something else and there was always other opportunities out there and i don't need this i don't need to be bullied and threatened and you know i want to sleep well at night and feel like i'm doing something for others and putting something out there that's worthwhile and i just i was done um and so they call us one day and let us go and everybody else is crying i'm drinking lunch i mean i'm like hey let's go have a cocktail because there's something else out there and i think that's what people forget is what their worth is and they get sucked into like my boss tells me i'm this and that's all i can do so um i then took about sorry i took pride i ended up taking about two years off i traveled i did i had fun um i turned 40 had a big party um and then i realized well maybe i should go back to work and do something so i just started thinking about what i like to do and i met um i met this girl through you know at that time it was all the meetups the networking events and i met um this girl named michelle who we just started talking and i had a concept about helping speakers find gigs because i had a couple friends that were speakers and they always struggled finding paid gigs and what it is is they were really good at speaking they just weren't good at selling themselves and i'm like oh you just need somebody to sell you i can do that how hard can that be and so through that we started this company called icubed agency which stands for um influence inspire impact and we met some other people we ended up having five partners which probably wasn't the smartest thing but you know it was a good learning experience so we got into this with five people and unfortunately i think three of them really wanted to start getting paid within three months of the business starting and you know as an entrepreneur and these startups you don't always as the owner you don't always get paid right away sometimes you do but i think it just depends and it's really hard when you have five people that are running this business and only one of us right here was the only one out there selling and they're all like well why aren't we getting paid and i'm like well go out and sell something and maybe you will like i mean we all have to kind of contribute and wear multiple hats so that's how i got into that um and it was it was a lot of fun we had a lot of really interesting speakers some really good some needed work but we set it up where they just paid us a percentage of like what they got paid um and we also ended up doing some um conferences one was an anti-bullying conference that we didn't do any marketing we didn't know what we were doing we really didn't and um we somehow had 400 people show up for this thing with minimal everything but it turned out to be a lot of fun and it was for pre-teens and teens a ton of kids showed up and got a lot out of it and it was amazing the stories that were shared um the different people that came to speak a lot of people wrote books about bullying that came and talked to these kids and it was a great experience and it's something like it's one of those things that i would love to get back into something like that down the road because it was such a good thing to do for the local community for the kids and it was something that you could offer in a lot of cities all over this country that could be very beneficial um because bullying is really different from where it was when we were kids so i really enjoyed that and i'd love to get into something like that again down the road well it's cool now it sounds like a fun business sounds like you know always some trade-offs with partners and you know if everybody pulls their own weight and everybody feels like they're contributing and inevitably my experience is that you'll always have some that pull or put or pull more weight than others and contribute more and how everybody views it so it's always a bit of a juggle so now you did that for a couple years and then you i think you transitioned or moved into doing a event venues business with another business or with other businesses is that right yes so while i had i cubed agency going i had a company reach out to me that had just it was a catering company um and they had just purchased or rented an event venue and they were having a hard time getting people to you know rent it out they're like we don't know really what to do with the space and i can't remember how i met them it was probably at some event or something and i talked to the owners and they did a quick interview with me and i said well i'll come in part time and give you about 20 25 hours a week this is what i can do that lasted about a month maybe two months and then they're like we want you full time um and i said okay i said well you know if i do it this is the i want to work from home like you know i had a haul on my list of stuff and they worked with me they were really fair well then about halfway into 2016 it was around the summer the owner approached me to take over the company he goes i have a lot of problems and i'm like you think he had people running people that were in charge of me that should have never been in charge they had no business they didn't know anything about running a business they had no standard operating procedures it was like they were a really good bartender and they were made sales director with no edu no formal education nothing it was just and he couldn't understand why i wasn't making money and i'm like well because you have somebody sitting there selling your wedding venue to people who can't afford it and instead of her saying we're not the right fit she's just discounting things across the board even discounting labor labor is one of the most expensive things in that industry you don't discount it and he went making money he was having a lot of problems so basically he approached me and said you have everything i'm looking for in a leader you're exactly what i want i need you to take over this and i was like no he approached he approached me like six times i'm like no no no no i don't want to do this this is a ridiculous hours i'm gonna work like there's a lot of problems here i don't want to take it over so then he finally said i have to do something you have to help me and i said okay we're in september of 2016 we got about three four months less to the end of the year i'll fill in while you interview and find the right person but that's it and i need a raise so he gives me a raise i took over and i had a meeting with them december of 2016 and i'm like hey have you found anybody what's going on no we really like you and want you to stay what do we have to do to keep you and he said can you show me what you were paid with pharma and all that so i pulled out some old offer letters and i said don't pass out because i mean he's he's a small business he's a three million dollar company he's not going to be able to afford what i got with pharma so he looked at it he goes i can't afford this i'm like i know you can't and i'm not going to ask you to do that because you would end up bankrupt i said but what you can is this and i wrote some stuff down that i wanted we agreed on most of it we had i mean it was some negotiation and so i said okay i will take over on one condition i have to let go about 70 percent of the people that currently work for you on the catering and the event venue and you need to let me hire who i need to hire and you need to invest some money you're to pay a little more in your salary to get the right people in here and um don't call me up and complain about it i need six months to get this where it needs to be for you and um basically don't bother me and yell at me that i'm costing you money and his wife thank god for her she was amazing she got it she was very progressive thinking she understood what i was trying to do she saw the writing on the wall and she totally backed me up and if i couldn't get it from him i got it from her if it was something i needed and within six months he was only making about sixty dollars a person when he did a wedding this was the venue the catering the bar everything within six months he was making over 150 a person because i changed up how we did it i put in a contract i mean i researched contracts i called his attorney to have them help me drop i would like write up a contract send it to them to make sure it's legal because you know they make it all fancy with the big words you know that um and that was it we turned it around and i did that until april of 2019. now what made you decide on uh on april 2019 to kind of you know after putting in a whole bunch of effort building the business turning it around what made you decide okay i want to go do my own thing um well yvette and anybody that works in the event industry whether you're a caterer you run an event venue you're an event planner a wedding planner it's a lot of hours a lot of time and you give up a lot of your personal life and i just kind of was like i'm done like i did it for almost three years um i was tired he was wanting to get out of it i knew that like he actually got out of the venue and just kept the catering business so i just sent them a nice note and said it's time for me to go i'll give you 30 days and that's it and i really had no plan everybody's like what are you going to do i'm like well i'm going to take like at least 30 days off and clear i was exhausted i mean i worked 80 to 100 hours a week and even though i was in charge i still don't work for myself i mean he was the only person i had an answer to the boss of the business but i still had an answer to someone and i just didn't want to anymore and so so yeah so you make that decision you say okay i'm gonna go do my own i'll take a little bit of time off i'll give them 30 knows give it take a little bit of time off now how did you you know decide from there to go to what you're doing i think now which is tidy spaces kind of how did you land on that and and then how has that gone since you've made that transition to be your own boss yeah so what happened was um at the same time my current business partner susan she had reached out to me we actually hadn't taught her in a few years and i met her years ago through um a retail store because her background was fashion and retail she reached out to me um she was like a regional manager for talbots and they had shut down the store in charleston and she was not in a position to move with them they wanted to move her and she reached out to me that you know she's not sure what she wants to do blah blah blah blah blah and this was right around april of 2019 and i was like hey sues i said you remember when i bought my house like you know this was like seven years ago and i had the closets custom done and you came in and organized for them and they looked amazing and you know i've stuck with every system you put into play i said how come you haven't turned that into a business like that's a great i said don't you know there's a whole national association of professional organizers out there like this is a business and it doesn't look like it's that hard to start da da da da she goes you know sandra i've thought about that because i have a couple friends that i did a few things for like i did for you but she goes sandra i really there's things about the business i don't know and i won't even know how to start a website social media like you got to be able to do all that now and that's just not my thing and i said but i know how to do that like i i could help you so we met in like later that month um at a mexican restaurant in hilton head south carolina over tacos and tequila we came up with tidy spaces the name the concept it took us about an hour to put it all together and we just had our two-year-old birthday on mother's day may 9th of 2019 we officially were llc'd and um that first year we didn't do a ton of clients we did just a few things because we were really trying to figure stuff out like do we want a website you know all these things that go with the business putting in operations a process and um we you know we just kind of came together and it was around january of 2020 we her and i talked and said okay what do we really want to do with this like are we going to do this full-time is this going to be a hobby where are we going and i was at the point where it's like well i just want to work for myself so we can definitely do something with this there's other things i want to do and we just decided okay we're going to move forward with this so we hit the streets like we got people booked we had clients signed up we were doing a ton of stuff with seniors and people like downsizing from big houses to assisted living that was kind of becoming our specialty well then what happened in march of 2020 covent do you think any senior citizen was going to let us in their house even with mask and a gl and gloves on no way we lost every client we booked from march and through april i think may june i had clients booked march through june every single client cancelled and i didn't know if i was going to get them back and we couldn't even get into like assisted living to help them get moved in things like that so we then were like okay what are we going to do and i said well we got to go virtual i said there's this you know all this zoom out there and face time we got to figure out how to do this we got to really hit social media hard we've just got to do more so we ended up hiring um three amazing young women that work for me that help us with content social media blogs things like that that are way smarter than those of us that are a little older and they're super talented and they really helped us drive that social media and you know make sure it looks good we're getting real followers not fake ones and we just then we're like we did a few virtual like like we are right now on zoom helping people organize their closets like whatever you can come up with to survive and then by end of may beginning of june we were able to start getting into people's houses and we like i did some work with a realtor um i had several realtors i did work with and we just started building and it's just kind of been a snowball effect i actually ended up coming back to south carolina because unfortunately my dad is not doing well but things here have been going really well um and you know we've had our ups and downs but overall it's great like everything that you wish for is happening and now it's to the point where i'm getting ready to hire some sales people to help with sales because susan and i are getting so busy with the jobs like you got to find that balance and you know i just put an ad out and i must have like 50 resumes to read now and i'm like oh my gosh i got to really do this all over again but this is always plenty to keep you busy but this is the fun of it like you know it's that for me it's like that drive that like like somebody says like when do you work i'm like i'm working all the time but it sometimes doesn't feel like work i don't know if that's like that for you you know i always always used to joke that you know my hobbies were startups in the sense that usually if i wasn't working and doing my business i was my mind was always thinking about the next business i did the next startup or the next day and yeah and there's always more things to talk about than time to talk about them so as we as we start to wrap towards in the podcast that kind of brings us up to where where you're at today i always have two questions that i ask at the end of each podcast so why don't we jump to those now okay 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 um so i think the worst business decision was i think probably when i was getting into the icubed agency and i think something that happened was not asking for help allowing my ego to get into the way in the way of what we were doing and not asking either my partners for help or like other people whether it was a business coach or somebody else who had done it i think that really probably was part of the downfall of that business i mean i'm glad in a way the business failed because i learned a ton from it um but i think not asking for help was the biggest mistake because i think had i like sat down and gotten some help in areas where i thought i needed or i thought i didn't need it when i really needed it i think it would have been different but i think i needed to learn that lesson so i don't know and i think that you know that one's often times as a entrepreneur or as a startup or minded individual someone you know likes to to be in charge it's always hard to step back and say hey wait a minute i don't know everything some things i need to learn i need to ask for help a lot of times there's a lot of people willing to give that help and wanting to to you know give input give feedback pitch in or whatnot but if you never ask they'll never know to help so i think that that's an easy mistake to to learn but something some def or easy mistake to to make but definitely something to learn from so now as 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'd be the one piece of advice you give them um i think and this i just recently really learned um get out of your own way i think it is i am someone that i can do anything i want when i when i am like on fire and at the top of my game but when i'm in a place where like either i'm not in agreement or i'm resisting or in the wrong mindset oh my gosh what a big chaotic mess it can be and i think i've had to learn this and i think anybody that is truly that entrepreneur who's driven and ambitious we want to control everything and do it our way just like you know the frank sinatra song i did it my way which would be my theme um but get out of your way because when i get out of my way and i actually open myself up like i have a business coach we use now and i actually open myself up to allowing someone else to give me some advice and say hey sandra this like you really need to go down this route like hold back on this do this it really opens me up for great things to happen and that i mean that's really what's been happening now for us with tidy spaces is like when i get out of the way all these things start to happen and it's unbelievable um and i'm i'm so grateful that that is a lesson i've learned i'm willing to learn it i hope i don't have to repeat it again but i might um but i think that's the biggest thing that if you want to get into this just get out of your way and and listen to others because that has truly helped me and i like that i think that that's certainly good advice and certainly something that people can take to heart as they are as they're getting their startup up and going well as we wrap up if people want to connect up with you 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 find out more um so we have a website tidyspaces.com um also i can be reached at sandra tidyspaces.com or follow us on facebook or instagram and instagram it's thetidyspaces and facebook it's tidy spaces llc we do a lot of tips and tricks and advice out there for organizing and anything to get you organized and motivated in your home or office but um we'd i'd love to hear from you feel free to reach out and i look forward to hopefully meeting some of your followers one day awesome well i definitely encourage everybody especially those that need to keep their spaces tidy which is just about everybody um to reach out find out more and then and get involved so well thank you again sandra 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com we'd love to have you on the show two more things as a list as listeners 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 others can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with the business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat thank you again sandra and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devon it's been a [Music] pleasure you

Do Your Research Up Front

Ian Abbott
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/14/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

