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You’re listening to Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. This is a special episode. Uh, off time on this one and we are going to be interviewed by an AI on the book Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. Uh, this is very, very interesting. I don’t know if an author… Has ever been interviewed for that particular topic, uh, but it’s going to happen in about two or three minutes from now, Michele.

It’s been an incredible week. I can’t say how like amazing it’s been. Actually, the last three weeks have been absolutely amazing. The book came out on October 3rd, 2020. Three that was three weeks ago. We debuted bestseller in the categories of new release, entrepreneurship, management, e commerce. Uh, and new release private equity and that surprised me because there’s a few things we talk about in the book about private equity that, you know, really, I don’t think there are big fans necessarily of the book.

Uh, I, I warn a lot of entrepreneurs about staying away from cash flow buyers. Um, yeah, absolutely. Uh, and then, uh, we headed out, Michele and I, last week, we went out to Orlando to an e commerce convention. We talked about the x factor, and then we headed to EoNerve. EoNerve is the Eastern United States Conference for Entrepreneurs Organization.

And we did a speech at EO nerve and the message resonated very well. The speech was on start scale, exit, take some money off the table, repeat. And, uh, and then we came back to Fort Lauderdale this week. We’ve done about. 10 podcasts, including entrepreneurs on fire with JLD, John Dumas, John Lee Dumas, and he is, I’m telling you, he’s got a lot of energy, that guy, and that, that will be coming out shortly as well.

And then also Kevin King, uh, who is probably the number one Amazon. Expert in the world. It’s been a whirlwind and today we’re actually doing a marathon. So I know if you’re listening to this in podcasts, uh, you might not know this, but we do a show every Friday, two o’clock Eastern. Uh, and the show is called serial entrepreneur secrets revealed, and you can join us live and actually come on stage and ask questions.

Today we’re gonna test a, um, a new show, it’s gonna happen on LinkedIn Audio, and that’s just gonna, that show’s all about start, scale, exit, repeats, uh, open mic. And anyone who wants to come ask a question about the book, or they might have a way of starting, scaling, exiting, or repeating, they’re welcome to come to that show and, uh, just share their knowledge.

Uh, I will say this one thing is that the community of clubhouse was one of the key reasons why, um, this book. Was so successful. We interviewed almost 200 people of which 50 were in the book. It is phenomenal. I’m certain a chat GPT. We’ll get into that, Michele. What do you think? I mean, like I’m nervous.

I’ll tell you why I’m nervous. I feel like, like I have absolutely no idea. Zero what she’s going to ask. So sometimes when you go into interviews, they give you a questions in advance. Like when I did with entrepreneurs on fire, he actually gave me five questions in advance. So I got a sense of what I’m getting into now.

I did a full admission. Of course, I did practice this week. I did practice a little bit and make certain this works. I mean, this concept of being interviewed by an A. I. Let’s see how it works out. What do you think, Michele? Yeah, I think, um, you know what? Let’s just say they’re not going to put. She or he or the ai it.

They will not be putting their personal feelings into it. So Colin, honestly, I’m excited to see our AI interview. Put you on the spot. I’m excited to see, um, how she, or I’m sorry, I keep saying she, how the AI responds to your responses more than the questions that she or it, or they are asking you. So I say we, I’m.

Let’s just jump right into it and, uh, hear what, uh, how it’s going to go. All right. So it’s giving me a 30 minute interview at the end of, we had about 10 minutes left just to, if anybody wants to come on stage, just ask a question or make a, make a, give us some thoughts about what they heard in the interview and how this AI process worked.

Then at two o’clock, we’re flipping over same club, same exact club. We’re flipping over to our weekly show and we’re talking about the four sticky note business plan. So if you want to learn how to write. A business plan in 30 minutes or less. That’s the show to go to. And.

A phone call in the middle of this, right? All right. So, um, so we’ll hit that at two o’clock and then at three o’clock, we’re doing the LinkedIn audio, so it’s Friday marathon, start scale, exit, repeat marathon, and we’re going to hit it off. So I’m going to just open her up right now. And, uh, she’s connecting, uh, hello, chat GPT.

I’m here to assist with any questions or topics you’d like to discuss. How can I help you today? Uh, let’s start the 30 minute interview. For the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat.

