Riding the Entrepreneurial Wave

The Complete Entrepreneur – EP46

[00:00:00] 

You are on Startup Club, almost 1 million members. We’re very excited about that. If you are not a member of Startup Club, please join our club. It’s all about learning. It really is. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a club about learning and uh, we’ve got Jeffrey Sass, Michele Van Tilborg, I’m Colin C. Campbell and of course our host Michael Gilmour will be coming on as well.

And here he is right now. Michael Gilmour. This is the complete entrepreneur riding the wave. I’m gonna pass it right to you, Michael, to tell us what today shows all about. Yeah, I think I’m gonna have to get my status updated though to a moderator. If someone can do that, that would be awesome.

I’m just doing the show right now. Yes. It looks like you are for us, Michael, you are [00:01:00] a moderator. Oh, okay. Well, that’s, that’s wonderful. . It’s great to be here. I must have been like, it’s my favorite time of the week. Um, 5:00 PM Eastern time. We’re taking a look at the Complete Entrepreneur. Um, it’s 5:00 PM Eastern Time every Thursday.

And when we look at the life of an entrepreneur, not just the business sides, although we’ll tackle the business sides as well, but also we look at what does it mean to go through the emotional journey of being an entrepreneur. And there’s so many different rooms that discuss everything except for that.

Everything except for that. Well, just before we get started into things, I want to say a very, very sound apology for everyone, for, uh, for last week. I was in absence last week and, uh, basically I traveled from the United States to Australia and I had a 30 hour journey and I screwed up my time zones and I missed the complete entrepreneur.

So for all my entrepreneur, my [00:02:00] moderators, friends up there, Colin, Michele and Jeff, thank you very much for filling in for me. I messed things up with my, we have an admission. I have an admission. Uh, I have to apologize as well. Um, I got, I was doing my taxes, my 2021 taxes, and I had two accountants. With me and I was working on it.

I totally missed it as well. I don’t know about you, Michele, but I apologize to you, Michele, for missing it. Don’t apologize to me. Jeff stepped in. I’m teasing. I’m teasing. Good on your, Jeff is the only one who made it, and I heard that it was an amazing session, so I, I think Jeff would, um, should enjoy and applaud here.

Thank you. Well done, Jeff. Thank you very much for doing that. I, I screwed up everything with my time zones, but we’re here now and that’s what’s important. And just before we get stuck into things, Michele, what’s going on with, with, um, startup Duck Club?

[00:03:00] Michele, are you there? Am I here? I am here. Yes. I’m Startup Club. You know, we’ve had amazing guests this year already with Jeffrey Moore and many, many others. Um, Joe Foster. Who was actually the founder of Reebok, he did an amazing session on startup Club as well. And there are many others that are coming up soon.

We’re working on, um, getting dates for some more really cool authors from the business world as well as some VCs. So please be sure to follow the calendar on the app, but as well as on our website, which is www.startup.club. And we also have a news, uh, email newsletter. We only email for events coming and we restrain that to maximum usually of once per week.

So please join our email list if you’re interested in getting alerts. Thank you [00:04:00] so much. Thanks very much for that. Michele. Do you appreciate that? Lots happening at Startup Club and I think the goal is to get to a million entrepreneurs by the end of the year for in startup like club, which would be absolutely phenomenal.

But today we’re taking a look at right In the way. How do you identify trends, seize opportunity, and then ride, ride that wave of success. Um, when you finally get to shore, what’s next for your business and how do you invest the resources you’ve gained from the wave wisely? Yeah. There’s a good old saying, and they’re saying is businesses duplicate success until they fail.

In other words, they keep on doing the same thing until it fails, and that’s the reason. . Um, most businesses ultimately fail because they don’t go and look out at the horizon and try to find that wave. I, I remember as a, um, [00:05:00] when I was younger, I used to do a lot of surfing and things like that, and I’d be able to look at the horizon.

I’d see a little ripple on the horizon, and I’d say We’re about to have a great big wave come through. Get everyone get ready. Yeah. All of the people around me and they’d said, I can’t see the wave. What were you talking about? There’s nothing in there. I said, trust me, I can see it. And what I realized is that over my many, many years of, of body surfing and board surfing and everything like that, I trained my eye to pick up the trend.

And the trend was that wave way out there in the ocean, which was slowly heading towards the shore. Yeah. And other people who’d only been doing, who hadn’t, hadn’t really practiced that, that, that looking into the distance as such, uh, they couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see it. So it’s the same for entrepreneurs.

We need to practice, we need to be looking for those trends. What are the things that are going to impact our [00:06:00] business? What are the, the trends that are gonna go and catapult the business forward? Um, or when you finally go along and you may ex exit or something like that, what’s the next wave you’re gonna ride forward?

Was it, was it the internet? I remember back in 96, uh, it was 96 when I founded an I S P, I think it was 96. Uh, found it an i s P and I, I just wanted to learn everything about the internet and I thought the best way to do it is to become it. So I found that I s P and I rode a wave. It was. It was amazing experience.

Yeah. And there’s been various ways have gone through the technology arena and the thing to look at as entrepreneurs is looking into the future. What is gonna be happening, what is gonna be happening in the future? So, Colin, you’ve, you’ve started many businesses and you’ve got many businesses, um, on the go [00:07:00] right now.

D do you find yourself looking constantly at the future? And for, what is that wave that you’re gonna be riding and, and what are the resources you need to be able to ride the wave versus getting crushed by the wave? Are you constantly thinking about those sort of things, Michael? I mean, it’s, it’s a topic that I really enjoy.

I think this, um, Michele, your phone’s clo over here. I think this, uh, this is something that is an opportunity for every single. individual entrepreneur who can figure out what the trends are and where they’re coming. We’ve seen history repeat itself many, many times over and over again. And you know, even in the, uh, recent history, we see it happening where these startups launch these mega companies.

I mean, think about it, you’re probably one of the most classic examples of this would be the auto industry with gm, Ford, and Chrysler, and, you know, Fiat and a couple other [00:08:00] ones, Nissan and Toyota and these companies existed for about a hundred years. And then you get this new guy named Elon Musk, this new startup, and he decides to launch this company called Tesla.

And he does this with, and all the other companies are like, oh, it’s too early, it’s too early, it’s too early. It doesn’t matter. He decides to do it anyway. And he launches it. And then you, you know, his market cap. at one point. I think it’s pretty close to that still today is the same as all of the other companies combined.

Um, and there was a company called Rivian that came out who had market caps higher than GM and Ford. And I know it, it dropped a lot. I mean, we’ve had it called tech rec in the stock market as you know, this year. Um, but it was still fascinating to see that Rivian had, you know, a startup again. You think they would learn their lesson, Michael, from Tesla and think, okay, we need to start positioning around this wave.

