The Mentors

When LISNR closed a major enterprise deal with NBC, the organization fundamentally changed forever. First, they were able to raise $10 million as they gained interest from 70 more enterprise level customers that wanted access to their innovative solution. Second, they got their first major lawsuit. These early growing pains would eventually lead them to identify a billion dollar opportunity, but how did the startup persist while avoiding failure?

In part two of our interview with Rodney Williams we discuss how the company managed to survive through multiple points of potential failure by focusing on gaining customer traction and building product value. Rodney tells us how the team was able to quickly create large sales pipelines that take years for some companies, through a meticulously thought out brand strategy. 

We also dive into the specific tactics behind his aggressive B2B lead generation strategy to understand how they were able to build up demand so quickly every time they pivoted. 

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Today the chase for success leaves many people feeling so overwhelmed that even doing simple things like scheduling a doctor's appointment can feel daunting. With an always on culture where everyone's personal lives are on display it's easy to get to a point where you're not defining your own success and instead are letting outside factors and outside parties define it. 

This week we were on an episode of the Redefining Wealth Podcast and the host, Patrice Washington, ended her show with a great question - what does success mean to you? 

Over the last few years we've realized that to us success is being able to have varied experiences and have a feeling of contentment and through this lens we're able to make decisions about what we spend our time on and the goals we set. 

In this 5 Minute Pick Me Up we talk about how we got to this realization, and what you can start doing this week to get one step closer towards defining your own success. 

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Rodney was still working full time for Procter & Gamble when he got a term sheet from investors for his new business, a technology that transmits mobile data over audio signals. After raising $850,000 in capital he was finally ready to quit his day job. He grew up with entrepreneurial parents that ran small businesses and from an early age he knew he wanted to build a big company one day that would impact millions. Today, LISNR counts NBC, Sony Music, Ticketmaster, and many other recognizable brands as clients with new partnerships that is getting their technology in the hands of millions of people. 

In part one of our interview with Rodney Williams we uncover how he navigated his career early on to position himself to become an innovator. He accumulated four degrees specifically designed to give him the knowledge, skill set, and awareness to be able to see a big opportunity when it came along. We find out how he ended up at a highly visible and cross-functional role at P&G and how after getting into a startup competition called Startup Bus he was able to bring on a major music record label as a client and raise close to one million dollars within six months. 

Next week in part two of our conversation we learn how the business pivoted into various verticals and markets closing massive enterprise deals in the process, and how the team eventually landed partnerships with some of the biggest companies in the world to change the way we pay with our phones forever. 

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Sometimes an innovator is born when someone decides to dig deeper in pursuit of a conviction or idea that others dismiss. This week we talk about a pattern that we noticed from watching Mindhunter and All The President's Men on Netflix. The characters in both stories go from being relative unknowns to changing history by being entrepreneurial and pushing further than anyone else was willing to go. 

We also talk about why your previous behavior doesn't have to define your future output and performance, and why anyone can chose to make a change at any moment that can reshape their trajectory going forward.

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Every creator and business founder reaches a point where they need to lean on the advice of a legal professional. But how do you know when the time is right? At what point in the evolution of your venture do you need to consult a lawyer, and how do you make sure that you're being as resourceful and pragmatic as possible? We thought the best person to talk to about this was someone that truly cares about entrepreneurs, someone that left a massive law firm to join forces with a legal partner whose mission was aligned with his - to help inspire innovation by working with brilliant founders from inception to help them navigate complicated legal issues. 

In our interview with David Postolski of Gearhart Law we dive into many of the same questions that first time entrepreneurs have when starting a business. The first half of the interview focuses on what to consider when thinking about Intellectual Property for your business, detailing what you need to do in the first year of your business and the costs you can expect around patents. 

We then cover more common questions, like when you should incorporate, how to avoid personal liability, when to create founder agreements with your partners, and why you should never pay for an initial consultation with a startup lawyer. David speaks with us from the perspective of an entrepreneur to make sure that you limit your costs early on while avoiding major problems in the future. 

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The average age for a first time entrepreneur is 40 years old. Why? Because by then you've already developed skills and knowledge that can give you a massive competitive advantage over other people that are just starting off. 

We spent most of this week at the Podcast Movement Conference in Orlando and wanted to share stories from a few of the speakers that we met that leveraged deep experience in one industry to create quickly growing businesses and brands in a different one.

The first story is about Hernan Lopez who built a career in TV at Fox over a 15 year period, to start a podcast network called Wondery that used the same approach to international expansions via partnerships to become one of the fastest growing podcast networks in the world.  

Next we talk about Erica Mandy and how her start as a local news anchor and eventually a reporter at CBS gave her the confidence to start her own daily news show called The NewsWorthy quickly landing a partnership with PRX's RadioLab.

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Sometimes passion and opportunity meet at the perfect time. Antonio was at a restaurant with his friends when he noticed how much plastic waste was being created by the trash from just a few customers. He knew that this wasn't sustainable and he decided to do something about it. Turns out the market was ready for a change. 

In this live podcast interview with the founding team of SeaStraws we talk about how they quickly grew their sustainable straw business, receiving their first major order after just a months of operation. Having already helped another coffee brand grow the founder knew that branding and sales were the most crucial things to get right from the start, so he recruited his friends Echo and Sophie to start the business with him. 

In this episode we dive into exactly how Antonio convinced his team to join him, and how they found incredible mentors and advisors to help fill the gaps in their team. We also learn how they closed their initial distribution deals, and why relationships are so critical in the early days. Lastly, we discuss what it means to run a public benefit company, and how the team's focus on sustainability drives the decisions they make every day.

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It seems that one of the most consistent entrepreneurial mantras is that you should never give up. But the reality is that entrepreneurs abandon ideas in favor of new ones all of the time! 

In today’s 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we wanted to discuss the often ignored topic of when it’s okay to give up on an idea, and why trying something new doesn’t always mean you’re chasing a shiny object. 

Some questions to ask yourself when considering giving up on an idea are:

Have you really given your original idea a real chance by iterating on it?

Are you still excited about the value your idea brings, or the people it serves?

Do you enjoy any of the day to day of working on this idea or business?

Are you in the mindset of identifying a new idea that’s worth pursuing instead?

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Deciding to change the entire direction of your business is inherently hard. Are you giving up too early? Will you lose the value you've already built? What if the new idea doesn't work out? 

In part two of our interview with Nigel Eccles he explains why his team made the decision to pivot their product and start in a completely new market - fantasy sports betting. It started with an ideation session with his team, and a realization that they still had a lot of potential with the part of their original idea that had been working - prediction software. 

Nigel discusses how they built their first MVP with no coding, and how lengthy early discussions with customers helped them identify a huge opportunity to create FanDuel. Once there were signs of success, Nigel went on to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in Venture Capital, investing deeply into marketing and growing the company into a billion dollar business.

We also learn why Nigel decided to go through the process of building a company from scratch all over again with his new business, Flick, and how he continues to validates his products to know when to correct course. If you have any questions or comments after hearing this episode, message us on the Flick app to chat.  

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The best part about getting older is realizing that everything you've ever been taught about how things are "supposed" to be is fiction. The truth is, there are no rules. Instead, there's an equal playing field for every single person that decides to create their own version of how things "should" be. 

Still, it's not always easy to have the confidence to create the rules yourself. To stop waiting for permission from someone else. 

In this 5 Minute Pick Me Up we discuss how to throw yourself into situations where you have authority so that you can start getting comfortable with making decisions and creating rules even when you might not feel completely ready to do so. We talk about our own experience with this as educators, and why mentoring and teaching has empowered us to understand that no one else is innately better at deciding on how things should be. 

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