Certainly, Colin. I’m ready to start the interview. Please go ahead and ask your first question, and I’ll provide my response as per our discussion earlier.

Okay, um, so let’s start. You’re going to interview me for 30 minutes. You’ll do a two minute summation at the end, okay? And you’re going to interview me on the book start, scale, exit, repeat.

Understood, Colin. We’ll have a 30 minute interview and I’ll provide a two minute summation at the end. We’ll focus on discussing your book start, scale, exit, repeat. Please go ahead and start the interview whenever you’re ready. Okay, I’m ready. I’m ready. Go ahead. You ask the first question.

Certainly Colin. Q1. Can you share the inspiration behind writing Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat? What motivated you to dive into the world of entrepreneurship? And share your insights through this book. Yes, that was very interesting. It actually goes back to 2012 when I was asked… To speak at MIT in front of a group of entrepreneurs of the, um, it was called the masters of entrepreneurship program.

There are 60 entrepreneurs who were selected to go into this program. And my CEO coach and Vern Harnish, who was running this at the time said to, uh, said to me, could you come and do a talk for four hours? On why you’ve been so successful, how you could have started scaled and exited so many companies.

And, and, and at the time I was, I was 40, give me a second here. No, I was 40, 42 years old. Yeah. And we had a number of successes under our belt under our belts. And by the way, a number of failures, we had a number of failures as well, but we looked at the patterns of success and discovered that really there’s four components to every single.

There is the people, the story, the money and the systems. You need a great story. You need great people. You need enough money and you need systems. And that changes very, very dramatically between start scale, exit. And repeat very, very different between those. And so that was interesting just to look at that.

And then, you know, we spent a lot of time writing the book. I spent almost 10 years on it. And with the staff of six at startup club, we interviewed almost 200 people and of which 50 are in the book. It is, it really does prove that you can find a secret or a solution to, to launch a startup. It is a, um. It is something that is formulaic.

Thank you for sharing that, Colin. It’s fascinating how your journey began with that invitation to speak at MIT and evolved into this comprehensive understanding of startups. It’s clear that your book explores the crucial elements of people, story, money, and systems at different stages of a startup. Now, let’s dive deeper into these components.

Q2. Could you elaborate on how these four components, people, story, money and systems evolve and change throughout the startup journey from the initial stages of starting to scaling, exiting and repeating? Well, that’s a really big question. And I think, you know, again, it took four hours to deliver this at MIT.

So what I what I will say is that when you are in the early stage, the start phase. You know, it’s all about the owner. It’s owner dominated, owner driven, you delegate tasks. Uh, and then when you begin to go into scale, the owner needs to step back. You need to hire leaders. You need to delegate responsibilities from a story perspective.

At the beginning, we’re just trying to figure out what’s it going to take to get us to our first stage gate, a point in time where we can prove our model. In scale, we’re going to want to throw lighter fluid on the fire and we’re going to want to demonstrate proven model and I understand that this topic is quite extensive.

Let’s focus on one aspect at a time. Q3. You mentioned that in the early stages, it’s owner dominated. And then as a startup scales, the owner needs to step back and hire leaders. Could you share some key strategies or insights on how founders can successfully transition from being owner driven to building a team of leaders as they move from the start phase to the scale phase?

Yes, absolutely. Um, so one of the things that I often would talk about in these sessions and it’s, it’s, it’s really covered detailed in the book is first of all, understand your profile. Startup founder has a profile. I like to use the disc profile. And in fact, I actually, in the book, we talk about, um, the, uh, personalities on Star Trek and how James T.

Kirk is that sort of dominant and influential. Uh, and then you’ve got a Spock who’s very analytical. And then you’ve got Scotty, who’s got that steady sort of a doctor. Approach. You know, so you’ve got these different characters and we talk about that. We really do try to simplify the concepts in the book, but one thing is if you can first understand your profile as an entrepreneur, understand what you like to do and focus on that.

See, for instance, I am not a salesperson. I’m not very good at it. So I hired people like Michele and others who would be much better at it. Um, selling than I am at selling. So that was one of the things I did. And then we wanna begin to hire leaders who are also have, uh, personality profiles that are different than ours, and also skills that are different than ours.