There’s a wave coming. So [00:09:00] one thing about myself, Michael, is I, I grew up, I was very lucky to grow up a father who brought a lot of technology. We had the, one of the first t RS eighties, uh, I mean, I’m going back now. We had the very first Sinclair computer, four case Sinclair, and I was six years old. Oh, I, I remember those computers.

I remember those computers. Colin . I was six years old and we had that first computer and you know, ever since then, um, We’ve always, my father, I don’t know what he, I mean, he, he found the money to make certain that we had the latest technology in the home. And, and that made a big difference. That made a big impression on me growing up.

And actually, one of my core values, my personal core values is live in the future. And I’ve, I’ve, I had one of the first, uh, uh, H D hdtv, uh, in Canada was actually one of the very first to get it. I was also one of the first to get a, uh, a, uh, an electric SUV v Tesla’s, uh, model X, uh, number 984. Um, you know, I, so, and I, of course, [00:10:00] internet bandwidth, everything, always have had the fastest internet I could.

I try to live in the future, and by doing that, I look for those things or opportunities or moments or aha moments, right, where I can say, okay, this is cool and this is gonna work. , you know, sometimes it doesn’t work cuz you know, I bought an N F T and I was like, this was really tough and what is it really worth?

It’s just a cartoon image of a blah, blah, blah. So don’t get me wrong, not every wave is gonna be a paradigm shift. Um, but there are those waves, some of them that are paradigm shifts. And if you can find or catch those, you can, uh, it can, uh, really lead to a lot of success because the back to the big corporations, the ones with billions of dollars, they’re two risk averse.

And I saw that in the nineties with the I S P when we launched it and became the largest in Canada until the telecoms came over and started, [00:11:00] you know, going at us. I saw that with, um, two cows. I saw that with hostopia, the hosting companies. Uh, and I saw that with, uh, dot Club, where. , I literally went back to the company that I’d worked for.

I’d sold my company to a Fortune 500 company. I went back to them. I said, guys, there’s new domain extensions coming out. You are in a very large good position. You have a lot of money. You make 200 millionaire profit. Do you wanna do that? And he said, that’s too risky. So he said, that’s fine then can I do it?

Sure, no problem. So I went and did it. And we just sold the company, Michele and Jeff and I just sold the company to GoDaddy. So, you know what? That’s okay. Here’s what I say. You know, the wave comes, enter the entrepreneur.

How true. How true. Um, Colin, I, I, I must admit, like when I look at the, the different waves, I’m a bit like yourself. I, I love living in the future. Um, like one of, I remember when I saw the, the Oculus, Oculus riff come out. [00:12:00] I was one of the very first people to buy. Um, and the first thing I did, people said, oh, was there anything on it?

Like you play any, was it games or applications and stuff? Uh, the very first thing I did, actually, yeah, there was a few things on it, is that I put it on the head of my parents, my wife, kids, friends, whatever. And I just wanted to watch their, their interaction with them. I just wanted to see how they, what they, their impression of the whole thing was.

And they’re completely gobsmacked by it. They thought, oh my gosh, this is incredible, but it’s too complicated. Uh, that was sort, so almost the reaction I said, okay, not a problem. The second thing I did was not play a whole heap of games. Um, the second thing I did was I began programming it. I wanted to know whether there was the tools that I could use as a programmer to development it.

And I found it was super easy. To actually do it. I thought, okay, we’re starting to get some [00:13:00] things in place. Yeah. And, and I look at where it, it’s gone now and you’ve got, um, Facebook is now meta for the metaverse and everything like that. And you, you could see that there is a surge in that direction. And I look at something like, um, VR and I’m going, yeah, that’s great.

There’s a surge in that direction. But the killer app’s just not there. It’s waiting for the entrepreneur to develop the killer app. Like I look at the internet in the early days, and to me, the killer app was actually email that was the killer app. The first time I sent an email to someone, um, I was using pH net.

The, the, the, um, uh, uh, I was bouncing signals off the inosphere to get the email to the other side of the world. And I got a reply two days later and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so fast. This is gonna change everything. Because if I was to do that with snail mail, it would take weeks. But I got it in two [00:14:00] days.

Nowadays we sit there, we sort of do refresh, refresh, refresh. You got it yet? You got it yet. Yeah. And, and things just constantly improve. So I, I look for what is the killer app, which is gonna really grip people and they go, I have to have this now. So you Yeah. And Michael, there’s a difference between the metaverse for these Oculus glasses, which actually have a very low usage duration, uh, usage rating and email.

Email solved a big problem. It took a long time to send a piece of mail, email did it instantly, you know, it solved a big problem. Whereas your glasses, and I don’t know how often you use your Oculus now, I’d be curious to find out, but I’d also be curious to find out from the people in the audience, if they’ve ever ridden the wave and they’ve had success or they’ve ridden the wave, like, uh, N F T, or.

Metaverse and, and, and, and they’ve been stuck in the chasm as Jeffrey Moore who wrote Inside The Chasm. So inside the tornado crossing the chasm, those books. But I’d be curious from the [00:15:00] audience, if you’re in the eyes, really, really would love to have you up here. But Michael, I’m just gonna throw that back at you.

Right back at you. Like, so do you still use your Oculus? Yeah, I do actually. I, I do use Mi Oculus. Um, and as I said, the killer app is not there. It is just not there yet. And I think it’s waiting for the entrepreneur to step in. Like they’ve done some interesting things with it. When we look at VR or you look at augmented reality where you’ve got a situation where they decoupled, so, so you don’t have to actually plug it into your computer and all that sort of stuff.

And so they’re refining the, the, um, the physical device and they’re doing that, but it is still waiting for that entrepreneur, that entrepreneur, which will go, I’ve got a great idea. That, that is the moment I think the wave will come through and it’ll be like, oh my gosh, of course we all have this now, but it’s not there yet.

So looking at these different [00:16:00] technologies is really quite interesting. But just before we do, so, um, the continue the discussion, you’ll listening to the Complete Entrepreneur and we’re talking right now about riding the wave. And if you’re in the audience and you’re saying, you know what, boy, if I got a wave to tell you about, it was an amazing experience with my particular business.

In fact, it was like tsunami. But please stick your hand up. We’d love to hear from you. We wanna hear from you guys in the audience right there. Um, and so stick your hand up and we’d love to have you up on stage, um, with us all. But anyway, I wanna, there’s a risk riding the wave, Michael, too. Um, you know, I love what Colin always says about living in the future, so we really have to kind of.

