Your ‘Big Break’ is in Your Hands

Serial Entrepreneur Club – EP56

[00:00:00] 

Catching the big break. That’s what it’s all about. We worked so hard and it sometimes seems to allude us that we get this one time is one moment where we get the big break as a startup. I’ll tell you one thing, my startups that I’ve sold were an overnight success. They just took 10 years to get there and we have all heard of the one hit wonders the bands that play one great song.

And then for whatever reason, can’t seem to put two corns together to create another great song. Think about the opposite of the one hit wonder those classical bands that can produce one great song after another, like the Beatles U2 killers was one of the ones I liked and the two thousands, that was a pretty cool band.

They came up with a lot of hit. And then another. And so it’s interesting to think about why so many startups or [00:01:00] entrepreneurs or share loss burgers can do that over and over again, is it possible that we can crack the code? That we collectively, the club has community work together to figure out what it takes to start scale, exit, repeat, and do that over and over again.

That is what this show’s all about. It’s all about finding out the formula, the secret sauce, figuring that out. We do this every single week. We’ve done it now for almost a year. We have over 50 episodes that are posted on our website@startup.club. And you can also catch your favorite podcasts network.

And if you search for serial entrepreneur club you can listen to some of these episodes. We’ve had phenomenal guests. We’ve had phenomenal. And it’s really been it’s really been a great podcast for learning how to launch your startup, how to scale your startup, how to exit it. And then maybe how to repeat that all over again.

Today we’re talking about catching the big break. [00:02:00] Sometimes it seems like we work and work and work, and we never seem to catch that break. Michele, you know what I’m talking about? Like it’s one years, two years, three years, four years. And we’re always saying, what’s, when’s it gonna happen?

When’s it going to happen? When are we going to, when are we going to hit that big break? If you’re in the audience and you’ve watched a startup before, and there came a point where you got that break, where something happened in your startup, something happened in your career where you finally got that break.

We want you on stage. This is going to be a fun event today. We’re going to be talking about, trying to create an environment. We can increase our chances of catching that big break. We were on a podcast, Michele and I were on a podcast and Jeff with the gentleman who started he’s 85 years old, he started Reebok and he told us that, one of his first breaks came when that famous Jane Fonda that’s it, that famous, not actress, I guess she was a workout coach and she did these videos and she had wore [00:03:00] a Reebok’s shoes.

And when she did that, and this happened by accident, this wasn’t a paid event, happened by accident. The Reebok began to take off in the United States and it became as a quite large global brand. So Jeff and I, we have a little bit of a story. We’ll kick it off here as well. J. And I were lamenting.

We were actually, this was about January of last year and we’re we went for a walk around the building. We often go for walks here in Fort Lauderdale when the weather’s nice and we were complaining, and this is now we’ve been doing.club now for about nine to 10 years at the point, about eight years.

Sorry. Cause it was 2013 maybe 2012 when we actually but nine years. And so we went for a walk for about 20, 30 minutes and we’re walking around the block and we’re thinking what she’s met. We have worked so hard to take this little.club, domain extension and sell almost a million domain names, [00:04:00] seldom globally, and nothing seemed easy.

It seems like we had to do one fight after another one battle after another one new customer after another, we had to keep making the next sale. Can we got back to the office. We came into the boardroom and we’re sitting around, we’re working on some stuff, then all of a sudden we get a phone call and I couldn’t believe it.

And this was about two hours after our walk and we got a phone call and I believe it was George Verdugo, who said, have you seen what’s going on with clubhouse? And we’re saying what is clubhouse? We had no idea what club was. He said, everyone clubhouses, it’s exploding this new app.

And a lot of the individuals are branding themselves with the.club name. And they’re also setting up clubs and using a dot clubs, similar to what with startup.club. And we were like, oh my gosh, this is very interesting, never thought of this before. I’d never heard a social audio chat. And so we we began to talk to some more people [00:05:00] and almost instantly, we began to see a dozen.

A hundred. I think there was one day there were 800 premium names sold in one day. And so for us, that was our break. That was the beginning of.club, really breaking out. And then ultimately we sold to GoDaddy last year and and we moved on, but man, it took a long time for that to come.

We did have a false start with Demi Lovato where she did use the.club name and, it got also a lot of publicity, but then she decided to change direction a couple of years later. And she never continued with, using that name actively, but catching that break, it will happen.

It does happen. W how do we create that environment? And Jeff, any thoughts on that story before we move on? And if you’re in the audience again, we want you on stage. Tell us how you caught your break or what you do in your company to help make that big break. Yeah, w we’ve always referred to it. It’s the torquing moment.

And, we were always [00:06:00] waiting for our torquing moment to have to happen. And the reason why we called it a twerking moment is there was a time when no one knew what twerking was. Hopefully if you’re listening to this and you don’t know, you can Google it, but just be prepared for what you might see, but no one knew what torquing was.

And then one night Miley Cyrus was on one of the late night talk shows and she showed off her twerking skills. And then the next day, everyone in the country knew what twerking was and was talking about twerking. So we always refer to that big break as that torquing moment when suddenly everyone is aware of your business or your service.