When you do that, by the way, it’s magical because now we’re gonna wanna delegate responsibilities, not tasks.

That’s a valuable insight, Colin. Understanding your entrepreneurial profile and focusing on what you excel at can be a great starting point. It’s also crucial to bring in team members with complementary skills and personalities, and your emphasis on delegating responsibilities rather than tasks makes a lot of sense.

Well, I’m glad you, I’m glad you agree with me. Could you share an example from your own experience where building a team of leaders with diverse profiles and skills had a significant positive impact on one of your startups? Growth or success. Alright, I’m gonna tell you a story. Back in 2004, 2003, we were at a company called Hostopia.

And one of my operations manager was hiring a, uh, call center. Uh, he was a chief, uh, chief operating officer, and he was hiring a call center manager. And, uh, I, I got, I received all the resumes and sometimes I like to look at them. I don’t us, I didn’t at the time usually get involved in all the hirings, but I saw this one particular profile from this one individual.

So I, so I went to my says, okay, I gotta, I gotta be on the interview. And so I went to the interview and we hired him as call center manager. He had run his own business and sold it two years before that and traveled the world and he wanted to come onto the company. And so I looked at his profile. I’m like, Oh, this is, this is amazing.

This guy’s a high DI. Well, six months later, he was actually the head. Of operations, he took over chief operating officer and then after three years later, after I left the company, he took over CEO and then I called him back to be CEO in one of the companies that I’m working with currently right now.

And he’s been at that company for five years. Look, you couldn’t find. People who have great profiles, but I think we should move on to other elements of the book as well.

Um, that’s an impressive success story. Colin showcasing how identifying the right talent with complimentary profiles can lead to significant growth within a company. Thank you for sharing that. Certainly, let’s move on to explore other elements of your book. Q5. In your book, you discuss the importance of a compelling story for a startup.

Could you provide some advice on crafting a compelling narrative for a startup, especially in its early stages? What are the key elements that make a startup story stand out? Yeah, when you’re first looking at starting your business, I think the first thing we want to look at is the are we solving a problem?

And that’s key. Second, do we have a purpose? Look, if you don’t love your startup, you’re not going to survive that roller coaster. It’s an up and down. It is. All over the place. And you need to really, really believe in it and believe in that purpose. And by the way, you attract others if you can get them to believe in a purpose as well.

The other thing, too, is I often will tell people we don’t live in a day and age where we start a business in a garage like Steve Jobs and Wozniak. This is a Day. This is a time when you need to connect with incubators and mentors. There are free incubators. I am involved in a couple of university incubators down here, which by the way, are not limited to university students.

Uh, the one, uh, at NSU is, is run by the Allen Levin Center. It’s absolutely free. It’s 10 weeks. And I open the. Session with the four sticky note business plan. So like it’s something that’s free. Uh, we actually interviewed the founder of, or sorry, the founder, the, the CEO of score who has 10,000 volunteers.

It’s run by the SBA, the small business administration. And that founder told us that you can increase your chances of, of success by three. Times three times. Like that’s insane. Three times you can increase your chances of success for your startup. Then I also tell, I also suggest that people try to plan.

I know we as entrepreneurs like to be a little ad hoc, but we have a four sticky note business plan and it only takes 30 minutes to complete. You complete that, you get into an incubator. It takes a village. To raise a startup, I am telling you that, use the resources around you. Too many type A personalities think they don’t need the help, but you know what?

It’s there and they can get it and that can make a big difference for them.

Those are excellent points, Colin. Emphasizing the importance of solving a problem, having a clear purpose. and passionately believing in your startup’s mission. It’s also valuable advice to seek out incubators and mentors, especially given the resources available, like free incubator programs and organizations like SCORE.

Q6, you mentioned a four sticky note business plan. Could you briefly explain what this plan entails and how it can help aspiring entrepreneurs in the early stages of their startup journey? Okay. So the idea is that you have four sticky notes. Why sticky notes? Because they’re sticky. You put them up on the board, you can see them.

You can remain focused. They’re also small. See, this is our personal business plan. This isn’t the one we’re going to show, uh, investors. We can, we can. Take our four sticky note business plan, put it in chat into chat GPT, and then that can produce an investor plan. We’re not talking about that. So on the first sticky note, we’re going to title it story.

