The Entrepreneur Ethos

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Jason Azevedo, Chief Strategy Officer at the Manufacturing Revitalization Corporation of America, a private equity firm that acquires, builds up and modernizes established manufacturing companies, eventually giving all ownership back to the employees. 

Jason's experience with entrepreneurship started when he was 15 and he began a business printing T-shirts. The business did not last long, however, due to the impact of the recession of 2008. Yet Jason didn't give up; he went on to found his own companies and eventually cofounded MRCA.

In this episode, Jason and I talk about how far manufacturing has come and how it's not the picture many people think it is. Companies are finding it more efficient and less expensive to build products in the U.S. The main challenge is finding employees - not because the work isn't fulfilling or well compensated, but because of outworn stereotypes of working in manufacturing. Manufacturing, says Jason, is one of the only industries that allows someone to start without a college degree, be trained, and work their way up into management. The work that MRCA does also seeks to help turn around the devastation wrought on many towns throughout America when companies closed their plants and left. MRCA focuses on helping to grow the company and keeping communities strong while also valuing employee wellness and input.

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Chris Clews, author of Raised on the 80s and a speaker who draws on movies from the 80s to illustrate lessons for business and life.

After 20 years working in marketing, Chris was wondering what else life had in store for him. He found inspiration in watching one of his favorite movies from the 80s, The Breakfast Club. He began writing about insights he gained from 80s movies, first finding popularity on LinkedIn. He self-published a book, built a website, and became a speaker. He's since written two more books where he draws on 80s pop culture to relate lessons on work and life. 

Chris shares some examples of these lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders. In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays an African king who journeys to Queens, New York. He hides his royal background and takes a job at a fast food restaurant. Chris explains how this is an example of humble leadership over earned leadership and how this can provide a better model for others. Another example he shares is the wisdom of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid where he reminds his student to "remember to breathe."

Chris and I talk about how these lessons are as apt now as they were when they were made, why 80s movies have an enduring appeal to younger generations, and why the 80s were such an exciting, experimental time in popular culture. 

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Sunny Han, CEO of Fulcrum, a cloud-based software platform for manufacturers.

Sunny describes his journey into entrepreneurship as more like listening to a "gnawing" rather than experiencing a sudden bolt of lightning. He made the decision to leave his job and strike out as an entrepreneur because he knew he'd regret missing the opportunity. He first thought of it as trying to "do" something; ultimately, he found himself creating something, which he now sees as an important distinction. He did not see where he would end up, but had a strong belief that with hard work he'd get somewhere. Fulcrum was the outcome of an interest and knowledge in the areas of small businesses, manufacturing, technology, and software. Much of his success, Sunny says, is from learning a lot from mistakes and failures. 

Like health care, manufacturing tech is ripe for innovation. The challenge, however, is that you can't just jump in and offer Band-Aid solutions. You need to look at the root, says Sunny. Most people give up, disheartened, when they get halfway there. But what matters in the end is that you ultimately solve a problem. He also cautions against trying too quickly to change something when some aspect isn't working. Sometimes it takes awhile for a change to come fully into effect. It's easy to get caught up in the latest thing, a new strategy or tool, when sometimes you need to just be patient and endure the hardship until things get better, trusting that the decision you made is the right one. In this episode we also talk about the role of luck in the entrepreneurship journey.

Now, let’s get better together.

• When you're a CEO, it's important to not give in to FOMO and react to every new opportunity or problem. You need to make decisions strategically, and have faith that things will work out. 

• We all have limited resources and limited time. It's vital that you figure out the most important thing to focus on first. One thought experiment you might do is to ask, if everyone wanted to hire me/buy my product, who would I work with first? How would I manage it? This can help you prioritize and target your market. 

• Use the theory of constraints. Sunny recommends identifying what the constraints are, ranking them, and then directing investment toward decreasing the risks that come with those constraints.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Yaro Starak, cofounder of InboxDone, a virtual assistant service for managing email.   