And it’s hard. I think part of being. For catching that the big break is being open to it, not having blinders on so that when George Redugo called and Michele and Colin hearing about clubhouse we jumped on that opportunity. So we didn’t just shrug it off and keep our heads down and just focus what we were focused on.

We perked up and said this is interesting. Let’s take a look. Literally at the [00:07:00] time, clubhouse was iOS only, and Michele and I are long time Android users. And we literally that right after getting off the phone with George, we went to the apple store and bought iPhones and signed up with an iPhone so that we could actually take a look@whatclubhousewasandwhatwasreallygoingontherewith.club.

So part of catching that big break, as Colin said is, setting yourself up for it. And part of that is. Being open-minded being aware, being able to accept that, that the next big opportunity or idea may come unexpectedly and not from a source that you were planning on. And so you’re not have to be ready to receive it when it comes to.

And I think also ready to maximize it, maximize the benefit. When we had something like that happen, I began to start doing some tweets and the industry media began to pick up on that and they began to see the excitement that was coming from us around these premium name [00:08:00] sales.

And I would actually I’d get I’d come into the office and I’d have the team put together a screenshot of all the premium sales I’d posted on Twitter and say we had another record, 389 premium sales yesterday. And and then I come in the next day, oh, we had another record. And then the media, the industry media began to pick that up and it became a self fulfilling prophecy.

So when these breaks come. And they come in many different ways. We don’t know how they’re going to come. But when they come maximizing the benefit of that and, using PR to your advantage can give you a lot more just a lot more room to grow and benefit from that break.

Michele w it was me Ellington’s we know you’ve been working with for two, three years. Have you got your big break yet? You haven’t have you, yeah I would say no. And I’m going to just shift here a little bit on what you’re saying. As far as big breaks go, of course, it’s, it’s fantastic to get them but that’s thing, the kind of thing about big breaks.

[00:09:00] It can’t plan on them. So you know what we’re doing and what we always did at.club is we still set or. Setting goals really just puts you into action and it helps get everybody moving down the same path. So what I would say is, yeah, catching a big break. Okay. The, of course there’s nothing better, but what you really need to do, I think, is make sure that you’re doing the business fundamentals.

And I think Jeff said is, make sure you’re ready. Should a big break come across. And I think also very importantly, don’t ignore it. It may not be like a super like, I’m not front page of the wall street journal. I think big breaks could be micro breaks. And I think that’s what leads you to ultimately, what some might say making you an overnight success or that big break.

Yeah. Interesting. All right, grace, you’re [00:10:00] onstage here. You’re up next. You want to share a big break that you’ve had or a question you might have around this topic?

Or the, maybe we’ll jump down a Tonya. If grace you’re not ready there. If it’s the bottom right corner for the mute button, I might’ve caught you off guard. It’s this is your big break. Come out and talk. All right Tanya, you’re onstage. And do you want to share with us one of your big breaks or thoughts on this topic?

It seems like we’re having some technical difficulties there. We’re working on that. Sometimes it happens in a way that you don’t expect. Back in 1996, we had an internet service provider in Canada and the neighbors were working on some construction, unfortunately, the the the phone company or sorry that the power company had come in and when they were doing the construction and [00:11:00] cut all the phone lines off to our building, and we were the largest ISP in the Toronto Canada, and we came to the office that morning and said, holy shit, we’re out of business.

This is it we’re done. No one can access the internet and probably about a good third of people who were in Toronto at the time couldn’t access the internet. So I got the team together around a board boardroom and I I called everybody and I says, guys, this is what we got. We got a crisis on our hands.

So this was a crisis. And what we decided to do actually was come out with a Presley’s. Within 30 minutes we wrote up a press release and we released it to the Toronto media. And the publicity that we got was huge. I remember listening to the news network, six 80 news at the time in Canada and Toronto.

And I would hear every single hour internet direct, the phone lines were cut. They’re trying to reestablish them the in, they explained that it was the power company and, so we, what we did is we took our problem, our issue. We didn’t try to hide from it. In fact, [00:12:00] we publicized it. We made like we let everyone in the Toronto know and, I guess there’s a saying, no bad.

Publicity’s what I was saying is that the fact of the matter is we were getting good publicity and good exposure for internet direct. And that, that gave us a lot fast forward two or three years later there was a hacker on our, on a very famous hacker named mafia boy.

And if you go back in history, you might remember this and he was on our plan. And we had been contacted by a number of media outlets. So we told them we’re going to have a press conference. And literally we had everybody from CNN to Yahoo news, all the Canadian news. And we were number one on the newscast that night, talking about how we identified mafia, boys account and that we had given that information over to the police.

And so there’s times in your life when this news hits? I think someone else has called I think Verne Harnish. I was in a session with him. He called it news. Jackie, I don’t know if you want to talk at [00:13:00] all about that, Jeff, but that’s some, sometimes that can help lead to catching your big break.