do all of your research up front like you know do i mean you can't do all your research over are you always learning new things every single day but like do your homework you know don't no ideas having a vacuum you know if you have an idea make sure you look at the lay of the land look at all the that exists out there see you know make a spreadsheet even or just you know a nice we'll get out your whiteboard and look at how all the ways in which your business is is different from their businesses and then use those that difference um at the end to really like you know shine you know or design a marketing strategy around or design you know help evolve or iterate your product to maybe add more differentiators or double down on those differences [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 into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder 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 now today we have another great guest on the podcast ian abbott and uh ian has kind of gone in or throughout his career life has kind of gone back and forth between business and academics um and originally starting out in high school got in or got into high school had some friends uh they wanted to start a business with it was kind of quora but before the core was a thing and grew to i think 50 000 users merged with another retailer finished high school after getting kicked out of high school i think a few times and he'll tell us a little bit about that and then went to dartmouth uh got uh some or studied physics as well as math um did a startup with some uh friends for a payment platform with marijuana which was an interesting one until the doj told them it probably wasn't a good idea i went back to school worked on some various startups including i think kettlebell kettlebell business coffee business and other ones um as well as puttering through a few different jobs before kind of diving into what he's doing now today with arc and he'll provide a bit more detail on that as well so with that much as uh introduction welcome on the podcast ian hey how are you man oh i'm doing great and excited to have you on so i just gave kind of the quick uh quick run through to a much longer journey so take us a little bit back in time back to high school and kind of how things all started for you okay yeah well i mean i wasn't back in high school i wasn't that into academics i always wanted to you know start a business um you know i you know so i did various you know things and you know in early high school various tried tried various things um you know some business down in colorado um you know mainly very very small scale stuff um tried to work with my dad who you know is uh working like the tap system uh trying to develop some like a shoot off of that um and then kind of you know uh kind of found my way to like a more tech side of things i took more of an interest in computers um uh you know i ended up developing like a small software company that was called a habit um you know i was very young at the time was like started when i was like 15. um yeah like you said we ended up growing it's like a very small user base um and then it was a more fashion i guess the discussions ended up uh that ended up happening on the platform were kind of fashion forward just for whatever reason it wasn't intended just kind of happened that way um so there was a retailer in texas on this guy launching something called the addition group or edition collective that had uh retail stores um that had some sales online and wanted to build out like a blog blog component so essentially he liked our community and wanted to kind of build off it and we merged with him and then he ended up selling uh the company uh down the road a few years to a retailer called q retailers and that was that story um and you know that was fun uh i know that wasn't like you know like you know the retirement plan relation i still didn't go to college uh you know so i went to college um for like a little bit just before that so i mean because that's i i would say that's a pretty good accomplishment anything that has a user base 50 thousand users is nothing anything to sneeze at i think it's cool that you guys are able to build that especially in high school so just diving into that a bit how did you guys come up with the idea how did you grow the user base and then what made you decide to merge um well well okay yeah so first uh so we sort of like to backtrack a little bit um you know i we came up with an idea for more of like you know uh general like more util or sorry less general more specific utility-based social networks so that's what we were kind of like focused on looking at and then we didn't really um it was kind of right pre-chora or right around core we didn't really heard of it yet or it was like right around the same time um and so we kind of is that was that same idea um you know uh so it was like you know the idea was habity and it was for like a q a kind of social network um with maybe like a little bit more heavy on the social component than they were on the topic component um we were more like a 50 50 weight um and that was kind of you know that that's mainly the only differentiator um and then uh yeah so then we we kind of you know from an interest in social networks to more like utility-based social networks you know the idea kind of emerged from that um it was mainly me in the beginning um and then i actually ended up working with some like well i got a space in like a wework labs downtown um i actually like got the office next to that guy who did fire festival billy mcfarland he had some company you know i don't know if you've heard of that whole thing which is hilarious where they threw this at concert you know and ended up in tents and stuff it's a whole different story but anyway uh so i had a space and we worked there and ended up meeting like a lot of different people there who were a lot older um who ended up helping with the business um you know including like uh later on our kind of co-ceo we had this guy named brendan mangus who's a great guy um and yeah i mean the the business kind of and then it grew to a couple more people um we had a cto who was remote named alex and then i you know my friends like you know also like niall came and helped out work there for a bit um but yeah that was mainly kind of a solo journey at the beginning um in my first kind of foray into entrepreneurship um and you know uh basically as as we ended up getting traction the team scaled to like you know a solid like four people five people and then um we ended up i was actually down at a meeting for texas to do fundraising for it um to try to take it to kind of the next level um and then in that meeting i ended up meeting with this guy who or an investor wanted me to introduce to a friend who was an entrepreneur who was going to give advice and that was the fashion guy and he ended up taking an interest in the business and maybe merging them for um for like you know his uh for his platform and at that time like you know the business kind of like you know we had strong growth at the beginning it was kind of tapering off we realized cora was growing really really fast you know there's a bunch of other factors like you know pressure go to college and things like that so essentially when matt like made his offers like okay that just sounded uh good to me essentially at the time um you know hey any any business you can start in high school and get any sort of an offer or merger or anything of that and i would certainly can't put that in the win column so that's pretty cool so so now you get done with high school you know you do that it kind of is a a a fun business that you do with some of your friends build it up get the user base sell it off um when you go to college and you know you studied uh you know physics and i think it was uh math and physics and then um coming out or coming out of college how did that kind of what did you do after college or was it was a payments platform for marijuana during college or after college i can't remember when you met which way you mentioned yeah that was during college so yeah i was there for college for essentially my freshman year and the first bit of my sophomore year and then i left to go you know with my friend victor stewart uh we left to go start that uh that that platform which we're calling spark and lightning um and so yeah i did that after maybe my first term my first sophomore term there so now walk us through because i think that was you know you say no it'd be you know you found out about a a payment issue or you know how to marijuana industry especially where it wasn't legal and the time and still isn't there and at least on the federation yeah not settling yeah not federally legal yeah that was just there was a difficulty on the payments platform to be able to manage money so how did you guys get into that and then how did you get the doj involved where they said maybe not a good idea yeah that was much later yeah so at the beginning i mean we just like used marijuana recreationally and we were a fan of it's like a creative powers and you know essentially just like you know thought the space was proliferating it was when colorado just became legal um my family lives like out in colorado so we thought maybe we could go out there and stay with them for a bit and try to launch the business um and you know essentially the idea is we were looking to get into marijuana but we were looking not to get into it in terms of like um you know seed to sale or any kind of development of the product really we had no expertise in that we weren't botanists or anything like that so we didn't really know anything about that kind of the business nor did we want to store a storefront they're very hard to get the licenses at the time and a lot of politics involved we thought that would be risky as well you know we were just looking for opportunities in the space and studying the space for a while you know and getting you know building something that's kind of like at the infrastructure level made sense to us and was safe with something like a safe bet so something that could have like good long-term viability um you know and one of the major problems in that space you know was this whole banking problem um you know and then we also software was a little bit of our backgrounds as well as physics and math is more a quantitative side like system side of things so that's where just we were kind of thinking is what kind of systems could we maybe build for support for infrastructure for the industry and then so that was just like kind of the mindset and then we um you know essentially found this banking issue um and it essentially came down to the money can't leave the states it can't touch fed wire you know anything supported by it or swift right a regular like go over there for normal ach things and the underwriting banks the transactions couldn't be like large banks they would have to be kind of inside the state and housed you know kind of that it wouldn't have to leave could the network you know transactions couldn't leave the state essentially so um so essentially yeah we were trying to find a solution you know that maybe we could figure out um you know and what we kind of came up with was like okay why don't we do some kind of wallet to wallet transfer you know and kind of have like an e-wallet that would then have like a feature where you would be loaded when you swiped essentially so you wouldn't have to pre-load it or anything um and then there would be a wallet to wallet transfer be a closed distance between the phone the mobile application and the pos so then we would sell kind of the system like an app to the consumer or the e-wallet to the consumer that then you'd use to buy marijuana with your phone from and then we sold like a pos to the dispensaries essentially that would then you know you know they would receive the payment and be able to clear out or check out the customer um and then it went over like uh you know um you know a private cellular network essentially was the solution um you know we had a legal opinion written up on it uh to review everything you know everything like looked good we found some guy who thought well not excuse like found a guy to say it's legal but it was like you know we got someone to sign off on it say it was legal um so we were confident um and then we were going to go launch the platform we were raising money there was a firm news raising money that actually successfully raised money now but at the time it happens in new york called tuatara we were going to do a deal with them um and then essentially um you know what happened was we wanted one extra step of verification we didn't really want to go to jail uh so we like you know figure you know it may not be worth going as a startup you go to jail so yeah yeah probably move first and ask questions later we thought it when you're this close to the line legally it was best to not maybe take the safer route um so it's like we wrote to the doj asking their opinion on our solution and they were essentially like you know absolutely not if you pursue this like we're gonna like no just don't so then we had to kind of take that piece of information and decide like did we want to move forward with the concept um at the end of the day we didn't um but was very interesting about that whole uh journey was that you know the underwriting bank that we brought the deal to to do the underwriting for the e-wallet was actually it ended up not being a cooperative but kind of an international bank that had kind of some sort of presence electronic in colorado physically it's called wirecard um and yeah it was this german company and now what's hilarious is the ceo ended up having all these problems internationally for processing marijuana transactions and now he's like some sort of fugitive but it's hilarious because i'm not certain if they if we were the ones who told them about the industry because when we called them we were when we were working with them or trying to do our infrastructure with them they had no idea or asking many questions about the industry it was very funny if the two were connected or he decided to move forward with the concept or his version of it when we didn't but it was like you know kind of i think we ultimately dodged a bullet with that one because it sounds like we could have gotten into some trouble you may have gone down the same road that road that got the other guy yeah so it was a blessing it was a blessing that you were uh yeah that you got stopped by the doj before you went too far down so so now you do that and so you know so you do that and that is you know kind of another interesting part of your journey as you're continuing along you know then you know after you do that for a period of time i think you um finished up the degree or then you went or did you go back to school i had it or was it no i never went back to school yeah no i never went back to school i just been doing odds and ends like you know it took more of an interest in like academic work um you know did some like much smaller scale startups like a coffee company that was like the nootropics company was like called two to one um you know you know 200 milligrams of theanine 100 milligrams of caffeine cold brew in like a bioplastic bag that was direct to consumer um and then like you know my friend started that company kettlebell kitchen um and then it you know a little bit later on um you know it went sort of uh it went into bankruptcy eventually the debt called on it there was a variety of reasons bad timing could raise the money but it was really strong business you know really strong um you know you know really good ltv cac like good good metrics also strong consumer sentiment a good brand like big red box um you know so essentially we went to a bankruptcy court and we submitted a bid to buy that all the intellectual property and the uh trademarks and uh the custom lists and social media accounts you know get that all from bankruptcy and i guess you know we ended up winning the bid for like 10 grand i mean it was formerly a 100 million dollar company um we were gonna you know the plan is we're relaunching this happened maybe like a year ago um so now we're relaunching the business or he's relaunched the business he's running that that business as a um uh with a distributed manufacturing plan at the back end um instead so a lot of you know think like territory foods back end you know now kettlebell kitchen with a brand front end um so anyway so that was so i'm kind of jumping a little bit but that was the most recent thing in terms of business you know that i've done and then the coffee company as well um you know uh yeah before that in the interim since uh since like sparta the fall of i guess spark and lightning um i just you know mainly doing a lot of academic work and working on some papers with you know some friends of mine or physicists and you know at nyu and um current and um you know um uh at suny that's where i forgot the name of that and my friend who's like a topologist and essentially just been you know studying thinking you know working on new ideas um and you know that's kind of during this you know kind of quiet period is when i thought of the the business you know i'm working on now and that you're helping me with the with my intellectual property yeah yeah so and in his full disclosure for listeners uh i met ian uh he we're working on on the idea for intellectual property to protect it and uh so with that make sure not to steal his ideas we talk about it a little bit yeah yeah yeah but you know one of the things that i thought was interesting so