Test out new things, be an early adopter, understand what’s going on, look for those trends and opportunities that might make a good business. Um, but it’s also oftentimes challenging. I, I had the experience with a company that I co-founded where we, we rode the wave. [00:17:00] We were way ahead of the wave, you know, where we had in the year 2000.

We had a service on mobile devices before the smartphone called bar point.com, where you could enter the UPC barcode number for any product and get back on your phone, pre mobile in Premo, you know, pre smartphone, uh, comparative pricing, information, reviews, and in some cases even purchase items right from your phone.

And this service was available on all of the major carriers in the us si We had deals with at and t singular, Nextel, Verizon, um, and. No one used it, . The technology was there. The distribution was there. We rode that wave. We, we were way on top of that wave, but we were way ahead of consumer adoption. So yes, the technology was cool and you can do all these cool things on your phone, but no one was willing to do those things on their phone at that time.

And [00:18:00] it wasn’t until many years later, arguably until recent years, that the consumer adoption and consumer behavior caught up with the technology and people were comfortable doing all these things on your phone. So you’ve gotta kind of find that balance where you can ride the wave, but uh, don’t ride the, wave the waves, uh, you know, into, uh, into the sand where no one’s interested in what you’re riding.

Yeah. You bring up an interesting point there, Jeff. I, I, I, I’m actually at the view that if you take the surfing analogy, you can see the wave, but you started paddling a kilometer too early. And I done exactly the same thing. One, one of my businesses back in, uh, the end of the nineties, early two thousands, where we developed an amazing technology.

And it was about 10 years. Um, too early I saw the wave. That was awesome. But, and I started paddling and putting resources into the, the business and all [00:19:00] that sort of stuff. But you know what, it got nowhere. Um, and the reason why it got nowhere is, is, is because I was way ahead of the wave. It, it’s a lot about the timing.

I’m getting that timing right and I, I look nowadays and there’s like alsos of plugins for browsers and all that sort of stuff and, and everything. And I’m thinking, yep, I was way ahead. Cuz that’s the sort of thing we were doing, um, way back then. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting thing. It’s not just seeing the wave, but it’s the timing of the wave.

Sorry Jeff. No, I was gonna say I’m not a surfers, you know, but I’ve been to the beach many times and I’ve watched the waves and you know what it is, if you wanna play with the analogy, you know, waves come, a series of waves come into the shore and there might be one that looks like it’s a great big wave, but what you don’t know is the second or third wave right behind it might even be bigger.

So sometimes you ride that first. But the real opportunity is catching [00:20:00] the crest of the second or third. And a good example of that, you know, staying with the, the mobile space. You know, the iPhone was not the first smartphone. It wasn’t the first touchscreen phone. It wasn’t the first touchscreen phone without a keyboard.

There were others before it, but they saw the wave. They waited for the first one or two to pass by, and then they got on the much bigger wave and introduced the iPhone and improved upon, uh, what was happening, and, and basically took over and dominated the market. So they weren’t the first, um, but they were close thereafter and, and rode the bigger wave.

Yeah. So I think we’re gonna be going into like, uh, old people talk here. If we don’t get Daniel Rich, Heather and t on stage. Come on, come on stage. Let’s have some fun here. But, uh, going back, no, back into 1998, the trio was taking off. Do you remember that, Jeff? The, the trio and. And I, oh, I remember the trio.

Yeah. And tech [00:21:00] communities, like I remember New York City seeing people walking across the street, not paying attention to traffic. And I said, okay, that is gonna be big that, that it went from a computer in every home. Bill Gates’ vision, there’s Kevin coppa, we’d love to have you up here too, Kevin. Um, the computer in every home to a computer and every hand.

Fine. Now we’ve got I ot, which is a computer and everything. Okay. So, so we went from that, you know, home hand, everything. And, uh, it’s just fascinating to see those visions and you know, what opportunities for entrepreneurs, like you could really, you can really seize the date. I’d also like to hear from people in the audience if they think there’s a new trend coming out.

Like, are NFTs something? Like I don’t, you know, I’ve, I’ve been very skeptical of NFTs. I’ll throw that out there. Um, do I think there are new trends coming at all the time? There are hundreds of new trends. Everywhere we look, we see them happening, we can catch those waves. Um, some of them are [00:22:00] based on reg change in government regulation that sometimes is an opportunity for us to seize upon.

Sometimes it’s based on a technology shift. Um, but there is so much change in the world and that change is opportunity for all of us. Yeah, how true. A a absolutely true there. Um, Colin, yeah, there’s so many trends coming in. The issue is picking the right wave, and I wanna come to Rich in a second. But what you said before, Jeff, uh, the surfing analogy, once again, waves come sets is so true.

They do come in sets and picking the right wave in the. And being positioned for that right wave in your business, uh, is so, so important. You can’t paddle early, but you can’t paddle too late and you don’t wanna be crushed by one of those big waves either. Yeah. So it’s, it, it’s juggling all those things.

It’s quite, quite, um, difficult. So, rich, it’s great to have you on the [00:23:00] Complete Entrepreneur. Uh, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of riding the wave. Hey, Michael, Colin and Jeffrey and Michele. Thanks for having me up. Um, you know, it’s sort of interesting, um, you know, you, you’re talking about trend spotting, right?

And, you know, one of the, the techniques that, that I’ve used very successfully is to spot trends via regulatory agency. and, um, those, those are definitely impactful. And, um, give you two examples. The, the first one is, is that, um, right around the, the time of AIDS was really, you know, a, a scare and, and you know, very much in the media, um, the AMA came out and past legislation related [00:24:00] to surgical procedures and the capturing of blood and other types of, of, um, gases, if you would, that are emitted during the, the course of, um, laser surgery.

And, um, in that process, there was a, a development effort undertaken by several. Um, startups that were developing equipment to go into the surgical theater to capture that blood and prevent any kind of transmission of, of, uh, aids and, and other types of, you know, hepatitis, et cetera, any blood borne, um, um, uh, medical situations.

And that technology was, um, acquired by a, a leading, uh, medical device company and basically, you know, perfected the technology, if you would, and [00:25:00] brought it to market. And they are, you know, the dominant supplier of that particular instrument in the, in the. Um, the second one is, is within the transportation industry when the, um, again, the ama but, uh, basically the, um, disabilities, uh, aspect of the AMA passed legislation for, um, buses to have wheelchair, wheelchair lift incorporated into the bus.

