Question 1

TRANSCRIPT: SE.Club – EP35: What is your X-Factor 11/05/2021

Accepted Answer

Today is going to be a very interesting session. You know, this show we devote every week for an hour. , we bring together serial entrepreneurs and if you're a serial entrepreneur in the audience, we want to hear from you.

 We really want you on stage because we're trying to crack the code here. We're trying to figure out what it is that serial entrepreneurs do over and over and over again. And I believe if we can crack that code, we can help so many other entrepreneurs succeed in starting, scaling, exiting and repeating that process over and over again.

I'm happy to say I actually got a publishing deal with Forbes  advantage and we're moving forward with a book called start scale, exit repeat, uh, today, if you come on stage, you agree to be recorded, but I'm also going to use some of the stuff today for the book and look, the more information that we share as a community, the better we're going to understand the issues.

And the X factor is something that, uh, every company I've done. I'll Paul, I'll talk a little bit about it, but I actually asked Patrick , who's my CEO coach last 20 years, and he's also CEO of rhythm systems, uh, to, uh, describe to us what he thinks the X factor is. And, and it started with Jim Collins and I know Verne Harnish has worked on it as well.

And, uh, Patrick Dean as well, and. So Jeff, if you could keep that up, that would be great. We got him on recording. He reported it just for the show. It's only a few minutes long, and we're going to understand what is that X factor? What is it that makes you unique and different  that can allow you to compete and beat your competitors?

Great. Colin Patrick. Hi, Colin. It's Patrick. You've asked me to join and share something about the X factor today and why it is important. And so let me, let me just do that for you today. You know, the, um, the X factor is something that gives you a 10 X advantage over in your industry and a common misunderstanding is what did you say?

You weren't hearing it? Yeah. If you could re tee it up. Um, I will, uh, actually, while you're reaching that up, we did start to hear it by the way. So, and this is by the way, we've never done this before. Recording is like a radio station, right. We're trying to pull in recorded. And we've never actually done that before.

So

give it one more try. And if it doesn't work, I call him it's Patrick. You've asked me to join and share  something about the X effective today and why it is important. And so let me, let me just do that for you today. You know, the, um, the X factor is something that gives you a 10 X advantage over competitors in your industry and a common misunderstanding is that it is something special about you.

And it's actually not something about you is actually you creating something special to take advantage of an industry bottleneck or a constraint that everyone else in industry has. And by solving this constraint, you might create an X factor for yourself and end up with 10 X productivity or profit over your competition.

Every industry has a bottleneck and most companies just accept this plan around it and in doing so a waste resources around it. However, if you can figure this out, you will then be able to develop something that is truly different with a true competitive advantage. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Uh, let's start with Tesla. Of course, you guys all know  what Tesla is now, right? The car industry is used to having dealers and dealers are a bottleneck to selling cars. That's an additional layer. They have friction in the system and Tesla got rid of dealers. Uh, they got rid of that constraint or that bottleneck.

And you buy directly from Tesla, no dealers, no friction, only lots of anger from dealers who live by this friction and profit from it. And they want to create that friction. So, so Kessler got rid of that. Another example would be Uber. You want a ride? You need a taxi, go get one, you know, in busy cities, you end up needing to queue up for a taxi and the less busy cities or.

You can't even get a taxi because there is no taxi company willing to invest in setting up a taxi service. Uber realized that these drivers and these taxi services, these are the bottlenecks and the drivers, or lack of drivers are the bottleneck. And so they created a way to kill that. Bottleneck. Anyone who wants to be a driver can be a driver and  anyone, and they can provide service to anyone who wants a ride.

And so that, that got rid of that driver, a bottleneck and create a whole new company called Uber, which is of course a company you guys know very well. So let me give you an old world example. All right. Instead of one of these new world examples, let's look at CarMax. If you want to buy a car or you typically want to look at different brands, a lots of people want to look at different brands.

And in the old days, you have to go to different dealerships to look at different brands, which you still do today, by the way, CarMax sells them all. They kill the bottleneck of you having to jump to different dealerships, looking at different. Now comments also make selling your car super easy and quick call it.

And I know that, uh, you won't be happy to hear this, but I recently walked into a COMEX, got their offer and sold my Tesla model X in about 30 minutes. I did not have to buy a car or to, or to trade it for another car. I just wanted to sell my car. So comics solved two different bottlenecks. Uh,  they got, they solved getting a supply of cars, making it really easy for consumers to come in and sell the cars and they solve the second bottleneck of providing you multiple brands of cars in one stop versus having to visit multiple dealers.

Okay. So why do us entrepreneurs, Mr. Sometimes? Well, because we're so excited by our own ideas, we jumped quickly to sell and make some money. It does work for the first few sales, but you don't really have a real company yet to have a real company. You must tell beyond your friends and maybe even beyond your first $100.

As you begin to scale, you realize there's friction and you begin to see this bottlenecks. So as you start working on your business, here are some tips for you. One check out similar businesses and ask yourself, where do you see these bottlenecks, where there's friction, where things slow down. Also, number two, check out what all the companies in this field are doing and ask yourself where there seems to be some illogical things that are happening, that they seem  to have to sell it for, because that's just the way it is, whatever you see.

That's just the way it is. This is usually flow that is happening around a bottleneck and some friction points that you can take advantage of. If you're entering a business area to you have no experience, that's great because you have fresh eyes and you're not already tinted by how it's supposed to work here in this industry.

So my final tip for you is if you're entering a new industry, uh, make a list of all the, how it's supposed to work here and the list of all the difficulties people seem to have. And you just make failure, rabbits somewhere there. All right. Call it. I hope this quick lesson on, on X factors and how you might go about looking for yours is helpful to you.

If you have any questions, send me some questions and I'll be happy to answer them after this, uh, broadcast. And that was Patrick Theon. Uh, he runs, he's a CEO of rhythm systems and, uh, he's been my coach for about  16 years, 17 years in business. And he's worked closely closely with Verne Harnish. Um, you know, a few of the examples come to mind for me are like Domino's 30 minutes are free.

You know, when they first came out with that, none of the other pizza companies believe they could actually deliver that, but they did. Uh, another example I use is national car rental. Now, uh, the bottleneck there was, we hated landing in our airport going and lining up for 30 minutes to get a car. Now you just walk them a lot, take the card.

And, uh, you know, we see these stories over and over again, in my particular case, um, I brought about, I don't know, 10 startups, very successful startups in my life, um, and sold them. And, uh, I think back to one particular one Hostopia Hostopia was a company that provided email and hosting solutions for telecoms, globally companies like,  uh, at and T Vodafone bell, Canada.

So it was really a, it also set the America and a lot of the number of telecoms and south America. And what we found in the industry was that the buyer was a middle manager, who it usually in it, who had to make the decision, whether or not they were going to migrate over to a new platform like ours. But the issue was there were very concerned about losing their job.

Uh, I mean, you can imagine when you move millions of email addresses and hundreds of thousands of websites, how that can be. And we were able to come up with a brand promise of 100% migration guarantee. And what I said a hundred percent, I didn't mean this is some joke. I mean, we would pay fair market value for any registration that was lost during a migration.

And this is something that none of our competitors could do. So what we did is we internally, we completely reorganized our company. We  changed our policies. We stopped listening to the customer's demands and started coming back when they made requests. That could cause my could cause, uh, errors or, or, or lost appliance during a migration, we actually came back and said, look, this is gonna, this is gonna hurt you and it's gonna hurt us.

So we're not going to do it. And because we did that move, we also, um, hired a number of technology, people in the Ukraine. I think. Uh, one time about 400 employees there. And, uh, I think in that department, we had about a hundred employees and we made certain that every single website was manually checked.

And we're talking about when we did the EarthLink migration, for instance, that was 80,000 websites. Uh, these were massive migrations and we were able to pull that off because we, once we made that promise when we created that identified that X-Factor, which, by the way, it took us  six years to do so. So you in your organization, you know, just because you don't have it yet, doesn't mean you won't get it.

It does take some time to figure out what is that X factor that you have in your company that can help you scale. And once we discovered it, it was Domino's, the market came in on us. We won almost every deal against multi-billion dollar companies, like various. And, uh, and other companies that were competing with us, it was just incredible how that was like a switch going off, you know, fighting for deals, fighting for deals, fighting for deals that all of a sudden winning every deal, every deal, 100% migration guarantee.

It was insane. What's your X factor. And if you're a serial entrepreneur right there in the audience we watch on stage. We want you to tell us your X factor and what it is that you did in your organization to create that competitive  advantage and basically kill your company. Before we open it up here to the audience.

Yeah. No, thank you for calling. And, and that's a great example. And I know I've heard this story about Hostopia many times, and that's a great example. Another example that comes to mind of a great X factor that maybe people have forgotten is Zappos. You know, we talk about Zappos a lot from the culture perspective, and everyone always uses them as a culture example, but actually what their real claim to fame was.

And they were one of the first, if not the first. E-commerce or online retailers to do this was basically letting you send back, try something on and then send it back for free if it wasn't the right size. And that was really their X-Factor when Tony Shay, um, got involved first as an investor. And then eventually as the CEO of Zappos, you know, people were telling him that he's crazy to invest in this company.

Nobody's going to buy shoes online. It's too complicated because you have to try  on shoes. You have to know that they fit and that they feel good and their X factor was yes, you can try on the shoes. And if they don't fit, we will, you can send them back to us and it costs you nothing. Try them on order three different sizes, try them on and get the ones that fit and send the rest back to us.

And that was really a powerful X-Factor. That's been copied by other e-commerce companies, Warby Parker, for example, in the eyeglass space. But really Zappos was the first to introduce that.

So that would be one example. Yeah, that's great. Uh, all right. Uh, Jason, you're first up here. We want to hear from you. What's going on. Collin, Rachel Jeffrey. I'm Jason Hill. I'm the founder of a new app called owl. I'm excited to be up on stage because I will definitely have the X factor. And we'll talk about that today.

So before I jump in con how do you want me, you know,  it's my first time in this room. Why don't you tell us about owl first, talk about your echo. What do you think that X factor could be? Um, and maybe we can get some people. Absolutely. So owl is invited on demand. Right? Right. Now we see audio technology.

There's a whole revolution coming right with the clubhouse. When it's done, people love walking in here and automatically going into big rooms, but there's one major problem. After everyone in the audience listens to Collin, Rachel and Jeffery speak, we can't do a one-on-one call with them very easily.

They're getting hammered on their inboxes, through Instagram, LinkedIn, and clubhouse. And then they have to figure out which ones are valuable to actually have a conversation with. So owl is going to fix that exact problem, going to give Colin an avenue to go live on an app once, twice a week at his schedule.

And pretty much people could pick his brain as a featured expert  instantly. So it's very similar at clubhouse and cameo. How to baby think about all the best and brightest experts across the world would be able to go live on an app and anyone could start. And then if they're available to speak, pay a price to chat with them, because time is so valuable.

It's Colin's time was, you know, a thousand dollars an hour, and I'm willing to spend that because I don't have to go through eight different assistance of it. I don't have to go through eight inboxes and I can just get directly to Colin and I can ask him the right questions. Cause he's full 10 different businesses.

It's valuable to me to get instantly connected to them. So we're going to create an Uber-like advice platform and we're in beta right now. And we're launching in the app store the end of December, and then opening up to the public in January. That's kind of the timeline on everything. Well, you know, it's interesting because it's a company that just went public called you to me.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but do you D E M Y and it reminded me a little, it's very different when you do, but similar. Um, what they've done is they create,  uh, they allow creators to create videos and then they cut back 37% of the revenue that. For those creators and they made this marketplace.

And I think that a marketplace, once it establishes itself, that in and of itself is a, is an X factor for having running up and down the stairs here. But, uh, it, it isn't it of itself the next factor. And I wonder in your case, if you need to have that marketplace, you need to have that standard established in the industry.

Um, I'm not certain if anybody else has any thoughts on stage about what Jason can do to create an X factor. So that I think what you're saying, Jason, is that your difference? Is it your instance versus the other services that are out there? Is that correct? Jason? Yeah. If you look at our website, like clarity.com for start-up right there on my syrup.com, they proven that people want to do audio calls  and connect with experts.

The thing that they're missing though, is that you have to book into the future and a lot of people wanted to buy. No different than Uber. Everyone came out and said, we'll now invest in a company like Uber, or you can just call a taxi and there over your home in 10 minutes. Well, we want to look at a mobile device and be able to instantly connect, you know, a driver to pick us up.

So ours is very similar because it's through a mobile app, not through a website and because you can build a following, but also the reviews. I mean, the review element is, is so powerful right now in clubhouse. It's all about follows, but you can't really gauge like all the one-on-one conversations you might have, right.

With our app tracking all the reviews, kind of like Upwork or fiber does. So after calling you give me advice on my app, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to lead a great review for you, and that's so impactful for the next person that calls you in the future. So we do have the entire tracking system and you, the experts left with 80% of the revenue and the platform takes 20%.

So, you know, there's a lot of  different things under the hood. It's not as simple as just, you know, make a phone call and it goes. So Jason, I think that's a really interesting idea. And if I understand it correctly, just like an Uber driver can decide when they want to drive. If I'm one of the experts on Al and I have an hour to kill, I can make myself available.

And then anyone who's looking for advice sees that I'm available. And if they think I could give them the advice, they can choose to chat with me and pay for that privilege. And then in theory, when you hit some scale, if I see if I'm someone who needs advice, I can go on to owl and see who, who are the people who are available right now, and then choose which one I think is going to be most likely to give me the advice I'm looking for.

Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, you nailed it. So that's exactly the point that our mechanism, our X-Factor is that kind of our mechanism when you, the expert goes in on a Sunday afternoon, because you're bored for an hour, you can set yourself available literally in one second and.  So back to the hot tub, relax.

And if a phone call comes in, your phone rings like a cell phone call, so then you pick up the phone and you're getting paid to provide advice. And if you could be driving up, you know, to Disneyworld from south Florida as an example, and just put yourself, you can put yourself out and then a call comes in and then exit club out and then take the call while you're getting paid.

So the beauty is you don't have to be in the app. You just have to set yourself available. And then, you know, of course, go on in and do what you were doing. That's the beauty of the app. I don't know, you couldn't pay me a thousand dollars, but once I get in that, but I'm not answering that phone, but now I totally get it.

I think

for a lot of people need advice. They want it now. And you're pretty much going to be able to deliver it faster than anybody else. And that is your X factor. So that's pretty cool. And what's cool. Is club proven a lot of the model is. That people love audio  technology. They love jumping into an app and speaking through an audio environment.

And what will be really neat is ours will take a lot of things. People do not like the backlog outs where they, they, they do not feel comfortable being on a stage like this, right? There's a hundred plus people in this room, you know, you know, they're not a lot of people love being in front of that. Many people, they would prefer a one-on-one consultation and out does not really offer that one-on-one style.

It's really awkward away. That's I want to try to connect one-on-one through this app. Uh, and a lot of the featured experts are not willing to go one-on-one with a lot of people that do wave at them. So our technology can run parallel to clubhouse. And of course, a lot of these experts monetize their time, especially your podcast as well, where you have featured experts on your show, and then people could actually talk more into detail with that expert you had on your podcast on a one-on-one call to pick the brains further.

No, I think it makes total sense where you're going with  it. Actually, I'm surprised on this app, how much people spend and with no chart charging at all and how much they communicate back and forth. I've learned and met so many people on clubhouse, but I think what yours though, is it takes it to another level.

It takes it to that point. Um, yeah, you really need to solve a deep problem. And I would rather pay somebody two or $300 an hour to really get into deep with them without, you know, but sometimes it'd be a little bit awkward if you're trying to do that and you're not getting, you know, they're not getting paid anything.

Um, I think it's a great concept and I wish you the best we do have to move on with it, but it's a great thing. No, I was just going to say, to keep moving along though, I was just going to ask Jason, if you had to just narrow down your X-Factor into one thing, one sentence, what would your X factor be for Al  getting advice at a moment's notice?

That would be my one sentence. All right. Well thank you for sharing that. I look forward to checking out Al sounds like a great concept. Well, let's go on Michelle. Welcome. Did you have an X factor you wanted to mention?

Um, I think I'm going to wait to hear what the other folks say, and then I would love to chime in. Okay, great. And the same with Olivia. If you have something flashy, Mike, otherwise we'll go to Hitesh. I hope I pronounce your name correctly. Welcome. What's your X-Factor.

Uh, it's been nice listening to everybody. Talk to Mr. Colin and Mr. Jeffrey and Michelle to be, uh, in the forum with all of you. So my X factor, basically, if you're an entrepreneur, my X factor, which I recommend to my students on other forums in India basically  is your doctorate. So your doctorate is nothing but the documents you have written down at the time of starting the company.