maybe just a clue in the audience a bit so bringing that up to kind of where you're at today and you know as we chat to your journey now you're at arc right which arc is kind of uh a bit of a i would say a futurist type of an idea where you're now going to be able to be able to move housing or you know easily move housing between locations via you know almost kind of a storage cane or a container or compact type of a housing arrangement but how did you kind of get into that idea how is it going kind of where's it at and kind of uh give it a be a bit of an introduction to the to the audience with uh all of where you're at today yeah sure man so the yeah arc is essentially like um what i'm looking to do is build kind of a device or a machine as an urban plan so you know most devices are like the size of the iphone or like the computer this would be the same exact thing just really big um you know just uh you know some kind of systems and something that's more you know right now all the urban plans you can think of kind of like flat you know kind of 3d static canvases then you make things on top of and all the different components are completely disconnected from one another like the roads the transit components you know the utilities and also the structures the permanent structures there um you know arc is kind of as we'll get more into would be more of a um like a fungible concept where a large percentage of the urban plan would be movable and then you'd have a smaller percent which would be like a skeleton that's permanent um but basically i've always been really into architecture i've always been really into engineering you know i'm not an engineer not an architect just so i always really loved these things and you know i've always you know even though i love software and love you know kind of formal systems and love abstract things in theory you know i've always wanted to do something like really cool like you know build like a physical product in the physical world or like a physical system um you know and that's essentially where i am today so during this period you know contemplation i sort of thought a lot about how my different interests or my strengths could really come together a lot of the you know through my life experiences you know a lot of the information i've gathered how could it be combined in a way you know that maybe is a new a new concept a new solution in the marketplace that doesn't exist you know what could be something you know again like my mind you know goes towards systems goes towards infrastructure i want to go as like low level as possible you know and like the human stack of things you know so i was just thinking of you know what you know you know in a physical world and i was kind of scale agnostic you know so like you know it could be the size of a pencil or could be you know the size of an urban plan or something you know so then you know i you know so from there what developed is you know i really found transit oriented development and i found like mobile the mobile architecture movement um and i really liked both of those movements um and i didn't quite understand why like you know with all the containerization that's happening which is also another move in architecture um like we know people building things like container homes or people even building container farms product you know production facilities that are containerized you know everything mapped to the container you know and so i didn't quite understand why you know that perspective wasn't combined a little bit with mobile architecture and maybe some kind of uh transportation component um because if you know like the function of containerization in the first place is you know you know it improved port logistics and you know reduced cost for shipping and really enabled you know globalization in a big way so like you know the current movement and architecture with containerization didn't it you're containerizing just for a design reason you're not containerizing for a transportation reason which is the point of containerization so basically it's like you know you know i thought that was like a hole you know yeah so so if i were to almost maybe summarize that or encapsulate that the idea is basically you almost take what would be a similar con or similar size to what would be a storage container you know what you'd be you see on a train or via cargo ship you then use that as a a you know a done-up you you make that into a home a nice a living facility and then you'd basically be able to move those around the country or you know via a storage or you know a different location mechanisms and transportation you'll be able to move so if you were you know retired and you wanted to go from a cold place to you know your snowboard or snowbird you want to go to a warm place you could just simply have your home it would you'd put or submit it they would move your house from utah and salt lake city which is cold to arizona which is warm and you can move back and forth or if you're a college student and you wanted to go to a different university you just have them simply transport your home you could stay in it they'll transport you from one location to another and you wouldn't have to pick up all your stuff and move is that about right exactly correct yeah so that's that's like kind of the essential the idea of arc would be sort of a large scale like distributed system or device that is a platform to facilitate this movement so think you can even think about it as like a network of high-based storage systems and then what you storage retrieval systems and transfer system i guess between so it's like what it is really is you know a you know these vertical frames because we're kind of fighting urban sprawl more with the design you know we don't want to have all the containers spread out everywhere like an rv park you know we want to have it more contained um have a smaller footprint um and a bunch of other efficiencies as well um and then so what it is is basically the idea of arc is these frames that then with a gantry elevator in the center that the front then the containerized units then slide onto or slide under um via like a track mover and then essentially the gantry elevator comes down internal to the frame and picks it up and then plugs your containerized residence into a dock which contains a solarium for a little bit more width and then a balcony essentially and so then yeah and then the container would then come back down be plugged into a well car with a track mover below it and then that would come and cycle through the site if we wanted to go to a different frame within the same site or location or would go down to a siding built along a railway where another gantry would lift it and move it on to a well car different kind of well car that would then be used to transfer it to another site via like our partner rail service um so essentially you had to circle back and explain the idea a little bit you know the essential point of arc would be to build these frames along the rail america's rail system which is huge um you know we have 140 000 miles of it um there's a lot of you know a track that's being abandoned every year as these up as the big companies kind of consolidate their operations to mainly just class one style stuff where they're moving really large volumes of freight so there's a lot of opportunity to take over abandoned track or build track extensions to work with these uh you know they're the largest land holders in the united states these you know five companies bnsf union pacific and such um so you know they have internal real estate development teams and economic development teams where people are usually building you know sightings for let's say like a you know a mining operation to connect to a mine or some kind of refinement facility or grain or storage or transfer or things like this you know so we would be looking to buy land or work with these companies in kind of more remote beautiful areas where maybe there's less rail traffic you know where then we could be at first like a manifest customer so you know we'd do manifest service diving in just a little bit just because without getting too much of the weeds and definitely we'll give you an opportunity to share if people are interested if they want to reach out they want to find out more absolutely encourage everybody do so but i think that kind of you know as we wrap towards in the podcast and there's always more things we want to talk about than time to talk about them you know that gives everybody a bit of an introduction i definitely encourage everybody to reach out and find out more so kind of with that as we do have to wrap up and we also just remind everybody we have a bonus question we'll talk just a little bit about intellectual property after the normal episode but before that we'll jump to the the last two questions i always ask at the end of each podcast so the first question i always ask is so you know we just chatted all the way through your journey including kind of what you guys are up to or where you're at today and kind of where or where things are headed but along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it um so the worst decision i ever made was probably um let me think about that was probably to oh i got to give this a minute sorry um or what one of the decisions if you could go back that you would change or do it differently i think you know maybe um not focusing on our social network company when we were 15 as much as i should have been maybe turning more towards like trying to get into an ivy league school are you following a more traditional route i mean definitely happy you know since core was competitive maybe i think i kind of bowed out too early and could have could have tried to run that business a little harder and pressed it to be a little bigger iterated faster and you know maybe pivoted and done something with it um yeah that definitely you know sticks with me um you know the other one is maybe not asking the doj for permission you know maybe if we worked with a cooperative or afraid to get something out or just move forward with a slightly modified solution giving that a little extra thought you know maybe we could have done something there um yeah essentially that's those two and and or you may have been in jail had you not asked the doj so right one of those that we don't know what happened it would be interesting if we could have gone back and uh played it out how it would have ended up taking place so definitely but i think that that's a you know an issue where every startup every uh inventor every entrepreneur kind of hits that hey is this a good idea should i keep pushing on it is it one worse i should let it go or pivot or go in a different direction it's always one where you know it's much easier to hindsight 2020 to say oh i wish i would have gone different direction but at the time you'd make the best you know best decision you can with the you know with the information you have on hand so i definitely think that's something to learn from so second question i'll ask which is now if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what be the one piece of advice you give them um do all of your research up front like you know do i mean you can't do all your research over you're always learning new things every single day but like do your homework you know don't no ideas having a vacuum you know if you have an idea make sure you look at the lay of the land look at all the competition that exists out there see you know make a spreadsheet even or just you know a nice we'll get out your whiteboard and look at how all the ways in which your business is is different from their businesses and then use those that difference um at the end to really like you know shine you know or design a marketing strategy around or design you know help evolve or iterate your product to maybe add more differentiators or double down on those differences no and i like that because i think you know sometimes especially as an entrepreneur you tend to want to dive in you want to get going it's a you know it's almost a new shiny object you're excited about it there you can see a lot of opportunity and yet sometimes because you get so excited about it you talk yourself into the idea you never actually do that kind of that due diligence you never check and see you know have you done your homework have you ever figured out is it a viable option is it something people want to pay for are there competitors what can you charge for this you know what is it going to take to start it up and doing it and you know and how are you going to make it how you're going to or follow through with it all those things are things that you should be considering as you get going and doesn't mean you can get or keep the idea going but do that homework as you're getting going so that you can know that what that roadmap is what that strategy is and before you dive in and get too far into it so i think that's a great piece of advice well before we dive into the bonus question that people are just listening to normal episode and aren't intellectual property which i totally understand but if they want to reach out to they want to find out more about you know your business about what you guys are doing with arc they want to be a customer or a client a investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more i just email my personal email iha 94 at icloud.com and i'll answer any and all questions all right well i definitely encourage everybody to reach out and find out more and get ours or get connected well as we wrap up with the normal part of the episode thank you again 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 and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show we'd love to hear your journey two more things as a listener one uh make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so 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 last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to reach out to us just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now as we've wrapped up with the normal portion of the episode we always have the bonus uh we have the bonus portion uh where we get to talk about one of my favorite projects or our topics which is intellectual property so that i'll uh fl or switch gears and we'll turn it over to you to ask your number one intellectual property question yeah uh how often do you guys run into issues with uh the greater international patent uh you know kind of market then you know you know for companies that want to be like not just the united states but for all over i know that's a different search process it's more expensive obviously it's more in-depth a lot more data to sift through um how often or what percent of time do you end up you know you file something in the u.s and then a company wants to go international do those companies end up wanting running into trouble you know or is that you know less frequent than um like you know than you'd expect essentially yeah i mean it's one it's kind of the old attorney's answer of you know every time you ask an attorney for an answer they always say it depends but it is one that it depends we'll give you a little bit of an insight you know every company is a bit different in the sense that some come some companies you know depending on their industry depending on what they're doing and everything else they are um their market is really going to be in one given country or you know so give you an example having have a client that's in the medical device industry and they look at it and say okay by far you know hands down the mo the most of our money that's been spent in the medical industry is done in the us that's where where the most of the money is where all the research and development is where a lot of money is spent on healthcare industry in general and so they're saying okay our really our target market is going to be in the u.s that's where most of our clients are that's where you can make the biggest splash and the best return and so they focus their intellectual property portfolio on the us on the other hand we have another client and you know that's in a different industry and theirs is much more of a split they say hey you know about 50 percent of our markets going to be in the us 50 is going to be in europe we need to have coverage on both and so then they end up going down that path because that's where they're going to be so really when you're looking at you know how are you go how to tackle international markets and whether or not it's important whether or not you have issues i look in and see where is your marketplace going to be where are you going to make an entrance where are you going to try and sell and then based on that you choose where your biggest part or portions of the market is where the highest likelihood is of your clientele to be and that's where you focus on your intellectual property so for some people is one country is one location for some it splits into multiple and it's really more of a matter of what is a business where your clients are and what is where do you want to have the the greatest amount of protection cool thanks man appreciate it so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and great question and if you or anybody in the audience ever has any other questions always feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat i'll be happy to answer any questions you might have and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast it's been it's fun it's been a pleasure in and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you man appreciate it that's fun [Music] chatting