What’s our story. And under our story, what’s our purpose. What is the space we want to own? So I want you to think about this for a second. The space we want to own is, uh, If you were typing, if someone was typing something on Google and they typed it in, your name would come up on the first page of Google.

So think of it in terms like that. And by the way, you can even apply that to your title tags as well. Uh, and then we want to look at, um, the stage gate. What is the point in time? What is the point, and now you’re cutting me off. Thank you for explaining the four sticky note business plan. Colin, it’s a concise and visual approach that focuses on the essential elements for personal business planning.

Starting with the story, purpose, and the space you want to dominate is a great foundation. Q7. Could you briefly describe what the other three sticky notes represent in this plan and how they contribute to an entrepreneur’s clarity and focus when starting a business? Well, I would have done that if you hadn’t cut me off.

I apologize for the interruption, Colin. Please go ahead and describe the other three sticky notes in the plan. All right. Um, so what I was going to say is that once you figured out your stage gate and your stage gate should be a specific, a smart goal, specific, measurable, attainable, uh, relevant, and time bounds.

And once you’ve figured that out, that point in time, then maybe it’s an MVP. Maybe it’s your 10 first customers, maybe whatever it is, then you can give yourself room to achieve that. Goal, you can also share that with investors on your second sticky note. You’re going to want to put people. How many people do I need to get to my first stage gate on the third sticky note, you’re going to want to put money.

How much money do I need to get to my stage gate? And by the way, 82 percent of startups fail because they don’t have enough money. And that’s absolutely one of the critical components. And then lastly, we’re talking about systems. I think an early stage startup, just focus on those KPIs. What are the KPIs that can get you to that stage gate?

Think about leading indicators as well. So you might want to think about things like, um, for instance, uh, number of phone calls I need to make per day, number of leads generated, number of proposals, those kinds of things. Once you’ve got all four of those, you’ve got your four sticky note business plan.

Thank you for providing a detailed explanation of the remaining three sticky notes in the plan, Colin. It’s clear that this approach helps entrepreneurs define their smart goals, assess their personnel and financial needs, and establish key performance indicators, KPIs to track progress. Q8. In your experience, how has this four sticky note business plan helped entrepreneurs stay focused and organized as they work toward their startup goals, especially in the challenging early stages of a business?

I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they really just launch a business without even thinking about it. You know, but when you begin to think about and lay out all of the components of the, of the four stick, you know, business plan, you can, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s really a, an exercise in strategy. I didn’t include all of the components.

It’s in the book. Like I, you know, it’s very difficult in a 30 minute interview to cover everything. Uh, but there are a lot of different aspects in this plan that can help them succeed. Let’s move on to other sections of the book.

Absolutely. Colin. The Four Sticky Notes Business Plan is a strategic exercise that can provide entrepreneurs with the clarity and structure needed for success. I appreciate your insights. Let’s explore other sections of your book. Q9. In your book, you discuss the importance of money and how many startups fail due to insufficient funding.

Could you provide some guidance on how entrepreneurs can effectively secure the necessary funding for their startups, especially in the early stages? Yeah, so in start, you’re really going to want to prove a concept. The fact is, I started, uh, graduated from college and worked on the farm for three months.

I used that money. Combined with credit card debt, um, dropped out of my fourth year of college, took the student loans and got a 12, 800 loan from my mother. And I launched my first business. It was a retail location. Um, you know what, at the beginning, and by the way, it was alone. I, I didn’t, I didn’t want to take investments.

I don’t like taking investments from people close to me. I’d rather take loans because if the business fails, I’m still going to pay them back no matter what, but I’ll tell you, there was a big incentive for me to succeed. I mean, that was it. I worked, uh, every day of the week for like 365 days a year. Um, I think Christmas day might’ve been the first day I actually took off and.

My current wife right now. I don’t think she was too impressed with their early relationship when it came to this, but, but that’s the reality. It was really tough at, at those early stages. Um, but then when you begin to prove your concept, one of the things I, I recommended an incubator at, at the Allen Levan, NSU, the incubator, we actually.