And, you know, if you were paying attention to that, you saw that coming. And our company was, and we developed a solution around a lift system to, to go into the, the transit buses. And, um, so that was, um, you know, one of the things that we did. And of course that sort of spawned other, um, secondary and tertiary kinds of applications that [00:26:00] we captured as well.

So I just, uh, just want to share. Fantastic. Rich. Well, that’s a what a great. Um, wherever advice there you have, which is basically one of the places you could look for trends and things like that, um, or opportunities is in the regulatory environment. It’s funny, my mindset’s always been, quite often been, uh, they’re behind the times, but what you are saying is there actually can be ahead of the times and point the direction, which is a fantastic word of advice there.

Um, thank you very much for sharing that. Do do appreciate that. Um, do you have anything more to share there, rich? Um, just, you know, the, the fact that, you know, when you, you take a look at, at trends, um, I mean that’s really a driver, right? Is regulatory, that’s not a trend. And the, you know, the trend is, is you know, basically, um, the result of that driver, right?[00:27:00] 

So that’s. That’s important to understand. Yes. Uh, that’s, it’s real, really interesting. So, Colin, well this is interesting. I mean, it, it’s obviously a very interesting topic to me. I mean, I, this is my whole life. I studied it, I continue to study it, um, you know, dot club as a result of a regulatory tr trend in 2012 when they deregulated the domain name space and opened up new domain extensions.

And, uh, again, I described earlier on how big corporations were too fearful of it. You know, it’s just so funny, like how it happens like over and over again, time and time again, it repeats itself over and over again. But, uh, yeah, you look at, there’s been a lot of regulatory changes. Um, a few years ago there was a prescription, uh, for, for, um, veterinarians, uh, no longer were allowed to hold onto prescriptions.

They had to share prescriptions. There were some changes in the US around that. , the [00:28:00] smallest change in public, uh, policy can make a huge difference for entrepreneurs who want to take advantage of that. Let me point to a company, uh, because he is my neighbor in one of these islands that I have a property on.

Um, and they, uh, launched a tax software company. So the trend was as a Supreme Court ruling on taxes, on sales tax, e-commerce companies now had to charge sales tax, you know, like pot.com, like the ones that Jeff, uh, and I run and like meowing ten’s the one that Michele runs. We had to start, all of a sudden we had to start paying sales tax.

It was a Supreme Court ruling on this about three or four years ago. And help me with the pronunciation here, Michele. It’s Alovera. I know. I can’t remember. It’s like, I can’t remember exactly the pronunciation of their company, but they were 15 billion. I think they may have fallen into 7 billion. They just got a takeout bid now.

I mean, oh my gosh. They made billions. Of dollars because what all they did was say, we’ll do your sales tax for [00:29:00] every state in the United States based on a Supreme Court ruling. And they were ready and they were positioned for that wave. They literally, they had positioned about a year before the Supreme Court ruling, and they positioned and they were ready to go.

What an incredible story. And, and billions of dollars being created based on a regulatory shift in positioning yourself for a wave. Yeah. What a fantastic story, um, about that company there, Colin. I think the, the interesting thing for entrepreneurs, we bring it back to the, the entrepreneur themselves, is like, how do you see a wave?

Like we talk about, there’s a whole stack of waves we can look at and discuss and everything. And we’ll probably do that later on in the show show. But I think one of the key things that, um, I think every entrepreneur needs to do is develop a learning mindset. And developing a learning mindset means you have to have a level of humility that what you’re currently [00:30:00] doing may not be, um, the optimum solution for your business.

And developing that learning mindset also may mean you have to cannibalize your existing business in order to find to, to surf that big wave coming through. And so, so the question is, I, I guess is how do you then develop a learning mindset? How do you feed that, that inner mind with new ideas and I, I can just relate, um, uh, some things that I personally do.

I do a huge amount of. Uh, books are my friend and I will just read and read and read, and I read on a diverse range of topics. Uh, I get a newsfeed to my phone every single day on the latest updates and sites, um, and, uh, uh, latest updates and technology and everything. And I just read it, consume it. And one of the things I find in that process is that [00:31:00] one industry may have been solving a problem that my industry needs to solve, but they haven’t solved it yet.

But this other industry has solved that problem. And I go, I can apply that learning straight into what I’m doing in my business, and I can ride a wave. It may not be a massive wave, it could be one of the close ones in Des Shore or anything that’s not a tsunami or anything like that. But I can ride that wave forward because I’m adopting something from another industry.

And I find that it’s really, really useful to do. So every single day I spend about 30 minutes and, and, and that 30 minute time, I’m feeding my inner sort of thought processes, constantly feeding them of all the latest in, in, in my space, technology and things like that. And I’m constantly doing that. And I’d be interested to know, um, uh, yourself, Collin, is, what sort of [00:32:00] things do you do to help you identify or to train your mind, to identify, um, those waves?

What sort of things are, are you a big reader or, uh, what is it? Well, first of all, we have to understand the dynamic of the rave. Of the wave of the rave, the wave, um, the dynamic of the wave. And, uh, I, early on my, my nineties, I read a book called Crossing the Chasm, and then inside the tornado, . I did an article about it a few years back, and I reached out to the author and then Fi, you know, and then he reached back.

It was actually quite surprising. And like, he’s a bestselling author. He sold millions of copies of these books. And if you really ever truly want to understand how the Wave works, uh, getting his book inside the tornado, crossing the Chasm, those two books define it better than any book in history. He actually, he actually redefined the technology adoption curve.

Okay. So, and I think he [00:33:00] deserves a Nobel Economic prize for this, and one day he’ll get it, but he actually, can I just chime quickly, Collin? Yeah, go ahead, Colin. Can I wanna chime the, I’ve read those books. And they’re absolutely fantastic. Uh, we actually had, um, Jeffrey Moore on, um, I think on startup.club, and I made sure I attended the session.

I listened to him and I thought, this guy really knows who he is talking about. I wanna read, was it Cool? Like it was on, it was on our podcast. It was on our show. The one that Jeff and Michele, what I do, it was amazing. I bought them straight away, read them. We even asked him about Clubhouse, uh, Michael, we even asked about Clubhouse and he said, okay, if Clubhouse is gonna succeed, they need to do the following to, to catch the wave of audio chat.

It was a phenomenal show, and by the way, you can go back and listen to it on your favorite podcast channel. Just search for Serial Entrepreneur Club, uh, and you can find it. And, and you’ll, you’ll, you’ll, you can listen to the Jeffrey or just go to Google and type a Jeffrey Moore startup club. Probably that’ll pop up right there for you.