This would be vision statement. This could be procedures or employees, or this could be goals for the employee. So there's doctor doctorates, which manually and written down for any company to succeed. If you have the right division documents and the right procedures in place for the employees and out the right goals for them, then that's, you're expected to succeed.

So you need to write these down, just like the memorandum of freedom, which has been great. You need to make sure you have these documents and the employees and all the, all the founders and pioneers, and that creates the change and the success of the organization. And if you ask me what people's skill, which is the extractor, I would say that's relationship.

If your relationships are good with your customer and employees and among the, among  the sponsors, then, then you're on the bottom. So these are my, my, my, my, uh, uh, my, my, uh, which are shadowing different forums. Thank you for having me. Uh, Mr. Jeffrey, thank you so much. Have a lovely day.

So I think that the, um, what you're describing are a lot of that and totally agree with you. I think we want to go one step. Because an X factor is an accelerant. It's something that you have that solves an industry bottleneck that no one else has. It's something you can do and engineer your organization, whether it's migrating websites and email addresses, which was that suppose Topia, whether it's delivering pizzas in 30 minutes or free at Domino's or eliminating the wait time for business  travelers with national car rental, that's where we're going with this conversation.

So I, I, I agree with you that you need those best practices, but I think we're trying to go one step further and say your company needs even more than that. You described your company, everything you described, but you also need a little bit more and that's that X factor. Um, Yeah, I think, um, it's an, it's an important, best practice and it's internally focused, I think.

Uh, and it's, and not diminishing its value. It's, it's really important. But I think as Colin said, what we're trying to kind of focus on today, it's really more of an external X-Factor it's, what's the thing that the marketplace is going to perceive, uh, about you. That's going to set you apart and hopefully ahead of any, excuse me, anyone else in your space.

So when you were doing Colin, the Hostopia thing, you know, promising guaranteeing that a migration was the X factor cause  no other company in your space was offering that that really made you stand out. So we're looking for those kinds of X factors, but I think everything you said attaches is extremely valuable and important for a startup to have, uh, as well.

Um, Emmy.

Yeah. And, you know, brought Domino's 30 minutes of free, but, um, believe it or not, my family business was pizza making. I was pizza maker when I was in my teens. And, uh, when they came out with a company up in Canada called pizza pizza up in Toronto and they did something similar and we literally said, oh, they're going to lose so much money.

They're idiots. The quality's going to collapse, blah, blah, blah. But then they, they became the largest pizza company in Toronto. And I know Domino's in the United States. So when you get that X factor, it can propel you to huge growth, huge scale, and you could  literally win a market place, but they're the X factors.

The ones that win are ones that people, the competitors will say, oh, that's impossible. Uh, customers say, well, that's so amazing. I can't believe I can get food in 30 minutes now don't get me wrong. I'm not a Domino's pizza or pizza pizza person. I actually will wait the extra 15 minutes to get something nicer.

But, uh, you know, maybe when you're young and whatever, um, you know, 30 minutes or free is, or is, is the way to go. But so that's, that's what we're talking about. Thanks attach. Uh, Olivia, you wanted to jump in,

sorry. We didn't want to interrupt. I want to share maybe my X factor. Um, I'm, uh, I'm the owner of a really tiny design studio. And the one thing I actually realized now that is, um, what sets me apart is that I am, I have dual citizenship. I am a hundred percent Latin  and a hundred percent American at the same time.

So the clients I have are basically clients that need someone. Like both cultures and is able to connect both cultures, um, and not just like translate into one language or the other, but interpret it and understand both sides and how will people receive the information or whatever we're working on. So for me, that would be my X factor.

I like that you're using your dual citizenship. I am dual citizen to Canadian us, but I have a friend who, um, 99% of his business out of Russia and he's an American citizen. And it's interesting how he uses that angle to connect dots between countries and make those connections where others who don't have those connections, it's much harder for them to, to get into that in some ways it is very defensible.

All right, sounds great. Uh, we'll move on  to, I'm going to try here. Javion JVs. We skipped.

I'm sorry, a meat, and then we'll jump to jive in. All right guys, I called in hydrography higher share. Uh, uh, and the, my expectation is the, is a company which I'm doing, uh, this is my second company and it is called the X future. So the expectation is in the name, it says, and then we say the expenditure via saying that we are going into the world of unknown.

And, uh, how do you nearly make it possible for the corporate and specialty B2B enterprise corporate to find the best in class tech solutions around the globe? So the problem, what we're trying to say is that, can we be the post solution? And at the same time, be the tender where you are only matching the relevant startups with the  right use cases in the call.

So, what we've done is we have optimized a platform for B2B enterprise and especially in CPG retail and industry 4.0. And, uh, with some of the corporates, like it'd be in both, uh, 19 now we've just really got Allbirds Diego, you need to work. What we've doing is we are reducing the sales cycle for the startups from three days.

You know, it be the three months to six months to, uh, to kind of less than two weeks now in terms of going to, so my expected before I would say is the ability to kind of allow, uh, corporates to reach out to the relevant startups only when they really need, uh, the use cases in to solve.

Well, that's a very, um, interesting admit the, the business is interesting and I think it's interesting, you brought up a point of by putting  X in your name, you know, we should, we should have you come on to the name game one Wednesday night and we can evaluate it there. But it is interesting because it does highlight how you said your X-Factor was in your name, because it does make people think in a certain direction when X is used like that, of course you have space X and many other companies that have taken advantage of, of sort of giving that futuristic, um, you know, bringing on the unknown edge to their name by including X.

So, um, I like that you shared both your X factor and your X name. In fact, Jeff BB had, uh, we had an objection from the ex, uh, the Google. Uh, in using what you're using. And then we had all the, we were kind of early and we had a code signing agreement with them now that we can use the XQ tour as the main, because X X is an alphabet, cannot be telling them Barlow is able to do it.

So basically, uh, it's interesting that not  many, not many companies, including the Google X is looking into that tech vetting. You know, you really don't know what is the future and how do you constantly keep evolving around and keep looking at new stuff that is coming around the globe. Yeah. And of course, um, X in this context is much better than X in the context of ex-wives and X partners and X relationships.

So, um, I like this X much better and the name just sounds so cool. Great. Well, thank you, emit, um, and was calling you wanted to go to, I hope we're pronouncing the J. Have you owned or Javi own tell us, which is correct. Hello everyone. My name is JV on Saunders. Uh, I'm the founder of earth. All trends. Uh, we are an aerospace manufacturing company with a few ties and branded entertainment.

As we have a branded entertainment media company as well, we're known for our  proliferating contribution to the film industry and also creating content and content strategy for various brands. And, uh, that ultimately provide value to our consumers that we work with. Uh, earth ultra act, uh, is going to be expanding into oceanic exploration, interstellar travel, and we hope that in the near future, we have the ability to expand into the north Atlantic ocean and the south Pacific ocean on exploration expedition.

That will be funded completely by earth, ultra X as experiences that consumers will be able to go on in the near future.

So thank you, Javi on. So that's another way of calling by, by calling this the X factor show. You're attracting companies who are using X in their names. That's two in a row, which is pretty interesting. And in this case, JV on you're  using X, um, and it's somewhat literal, um, abbreviation for exploration, but what would you say is your company's X-Factor

just to clarify the correct pronunciation is Jadeveon JV on Sanders. You're welcome. And I would definitely say that our X-Factor as a company earth, ultra X is a visionary company. Uh, as we are looking to explore the ocean and a never before seen way, there are no companies at the moment. Yes. There are companies developing technologies that will enable.

Uh, human access to, uh, various parts of the great deep, but earth ultra X will be the first company and American and the American history to open up consumer experiences to not  only oceanic exploration, but also interstellar travel as life will be multiplanetary in the near future. Thanks to the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with their companies, blue origin and space X.

Well, I think what you said never been seen before. So if you could explore the oceans and you've got something that allows people to explore the oceans that they have not been able to do before, because you've got something unique and different, that is the X factor and you win that game.

Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing that we look forward to, um, going on one of your explorations, hopefully in the, not too distant future. So I might stick with the OSHA. Jeff. I don't think I'm propelled into space. I don't know a cap bill, bill Shatner was able to do it at 90. I'm sure you could do it calling.

You can make  it. You can make Samoa. Welcome. What is your X-Factor? Hello everyone. Thank you for having me. Um, so I would say that my X factor is playful men, so, um, I'm, uh, I'm. I specialize in acceleration for, um, an acceleration consulting for startups and innovative businesses. And what I've noticed is that I have a very, um, Curious open playful nature.

Just, I've never lost that. Whereas most people that when they grow up, like we do, and a lot of startup founders and business owners, especially when they're focused on scaling, um, hold on to a lot of stress and a lot of tension when they're trying to look for solutions to their problems and trying to find ways to grow more effectively.

And because of my approach and my, the premise that I come from, where I'm very, just like, you know, like there's  no, there's no pressure. There's no stress. Like, um, I'm able to see things in a different light and a different perspective. And what I've noticed with my clients is that I often inspire them to also let go of control and all these other things that are actually limiting their own creativity and their own, um, innovation.

And so the happening is not only do they, they come from a more playful place within themselves. They're actually able to access. A higher level of innovation, which allows them to grow a lot more quickly.

I mean, like, you're amazing. Like we, we, we have to get you on some of our panels here, uh, on some of these shows that start-up club you're amazing and your insight is very good. Um, no, I mean, so what was the question? Job playfulness? No, I was asking, yeah. What did you think of playfulness as an X-Factor  look?

One of the, one of the defining ingredients to an X-Factor is that the competitor doesn't have it. So can, does your competitor to have that and I'd like to understand that a little bit more of what you think your expectation is or could be. Yeah. So, um, I networked with a lot of different consultants and, um, some of them I really respect too.

And what I've noticed is that. Level of just openness and playfulness and not just that playful perspective is not something that my I, from what I've seen, it's not something that my competitors have had. And in the five years that I've been doing this with my own clients who have worked with other consultants and whatnot, they've also said the same thing that nobody's ever approached things in the way that I do from this perspective of dislike and from being intentionally playful and curious and innovative in those ways  for the compliments, I would love to be on any panels.

And you got to come back to this show every week, every Friday. Um, but we do, we do a number of shows like, um, every, uh, Thursday at five o'clock Eastern, we do the complete entrepreneur. We focus more on the entrepreneur themselves versus their business and the emotional states that that entrepreneur is in.

So, I mean, I think it'd be great for you to keep, keep coming on stage. It's great. I don't know where you've been all this. Okay, but I followed you and your amazing person. And, uh, and I, and I think you said it right, your competitors don't have it. Your competitors don't have that approach to the marketplace.

So you're, you're taking a different approach. And, and sometimes with the X factor to what we need to do is we need to actually just try it out. You know, we need to experiment, we need to test. We need to see if that is a differentiator enough to move the dial in a big way, uh, for our company. Um, again, with those Topia, it took us five years to really get to our  X factor.

We're almost public by the time we figured out our X factor. And that's just amazing in my, my, my thinking of it. It's just thought when I talk about this, um, a fourth sticky and a four sticky note, Jason knows the book. There's a four sticky note business plan, but people, money stories, systems, and each, you know, each sticky has, you know, your, your, your business plan, uh, each component of the business plan.

Um, the X-Factor of all of them, the X factor is the hardest to achieve. But once again, it's like magic. It's like when you get that secret sauce, you know, w what was the X back from McDonald's? Was it, was it, I think their, their X factor was just, everything was consistent there. One of the first restaurants in the world that ever.

That's no that's burger king, Michelle, having your ways, burger king. No, I'm just thinking I'm going back now. I'm going back to the books I write here, but actually, actually you guys  calling you and Michelle just gave the perfect example because you said McDonald's, their X-Factor was, everything was the same, which is true.

And Michelle, you hit the nail on the head because McDonald's X factor was everything is the same. What did burger king do to compete? They took the opposite approach and said, it's not the same. You have it your way at burger king, if you want the same old thing, every way I go to McDonald's, if you want it your way come to burger king.

So that was a great example. You guys both. And Jessica Michelle know about this, but we travel all over the world. We moved to China 10 times with thought, and I would like, please, can we go to a McDonald's I don't go to McDonald's in the United States. I'm sorry. It's just way too, whatever. But when you are traveling in those foreign countries, once in a while, you're like, oh please, can we go to, McDonald's get a big Mac.

Oh gosh. So I want, wanna like pivot a little bit, if I can call on and check,  you know, I, I hear everybody talking about their X factor and I love this conversation because to me it's one of the hardest thing to do. You can just rack your brain saying night, not sleep and you still don't think of it. So for me personally, one of the methodologies and books that I love, it's called blue ocean.

And it's called blue ocean and Jeff, actually him and I saw the authors actually speak. It was amazing at Patrick CNN's conference. The blue ocean helps you find your X factor. So basically you're not in the red ocean where all the sharks are eating you in it's bloody frickin red. So you literally, they have a methodology where you chart things out.

What are the attributes were the most compelling attributes of your competitors and how do you break away  from that to find your X-Factor? And one of the very cool, um, case studies they gave, I think it was the Austrian Philharmonic. They were just dying. They were going bankrupt. Everybody knows. Austria is very famous for their classical music.

So what they did working with this theme was they really started to understand. That they needed to make it more like a family night out like funding under the sun and not all pretentious and dress up. And our revenue went like through the ceiling calling also have the same experience with his migration.

Like what was that massive pain point? What was the thing to differentiate that people would just love you for? So, you know, for anyone in the audience that's thinking about, oh my gosh, how am I going to figure this out there? You know, there are some good resources out there and, you know, really exploring and kind of mapping out the marketplace and primary  players is one of those methodologies that I think is very helpful.

Thank you. Thanks Michelle. That's a great example. And yes, she was a great speaker. I remember that presentation very well. Um, we've got about 16 minutes left. We try to do serial entrepreneur hour in about. Um, so we have two people on stage ghost writer. What is your X-Factor,

uh, ghost rider? Don't ghost us. If you want to tell us about your X-Factor unmute yourself. There we go. Okay. Sorry. All right. We're not, we're not hearing you, so let's go on to Susan, Susan. Welcome

Susan. Hi everybody. Thank you for inviting me. I think Michelle is absolutely right in terms of the biggest challenge  for entrepreneurs and small businesses is to discover what their factory is. Ultimately the most important thing they have to do. I am an entrepreneur, but I also am a volunteer at score, which is under the small business administration.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses growth through free mentoring. And what's so exciting about score is it's absolutely free. You can visit with as many mentors as you want as many times as you want, and we all have different expertise. So I think what I discovered in my background is also I'm the PBS documentary producers with all about storytelling.

So when I have a client and they meet with me, basically they have all the answers, but they need me to ask them the questions and something that is just typical to them, or they don't think is special. I draw that out of them. So it's by letting them start to tell me their story, that we draw these X factor elements out of there, out of their history.

And I think that it's also important that for small  businesses and entrepreneurs, that they have to know that it's not about being on trend only. It's about thinking how to be ahead of the curve. And that's really important. Thank you, Susan. That's awesome again. Um, that's amazing, uh, understanding the story and what's unique and what's different about who we are and could not lead to an X factor.

Cause there's an X factor, really all of the being unique and different than your competitors. And again, even, even if you're not better, you're unique and different. And that's what gives you an advantage over those competitors in a certain market. Maybe it's in that blue ocean as a smaller ocean, but yet you can dominate that ocean.

So I liked the way you phrase that. Actually thank you. That's focused on solving a problem, but unique in the way you solve it. 13 years ago, I came up with an idea after reading an article in the New York times that more  women than ever are going to their cosmetic surgeons with photos of Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez, and they wanted the confrontation surgery.

So I thought of a better way. And we created booty pop the panties that make your booty pop. It was all done through storytelling and we got pressed. We were everywhere on every single show and today's show. Good morning, America, the doctors, Wendy Williams, the front page of the wall street journal, absolutely everywhere.

And the secret was not trying to sell something, but telling us a story that was unique, solving a problem, and really being ahead of the curve, giving people a solution that they didn't know up and making, wearing padded underwear frenzy. Well, if you can sell it, it's amazing the way you say it. Like booty pop got that bad underwear.

Okay. My 90 years old, I don't know. I'm just like the way you're right. It's all about the way you told the story. It's it's descriptive w why women were going to the gym now to, you know, endless squat to get a booty, why they were having plastic  surgery to look like the Kim Kardashians and the Kylie Jenner.

They want it to look like this and solve the problem that was not permanent, not risky and not. That's great. Uh, very, very, very, very clever idea. Um, and like you said, much less risky than some of the other solutions. Uh, some women have pursued, um, with mixed results, if I do say so myself, thank you for sharing that, Susan.