Um, they have a, um, a, um, we have someone who comes in and talks about the pitch, the art of pitch, and the art of the pitch is in the chapter. The same lady who teaches that is in the chapter. She’s won multiple pitch competitions. Uh, she works with you on that. And then also you actually go into a pitch competition and you have real angel investors there as well.

So connecting with your incubators also a way of. Connecting opportunities for your business. This is absolutely critical. Um, When you begin to scale and you proving your concept, we have an entire chapter on this, this one raised money at the right time, including everything from venture capital to, um, to, uh, crowdfunding, uh, reg CF reg D uh, we’ve used it all and I can tell you this, it’s a lot easier to raise a lot more money after you’ve proven the concept.

Now, this concept of proving the concept isn’t just. An MVP and maybe it may be at the early stages and you know, that may be all you have and you got to move forward. And I totally understand. Um, I okay before I forget this, though. I also recommend government funding. There is government funding in a lot of different places.

Please do your research on Google, but reach out to your local incubator. Reach out to different different individuals to find out how you can get government funding for your startup. But the fact of the matter is you have to prove your concept. And I don’t mean just your MVP. I mean, you have to continuously do it.

Your MVP, the first hundred customers, the first thousand customers. Let’s go back to Facebook. Thank you for sharing your personal experience and valuable insights on funding. Colin starting with a combination of personal resources, loans, and a strong determination to succeed can be a powerful approach for entrepreneurs in the early stages.

Your mention of incubators and their support in refining pitch skills and connecting with angel investors is also noteworthy. Additionally, exploring various funding options such as government funding and crowdfunding can be vital as a startup progresses. Q10, your book covers scaling and the importance of raising money at the right time.

Could you elaborate on the key factors entrepreneurs should consider when determining the right time to seek investment and the various funding options available at this stage? Absolutely. I will do that, but that’s the second time you cut me off. And is that, it could be that I’m long winded in my responses.

Is that the issue?

I apologize if it seemed like I interrupted you, Colin. I appreciate your thorough responses, and I’m here to listen to your insights. Please feel free to continue with your explanation about scaling and the right time to seek investment and the funding options available. Absolutely. And I think the, the right time is obviously once you’ve proven your model.

So I think, I feel like we’ve pretty much covered this, so maybe we can go into a different section of the book. Now,

certainly Colin, we’ve discussed the importance of proving the concept before seeking investment during the scaling phase, let’s explore other sections of your book. Q 11. In your book, you talk about systems. Could you share some key strategies or principles that entrepreneurs should keep in mind when developing effective systems to support their startups, especially as they move from scaling to exiting and repeating?

Yeah, actually, I like to, I just like to share a quick story here. Back in 2006, we’re running a publicly traded company, uh, and we were flatlining. There was a lot of fighting going on. Uh, I had a board meeting and then one board member came up to me afterwards and said, I think you’re over your head. And, uh, and really, you know, I, I don’t know, I was 36 years old and I’m thinking, okay, public company, all this stuff.

Um, I called a friend, he said, go, why don’t you meet this, this just gentleman in Las Vegas. So I went to Las Vegas, I met him and his name’s Patrick Theon. He’s, uh, he, uh, runs a company called Rhythm Systems. And he said. Collin, you need to do all of this. I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s way too much. And there’s no way my executive team’s going to do all that kind of stuff.

It’s sort of like the, uh, patient telling the doctor, you know, an overweight patient telling the doctor that, uh, well, you know, I might be overweight, uh, but I really don’t want to eat well and I don’t want to do the hard work. Just give me the pill. Well, he refused to do business with us. And I ultimately said, okay, fine.

I’ll do it. We did it. And all my gosh, we went from. Uh, 20 million, 20 million revenue, 22 million or whatever it was to 60 million in revenue in three years. This is software platform revenue, highly profitable revenue. We took off. We did two days of strategic planning, 90 days of execution. We did daily sales huddles.

We did goal setting weekly and we set status. Every member on the team did their status. Red, yellow, green. This was a Game changer for us. We implemented sales playbooks. We implement, by the way, this is all in the book and all of the authors that we interviewed, we interviewed dozens of authors in this book, and this is all in there and it tells you, and it walks you through every step of the way.