But it was really [00:34:00] phenomenal and, uh, I’ve developed a bit of a relationship with him so far. And he’s, I’ve, I’ve used a lot, some of his theories in the book, uh, upcoming book. , um, that I’m coming out with called start scale, exit, repeat. And, uh, it’s been, it’s like, look, if you really wanna understand it, he’s the one I learned from it, and I’ve lived it.

I’ve lived it over and over again. I’ve done about 10 different technology companies and they’re all about catching the wave. And yeah, you’re right. There are waves that like, like I’m, I’m really, it was negative on FT and I’m still negative on vr. I think VR now has been in the chasm for 20 years. I think it’s a tough space.

Real tough space. Um, and I, and I’m not convinced it’s still gonna get there. Uh, Michael, I know you’re more optimistic than I am on it, but sometimes when you use the technology, you know, uh, there was a stat I read about that, that there was only 3% of people who actually bought Oculuses actually used them.

Uh, I’m being honest, like it’s tough, like when you see usage, if you don’t see the usage, that was the same at [00:35:00] Doc Club. Like, if we didn’t get the usage, we wouldn’t get the renewals, you wouldn’t get the sustainability. People started using.club domain names on Clubhouse. They really started using.club domain names.

I mean, it became something. Now when I say using them, do I, am I in comparison to.com? No. Dot com had 130 million names. We had a million names, you know, but still a million names at 10 bucks a year is a business. It really is, right? So you have to think about that, right? Is there an opportunity with a wave?

So let’s talk about the new waves that are coming out right now. I’m very curious to hear from the audience. If you want to just come on here, come on stage. Just talk, talk about the new waves. You know, I, there’s a few ideas I was thinking about, you know, around, around the new waves, but, uh, I just want to hear from the audience too.

If you, if you have an idea, like what’s the next big trend? Is it web three? You know, is it the metaverse? You know, I, is it, is it, um, you know, like sometimes the world, like high inflation causes things, um, the, uh, , [00:36:00] the whole pandemic, you know, we had Peloton was, was huge and now it’s collapsing. I know, but you know, what’s the next big.

That’s what I wanna hear from the people in the audience. I, I, I, I agree with you Colin. Uh, you’re listening to The Complete Entrepreneur and we’re talking about riding the wave as in your businesses, like identifying those trends, which can be transformative for your business or giving you that opportunity and you can seize and move, move ahead with it.

So if you’re in the audience as Colin’s been in, in treating, then please stick your hand up. We’d love to have you up on the stage. It’d be great to hear from, hear your story on riding the Wave. So it, the other places I thought would be interesting to look at is, um, the other places I, I look for ideas from and things like that to identify those ripples on the horizon is I look at influencers and publications in the industry.

And as, as a classic saying, I, I quite often use, which is see [00:37:00] somebody, not anybody. In other words, you can waste a huge amount of time in social media and you’re hearing these people or some of the forums and things like that, and you’ve got people who are suppose experts in their own mind and they really have no idea what they’re talking about.

But then you’ll have other people that they, they really have the finger on the pulse. They’re the people I pay attention to and I watch what they do and I watch what they say. They’re the publications I go along and read about, um, and, and so forth. And I find that once again, I’m feeding my inner mind as such of ideas, uh, constantly do doing that.

Uh, I look at latest industry data, if. I look at the industry I’m in, I look at the data. Like I, for a presentation for a conference I was speaking at, I spent probably a week and a half pulling apart [00:38:00] industry data, um, and trying to view the industry in a very, very different way. Uh, I’m in the domain industry and um, uh, in fact traffic management industry of, of, of domains.

And I pulled apart literally billions of data points. Um, we had a, a, a client who had all these questions and everything like that about what was going on, and I ended up developing a spreadsheet, which was like, it was over half a gig in size to pull, to pull the data apart. And that allowed me to identify a wave.

And I said, said to this guy, said, you know what, with this data, you can go along and accelerate your business, which will then accelerate my business forward. You know, it’s identifying those waves for people, uh, can, for customers can be very, very beneficial for them. And also in the end, it’s beneficial for [00:39:00] yourself.

Yeah. So there’s lots of things I end up doing, and I think the number one I’d like, like to do, uh, is, um, is just before I, I, I share this, Jeff, I would love to get your thoughts around this. Um, just, uh, around where do you look for Rod in the way, particularly, I guess in your marketing sense and everything like that, and, uh, in your role that you play in your different businesses you’re involved with.

But the one thing that I look at and listen to is customers. When I hear customers repeating the same problem one customer to another, guess what? There’s a way of developing here. And if you can solve that problem, just like Rich was saying with the um, the regulatory environment, with buses and everything like that, if you can solve that problem for the customer, guess what?

You’ve just started riding a wave. So Jeff, I just wanna come to you in [00:40:00] all the businesses you’re being involved with and everything like that. What’s the things that you do that help you identify waves moving forward? Is there some things that you do in your, uh, with yourself, maybe even in your daily routine and things like that?

I think we may have lost Jeff, but anyway. That’s okay. So, um, maybe Colin, I’ll come back to yourself and ask you the same question. Is there things that you do. In your daily life, which is actually it. It helps you identify waves. Okay. I told you that Michael, I live in the future. I bought like a, the first electric vehicle.

I literally have always had the fastest internet possible. I got starlink in my beach house on the west coast of Florida. I am always, look, I mean, think about Starling for a minute there. Just let, let’s just, let’s, let’s just for fun, just think [00:41:00] about this. You can now have high speed internet in any location in the world.

And this just happened in the last year or two. And this is again, back to Elon Musk. I don’t know. He, he really is amazing . But anyway, like, think about that. How is that gonna change the world? Well, now you can work at sea, you know, I mean, you can actually work at sea. I bought some condos at sea on a new ship that’s being built.

You can actually work at sea, like you can actually have a life at sea. Like this isn’t insane. We have to stop thinking just as, because this is the way everybody’s done it in the past. This is what’s gonna happen in the future. Cuz it’s exactly what the big companies think. Yeah. How will starlink change the world?

And so you’re right. So I’m, I’m living the future. I’m always trying to grab those technologies and experience them for myself again. I, I did use those Oculus things. I can’t do that. It doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t [00:42:00] make me any money, it doesn’t change. My world doesn’t email faster. I wanna push, push me for, I wanna push, you wanna push you with this, you talk about Libby in the future, but what it means is you have to know what the future is before you can buy.

You can buy the product, whether it’s in Oculus, whether it’s starlink and everything like that. So where are you getting the information from that’s feeding your brain. You’re inner brain that says, I’m gonna go and buy a starlink setup. Where are you getting that from? Well, I mean, for me it was a need back to the need again.