Yeah. News jacking was coined by David Meerman Scott and He’s got a book of the same title. And it’s really just being aware of what’s happening in the news and in the real world and how your product or service or company relates to it and then jumping on the bandwagon. So if there’s a big story, that you can add to, or that’s related to the industry you’re in, and you’re able to get picked up maybe as an expert, giving a comment on it to the media, or just somehow when people are following that story, you’re also getting picked up.

So news jacking is a good strategy to try to force that big break to happen.

Yeah. I often think too, that, if you can develop policies and strategies in your company to help get this break, big break to occur, it can make a difference. And I think the [00:14:00] one that comes to mind for me the most is trying to figure out or a staff. An X factor for your company. And that Hostopia, this my last story here, but, and would definitely go around after this, but it has Topia.

We would migrate websites and email and we provided the hosting and email for most of the telecoms in north America, south America and Europe. And we became a leading provider in that, but we weren’t that way at the beginning, we struggled to get our first client. In fact, it was our VC that helped us get get the first customer cause our VC was.

Tell us ventures and they were a division of Telus. And so we were able to get, tell us, and then from there we’re able to add additional telecoms in Canada. And then all of a sudden we wanted to go to the United States and we said, okay, let’s do this. Let’s expand down there. But we struggled. We struggled for 2, 3, 4 years in the United States until we started getting some key deals.

And the first one, I remember being EarthLink when we won that deal, Donald dealing with some older names here, but we won that deal. [00:15:00] We were, we won it because. We had it set up an X factor in an organization that said, we will migrate these websites. We will have a 100% migration guarantee. And what that did.

It allowed us to have something over our competitors that our competitors could not give. It was something unique and different. We had solved a bottleneck in the industry and the bottleneck was that most of these buyers from these telecoms didn’t want to migrate or move to an alternate provider because they feared losing their job.

And they feared that cause migrations, if anyone has been in technology, they understand migrations are very challenging. So when we won that earth link deal, it essentially created a domino effect. And it just took off like we one after another, every telecom fell towards us and our competitors Verio and host way, they lost market share to the point where [00:16:00] we had 95% of all the new deals coming in because we became the defacto standard.

And again, that was a strategy of creating an X factor, something unique and different that the industry, our competitors couldn’t provide or couldn’t offer, or if they did, it would take a year or two for them to play catch up. And that gave us the opportunity to dominate the industry and the dominoes fell.

So I think that was the sort of third example I have about the X factor and about Hostopia and how that company did very well. Again, it was sold and went public and then was sold to a fortune 500 company. Again, grace, we have you on stage. Can you blink your microphone if you’re available? If not golden, you’re on you’re up next.

Is it just me? Am I going to get a break here? My, my guests don’t seem to be able to oh, here we go. Golden. You’re alive. Hi everyone. Good evening from my aunt. [00:17:00] Yeah. Do you have a, do you have a story for us? I do not have a story about big break because I’m still waiting for my big break.

But I am learning from the experiences you guys are sharing. And I really needed to I really needed someone who has been through this process of getting the big break to share his or her story. And I am really learning because as a founder of a digital enterprise one that focuses on paid media, I’m still working towards my big break.

I’ve implemented lots of strategies that should help help me reach this big breaks, teach nationally and also internationally. I’m still being open-minded I’m learning a lot from this conference. Yeah. And that’s interesting. I I think sometimes in our doc club and some of my other companies, we got our big break just by sticking ourselves out there just by going to the bar in the, at the conference at seven, eight o’clock at night [00:18:00] and hanging out and meeting with people and connecting with people.

If you’re at a conference and you’re you’re in your room, you’re not going to get the big break, but you go down and you meet with people, you talk to people, you work the room you work it. The other thing too is where are your shirt? When we, Jeff and I, and Michele, we always wear the shirt of the company.

Here’s a funny story about, or two weeks ago I was flying into Toronto and a very nice gentleman from Nigeria came up to me and said, Hey, I’m on clubhouse. I, he saw my start-up club t-shirt and he said, I’m on clubhouse. I’m in startup club. And I don’t know what can come of that. I don’t know what could come of anything.

How do we manifest the break? How do we make it happen? How do we make it happen? Is we don’t sit in a hotel room. We go and we work in we worked the PR, we worked the sales and eventually it will come. Grace. I see your microphone’s off. Do you want to share with us a story or a question?

Okay. Must be the [00:19:00] app or something. ACE Europe. You’re onstage as well. So we’ll jump over to you, ACE. You’re going to share with us. Yeah. First off, I want to say you’re absolutely right column. You have to put yourself out of. You have to be willing to expose who you are to get people, to get interest in whatever you’re doing.

And you don’t know when that one moment is going to happen because you put yourself out there, whether it’s being at a conference going after hours, talking to people, hanging out, you’re also positioning yourself as an expert if somebody has questions. So there’s a, that’s a, I just got to say that’s a really some really great feedback and some really great insight into how to make it happen.

