The Entrepreneur Ethos

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This bonus episode is a bit of an experiment to sharpen my skills in machine learning. You see, I ran Anji and I’s original interview through a speech to text program to get the transcripts. I then took a look at the keywords and found this gem about complementary cofounders skills.

Anji and I were talking about how to figure out if you can work with a cofounder. That’s where this starts off at 29:10 in the original interview. The transcript is below. It has been edited for length, clarity, and typos.

Anji: I'm really lucky. So Dilek, my current cofounder, is amazing, and we definitely were complementary to each other. And she's, you know, she’s coming from the design and jewelry background, so very creative. But she's quite She's quite analytical for a creative person, and I'm the more analytical side. But I feel like I have a very heavy creative side, and so we're very complementary to each other. And so what? Even I may not be as creative as her, but I get it, and I also know what good creative looks like. And she may not be as analytical as me, but she also knows these things need to be done like profit margins, financials, this all that stuff is really important. She may not be the one running the spreadsheet, but she understands the importance of it and so that has been great to. 

Complementary skills, I think are so so important. It's not an either-or it's both are needed. I have to say I'm very also very lucky with my prior cofounder. I did two of my startups with him. 

He was on the engineering side. That was probably where I was. The more creative one is the more analytical one. But he too. We have very complementary personalities. I'm probably a fierier person. He's calmer.  I do feel like when, especially when you're looking at a cofounder, you want someone that kind of compliments you, And then you also appreciate that skill, right? You don't feel that my skill is better than yours or, you know, that one is superior to the other. You realize how they work well together. 

I think also when you build out the rest of the team like everybody is like a piece of this puzzle rate, And so what? What what are they what? Peace or they fit.

I've learned so much from both of them. Um and I have to. I have to, you know, like a lot of people. You know, this is about a lot of founders where they have cofounder issues or you don't agree on a lot of stuff until,"

I've been really lucky. I can't say that doesn't mean we agree on everything. But I think where you're able to kind of discuss it, not take it personally, not be mad at each other."

I also think that's important as you grow the team. Like your team needs to be able to come to you and have an open discussion … You're not going to do this alone, no matter how smart you are, no matter how much you know.

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On this episode, I talk with Brady Morgan who founded Financial Automation in February of this year after working as a financial analyst. He, his partner, and his team of twelve build automated systems for businesses to manage their money so they can free up time to focus on the aspects of their businesses they know best. Brady also hosts a podcast, Budget Trek, where he covers personal finance and interviews entrepreneurs about finding financial freedom.  

Brady talks about his why, the vital element every entrepreneur needs to know to keep them going. After realizing his parents struggled to get by financially when he was growing up, he put his focus on earning enough money to provide for his family in the future without sacrificing time. He studied finance in college and worked as a financial analyst before deciding to start his own business at the age of 24. 

Brady explains why he believes in “work-life harmony” rather than balance, and how his determination to provide for and spend time with family has prompted him to start his own business and also help other entrepreneurs save their most valuable resource -- their time.

Now let’s get better together.

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Today I talk with Jo Lynn Clemens is CEO and Founder of I’ve Been Vetted, a company that helps companies improve risk management of employees with a risk scoring platform, Risk Karma. Like many other successful startups, Clemens found a need and sought to fill that need by providing a scoring system to help companies reduce risks in one of the most expensive areas of risk management -- employee behavior. 

Jo Lynn came to entrepreneurship after the death of her father, when she sought more work flexibility while she settled his estate. Using what she learned in her previous jobs in insurance and risk management and as an auditor with Lloyd’s of London, she set about developing tools to help companies better manage their risks in human resources.  Clemens finds one of the keys to her success is employing efficient processes and building relationships with clients. 

Now Let’s get better together

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On this episode, I speak with Jennifer LeBlanc who started out as a scientific researcher in Canada but soon found she preferred doing research on people and their projects. She moved from writing about people to being part of corporate launches, having been “bitten by the tech bug” when she came to the Bay Area.

In 2003, despite being told she was “crazy” for starting a business during a recession, she founded ThinkResults Marketing, recognized by the Silicon Valley Business Journal as one of the top ten fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley back in 2017. 