Right? Yeah. Like I have a, I have a beach house that has a pretty crappy internet on an island, you know, in, in the middle of almost nowhere. So I’m like, yeah, I’ll take it. You know? So, but it makes you think about it though, once you do that, or the electric car, or the electric SUV or whatever it is. I had the first bolt in Fort Lauderdale, like, you know, where do I, I mean, look, you’re, for me, I’m always, of course, I’m always following the trends, looking at what’s technology, [00:43:00] what’s new, and I’m picking and choosing.

It’s sort of like going to the flea market and say, I like this, I like this. I don’t like that. I don’t like that. I didn’t, I’ve never bought an Oculus. Okay. I’ll be honest with you. And I bought an NFT only once, just for the fun of it. It was only 50 bucks. So I’m not, like, I’m being honest with you, like I, I pick and choose my, but I bought a lot of Bitcoin.

I bought it when it was 3000, 4,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000. You know, I kept buying that. And then I bought, uh, uh, a lot, uh, uh, again, when it was 30,000, 35,000. And then I ended up losing some money recently. So I’m not perfect. Okay. I do believe in Bitcoin. I hate Bitcoin for its environmental impact. So about two months ago, I started buying a lot more Ethereum cause I think they solved the problem with proof of stake versus proof of work.

And that’s the kind of stuff I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about down the road, you know, do we wanna live in a world of environmental damage because of an online currency, or do we wanna live in a world of, of where you don’t have that environmental damage? And uh, and [00:44:00] Ethereum solved that problem. And my guess is that Bitcoin will eventually solved that problem.

But I don’t understand all of the inner workings of how the vote could occur to get Bitcoin over that hump. But I will say that the government, the US government and other big governments could come out with mandates and say, we’re putting an environmental tax on Bitcoin. Of 10% and that would force them to move to, uh, proof of stake, not proof of work.

I hope I didn’t get that backwards, but in any case, that’s an example. Like I think that this idea of deflationary currency, that’s my gosh, I jumped on Bitcoin, I believed in it. I never jumped on NFTs. So we’re gonna wanna pick and choose, like we’re gonna learn as much as we can about every technology, and we’re gonna think about it.

Which ones are gonna be the ones that are gonna be transformative and which ones are not. I’m sorry. Cartoon aches are not transformative in my mind. And they do not solve a problem. They just don’t. [00:45:00] They just don’t. Yeah. Yeah. Colin, I, I, I, it’s amazing. We’re very similar in that regard. Like, when I want to learn about the internet, I said to myself, I want to.

uh, what I want to understand about electric vehicles and all that sort of stuff. I bought a Tesla when I want to understand about vr, I actually bought, I bought two Oculus. Uh, when I want to understand about crypto, I said I need to go and buy some. So I went and did it. Yeah, and I think that’s a, it’s a, it’s a mindset of, you know, what you need to invest in yourself sometimes, but it could be buying a product or something like that.

And you’re trying to experience it to work out is this a wave, uh, is this going to be propelling things forward and all that sort of stuff. So Rich, you’ve got something to say. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, just to sort of build on that, um, my current, um, entrepreneurial activity [00:46:00] is, is driven by, um, trend spotting.

And, you know, when we, uh, when I started this, this venture, um, you know, basically it was the result of, you know, looking at the trends and, um, doing a situational analysis on the impacts of, of what’s happening around us as a result of, of covid and. , you know, basically, you know, some of those impacts were, you know, the obvious ones.

Of course, you know, the, the job loss, the inflation that we’re now seeing, um, the know-how lost in the, um, employment sector on the experience, you know, lost by, you know, companies cutting back and, and, uh, shifting, um, employees, you know, from full-time, the, the part-time and then just releasing them. Um, so those are some of the, the top of mind things, you know, [00:47:00] that, that we spotted.

And, you know, basically, you know, the, um, the loss of income by, you know, the, the population today is, um, and because of inflation, inflation, now, you know, they’re looking for, you know, other ways to supplement their income. So this, what I refer to as is, you know, the, the knowledge worker. Is, you know, now has an opportunity to, to leverage that and, uh, what we’re putting together as our How true.

Yep. Uh, how true, rich, you, you, you just identified a whole series of massive businesses right there, uh, in, in what you just shared. Um, it’s really is phenomenal. Um, there’s so many of these trends, which Covid created other trends, which you, you put your finger on, which is the, the, um, the migration of the workforce and the fact the workforce [00:48:00] is completely changed, or how do you manage a dis, a disparate workforce where you got everyone working from home, some are working from the office, some are working from, uh, uh, the, the condo on a boat cuz they got a starlink in, in their beach house.

Like there, there’s all these different things. And how do businesses wrestle with managing that? Yeah. Is such a huge trend. Sorry, rich. And, and that’s, you know, what our SaaS product is, uh, built around. Yeah. Thank, thank you for sharing that again, rich. And feel free to jump in, uh, as, as we unpick what the trends are moving forward.

Cause I think we need to really look at what’s going on in, in the industry and that we’re in, and also what’s actually happening in a macroeconomic sense as well. Um, I, I remember I was speaking at a, a conference [00:49:00] and the beginning of my session and I, I, I said, I’m gonna show you the most incredible computer game you have ever seen.

It’s going to blow your mind. It’s involves time travel. It involves really detailed, uh, detailed sort of work, but also it’s at a very big scale. And, um, I put up on the screen Excel and you can see the audience. They’re expecting some amazing game or something like that. And we’re gonna be playing. I said it is, it’s the best game in town for the entrepreneur.

I can go along and I can create a business plan using Excel, and I can identify trends. I can identify opportunities through Excel that I could never do in any other tool. This is the most amazing tool you’ve ever seen. And it really is phenomenal. And, uh, if you don’t know how to use Excel to a high level as [00:50:00] an entrepreneur, I highly recommend you begin to go along and really get into it and, and learn, learn about how to actually use it because there’s just so much you can do with it.

It will help you identify those trends. Anyone wanna come down to? Ryan. Ryan, it’s great to have you on the Complete Entrepreneur, and we’re talking on the topic of riding in the wave. So welcome to the stage, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, not a problem, Ryan. All right, cheers.

Um, so yeah, so I appreciate the topic of conversation and love hearing how you guys delve in and how you look at, look at all, uh, the different trends and things coming up. W the way that I’m, I’m gathering my data right now just from anecdotal evidence just to set the stage clear. This is from my experience, but what I’m experiencing, a wave that’s coming.

Is one that’s been building and that’s the return back to, um, experience economies and in niche [00:51:00] groups, mastermind groups. I’ve been in the game for a long time and I’ve never had so many people reaching out saying, Hey, we’re doing a new mastermind. Hey, we we’re looking for facilitators. Hey, we’re doing a new mastermind.