Um, that's definitely a very cool story and a very cool X-Factor, um, juice. Uh, welcome. What's your X-Factor

um, yeah, we hear you. Awesome. Okay. Um, yeah, so I am the founder of a company called little Liberty LLC. And what really separates us from our competition is our X factor is that we are a team of just the Bostonian activists.  We have decided to take the world of social impact and mix that with financial services.

Um, we're nonprofits often find themselves. Unable to provide the services that can really financially help many others in the community. We kind of help bridge that gap between their social impact and other financial institutions, banks, and accounting firms, um, where you can think of things like, uh, I would say, yeah, there's our X factor is our dedication to social impact on our community, um, and solving financial equity with wherever we see it, um, through the world of business.

Uh, and that, that usually is what I would say. What separates us from others in our industry. Colin, what do you think of that focus on, on social? Good as an X-Factor. I think it's a little open, um, I think the MP direct, you know, it's our, till we are here. Right. So I'm trying to think about like, can you, can you narrow  it down a little bit more?

So. You have this social good that you can live or that no one else can. And that's why they would use you. I mean, look, we've seen it happen with, um, was it Allbirds the one that went public this week as well, who they, you know, I think they gave him a pair of shoes away and what not. So, so I think there is something to using social good as an X factor.

I actually think drawn from it. I think this the way look I'm 51 years old and the millennials today, they throw a lot more socially aware and socially conscious than the older generation. And I think that, you know, it can actually deliver an X factor, but can you narrow it down a bit? Definitely, um, our main goal, uh, we'll fill out the main problem right now.

It hasn't been in Boston for the median net worth of black families. You see that at about $8 and for our white counterparts, we see that about 2200 47,500, a difference of about 31,000 times. Um, and it gets even worse when we look at credit scores, um,  in Boston's areas with the highest concentration of black families, we see credit scores, lower, lower, lower than the 660 range.

Um, so what we do essentially is we take the funding we receive from clients and we put on subject matter seminars for the community to teach people who were in debt 15 years old, how to get out of it now as adults, um, we teach people impacted by financial literacy in our community by providing that directly to the community I know charged with receiving it.

And we also are considering starting up a mentorship program, but as far as social impact, we, again, our company was very, very dedicated. So our. Um, and again, we do have the, we have, we have the pretty big goal of seeing, uh, the median net worth of black families in Boston race to at least about 20,000 by the year 2030, the credit score is averaging about 700 and above by 2030 as well.

Um, can I say something? Of course. Um,  I think, uh, often what happens is we mistake our, what our mission and, um, our goals are along with the impact that we're making with what our X factor is. And I think what Colin was trying to say is that there's a difference between that because any company can say they have the same goals that you do.

And here's how they're trying to like, change that. Whereas either your approach or your perspective, or the way you do things is usually what's going to differentiate you from anyone else. That's doing the same thing that. Yeah, I think that was very well said. Um, somehow, and I think like, for example, in your space, uh, juice and X factor might be that, you know, because of this disparity, uh, in credit scores, in the community, we've set up a system where we make loans that are not based on the credit score, but that are based on other factors that are more equitable.

You know, something like that would be more of an  X-Factor than just the social. Good. I think when Colin talked about being more specific, it was kind of something along those lines. Does that make any sense? Ah, right now, yeah. If you can come up with that alternate credit for credit score, then you got something, you got something that you could tell the lenders that no one else.

That is the next site. That's the epitome of an X factor right there. I like the way we both step, sorry for making you the Guinea pig in the audience there, but I love, I love your idea. I don't know how far along it is. I've actually worked at companies that supply massive data and did those kinds of battle analytics collaborating with fair Isaac, who is the first one to do the credit scores.

So I, I personally, I would love to see somebody come up with some kind of algorithm that's different than just, you  know, what is your rate? You have a recurring monthly income because there's so many other factors that go into what is a credit worthy person. It's insane to me, that traditional model. It doesn't even really look at oddly enough, here, your actual wealth at some point, it's just how much money.

So I think that would be a phenomenal, um, thing that it's actually good for society, if it can be done in a way that mitigates risk for the other side.

Great. Well, uh, that's uh, that would be a great X-Factor and, um, really interesting discussion where we're coming up close to the top of the hour. So Colin and Michelle, I want to make sure that there's time for you to wrap this up. Colin and Michelle tell us what's happening over@startupclubandourwebsiteatstartup.club, but Colin.

So did we, did we touch enough X factors or we need to do this again? Another Jessie, you came on stage and then 

I'm trying to be very short on it. It's very interesting conversation. So, um, I am part owner of a courier. Based out of Omaha, Nebraska. Um, we went from nothing to a little over $4 million in about four years in revenue. Um, the X-Factor that we bring to the table is really, um, a pay for performance model, um, and a lot of your careers, uh, when you're in our space, they do a daily rate.

And when we're working with primarily 10 99 employees, the idea is that, um, if I'm a 10 99 and I'm on a daily rate, I'm actually motivated to start my car because that car is an expense. So I'm working through this idea of how can we keep people motivated to keep their vehicles moving? Um, very, very simple.

We just paid by the mile and pay by the stop does not sound revolutionary at all. Um, it's not a fantastic concept that no one has ever come up with,  but it is one that nobody in our sector executes or executes well, so that is our extra. And I, and I like what you said there, it doesn't have to be revolutionary.

It could be something that's very small and different, but it gives you just enough advantage for you to win in the marketplace. Yeah. And it's worked very well for us. We have competitors, like I said, we've been around for four years. We have competitors that come into our space and they may augment, um, some of the services that we provide, but they don't stick long because in the longterm, our drivers perform better and are more efficient as a whole because they're moving and not sitting around.

So they meet the need of the customer.

That's a great, um, X-Factor Jessie and it's interesting because a lot of the X factors we've heard and talked about are directly related to a business model, but that doesn't always have to be the  case. Does it? Yeah.

No again, it's, it's, what's that secret sauce? Really? No. You know, what, what is it that, um, that secret formula that you have that nobody else can replicate? What it could be. It could be an individual, it could be expertise. Um, we've talked a lot about it. Move on to different things here about people who have dual citizens who can have something advantage over someone else and or another companies, because they understand how to connect markets better than other people.

It is. What do you have? That's unique and different than your competitors do not have. And is there a bottle in your industry and the bottleneck in the industry for the telecoms of those Topia was the fear, fear of actually migrating websites and email and having them go down and losing her job. And we saw that bottom for our, our customers and, uh, the company did IQ and all that.

And we've  seen that happen over and over again in history where companies just continue to grow and expand. Once you connect that form. And it's like, it's like, it's like the sound of a bat when you hit that bat. And the ball goes out of the park and you've got the home run. You'll know it once you hit it.

And it will happen so fast. I really enjoyed today's session. There are around 50 or so, or a hundred actual episodes around, uh, like 30 or 40 of these episodes of the serial entrepreneur hour on www.startup.club for next week. We are going to, so talk about the entrepreneur. And I was reading an article in the wall street journal this week about a study that had comments that said that entrepreneurs who raise money, who are confident and humble.

I have are twice as likely to raise money than entrepreneurs who are not working. You know, those offers that  typical ones that are arrogant and they know all their stuff, but they, they don't demonstrate the ability to a VC or to an investor that they can listen to that investor. They fail at raising money.

So I thought that would be an interesting topic. So we're not going to talk about types of funding next Friday at two o'clock, we're going to talk about what does it take for an entrepreneur to raise money for their company? And we want serial operators onstage. I've got like 20 texts in the left. One minute, sorry for the interruptions, but what does it take for an entrepreneur to raise money?

You know, what personality, what kind of presentation should they make? And we want serial entrepreneurs to come on stage next week and share that, everyone here, you know, definitely Samoa and Susan and. And everyone else on stage. Jesse was great. He listened to you as well. We want you to come on stage next week and share that with us because together as a community, we can really thrive and we're proving it  with this show.

Thank you for listening to the serial entrepreneur. I'm Colin C Campbell, Jeffrey Sass, and Michele Van Tilborg are the hosts and we shall see you next week.

Question 2

TRANSCRIPT: The Name Game EP17 (11-4-21)

Accepted Answer

Hey everybody. Welcome to the name game, and it is Wednesday night, six o'clock Eastern. Hi, Rachel. Hey Paige, how are you? Good. Wasn't sure if I should have started. So thanks for starting it. And I got it from here. Alrighty. Thanks everybody. Welcome to the name game. And we do this show once a week and start-up club.

And it was a, the name game was actually invented by Jeff sass, as he was traveling the world, talking to people about how to name their startup and their company. And one of the things he found was people are sometimes having to reach so far down  into the unspell of. Unpronounceable unremembered trouble names that sometimes there was options for your company where you could get a good domain name, I taking irregular regular name.

And so that was kind of the name game. And in startup club, we've changed it to be where you share with us the name of your startup or your business or your product even, and the domain name that you're using. And the reason that's important is. The internet has really taken away a lot of the old marketing and distribution channels.

And many times you're just sending people to your website and how the first impression that that website gives the ease of remembrance of that website. The ease of using your email and everyday correspondence, um, can be important in the success of your business. So we try to just take a look and contribute.

Kind of  a disinterested third party. You know, you may share the name of your company with people that you know, or inside your company. And they're going to, they're going to obviously want to, you know, affirm that you made a good choice and then you may share it with other people that you, you know, you may not know.

So we try to come at it from people that have looked and evaluated thousands of companies and their brands. And maybe just give you some insights, uh, some directions you may. So that's the name game. And in a second here, I'm going to invite people up to be a speaker. And if you're a speaker, then you can tell us the name of your company and your domain name, and then just hold off right there for now.

And then what we're going to do is, uh, whether it's Jeff or Sharon and myself, we're going to talk about what we think our perception is of what your company is or what your company does. And we hope that that gives you some insight  into what your name and your domain name are currently portraying. And then we'll give you a chance.

So don't feel like if you don't say what you do at the beginning, that you're out of luck, we'll give you a chance to say this is what our company does. And I think you have a chance then to share what your company does. Uh, you know, who knows, who might be listening, you might be able to develop some valuable networks with partners or.

Um, other people that are listening in the room. And I think that we've, we've heard over the past, uh, uh, six months, just some wonderful ideas and ideas that have made me think of different ideas. So hopefully you guys get as much out of the, the name game as I do. Um, and we'll start here in a second. I want to wait for Sharon to join.

And maybe I just can't add speakers. So hold on Jeff. This normally at the helm and he's got this down to a science,  so I'm kind of stalling right now. Let's see, I'm gonna invite a couple of people up so we can start filling the queue. Now you will see a red dot up at the top, and that means that we're recording.

So we are recording the name game and this'll be available on start-up dot club. And you can listen to past episodes of the name game to get different branding stories that have been told in those episodes. And I think that, um, I think that in that regard you could, it's kind of like taking a whole semester's worth of a branding masterclass, um, on one website, it startup.club.

And not only can you hear the recordings of, of the name game, but the other shows that have been on a startup club and you know, it really is a chance to kind of get a, a pretty good education instead of bins watching the latest accident, adventure or drunk. You can  binge listen to programs that will help you with your start-up.

Um, so I'll call everybody up. Hey, Sharon, I see you there. Sorry, I didn't invite you right away. Welcome to the name game. How have you been I'm substituting for Jeff here. Um, what's going on? Hi, Sharon. Hey Paige. Good to see you again. Um, I know Jeffrey's going to try to join us later, perhaps, so I'm happy to help you run.

The room and get people, um, in the spirit of the naming game that we do. And just to remind people that, you know, your brand is so strong. Only if you associate a strong name with it. So, um, people oftentimes will throw out a name and think, oh, this is easily recognizable, but, um, oftentimes there's a disconnect and it's really important to make sure that.

Your brand is recognizable from  not only like a product standpoint, but from a name standpoint. And the story that you tell with your brand, um, you know, really has to like play through on every aspect of it, whether that's the name, whether that's the domain, whether that's the tagline and they all have to be cohesive and they all have to be very, um, you know, intertwined with each other.

And if they're not, that's where we can get the disconnect and that's where we can lose customers. And then we can lose opportunity. Well, thanks, Sharon. I certainly appreciate that. Um, a metaphor that I think we've probably used in the past would be if you opened up a storefront of a boutique or a store in your local area and everything looked great about your company and your interior.

Where your sign goes, you're just kind of plastered something you got to Kinko's, you know, with some scotch tape or something, you know, it all plays into it. So I liked your comment about how everything plays in, you know, it is related to everything else. Well, last time I was  the host, we only. Didn't have enough people to fill up the show.

So I just want to encourage you if you're here listening to the name game, this is a time when you can share the name of your company and your domain name. And I just wanna encourage you. I think Shea, I think Sharon, we're pretty nice. I mean, we just try to tell you what an outside person might think and hopefully it's been helpful.

So hopefully we haven't dissuaded anybody, uh, from coming up.

There you go. So, um, let me check and see how we're doing. We've got a great audience tonight. Uh, thank you for joining us for the name game, and let's talk to Ari and hopefully I've said that correctly and welcome to the name game. What is the name of your company? And then what is your domain? Hey guys, thank you so much for even having me up on the stage.

I really appreciate what you guys are doing for all of your listeners. It's, it's an amazing resource that  we're all, you know, getting a chance at. So I appreciate it again. Um, so the name was, uh, proof prints, but as I've learned more about NFTs, I think, um, my project belongs to. As an NFT, more so than prince.

And so I just want to drop prints from my name. So it's proof prints, but it's going to be clothing that translates into NFTs as well. So all we can't give us any hints though. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, you are gonna get a chance to share it with that's. Okay. So before you, before you went the other direction, You were proof prints.com.

So we may just talk about that and then we can talk a little more about what direction you wanted to go in. The proof prince is on is not a bit like, well, it was available, but I don't like prints and I don't own it because I wasn't quite sure about it. The name. And this is early on in my  project. So, um, but I know proof I need in the name.

Uh, but it's but anyway, go ahead. Sorry. All right. So Sharon, why don't you share, I'll share what I think about proof prints, even though we know she didn't go with it, but maybe we'll see if that can help her and we'll do it with an eye toward what she might want to get. So proof prints, if you would have shared that with me, it's funny because when I don't know what to guess, I usually have a.

We'll I span a virtual wheel and I either guess cannabis or NFT. So I might have got this one. Right. But I'm proof prints. I would've said it was probably because I have a background collecting baseball cards and the idea of a proof, meaning a one-on-one or the, the artist rendering that was used to make multiple.

You know, copies of something. I think I probably would've gone in that direction with print proofs. So maybe I would have said one-on-one, but I probably just would've said limited  edition prints, print proofs.com with a little alliteration of the two piece. And I think I would have liked it. Print proofs.com.

How about you? Um, I think if you went in that direction, so as we're, as we're dealing in hypotheticals, I probably would have gone with prince being clothing, like, um, you know, Jakarta or checkers or polka dots being a print. And so I would have gone with a clothing print, um, and thought that I was curious as to whether proof was a, an accurate.

For something else or to stand for something else. So that's the direction that I would have gone in. All right, Ari. Now you can tell us that you're going in a different direction and how did we do for one? And then go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm so sorry. No, and then let us know what direction you're in and maybe we can help you in that.

Yeah, so you're actually both,  right. Um, it started as a clothing line only. Um, but I recognize how impactful CRE you know, turning this project, in addition to the clothing, be an NFT that they, you know, any purchasers received the clothing. So this is a huge undertaking, but I do think I have a brilliant idea.

Um, and so I know proof I have to have in the name. Um, and if you take a look at my profile here on clubhouse, you can see what I'm kind of doing with it. Um, it's P R O F, but the O O is actually like the percent sign. So that'll be like the, the, the image of our brand, like, uh, like the icon of it. Um, but.

Again, I don't like prints now because of the NFT aspect of it. I think it's more like art now. So like  proof art, but anything that I've come up with, it has already been taken and costs a lot of money. Um, I also, my last name is gold and that's going to be part of like the, you know, the whole artist name as the artist.

Um, so. You know, the artists to be listed as gold. So I could put gold into the name somehow, but everywhere that I kinda put it, I'm not confident enough in the name. So those are kind of just some things to work with. And if you guys have any ideas, you know, moving forward, I appreciate it. So I'm actually curious, Ari.

What, why you keep going back to proof has to be in the name. Can you tell us a little bit that. Um, exactly what Paige was saying about how it's limited edition. Um, that's a vital aspect. Um, and in reality, my project is all in the marketing. Um, cause you know, everybody's done limited  edition clothing, but the marketing is what's important.

And of course I can't, I don't want to explain too much about that part of it, but, um, I just, I have to have proof in the name.