Her experiences led her to share the ten key elements she sees as essential for new companies in her book Launching for Revenue: How to Launch Your Product, Service or Company for Maximum Growth, which she published in 2018.

At the same time, as she was working on the book, she was drawn to the emerging movement of women taking on harassment in the tech industry. 

As a result, she collected and published a book of essays titled Changing Tides: Powerful Strategies for Female Founders. She also founded the Changing Tides Movement, which offers support, networking, and resources for female founders, to give them a safe space to exchange knowledge and learn strategies for finding funders.

Now let’s get better together.

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Today I talk with Kurt McIntire who is a San Francisco-based software engineer and entrepreneur. His first business was a mobile app development company he co-founded with his college roommate, called Vektor Digital. After five years of successfully developing applications for clients, he and his cofounder decided to go separate ways to explore other avenues. Kurt then went to work for Meraki, which is part of Cisco.

While there was much he learned at Meraki, such as standardized processes, he decided entrepreneurship was better suited for him. He and his wife both quit their jobs and embarked on a month-long road trip throughout the Southwest, just before the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to shut down cities. In addition to bonding with his wife, Kurt made his daily tasks to  “read, write, and sweat”. He used journaling as a tool to help him figure out what he wanted to focus on. After returning home, he decided to focus on machine learning and co-founded SharpML. 

SharpML is currently focusing on consulting with companies to develop AI solutions in the form of image, video, and data analysis.

One important takeaway Kurt shared was that he and his co-founders learned that they needed to acknowledge and work with their different communication styles. The key, Kurt found, was being open about their fears and working to understand each other’s different worldviews. In addition to having weekly sales and tech meetings, he and his co-founders also make time to share their thoughts and fears. 

Now let’s get better together

Links to Explore Further

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Today I talk to veteran and entrepreneur Tom Schwab, founder and CEO of Interview Valet. In this noisy digital world, if you can’t break through the noise, you just add to it. Instead, you need to get in on the conversation where your ideal customers are already listening. As a Navy veteran who ran nuclear power plants, and an inbound marketing engineer, Tom Schwab has a refreshingly unique approach. 

He focuses on time-proven strategies, then supercharges them with today’s technology and podcast interview marketing. As an author, speaker, and teacher, Tom helps you get more traffic, leads, and raving customer fans by being interviewed on targeted podcasts.

Tom founded Interview Valet after seeing a need for a workable system for entrepreneurs, authors, and thought leaders to market themselves through podcast interviews. 

Tom references his time in the Navy as good training for the pandemic as well as building a business, instilling in him a mindset that looks at the journey instead of the end. Instead of approaching every day as the same as the last, he chooses to embrace each day’s challenge and to learn something new, one of the hallmarks of being an entrepreneur.

Another lesson Tom has applied from his military career is the value of having an efficient process and always assessing it. He believes in hiring good people, building a good system, and then trusting in his team to make good decisions. This is why he calls himself a Chief Evangelist Officer. he’s an evangelist for the company, his clients, and his employees, who all work remotely. Remote teams are one of the only ways to respond to clients that are all over the world.

As an entrepreneur, Tom strives for “work-life integration” rather than “work-life balance.” This enables him to schedule his time to focus on his business when he needs to, and to schedule time for his family or other pursuits. While he feels like he only works ten hours a week, that’s because the rest of the time he’s “working,” he’s having fun and that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about. 

Now let’s get better together.

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On today’s show, I talk with Tom Geary, an entrepreneur who started a successful marketing agency, School of Thought, in 2008, on the eve of a recession. Tom shares insights about the importance of creativity, taking risks, and having empathy even during scary times.

Tom has been combining his creative impulse and entrepreneurial spirit since the age of 10 when he started a newspaper while traveling around the world with his parents. Tom shares the experience of surviving a typhoon on his father’s boat, and how he learned from his father to think outside of the box and take each problem as they came. 

Tom stresses the importance of working with companies to help them see past what they think they know and put themselves in the customer’s place. He creates campaigns that don’t just “play by the book,” but that stand out from the crowd. His company’s motto is “Make them care,” and that’s what he endeavors to do for every project he works on. How a company communicates its offering is as important to think about as the product or service. 