All Yaro knew when he started university in Queensland, Australia was that he didn't want a traditional job. It was the late 1990s, and the internet was opening up new, exciting opportunities. Yaro created a website on Magic The Gathering, a competitive card game and made a modest income by selling cards, in the days before PayPal even existed. Within a few years, he'd launched another business offering translation and editing services to students whose first language wasn't English. This business grew to the point where Yaro could make a living. From there he tried blogging, eventually also growing that into a business where he offered courses around blogging and ultimately building Blog Mastermind and the Laptop Lifestyle Academy.

As a busy entrepreneur, Yaro was spending a lot of time answering emails. He decided to come up with a way to delegate these tasks, which helped him to build a business while freeing up more time. Eventually, he decided to develop the system he'd set up into a business idea. He invited one of his assistants to cofound this new company, InboxDone, which has since grown to now having 45 team members working for CEOs and managers around the world. In this episode, Yaro and I talk about how to build a service-oriented business, the challenges of scaling, and the power of delegation. 

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Jason Cohen, founder and chief innovation officer of WP Engine, the sixth-largest public-serving website platform.  

Jason is no stranger to startups. He's been launching businesses for two decades and previously founded Smart Bear, a company that makes professional-grade peer code review tool that was bought by AutomatedQA. Jason's businesses have started out as ideas that he then explored to see if they had potential. With WP Engine, he explains, he was able to use a more "thoughtful" process, a process he's developed and refined to grow WP Engine into a successful mid-size company with over 1,500 employees.

Jason explains how asking the right type of questions are critical in the idea validation process, noting that just identifying a problem is not enough to start a business. He first writes down his hypotheses then formulates open-ended questions of potential customers, looking for commonalities among answers. With WP Engine, the answers have been and continue to be overwhelmingly the same, which helps considerably in guiding the business. Once you start to really identify and understand your market, you can not only understand how to better build a product, but also how to market effectively as well as build other products. Jason also explains the "three horizon model" and how it applies to his mission to grow and innovate as his company grows even bigger.  

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Steph Nasser, founder of OpenVC, a platform for entrepreneurs to more easily connect with VCs.

Steph's first job out of business school in Paris was at a Microsoft startup accelerator. Like so many entrepreneurs, he saw where something was needed. In this case, it was a comprehensive database of venture capital firms that entrepreneurs could search to find potential matches for their funding needs. Surprised that it didn't already exist, he set out to build it. 

Still in its early stages, OpenVC is already making a mark by building its database, filtering out the "noise," and also offering education for entrepreneurs. They have started hosting "roasts" where several founders pitch their businesses and get "roasted," giving them feedback on how they can do better. 

Steph believes that the old way of getting funding is changing. He sees younger VC managers as being more open to using technology to connect, as opposed to the old way of going through introductions. OpenVC is on the road to becoming a powerful tool to do just that.

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Carl Robinson, founder of Rumble Studio, which offers technology to help podcasters cut down on the time needed to make a show. 

Carl studied computer science in England and first worked as a management consultant, then moved to China to found a startup with a friend. They had success with one app but not so much with the other. Carl went back to being an employee, and returned to school to pursue a master's in data science in France, where he still lives. 

While doing an internship for his studies, Carl started a podcast that focused on voice technology and AI. Though it was a lot of work, Carl acknowledges that all the conversations he's had with his guests have helped him to better understand the landscape of voice technology and the possibilities for AI. He combined this knowledge with a problem he identified: the amount of time and work it takes to put into creating a podcast.

When Carl was approached by an entrepreneur incubator, he jumped at the chance to develop the idea he had for making podcasts more efficient. He joined forces with co-founder, and they developed the technology that became Rumble Studio. This technology allows podcast hosts and their guests to have asynchronous conversations and provides a streamlined solution for recording, editing, and promoting the episode. We also talked about the potential the technology has for helping companies obtain customer feedback, among other possibilities.  

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Richard Lau, founder of Logo.com and Resume.com. 