For me, quite frankly, I was really interested in getting into the film industry and I, and as well as the, the blockchain industry. So I had just was doing the same thing. It was going to conferences, getting evolved, finding ways that I could make myself valuable. So one of the ways I was doing it was for some of [00:20:00] these like blockchain and and crypto conferences was, Hey, you guys.

Media like you don’t have anybody to film. So how about I filmed some of this stuff, this content for you and give it to you. So that way you can share it with your with your, various people and various team. And then as that started happening, I started, oh, wait a second. I could use this. I can start figuring some way out to incorporate both of these things.

So I got started getting invited to more and more things and more and more people were wanting to use my services. And then from there as well, I was also, working and trying to build my film career, so to speak. And one of my friends just happened to that. I hadn’t talked to in probably 15 years just happened to meet up with.

And he had just was leaving, working with in the video game industry. He had been working with some of the more well-known franchises and people in that space. And they wanted to transition over to making movies and he was starting on a [00:21:00] film. And then he just, we were, and I was working in making, VR and AR stuff.

And he saw some of my work and was like, Hey I would like you to come on as an executive producer, mind you, I’m still working a full-time job. I’m in finance and asset management. But at that moment, once he said, Hey, I want you to, I want to bring you on as an executive producer, it was like almost a $2 million budget.

It was, everything else started clicking. After that, I started getting more and more interest from other other people in clients. I started working with more people in the space and I started building my idea and my reputation. And it really, that, that moment was just a, a turning point now just to say it’s not all over, like you still got one big break, me leads to other big breaks, but those are the, that’s the thing you have to just see once you get that first thing and you can recognize the value in it, as well as it’s as a game changer for you.

It starts, it’s one of those things, it’s a cascading [00:22:00] effect. Like the other things start happening and happening. And before it you’re on your way. So yeah, that would be my story I’d like to share. Thanks guys. Yeah. It’s interesting that even clubhouse, like just coming on stage, just talking about it and talking about your business and your ideas.

I was just with a gentleman who had a very cool blood detection technology here in our incubator. He came to visit and I said he said I want to do a series a, how do I do that? And all this stuff? And I said, okay why don’t you come join us? We have shield Minot coming on.

He’s a 500 startups guy. He’s had a lot of experience raising money is coming on in may. And I said, why don’t you join us for that show? Come on stage, talk about your company. We’re going to have a number of VCs listening into that. We’re going to have a number of investors and yeah. Maybe something comes of it.

Maybe something does it, but it’s worth doing, it’s always worth taking those podcasts. Are those calls or the club has checks because they’ll come a time or a moment when the right [00:23:00] person’s in the room and something happens. Jeff, I know you’re in the movie background here and you wrote a book, how to really succeed at marketing, with with launching B movies.

Do you have any thought about like from the sort of Hollywood side about, how they catch a big break, these actors and actresses. Startups can catch one. lot of it, it’s not just the industry, it’s all industries. It’s really about relationships, right? And that’s why, what everything you and ACE have been saying is exactly right.

One of my good friends is Jeff Pulver, who one of the founders of Vaughn originally and runs a lot of conferences. And he was one of the early investors in Twitter. And Jeff always says, and he ran a conference, the one 40 comp, which was the first conference based on Twitter in the early days of Twitter.

But he always says, the next person you meet can change your life. And that’s really. A true statement. It’s a true statement for business. It’s a true statement for personal relationships. So to, to your point and what ACE was saying, if you don’t put yourself out there, [00:24:00] if you’re not willing to engage with people and speak to new people and talk to strangers and share your knowledge you’re limiting yourself from those collisions happening that could actually change your life.

And a lot of businesses, including the entertainment industry are built upon relationships. People want to work with people who they trust, who they like being around. So when they need some help, they’re going to turn to the people they know who they think can provide that help, not necessarily to a stranger.

So building those relationships, putting yourself out there, being helpful as ASIS said, when he was starting out, he just tried to figure out how can I be of service? How can I be helpful to someone else? And that’s the best way to, to realize. Get someone to appreciate you and trust you and to learn your skills, sometimes especially for entrepreneurs or freelancers, or if you’re a creative person, sometimes it’s very hard.

You don’t want to give up your talent without getting paid for it. And I have a chapter [00:25:00] about this in my book column, the book you reference everything I know about business and marketing, I learned from the toxic Avenger but there’s a chapter in there about, giving up things for free that.

Value, obviously there’s a fine line but sometimes it’s really important to give something away for free to give of yourself for free to share your talents and skills for free up front, to gain the trust of someone to gain things. And any, anytime I’ve ever given away ideas without worrying about getting compensated for them, it’s always ended up leading towards real business with those other parties.

So sometimes we’re a little bit too precious about our ideas and if we just keep them a secret forever, they’re never going to happen. So sometimes you have to share your ideas in order to make them happen. Hopefully that’s helpful. Yeah. I would just like to say Jeff, that’s a really great point.

Even if you look in tech like the freemium models they give away. Basically, memberships, so that way you can try out their product so you can see what their value is before you move up right before you [00:26:00] get to the second. And the third tier level of paid of of paid subscription.