Stand On The Ground

Ahmed Elnaggar
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/12/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

try to control the expenses and don't spend in things that is not uh really beneficial and look at stand on the ground don't look at the unicorns and all this now yes this is the target but stand on the ground because this was a mistake that also i did and so much was spent was acting as a startup concept that you read about every day and spend a lot based on that but at the end of the day it comes by steps [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 the ceo and founder of miller ip law where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks so if you have any help with your business uh feel free to reach out to us grab some time at strategymeeting.com now today we have another great guest on the podcast um ahmed all is that about right my gosh all right close as i'm gonna get so to introduce almond just a little bit so finish up high school went into college and was and to get an engineering degree graduate and decided to go into a bit of a different direction and to win into flooring did that for about 12 years and then the last two or years last few years i've been doing flooring as well as a startup rubaidus and then i think about two years ago or you started rebates and about a year ago you moved over to that full-time so um there's a quick summary journey and with that welcome on the podcast thank you thank you darren great to be with you so i gave kind of just a a quick overview of your journey and never does it justice so maybe take us back to a little bit uh high school and kind of going to college going to engineering and how your journey started from there sure sure so i have been living that time in egypt i'm originally egyptian so i have been like there the days of the schools are there and then went to the university but from the high school i have been working with my parents so my parents are traders they do steel business and that so i have been working from a pretty young age with them helping them with stuff and i have been prepared to be an engineer to follow the same steel business so i studied in egypt also in university i got a degree in material science engineering and after i graduated i worked with them a bit but then i found like another company approaching them and telling them we want to sell flooring in egypt and there so interesting and then i started looking into it it was very interesting so i said okay i will get out of the steel sorry guys i'm jumping out and started with a small shop and the shop get bigger until it reached like 200 plus employees biggest company in the market till now and then i moved to uae to dubai i made they had the same business there as an expansion for the middle east for five years i lived there and also until now the business is still there and growing and meanwhile rebate has jumped in so this is like before you jump to robaitis there's one question because you went into engineering in university did that for a period of time and you kind of mentioned you know flooring versus engineering seemed like two different directions so what was it with the flooring industry that caught your interest or helped or helped you to decide to go into that direction as opposed to continuing on to to use the engineering degree yeah so first i like the idea of that every day you make something new so every day you enter a new house or a new project or you do so every single day is something new so this is my biggest part that i like about in this field but also engineering the beauty of it is that it's you learn there a way of thinking like how to think like an engineer but you don't need to work every day with the machines or with the materials for that you just need to apply it in every day so this is uh it helped me a lot actually helped me a lot so maybe yeah what i wish is because i studied this in dvd yeah so so now you go into flooring you did that i think you said for 12 years right yes so now in the middle of that how did you get into rebatas you know because that's again almost a bit of a different area it's not necessarily related to flooring or other things so how did you initially kind of come up with the idea there or kind of get into that area yeah so rebates came from the part of being having a part of to do with the retail in my daily business at the flooring and i have my own retail stores and that so we got always the challenge of how to get to know more about customers how what insights when to know if this the customer is like uh they're preparing the new home they're moving they're doing so all this and also we had some products that we wanted to approach for customers and we didn't know how to make them loyal how to make them like come here and buy it and become a loyal customer and say the words so from there we started to work on the loyalty program and then the authority program developed the elevators and instead of saying okay but this doesn't apply only in flooring it can apply to anything and we took it forward from there and it became like a beautiful creation between fintech and loyalty which is nothing about the floorings with engineering but it's a very very interesting challenge we have been for two years preparing for it and now we are going live so yeah now let's see what will happen now new journey and that's always fun to take on a new journey so so now you kind of have okay you know so it makes a little bit more sense you work with flooring you're also trying to say hey within this industry and a lot of other industries there's an opportunity to do loyalty programs to keep you know people coming back using you reminding you of how it works and so you start to build into that now you know remind me on your engineering did you utilize your engineering background did you have kind of a programming idea did you have bring on other people as you had the idea or kind of you know once you have the idea and start to implement it how did you start to build that and you know how did you start to grow it yup so we are three people who actually are working on debates or as nothing as me so a friend of mine from school also has the same background everything but he studied computer programming i studied actually production engineering and material science engineering so it's not coding and another also like my partner is also my younger sister she has been studying business and marketing and worked with multinational like dell for five years so the three of us we joined forces and we said okay let's build something out of this we were all convinced of the idea and we took it from there so now and so you you guys had the idea you found you know you found the other people that were excited about the idea as well you kind of built the team now you did this for a couple years while you're still doing the flooring business right in the sense i always use i usually joke you know really a side hustle is just a second full-time job so you know how did you balance kind of keeping the flooring business going keeping building that to pay the bills as you were getting uh ribas off the ground it was very very challenging and that's why rebates when it's time now to not when the launch pad came and the lunch time came and then we're going live so then i had to say to the flooring teams okay guys i have to jump now out of the boat so i will still be a shareholder but i will not be doing the daily business i will be a full-time employee at rebates because it needs this focus now and same with my two partners they did the same so we all now are focusing hundred percent on rebates it was assigned housing yes for two years building the thing up but now it's time to go full time so you did that now you know and it sounds like you basically in correct me wrong when you got to the point you're saying hey we've got the product development we're going to launch it it's going to go in the marketplace we need a full-time effort in order to make this successful is that about the time that you decided to jump over and do it full-time or kind of what was that trigger to say hey i've been doing this both you know both the flooring business as well as your betas for a period of time what was the trigger to kind of make you decide that hey now i got to be all in the trigger was that everything was ready and it was really this was really taking started to take a lot of time that i felt that okay i will be like not fair to the flowing business and maybe like uh things might happen or like i feel guilty that i'm not giving a hundred percent maybe if someone else is in my place he will be doing a better job and can take it so that's why this is the trigger is okay give it the full time i really believe in it i really believe in the idea on the hard work on the team so let's give it a shot and this was the trigger so now one other question on that so you know because you've been doing flooring for 12 years that's a good period of time was that a bit of a a scary jump you know to make that over to a business you know one business is you've grown it it has recurring revenue you can you know make it salary and take a step back and move over to rebatus was that an easy decision was it a scary decision was it all the above or kind of how did you balance that decision as you as you were making it no it was not an easy decision at all at all especially like when you look like okay i have a lot of things that be like paying and expenses and then that needs to be covered but also it is a move in the life like i've been doing this for 12 years i reached the point that okay i'm one of the top three in this region doing this job so it will be mainly a repetition of everything every day which is something like i can't live with so much to go every single day and do the same thing this is for me like not me so that's why like a new challenge i think it's the right time for it but it's not an easy decision no it's not so so you you said okay you know it's hard a decision is it's the right decision it's the one that you want to chase after so you now made that you've done that for you know about a year because you made you i think you said you've been doing it full time for about a year you know would you make the same decision has it gone well has it been you know bumpy and ups and downs or kind of how has it been since you made the decision i would do it again 100 like no regrets no regrets yeah still we're thinking of but but i feel that good things will happen so you know so now you kind of you made the decision you're all in you moved over you kind of done that and you're you know taking that opportunity now looking kind of towards the future you know take the next six to 12 months for for your business kind of where you guys are headed where do you see that heading kind of what's the trajectory and kind of what's the plan yeah so now as i said like we have been launched for time now like so now we're going to go for our marketing campaign we'll start and the situation with the covet is getting better now so hopefully soon we'll start to make some meet ups and seminars some meetings that we can explain more what is rebate is what it's about mainly focus on the user journey user experiences we want to hear a lot from them so this is like now the way forward well cool that that sounds like you know it sounds like a lot of opportunity to head and as things continue to open up and hopefully turn back to normal you know the the opportunities continue to even grow beyond that so it definitely sounds like an exciting path so so now as we've kind of taken you know from your where your journey started brought us up to a bit in the the current as well as in the future maybe just before we dive into my uh past or my couple questions i always ask at the end you know help us everybody understand we touched on it lightly but how does rubidius work and how is it a bit different than what's out in the marketplace yes so rebecca has two sides one side is uh we serve retailers and brands and another side how we deal with the consumer phase so rebates is a loyalty program but we reward users like let's think with me loyalty programs you must have a special card or a special membership and you use it every time we try to build something that's really frictionless and easy seamless no hidden schemes nothing so literally we reward users for everything they spend daily from their cards whatever you spend from your bank account from your credit card or debit card you get rewarded on that and the reward is easy it's a cash back reward but instead of giving it to you we share the cash back with everyone so devin you make an account on your business and then you start before even you buying anything you start to receive messages i have two dollars received to my account three dollars one dollar five dollars you're just receiving because this is called the sharing economy you are sharing the cashback of other users in debates but fine you don't know them even but they are just this is how it goes and from the other side for the retailers and brands we can give them really very good insights about the categories for example how users are behaving for buying coffee for example in the age group how much they're spending coffee in this area in this location so then this retailers and brands can reach to the users and tell them okay you're like you spend coffee you spend like 100 dollars a month on buying groceries and this i'm giving you this voucher card to buy from this place and you'll get some deals you'll get some discounts so it's all about finding this link between the users and the brands and the retailers so this is what is related it's shortcut of debate us so it's all about rewards all about offers all about discounts it's free for all users to join for the first month and from there they can go for a very small subscription p a monthly subscription fee oh cool well it sounds like a fun and exciting company definitely uh one that a lot of people can use so well kind of with that now as we've heard a little bit about where you're at today and kind of where you're heading and what rebates is always ask two questions at the end of each episode 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 yeah this is uh this is a good one so the worst decision i ever made is when i started to work in the flooring business and then i started to choose the things that or the colors or the designs that i i like personally and then for example i got stuck with really big stocks in my warehouses because my taste doesn't reflect the marketplace so i didn't listen to the customers i didn't listen to the market i thought that i can choose and whatever these things are like and this actually i applied in everything else so the first thing in rebates when we started something new or of course in the flooring in the last 12 years is let's listen to the market see what the market says listen to the users what do they need not what do we want to offer them and then it will work so this is uh this was it no and i think that that's a good le you know it's an easy because a lot of times you think oh i know what the users want or i know what i want and what i want is going to be the same because i am the customer and those type of things and too often we kind of to infuse too much of what what we think or what we want is suppo as opposed to what the customer will actually want and when we step back and actually listen to them it can have a big impact oh usually for the positive if we're going to incorporate what they want in with what you know what we're doing so i think that's a great lesson to learn so the second question i always ask is so if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them try to control the expenses and don't spend in things that is not really beneficial and look at stand on the ground don't look at the unicorns and all this now yes this is the target but stand on the ground because this was a mistake that also i did and so much where spent was acting as a startup concept that you read about every day and spend a lot based on that but at the end of the day it comes by steps not like on one shot no i think that is you know that that's a great piece of advice and kind of keeping feet on the ground and there's a lot of times you can chase after hey those are fun ideas or cool ideas or they'll be great features or other things and you're kind of keeping centered on that core of what is the value you're adding what is the thing that differentiate you is going to have a big impact in making sure that you deliver on what people want so i think that that's that's a great piece of advice as well so well as we wrap up if people want to find out more about you they want to be a customer or 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 con or connect with you and find out more definitely they can as simple as that rebates.com or the contact there we personally check it every single email or every single message so we don't miss anything so we'll be there all right well rebatis.com as easy as that to reach out connect up and find out more so well thank you again ahmed for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure to hear your journey now for all of you listeners that are out there if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the show and share your journey just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast we'd love to share your journey two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two um leave us a review so everybody else can find out about our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to go to uh strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help thank you again ahmed and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much pleasure thank you