At the same time, my friends that are in the restaurant and food industries are creating these niche ified restaurants that are catered to specific experiences. Um, in the same way, you know, we have, I’m partners in a, in a shuttling company and in a venue, and so we have different buses that my partner over there on his own, looking at the analytics, we’ve converted a bunch of different buses.

So we have like the Golden Gate Bridge bus that has been retrofitted into a meditation, drumming music, mobile music studio. Um, we have another bu we have a number of different, uh, Uh, prison buses for example. We now have two prison buses that we converted into mobile whiteboarding mastermind studios to recharge rechange, the energy from one of being trapped into one of being free.

So that’s kind of what I’m seeing is this trend towards these really hyper specific [00:52:00] ified, energy specific, if you will, uh, experiences that people can have because I think that’s really what we’re all longing for. And um, and one thing that I will wrap up on that and saying one thing that I’m doing personally myself to leverage this is thanks to you mentioned clubhouse and these audio platforms, you know, the value of my voice has never been higher.

And I’ve been, I’ve narrated a lot of audiobooks. I’ve narrated a lot of e-learning materials. I’ve been in the experiential learning game for over 20 years. Uh, but what I’ve been developing, and I’m curious to see if anybody has any tips or can complain me into some platforms that they trust, but I’ve been working on collecting a lot of materials and doing a lot of legwork to building an AI for my own.

Narration voice. So eventually I can be paid to narrate audiobooks from copy paste and it’s really good stuff and I might have to come in and do some corrections here or there, but I shut down the amount of, uh, nuanced work that I have to do so I can scale myself, scale my income, leave a legacy and an impact for myself, my children, my great-grandchildren, great, great-grandchildren, will be able to [00:53:00] hear my voice.

Um, I’m trying to pair with it in AI to think the way I think, listen to my coaching calls, listen to my presentations, my mastermind facilitations and mirror kind of some of my thinking model and questioning models. So I might even have some rudimentary coaching AI that might be there to be a problem solver for my posterity, uh, when that time comes.

So that’s what I’m doing in my world to identify work with waves based off what I’m seeing my partners are seeing and doing what we can to just continue collaborating at a higher level. And speaking of domains, um, if anybody’s interested in collaborating.com, uh, I’ve had a lot going on and I’m actually interested in potentially selling collaborating.com and.org right now.

So just throw that out there too. But yeah, thanks for having me and uh, I’m complete. Thanks very much that Ryan. Well, some great, great trends there. You’ve identified for your businesses, that’s for sure. So what I wanna do is, in the last few minutes that we’ve got together is I just wanna throw out a whole stack of, um, great trends that I think are there, such as low [00:54:00] code websites.

The fact that, that there’s, um, low code to no code website. So anyone can build a website or emails making a comeback. Uh, right now, um, the, the role of micro influencers in your industry, you can use them to be able to get your messages out or content in multiple formats. Um, so you can disseminate content and give that content away for free.

Then ho uh, and then get people coming back to you to buy your products. The growth in micro community, that’s what, what Ryan was sort of putting his finger on some ways, some of those micro niche, um, niche opportunities, um, or, or specialization of the workforce. Um, the FA way people are getting more and more specialized and less generalized.

And what’s the opportunities in that? The work from what home thing we, we touched on, um, uh, the fact that there’s the social awareness. That [00:55:00] people, um, will buy from companies that have similar values to them. Um, so what’s, what’s that opportunity? Subscription based business models. I will pay $10, um, a month for something, but am I really gonna spend 150 bucks for the year?

Probably, or $120 a year? Probably not. This, the whole Patreon business model, which is underpinning a lot of those YouTubers and things, 3D printing. Oh wow. I, um, uh, I was looking into 3D printing this past week and, um, seeing what some things been done with these, like a few hundred dollars to buy one nowadays and what they can produce is amazing.

That’s like dis completely distributed manufac. How is 3D printing gonna change everything? Uh, e even down to things such as reductions in staff at restaurants as they’re replaced by robots. I went to a, a [00:56:00] restaurant and I, rather than a server delivered my, um, my food, they had a robot delivered my food, and uh, I can just, um, I can order straight from the table with my, my smart device and I have it delivered to me by a, uh, by a robot.

Yeah. See, I see, I see the, I see the smart device, but I don’t see the robot, Michael, I’m sorry. Um, see, that’s exactly the, the robot delivered to me and they, they cut out a whole lot stuff in that process. Okay. Okay. Yeah, you can sit on the end assembly line too. Let’s remove all humans from everything. I mean, look, I’m not in, I’m not going there with you on that one.

I think that the idea, lemme make the order process is there. Yours. We don’t need the totally with that. Okay. Let, let me go along and, and push you on this. I saw the restaurant is a decent sized restaurant. They, they bought one robot. It was a bit of a gimmick in some [00:57:00] ways the thing was interesting cause they know.

Yeah. The thing I found was they then bought two and I believe they just, well, I’ve been away. They bought three and see you probably went there just as robot. That’s thing the restaurant . But like, look. Yeah, you, what problem are you saying when I say it’s a robot? It just, it’s a, it’s a delivery, a delivery device.

Not something walks around. But you, you, you, you look at um, e even the area of robotics and what is happy in robotics, it is phenomenal what is going on. Robotics and is that a wave or is that one of those tsunamis which will crush you Unless you’ve got like a, a billion dollars, please steer clear. Um, it’s, there’s a lot of things happening around the world, um, and many, many different types of waves and stuff like that.

Um, which, which are gonna be phenomenal, um, as they unfold. So you don’t believe so [00:58:00] what’s some of the waves then, Collin? Well, you talk about robots. Okay, let’s talk about robots then. So I got, I bought a lot of robots in my time. I got one in my office who never moves at all. I can’t remember the name of it.

Uh, it was like a $4,000 robot that’s supposed to like, charge your phone and come up to you and be a remote computer. We can’t seem to get a stupid thing working. And then I have another robot in my office that cleans the floors and just changed the pad. And I have that at my cottage. I got, I got fell in love with this iRobot, not the vacuum cleaner.

It’s too live. I fell in love with the little spray like, uh, mopping robot. And it’s amazing. You press the button or you can actually, you can preset everything. So just everything, all you have to do is just change the mopping pad, which for me is a lot better than walking around with the mop and actually doing the work and it will go there.

It was under everything and it does a great job. So we run that, we ran that at the office, we run that at my [00:59:00] cottage. And, uh, that’s the example of solving a problem versus, uh, this sort of kooky robot walking around talking to people and not really doing much. So that’s an example. Yeah, absolutely. There, there’s, there’s lots of examples out there of where technology, um, how can I put it?