So that idea of giving stuff away for free in order to build value in what you have is very important. And the whole thing is that this is all sales. I don’t care what industry you’re in. I don’t care what you’re doing. You have to get people on board to buy in. So you have to sell whatever it is that you are doing.

You have to find a way to sell it and make it valuable to other people. People should never forget that, that you’re always selling yourself. You’re always putting yourself out there so that way you can build value. That’s great. That’s I think that’s great advice for all of us. It’s the little thing.

What does wearing a t-shirt or another one we do often at the shows, these conferences was Jeff, Michele, and I will sit in the front row, the keynote speaker walks in and they see these three people with the.club shirts on, it doesn’t matter what company is, you can have your company shirts on [00:27:00] and I’d say almost 50% of the time and the keynote, they mentioned our company, they mentioned our name, mentioned who we are just because we’re right there in front of them, we’re are we making that happen?

Are we making that moment happen? Yeah, we are. It did it cost us anything? No, it didn’t. So you’re right. It’s selling is doesn’t always have to be just verbal. It can also be the even wearing that, wearing your company. T-shirt everywhere you go. What? Colleen, you stuck your neck out, came on stage, and we really appreciate that.

Do you want to share a story with us? Hi, Colin. Thanks. Great to meet another Canadian and Michele and Jeffrey too. That’s great. My first time on this room the best part of starting a business is the networking. It’s a lot of fun. You do meet some very interesting people and I think so starting a business that’s as she has a big impact has been a very stimulating project that does gain interest.

Saber planet [00:28:00] refiller Marie is addressing the global plastic waste crisis at the source. We’re transforming distribution with new infrastructure and technology to remove packaging which will reduce cost 20% waste to a hundred percent and make a million tons of carbon emissions. I there’ve been a lot of nos in the beginning and every time I had a no, there was something better around the corner.

So it was a very interesting project, very stimulating in design. And then you get that one big break where somebody comes to you and says, I love your project. We will fund the full project and it came from EU climate bonds, and then there was a catcher and then they’d catch was he needed a guarantor on the bond, which has been taking too much time.

So now I had to venture out and find partners in my system. [00:29:00] So it’s been an interesting journey. I don’t, it, it is very slow. Even when you bring such impact, it still takes a lot of convincing. A lot of concise information to bring your message across and how you going to market it. You have to look at all parts of the project.

So in, in the case, on some of the clubhouse, I promote my location or showcase as a movie set location that would promote the business. So I’m looking at marketing in different ways that I don’t think other people are. So it’s been a lot of fun designing. I can only tell you that funding is probably the most frustrating aspect of any business.

It’s 98% time waste looking for money. And I think and in my case, COVID was actually the big break [00:30:00] that pushed environment. Startups forward. So again, there’s bad, really bad things about it. And then there is some good that it made, it was a kick in the butt. I think the world needed to address what we’re doing wrong in the world.

And status quo is completely failed in many areas. So very stimulating, lots to learn was lots of fun, networking and traveling to get my answers and research. It’s called lean research. And so as a lean architect and award-winning in technology automation with IBM after 35 years this has been a fun next career for me.

So thanks for allowing me to speak. I look forward to listening more well, do stick with it. It sounds fascinating. And it’s too bad. We didn’t have you on the show to Wisco. You can catch the recording, but we did a whole green [00:31:00] energy know green start-up show and, you would be, would have been great to join us with that.

And I was reading the wall street journal yesterday about, the big explosion in. Investments in this might be slightly different, but in the carbon credits in Canada. So you can’t, Canada’s an interesting environment. It actually can actually be a bit of an incubator in its own, right.

For startups because, you don’t, you’re not dealing with this larger market, but you bring up an interesting point about how global events could have negative, but also in some cases, positive consequences or potentially help businesses. I think about my own businesses, I’m invested in about 10 different companies and, one of them was we did all the advertising for taxi cabs up in Toronto.

And you can imagine when the pandemic hit, I got decimated another business product , is a pet related business with, design quality dog beds and And products and that business exploded in the pandemic. And, it was that, Jeff was the third, was this pandemic a part of what helped [00:32:00] take off and become such a large brand now in the United States and Canada.

Interesting. I didn’t even think about that Killeen until you mentioned it. All right. It’s certainly contributed. I’m not sure if I would, equate it to it’s working moment, but it was certainly the influx of new pet parents during the pandemic certainly was a shot in the arm or in the paw for, anyone in the pet category probably.

Yeah. You probably any commerce as well. E-commerce took off Renee. You’ve been very patient. Have you got a story for us or a comment or a thought or a correct? Yeah, but I’m in Toronto. The total is catching the big break. I thought it see if I can create a very small break. Would it be appropriate for me to contact yourself calling or Jeffrey?