Gotcha. So, um, one I followed you and, uh, I may escalate, I've got an NFT project that I need to have someone do some custom printing for. So w I'll talk to you about that later, but I think that I will say the word proof as much as I know what it means. It may not carry well. I kind of liked your little percentage sign percentage sign.

I'm not sure if it's. And fits the official shortner. And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of kids these days, and I am not one will start writing their name without the vowels or, you know, different companies. They'll kind of do that as an edgy thing to do, and I'm not  sure. The proof has, has become where everyone knows it as those two things, you know, I think it would be different if it, if it was, they used to have a language called Leete that would redefine certain words based upon making ease, threes and fives, SS and stuff like that.

So I think you're going to have a lot to do to teach people proof and then teach them that the percentages are. And I know you said print proof was expensive. Sometimes you can find it where you can buy it on monthly payments. But I think that there's another site out there it's called dot D O T O. M a T O R.

And you can just Google it if I've spelled it wrong. And what you can do there is you can put in like 15 words on the left-hand side and like 15 words on the right hand side and it'll combine them and then search for the domain. So you could put like on the left side, you know, proof meant  rare design, stuff like that.

And then on the right side, put, you know, clothing, fashion, and, and maybe something pops up that gives you an idea. And that's one of the places I go to. Yeah. And you could do it in Excel too. I think, you know, you could put 15 names across the top and then 15 names on the side and then combine them or something, but it just kind of gets the juices flowing a little bit on how certain names go together.

Um, print proof, you know, I don't like print anymore because of, it's not originally the idea. The project started as a street wear company, but now that I've lost. More into NFTs. I recognize how much bigger my project could be when I incorporated and as an NFT, um, it like really the possibilities are limitless and of course every idea sparks a new idea.

Um, but I recognize that prince is  now limiting, you know, my brand's potential. So it's more like art, like proof art. Oh, I've tried, I've tried so many different things, but everything that I personally can think of has been taken, but, you know, it's just my next idea. Like, it'll come I'm sure. But everything that you're telling me is, is extremely helpful.

So I think that website is going to prove to be, like I said, very helpful for me. So thank you so much for that. What about, have you thought already about the, uh, idea of taking PR U F for. The double though. Right? So the double of thing, um, is because of its being limited edition, it looks exactly like how a real proof on art would be.

Um, so I need it as the, I want it as the percent sign. Um, it coincides. You know, the marketing of everything about my brand. So I do need, I want it like that. That's kind of how my idea  sparked. Um, so it's definitely part of the project. So it has to be, uh, that, that person, so. So my only issue would be then just recognizability.

Like, um, if you, one thing it's really important to always realize or to think about when you're starting out very new on the branding process. Is that something that means, uh, if it means something to you, it might not mean something to other people and to be very careful about making sure that your intended market is.

Really dialed into what it is that you're trying to communicate. Um, if, and I'm not suggesting that this is your situation, I'm just sort of giving this as an overall question. And that is that, you know, make sure that everyone knows if they're going to see that percent sign, what it means to them and make sure that, um, you know, it's kind of gotta be this ubiquitous thing where no one's going to get confused.

Like, oh, percent means  maybe something like I originally thought. I was thinking like, um, ABV I was

proof green. And so I wasn't really thinking about your product or your vertical, that, so it's really, really important to sort of not get bogged down with, um, your personal intention and to make sure that everyone else is really on point with what you want. No, I definitely appreciate that. And, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Um, but I do know that the, the, again, the point in the marketing of my product will, will show why the PR you know, it's a percent, so of course, nobody will recognize it until they understand what I'm selling. Um, but once they do anybody in limited edition or NFT world would understand. And  w which is, would be the customer.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you for being willing to go through that. And I, I really, you know, I encourage you that you're doing a great thing by putting your idea out there, um, strengthening it, strengthening yourself on your story and your message. I hope just in sharing it with us, you know, you've got a better chance to share your message and, and I wish you a lot of luck.

Um, I'm going to expand, um, because we lost Jorge here. Um, Let me see if I can get them back. Uh, I'm going to expand on one thing that you shared and, uh, and I truly mean this as a compliment. I think there's a chance that your new ideas have grown bigger than your original idea. And if you stay married, Sometimes as a founder, you need that passion and that strength that I will see this through.

And I will see my idea through, you know what I mean? And that's what it takes,  but at the same point, you see it and I can, I can taste it. Like I know that like, but also as a caveat and this is why having a user group or a networking group or a close knit group of three or four, You know, entrepreneurs that you you're with that know you sometimes then it can also be the one thing that you have a hard time yielding on, and that hurts your project.

Um, because you know, you're, you, you know, you hold onto it too long because your idea might get bigger. Then your original one, you know? And so I just want to throw that out to you, keep this as your working plan, keep going at it. You've got great determination and creativity, but at some point in time, if you remember back to this conversation and you've got people saying, we're going to fund the company for $40 million and this, that, and the other, but we want to go in a different direction.

Just be willing to yield maybe because your idea may have  outgrown your original thought. So that's just what I was throwing in. No, I appreciate it. I definitely hope, uh, but 40 mil. I appreciate it.

I followed all of you guys. I really, again, thank you guys so much for taking the time to help all of us down here in the audience. All right. And come on back and let us know if you do decide when they absolutely, you're going to see a lot more of me. Thank you. All right, Wesley, how are you? Welcome to the name game.

And when you do come up to be a speaker and I invite you up, you are, uh, your mic is on. And so you're, if you could mute it, if you're not the current speaker, but Wesley you're up. And if you could share with us the name of your company and your domain name,

tech strand.com. Well, I love the fact that you have the name and you have the pure.com. Cause then even though you did say it  twice, because I think you're the type of person that said I will do exactly what I'm asked, uh, the rest of the time you ever talk about it. You never have to say it twice again because it's just assumed you're tech strand.com.

So strand, I'm going to go. I'm going to go with tech strand.com, tech strand.com. I'm just going to, I'm going to go for man. I'm hedging. My bets here, consulting and engineering. And the idea is you pull on the strand and then that brings about so many other new ideas. So you help people with professional solutions and technology from the idea that.

They bring a little bit of a strand and then you expand on everything else around it. Tech strand.com. What do you think, Sharon? Uh, I'm going to go in a similar way, but I'm going to go  with it support so never get. Um, so I'm going to just throw a tagline out there and like never get stranded again. Um, so that you have this idea of, you know, if your it is falling apart, um, and you need some help, you reach out to tech, strand.com and they're going to get you on the right path, get your software up and running, get your hardware issues, taken care of.

Um, that's where I'm going. All right. Well, text strand, Wesley, how are you? Welcome to the name, game. Hope you're having a good day. And what is text? Well, text's brand is T E X S T R a N D. And it is primarily geared towards, uh, textiles in the, uh, hemp space, uh, sustainable textiles and sustainable, uh, materials. 

Gotcha. So I guess I heard tech with the C H and it's texts, which made me think that I use so it's T E X. Yeah. Sure. And then it became text, but not for Texas, but for a tech. Textiles textiles. There we go. I knew you said it. Boy, my short-term memory is going. I gotta lay off the NFTs. Um, so textiles and then strand being the fiber in him.

So text strand, I think it, I think your logo's going to be really important and maybe even your tagline. Hey Sharon, what do you think about tech strains?

Um, yeah, I think we're talking about radio test here. So T E X and T E C  H um, became an issue for us. And, um, what happened to your wheel page? You usually go with, uh, cannabis or some sort of product and an Ft. And I know, but this one, I thought I knew, I thought it was pulling on the strand of, you know, the tech.

You would try to be too clever for your own good in England, they have like the strand and then you came up with stranding somebody, and then we got a completely different one, which was him. But anyway, go ahead, Sharon. Um, no, I was just going to say that's, uh, I like that the texts for textile though. I think that's the only thing that may be a little bit of a limiter because.

Would I think in most people's minds texts would be Texas, like you said originally, or I I'm from Texas. So it could be, it could be either. It could go either way.  Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing I might share with you as you think about different names and you may run with this one for a long time, I mean, you may get great feedback is you're almost saying the same.

Thing twice. What I mean by that is as opposed to maybe an adjective noun or one verb acting on a noun, you know, that Tex is textile and that's kind of a synonym for clothing and fashion and stuff. And then the strand is kind of clothing related. So you almost have two parts of your name relating to the same thing.

And maybe it doesn't give you a chance to, um, get into, usually when you have two words in your name, you get a chance to talk about. What's a little bit of differentiation. Like if I was cars.com, that would be awesome. But if I couldn't get that, but I was great cars.com. At least I  had a chance to talk about what a little bit more about what my site was about, but I'm not sure with tech strategy.

Tech strand. If you're not just saying you're about clothing twice, but your logo can fix a lot of that. Um, but I wish you luck. I think you've got an hopefully a great chance of success. Well, thank you calling her and I'm not, but you can't have one without the other, like you said, you've got to have a strand of yarn to make textile.

Gotcha. Well, super well, I love the fact that you've got the.com. Yeah, you've got a great email. You know, I think visually the more you can get your spelling and your logo, then people will have your email and your. Instantly, you know, from your, from your logo and, uh, and having the exact match there, and it's short, people can type it in.

They can text it when you're at seven letters. I think you're still in the room where you can text things.  People don't have to try to always forward. You know, someone gave me a, Hey, go to text strand.com. Tempted to try to forward that as opposed to typing it in, but good luck, Wesley hijab. Okay. Let me, let me chime in real quick.

I, I caught the tail end, but I did hear the discussion on tech strand and, uh, hi everyone. Sorry. I'm late. But, um, since it's a hemp base, you know, you're making stuff that are, that are sort of hemp based. Did you consider doing something with the word hemp, like hemp strand or something along those lines?

Because the textile as Paige sort of alluded to. The text, the word strand, when you know how clothing is made, sort of implies that it's textile already. And so the differentiator of your product, it seems like is, is on the hemp side. And maybe there's a way to work that into the name, which will make it less confusing and also easier to pronounce it.

Well, it's not only limited to just hemp, but also  bamboo and other renewable, uh, materials used in the textile industry. So I'm not just limited to, um, you know, it's canal, bamboo, hemp, uh, and renewable. Plants renewable stream, but if there a word, you know, I I'd say maybe spend a few minutes with the Saurus and play around because if there's a word that represents all those plants that are used for, um, fibers and clothing, or if there's other words, um, that might get it across.

More directly. Um, you might want to play with that a little bit because that just the X, T S T together is, is always going to be very hard for people to hear and spell. And, and remember, it's, it's just a hard combination of letters when you put them together in, in my opinion. Well,  thank you for your opinion.

And I really appreciate it. Yeah. Jeffrey, I totally agree with you. And I just want to throw one more thing out and that's, um, I think, you know, It's a page. This point you might be missing an opportunity, uh, if you don't take the renewable or sustainable angle, because that is a hot up and coming, um, market, and there's a lot of opportunity within that to sort of play with it.

And obviously you could play with your logo and incorporate things in your logo that. Uh, I was thinking of like, um, the T is, looks like a piece of bamboo and, you know, the S is, would be a piece of like hemp rope or something like that. So you definitely have the opportunity. Take it in that direction. Um, and to Jeffrey's point about, you know, the, the X and the S T together, um, being a little bit difficult, maybe you have an opportunity to play with the  renewable sustainable thing and take that in that direction.

If you look at the logo that that I created, because I do my own graphics and including the one that you see here, when you look at the Bain company logo, when you see. Uh, at tech strand.com, you'll see at the bottom, there's a number of lines and they differentiate in various colors of green to represent.

This was just my own, you know, design to represent that each one of those lines represents a, uh, you know, as sustainable.

Yeah, I really liked the logo. I think that it does hint at that inner working and just, there's just a positiveness to it, um, of having all those strands work  together. So I think you'll, I was asking myself, I wonder if I liked the strand or the text better. And I think I liked the strand the better. So if I.

Doing creative consulting for you. I might lay out some choices, even something as common as strand Knology or strand Neville, or, you know, strand something. But, um, I think text strand is going to work for you until something knocks it off the top. You know what I mean? And you'll know it when you see it.

So thanks for sharing Wesley and thank you all so much for all y'all's opinions. It really means a lot. Gotcha. Hey, um, I've got a private message here, Jeff, um, from somebody who joined on the bottom, it says, hi, I'm mark. First time, caller, long time listener. Name of our company is. Uh, what do you think?  Oh, that was a very bad joke in another meeting of the word.

Um, that's pretty funny. Yeah. So that's, uh, I don't know if he talked about it at the beginning of the show, but obviously in the naming world, that was the big news. The big news of the week, which of course mark, who sent the message is clearly mark Zuckerberg. Who's who's in the audience somewhere. No, he's not page as being very clever as page always is, but yeah, I mean, they, you know, Uh, one could argue it's a little bit better than alphabet.

It's shorter, easier to spell. What do you think? W what do you think? We'd say if, uh, if mark from Palo Alto, uh, popped up and said Metta, and, uh, we have metta.com. Uh, I think I would probably say that, uh, you're a technology company and you want to be in the metaverse and I wonder if I would have said something.

You know, you've got a great short name, but there's a lot of other  companies with that name out there. Um, so, you know, hopefully your ambitions are grand enough. I probably would've said something like that. Sharon, what do you think you would have said with, uh, with meta at metadata com? I don't know, page, I think that you might've gotten schooled when you said that to the Kohler.

So we might've had some issues with that. But I think, I think that metaverse has been in the zeitgeists long enough. And especially recently that you probably would have said, well, you're definitely going to be a tech company with something to do with some aspect of the so-called metaverse. I think that pretty much would have been a given right.

Yeah, I think there's another part of Metta that's so wide open that it could have been used for a clothing brand, a fashion brand that cannabis brand NFT, um, you know, almost anything, um, because it is a CVC V and you know, a lot of people have used it for a  lot of things. I mean, if you had a T2 it Emmy TTA, we even had a basketball player change his name to Metta world peace.

So, um, It's uh, I actually was doing some research the other day and found out that there used to be a key on the keyboard of old computers, where we have the windows key. Now that used to be the medic key. And, uh, and so its roots go back quite a long way. Well, actually it still exists. The trademark logo.

And that's where the Medicaid come from. If you hold down the alt key and type oh 1, 5, 3, it it'll give you the little trademark logo above the tab. And Shane with Wesley look at Wesley. I figured there's probably 14 people in the world that would know the Unicode extension for the Metta ID that I just looked up over the weekend.

Wesley that's  fantastic. Well, I'm an old almond old school dude.

All right. Well, Jeff, we had a small number of contestants today. I'm not sure this happened last time. My hosted. So I'm starting to take it personally or else. I don't know if, when I'm the host, uh, everybody can come up or not, but, uh, well, all the UK, we haven't moderated the showrunner. ISO only you can see the hand raises.

I can't see them. So it's up to you to bring people up if they raised. Oh, I'm not sure I know how to make. Oh, there we go. You where it says make a moderator. That's a great deal. And now I see there were some people with their hands up. I was wondering if maybe I couldn't see friends, maybe they have, if they're not friends of mine.

Anyway, there we go. Hi Dean. How are you? Welcome to the name game. Well, thank you very much. Finally getting up the nerve to join  your stage. I've been working on a project since early in the summer, and it's called copper seed safe, copper seed, safe.com. Well, fantastic. Welcome Dean copper seeds safe. Let's see.

I'll act like I'm in charge. So Jeff, since you were a little tardy today, we'll let you go first with copper seeds, safe.com copper seed safe.com. Well, the good news is I, the, the words flow well together. It's a little bit long, but I understand all three words. And how to spell them. So I think it's okay on the radio test side, but I'm trying to find a connection now.

I'm not smart enough to know if copper seed is something that exists and there's a particular meaning to those two words together. Like if, if there's a certain seed quality copper seed copper seed safe. Oh, actually now it just popped into my head as I  set it out. You make a copper seed safe. So if people want to keep.

They are seeds safe. And I mean that literally, because if you, you know, if you're going to be planting seeds, I presume that if they're not in the right environment and you're keeping them for a period of time, they may lose their virility, so to speak or some other things. So maybe then maybe there's some properties of copper that make it a very, um, good element to store and preserve seeds in like the supposedly some underground.

You know, a underground bunker somewhere out in the desert that has samples of every seeds of every plant on the planet, so that if we have to recreate ourselves on Mars or after the nuclear apocalypse, it'll all be there. Maybe that's made of copper and you make a home version of the copper seed safe.

So that's going to be my guest, sorry for the lengthy reply. But.