Richard started out 20 years ago registering domain names, working at home in his bunny slippers. After growing the company to $4 million, he sold it and moved to California, but unfortunately the deal went south and he ended up with a severance check and took his wife and infant back home to Canada. 

After that, Richard took what he learned and started over. He worked for 10 years as a domain name broker, specializing in tracking down hard-to-find contacts and buying domain names that he then sold, or kept for his own inventory. Eventually he started developing websites for the domain names he bought. He and his partner built Resume.com into a full-fledged business offering resume services and eventually sold it to Indeed. They also built up and sold domains.com, selling it to the company that became GoDaddy. Richard also founded and produced a conference for domain name brokers. His current project is logo.com, where entrepreneurs can have a logo built for free. He plans to grow the site by offering other services for businesses as they grow. 

Now, let’s get better together.

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Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, David Perry, cofounder and CEO of Carro, an e-commerce networking company that is upending e-commerce by bringing together brands and influencers to work together to increase sales. 

David is a serial entrepreneur who started out in video game design. He grew up in Northern Ireland but left at a young age to go work in the video game industry, eventually ending up in California. Some of his most successful ventures in video games were those that paired up with well-known brands, the first of these being a game featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After starting his own company, he experienced this phenomenon from the other side, when a character his company created for a game was licensed out for other products. He later was involved with a game associated with The Matrix movies. 

With Carro, David has brought his understanding of the importance of branding to the world of e-commerce. David explains that after "retiring" from the video game industry, he just wanted to learn how to do various things and explore questions. He noticed that his daughter was very loyal to particular brands of clothing and wondered how to get influencers and brands to do more for each other. The basic premise of Carro is that it gives brands the ability to connect their inventory with influencers, and gives influencers the ability to sell products without losing the customers to another platform. They now have over 30,000 brands connected through the Shopify platform so influencers and partners can sell inventory from other brands right in their own online store.

Now, let’s get better together.

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This bonus episode is an experiment in asynchronous podcasting.

The concept is that guests can record answers to host questions anytime they want, via a SaaS tool called Rumble.Studio.

It's a different way than I normally do the show but I wanted to experiment with it to see how it works.

I think this method of making podcasts has a lot of merit. I'm not going to change the format of my show to this method but for what you're about to here, it makes a ton of sense.

The reason I was inspired to give it a go is because I interviewed the founder of Rumble.Studio, Carl Robinson.

This first episode is the answer to the question:

The answers were super interesting and insightful. If you're a podcaster, this is definitely worth a listen.

The guests on this bonus episode are listed below. Thanks again for helping with this experiment and your awesome insights. I really appreciate it.

01:17 – Asha Wilkerson: Personality and Energy.

01:57 – Swire Ho: Target Audience and Potential Outreach.

02:18 – Roger Nairn: Uniquely Excited and Do Your Homework.

03:10 – Christina Eanes: Professional and Enjoyable.

03:45 – Steve Christensen: Authenticity and Energy.

04:20 – Phillip Hughes: Build a Relationship and Interesting.

05:56 – Tom Schwab: Powerfully Interesting and No Robo Emails.

06:33 – Douglas Kadlecek: Passionate and Make Me Think.

06:55 – Dr. Steve Yacovelli: Exposure and Practice My Story.

07:28 – Cathy Nesbitt: Share my Message and Insights About Myself.

08:02 – David A Conatser: Help Tell Your Story and Expose Your Creative Talents.

08:12 – William Branum: Ask Difficult Questions and Make Me Think.

09:03 – J. Thorn: Warm, Inviting, and Listens.

09:25 – Tejaswi Gautam: Credibility and Visibility.

10:19 – Marvin Raab: Fun and Publicity.

10:35 – Farzad Rashidi: General Popularity and Educate the Audience.

11:40 – Rachel Michelberg: Recommended and Personal Relationships.

12:02 – Brenden Kumarasamy: Find Small Ways to Add Value That Excite People.

12:59 – Grant Faulkner: Professionalism and A Good Experience.

As usual, I also put some of the Actionable Insights I learned from the interviews below.

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