If you go to dot com, we sold 12,000 NFTs of cat robots have four businesses came from Korea. We sold out in 10 hours and [00:33:00] we’re creating merchandise while kinds in Korea, but for the north American marketplace, because you’ve got paused.com and the other Meow website, could there be a relationship where we can take our characters and put them onto the different products that you have and because we do the fulfillment and that would be catching the big break, but being here at the moment to be a great example, if it took place.

Yeah, Michele, you’re the cat lady, Michele, you have over a million followers on Facebook and and Instagram million and a half. Any thoughts on that? Could we create a break here? Yeah, it sounds very interesting. Renee, can you direct message me and we can co connect after the show.

I’d love to hear what it is you have. It definitely sounds like it could be something potentially that we could try to monetize through our user base. Yeah. Yeah. We were lucky we did three and a half million sales and in 10 hours and [00:34:00] we are 20 people the 90 days, and we’re creating big relationships internationally.

And it’s all about cat robots at the moment. Yeah, shoot me a direct message. But please. And I also followed you. Yeah, I would definitely love to follow up with you and hear what you have. Okay. It’s created a break. That’d be good. Thanks. And that’s how it happens. You got to put your neck out there, right?

You gotta. Sticky, let people know. I didn’t know this existed. I didn’t know Renee existed until two minutes ago. And you had a cat robots and I’m actually, I think you can have a lot of fun with the cat robots. I know me Ellington’s has sells hundreds of products from t-shirts to mugs and everything.

Who knows how that can all link up together. But it’s that’s, that’s how it happens. It’s happening live here, right? Yes. It’s called dot com. If anybody wants, if you want to look at it, how do you spell that? Cathartic cat bot. like cat [00:35:00] robot, cat ball.com. All right. Great. You got it.

We’ll definitely check it out. It’s interesting because when you’re in a space like NFTs, there’s so much noise. There’s so much out there. How do you stand out? How do you differentiate yourself? And I think that. You don’t necessarily need to be the biggest NFT. You don’t need to be Bumble or bimble.

Why don’t, whatever his name people thank you. People, you don’t need to be the people, or, you just need to win in your niche in your category and appear to be a leader in that category. And that gives you the strength to succeed. That’s great. Drag up the Dragos, the Ruggles. Yes.

It’s within S H at the end. Happy to be here. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. How does it work here? Are we showing or the projects or, we’re being a bit ambiguous here today. Cause we’re gonna start having a fun Friday afternoon, but we’re talking about our break, and if you’ve had a big break in your [00:36:00] business and you’re in the audience, you want to come share that with.

You know what happened in your start-up that led you to get to that point where it just took off. And sometimes it seems to happen overnight and, and for others, like most of us, it seems to be 10 years before we finally get that moment in time and it takes off well. My, I started up distilling.

So we started we started in January. It was quite a big break because I ended up in DEMEC. I had the time and the energy to give shape to the project basically. My project is is a bit different than other projects that I think you’ve seen in the space. What our aim is to create the central nervous system of the world.

It’s quite an ambitious and innovative yeah. Plan that we have because we want to provide to leverage the web. Technology and provide the information and the power of the intimate back to the people. We are [00:37:00] basically creating a fully fledged blockchain that in the proof of concept should support around 10 million PPS.

PPS stands for transactions per second. And based on that framework, we are we are planning to develop a fully fledged ecosystem that will basically be present on all the sectors of the community. So like health sector energy sector educational sector. And this I came up with this idea after it’s quite a bit of sad story because yeah, at the beginning of the pandemic, I lost my I lost my father and that was a wake up call for me to start creating something that will basically allow people to integrate the technology easier in their life and to leverage the technology, to make the life easier.

Wow. And that’s really per purpose-driven and, it makes all the, all of my, all the difference when a startup is [00:38:00] purpose-driven. I do what you’re talking about with web three here, and even with the NFT with Renee and the NFT and Colleen with the the green energy, the. What I’ve seen in the past.

And like every business is different, but when there are new paradigm shifts or new technology shifts or new regulatory shifts, the opportunity for startups is much higher than if you’re in a mature industry. If I’m going to launch a new running shoe today, it’s going to be tough. Don’t get me wrong.

It’s gonna be tough to launch a new NFT as well, or, a new service for self-driving or AR or augmented reality or the metaverse or tokenized real estate. And we’ve done a few shows on these topics and we’re going to continue to do shows about these topics, but. If you have the idea and you can see the opportunity coming down, the wave that’s coming and you can seize the day Carpe diem.

You can leverage that [00:39:00] position to, to really take a leadership role in that industry and fortune 500 fortune 1000 I’ve fortunately, or unfortunately I’ve had the opportunity to work for a fortune 500 company at the top or near the very top. And I can tell you it’s there’s opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs because they’re very risk averse in nature.

They really don’t want to launch new businesses new companies. And they, what they prefer to do is, not take the risk, don’t get fired and simply buy the startups that seem to be the winners of the new industries. So that’s very interesting. I’m sad to hear a drag, a ship. Your father was your father.

You said that. Yeah. Thank you very much for the work for the kind of words. Yeah. Sadly we basically we didn’t know. There was like a medical issue that we investigated for a long time. And we didn’t know because the necessary medical treatment that he needed wasn’t wasn’t applied.