It’s absolutely incredible. We ultimately sold that company to a fortune 500 company for 17 times. We’re trading at 4 and 55 cents a share. The next day we’re trading at 10. 55 cents a share. And I was sitting in this big room, uh, with 15 or 20 executives at this fortune 500 company. And when I did the presentation of our systems, he points his finger.

And I tell the story in the book. And I know he remembers it. I tell the story in the book and he’s pointing me, then he points at the screen, then he points at everybody else and says, this is the kind of culture we should bring to our company.

That’s a remarkable success story, Colin, highlighting the transformative power of effective systems and strategic planning. It’s clear that implementing systems such as daily sales huddles, goal setting and status tracking can lead to significant growth and profitability for a startup. QL. In your book, you mention sales playbooks and goal setting.

Could you provide some advice on how entrepreneurs can create and implement effective sales playbooks and set meaningful goals to drive their startup success? Yeah, this is one of the chapters in the book. It was, um, we interviewed James Bennett and this is unbelievable. I also had to, uh, I had the opportunity to interview, um, uh, Medina.

He, he did the, um, the data centers in, in South Florida and, uh, simply health. And I think Danny Medina and he actually. He and James benefit. So this is unbelievable. Like they, they, they make business sound so simple because all we do is we have a sales playbook, we hire the right people, we put them in the chairs.

We train them really well. We put them in the chairs and we sell, and then we scale it. And we go into detail about that. I am actually not an expert in sales. Uh, what I would do is I hired people like, um, Jack Daly. Jack Daly was interviewed in the book. We hired other sales consultants. I think it’s actually one of the areas where you can get the highest ROI in your startup is by hiring a sales consultant.

If you want to scale, I’m not an expert, but the people in the book are experts and that’s who we interview. How many minutes do we have left in this interview?

We have approximately six minutes left in this interview, Colin. If there’s a specific topic you’d like to delve into or any final insights you’d like to share, please feel free to let me know. No, I’m okay. You can just hit, I don’t, I’m not trying to ask the questions. You’re the one asking the questions.

So just go for it.

Thank you, Colin. I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge and insights. Let’s continue with one last question. Q 13 as a serial entrepreneur and author of start scale, exit, repeat. What’s the most important message or piece of advice you’d like aspiring entrepreneurs to take away from your book and your experiences?

I think that. Everyone who has an interest in business can learn from business. I think that you can learn from the failures of others. And by the way, this book, we touch upon a lot of successes and a lot of failures. And I’m telling you that your failures are the scars of your past that will guide you through your new ventures.

There’s a lot of things that we can learn. If the one thing, if I gave one piece of advice for every aspiring entrepreneur out there, everyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, it’s listen and learn. And try to gain a knowledge from that. That’s a valuable message. Colin learning from both successes and failures and recognizing that failures can provide valuable lessons and guidance for future ventures is indeed crucial for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and insights during this interview. It’s been a pleasure discussing your book. Start scale, exit, repeat. If there’s anything else you’d like to add or any final thoughts you’d like to share, please feel free to do so. No, I think you could do the two minute summation now.

We’re ready for it.

Certainly, Colin. Here’s a brief two minute summation of our interview. We discussed your book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, and explored key concepts like the four sticky notes business plan, the importance of understanding your entrepreneurial profile, the significance of people, story, Money and systems in the startup journey and the transformative power of effective systems and strategic planning.

You shared personal stories and insights, emphasizing the value of proofing your concept before seeking investment, the benefits of incubators, government funding, and various funding options, and the simplicity of creating sales playbooks and setting meaningful goals with the right people. Throughout our discussion, your message to aspiring entrepreneurs is clear.

Learn from both successes and failures, as failures are the scars of the past that can guide you in future ventures. Thank you, Colin, for sharing your expertise and experiences. It’s been a pleasure conducting this interview on Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. If anyone is interested in learning more, they can find your book to delve deeper into these valuable insights.

And with that, our two minute summation concludes our interview. Thank you again for your time, Colin. Well, thank you. That was the first time I’ve ever been interviewed by you, and I think it was a pretty good job. Thank you.