Ask For Help

Nicole DeAngelis
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/11/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

ask for help it's something that i it took me a while just because i have a lot of pride and i think that i can teach myself anything which might be true but it might take years and that's not very smart so every time i've asked for help it's always led towards more progress um and faster than i would have been able to do on my own and most people want to help you succeed [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours to feel free to reach out to us go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat today we have another great guest on the podcast and nicole the did the angelus that was i i started this stutter and then i think i made my way through it uh but uh so it was a quick introduction to nicole um so she's in her own words she was one of the weird people that she knew what she wanted to do when she was in middle school um grew up in ohio but went to new york and wanted to go in and be into marketing so um also i think at the age of five years old was into art and then went off to temple university in philadelphia severed studied advertising did several different internships worked with a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds and like to understand you know kind of where they're coming from also i think worked on political advertising for a period of time um intern got hired to do digital ad agency after that um didn't like new york decided it was uh wasn't the place for her so decided to move out uh go to a different place and also had an idea for an app that worked on uh with friends for a period of time uh lived in austin i think in 2010 or so um revisited some of the ideas the app development that they'd been previously working on did as a side project had a few other things going along the way and that kind of brings us up to where she's at with her business so she'll talk a little bit more about which is uh reef froth uh froth or frosh broth all right with that much is introduction you can correct anything that i slaughtered welcome on the podcast nicole um i feel like i should hire you to like be my rep that was such a good rundown it was like better than i could describe myself so all right well mission accomplished i didn't slaughter it too badly so so i gave the quick 30 second or so run through and it was quite the journey to try and or to get through but why don't you take us back a bit in time to being kind of the one of the weird middle weird people he said in middle school that knew what she wanted to do and kind of how your journey started there yeah so i was always um really creative and always kind of thinking about the next thing that i should be doing um and coming up with these oddball ideas and you know trying to get my parents to support them my sister i would make her my fashion model when i made a dress out of curtains things like that um but you know i actually i was pretty good in school but i never really enjoyed uh the heart like the hard i don't want to say hard like they're hard but like the hard sciency topics such as science and math and um i always loved art but um my i had a father who worked uh he his career was in accounting and finance and he basically was like well i'm not going to support you if you're an artist so i would suggest you figure something else out to do maybe you should be a vet because you love animals and i was like i hate science so i was like thinking about what i wanted to do then because i knew that i i wanted to get out of ohio where i was from and i knew that i would need to support myself and i really liked art and i kind of got obsessed with watching commercials and referring products to people just because i saw them on tv and i thought this would be a really really cool thing to do and at that point i kind of got laser focused on working in advertising when i grew up so so now you got laser focus you're going to do advertising when you grow up you go off to school you get a degree in advertising now when you get after you get the degree and you're coming out with the you know with the with the degree you're coming out of university kind of where did your journey start from there where did you you know where did things pick up yeah so um i did a few different internships during college at a variety of different agencies some larger some smaller and my last one was actually in new york at a digital agency and i really liked working with the people there and i learned a ton and i thought i was going to go more into the design and art direction route but after interning with them they were like hey we think you'd be a good producer project manager do you want to do that and i had been working on campus in our graphic design center for three years where i kind of ended up like leading our design team and managing our products their projects and workflow and i thought ah that's interesting i wouldn't have to be doing the the manual tweaking of every design and uh the revisions because that's the annoying part but i get to have a say in what's designed and developed and that sounded interesting to me so i joined that agency full time when i graduated so now so you joined the agency and that was in new york is that right so you did that and how long or how long were you with the agency how long did you do that for um i was there for a couple of years um i would have stayed longer if i made peace with the craziness that is living in new york great place to visit love visiting living there is a different story so now you so you you find out you say okay new york is a great place to visit it's not so much where i want to live you got you know but you do have your job with the the advertising agency and you've been doing that for a couple years getting experience there with all of that kind of how did you decide to make the leap where did you go to next kind of once you decided okay new york's not the place i want to be at forever what or what how did you decide to transition from there yeah um i had a good friend that i met in college he was from texas originally and he was like all about texas and i used to make fun of him because i just thought texas was like kind of a hillbilly place i hate to say coming from the northeast um but he invited me to come visit he was like i think you'd really like it i think you'd really like austin i think you'd like the vibe um so i came and visited uh in the winter holiday it was over new year's and i had so much fun the pool like there were pools that were open we could go swimming it was january everyone was happy we could get margaritas for like two dollars and he told me how much his rent is and i just like my jaw dropped so um yeah i you know did some quick calculations and realize how much cheaper it would be to live here in austin and i kind of just did one of those reflections of my life and what i wanted to be doing and decided that i should quit my job and move to austin and somehow convinced my parents to give me the third car that they happened to have because i decided i needed a car so i drove down from new york my friend met me and yeah it was we got here on valentine's day in 2010. so now you get there on valentine's day you know did you have a job lined up did you have an idea of what you wanted to do were you just going to say hey i'll move down i'll figure it out when i get there kind of how did you transition from you know new york had a job you know intern there worked there for a couple years to go into austin was you know did you have something lined up or how did you decide or how did you figure out what to do once you moved down there i honestly didn't even look for a job before i moved down which i know sounds insane um but i kind of just wanted a mental reset i had i mean by the time by that time in my life i had already had like 30 different jobs if you count all the different like gigs and things that i had done since i was in high school um i was always like a very enterprising person and i felt like i needed to give myself some time to have breathing room i mean i never studied abroad i never like i started working right out of college so for my own mental health i decided to take a break and then eventually um much to uh the dismay of my parents i i took on some like random part-time jobs that didn't really have anything to do with my degree but were like nice for my mental health um while also taking on some freelance projects so i i got connected to different people that needed websites or brand development and i worked on those projects to kind of keep fresh so now so you do that for a period of time and then you know you and i also you know you make friends or make additional friends in austin decide you like it you know work the the various kind of odd jobs in that now how did you get it back into uh reef or is it reef froth or frost i can't remember how to pronounce it refresh all right i always want to say refresh so then i get then i get tongue tied when i try and go to say it so you how did you guys or where did that enter into the picture because i think it was the business that you kind of started had the idea set down pick back up so kind of how does that intermix with your um with the your journey as far as going to new york and austin and figuring out odd jobs and everything else yeah um so i you know i had always been exposed to a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds just you know through working part-time from such a young age and also living in different cities um so i've just i've been one of those people watchers who likes to get insights about how people tick and how they operate and just common threads throughout um what makes us human so i actually that i guess that sort of like informs where i'm coming from but i had the idea for refrosh when i was living in new york uh one of the reasons why i didn't like living in new york so much was because it was really difficult to make friends there and i felt like i was a weirdo because i couldn't make friends and i didn't even know how to talk about it like say hey i want friends because it felt almost too vulnerable to even put myself out there in that way i would go to networking events um i made friends with my co-workers they were all older than me we weren't in the same life stage um but it was really difficult and at that point i had learned so much about technology and data um and you know how how technology can connect to us you know with facebook and things like that um and i was just thinking how could it how could technology connect us in a more meaningful way where it's explicitly around helping you make friends based on things based on data points that technology gathers about you which we know now there's like an infinite amount of pieces of data so i feel like i'm rambling no i don't think that makes sense so so now you have that idea you're kind of okay you know you you want to figure out a new way to network how to make you know to to get in a comfortable zone to recreate that experience and kind of go through all of that so now how did you build the business around that or did you build start to build a business was it kind of a side hustle did you pick it up put it down kind of or refresh it or refresh it on kind of how that evolved to where it's at today yeah so i had the idea for it in new york i looked for some developers to help me because i knew that it wasn't something that i could build on my own that didn't really prove fruitful i moved to austin kind of let it go um you know had some life experiences including living in france and then i came back to austin and i was like okay this is still a problem it's not so much a problem for me right now because i have made friends because austin is a very easy place to get settled in but it's still a problem for a lot of people um so i set out and i found a developer to work with me who was also interested in the problem we didn't meet through a mutual connection or anything like that so i wouldn't say that the relationship was super strong necessarily it was more out of convenience and he was great but we ended up kind of having different visions about how it would move forward so we went live for about nine months attracted a few hundred members had a big launch party got a little bit of press um did these introductions in a very low-fi manual way because we weren't interested in building tech until we had proven out um that this kind of you know interaction friend making facilitation was something that people wanted um and more importantly that they would pay for so so you see you you kind of pick that back up and you say okay kind of got a mutual connection or at least someone that can help on the programming side want to build it so did you you know after you bought or get back from you know seeing a bit of the world and going on you know and going on that stand did you dive in full time did you do this as a side hustle did you feel bor or form a team or kind of how did that kind of evolve along as you're saying okay this is still a problem that we'd like to fix yeah at that time it was really me and my co-founder i was i i didn't know a fraction of what i know now about what it takes to actually launch a business i i knew a lot about advertising i knew a lot about building websites um i didn't really know a lot about fundraising or actually building a startup team and really rallying people around what i was doing and what steps i needed to take to show traction um so at that point it really was the co-founder arsenal networks he i think i don't think he was working at the time um but i was working at an ad agency in austin um because i at that point i didn't really have the savings to support myself and we weren't we were making a very tiny amount of money so i needed a job fair enough so so now kind of now bringing yourself forward so where are things at today what are you doing you know with uh reef roth with your you know any other you know support you know supporting yourself as you develop this kind of the same thing with the co-founder kind of where things lie today so i decided to pick this back up in march so it's been a little less than two months at this point um i was working full-time for a tech startup um and i left that job at the end of the year i kind of went back to that soul-searching phase i feel like it happens you know every 10 years or so at least for me at this point and i had dabbled with starting a pet accessories business a couple of years ago while i was working full-time and my first inclination was to try to move that forward and at that point after doing some more analysis about what it would take to really get it off the ground i decided it wasn't the right move for me just because of how much capital would be required how much competition had entered the space in the last two years and frankly a reliance on overseas suppliers which wasn't making me comfortable in the end so i hadn't really intended it was sort of in the back of my mind refresh always was there especially after the emergence of bumble which happened pretty much a few months after refresh launched and then with the growth of tinder and other apps that people are using to meet people um the idea was always there and i kind of always had some regret that it didn't move forward so when i took that break decided the pet accessories thing wasn't going to happen and i was like okay refresh i had a place to start from of course it's rebuilding it from the ground up but let's do this thing so now i have savings because i've been working for i don't know the past 15 years not more um and i have a pretty strong network so i've been leaning heavily on people in my network i've developed a small cohort of advisors that are helping me across technology branding operations and then i'm building a very small team of we'll call them contract part-time workers uh that are helping uh with more of the executional things around marketing social media um and design and i am on the hunt but i'm taking a very kind of judicious approach this time i'm on a hunt for a technical co-founder because that's going to be key that's cool well sounds like a lot of things going on a lot of progress and a lot of road ahead to keep figuring things out so all exciting so well as we start to to wrap up the podcast i always have two questions and just as a heads up to everybody we'll also go over the bonus question and chat just a little about uh intellectual property if we get a minute at the end after the normal episode but as we jump to the two questions i always ask at the end um 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 yeah so i was thinking about this um for quite a while because it's sorry i give these very like over thinking answers i honestly feel like i can't say that there was one necessarily worst business decision because i definitely have that mindset that every so-called bad decision is a learning opportunity and because i haven't scaled a business to the extent that it's generating so much revenue it has so many stakeholders i feel like any decision that i make that isn't good at this point is a teachable moment and it's important for me to make so then i'm going to rephrase the questions i'm not letting you get out of it so what was one of the teachable or decisions you made that was a teachable moment over your journey getting myself into too many things not saying no um i i get excited about things i get excited about building and creating and we'll take the pet accessories business for an example there um i made it i made some decisions that i wouldn't make again uh in that i went pretty far in the product development process without necessarily knowing that i was going to have revenues or how i was going to pay for production and i would have scaled back how many things i produced and i also would have vetted out the vendors that i was using a little bit more carefully that sounds like a great learning experience some might even call it a mistake that you learned for but we won't call it that so all right so then now or then as we go to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them starting their own business or joining a startup starting their own business we'll go with that okay ask for help it's something that i it took me a while just because i have a lot of pride and i think that i can teach myself anything which might be true but it might take years and that's not very smart uh so every time i've asked for help it's always led towards more progress um and faster than i would have been able to do on my own and most people want to help you succeed no and i tend to agree and i think that sometimes we feel like hey we have dude on our own we don't want to burden people we don't want to be a nuisance or you know mooch off them so to speak and yet most of the time if you ask people for help they'll either tell you hey we can't do right now but here's other people who give you some thoughts or feedback but most of the time people are pretty willing to to give lend a hand to help people out as they're you know doing whatever startup or small business they're getting going on so i definitely think that's a great piece of advice so well as we wrap up and we'll chat just for a minute about uh intellectual property here in just a minute with the bonus question but as we wrap up otherwise for people who want to re or check out reef roth and they want to find out more about it they want to be a they want to be a client that customer they want to be a user 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 and find out more well you all of those things are great please reach out to me however whichever channel you prefer um all of our social is at refrosh it's r-e-f-r-o-s-h and my personal email is nicole refresh.com and you can visit us at refresh.com simple all right simple as that so i definitely encourage people to reach out connect up and find out more um so thank you again for coming on the podcast 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 and apply to be on the show two more things as listeners uh one is uh make sure to click subscribe to your paw cats players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everybody else can find out about our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need any help with patents trademarks or anything else feel free to grab some time with us to chat at strategymeeting.com so now as we wrap up the normal part of the episode we'll at least talk or get an opportunity to chat just a little bit about intellectual property which is obviously an area that i enjoy and it's kind of fun to switch you know switch gears a bit i always get asked the questions during the normal episode so now i get to be put in the hot seat so to speak so with that i'll turn it over to you that uh for what's uh an intellectual property question you have so i understand uh fairly well uh intellectual well sorry but i understand a patent of a physical product you have your diagram um and actually that's something that i explored with the pet accessories business because i had created this unique collar which is also why it took quite a while to produce um and that was a daunting process looking into that there was a lot of well maybe you don't know you have to put it out there and it's very expensive to do that um and i learned about provisional patents i did a lot of research about this i guess what advice do you give to people that are worried about defending their intellectual property but might not have the money to invest in it and aren't sure if their idea is even patentable yeah and i think there's probably a couple questions in there one is you know whether or not you should actually invest or whether or not you should dive in the other one is let's say you do get a patent or you know you you do invest in that how you might going about uh protecting it or otherwise enforcing it as a small business or as a startup so on the first one i would look at it and say you know in intellectual as a startup or small business you always have more things to spend money on than money to spend so as you're looking and saying you know weighing it i would first of all make sure that you actually invest where you're going to get the business up and running because it doesn't matter if you have intellectual property if the business never gets up and running never goes anywhere the intellectual property isn't going to do any good now with that said the the thing that you're gonna then probably the next step is okay we've got the budget set aside we're gonna get things kicked off we're gonna get things started now how do we protect it so really intellectual property patents trademarks copyrights whatever your business might be has serves kind of two purposes one is kind of defensive where it allows you to box out or to protect what you put all your blood sweat and tears in what you develop so that others can't come along and and copy it or otherwise ride your coattails the other thing that it does is also allows you to have an asset that's you know an actual valuable asset of the company that you can license you can you know sell you can if you do a merger or an acquisition or you try to get investors anything of that nature you can actually capture and get an asset that encapsulates a lot of the time and effort and money that you've invested for r d so that's kind of when you're trying to decide when does it make sense is when do you get to a point that you've invested enough with time money and effort you're saying hey we have something here that we want to protect but we want to have as an asset that we can invest in on the flip side you know you ask a little bit about enforcement now if i were to get into enforcement it's it can be more dif it depends on who you're trying to enforce it against if you're trying to enforce it against another small business you know then you may be able to compete may say you know if you're saying hey we have the money we're going to send you a cease and desist letter you need to stop a lot of times small businesses are in the same boat they don't know that they're infringing on you and they'll stop so that one is one that you can typically navigate a little bit more easier now if you're up against a big business it is going to be more difficult because it is expensive a lot of times to enforce and if you're up against a big business that's better or better funded then you're going to say we can't we don't have the same amount of money to invest that they do um there's a couple always a couple options there one is you know every business has a competitor and you know you try and think of apple has samsung pepsi has coke you know um ford has chevy and all of those different companies they always have a competitor something that's up and coming somebody that's a big competitor and they're always trying to you know outdo one another so if you're not able to necessarily enforce it yourself a lot of times you can go to the competitor and say hey we have valuable intellectual property we have great r d and you know this your competitors are starting to encroach in this phase their space would you like you know would you be interested in either licensing from us or acquiring us or whatnot and it can oftentimes give that competitor that competitive advantage and they can go out and force it for you the other thing a lot of or sometimes you can do is what's called a patent troll and patent trolls can get a good name and a bad name in the industry and they they deserve both of them but patent troll is basically someone that's not in the business of manufacturing things but their business is basically to go out and enforce patents so a lot of times they're going to look and say you know basically they'll go out for a percentage or for either percentage of the company percentage of the proceeds or whatever structure they work out say we'll go out and enforce enforces patent against those bigger companies because you have invested a lot of research development time money and effort and these they you should be compensated if somebody else goes out in fringe so that's another option as far as when you're looking for enforcement the last one you can do is sometimes the timing just isn't right you may say hey we're too small we're not big enough but hey we're going to keep going we've got a good business we're still getting bringing on revenue we're still becoming better we're going to out innovate them now we're going to keep ahead of the market and then we're also going to buy our time so in three years four years five years down the road when we are big enough when we do have enough revenue then we're gonna circle back we'll enforce it and we'll have the wherewithal to um to make sure that we can keep that competitive ed so there's a few different options as far as how you decide what to get and then how you decide to go about enforcing it so with that i probably got on long enough with intellectual property i could go on a much longer if i ever wanted to and nobody would want to listen except for myself so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast thank you again nicole for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks so much devin this was fun you