This is the reason why [00:40:00] I saw the opportunity to leverage web 3.0 and leverage the sectors of the community, because for example you have you have the, so basically you have your evidence on all your medical checkups and, but they are scattered all over. Like you are going to a doctor that has, I don’t know, a cardiologist that checks your heart.

You go to a neurology neurologist that checks them checks the nervous system and so on. And basically all of this checkups are basically scattered. They are not put in one place and this Started the idea to make a decentralization, a platform that will leverage and will help people to as I said, medical in the healthcare sector but also in the other sectors as well, because I see that there is a lot of room to improve and grow.

And we need a refresh on the technology that we are using right now. I saw that there are a lot of countries that are starting to take the leap [00:41:00] and adopt autonomous driving, adopt green energy, adopt, better education and so on. And this is a, this is quite the journey because I see that people are moving in that direction, but.

And web three is the platform for this because it’s starting to look more secure than what web 2.0 is and leveraging on top also our engine, because we are developing our own our own Cardinal overseer engine that will leverage the blockchain will make things better because that’s one of the things that people are missing in their blockchains.

Basically they are like full power on all the time. They are not stepping down or stepping up when they are necessary. So yeah, maybe this will be this will be basically look better from the energy side as well. Yeah. And also we are right now opening actually [00:42:00] in two days we are opening our seed rounds for the for the private and public sale for this.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you. Very exciting. Very exciting times. And best of luck on that. How do we manifest? How do we manifest our big break? How do we make it happen? What do we do? And we have the panel here on stage. Anyone let’s just go popcorn style.

Anyone want to throw anything out? Any other ideas, Renee, I feel like I’m with friends, birds of a feather. I just realized as you’re speaking that my three early big breaks all were the same. It was somebody betting on me. So the national film board, I was like 18 years old at McGill and I was skipping classes going to the film board.

My future boss bet on me. They needed an information retrieval system for expo 6 67 and have be done in six weeks. And the guys who I was visiting theirs said, can you do it? I said, yes. [00:43:00] And I have a clue, but I did it by staying up till two in the morning, going back at six. And then at Harvard, when, after they turned me down for masters for not having focus cause I wanted to combine film, education, games, and computers.

They told me no focus. So invented the first multimedia game. And the Dean of the school of education invited me to reapply all within 90 days of being declined. So he bet on me. And then at the bell Canada in summer 69 after the masters 18 T circumstantially changed all the budgeting forms, 2000 cells and the fellow bell, Canada, the manager didn’t know what to do.

And I was consulting. I didn’t want to be a program. So I said, why don’t we just let you type in all the cells putting semi-colons in between them that you don’t need programmers anymore. So circumstance of at and T changing the entire budgeting by being at the right time, place became the electronic spreadsheet which he bet on me.

So it was always people betting [00:44:00] on me is a common thread under certain circumstances people taking a chance on you. That was always the big breaks. Yeah. It really is the right being the right place the right time. But again, you have to get yourself out there. You always got to, so you’re really stuck your neck out there in a, when you said your first project there, when you said you just, you said I’ll do it and you had no idea what it was involved in it, but you knew it was tough, but they must have believed in you for a reason.

Why did in those three examples, why did they believe. There must’ve been something they saw in you in energy, there must’ve been something that you showed them to get them to believe in you in each one of those cases. Yeah. I haven’t thought about that. Yeah. And that’s how you manifested it.

I think that’s what it’s all about. Colleen, you’re you ever thoughts?

Yeah. Thanks for sharing Renee. Yeah, it’s reminds me of when I was looking at projects. And so [00:45:00] my specialty is telecommunications in the airline industry. People think texting is new it’s old, it’s 60 years old in the airline industry. And that there’s a lot of rejected messages. So I actually designed a reject message robot to handle all the rejects that came through from the other airlines.

And it was really in A big game changer to reduce labor, and nobody wanted to do the work. And so I automated a complete robot to handle all of it. And I have a legacy now with air Canada and IBM for that was one of my wards. I’ve got a number of other ones that were big, but it was fun that they loud after you do one, then they let you do the others a lot easier.

And I’ve done a lot of different projects. This one saver planet is my biggest of course. But it’s the most stimulating one of all. And I can’t wait to show people what I [00:46:00] designed. It’s a lot of fun when you get it to reality and very rewarding in the end. I hope so. Thanks for letting me share that story.

I think just having a passion for something, and it gets you through those hard times. Earlier I said that, all of all the companies I’ve sold, it’s, every single one of them seem to take 10 years and it just, you have to go through a lot. There’s a lot of tenacity required in the startup that it just, people look at this public IPO or they look at when we sell to GoDaddy or they look at any of these things and they think, wow, you did it so easily.

But no, we struggled. It was hard and years of struggle to make it happen in, in it, but it did happen and we stuck with it. And I think, that’s probably a message as well as it’s just stick with it, you have to have enough oxygen in the room to keep it going. You have to keep, have to be break even, or at least somewhat profitable, but just stick, stick with it.