Now, with everyone in lockdown during the pandemic, Tom says that business leaders should take this opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and empathy while also being creative. He points to campaigns by Reddit and Frito-Lay as examples of how companies can be different while also demonstrating understanding and empathy.

Having the courage to take chances and try things out is essential to succeeding as an entrepreneur. The best practice for companies to survive rough times is to the exact opposite of what many do - to pull back. Instead, Tom recommends that we take the opportunity to stand out, to invest, and build up. 

Tom strives to create a workplace where employees feel invested and care about the company. He encourages employees to practice self-care and to have boundaries between work and personal lives, which is particularly difficult right now. Employees, like marketing, should not just be an afterthought in business. 

Now let’s get better together.

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Today on the podcast, I talk with Gregory Roufa, founder and CEO of Sodalis, a company that is transforming the way we interact with each other. Gregory started off in the mortgage brokerage business where he learned how to work with others to get stuff done. Gregory then went on to form Corrigo, a platform to help manage facilities with wireless work orders back in 1999.

His time at Corrigo was a wild ride. At one point, it went from 200 people down to 16 in a single day. That taught him a lot about how to manage a business during a downturn but also the toll that stress and strain can take on you.

One of Gregory’s proudest technical achievements was keeping Corrigo’s cloud service up and running during the early 2000’s -- which was the very beginning of cloud computing. To put that in perspective, Amazon Web Services did not even exist back then.

Gregory also learned during those 20 years of ups and downs to take things one step at a time, prioritize, and to find good people. His team was what really made it all work. Without a good team that’s aligned to the goals, works well together, and can trust each other, Corrigo would have folded a long time ago.

Gregory’s new venture, Sodalis, is totally different from real estate management. Sodalis is focused on helping people heal through deep connections with others through VR. It’s a fascinating idea whose time has come and if you’re interested in how to have transformative experiences without using drugs, this is one to listen to.

Now let’s get better together

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On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Ben Simon-Thomas, co-founder and CEO of W3LL or Well which is Connecting people With Effective, Evidence-Based Solutions That Improve Wellbeing. 

Early in his career, he worked in preventive medicine to try and change people’s lifestyles so they can be more healthy. That inspired him to come back to healthcare and form W3ll.

Ben’s by nature an optimistic person and sometimes that can get him into trouble, especially when it comes to picking a co-founder. What he has learned about picking a co-founder is that you have to have the attitude that anything is possible while not dwelling on the past. It’s also important to feel at ease with your potential co-founder, which has a lot to do with transparency of both actions and being honest that you won’t have all the answers. It’s the ability to hear options, good or bad, and then come together to solve the problem that’s the hallmark of a good founder pairing.

Ben has a Masters in Buddist Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies that is driving what he is doing at W3LL, which relates to Health, Happiness, and Holding Space. What that all boils down to is how our thoughts affect our wellbeing.

We cover a lot of ground from 3D printing to mindfulness to a person’s wellbeing. It’s a fascinating conversation about how to be more healthy, happy, and hopeful. You will not want to miss this one if you want more wellbeing in your life.

Now let’s get better together.

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On this episode of the podcast, I speak with Joanna Penn, Award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She is a podcaster, international speaker, and award-winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, The Creative Penn is regularly voted one of the Top 100 blogs for writers by Writers Digest. If you want to figure out how to write books and even make money writing, then this interview is a must-listen.

Joanna studied theology in school and then went into IT consulting where she learned all about business but was miserable doing it. She went through a cycle of working and quitting until she realized that she should start her own business. It took stints in real estate and then a scuba diving company, all of which she hated and “failed” at to realize she needed to do something she loved. 

These “failures” also gave her the insight that she did not want to manage people or assets. Rather, she wanted to do high-profit margin work that she loved that could be done anywhere in the world on a laptop. That led her to become a writer where she could do the things she loved -- read, write, and travel. 

Joanna loves reading Thrillers and Dan Brown inspired her to combine her fascination with religion to write her highly successful ARKANE series. This following your interests approach is a great way for entrepreneurs to figure out a way to create an independent life that completes them. If you’re an author, chances are, you don’t make a whole lot from your writing and that’s why Joanna has multiple streams of income -- selling books is only one of them. This allows her to do what she loves while also making a living -- an important part of being an entrepreneur.

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