How To Understand Accounting For Your Business

Andrew Klein
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/10/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

and so i think on the on the lower side on the on the block and tackle side make sure you have your information in excel format or in quickbooks so that you can manipulate your information and get it clean and then on the other side make sure you have someone to talk to whether it's someone like us or whether it's an investor an advisor to to talk you through things like profitability and ask you the questions that you'll need to answer to you know the tax man but also to future investors [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 the ceo and founder 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 and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest episode or uh guest uh guest on to do an expert series which is andrew clean or client fine andrew klein like the underwear all right so andrew klein and uh he'll be talking a little bit or a lot of it about an an area that oftentimes as a startup or small business you want to avoid because it's not the fun or the sexy part but definitely is worthwhile and uh and has a lot of benefits to do it which is a lot of times bookkeeping and finances and accounting and kind of what you do that and if you know how to be a cfo is if you're a startup or a small business and how to keep things straight and kind of all of the the software tools and development and kind of all those different areas that while you know it may not be the fun or exciting part definitely has an impact on your business and if you don't do it can get you in a lot of trouble so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast andrew hey i'm happy to be here you know i i also am excited to be working with you more and more in the future um i love what your firm does as well thank you i'm always excited to have a great people on board and good connection so before we dive into the area of expertise maybe just take a minute or two and kind of introduce yourself a bit to the audience as to why you're an expert why you know what you're talking about and why they should listen to you yeah i'm the founder and uh managing partner of z counting so we're like accounting but with a z instead of an a um and uh i'd worked at a major accounting firm when i graduated from college i did auditing of large private and publicly traded companies and i just hated my life because you just didn't have the opportunity and freedom that you have as an entrepreneur to really make decisions and do do the right thing you know and so i went uh i then quit that job i and i went into a variety of different businesses tech businesses healthcare food service and eventually after an exit to coinstar we sold the coffee kiosk company to coinstar i joined an angel investment group as the executive vice president and i recognized the reason that my companies were more successful or were you know successful over the the 20 years that i was doing them was because we had a really strong pulse on our accounting and finance and we could explain to investors and stakeholders how our accounting and finance worked and how our profitability worked with our customers and so i started c counting initially to provide cfo support to help with the communication part and then by year two we realized holy crap compliance on the basic level is totally being missed by these entrepreneurs and they're wasting so much time on the weekends when they could be selling to customers and so we launched essentially a 500 a month basic bookkeeping for small business package that's super transparent and allows them to fully outsource everything in accounting and so yeah we've raised over 100 million dollars for clients we just had a client i mean it's probably higher now we just had a client raise 13 million yesterday um which was which was awesome and uh we've helped you know hundreds of businesses on a monthly basis we help hundreds of businesses with their accounting so now no that was a great background and definitely is uh insightful now now diving into the area of expertise so let's say you're taking a startup or a small business and you've got you know a few people they're just getting going and they don't have you know an ability most the time if you're a startup you know you have more things to spend money on the money to spend and so you're always you know most time you're wearing multiple hats you're not able to bring on a full-time cfo or sometimes outsource as much and you know so that's some of what the services you guys offer but for some of them they're saying hey we we don't have any money this is a side hustle of bootstrapping what are some of the things they should initially be thinking about as far as how to keep their fine either get their finances in order or keep their finances order if they're just getting started yeah and in a perfect world i think that you would as soon as you finish your corporate formation and create your company bank account you'd engage an accountant to set up your accounting processes and procedures uh probably quickbooks for small businesses before you know they grow um but when i meet entrepreneurs i we see a lot of entrepreneurs um i'm based in seattle but we've got sort of a satellite office in austin and uh and l.a and so when i meet entrepreneurs a lot of times the entrepreneurs don't have investors right out the door or they don't have the private net worth to be able to sell fund the business and so they're sort of bootstrapping along and you know maybe they scrap up enough money for the the lawyer but they think well i can just you know i'll just wait till tax time to do my to do my books which i say if you don't value your accounting day one it's okay right like like it's not the most exciting fun thing to be doing on on a weekend you know sell to your customers but i know that it's a fun and exciting thing to do on anytime some people like you may find it exciting i always look at it as it's something that i have to do as part of the business and whatever i can do to offload it is what i like to do totally you know and it's great we've we find um you know our employees they get excited about entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial journey and all of the amazing things you can do but they also just love to sit in their office with the green visor and just chug and when i give them too much client-facing work they're like can we just go back and do the accounting it's really funny but uh you know i so so if you start a business and you're really strapped for cash and you haven't raised money yet i would suggest just go to quickbooks online and get the basic quickbooks online and connect your business bank account right and we actually offer all of our clients and don't tell into it because i'm not supposed to do this but anyone that calls us we give them half off of their quickbooks subscription um because we get it you know we've got thousands of or hundreds of clients on quickbooks so we get it for half off so i just passed that savings on to our clients um but if you just simply plug in quickbooks and connect the bank account then all of the information will be in quickbooks and so if it takes you know if you call us or another firm in you know april 12th right first we're going to say you're going to need to file an extension but second we have all the information oh this this year you get until maybe oh yeah well yeah yeah you get another month yeah may uh another month to procrastinate yeah another month to procrastinate but you know if you have everything in the quickbooks even if you haven't allocated it to the correct expenses or taking your deductions it's it's there for an accountant or a bookkeeper like like our team to go in and clean it up and get you compliant and so i say don't let that go on for more than a year um you know because we've also had that problem where clients are being chased by the irs they're spending so many cycles fighting the irs because they never paid taxes for three or four years instead of running their business so so now so let's say okay so i i take away my my short take way to simplify it for me is at least connected to for first step is connect your friends and there's quickbooks there's fresh books there's a few different softwares but find one that you can automatically connect to your bank account import the expenses and then you can at least walk through and kind of categorize or put those in the right categories of what they are as a starting point or a stepping point now yeah and if if you're a founder and you don't have you don't have a ton of money don't worry about categorizing it until the end of the year and having one of us because go sell some customers right go to your business build your software right don't worry about you know a an accounting thing for a couple months because we can always go back and fix it right like it's not like as long as the data is there we can allocate it right and so my suggestion is make the business work and we can catch the accounting up there's other accountants i'm sure that'll tell you like don't do anything until you do your accounting but you probably don't want one of those they're paying the ass i agree well i mean because i mean and it's always funny you know every time you talk to whatever expert it is it's always theirs is the most most of the time theirs is the most important you should always get started on ip or you should always get started on an llc format or you should always do accounting because it's going to have well yeah they're all going to have an impact on your business but i like to your point if you don't get out and sell it doesn't really matter any of the rest of this because the businesses are going to be in business long and so the first thing is focus on do get out there figure out how to make money and get sales but then start to at least take some initial steps with this so now let's say okay so i got let's say i took that first step and i've got whether it's quickbooks or freshbooks or any you know a few different softwares out there that the accountant can do then you know as i'm going throughout the year what things should i be thinking about as far as the accounting side as far as you know how should i if i get and i'm taking this from from the perspective that i haven't hired a cfo or an accountant yet because i'm a small business you know if i were to do that what are some of the initial steps i should be and or let's say i say okay if i do a good year this year next year i'm going to go and hire someone that knows what they're doing but what are the things that they should at least start to do as they let's say over the first year that they get the business established yeah so i think that the hard thing is if you get an accountant that doesn't see the big picture you're going to be constantly fighting over you know decimal points and pennies on invoices right but how we like to look at all of our clients is is we definitely take a look at the details but at the end of every month we take a zoom out and we look at the financial statements and so i think that it's important for an entrepreneur to take that same perspective and instead of looking at you know the monthly financial statements or the individual invoice details they need to understand what the next milestone is with investors and then track their business to that so if you're a consumer products app like like a social network or something that's that's really about growing the volume of users i think that you need to focus on activities that grow the volume of users and try and match those and so as you're tracking your your uh expenses and revenues and putting them into the categories within you know quickbooks or freshbooks or xero and i actually suggest quickbooks uh online out of all those because every account knows how to use quickbooks and so you're never going to have a problem finding someone that can do the software but if you can track based on what your goals are and so if you're a sole proprietor your goal is going to be having enough cash you know to pay the next three months or so of your expenses and if you have investors it's going to be spending enough cash to hit the milestones whether it's customer revenue targets or engineering successes that those investors need to do the next round so there's breaking up a bit because you kind of hit on almost two different areas one is if you're simply trying to do accounting or otherwise make sure you make payroll that enough money is coming in you're covering your expenses you're going to be able to maintain inventory that's kind of one side of account the other side is if your plan is to go get in whether it's angel investors venture capital or otherwise take on and invest your money then you're going to have to have your books in in order so one that they can do their due diligence see where your books are at how much debt you're in and how much you know shares have been authorized or paris they're you know putting put out there where their money's gonna go so those are two different type of things so let's break those out just a little bit so and you start to touch on kind of two different things but let's say i'm not going to for this year i'm just going to bootstrap and i'm not going out investor dollars i'm not going to do that i'm simply going to try and keep the business get the business established keep it afloat and do it a little bit what are the things that i should be looking at for account and then we're going to jump over to when you are looking for investors but the first step what are the let's say the top two or three things that i should be doing as i get going this you know hard to get going this year that i should be thinking about for counting if we're just bootstrapping it yeah if you're just bootstrapping you know there's a ton of tax strategies you can use and there's a bunch of magic based on the categories and how you allocate expenses but if you're simply bootstrapping the most important thing is having the cash today for tomorrow the next day the next week the next month right and so i think that the most important thing is managing cash in versus cash out so i work for a company that bill gates owned called corbis and corbis because bill gates was the the main um funder of it and they never were really profitable like a lot of these tech businesses go they really focused on how much cash in versus cash out and cash needed to run the business and so i think that that's a really smart way for a bootstrapped company to operate so taking a look at their weekly or monthly or however they run their business cash in versus the cash out versus the cash needed and so you can really scope and especially if you're using quickbooks it and you can do a daily or weekly look you can see how much money you used last month to sort of forecast how much money you'll need next month no i think that that's a good i mean that's it's simple but it's one where hey let's see how much is coming in how much is going out are we at least at meeting our needs of how much is going out versus coming in if not let's see where the money that is coming in where that is so we can adjust maybe get more money there or where the money is going out can we either reduce expenses or otherwise delay that or adjust that so i think that that's a great place to start now let's flip to the other side let's say my my i'm projecting that you know in order to get the business it's going to be a cash intensive business or i i really can't bootstrap it or i do need a minimal amount of investment and that can be anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds to even you know millions of dollars so to speak because different startups have different needs but if you're going into an investor and whether it's an angel capital venture capital or angel investor venture capital or anything else what are the things that they should be doing to get their books in order yeah you know i i really like to do product market fit conversations not just with customers but with investors and i like to understand what's important to investors and so on on one level you got to do the basic bookkeeping have basic categories and identify how you've spent the funds thus far and the you know those top categories are direct costs of cost of goods sold for your product or service your marketing expense your engineering expense and then everything else that supports the office and so the more that you can skew into engineering on the early on so if you're spending a lot of your your time and money and you can allocate that to engineering and you're building a tech company it's really easy to justify that to investors if you're building something like a consumer products company you're really going to want to be looking at marketing spend and how that relates to your sales and so the the other thing is you're thinking about what is the most i love talking about positive stuff opposed to like i like the carrots right and i'm actually a vegetarian and so i really do like carrots um but uh but where you can really get in trouble um on your accounting is around payroll and so i think that once you're ready to start hiring employees and contractors i think you need to be really thoughtful and and really get help because a lot of people like if an entrepreneur wants to book a meeting with me i i'll give a 30 minute free meeting to any entrepreneur i i think you'll do the same thing right yeah no and that's exactly i mean we take we'll do a 15 minute what i call strategy meeting but we will sit down with you kind of walk through here's some things to start out with you know and it's probably a little bit the same you do in in the sense that you say hey i understand sometimes there's more money to spend or more things to spend money on the money to spend and you may not be able to afford our service today but let's think about here are some things to get you started here are some where you should start be planning your milestones and kind of figure that out and strategize and it seems like the same thing with financial planning especially if you're going into investors kind of having that same strategy of okay here's where we're spending it here's how it's going to be spent here's how we're going to utilize it here's how we're going to use your money to leverage it to increase the valuation of the business so you get a return yeah and the other thing i think where you can get in trouble is around payroll and so i i say when you start doing payroll don't delay payroll taxes or don't say well we'll catch that up later because payroll will pierce the corporate veil meaning even if you have a business entity an llc or c corporation you're still liable for payroll taxes if they're not paid and in states like california and washington they're very pro-employee and so we actually had a had a problem with a client where they were paying contractors in california because they you know they're based in washington didn't really want to have people in california and because the pandemic one of their employees couldn't move up to washington so they were paying them as a contractor and they filed with the state that they were a w-2 employee meaning an employee with taxes withheld and there were huge penalties for the company and it cost us a lot of money or at least it cost our client a lot of money to fix that that problem and we'd suggest it against it you know if you're gonna pay employees pay employees and withhold their taxes but i think there's so many cheap payroll solutions um one that we use a lot of is is gusto and again if if you have me help set up your gusto i'll set up your gusto for free and give your first month free but there's also adp and you know a variety of other ones um there's also peos like conspirity and you know a variety of other companies but there's so many companies that do payroll compliance so cheap like just use one you know it's it's it's better to pay a little bit extra you know 15 more on your payroll than have to pay a lot extra in the future for all the penalties and and interest no i and i definitely agree and it's one where you know i think that sometimes you say oh we'll catch it up we'll delay it and you know you get yourself into a big world of hurt because often times you push those out and the business doesn't go well and now you've got stuck with a big you know big amount that you are obligated to pay and you don't know how to do it so i think that building those in and saying either we're going to have to reduce staff we're going to have to reduce what we're doing hours whatever but keeping yourself balanced and this is kind of a a side note you know for those are listeners when you mention piercing the corp reveal just kind of as a an explanation there so when you build whether it's where you form whether it's an llc and s corp or c corp you have the presumption that basically your personal ass they people can't come after your personal assets and so if you're to get sued you're to you know you're to have whether it's patent trademark lawsuits or you're to have product liability or other things then they can they can come out to the business and the assets and they can do that but they can't come after your life savings they can't come after your house when you pierce the corporate bill it basically means no we can we can go beyond the llc or the business and actually come after your personal assets for certain types of things and one of those is going to be if you if you mess with the irs generally they they figure out a way to get the money one way or the other yeah and it's not just the past due taxes but it's uh employee wages or presumptive employee wages and so that the governments particularly on the coast will not accept an evil corporation not paying their employees and so if you can't afford employees do lay them off don't make people work for a future promise of pay because it can get you in big trouble that's interesting now one of the other things that i think that is and you can correct me or wrong it's one where i know enough to be dangerous but that's always the worst place to be because then you don't know exactly but on piercing the corporate belt if you start to co-mingle funds is that right in other words i start to use personal funds and business funds and i kind of start to use them interchangeably and this happens a lot especially if you're a one-man guy or a show or you just have a few and you know oh i'll just take out enough for me to live on and so then you kind of you know start to use what money that does come in as an income as a way to a source of living but you never actually pay yourself an income and the business does that and then that can get in trouble so maybe kind of touch on that because i think that that's one where people don't think about oh i just i'll just pay myself enough from what the business is making to get by but they start to mingle those funds they can get in trouble yeah and i i think that's that's probably more of a legal concept than an accounting concept because a lot of these small businesses they can't survive on their own and so there's a personal credit card that will bring into the business because it's used primarily primarily for business the irs will accept that credit card as a business card and as business expenses and so to to some point um you can do that but once you do that that card or that bank account is now a business bank account or a business card so yes it would pierce the corporate veil you would be able to in a lawsuit attack those accounts and so if you're co-mingling between like your robin hood account in your business account you know make it very clear what is an owner distribution what is owner pay and then also when you're doing the accounting if you have to keep throwing out oh this is a personal expense not a business expense it creates a lot of extra unnecessary work so just have a personal card and have a business card and you know use your business for business and your personal for personal and i know a lot of entrepreneurs don't have a ton of personal because they're working all the time so you know take that take that into account but yeah i'd say keep it clean but yeah even and where i've seen it is like you wanna you know you gotta pay rent this month for your you know your apartment or your house and so you you rather what you should be doing and then you can crank me where i'm rowing is just give yourself a seller make yourself make it clear what you're paying and you can pay yourself a salary do a distribution whatever it is but what often happens or they'll just go and they'll take the business card or the business account they'll charge their uh their personal whether it's a rent or utilities or food or whatever and then they'll say oh i'll get it caught up or this is really my payment and then it creates one is it allows it to hey if you start to commingling funds then you're saying that at least on the legal side you're not you're not treating this as an llc you're treating this really as a sole proprietorship or other type of business formation and then they can co-pierce a corporate bail because you're not keeping those are separate but then even on the accounting it gets okay now is this a business expense is this a personal expense and how what is you know having to divvy that up especially like you get in the category of the food was it was this a client meeting with at a restaurant or are you just going out to you know your your with your family to dinner type of thing and it can create a bit of a difficult to sift it out so that's i think a fair thing to just try and keep those separate as best you can well as now as we to start you know to start to wrap up and they're always which was interesting i thought this would be you know it's interesting it's accounting and you're like oh it's going to be accounting but there's a lot of interesting aspects here and i think that there's a lot of things that businesses legitimately do know or shouldn't or should be doing and should know that they'd often times don't spend the time to come up to speed but as we wrap up the podcast and again there's too many things to talk about so maybe someday we'll have chat again soon but if um if we're to if you're talking now to a startup then they're just getting going and they're saying okay i've done a horrible job or i haven't done anything with my accounting and i just want to get started i need to get something going today and you touched on maybe beyond quickbooks or just getting connected up because we already talked about that but they could after they get quickbooks connected up or freshbooks or whichever one they prefer what would be the one step that you would tell them to get going on today that they could at least get started with within accounting and with the within finance of their business yeah what what i'd like to remind everyone is there's no emergencies in accounting you know in it in accounting no one like dies or goes to jail right i mean unless you're in like major corporate fraud like enron or something right but but in general like if you made a mistake or if you did something wrong there may be penalties there may be interest but in general no one goes to jail and there's no emergencies in accounting and so i think first i should just take a deep breath and then think about what's the next step that we can do to gather all of the information to either do it ourselves or to hand it off to someone like us and i think the other thing when i started my first company when i quit the um the cpa firm i started a chain of crepe restaurants and i had some really great mentors when i wrote my business plan when i was in college but when i started my business i was smarter than i ever was smarter than i am now because now i know all that stuff i don't know back then i didn't know what i didn't know right and so so i just ran this business and i and we had the 2008 economic crash and i had no mentors no people that were helping me with my business and so i suggest that founders build a board of advisors um you know or a group of advisors maybe not a formal board so to speak but you know three to five guys and gals that they can lean on when they have questions and so i think there's a lot of investors that have a financial background which is why they're investors and so i think that having an investor participate as also an advisor on your financials even before you talk to an account or meet with an accountant can help you navigate through some of these things that seem foreign and so i think on the on the lower side on the on the block and tackle side make sure you have your information in excel format or in quickbooks so that you can manipulate your information and get it clean and then on the other side make sure you have someone to talk to whether it's someone like us or whether it's a investor an advisor to to talk you through things like profitability and ask you the questions that you'll need to answer to you know the tax man but also to future investors no and i think that that's that's a good uh having those whether it's a formal board whether it's just a group of mentors or there's people you know that you look up to but have those people that for the different areas of your business you can turn to ask a few minute questions get a little bit of advice get a little bit of a guidance at your training going and most people if you know don't don't over abuse it or you know don't abuse it so much so you're going to them every day and spending an hour of their day because they've got to get do their business and do it too but most people are saying hey if you need a few minutes we're you know we've been there we especially they've been there been through it they want to give you a little bit of advice sit down and give you a bit of time and to help you out so i think it's great to establish those people that you can trust and you can um whether it's formal or informal that you can have that as a group well as we wrap up if people want to find out more they want to be a client they want to be a customer they want to be an employee they want to invest in your business because it's so awesome they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more yeah so our website like i said was zcounting.com so it's like accounting but replace the a with the z so i was going to be accounting.com because i thought web domains are the best but accounting.com was already taken but counting.com was taken counting was taken but i got to z counting and it was still available and so so that's what we ran with and so um so yeah just go to zcounting.com and right at the top and at the bottom of our page we've got a direct calendar link that you can book with me probably similar to your strategy website um i'd i definitely encourage people to go to zcamping.com grab some time to chat and definitely take advantage of doing a strategy meeting or strategy session figure out how to get started and what you know whether or not it's you using you as a services now today or getting advice so you know how to plan for the future i think that's all very beneficial north while well thank you again andrew for coming on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you els or all of you listeners out there if you either have your own expertise to share or you just want to come on and share your journey feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast also as a listener a couple more things one click subscribe in the podcast player so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with their business just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help thank you again andrew it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last all right sounds great see you soon you