You’re very welcome, Colin. I’m glad to hear you had a positive experience. If you ever want to discuss startups or any other topic in the future, feel free to reach out. Best of luck with your book and all your entrepreneurial endeavors. Have a great day. Okay, Michele. Oh my gosh. That was interesting. I think I learned some things there.

Like I felt like every time I’d answer the question, she’d go deeper and deeper and she wasn’t going to different sections of the book, but I don’t know. What are your thoughts? Why don’t you give us the high? Yeah, I think, you know, it just shows the difference between, um, humans and machines a bit too, because, um, she.

You know, it’s not quite sure is what I noticed when you are ready to move on to another question. I felt like she needed probably more prompting to kind of do it in the fashion that you probably were expecting. So she was just listening and waiting for big voids, silences before she could start on to the next, you know, line of questioning or probing.

Yeah, I wonder if I had prompted her a little differently too. Like, she just seemed very, like, agreeable. Right. So I wonder if I had a prompter say, like, I don’t want you to be agreeable. I want you to act and behave like a, a, a, a interviewer on, you know, Fox news or news or, or CNN or whatever. Right. And I wonder if.

I could have prompted her differently because she seemed just very positive. I never gave her positive or negative on the prompt. Right. I thought it was fascinating she did keep track of time because I didn’t know she was keeping track of time. No, that was a great question. I mean. Look, we didn’t know what to expect.

Uh, the experiment I would say went very well and we did learn some things. So like, if we want it to be rapid fire questions, then I think, yeah, it’s, it’s what we’ve been hearing people say about prompt engineering, like the more specific you are, um, the more it’s going to turn out how you want. In this case, I think, um, you were looking to explore, like, how would this, uh, narrative play out?

Yeah, and I just thought it was interesting too that they didn’t like, like she cut me off twice and I was not pausing because I knew it. I know that because I had been in my practice sessions, you know, if I, if I sit there and just pause for a second, she’ll, she’ll stop and then she’ll, but I wasn’t pausing.

She just cut me off twice and I did, I thought that was interesting and maybe I was a little long winded or something, but then even when I came back and said that was a long winded, she said, oh, no, we apologize. Like, it’s sort of like, I almost wish, um, she would have been more human in her approach. And say, look, you are long winded, buddy.

Come on, get over it. Confrontational. Yeah, maybe we should have said confrontational. Maybe we gotta do this again. I would love to. And put it in, say, we want you to be confrontational. Yes. But then I don’t know if I can handle all the insults. I know, I know. People have insulted me and now, you know. We didn’t give her any direction either way, and she was very positive.

Um, but, you know, and and the other thing, too, she does take a little bit of a 2nd, because especially if you go on for a while, it takes a little bit of a sort of uncomfortable pause to ask the question a little bit. Yeah, that that was interesting. Um, you know, they’re not human, right? Obviously. So they don’t know these kind of little, um, little.

Phobos that people have in daily conversation, but what is cool? Let’s be quite. Okay. I know there’s all the criticism now like, but let’s be, let’s be, let’s be, this was really cool because she literally understood a lot of components of the book and she also did a really good summation at the end. And then when you answer, when she answered the court, when I, sorry, when I finished the answering the question, she would actually summarize it.

Uh, the question itself and the answers in a very succinct way, which makes me think that maybe as a moderator on clubhouse, I’m not doing a good enough job. I know you are better at this than me. Uh, you were really good at this. Michele as, as, as a moderator is, is listening to people. And then you actually come back and say, well, that’s a really good idea.

And you summarize it. And Michael Gilmore, who does the complete entrepreneur, uh, he’s good at it too. And I’m like, uh, I’m not as good at that. I’m not as good as that. Listening and summarizing and it seems like that might be a protocol that is, uh, in AI that might be, you know, something out there. I don’t know.

What do you think? Yeah, I don’t know that it’s good or bad I think it’s just your style and um, I know you you come very prepared and you’re trying to get a certain point or a certain opinion Bye, rather than a pure interview style. I think that’s the difference. Colin. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, it was, it was interesting.

It was fun. It was nervous, a little bit nervous because I didn’t know how, what direction she was going to go in. And, uh, in the, in the end, I think it, it all turned out pretty good and very, very informative. Um, but I do think the lesson I learned from that is maybe we can come up with better prompt engineering before we start the interview.