Can be a bit of a gimmick. Um, but at the same time that un underpinning a lot of that technology is some quite interesting opportunities. Um, and you, you look at robots and you look at restaurants and everything like that. And the way restaurants are operating is as example. Um, I think it’s. Due for Rev, uh, a revolution.

I look at the changes in education, the fact that the world essentially uses an industrial age education system, and how that needs to be revolutionized. Um, and it’s just waiting to be revolutionized. It’s just sitting [01:00:00] there, and I keep on saying this to a, the teacher friend of mine, I say, look, this edu the education system is gonna be completely transformed.

It’s just, and maybe that’s the first word, metaverse. Maybe that’s the first area. Correct. Right. Maybe, maybe that’s the, maybe that’s the killer app, is that you can actually be in a, uh, in a, in a metaverse environment and learn, you know, I could look at, you know, I, I, I’m a big believer in ar, not vr, but, um, imagine going into Rome today with your smartphone and you hold your phone up to the, to the, uh, coliseum when you’re in, you know, the staging area, and you can see the coliseum like it was 20 years ago.

Can you imagine that? Like, that’s so amazing to me. That would be, that would enhance travel. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life, like to see it through smartphones. I did exactly that. So cool. I did exactly that in avenue in the Papa Palace where you held your [01:01:00] smartphone up and you, you moved it around and it showed what the palace looked like at the time.

The, when the popes were there. Exactly. And then you could go chase the Pokemon man around the, around the, uh, city . I’m just saying. But Pokemon man did teach us something, right? It did teach us that there is something else there. There is this augmented reality and imagine, you know, watching. Okay, my, my biggest one is that imagine watching the, um, landing at Normandy into World War II through your phone.

I went to Normandy and I went there and I watched a cheesy 15 minute video and a pavilion, and it was like pretty, wasn’t it really? I didn’t really feel like I experienced it. Yeah. Yeah. I saw the beach, but. Imagine taking your phone and actually just doing that. Watching the landing. Yeah, that would be so cool.

And I think that’s where we’re going. What? It’s coming. It’s coming. I know you’re gonna wind it up here. It’s coming. And as entrepreneurs and startups, we just gotta think about what can we do. To ride that wave. Right? Yeah. I, I also, [01:02:00] I think I just wanna wrap, sorry, go. No, I just wanna say one last thing too.

Sometimes the wave is actually an offshoot of another wave. Um, and the opportunity is looking at one wave and seeing, you know, what you can spin off from it. So a lot of the advances in many different areas from, um, wearable devices to all these inexpensive now, you know, security cameras and motion detection and cameras that move, and all this technology, a lot of it stemmed from smartphones.

In other words, because the smartphone drove the miniaturization of the camera. All the software improvements to cameras, the, the, the miniaturization of accelerometers and other sensors, we don’t realize how many other devices and things that we’re using now are actually leveraging components of smartphones and, and, um, developments that came out of.

The smartphone world. It’s a lot like when we think of space travel, right? Some of the [01:03:00] advantages of NASA over the years hasn’t necessarily been just landing on the moon and building the space station. It’s been all the other products that evolved from the technology and the research that was done, um, for the space program.

So you might look at a wave and and ask yourself what things are being dragged along by this wave that I might pluck and turn into my own wave? Uh, you raised a really important point there. Um, Jeff and I think on that, we’re gonna be wrapping things up that, but being able to identify trends can, is actually critical for entrepreneurs because there’s nothing worse than paddling When the wave is, is like a mile away and you’re thinking, why are I getting anywhere?

Cause you’re not, right. The wave. Or it’s even worse if you’ve left your paddle in too late and you’re getting crushed by the wave. The challenge is, is to pick the [01:04:00] wave and surf it and go along and, and get that ideal positioning to be able to get onto the wave. That’s the real challenge, and that’s where really I, I see, um, a lot of entrepreneurs that are, are, I call them expert entrepreneurs, they’re able to do that and they repeat entrepreneurs and they’re, they’re constantly building one business after another business and after another business.

Anyway, it’s been a great talk today. It’s been really, really good. I, I’ve, I’ve had an absolute ball. Um, so Collin, what’s being, what’s going on with startup.club and what are , I just have to say Yeah, you’re looking involved. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, if you are not already on that email list, you’re gonna miss out online.

We got two very famous speakers coming on this month. Um, I’m not gonna tell you who they are. , you gotta join that email list. And, um, I also have another gentleman who started a, um, I’ve already interviewed him once, twice, [01:05:00] but he started one of the most famous brands in the world. Um, top 100 brands, uh, company’s, uh, he’s 87 years old and I’m actually going out on the boat with him tomorrow, Michael, uh, for about, uh, for about three hours and having dinner with him.

And, uh, he’s just a phenomenal individual. He’s gonna come on too, but he’ll probably be on November. December’s episodes of the Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed episodes, which are every Friday at two, two o’clock eastern. Um, I just wanna let you know, if you’re not on the email list, like we’re gonna tell you, we’re gonna tell you if someone’s been coming.

Look, we’ve had Mr. Wonderful on, we’ve had Jeffrey Moron, we’ve had Jack Daly on, we had Bernard Armstrong. We’ve had so many great authors on, I got two coming in next two, three weeks. He gotta just join the mailing list. It’s, we don’t spam you, we don’t do, all we do is just tell you he’s coming on. Almost a million members strong.

That’s what startup club’s all about. How do we give back? How do we give back? And, uh, we’re trying to figure that out. So see you, [01:06:00] uh, next. Fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. So next week on the Complete Entrepreneur, we’re looking at building the r and d. Mote Research and development is hard work, but there’s also a way to build a moat around your business that makes it impossible for competitors to tack across.

So we’re gonna be tackling that as an interesting topic, which, um, I think it’s gonna be a fascinating one to get some, some input from different people around what’s r and d really like and, and how it’s helped them in their businesses. But I just wanna also say thank you very, very much to my co moderators for being here.

It’s been wonderful having you on the show as per always, and for Rich and Ryan, thank you for sharing your thoughts on the topic of riding the wave. But you know what, I’d also particularly like to thank all of you in the audience who’ve stuck through the very end on uh, on the Complete Entrepreneur, and I look forward to seeing you next week [01:07:00] at 5:00 PM Eastern Time next Thursday.

I’ll see you then. And it’s Michael Gilmour, and don’t forget to go along and follow any of the speakers you’ve heard today as well in the club. Thanks, lovely. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you.