Don't Release A Crappy Product

Where Are They Now?

Tom Milligan
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/9/2021

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.

ai generated transcription

my biggest fear has been um producing an inferior product or a product that simply that wouldn't pass muster um but what that's done is it's really it's shown me and taught me that first off don't release something unless it's at least minimal minimally viable don't release a crappy product and if you do release one you're going to have to deal with it in the future and i so that's all that's what i've learned over these last few months [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 into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with years just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always happy to help now today we have another where they at now episode where you know it's always kind of fun we always have the original guest on we'll talk about what you know how they got to where they're at today kind of what their journey was and then but we never necessarily hear you know kind of what happened after that so it's fun to have people back on kind of hear how are things going did things go is according to plan did things pivot did they adjust and kind of what did you learn over the last six months and so we have another great guest on that was previously on tom milligan um that he'll be talking a little bit about um all of his journey he does uh ourdivorce.com as a reminder that helps people to streamline to how to get a divorce and use it through their system and through software side of it so he'll give us a little bit of a reminder as to where he's at six months ago and then we'll hear a little bit about what uh what's going on now so with that welcome back on to the podcast tom hey thanks devin it's great to be back with you so i gave just a very brief kind of introduction as to what we're gonna be uh chatting about but uh maybe kind of as a quick review for the the listeners kind of tell or remind everybody where you were at six months ago what was going on and then we'll talk about how it's gone since then well as a quick reminder um i started our divorce.com not because i'm an attorney which i am not um i started our divorce because um i had just i had been divorced about 20 years ago and uh it was a rough divorce cost me a lot of money and spent a lot of time doing it um but i went through a divorce about a year and a half ago and when that divorce was happening i made a vow to myself that it wasn't going to cost me so much money and it wasn't going to take so much time so i put together a plan and thankfully my now ex-wife agreed to that plan and we were able to get our divorce paperwork ready to file within 48 hours of making that decision it cost us nothing and and it's something a friend of mine at the time a divorce attorney said man if you could package this up this would be quite a business you'd help a lot of people and so an idea was born so the day after the divorce was final i started our divorce.com we started the development efforts and when last we spoke we'd had a couple a couple of fits and starts we did a launch on september 1st we kind of had to pull the product back redo a few things since then we've added another thousand or so couples i think at the time we were just at about 12 or 1300 couples that have entered the system we've added another thousand or so since then we've learned a lot about marketing which i'm sure we'll talk about um you know it's been it's been a great i think it's been about five six months since the last time we spoke so looking forward to the conversation awesome well that's a great reminder to people so yeah let's dive into it because i think last we talked um you know it may have been i'm trying to remember if you'd actually launched you were just getting ready to launch i think it was right at around the time you just launched you'd kind of gone through a bit of b or you've done a soft launch in september one and then you know i think since then and as we chatted a bit before this episode um you had to pull it back and then you did another soft lawn so maybe give us an idea what was the motivation why did you pull it back and what did you learn and then how did the the second kind of soft launch go sure uh so the reason we had to do this off the we had to pull it back and relaunch was because we want to make sure that we have a quality product and that's the bottom line i would rather have customers angry at me for not having a you know not being able to finish the product rather than being angry at me because they did finish and it didn't work um and so we we decided to pull it back because you know we went into this thinking it was going to be probably a little bit easier than it has been and i think a lot of entrepreneurs have that same uh hope and dream were you know hope spring's eternal and and we uh we just realized that you know every state is different we knew that going into it the laws are different the paperwork's different um we had to create um you know not to get you know overly technical but i'm assuming a lot of people understand the concept of a mail merge from excel to word and the concept is that we gather a bunch of data in our application and then we have to fill out the forms in each state and there are 25 000 separate variables and fields that we potentially not in every document of course but we have 25 000 variables that we have to manage and there's a lot of room for error and we had not accounted for all of that room when we did our first launch and so we had to pull it back and just make sure that everything was perfect um and i wish that i could say everything was perfect today um it's more perfect and we're and we fix things as we go now rather than launching with known issues now one question i'll ask is you know pulling back a product it's always a bit painful in the sense that you're you you know it almost feels like you're admitting defeat or at least you know temporary defeat in the sense of man we launched it we thought we had it and then we there were enough issues that we wanted to pull back so that we weren't quality issues when you did that you know how did you approach the customers you just simply say hey we you know it's not working as well as you want we're you know we're going to refund your money is it hey we can finish up what we already have we'll do it manually or we'll do it by hook or crook and get it done or kind of how did you pull it back when you figured out that there's a lot more variables to account for a great question and there was a lot of debate uh as to how to handle it but the one thing that was never up for debate was full transparency we just decided right up front that we would just be fully transparent explain the situation if we lost a few of the customers we lost a few of the customers but what uh there was no need to give a refund because we don't charge anything until until the end um so what we have done for the customers that have been that had to wait um we did give them a discount either 50 or 100 um we only charge 300 so there's not that much of a discount that we can offer so we gave a 50 or 100 discount depending on how long they had to wait for us um and it was a really i got to tell you i was nervous uh for you know as one can imagine um to make that decision but then when when we started offering updates uh daily or weekly updates depending on what was going on at the time um to the to the customers and only to the customers that had already finished the process and were just waiting for us to print the paperwork that's really the only hold up we've ever had is being able to prevent print paperwork that would be accepted by the courts which is the ultimate goal of our divorce and so we it's i've had the opportunity to speak to several of these customers not just emails and texts but actual phone conversations and one of them a few weeks ago when we were just finishing up this state i can't remember exactly which state it was but this customer had been waiting for about a month and you know they were getting frustrated and you could tell and so i picked up the phone i called this guy his name's greg we ended up talking for 30 minutes and we we we bonded we had a great time and i said look greg i'm so sorry that this has taken so long i mean it's hard this is not an easy thing we're doing here if it were easy everyone would be doing it um and that doesn't it doesn't excuse you know anything i'm not trying to make excuses i'm just telling you that's i'm trying to be open and up front and he said look thank you so much for calling we're just happy to be a part of this we're so happy that there's a service out there that that does this we're willing to wait and i it was so great and so he's actually offered to do a video testimonial as well um as soon as their divorce has been signed by the judge so he and his soon-to-be ex-wife um you'll see them on our tick tock channel soon so no and i think that you know i think that's a testament one that people want need your service but also two a lot of times you know you can either sell we're having to pull this back it's you know it's it almost feels like defeat but you can take it as an opportunity to learn about your product learn you know learn from other people it's to what it what you could change what you can make better and it gives you an opportunity to improve it as opposed to just simply just feel like you have to you know hold off or not you know not do it and it's not never an easy thing and i get that there's a lot of debates going back and forth but it sounds like out of that you got some a lot you got one you found out you had more or people who are wanting and there was the man there were loyal people that were willing to wait and then you also got some feedback so it sounds like overall it was a worthwhile endeavor now absolutely now one of the other kind of questions to follow up is you know as you're hitting all these issues and i think that you know and we chatted a little bit before the podcast you always discover it takes two or three no even if you really even build in cushion to what you think your timeline is and say okay i think it's gonna take six months i'll say it's nine months it usually still takes two or three times longer than the nine months or whatever that time frame it is and also takes two or three times the money so inevitably i think everybody thinks oh i planned this down you know i'm going to be the exception i'm always going to i'm going to be the one that actually keeps it on budget non-time and many everybody oh i don't know if i met an inventor that just unless it was so drop dead simple that there was nothing to it everybody hits into that so as you're heading into that and you're figuring out okay this take you know first of all you're having to pull it back you're having to hold off a bit you're having to deal with customers and letting them know what's going on and then you're also having to um figure out how to fund it how to do more time and money and how to you know extend the runway until you can get paying customers how did you balance all that where it's taking longer is costing more and you're still not getting revenue in well so this this project i think we mentioned this last time we were together um has been self-funded primarily i funded this myself through savings and the sale of a home after the divorce and also my business partner um jill has been funding um adding some funds as needed um we you know we we do have revenue now um so it's not that we have to fund everything anymore that's the good news we haven't uh we still haven't made a profit but we will get there here in the next month or two um and uh so so the number of days um that we're going to have to continue throwing money at this is are are quickly coming to an end and that's pretty exciting now as far as making some of those decisions i mean it really comes down to we can't afford especially at the very beginning of our business we couldn't afford any bad reviews um we certainly couldn't afford to get the word out that that we provide crappy product or that our documents aren't accepted by the courts and again like i said at the beginning i would really rather have a bunch of angry people saying wow you didn't give me documents rather than your documents suck no and i think that there's a there's a good point and i think the other lesson a bit to learn in there is you know it makes sometimes you know you always hear you know take money and take venture capital and take you know this and that and that's how you fund a company and yet sometimes when you're self-funding it when you hit those bumps on the road you know even though it hits your pocketbook you're not having investors that are frustrated why is it taking longer why is it more expensive you know and everything else because it gives you the bandwidth to do what you need to do with the product to make sure that it is it is what you promise on and what you want to deliver and you're not under the crunch of the timeline so much that you're delivering product that you can't be proud of so i think that is one that you know sometimes even though it sounds like you know venture capital money angel and there's certainly a place for that so i'm not knocking that but it also gives the flip side of when sometimes it's better to not have taken that money so that you can do what you need to with the product yep so now so and so now kind of catching up so you you know you pulled it back you you reeled it back in you take a while you fix the problems you deal with the variables you enter you know you underst you figure out what you didn't know before so that you can update it you go through all of that ex exercise and that experience now you guys have relaunched since then you had i think originally we talked to you at 1300 you even have more than that now so maybe fill us in a bit on how's the relaunch since you've done the second soft launch fix things how's it gone it's gone well i mean clearly it's not it's not perfect i wish i could say it's perfect and quite frankly it never will be yeah i've yet to meet someone that has done any project especially software but really any project where hey it's done it's perfect it's just what it needs to be because even when you've just about reached that point you have the next idea of how to improve it make it better and it starts all over again yeah well and and so we we went through and and we defined mvp the minimum viable product um and that's what we have achieved um and so we have literally hundreds of items on the software backlog in our and we're organizing into sprints now so we're doing two week sprints you know now we're into product enhancement rather than product development so that's always a really fun place to be um and so what we've also done um well let's just start at the beginning i mean the bottom line is is that this is like any sales organization which is what we are i mean let's face it um it's a funnel and it starts with number of visitors to the website and so what we did um and i can't remember exactly where we were in the process when we spoke last time i should have taken the time to listen i apologize but um we started a tick tock channel way back in september and had a couple of viral videos completely by surprise and so we decided to continue using tiktok as our primary marketing method well over time it became so effective um that we stopped all google and facebook ads entirely we literally pay nothing for advertising and we get about 20 000 uh new unique visitors a month to our site so what we decided is that in order to really focus on that traffic we actually started an affiliate program where we actually found several tick tock influencers and paid them a very small amount of money i think it was a nickel per unique visitor that they drove to their unique url and it really just drove a ton of traffic and it got us a good name well what we learned quickly though is that while eighty percent of our traffic was coming from those influencers only twenty percent of our starts that's what we call our the people who enter the program the starts only 20 of the starts came from them and so jill and i when we do our own videos that's only 20 of the volume um on our site but it's 80 of the start so it's truly the 80 20 rule so what we've learned is that while jill and i don't produce as much traffic we are far more effective um as a matter of fact we did learn that um just this last week we ran some numbers 13 conversion um so 13 of the people who go to my videos or jill's videos convert actually start the process and i don't i think most people would kill or die for a 13 conversion rate so so you start the funnel at the top with visitors on the side then they have to click get started and then their three-step process and so obviously people fall out of the process along the way but what comes out the bottom is some subset of all of those people who said get started um and it's you know it's a um it what we've recently done is we've actually just ended um yesterday we ended our affiliate program with our influencers we had to give 30 days notice per the contract and so we did and yesterday was the last day of that program not because we don't love them all but and they were driving a ton of traffic when i say 20 000 i mean just from jill and me we were getting about 80 000 with our affiliates and but they just weren't producing enough and so our cost per con completion was greater than our greater than our actual money so it cost us more than 299 dollars just to get a completion um we got a lot of name recognition but we still got to make money so every good business still needs to make money and that you know as as opposed to what you see on tv and read where they have unlimited funds and you got lots of investors and you can lose money for 99 percent of businesses if you don't make money you're going to go out of business so i definitely exactly and one of the other things you just started to touch on but i thought was interesting is you know as you guys are redoing the soft launch and you're you know getting things going again and you know kind of or seeing how it turns out you found out you know you looked at the analytics and and one of the things you found out was also um that sunday was your busiest day so tell us a little bit first on you know how did you guys start to is analytics important how did you guys start to figure out your analytics and any other insights that you guys kind of gained as you're going along that path sure so so as we like i said we kind of fell into tick tock so we didn't like do this on purpose but we do now it's it's all on purpose we release two videos a day but what we've and we do that because we have to test when the best time of day to release is um and so in order to know what time of day we also need to know um day of week and so when are people the most likely and at what time on that day are they most likely to want to get a divorce which is it's a horrible thing to think about and i'm in such a weird position because i don't advocate for divorce i just want to make sure divorce doesn't have to suck as bad as it has in the past and so um and so we started running um we there are always two people involved of course in every divorce and we call them an instigator and a recipient because the first person actually starts the process and then invites the other person to join and so what we do is we we count um instigator um account creation date and time that's kind of how we figure everything out um and what we've learned is by the way 67 percent of our instigators are women and sunday is by far our busiest day in terms of new starts um roughly 45 of our starts happen on sundays um and so we focus a lot of our efforts on making sure that our videos are our most what we believe to be our best videos um go out on saturday and sunday to try and you know gather that um you know basically capture that weekend divorce fever for whatever reason that's when people do and i don't know if it's because they get angry at their spouse on a sunday or because they're not working um i don't know exactly why sunday is so busy it just is that's interesting so so now you you know you but but i think it's a testament at least you know you may not always know the reason behind but you know for for example you know if you're saying hey the majority of our you know the your initial contact or initial users are going to be women then you may adjust how you're going to or change your messaging or your videos or how they interact with it or what it's like and same thing if you're saying hey if sundays are the thing we may need to either have more customer service or staff up or otherwise adjust our message so if people are doing it on the weekends doing it when they have down time they're not doing it during the work day it's i think it's a testament to the reason why you need the analytics behind what you do rather than just guess and you know not pay attention to because it can have a big impact one way or the other and even with your affiliate marketing it sounds like you know all of those if if you if you're not paying attention it's easy to miss the things that are going to make the the business even more successful exactly yeah i think that you know when now that we know a lot of these things um we we know that um i and this is not to toot my own horn in any way because i i don't even know why this is true um but what we know is that the videos that i produce and put out on tick tock um tend to go more viral than jill's and it's you know i love jill's videos more than my own so it's not about that i i think it comes down to there aren't a lot of men on tick tock talking about their feelings and their divorces and stuff like that and and so our audience which is primarily women i think that they find that endearing i don't know what the right word is but um they they resonates more with them it resonates somehow with with women and so um and so we you know we try to do some really inspirational videos we try to have a lot of fun with the videos we make fun of people we make fun of ourselves quite a bit um and you know we just try to have fun and it's just the beautiful part of of tick tock now the other crazy thing by the way and not this is a commercial for tick tock but um i strongly encourage any business especially in a b2c type of a business it's free and in fact it's actually better than free because as soon as you reach a certain following you can join the creators fund so i actually get paid to make videos to advertise my own business um it's an insane it cost me negative dollars to advertise and that's like a dream um so anyway just a throw just to throw it out there if you're in the b2c business tick tock is a great place to be if you want to have some fun with it oh and that's i think that's a good good insight and good lesson learned so as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast you know now looking you know so we we kind of had the original podcast episode that we did was looking you know kind of six months ago we talked heard about your journey now we've heard kind of the last six months how things have gone how you've pivoted adjusted looking again once again to the future you know if you're to take the next you know again six to 12 months out where do you see things headed what are kind of the plans and what's what's next for you guys well the the biggest project we're involved with right now is that we just tripled our our legal staff um literally this week um so we now have far more legal professionals involved and so we are improving the documents even though the documents are acceptable we're improving the legal documents so that they're you know better they're more efficient we're trying to reuse documents across states wherever possible or portions of documents so that we don't have to manage every piece of it individually and we can just manage a master like for example an asset division table is something that we can reuse in every single state and so we are going through all 51 jurisdictions and replacing the language about that with common language um so that's the biggest thing in terms of what's happening today what's happening going forward um over the next six to twelve months what you'll see the name our divorce was not an accident and really what it comes down to is that anyone who's ever been divorced knows that when the judge signs your decree it's not over that's actually the beginning and now you have to manage your divorce there's financial implications from alimony child support then you've got visitation and parent time you've got so many things that have to be managed to maintain an amicable divorce that we will be building out tools that allow a divorced couple to manage their kids calendar and their alimony payments and child support and we will allow you know we will have paperwork involved so that people can you know file documents to change their child support or change their alimony order based on new jobs or anything like that so where the plan is or like i say it'll it's a it'll be a lifetime journey but you'll see the first release of our platform over the next six to twelve months about how to manage an existing divorce so getting divorce is just the beginning now we can manage the ongoing divorce too no and i and but i think that's interesting because you know it's dip you know illegal phil they get were in the same but even i do a lot of patents trademarks intellectual property and one of the things i've noticed is you know a lot of times you know you tend to focus on just one very narrow sliver of helping somebody in that but there's always that you know things that they're doing before they come into contact through things that they're doing after they come into contact with you of which they both need help and they need assistance and so as you expand the product a lot of times you're saying hey let's help them not just along this very narrow slice of their journey but help them along as much of the journey as makes sense and as much as we're able to absolutely yeah i think that i think a lot of people have that they think that it's oh good i'm divorced it's over and it's just not and there's just too much more to it so we want to help people make that whole their whole life cycle of their divorce goes quickly and easily as possible um no i think that definitely makes sense so well one and so now as we wrap up the podcast i always have one question you know normally during the normal episodes i have two questions i always ask and you know we talk always about that with the where are they at now our episode i always try and change up the question just a bit um because you know usually once you got into it further and you got deeper into it you find things that you know they keep you up at night they keep you worried to keep you you know that you fear so to speak or the or make your concerns you always have to deal with and so i always switch the question out for a bit so now i'll ask my final question for the where are you at now episode which is along your journey what's been your biggest fear and what have you learned from it the biggest fear um really comes down to what we've already talked about i'm sorry to be boring but my biggest fear has been producing an inferior product or a product that simply that wouldn't pass muster but what that's done is it's really it's shown me and taught me that first off don't release something unless it's at least minimal minimally viable um don't release a crappy product um and and if you do release one you're gonna have to deal with it in the future and i but so that's all that's what i've learned over these last few months no i think that's a good lesson to learn and i think it's one where it is a fear that you have that hey i'm going to put this out in the world it's not going to work or it's going to fail or it's not going to you know people aren't going to receive it and it is one where you always having to constantly guard against it that you know there's two temptations one is you work you know you wait off hold off so long that the product never makes it to market because you're always fearful that it's not going to work it's gonna be a crappy product and then you have the flip side of it where you put it you know you you worried that if it you know you're if you do if you wait too long you're going to miss a market you're going to miss a window you're going to not be able to fund it you're not going to be able to keep it going and so there's always kind of those fears of when is a product good enough so i definitely understand that fear and also kind of what you've learned as you've gone along as to how to deal with that fear so very insightful so well i appreciate you coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure to catch up with you again hear where you guys are where you're at and hopefully things continue to be successful um now for all of you that are and before i jump into that one more reminder for people if they forgot they don't remember how to reach out to you if they want to be a client a customer if they're if they're going through a divorce or they're headed in that direction if 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 and find out more well first off if you if you want to be my customer i'm sorry to hear that i really am um but if you do want to have an amicable divorce go to ourdivorce.com um you can read all about it we have a great resources page where we have several contributing attorneys and other legal professionals that write blog posts for us there's a lot of great information if you even if you're just interested in the in this in the uh in the subject matter um if you want to contact me the best way is just uh info our divorce dot com um love to hear from you um again weird place to be i don't want you to get divorced but uh if you are going to get divorced i hope i can help help help make it a little less painful no but i think that that's fair in the sense that you know it's kind of like most time although i get to play in a different area of law where people actually are excited to see an attorney and you know they have an invention but most of the time it's like i have to go see an attorney i don't want to see it's like hey sorry that you're going through a hard thing let's see how we can best help you out in a hard time so i definitely get where that you know kind of the conflict or conflict arises but 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 come and be a guest on the podcast we'd love to have or share your story just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as a listener one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast please you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find about find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with your business go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help thanks again tom and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks so much devin you

Spend Your Time Wisely

Catharina Joubert
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/8/2021

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.