And it will happen. You will raise that money. You will get that new product. You will make [00:47:00] that big, new deal. You will sell the company. These things will happen if you just stick with it. Any other thoughts on the team here? We’re gonna jump over pretty soon to our big show which is happening in about seven minutes.

I don’t know if you’re on the email list, but if you’re not, you have to get on the email is www.startup.club. Cause every few days now we seem to be announcing a new star speaker on the on, on, on the email list. So if you’re not on the email list, please get on. And today we have NATO’s head of innovation, Phillip Lockwood on peaceful defense.

And Anton cool. Who does a regular show here on start-up glove? He’s brought them on. He’s coming on to talk today. That’s interesting because he’s trying to talk about using AI and those types of technologies to help, to help to help make the world a more peaceful environment. And I think that’s just one when you don’t want to miss [00:48:00] it’s going to happen in about six minutes.

And if you follow this show, you’d know for the last 54 weeks, we run it every Friday at two o’clock Eastern today, we moved the show to one o’clock Eastern, just so we could make room for this show. So if you get a chance, you’re on clubhouse in the next few minutes, join the show at two o’clock Phillip Lockwood, the NATO’s head of innovation.

All right. Any last thoughts from our panel here today on manifesting your big brain. Just one thing calling, I think a world in crisis has to change the whole economic development process architecture. I am a lean architect, so it’s changing it so that there’s speed to funding and it’s redesigning a central location because what we have now currently is maximum fragmented manual, searching to find the people [00:49:00] that you think will help you.

And it’s still very old and archaic. I have a design after I’ve done this project. I’ve got four major projects of what I’ve found failed in status quo in a world in crisis cannot exist. We need speed to action and speed to funding and that’s if I can say that I’ve seen it and I know how to fix it.

It just, everything takes time and it’s been too slow. So thanks. It’s always too slow. Isn’t it? Frustratingly slow. And yet everyone looks at television, I watched Adam Newman and the whole WeWork and we crashed and it looks like it all happens overnight. No, it takes 10 years. It takes eight years to get to those points and it just, it’s always too slow.

It’s not like it is in the television. I good as it misses that automation, it needs automation. It doesn’t have any really. Thanks. Hey [00:50:00] Michele, any last thoughts or Jeff before we close it out here? Yeah. I would say, to our members here listening today, like a lot of it is just getting a plan in motion.

Really, you can talk and, theorized, et cetera. But time and time we see the people that are successful and they, quotes get the big break. It really is because they really believed they surrounded themselves with people that had faith in them and they just got going. They didn’t know all the answers, you just have to get going because otherwise you’re going backwards.

So thank you for everyone for listening today. Yeah. And when Jane Fonda used that Reebok shoe that Joe Foster, who founded Reebok a few weeks ago, talked to talk to us on start-up club. When she used that shoe, why did [00:51:00] she use it? She didn’t use it because, she was thought it was a cool looking brand.

She used it because she thought it was the best. Possible product for her and for what she was doing. And that, that led to the big break that Reebok had in the United States. So sometimes just operational excellence, just delivering, what you do and doing it better than anyone else leads others to use your products.

And sometimes those individuals are notable. Jeff, last comment, before we close out. Just a really great discussion. We touched on so many interesting things, how important relationships are how these collisions, clubhouse. I think one of the magic of clubhouse as a platform is the ability for these collisions to happen, where someone can come up on stage that we’ve never met before and suddenly a new relationship sparks, and that could lead to something including a big break.

So this is a great platform for these kinds of collisions to happen. That create relationships that create big breaks. So it [00:52:00] was kinda Metta, not the Facebook kind of meta, but Metta meeting recursive in that, as we’re talking about big breaks, perhaps some big breaks have occurred right here in this stage.

So it was a great time. I do know that when we hit a million members that start a club, we’re not going to go cross the line quietly. We’re going to try to newsjack that we’re going to work the PR. We’re going to, we’re going to let as many people we know and let the world know that we were, we were the first club knock on wood to hit a million members on star on clubhouse.

And we think that’s just a really big achievement. But again, sometimes you don’t, I know we have a lot of Canadians on board here up on stage and I’m one of them. And we sometimes tend to, our culture is very humble. Sometimes we do have to share our successes and promote our wins and that can lead to other successes down the path.

This has been a great show. Thank you very much. A Renee [00:53:00] drag us, Colleen, I’m following every one of you. If you’re on in the audience and you thought their information was valuable, we’d be happy to, for you to to follow those speakers as well. Their expertise Vandal, sorry. We’re out of time.

We are going into live to another show right now. With I mentioned is the head of innovation for a NATO and it starting at two o’clock. So we’re going to close the room right now. Thank you very much. We’ll see you next week on the serial entrepreneur club, our two o’clock Eastern on Friday, not one.

O’clock two o’clock Eastern. And if you want to catch any of the episodes, check out your favorite podcast network. Just search for serial entrepreneur club. Thank you very much.