 Well, I'm going to say that it has something to do with cannabis because that's what I went with with seeds, and this is certifying cannabis to be safe. Uh, so I got two out of three. I'll go for cannabis, safety, cannabis, something around that. Sharon, you want us to go with those two? Are you having.

Um, the only thing I was going to add to maybe Jeffries was like the heirloom portion of it. And that there's a big, you know, movement to go back to the heirloom seeds and not be genetically modified and things like that. So maybe there's a way that, um, this company sort of, this gives proof to the fact that this is a non genetically modified seed and it's, uh, you know, safety.

All right, Dean. What do you do at copper seed safe?  Those are first of all, very reasonable guesses, but not what I'm doing. I am making are I have, I'm making a solution for storing seed phrases for crypto currency. So the. There's no customer service in crypto, and everybody has to save their seed phrases.

I make little copper sheets that you can simply write on with a pen or pencil, and they're fireproof, waterproof, permanent records of whatever important information you need to store.

That's really interesting. And then, then. But what happened, but it's a physical piece of copper. So you still have the issue of keeping that physical piece of copper in a safe place. Is that correct? That is  correct. And it is similar to a sheet of paper. So you can store it any place where you might do that, whether it's in a book or in your wall or in a safe deposit box.

But the idea is that it's not going to degrade or, uh, Get damaged. Well, it can get damaged. It's not impervious to everything, but it is a indelible. Yeah, Paige, but I just want to say one thing and then I'll let you go. It's interesting. Cause you know, you don't think that. Is, um, delegable the opposite of indelible, I suppose, but you know, I, I live in Florida and we get a lot of sunlight and I have, um, in my living room, you know, the sun comes in pretty brightly during the day.

And I have coffee table books on the coffee table. And I recently noticed that like all the book covers are fading away of all these beautiful coffee table books because of the sunlight shining on them. So paper is not, um, permanent by any stretch of the imagine.  Well, Dean, I think it's a great idea. I think it is a need, uh, I've gone through the process of creating my seed phrase and going through the different iterations of saying, well, if I write it down anywhere that it's only as safe as I write it down, but if I forget it, then I'm going to wish I would have wrote it down, even if it was someplace unsafe.

And just for those of you listening to share with Dean shared is because the idea of the de-centralized meaning no, Knows where my crypto is, but at least if at least eight to 12, computers can verify that I own it, then, you know, then I own it. Um, there is no, as he said, did a great job of explaining.

There is no customer service. There's no givebacks, there's no do overs. Um, it's it's immutable. So I think the idea of doing it in copy. Was good. I would say for your company name, I just wonder if you're so early with what you're doing, that you  might have more success, even though you feel like you might need all three names of going with just two and then maybe having copper seed safe, be one of your products.

But I feel like. For your name? I feel like you're so early on it, where safe seed or seed safe or something, lets you stay open to doing it other ways besides copper. You know what I mean? Um, but that right now to, to have to go to three words when you're so worldly, it's not like there's thousands of companies doing what you do.

Um, that the, the big thing you're tying to communicate is keeping your. Safe. So, I mean, you probably looked@seedsafe.com and maybe it was taking them, maybe it wasn't, but something that's, maybe just two words, uh, might be easier for people to remember at this stage rather than all three, but you know, the copper is like you say, it's what you do.

So pretty neat. I'd probably get one. I don't know. Do I buy  them online or do I, do I get them in a, in a store, like office Depot? Or how are you going to do. My plan is to sell them online. Currently they, uh, I do have a live listing on Etsy and I have a website where I plan to accept crypto and it is set up to use the Bitcoin lightning network.

And I'm trying to find ways to accept other kinds of. Crypto as well. Well, fantastic. Well for the feedback, I, I understand that it's long and that it is confusing because people are more used to seeds at this point. Um, so I will definitely take your advice to heart. Yeah. I think I would add to that too.

Dean is, is maybe, you know, copper as Paige alluded, it is a very specific solution. But, but crypto on, I know it's hard to get certain crypto words, but maybe something with crypto in it, crypto seed safe, even though that's long too, it's  shorter than copper, but that immediately then defines what kind of seed you're talking about or, or, or Paige suggests maybe seed safe itself.

So in other words, and that gives you the opportunity is I like what Paige said, you know, when you think in terms of your name, You also want to think in terms of the growth and future and scaling of your business. So if you want it to ultimately become a supplier of a wide range of seed, say. Leveraging different materials, technologies, concepts, um, taking copper out of the name.

It gives you that flexibility. You know, I, I, one of the companies I'm involved with was originally called treat a dog.com and we recently changed the name to pot.com. We were able to acquire that domain and of course, as treated dog, we were limited in our growth. We could only do. Don products, but as paul.com, we had the flexibility to expand to other pet products.

So, you know, if you pull copper out, the copper may limit you to compensate. I think that was paid  was pages point.

Yeah, I think the other attribute of your product that you're trying to incise is permanency or unforgettable illness, or, you know, something like that. So you could be like something related to that, and then underneath it, you know, keeping, you know, your, your seed phrase saver or something like that. And then, and then people would get both, but great idea, boy, we hear some really great and unique ideas.

Um, on here and, uh, and I'll keep an eye out if nothing else. Dean don't overlook the fact that just by having people, people that are interested in it, you're going to have a valuable customer list of people that have got wallets at some point in time. And you may end up doing just as well with that list as anything else.

That's very interesting page. And let me ask you. Or just drill a little deeper for advice on that. I've actually been considering not keeping any customer  information. I'm wondering if it would alleviate people's worries that, uh, you know, there'll be a target of hacks or something like that. And I've actually been thinking about assuring people that I don't keep their information.

Sorry, page. From a marketing standpoint, Dean, um, your list sometimes is the most valuable thing that you have. And, um, I th what I, there's an interesting component there because, um, if you create, for instance, if you get, you know, 20,000 followers on Instagram or 10,000 followers on Facebook and 5,000 followers on clubhouse, if any of those platforms.

Goes away. And I know people are like, oh no, Facebook's never going away. But if it goes away or goes down, guess where all those people are  unavailable to you, but your list, however, the people that you've gotten to, you know, subscribe or that your customer base or whatever, those are yours and you own them.

Um, just yourself. No, you don't have to share them with anyone else. So giving away that opportunity seems to be, uh, would provide some limits to you that I don't know that I would, I would definitely not recommend. I don't know. You know, I could play devil's advocate with that a little bit in this case.

Cause I think in looking at the crypto space, as, as Dean indicated, there is, um, a large portion of active. Participants who are in there specifically because they like the anonymity of, of, uh, of a distributed system. Um, and, and that might be an attractive thing to them. And your points Jaron are absolutely right about the value of a list.

If your goal as a company is to  continue to remark it and, and offer new products and services to your customer base. But if Dean's vision is, you know, this is a safe. It's secure, I'm handling it anonymously. And rather than, you know, once you buy it for me, I don't care if you never come back to me again, I just want to get X percent of all the people in the crypto space to be using this product.

And that's a big enough pie for me without having to remark it remarket and reconnect with my customers. So just to flip, flipping the coin a little bit to, to look at it from both.

Yeah, I think, um, you know, obviously whatever works best with your brand, you know, you could obviously have people just simply choose if they want to get, I just think you have a chance to be so neutral among different exchanges or cryptocurrencies because you're offering kind of a side product. Where, where you can be, uh, endorsed or  recommended potentially by all cryptocurrencies.

You know what I mean? Because you're not a competitor. And so you may end up then being able to expand your product line to anything else that a crypto investor might want. But I don't, I would not be worried about me giving you my information to order it because I've, I understand it correctly. You're giving me kind of a cold, when I say cold, I mean, non digital.

Uh, thing that's, that's, that's analogs, it's real world. It's real life that I'm etching my password in real life, real texture into something. So it's not like the, the copper safe pass thing that you give me has a digital thing on the back that it's keeping track of it. Right. I mean, it's just literally the physical seed phrase emphatic.

That's exactly right. It comes to you as a blank, smooth sheet of copper and you write in your handwriting on it. I, I can  see the value of keeping some information to make future orders easier because we do collect a lot of wallets. And I think people quickly find out that they collect a lot of wallets.

Um, this is great food for thought, because maybe I can find a middle way to assure people that only I am keeping the information and the combination of Etsy and the crypto has been my current balancing act where Etsy and the credit cards keeps information, but the crypto I could do through a telegram or something.

Totally private.

Well, terrific. Well, Jeff, I feel like we've wound down our audience. We've had some, uh, terrific contributors tonight and, um, and I think that, uh, that we may be winding down and make this a shorter session. Uh, Sharon, did you have anything  else you wanted to share or anything else that's been going on? I was actually going to, uh, offer you a platform.

Cause I thought from the, uh, last week, I think it was, or the week before, um, we've been talking about extensions a bit and I know that that's a powerful opportunity to extend your domain name. And I was wondering if you might want to speak on that for a few minutes and just talk about the possibility of extensions in terms of extending the, um, You know, the, the ability for you to take your name and take a component of your name out of that and use it as the extension.

Yeah, great question. Um, and I talked about this quite a bit in domain club on different tops and rooms. So if anyone wants to follow me or join domain club, it's kind of a, a, uh, uh, run by the same group that runs start-up club. And we talked about domain names and what's been interesting about this whole meta  emphasis and domain names.

Uh, and it was first we had ETA two then Metta versus it's been interesting to see what the. And speculators do go after when a word like this enters into people saying, oh man, if I could get a domain name with that word, I can make a lot of money. So I'm going to talk about speculators. I don't know if we've had as many companies start up to be medical companies or metaverse companies because of the Facebook announcement.

So I wouldn't say this is a great predictor of, of public behavior for, for like, if you could chart out the next thousand metaverse related startups, you know, what words would they use? I think that might take six months, but speculators are able to buy so fast that it was interesting to see them. First go, what I'm going to call horizontally, which means they were buying the word Metta dot and you had people buying metadata, horse metadata,  Haki metadata, Osaka, metadata, really anything, you know, and.

And I think that most of them, I hate to say it. We're probably thinking, oh, I'm going to buy this name and Facebook, Cisco buy it for me for a lot of money. And, and you'd say, well, if that's what they wanted, they should have bought it at first, you know, but they have bought a couple for a lot of money. So, but I guess what I saw happen was the speculators went horrible.

First. And then they went towards staying in.com, but adding a second word. So, you know, they went for metadata coupons and metadata bargains. And then after a while you had people going for Mehta, bargains and medic coupons.com to the point where now met up, plus almost any English word is taken. I ran almost 25,000 English words with Metta, and I think I only found four desirable names.

So I think right now, if I, I think the past recommendation has always  been, you're better off with two words and.com, then maybe one word and a new TLD, but the public does seem to like having the one word and then there's these things that we call new TLDs. So if, if you're marketing. If you have other things in your company's marketing, they're going to be strong, your technology, your people, your relationships, and you literally just need a functional name.

I think the new TLDs. You know, and I think, but I don't think they're going to give you anything like the.com wheel, where you get prestige from it. I don't think by being metadata online, people are going to go, oh my gosh, you got the online. That's awesome. You know, you must be a great company. I think they're just going to say, well, that's, that's what you chose to get, you know?

And it may still be, uh, a detriment, but, um, you know, if the word on the left is good, I guess it's okay. I'm not sure if that helped you, Sharon,  but, uh, that's what I've seen happen this week. No, I think that was great. That was really important information. And, um, I, I told, um, Jeffrey and Paige that I was going to have to bow out a little bit early, so I'm going to do that right now.

So, uh, it was a pleasure joining you for the name game again, and I'll see you guys all next week.

Well, thanks Jeff for another good name game. And, uh, let's see, I think, uh, since, uh, I opened it, maybe you can close it and if you had any closing words or else we can wrap it up. Sure. I I'm sad that I missed the first few minutes, but I'm happy that this show and all the episodes of the name game are recorded.

So I can go to start-up dot club and listen to the beginning of the show and see what I missed tonight. But what I heard was great. And as you pointed out earlier page, it's always, you know, part of the fun of this game is that. Learning about  these interesting companies and interesting product ideas that people have.

And as we always have, we heard a few really interesting ones tonight and they run the gamut, you know, different industries from, from hemp and other, uh, based clothing, uh, with, with Wesley to, um, you know, an interesting way to store your crypto seed. I mean, all this stuff is really interesting. So I'm always looking forward to the show and I encourage everyone to go to startup.com.

The website for startup club to listen to past recordings of the name, game, and other shows that we've been recording for start-up club and also sign up for our mailing list. So you can be kept informed of special events and other things going on here at startup club. So thanks everyone. And thank you page.

Great. All right, we'll get to close the room out and then we'll hope you'll join us again next Wednesday at 6:00 PM. Eastern for another episode of the name game. Thanks.

Question 3

TRANSCRIPT: EComm Weekly - EP18: Surviving the Supply Chain Disaster (11-04-21)

Accepted Answer

if you want to hear more entrepreneurial information, startup club has a huge well, a large group of rooms that target entrepreneurs. So just click the green house and you'll have notifications. Some of the things we're going to be covering. We are going to be talking about what exactly supply chain is, what's happening, why it's happening, what are some, some solutions to get around that and, um, just, you know, general topics and tips and tricks that we might be able to do to get around it.

So I'm going to just go around the room really quickly and just to introduce. The guest panelists. So real. How are you? Who are you?  What do you do? I know. Um, and hi to the listeners. Um, my, obviously you could've have seen, my name is Rael Lowenthal, uh, I'm the director of business development at a company called Z.

Uh, we are an import of record and logistics specialist for e-commerce sellers. Uh, we focus specifically on Amazon FBA. Uh, but we do, uh, obviously service other clients on Shopify and various other channels. Um, yeah. Looking forward to being, yeah, I think, you know, we're experiencing an incredible amount of disruptions, both in our clients, uh, production supply chain, and then obviously in the logistics and then, uh, throw Amazon into the mix with, um, uh, stock limitations.

It's, it's just all a huge recipe for, for navigation, for Amazon sellers. But looking forward to the.

Hey, I was just talking to myself like I normally do,  but, uh, anyways, I am muted the lobby. Who are you? What do you do? Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. Again, know I named me suffer lobby or raccoon. I, uh, quote, partner. With norm on a whole new worldwide. And what we do is we are a supply chain solutions partner, uh, which is pretty much a one-stop shop, you know, helping e-commerce brands to source import ship warehouse.

We'll find, fulfill their products to end user. We have, uh, a three PL facility here in Pennsylvania. Uh, we have, uh, uh, sourcing outfit in China and, uh, I'm happy to be on the show to be able to answer questions and to also learn from other, uh, people here. Thanks so much. Very good in France. Walk, just bumped into you in Miami.

Yeah, it was great meeting you there. I hope you got a tan. I know it was a little rainy. Um, But, yeah. Thank you so  much for having me. I, uh, similar to our IO and apple, labium kind of a combination of both of them. Uh, I'm the director of business development here at Novi land and we're a full stack infrastructure for, uh, all supply chain solutions.

So sourcing production oversight, um, quality control inspections, uh, fulfillment. Logistics with FOMA distribution with over a million square feet here in the us. Um, and we handle any multi-channel brand anywhere that's going from Amazon to their own DTC on Shopify, Walmart, Wayfair, what have you. Okay, so I'm just going to throw out a few questions and you know, my, my go around in a circle or you just pick them up.

If you, if there's something that you want to just, uh, talk about. So first thing in your own words, for those of us. There's a lot of people here that are just new to e-com. What are, what is supply chain management? So I don't know, rail, if you want to just pick that one up and talk about. Yeah, sure.  Um, look, I think supply chain covers a variety of elements.

I think, uh, you know, to port for the newbies, um, I think to start off your supply chain actually starts really at your manufacturer of your product. Uh, it then moves on to your logistics provider who moves your product, uh, from, you know, the, the export destination to the import destination. Uh, there may be even another agent then that has to do the local delivery in the destination.

Um, you know, when it comes to the import process, you'll have a customs broker as well. And then, um, you know, if you're looking to import into countries where you aren't located, then you need a local import partner, like, uh, like what we do at Z, uh, to actually, you know, be listed on your import documentation so that your goods can, can kick custom successfully.

So there really are a lot of, you know, various, uh, players in your supply chain. Uh, W, you know, in, in having a successful e-commerce business, what most, uh, e-commerce sellers want to do is to try and  simplify that as much as possible. Uh, and, and that's where really, you know, sort of one stop shop solution, uh, really comes into play.

And I think that's where a lot of people are. Uh, a lot of e-commerce sellers have looking for, um, there are various moving parts. Um, not, I don't think there's one, you know, one solution that covers everything. Uh, but I think some of the other panelists, you know, working companies where they try to aggregate things together.