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and this was a very hard lesson I learned, so be careful in how you spend your time so we always gonna get a very rewarding feeling from being busy, and this can we just be like, you know, answering emails taking phone calls, you know, doing marketing. But if you do not actually evaluate the impact that all this business is having on your ROI, your return on investment, and what the income is and how you're actually making progress, are you growing your audience, your podcast so whatever, what your income or profit is whatever it might be, if that's not growing fast not changing and yet you're all busy all the time, then you need to reevaluate and strategy. Everyone this is Devin, here with another episode of the inventive journey. I'm your host Evan Miller, serial entrepreneur has grown several startups, seven and eight figure businesses, as well as the CEO and founder 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 strategy meeting calm and grab some time with us to chat. Now today we have a another great guest on the podcast Catherine show Joburg or Howard, as close as I can get to. So, Katharina. She grew up in South Africa, dropped out of high school and then, instead they completed their examinations to get the degree left at home and 17 went to Japan for a while, which is a fun age to go and explore the world went back home, went to university for a while, got a degree in music and sound production and also did some went to France, do some English teaching had a family tragedy came back home taught some English taught some music. Excuse me, and then moved back to UK wanted to do something else I signed up to do teaching. First, I think Teach First Leadership Program, and some of the rougher schools in the UK, got some great experience, but it was also a very stressful thing, so I decided to move on from teaching and move over to what she's doing now, which is more of a multimedia company and also does a rise and produce a podcast so with that much as introduction, welcome on the podcast Catherina. Thank you for that great introduction you basically covered everything but I'll try and expand on some points. Absolutely. So I gave, as you said I gave kind of a 32nd overview of your journey which is condensing a much longer journey into a much shorter amount of time. So let's go back a little bit and tell us a little bit about growing up in South Africa and testing out of school and moving to Japan, so kind of tell us how that all the journey got started. Okay yes that's actually like where, if I look at where I'm at now, it all goes back to that stage and of course you don't actually realize it at the time. Now, growing up in South Africa, I mean, it was just such a mixed cultural bag and I'm of a mixed cultural heritage, so obviously one of the things they've really really influenced me was this fascination with traveling and exploring the world and meeting new people and being able to speak different languages, and the other on the other hand, however I was also both just very creative. I loved music loved writing, so these are the things I did. Now you mentioned that I dropped out of school and the reason for this was simply I just felt everything was going very slowly. And this kind of depressed me so in a way I felt like I was wasting my time so at one day I just stopped going. And my parents had to make peace with that, I got the textbooks ordered and just completed the exam, as quickly as I could. The exams that could allow me to for example apply to university and so forth. And luckily this put me in a position to leave her pretty quickly and it also gave me a lot more time to do different things so I spend a lot of time, like to put it in perspective, I wanted to be a concert pianist, I was really fascinated by the power of audio and how it can just influence people and sway their emotions and make them feel better. And then I was also fascinated by stories. So I did a couple of other cultural activities which allowed me to go to Japan, there was a very rare opportunity that opened up. And it was more through people I met, so I took it immediately, but I was still a teenager, I was 17, and my parents eventually asked me to come back and actually go to university, so I did that. So one question why, before you get back to university, so you went to Japan for a period of time did you just go on your own. Did you have a plan and what did you do while you're in Japan or kind of, that seems like a bit of a cultural jump and also just a, a different direction to go into what did you do there and how did you figure out, or how did you figure out how to make your way there. And so at the time, I can't actually remember how I got into it but I was playing Eagle, or golf, which is the oldest strategy strategy game, and it was invented like I don't know how many years ago. Basically it's kind of like chess but it's a lot simpler and a lot more complicated for example computers, only they were only able to develop a computer program to be professional Go player, like, a couple of years ago. That's how complicated the game is. So that's what I did, or spent a lot of time on, and I met a what they call the center like a teacher and because of the situation I was one of the few South Africans that especially being a female South African. So they just said, Well, come to Japan and studied again when I said why not. But yeah, so it was a very rare opportunity and I did just go by myself. I probably, from that point onwards, I've just been a bit of a nomad I have not been able to stay in one piece for too long. So you say he said okay you know sounds like a fun opportunity you know I've got my testing done with school, ago in Japan have an adventure and do that for a while so you do that, and then I think you said it was what it means studying go now, one question this is a follow up on that you know was that it was playing going up to support yourself, did you work there. Did your family support your kind of how did you while you're in Japan, not being at home anymore. How did you kind of fail to pay for your life expenses. So, obviously, all of the expenses they sorted out some accommodation for me I didn't have to work or anything I couldn't because I feel that I would have had to have a work visa. I was still like a teenager, so it just wasn't going to work out. So, because they also gave me like, actually I could attend the school for free, where I was studying, so it was kind of like a bursary. And then my parents just supplemented what I needed. Otherwise, sounds like a fun and exciting experience and so he did that and how long were you in Japan for. I was meant to stay a roughly a year but then of course there was the university question of university which starts in January in South Africa so yeah I had to cut my time short. So now he come back to South Africa say okay I'm gonna study in university. So, what did you decide to study kind of how did you know how did you decide where you're going to study and what direction to go from there. Yes, very good question, because I was very certain about what I wanted to study, and I was music, but at the same time I knew I wanted to at least specialize in a one on one language, and then, I was so, like, fired up about different languages so I wanted to so in total three majors, which meant that the best degree at that particular university I wanted to study at was something called Music Technology. Now I think this is like 2008. And back then podcasts haven't really started and what music technology basically meant was you were you were going to go into sound production you were going to do something to do with the technical side of sound. And this didn't interest me at all. Even though fast forward to today, this is what my company is basically based on but yes. So at the time I didn't know I just thought well, I could do loads of different things and that's what I've always been doing so that's why I decided to do that. Now definitely makes sense and so you study that you get a graduate from university get the degree, and then where did the next adventure life where you say, obviously the like traveling. By this time, so I was just like, Okay I need to get to a new country, or something strange but yeah that was the idea. And because I studied French at the time, I went into the did my post grad in French literature, all the while I wasn't entirely sure what the career idea was going to be all I was thinking about was just like going to as many different places as possible so it allowed me to go to France so there I got his poster the English teacher. And the idea was to stay in France, I didn't really have any plan to come back to South Africa and basically from France just find a different place to go to. But unfortunately at that stage, there was a family tragedy which meant that eventually I went did go back to South Africa. And I think that is kind of like where all my, I almost want to say worse decisions started happening because I was on this climb very fastly in a direction, and even though I didn't have a clear destination in mind I kind of knew what I was doing, maybe not. But anyway, when I went back, obviously, you know, I had to think again. What kind of job was going to do in South Africa. At the stage, I mean, I studied music technology, which already was a bit of a vague thing. At that time, and French and English so everyone said Well the easiest thing to do is just go into education. I mean, with that, it's very secure. Everyone needs a teacher, like, it's not something that's going to go out of fashion soon. And so I said okay, why not so I followed everyone's advice but the thing was getting into an industry like that, which is, I mean, I loved being a teacher I love teaching. Still, if you get really comfortable. And because it's fairly easy to get a position, regardless of where you go, it makes it even more attractive in terms of a career and then you start thinking, Oh well, I want to do more and at that stage I was working for tertiary institutes of higher education. So they asked me to do a bunch of curriculum development, which was great. But during this whole time even though I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. I kept feeling that something went lost or something went missing and I'm not entirely doing what I wanted to like when, way back when I was, like into music and into writing. and the big reason for all of this was some people were saying, well, there isn't really a career in those things unless you're like one of this, like very very special or exceptionally talented you know a virtuoso for writing it was just simply don't even try. That was the message I got message you decide, okay, I'll do teaching for a period time I think that after the family tragedy, or tragedy after you stayed home for a period of time you went back abroad and you went to the UK and did the Teach versus leadership. Yes, so, I mean this is all just kind of like a blur at the stage so basically I met my partner. When I went back to South Africa and his family is based in the UK. So at some point, we just agreed that while he said, there's a chance to go over, and I didn't even look at the map, he just said it's, it's in the north of England, and I said yeah why not. So I left everything behind, again, a very secure career job family support structure, which is wonderful. It's very useful, but I found myself having moved country already for a couple of times I knew that the community living education are the teachers so I looked at systems, and found something called Teach First, now in this states, It's called Teach America. And basically the principle for this is a leadership development program where they take top graduates, and they put them in, without any prior training, they put them in, like, really tough schools, and in normally very poor regions. So that just automatically because they haven't had no training they've had no background, they can just like really develop the students. And because it's, you know, their mentality they can raise aspirations and then those schools and students and areas will slowly turn around because of these. Well, training teachers. So that's what I did in UK. And yes, that was great. In a way, in the sense that, I mean it really developed me as a person and I got to, I hope, have a positive impact on quite a few students and mean something to them and what I taught them but also being kind of support them, but at the same time, it was grueling It was absolutely like I did not have a life at all outside of it was like very very tough. So now you do that for you know even sounds like it was rewarding and also stressful and tough and kind of everything rolled into one. And what made you kind of decide okay I've done this very time was rewarding. I want to do something else, you know, kind of go a different direction and how did you decide what direction to even take yes so strangely enough, at the same time because I was in this new country, so the other side of what I was doing, I was actually a music journalist so all along. I've always been writing always been into music and so forth. So, I was doing that at the same time living this dual life, and I was, I also had a blog to explore and kind of let the world know about this really beautiful region, with all these ideas and potential, but very few people knew about it. So, based off of that, I just simply decided that even the interesting story was, it was the first day of a new year that I walked into the headmaster's office, and handed in my resignation and just said, Well, if I don't do it now I'm never going to do it so I did it. I'm freaked out for a couple of months, just thought well I'm going to start a podcast, there's no, no podcast in this area is celebrating the space, people, and I'm just going to start one I did not put a lot of thought into it, even though I did. I just, like, in terms of podcasting and businesses surrounding podcasters and like Multimedia Production I didn't think about that, I just wanted to do a podcast. And that's what I did and then I found that regeneration studio which strangely enough was not the best name, but I was normally when I'm literally like, if you send me another direction I just. So, for the podcast, what was the original idea or what did you want to, you know, kind of focus in on what was the motivation kind of as to where you were with podcasting focus on. Yes. So, because Teach First, they allow us to do a lot of printing or like kind of, what would you call it a kind of like apprenticeship, but during the summer holidays we could go to these big companies like PWC or some of the others Deloitte, and we could do like internships, basically. So that really sparked my interest in actual business I even wanted to do an MBA at this stage. And because of that I was interested my first podcast idea was really like looking at the entrepreneurial ideas, entrepreneurs in the area, and the innovation, and kind of spreading and spreading inspiration through. So that was my initial idea, it was a little bit more business focused and but creative at the same time. So that was kind of the initial focus initial idea now, did that work out, did you stick with it is that what you're still doing today. We're kind of I think that as we chatted a bit before things continue to evolve a bit as you kind of figured out, you know where the what the place was versus was with the podcasts being there. How did they know, kind of with that initial idea you took the lead, or where did it evolve from there. And, yes, so at this time. Even though I did some market research. I actually did quite a lot. And I had an idea of it, but I didn't actually think or market what I was doing. And because of that, there was a there's loads of reasons why I didn't actually spread the word and be one of the reasons is that it was last year that I launched something called COVID-19 happened. But anyway, what happened throughout the year was basically organically, this was not the idea. I just met somebody in a coffee shop and told them about the podcast because I wanted to know if people in this area actually listened to podcasts, because I wasn't getting any traction on the one that I started right at the start. Once again because of various reasons, and if so, what kind of things would they be interested in. So I just started talking to this person and they were the CEO of a charity and they were like, really interested in that idea. And then they wanted more. And that's how my current because I suddenly realized that I've always loved writing and creating content about other people and what really drove me was not a superficial picture, I really wanted to drive into there, like the soul of a business will the soul of what mattered to people and capture that. So whereas, sure enough, there are millions of multimedia production agencies and so forth out there. I felt that there was perhaps not that many really trying to put out something that focused on the impact people wanted to have, and that's what got me thinking and then at the start of this year. I also realized that my name was, At least from a podcast or content creator creators perspective, if wasn't the best name because people didn't quite know what regeneration studio meant. While it was very clear. If you prefer to urban regeneration, which means it just means turning up kind of a crappy place where should you place into something that's kind of nice and cool. While it is frustrating swearing. So that was very clear to me but to be honest. Anyone, like if you just spoke to them, they wouldn't know that necessarily unless they're an architect. So yes, so I decided to really look at my audience as well because I realized that as much as I wanted to have an impact on the people around me. They're not necessarily they're not necessarily a podcast listener that I couldn't take that approach and just think because it's their areas, they're going to be interested in it. And even more so people outside of the area were, weren't necessarily interested in there either. So I had to find a different angle, and my angle was to look at who can I actually speak to. And that's how creative fraud came about because I'm a creator abroad. No, and now that name makes at least for me, makes it makes sense and kind of resignation so genuinely makes sense like, did the shift a bit. Now as you did that you know you've shifted he kind of gone through, you know, been a bit of a nomad going to different countries you've been different, a bit of a few different career paths, and now you're on with the the current business you're at now kind of saying okay, we've figured out a bit of work you know why you want to position the podcast what you want to do is for media production everything else. What is the next kind of six to 12 months look like. Yeah, so I've actually now got like a product like a proper thing that I developed, and I developed it around the idea that I want because I looked at, loads of other podcast production agencies and the exciting part for me is okay so I am literally the first if podcast exclusive production agency or audio marketing agency in this area in the northeast, so I'm basically for the next six months, I've just need to contact as many people as possible and put this in front of them, and also more specifically what I part of my target audience if you like, would be the people who would eventually be attracted to the podcast. So, actual creators abroad, because I'd be able to really like, that's one of the company values I decided at the start, is that it's really a celebration of diversity. So to people who who want that cultural understanding and interaction so that's my other side so people around here who don't have anyone else to turn to, and then created as abroad so that's what it looks like for me and then I've got another thing in the works which is not to do with language instruction by the way, that's what I did I was a French and English language teacher so I've got a very well, let me just say an original idea for teaching languages but that's coming later on now. Sounds like a lot of fun, fun opportunities are coming up in the future so definitely excited to stay tuned and see where things going so well as now as we wrap towards the end of the podcast I always have two questions that I asked so we'll go ahead and jump to those now. So 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. I thought about this and there's so many bad things, but what would probably be not paying enough attention to marketing. And I know that time is limited. And you, in my case, not all of us feel very comfortable with selling ourselves with telling people what we do. But the fact of the matter is if you start a business or if you have a service, and you really believe in it. For example, if I were to use an analogy or a different kind of business there's something that would really change people's lives completely so you can cure people who are short sighted like, like if you had this medical care for people, and it doesn't have to be laser operation for their eyes, would you just keep it to yourself because you're too scared to sell this kind of invention that you know you would talk to it, to people about it, you will tell them about it and it's the same with anything else that you do you have to really believe in it and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't believe in it and I didn't sell it, and because of that for one year, I was like, incognito. No, definitely makes sense and good mistake to learn from and learn from. So now we'll jump to the second question which is, if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them. So, I'm going to give two pieces of advice, very briefly, and the first piece of advice is specifically for content creators. So someone who doesn't necessarily have a physical product that they're developing or want to sell. So the really tough thing about a business when you start out, is that you obviously you have to get the word out there. Now, if you do not have a reputation to kind of get that kickstart from. It is really important to think carefully about your branding, and how you're going to position yourself in the market. Because if people are not clear on what you're offering. So, especially like I said for content creators like if you have a podcast, amongst million others, then they're most likely just going to move along. So that time that you need to take to explain to them what it's about, are going to lose perhaps 80% of your audience. So, be very clear and very specific with your branding rather than be too simplistic with it, and too complicated. I like that and I like that, you know, oftentimes of branding and trying to convey so much information you want to know, tell everybody all the cool things and all the different things and the reason why they should pick you and everything else was you know, there's always a lot of excitement, a lot of things that you are probably doing different unique, but I like the simple processes hayleigh are conveyed the information that they're going to need, what they're going to want to know and you know how you how you want them to perceive the brand, keep it simple, and that does more to help your brand, than it is to overcomplicate it or to try and convey too much information over, or, you know, in any given time so I think that's great advice. Yes, exactly. And then just very briefly on the second piece of advice and this is more generally, for any business is. And this is a very hard lesson I learned, so be careful in how you spend your time so we always going to get a very rewarding feeling from being busy, and this can be just be like, you know, answering emails taking phone calls, you know, doing marketing. But if you do not actually evaluate the impact that all this business is having on what your ROI, your return on investment, and what the income is and how are you actually making progress, are you growing your audience if you're a podcast or whatever, what your income or profit is whatever it might be, if that's not growing if that's not changing and yet you're all busy all the time, then you need to reevaluate and perhaps influence. No, and I agree and I think that there is oftentimes it feels like hey if I'm busy, I must be, you know, must be successful I must be improving on something and sometimes that's true and sometimes you are being, you know, being busy isn't a bad thing. But if on the other hand, if it's just busy for busy sake are the things that you're doing are the things that are going to create the most value, then just being busy doesn't doesn't benefit your business so I think that's a great another great piece of advice. Well as we as we wrap up when people want to reach out to you they want to find out more about your business, they want to hire you as a content creator, they want to be a customer, client and employee and investor your next best friend, any or all of the above, what's the best way to reach out contact you and find out more. So the best place to go where you'll find all my links, and my contact details, is my website, which is creators, abroad.com, and you can just simply get in touch Email cat at creators abroad. COMM or Instagram, which is where I'm most active at creators abroad. Actually that's creators dot abroad as adopted. I definitely encourage everybody to reach out find out more and make sure to connect up with. Well thank you for coming on the podcast has been it's been it's been a pleasure. Now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell me like to be guest on the podcast is go to inventive guest calm, always love to share your story, do more things as a listener, one, make sure to click Subscribe in your podcast place you know on all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review, so that other people can find out about all the awesome episodes as they come out. Last but not least if you ever need help with patents, trademarks or enhancing their business just go to strategy meeting. COMM grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help. Thank you again, Catherine and wish the next leg of your journey, even better than the last. Thank you so much, Devon, for having me on the show.