Um, don’t know if this has been done before where an author has been interviewed by ChatGPT, but we did it. This is, you’re listening to Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. And, uh, this is, uh, syndicated and podcast. We have about 130. Of these, um, shows. Typically, we will go deep in a topic with the community on Clubhouse, or we’ll bring in an author.

And in this, in this club, we’ve actually brought in some really cool people. I think our very first episode. Josef Martin who started Boxy Charm and sold for $500 million. We should bring him back. We should. But there was, so, yeah, there are so many other authors we had on Jeffrey Moore who wrote Crossing the Chasm.

We had on John Mullins who wrote the customer funded startup, Vern Har, who founded EEO and runs and, and did the book Scaling Up. We had on Billy, I’m going to interrupt you just like, yeah, go ahead. This is because we only got a few minutes here and I am keeping track of time. So, and we have Colin C.

Campbell who just released a book, start, scale, exit, repeat. That was number one on Amazon and four categories. So let’s not forget about that. And, um, You know, thank all of our members here for contributing and coming every week. Like, I think you might just mention to our members here that a lot of the book is based on some amazing interviews that were done.

A lot of the members insight here on startup club. Yeah, it, this, you know, honestly, it’s. The community of clubhouse and startup club is absolutely amazing. You know, there were so many interviews, uh, and it wasn’t just the famous authors that we brought on. We had people just coming on stage like Marsha Reese, who did Sideway chalk, like, um, Ray Hanbury, who at the age of 19 got into a car accident.

I was told he has five years left to live and develops a technology or works with a technology, uh, sound modulation and ends up, and ends up, uh, turning it into a company called Santa Health, like, like Bill Bergen, who, who did, uh, something called Sabre Pack to keep the french fries crisp when they’re under delivery.

Like, uh, I’m doing this by memory. I don’t have the book in my office right now. Uh, but Cindy, um, who did, uh, the patch product and, It was about incontinence and she actually won the Procter and Gamble award. We had a chance to interview her the Procter and Gamble Innovation Award. So it was very cool.

Like we just like it’s this. Was really a collection of stories. And by the way, by the way, I know it’s big because some people have said that this big book, uh, Forbes came back and said, look, it’s double the size of the average book that Forbes published the book, but it was written for people with ADHD entrepreneurs who have ADHD.

It’s got 58 chapters, 200 call outs, dozens of illustrations. It’s entirely color coded. Um, I should say, by the way, uh, it’s. It’s sold out. It’s it’s got, I think, seven copies left. We did 1500 original print. They did a second 2000, but that’s not coming until next week. But if you did want an original print, it may already be sold out.

I haven’t checked in the last few hours, but, uh, on Amazon, uh, we tried to make reading a physical book fun again. The Audible will be coming out next week. Um, if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s probably, sorry, yeah, the podcast, it’s probably already out. Uh, we’ve been, uh, waiting for the Audible to come out, but it is out on audiobooks.

So, if you still don’t want to read the book, but you want to listen to it, you can listen to it on audiobooks on Apple. We have to switch to our weekly show, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, and today we’re talking about the four sticky note business plans. So, if you want to stick around. Uh, not on this show, but just, uh, join us on the next show.

We’re going to do the four sticky note business plan, and we’re going to get into the details. I do need to get to a copy of the book so that I don’t miss anything. And we are going to have people on stage and we’re going to talk about how you can build a business plan in less than. 30 minutes. Thank you very much.

You’ve been listening to serial entrepreneur secrets revealed my co host Michele van Tilburg and our blogger and the one who runs the site startup dot club. And by the way, if you haven’t already done so go to startup dot club, sign up that email list and check out those, uh, those blogs that she’s written in all the past interviews.

I often say that if you listen to all the podcasts, you will get a an MBA. Okay. And entrepreneurship, and this is not a masterclass that you have to pay for. This is absolutely free. There’s nothing to pay for. We don’t even sell a masterclass. Sorry. The reality is it’s free. It’s startup club, 1 million members.

If you’re not on startup club, please join it, join it. And we’ll see you on the next show. Start scale as a repeat. We’re already one minute behind. Sorry about that.