And I think that that's really valuable for, for Amazon sellers or, or e-commerce service. Okay. Hey Francoise, what is going on out there? Like, why are we only hearing about this now? And, you know, just. What is, yeah, I know we talked about it Miami, but there's a few different elements that are happening.

You wanna do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Royal, uh, put it very beautifully. It's essentially the tying of the entire supply chain. And it's important to remember that there is no single piece of the supply chain that's um, I guess messed up right now. It's the entire thing.  Every single day. Relies on the one previous to it for the entire thing to work.

Um, and so we're seeing bottlenecks throughout the entire process, right? Manufacturers are starting to see significantly larger orders from, um, more e-commerce auditors coming on board from, uh, those that are scaling up and as well as the retailers, it's important to remember that retailers are. Also, you know, starting to get more into e-commerce, they're bumping up their distribution channels to sell their products and their brands.

Um, so starting at the manufacturer level and then going into, uh, you know, the shipping to the ports even, uh, You know, all this inventory has to get on the boats. First, they have to go into containers. We're seeing a global container shortage. Um, and we've seen this for the past about 12 to 18 months all the way at the start of COVID when, uh, you know, everyone thought that e-commerce and just buying and spending was going to go down.

But in reality, all sorted skyrocketing, um, people started just buying everything. Right.  We saw tremendous increases, a few hundred percentage points on, on certain platforms, um, particularly Amazon us. And so getting containers was a pain. So then we started seeing price increases. We started seeing, um, more blank sailings, uh, which means, you know, uh, they essentially were not shipping out certain containers just because they had to fill those up with containers.

And those took longer to fill up at the manufacturers. So larger orders, bigger delays that manufacturers delays in obtaining containers, which can take up to four to six weeks now. Um, so LCL is definitely one thing that a lot of companies are looking at. And then we're talking about the carriers themselves, or I remember freight forwarders are not carriers.

They're just the intermediary between the carrier and yourself. Uh, th they're essentially think of them as a travel booking agent for you for airlines, right? Delta is the carrier. In this case, a booking agent would be the freight forwarder and you are the passenger. Your cargo would be the passenger on that boat. 

And from there, we just saw a series of very unfortunate events, uh, from, you know, the Suez canal, which a lot of people thought was just a drop in the bucket, but caused major shortages and delays with the containers that were stuck at that port, um, with the carriers and the vessels that were stuck at that port.

And the fact that manufacturers couldn't produce or get product out of China because of the delays in that port, which is a global. Um, and then, uh, you know, getting to today, we're seeing massive port delays. We're talking about, uh, not just, you know, a few dozen containerships sitting at, uh, any port here in the U S we're talking about over 70 at just the port of LA, which imports the vast majority of products into the U S uh, Los Angeles and long beach, or, or, uh, essentially screwed because we were not capable of actually running this 24 7 model that we're moving into today.

Um, And then that just is reflective of every other port. So with the delays at the  port of LA and long beach, the natural next step is everyone's thinking about going to Houston or going to Savannah or going through Canada and then coming into the U S or the great lakes. I think that's the conversation we had in Miami norm going through the grief.

What was that? I said, that's not a good choice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I know the ports of Chicago when I was just looking into it earlier today, they're starting to pick back up and do a little bit better, but, uh, there's no good port to go into any port that you're looking at. Any price that you're seeing is reflective of, uh, the tremendous supply chain backups that we've been seeing for the past 12.

I don't imagine it's going to get any better, uh, because just thinking about the next step in the supply chain, warehousing and distribution, a space that I think, you know, uh, F a lobby is also very well versed in, um, these things don't run 24 hours, right? Live unload is always preferred. Um, there's always going to be a longer demurrage truck waiting times,  which is going to cost the brand more.

Um, And so getting into that containers, can't get there from, let's say 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM until 8:00 AM. That's a whole, uh, you know, 10 to 12 hour gap that containers are sitting at the ports in the us. Um, so it's just backup after backup, after backup. There's no single bottleneck that's causing this.

It's it's really that, uh, again, beautifully put by rail that this reliance on every step of the supply chain and working for it to all actually work. So I'm just going to open this up to any of you, because this is crazy. This is a crazy stat. I don't even want to spit it out because I might be wrong.

How many empty containers are sitting at a long, long beach right now? I'm not versed in that, but I know. Uh, there, there's definitely statistics on it. If you Google port of Los Angeles, I think it's actually  port of Los angeles.org or.com. One of those that'll give you the daily statistics of what's going on.

Um, and they have everything from chassis daily chasses to what the delays are, um, on even the, uh, the container, um, uh, boat, uh, drainage on the water. So I think we're seeing upwards of 70 container ships just sitting there not being able to unload anything, but to answer your question, I'm not sure exactly what that number is.

Okay. Rail or not norm to give you some insights. I think I wouldn't be able to tell you how. It's stuck there, but what I can tell you is, you know, I'm dealing with clients on a daily basis trying to get their goods out of direct. Um, and you know, just for the last. We have multiple clients just keep getting knocked off a vessel, knocked up a vessel, delayed, delayed, delayed, and, uh, you know, we speak to our freight forwarder partners and, you know, cause the client starts to get really anxious, like antsy with us.

 Um, and there's just the, the responses that we get, this is just how it is right now. And, uh, there's really nothing else we can say other than congestion at ports. Uh, so for us, it's not really important. Uh, what, what the number is necessarily, but just about how we assist our clients and trying to navigate, uh, this, this really difficult environment.

Right. I'm going to sell it. I'll go ahead at the lobby. Well, I, you know, just to like friends finding the right outfit, just to put an estimate on it, I would say at least a hundred to 200,000 containers are there. Uh, and how do I know this? So, uh, if you have 40 to 70 ships just waiting to unload, and each of those ships will have about 20 to 30,000 containers on.

Uh, you can multiply that by 40 to 70, it tells you how much containers even waiting to be  unloaded, not to talk of the ones that are sitting at the port, which I will say easily a hundred to 200,000 containers are they're empty. Uh, another issue is the, the truck drivers. The right now the us is short of a hundred.

I think I said yesterday 80 to a hundred thousand truck drivers are needed just to be able to keep this, uh, supply chain going smoothly as they used to be. And nobody's working, that's crazy, you know, is this shortage of truck drivers charges, containers. So what can we do? So we've got a lot of e-commerce sellers on here and they're either.

On one of those ships, they haven't produced their products. Are there anything that we can do to help speed up the process? Yeah. I mean, there there's nothing that you can do to  alleviate the right now. I would say, uh, I mean the, the only advice, I guess I would give anyone that's shipping anything right now is, do not go with the cheapest price that they see out there.

Um, And when it comes to routes, one thing that we're doing for a lot of our clients is looking at those optimal routes. And a lot of times you might consider a port of LA because it's closest to China. But think about the congestion that's going on there. Um, consider where your product needs to. And a lot of times it's natural.

I think for Amazon sellers to put in that it's coming from an LA warehouse to an FBA center. And so they get an Amazon FBA fulfillment center on the west coast, which seems logical during normal times, uh, think of alternatives now into maybe Savannah and to Houston. Um, these are still going to see some level of congestion, but if you can get an Amazon fulfillment center there, uh, then you should be able to speed things.

At the port itself and the fact that there's going to be more drivers, the fact that there's going to be less congestion at the  ports in regards to vessels waiting. Um, there, you're going to see, you're going to see, uh, shortages across the board, but just think about where can you ship this product that has the least amount of congestion.

Uh, LA is going to have that by far for the rest of the year, uh, in regards to production. We're going into, you know, a very, very strong end of the year into Chinese new year. If you're shipping, if you're producing in China, no one knows exactly how this is going to work out with, uh, you know, the pandemic still being very prevalent.

Uh, it's important to remember that there's people on the other side of that, uh, you, you need to talk to your factory, uh, owner or the sales rep that you're working. Tell them your plans, ask them what they can do and what you can do for them. Um, I think that's a very overlooked aspect of this. It's building that relationship with your supplier, whether that's with a sourcing company, whether that's with your sourcing agent or with the factory itself, uh, find out what you can do for them.

 They will go above and beyond to try to help you out. If you. Yeah, I think I want to add to that, uh, you know, the, the two, the two sort of key words that jump out at me norm, you know, to, to help, uh, e-commerce sellers with this RJ. And I think it's planning and education. So, and, and that can really be, uh, put into, into multiple areas.

But I think the things that really, uh, shout out to me in terms of, if you're looking at action, uh, I think it's important to address. Um, uh, to do better inventory planning, like Francis said, there's very little you can do right now. If you've got a container stuck at a port, there's nothing that can be done to speed up that person.

Multiple countries that you ship to. Uh, so, you know, if let's say the port in LA is blocked and your us sales are dropping, at least you've got UK and Australia and sales, uh, still able to go because there's less congestion there. I think that's, that's one, one thing to, to think about. And the other is, you know, when you're, when you're talking  about manufacturing and getting your product ready, it's understanding your lead times from your suppliers and then, uh, planning that together with the.

Uh, that you're currently seeing in, uh, in, in logistics. And then, you know, if you have the luxury, if you have, uh, products that may fit this, uh, airfreight mafia, Uh, I an option to avoid a complete stock out. So it's not gonna replace, uh, you know, moving a full container load into a particular destination.

Uh, but it might allow you to, um, you know, at least, uh, avoid a complete stockout in, in that particular. Well, adding to what Ryan said. Um, I, I also believe that, uh, if somebody must stuck up and maybe plan ahead, you would definitely require more capital to be able to do it. So if you have access to capital or on finance, Please go ahead and get it because whoever does implant ahead will run  out of stock and you can really sell a lot.

I see a lot of brands that have, you know, probably two to four times their sales from last year, just because all of their, all of their competitors run out of stock or they don't have the capital to move volumes or to manufacture volumes. Another thing I'm going to add to that is if your products could be sourced in the U S.

Or Mexico or Canada. Uh, you should also start exploring that, uh, because you'll be surprised some products might be worth it to, to make in your very close to your marketplace that you're selling. So if you're selling in the us, uh, start looking into us manufacturing, uh, I just heard like two weeks ago that Walmart.

Uh, just pledged to $350 billion just to only buy made in the us products from the seller. So if you're a pro, if you, if you plan to sell to  Walmart or sell through Walmart marketplace, uh, they have a lot of plan for the next five. I think it's seven to 10 year plan to be spending 35 to 40 billion every year.

Just to buy made in the U S goods. So, uh, you'd be surprised what you can find. I mean, I, I, I own two brands and, uh, those brands, you know, byproducts here in the us and, uh, it's never been an issue. So I think you should, if you can look into. You know, just exploring the U S the CA uh, Canada, and maybe some part of Mexico that might be able to, uh, ease up on your, uh, total reliance on, uh, transpacific, uh, you know, uh, shipments.

Yeah. You know, it's funny that you said that I've lobby because, uh, I recently heard, I was talking to somebody somewhere and they used to get their Eva foam. Typically that's where I would've thought Thai, uh, China Taiwan  anyways, high-quality Eva foam. That was my go-to. And I was into Eva foam for quite some time, the person who is getting their foam now out of Columbia, and it's a higher grade and it's cheaper.

And you've got the element of time on your side in Colombia. So I would never have guessed this. And I don't know if. I'm probably the oldest guy on the call, but back in the day, I don't know if anybody remembers this, but Walmart used to pride itself on being a made in the USA company. And that changed that's slowly slid off to, you know, made in China lowest price rollback.

So it's interesting. That's kind of going full. But, um, the other, the other thing about it, I don't want to make this call into just made in the USA, but that is a really great option. We had, um, we had, uh, a client,  they wanted a Woodpro. And so it was sourced. Uh, first overseas, it was, um, a high ticket item.

It was a large item. Uh, it was a heavy item. And I believe at the lobby, I think it was around 75 bucks that they were paying. And at the end of the day, you found you, you knocked off the wood, 30% less made here, and then you find. A different material. So you just substituted the material and that even brought it down further.

So their landed cost or their costs was a, I think it was around 30 bucks. Is that. Yeah, about 35 bucks. By the time you factoring all the shipping, the tarrifs, the clearing cost, the freight forwarding, and a another good point. You said it's just replacing. If you're not married to a specific material in the U S Lee.

Extensively has a huge edge over any country in terms of material science and the us has a lot of materials that nobody  has even heard of, but they're being used by halo space companies here it'd been used by lodge, uh, 3m. Group, you know, most Santo, those are the large companies that are using made in the U S materials.

And it's their best kept secret. These are materials that, you know, come on people like you, and I don't even know anything about until you really inquire about it. Uh, you see that these are really solid materials that are being exported actually out of the U S to even countries like China every day.

You know, I I've got one other question. I'm going to throw it out. Any of you, but the timing. And I know when you, when I say, oh, how long what's the lead time? It's like, you know, how long is a piece of string, but when you're doing inventory, you know, planning, what should we be looking for? You know, it's no longer, okay.

If it was taking six weeks to produce, it'd be four or five weeks on the water. What do we have to consider? What are the  options. Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, something generally that we're seeing, um, even for clients in California is anywhere between a 75 and 120% increase in total lead time. So whether that is congestion in China, whether that is congestion in the ports of LA, whether that's even.

And another factor to take into consideration, especially if you're doing, uh, FCLs or full container loads is that you are responsible for that container until it gets back to the boat. So accounting, even for the costs of that, if you let's say you get it dropped off at a three PL and it gets taken back to the port of LA and they have nowhere to drop it off, that Denver is just something that you're charged for.

So I usually want to make this really clear for the people that have never done this before. So, what you're saying is that you're getting caught, you're getting charged, but  you're getting charged until that container gets loaded again. Correct. Or if it goes back to the vessel and they ship it back empty, which we have seen a few carriers start to do, because think about what they're making.

Let's say about $20,000 on a container coming to the China versus getting it filled and shipped back from here for about $1,500 the two week lead time, three week lead time that it takes them to get back to China and fill it up again. Uh, it just makes more economic sense for them to ship back empty containers.

Does it make any sense? Is there any case where it would make sense to send by.

A hundred percent. Are you referring to just sending products from overseas to the us? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's tons of cases. I think it heavily depends on the type of product, the value of your product. Uh, what's the competitive landscape,  right? Are your competitors struggling with. Inventory. If that's the case, you can start to take up more market share.

Yes. It's going to cost you more. You might even lose money on it, but if you can start to rank up your BSR for example, and you can start to go omni-channel before they can. And you can build that brand of reliance with your consumers. Then at 100% makes sense. Uh, so it's not just, and this is what I was referring to at the beginning where it's not about just paying bottom dollar for this anymore.

It's, it's no longer a buyer's market where you can haggle with your freight forwarder, or you can go to five different freight forwarders and get all different types of prices and just get the cheapest one. And it's only going to differ by about a week. You're looking for strong partners for three PL for fulfillment, for.

Um, uh, the actual logistics from overseas and, and clearance through customs, uh, at the end of the day, if they don't work together effectively, you're going to be paying an arm and a leg with that truck waiting at the fulfillment  center with them, not taking back that container on time with them charging you additional truck waiting times.

Only allowing you to do live unload rather than just dropping the container off. Uh, I mean, there's so many aspects and, and, and very small details that go into it. And if someone's not experienced with dealing with three PLS, it's important to work through these cases with them at the beginning. Um, it can add so much more money, uh, to your cost per unit.

Uh, if you, if you're not experienced with working with the charges of a three PL, and I know you guys do a great job over there as well. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Jim, you got a question I knew you'd be up here. I knew it, not a question. I just wanted to make a comment, uh, talking about air versus ocean, uh, what I've done, and this has worked very well.

And I think it would, uh, be wise for people to make some calculations. Uh, I've always, uh, say on a  new item, I would take a CFI ordered 5,000 units. I would, uh, send in. Two or three master cartons, uh, express air. Then I would take 10% orders, say 500 units, send that air cargo and the balance by. Now the lead times have definitely changed on all three methods of, uh, moving the freight, but, uh, cost averaging the overall freight down.

Also, you have to take a look at what is the lead times. The lead times I think are going to be so critical and a lot of people are going to. Disappointed, uh, you know, historically I always counted on 90 days from the data PO until the product, uh, hit the warehouse, meaning my, uh, three PL in Nashville. So you really have to be very conservative in looking at those  lead times.

The other thing is that, uh, the mode of transportation. When I was doing a lot of business, direct importing products for target and Walmart, uh, I ran through, uh, some business cycles, long Sherman strike, and we had a lot of product, uh, sitting out in the, uh, you know, shipping, uh, ships. And what we did was that we were proactive and we, uh, use Vancouver.

Uh, Vancouver and norm you're Canadian, you would know more about Vancouver today than I do, but Vancouver, it was more expensive. And we had to intermodal it from Vancouver, uh, into Minneapolis, for example, additional costs, but we got our, uh, inventory in a reasonable amount of time. I think what people need to realize they need to have plan a, B and C,  because this is so fluid.

Nobody I think has a definite uh, this is what you need to do. Uh, the east coast, I hear some good things out there. Uh, the other thing that we always did was that, uh, we need. Uh, had things to exit, uh, on the west coast. Uh, we always use three PLS in the Midwest. So, uh, clearing and everything was fob Nashville.

And that seemed to work out better, uh, in the sense, a lower volume Nashville, and they were able to move through it. So I just wanted to say. Those comments, uh, it's doable. Uh, it's going to be very frustrating. Uh, I think people that have inventory are in good, uh, supply right now are going to have excellent sales, but people that are just entering the market or whatever, uh, they really need to get a lot of information and have plan a, B and C uh, if they want to,  uh, eliminate some of the frustration.

So I just wanted to make those comments. Thanks, Jim. I knew that, uh, you are going to be up here talking about something today, but, uh, really appreciated. And by the way, this just reminds me if you like what you're hearing. If you, if you like the details, what you're hearing today, please follow the panelists, including Jim.

Uh, Jim's a great guy. He comes up with nugget after nugget, but also rail at the lobby, France. Uh, you know, follow them, listen to what they have to say. They are incredible. They're intelligent and they're always dropping. I don't like the word but nuggets. Okay. I'm going to just have one more question today.

And that's about how do you structure your inventory? What are you doing now to, for inventory, um, strategies? Because what we're finding is it's taking long. How do you, how do you  what's what's the game plan? What are you guys doing? What are you telling your clients? So normally I think I can add something.

Yeah. Um, and, and it's, it's not about necessarily what I'm telling. Uh, it's more about tell us, um, and, and, and how they navigate this and it's kind of fold now. So it started off with Amazon placing severe stock restrictions over the month on them. And then obviously with supply chain, it became even for supply chain disruptions, it became even more apparent is to actually have storage facilities.

Um, the three PLS, like in the desk where you sell your country and data. Uh, kind of deal with the fact that, you know, you send small amounts of stock at any given time. And when you have, uh, disruptions in supply chains and an additional lead times, you've at least got, uh, more stock in, in that particular country.

It goes back to the lobby, says  around, uh, finance obviously can capital plays a huge part in, in being able to do that. Um, but I think in, in these times, and, and, you know, going forward that the disruptions aren't going to go. Um, in terms of planning the capital, uh, keep a little bit more stock in, in your, in your destination country, uh, be sloppy overstock, you know, it might have a little bit of additional storage costs, but that additional storage costs is a lot less than completely out of stock.

Um,

Go ahead and as well. Yeah. And I think to add onto that it's, uh, and I think I referred to it a little bit earlier. It's it's really having those conversations with your partners, right? If you traditionally were using your three PL for FBA prep and they're not suited for warehousing, uh, particularly if it's a small.

Uh, a warehouse that they're using, maybe just in that location, uh,  you need to know what their limitations are too. I would not expect to just. You know, going from half a container or maybe one container per month to it's three or four containers off the bat, I think it's letting them know what your plans are, uh, finding out if they have a solution for you.

Right. How long are they going to be storing that? Are you going to be handling multi-channel distribution? Um, are they going to need to, uh, prep more than usual? Uh, I think these are all conversations that they would appreciate. You might even be able to get better rates. Uh, Uh, they'll prioritize your order over someone that is less communicative and has put more strain on their operations.

Um, so it's all relationships. I think it's having those conversations, definitely doing what Raul mentioned. Uh, having higher levels of inventory is going to be key to maintain, uh, just your positioning in the market, um, and even, you know, beating out your competitors. But those conversations are really key. 

Well to add to that, uh, as well, um, Uh, relationship is everything. Uh, even though you will need some more capital to be able to pull in a lot of products to sell, uh, you know, you should talk to your supplier, especially in China or whether your suppliers, even in the us, uh, most of these suppliers do they have employees that they, uh, that are relying on them.

So they really want to move products as well. Uh, so talk to them on even a payment terms. I mean, I have a supply in Shanghai, in China that, you know, private gave me half a million dollars just in, uh, just in, uh, a line of credit all by himself. He's like, look, just go sell, you know, and pay me little by little.

You never know what you can get out of your supplier. If you're being very good to them. If you've been paying them on time, if you've had a really good  relationships with them, You know, talk to them, see how they can also help you to balk up, uh, for this, because you are going to sell a lot. If you, if you're a better plant, uh, if you have better planning, you're going to sell a lot.

Another thing is to look into multiple marketplaces. I don't know if norm wants to talk about Walmart and all these other places that are available, not just Amazon alone, you know, talk about, I mean, let's, you know, let's go into Walmart, talk to you at 3:00 PM. You know, uh, like French. So I was saying, he talked to you at 3:00 PM.

Let him help you plan how to really take advantage of all these multiple market leases. So you can sell as much as the market can absorb. You know, I think it's a really good time for sellers that have planned very well or that. The inventory's very well. Uh, there's one last thing that I think we forgot to mention about this power rationing in China, which I really don't understand.

It doesn't  make any sense to me, but a lot of the Chinese factories are experiencing, you know, power rationing, you know, the ton of light in one region. They Tony back on. It's just a mess over there. I don't know. I don't have any solution to that, but I just see that happening yet.

I'd like to just add one thing. Uh, the question was, uh, inventory planning, you know, historically, you know, I always wanted to turn my inventory four times a year or more. Uh, I think anybody, uh, doing that, it's wonderful, but it's probably not realistic. So having inventory is. Old phrase, uh, cash is king. I think today inventory is king because, uh, we're in a physical product business.

And having sufficient inventory is going to, you know, uh, bring in the sales dollars and continue to prosper our business. So.  You know, example if I was, uh, my goal was to turn it four turns a year that, you know, uh, uh, every 90 days having new inventory flowing in, but that's not realistic. Uh, I think what's realistic is more about 150 days, uh, given the current situation and, uh, payment terms.

I totally agree. Uh, you know, if you have a good relationship, if you've treated your suppliers, Many of them will, uh, start off with some open account terms with you and you can build from there because they still want to keep their factory going with their workers employed. And that's another way of.

Infusing capital. That's not your capital, but, uh, partnering up with people and the relationship. This is a relationship business from start to finish, you know, starting with your suppliers and then they, uh, with customer service. So I just wanted to add those few.  All right. Well, thank you very much, Jim.

Thank you, rail. I for lobby Francoise. Thank you, Rachel. Um, that's it for today. We have this room every Thursday at one o'clock. I do want to mention that after the lobby is going to be. Uh, lessons from the edge today. I believe that's at four o'clock in the startup room, a startup club. So that's going to be really great.

I think they had Mr. Wonderful on last week. So, uh, all right. I have a lobby. You're going to be backed into the corner of the questions are going to be tough, but you know,

so every Thursday one o'clock come and join us. If you like, what you heard today, please follow the speakers and we will see you next week.

Question 4

TRANSCRIPT: The Complete Entrepreneur - EP19: Do We Need to Be Paranoid to Survive? (11-04-21)

Accepted Answer

We have well over a hundred recorded sessions, blogs and transcripts. So we're really trying, you know, to capture this great information on the featured shows, serial entrepreneur, the complete entrepreneur e-commerce weekly. Coach you. And, uh, I think a couple of other sessions on a weekly basis, you can also join our email list.

We invite you to join our email list and when we have, you know, special feature content or a special featured, um, speaker, we'll say we'll, we'll get you that email out. Uh, we have a lot of. Writer or some very predominant authors that we're booking here to show up on start-up club and that within the next couple of months before the end of the year.

 So if you're interested in hearing about that, please make sure you sign up. Thanks so much. Hey, Michelle, I have to do a little bit of a brag here. Um, so we did have Mr. Wonderful twice last month. And, um, I had been working on it. Who I'm telling you is probably one of the top five business authors of all time.

I'm pulling them out of retirement. You might even be able to guess his name and he's never been on club as before. It's actually rather funny, um, in the way we're communicating with them and he is coming on. He's I think he's on for January 15th. We haven't actually, I don't know if we firmed up the date or not.

I don't want to announce it yet. I'll now send next week. Okay. But let me tell you this. This is the kind of stuff that you can learn a lot about. And this particular author is someone that I based my entire career on his theories and his concepts, and they worked. And fortunately I've been very successful  and I gave him a lot of credit for that.

So I'm pulling them out of retirement or bringing them on startup club. If you're not on that mailing list, you're not going to know the date and you're not going to know the speaker, but it's going to be probably the event. It will be probably the top event on club.

Wow. A lot happening there at startup like cloud and had to pretty exciting, but, um, we're taking a look today on the complete entrepreneur at a great topic. I must admit when I first, first was thinking about different topics and so forth like that. You know what, this is one I will, I personally want to explore, and that is only the paranoid survive.

So the question I have is, was Andy Grove, who was the chairman of the board of Intel? Was he rides, destined that entrepreneurs and businesses need to be paranoid to survive in a hyper competitive world? Yeah, it's an interesting question. Um, is it  right? And is it helpful? To always be paranoid or do we need to be paranoid or were you going to get the devoured by a competitor?

I was reflecting on, I watched a David Adams. Um, if you don't take bad and Bari, great naturalists running, watching one of his documentaries this past week. And I had like this cheetah crawling through the grass on the Savannah plane in Africa and the cheetah was there going through the grass and his eyes, looking at this gazelle in the distance and David Adler, boy voice only he can do his voice.

Of course it was. I wonder what's on his meal menu this week or today. And so, and you see that the gazelle and suddenly he sticks his head up and begins to look around and seen something moved in the grass. And it just took off, like you wouldn't believe tell you what  that gazelle was paranoid. It was constantly checking.

All the time am I back to be eaten? Am I about to be devoured? And I stood about that in terms of entrepreneurship, is that, should that be our attitude as entrepreneurs? Should we be that gazelle, which is constantly looking constantly checking, constantly worried about disasters. And I then begin to think of my own life this past week in my own company, where we had literally record.

And crazy high and doing unbelievably well, but you're the first thing I thought about was I wonder what's going to happen. Um, next week, are we going to go down? What's going to happen with any competitors what's going to happen here. What's going to happen there. What's going to happen with, with, um, with clients what's going to happen.

What's going to happen. What's going to happen. And it's the great. Is going to happen  machine of the mind of the entrepreneur, is that healthy? Is that healthy? Are we the gazelle or are we the cheetah? What is the mindset of an entrepreneur, which is different? And, you know, it's constantly thinking about things all the time, which in some ways, I think in my own thinking.

That maybe Andy Grove was right. And that we do need to be paranoid as entrepreneurs because we aren't paranoid. We become the prey rather than the predator. And it's an interesting thing. So Colin, I can ask you the question. Are you prey or predator? Are you the cheater? The gazelle? What should an entrepreneur be?

Oh, no, no, let, let, let's all be very clear here. We're not Elon Musk. We're not bill gates. We are prey. Okay. The big  corporations are out there. They want our space. We know how to survive in this space though. Right. And we know how to figure it out, where they often are very nervous. They're scared to journey into unknown territories where the entrepreneurs, we have no choice.

We walk into that field. We walked into that grass and we. We're being hunted, but we also know this is new terrain. This is an opportunity for us to really win. Um, that is something that I learned when I was at a fortune 1000 company. And I actually had, um, the opportunity to, uh, understand from the very top that these big companies lacked the innovation.

They lack the risk taking. As entrepreneurs we're always, our business models are always at risk and the key is to build a moat. And if we keep building something and we  don't think about the moat, then we are a potential of losing the gains that we've made. And what do I mean by a moat? There are different ways of building your defenses.

One, you can patent, you can trade. You can come up with processes. Uh, we're having a session tomorrow at two o'clock Eastern on the serial entrepreneur hour. And we're talking about creating an X factor. That's probably one of the greatest moats you can create, which is basically something that you have that no other company in the world has or in your space.

The mode is your defenses. If you're not paranoid, you're you're, you're not going to say. If you are paranoid, you'll build that mode and you will defend it and you will win and you'll continue to scale. But more often than not, Michael, I actually believe that most entrepreneurs are not paranoid. They they're too innocent.

They come into it  and they don't build them up. They don't spend the time to build the defenses. They're always focused on the growth and not the. Yeah, but let me just tackle you on this building and Mert sounds great. You've got a castle and you're going to build a motorman and that's all very well, but isn't the life of an entrepreneur.

All about speed. Like I look in the internet space where I, um, my businesses are read. And let me tell you, there is almost no point in trying to build a big motor Rhonda castle, but there is a great impetus around speed and innovation and being ahead of competitors and everything like that. Because one thing I do know is.

Um, big corporations don't move fast, but as an entrepreneur, I can move really fast. I can pivot quickly and light that gazelle. I could be like dodging backwards and fours as I'm hitting it, heading in the direction of my vision. So is it, is it about. Or is it about  building the mode or is it about speed until you can get to a place of rest where you can have the time to build them out?

Like, what is it like, what is it about? Yeah, it's funny you talk about that. Cause I just did, uh, another session at, uh, NSU and the students. I talked about this, this concept that if you can actually choose an idea that has a mode. And you begin to think of the moat before you launch your idea or your concept, then you're much better capable of defending against the lions.

You're the gazelle. You're right. You're definitely exposed, but if you're a gazelle and you've got an army around you, you're in a lot better situation. And I actually think you can, when you first launch this. I truly believe you have to be paranoid from day one. You have to move fast, but at the same time, you have to be  thinking about how can I build that load?

How can I build the defenses? And you can do it. I've mentioned a few ideas already. We're on patents, trademarks, X factor. There are ways of building that. Am I saying, Michael, you need to move slow. I think you're mis-characterizing. My description here. I'm saying you need to be quick. You need to be fast.

You need to be that gazelle, but at the same time, unlike most startups, you also need to begin to think about how do we defend. And that's what most startups are thinking about. Grow, grow, grow, and they're not thinking about defend, defend, defend. I think it's a combination of the two, and I think you can actually have better success, even at the inception of the idea of your.

Yeah. I agree with you on that. Yeah. And I purposely probably miscategorized you a little bit, they're calling, um, about the mode and the castle and so forth, but you know, when I think about it, Um, as a, as a startup, if you're launching the startup gates and you're sluggish and slow, then you will be  devoured.

I can guarantee it. You've really got to, like you hit, hit, hit your stride and you just street. I know it's like I've watched many, many businesses over my career. And every one of them was launched in a sprint. Why you wanted your tape? That grant is quite often a grant, a land grab. You want to get that ground and so forth, but you're also right also, right?

That how do you, how do you protect it? And one of the things I I've sort of developed a habit of doing every single week is I do a, a mental SWAT analysis of my business, every single. And I sit down in the morning and I'm on a Monday morning and I think strengths, what are the strengths and what business are they going to go?

What are the strengths of my businesses? Are they going to be devoured? Where are my weaknesses? My business, um, where, where, where the, the exposures I've got.  How do I shore up those exposures? How do I minimize those exposures? Do you have a big single client? Is that, is that big seal client go to leave what's to stop them from leaving your business, um, that big single client.

So suddenly your revenue line collapses. Opportunities w where's my big opportunity. And am I really focused on that? Or am I trying to be focused on the 50 opportunities and threats? Where's my threats, by the way, just on the opportunities. One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of entrepreneurs do, um, is the, it's the classic saying?

My grade five teacher taught me well, Uh, good. Better, best, never let it rest until your good is better and your better best. And what that taught me was the enemy of the best opportunity is the good opportunity. It's not the bad ones. Just the good ones. Yeah. It's a good opportunity. But what's the best opportunity when you've got limited resources in your organization,  quite often, entrepreneurs, they are the resource.

Um, then you better be choosing the best opportunity otherwise that cheetah's going to run you. But the threats, what are the threats and for your business? Colin, you've got somebody saying on my club, I was going to ask you, Michael, what do you think Paul Davidson and Rohan are thinking right now with clubhouse?

Like, are they paranoid or you think they're paradise with Facebook? Uh, Twitter, Spotify, they're all breathing down their necks. I mean, they must be paranoid. So what do they do? Let's talk, let's talk about that one. They're innovating very quickly. I still, I think one day we're the first to market on social audio, audio media.

And, uh, I believe that they're innovating very quickly. So that's one of the techniques they're using. And the other technique is they raised a lot of money. They raised a lot of VC capital to compete. Can they need it too? Cause  they were in, like, they walked into the gladiator, like they walked into the chamber and they were ready for that.

You know, just have your thoughts. Maybe you have a few thoughts about clubhouse and Paul and Rowan, but otherwise we've got to move on. I know that. Yeah. Look, I think there's a good case study actually. Uh, when you think about clubhouse and had their behaving as the gazelle, because, um, they're definitely not a Facebook or Twitter or, or anything like that.

They're um, did the newborn in the block and the kickstand, the face of the other. They really did. They kicked Santa Fe's and my guess is they would have had a number of those companies, um, knock on the door and say, here's a big check for a billions. And they've said, no, that I'm just guessing here. So that's a guts move.

Um, so how are they actually responding? Um, I would agree with you calling just on that. They'd have to be paranoid. You just need to look at the number of  updates, um, until the clubhouse. First up and this insane, like I'm the middle of a tech development and the lecture stuff. And let me tell you, um, to do a deploy, um, is a big issue because you're, you're, you're pushing your code out there in, into the production environment and real people are going to be interacting and you have to be really careful with it.

And you'll look at the number of updates the clubhouse does. It's pronounced. The speed of which they're innovating is frightening. Like my guess is their CTO is probably not. Um, as, uh, as these, what was it? What's that saying that beacons will finish when morale improves. It's almost like that to his team.

I imagine he's like being in them, Greg, we ain't got to innovate. We've got, we've got to get this out. We've got to get this out because you know what someone's about to go along, eat our lunch and that's a paranoid mindset.  Um, it's not sort of saying, is, is Facebook. Well, or Twitter, go to eat my lunch.

It's assuming they are coming to the watering hole to go along and wipe me out. That's the mindset. So I agree with you on that. And they're, they're innovating and they just rather things they showed up, obviously the capital base and so forth like that as well. But the interesting thing I think about this whole space, And I know Colin, you and I've had this conversation a number of times is I don't think anyone really understands.

I don't think anyone really understands what clubhouse or this whole social auditory environment really is. And there's social interaction type environment really is. And that's an interesting challenge to call it. So, um, and I think it will pan out over time exactly what it is and that's where it gets really, really  interesting.

So, Michelle, do you have any thoughts just on that? What Colin said, but past. And what's going on with clubhouse and things like that. Because as a case study, it's, it's, there's amazingly good one. Yeah. I mean, look, they're in a tough space and you know, let's be candid here. Like I know they've taken some criticism in the market lately.

Like people think they should be growing faster or this or that, but I'm going to say that the. How many people, how many companies, how many products have been launched in the last five years that have been able to accomplish what they've been able to accomplish? So clearly they, you know, they are very aware, various toot and very responsive to what's going on in the market right now.

They're innovating and it's tough to be an effective.  It's tough to grow that fast. It's tough to, oh my gosh. We all know to have the growing pains that they've had and still persist. Obviously, you know, I would say I don't have any insight information. Of course I don't, but obviously their investors are very confident in them.

Um, because it shows in terms of the speed and veracity that they're growing and improving. How could you not be paranoid when you have Facebook on your back and Twitter on your back and read it on your back and who knows who else? Like I was reading some studies today about others that are, you know, coming right around the corner.

So it's a very interesting time. Um, clearly this was a HubSpot actually, um, Article I was reading about trends and social media. It is being recognized as a very edited, innovative channel and innovative  approach to social media. Um, especially in terms of, you know, it's all centered around people talking, you know, real time and people are looking at it as the, you know, the next evolution, the next improvement of podcasts.

So. Uh, clearly, uh, you know, they're hiring like crazy, they're throwing resources and money at it because they believe it's, you know, a very, you know, viable space and money's flowing there. So I know, you know, if I were them, I'd be very paranoid and I'm paranoid about much smaller things in my life and my businesses.

So I can only imagine. Yeah, that's so true. What you just said there, Michelle. And, um, you know, so we're talking, take a look at the topic of only the paranoid survive and is this true for entrepreneurs and how does that spill over out of the business environment and your approach? Shouldn't you be paranoid in your personal life too.

And what's the impact of that, or what happens to  when your business mindset translates into your personal life as well? It's all big, big questions. Now, if you're in the audience saying, you know what, let me tell you, I've got a story to share with you guys from my own experiences, entrepreneur, I'd like, love you to put your hands.

And we have having to the stage and we can hear your thoughts on this really exciting topic, but yeah, just as, um, as we do. So, um, Carissa, welcome to the stage. It's great to have you here. And Theresa, um, do you have any thoughts on only the paranoid. Thanks for having me. Yes. So I, the loving the conversation, and I have a little bit of a different take on this, this metaphor of whether or not we're the prey or the predator.

To me, it kind of solves some of the issues to think of myself as the  predator and the dream as the prey, because this means my job is to move fast, uh, and to outsmart figure out how to capture and get to that, get to that dream, get to that play at w whatever it takes. And so it encourages me to think about how.

To focus on and grow my strengths and, and look for these holes and, and look for that blue ocean or the, or the moat of where I'm unique and take advantage of that in every way that I can. So, yeah, that's just, what's come up for me so far in the conversation. Michael, can you hear me, Jeff? Tell them my experience.

And I think, I think it's have a different take. I think it's very important to be paranoid as an entrepreneur, but it's also very important not to be too paranoid.  I had a business partner who probably quoted Andy Grove three times a day saying only the paranoid survive. That was his mantra. That was his modus operandi.

And he took it to such an extreme though. That he basically approached startup life from the point of view that virtually everyone we encountered. I was out to pardon the French, screw him. Like everyone was out to take advantage of him and every business opportunity, every meeting we went into, he would go into it with that mindset, with that completely paranoid mindset that, that they're out to get me.

They're going to steal our idea. They're going to take advantage of us somehow. And you know, that made it very difficult, especially in the early days to. Partnerships to, to trust that we can enter into a working business relationship where both sides benefited. And it was a real challenge. He  took it to such an extreme that I felt it was a negative.

And, and I was always trying to temper his level of paranoia, um, and, and try to contact. Teach him or get him to understand that not everyone is out to get you right. That there are actual people who are honest and trustworthy and want to work with us and help us grow the business, whether that's by being an investor or being a partner, et cetera.

So that level of paranoia is a negative, in my opinion. The flip side is I think that the good level of paranoia should lead you to always have a plan B you know, and I talk about this in my book, from my experiences in the film industry, when you're making a movie. You know, you have to assume that ever something is going to go wrong every day.

Something's going to fail and you have to have a backup plan. So I think only the paranoid survive to me means that everything you do, no matter how  confident you are, you have to assume. Something could potentially go wrong and you have a backup. If you're starting a new marketing campaign and everything's lined up perfectly, you can't assume that it's a, in that it's going to succeed, that you're going to hit the revenue goal.

You know, if you're launching a new product and you have a target launch date, you can't assume that you're necessarily going to hit that target date. You have to be enough paranoid enough to understand that there are. Variables, there are things that can and will go wrong. And how are you going to proceed when the things do go wrong?

You know, what's your backup plan? What's your plan B for every step of the way. So I think having enough paranoia to always have a plan B is very healthy, but I think that having so much paranoia that you are unable to trust anyone or anything is not healthy for your business.

Yeah, Jeff, it's an interesting thing you bring up there. Is it really healthy for your business or healthy for you  personally? Um, as well. And the thing that I, I started to note down then when you were talking and about your, your friend, you were in business when business waves and everything, and how he was quoting the mantra of Andy Grove constantly.

Is it is Goodwill and paranoia on opposite sides of the spectrum. So you go to a, meet, a business meeting for instance, and if you have a paranoid mindset, you're looking for the person who is going to go along and do you in, if you go to a business meeting with a Goodwill mindset, um, uh, have you just translate yourself into being the prey versus the predator?

Uh, because I'm going to have going with. Or is there a balance between those two, Colin? What do you think about that? Is there a juxtaposition almost between Goodwill and paranoia and it's almost  like the, uh, the entrepreneurs be schizophrenia and have a bit of both when they go along and have their meeting as their business, uh, as part of their business, just suite of tools.

Okay. That's interesting. You bring this up because I often talk about. You know, when you have an idea for a startup, don't be paranoid, share your ideas with everybody, you know, because they're here to help you. Obviously you want to trusted group, you're not going to go walk into a bar and talk to some guy or whatever about your idea.

I'm talking about the people you. More often than not too many people hold on to their great ideas and they never share them, but I call it vetting, uh, vetting process. So I have an idea. And then Jeff knows about this. Michelle knows what this, I keep coming up with different ideas, you know, from shareholder blockchain to, um, startup  club, like, uh, guys we're going to, or guys like, and Michelle, we're gonna to.

Idea. And what do you think could this become a media, a media companies, startup.club. What do you think you share it, you share and share and share and share, and you get feedback and you get great ideas and they help you sharpen that sword so that you can win in that battle. And if you're paranoid of sharing your ideas, then you're never going to move on.

So I do think there's a time and place where you need to be open as a startup when you're in that early stage, you definitely need to be there as you grow and expand. I talked about building the moats. That's, uh, that's very important as well. And then ultimately you are in competition with these big companies.

You are in competition with the wannabe. You know, I walked into a Costco a year ago. I was so upset. I walked into  Costco and there was the product that we had invented at one of my companies. And we had a patent on it and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. And it was just, I was so depressed the whole afternoon that they would just do that.

And yet we had a patent on that. Of course we're defending our pot and we're fighting that, but I'm just saying like, you have to, once you've established it once you're there also, you do have to. These are your ideas. This is your intellectual property. This is your business. This is just start up. You do need to defend that.

You need to find ways of defending that. And I've talked about building the out earlier and you always have to repair a night's sorry, Michael, I'm rambling now at this point. Yeah, no, no, but you bring up some interesting things. Once again, you came back to patents and so forth like that. And I agree with you, pages are very, very important tools for the entrepreneur and if you're an entrepreneur and you're not sort of aware of the painting process, then can I  suggest you actually, um, educate yourself on that.

But just on that though, Um, what happens? Buring in an industry like many of the internet industries where it's, what you're doing is not painter patentable, but what you've got to do is you've got to move. You've got to move really, really fast and you need to be that gazelle or have the mindset of a cheetah, which is chasing down the prey, as Theresa said so eloquently.

That's my vision out there. I'm going to chase that down. Um, and what happens when you get to the vision Chris up and you chase it down, you find the achieve. Everything I give, could look at, um, was it, uh, how. From from Starbucks, he achieved an incredible vision, amazing vision for Starbucks. He leaves the company, the company rests on his laurels.

It begins to fall apart, and then they  get him back into the game and it takes off again. And he resets the vision. So, Chris, just on that, is that, did someone like a Starbucks or, or have you ever seen companies where they've achieved their vision and they lose their sense of parenthood? And they begin to sort of rest on their laurels and they need to be pushing forward to a new, fresh vision, but they don't and they begin to go backwards and slow down.

And yes, they've got the Mo, but they've also got the deck chairs out the front of the, uh, of the moat and they they've got their umbrellas out and people are bringing in. Bringing them drinks. Is it more like that? And what is it about entrepreneurship, which needs a really kick things and do a new, fresh vision.

Have you ever had an experience of like that Carissa? Well, working with a lot of entrepreneurs, I find people kind of fall into a couple categories. So there's the person. Who's  chasing money. Um, they, they want to, they they're going for the comfort. Um, and when that's the goal, I guess what you're saying is definitely.

Definitely a possibility where you get comfortable and you can kind of just sit on the tech and see what happens. And, um, but if you, if you really are that the cheetah, like, if, if you're like, like there's this breed of entrepreneur that you're not like you're, you're, you're dreaming and you have to try it out.

Like if that's in your blood, um, It's like that sitting still place is very uncomfortable. Like you either are new visions happening all the time and it it's almost like too hard to ignore them. Like you you've got the, you got this when you locked it down and you just have to wait for the next right ones that come, and then you go for it.

Yeah, but you used the word uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. Um, I've seen many, uh,  many, uh, entrepreneurs. They've got their deck chairs and they're seeing that they have the deck chairs they're seeing on the title. I'll tell you what that's pretty uncomfortable versus, um, versus being in the speed boat or something like that, um, which can weave around the iceberg and everything.

So, uh, it's a big challenge, you know? Being uncomfortable. Isn't that the mindset of an entrepreneur in isn't that in itself and mindset are being paranoid because you're relishing. The uncomfortableness is Michelle. When you, when you look at some of the businesses that you've been driving forward, is, is that sense of being uncomfortable, something that you relish or you sort of.

Oh, my gosh. I wish I could just be in that direction. Perhaps someone bring me a drink at some point. Like, what is it about being an entrepreneur and that sense of paranoia and sense of uncomfortableness that drives you?  Well, I don't know if it's a good thing first and foremost, because I think I spend personally way too many sleepless nights and it makes me a little crazy sometimes.

Um, you know, um, Kind of pivot a little bit on your question that I was thinking about as the others were speaking is for me personally, one thing that I have found that I have to be careful about, and I think a lot of people, you know, may make this mistake. Maybe they don't is being like overly paranoid about competitors.

Versus being paranoid over, making sure that you, you know, are executing at the highest possible level that you can and not forgetting things. Um, for me, you know, paranoia is more around execution, making sure I didn't forget things or you know, that I didn't look at  things that were obviously in front of me, the thing that's.

You know, more of a thing that I've learned as I've gone on in life is not being overly paranoid about competitors, because why that's not something I can control, what can I control? I can control what I do that I execute and that I'm doing my research and that I'm talking to folks and like trying to do that.

Thing and bring a good market, a good product or whatever it is, service to the market. What I cannot control is my competitors. And also what I have found through the years is I've seen people and I've made the same mistake before, like hyper-focus on something competitors doing. And not even knowing my goal, if they're even making any money out of it, like that's a really big trap that I feel you have to be really careful not to fall into.

And I do feel that it's more about execution and I  mean the full realm of execution on, on your plan, on your strategy. So that's, that's more kind of the lens that I try to look at it. You might call it paranoia, Michael, but for me, it's execution and making sure you know, that I'm communicating, you know, like the basic things I need to be doing that I don't forget that I'm not holding back the team that I'm not holding back the company.

Like, that's my worst nightmare, Michelle. I love what you said about the competition. And I think that's, that's a really important point. Whether it's paranoia or not, you know, too many people get caught up in worrying about what the competitors are doing as Michelle said. And really at the end of the day, our biggest competitor is always going to be ourselves and our company.

Right. Are we executing to the best of our ability? So I think that's great that you brought that up. Uh, Michelle, Michael, I'd like to push back a little and say that. I think you're, you're mixing, mixing metaphors a little bit when you equate.  Uh, paranoia with being uncomfortable. I don't think that they're the same thing at all.

In fact, I think, um, it's important to be a little bit uncomfortable, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can be uncomfortable and not be paranoid. And conversely, you can be paranoid and, and not necessarily being. The race car driver, Mario Andretti, you know, famously said something along the lines of, you know, if you're not a little bit nervous, you're not driving fast enough, you know?

And that's more about being uncomfortable than being paranoid. It's about pushing the envelope and really trying to. To, um, you know, exceed your abilities and exceed expectations for your company and really push to the point where you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable. And that goes back to what you said earlier about, you know, resting on your laurels.

Whereas paranoid, I think is more about. You know, worrying, you know, looking over your shoulder constantly and worrying that, that someone else is gonna take that piece of cake. That's supposed to be yours, that someone else is going to, you know,  as Colin was saying before, steal your idea or, or, or, you know, you know, be able to get through because you don't have a moat around you.

So I think. Being paranoid and being uncomfortable there may be related, but I don't think it's the same thing. And I think it's both are healthy in small doses. It's healthy for an entrepreneur as Mario Andretti said to push things to the point where you're, you're not a little comfortable, right. You're, you're all on the edge a bit.

Um, and it's also healthy to be paranoid enough to not assume that everything's going to go the way you think it's going to go. And that. Deal you make is going to be the right deal and that someone's not going to attempt to or succeed in pulling the rug out from under you from time to time. Um, that would be my.

Yeah, Jeff. You're right. I was pushing it there. I'll tell you one thing for sure. Uh, I was really hammering up there having a good dose of being uncomfortable. Good dose paranoia is great, but should we be consumed by it? That's a different question altogether. Um, and a great, um, a great  illustration for Mary and Dreddy, you're listening to the complete entrepreneur.

I'm we're looking at the top. Only the paranoid survive that famous saying by Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel. Now, if you're in the audience there and you say, look, I got some stories to tell you about that. Then please take up your hand. We'd love to invite you to this stage and hear your perspective on this fabulous.

But in the meantime, I just want to share a story from a business commentator. His name is Simon Sinek. I was listening to his story and, uh, he was sharing this and it relates back to what both Michelle and Jeff said, um, about competitors. And he said he was in a car going back from the airport. With a, um, an apple executive, you spoke with the apple conference and he thought he was rattled the apple executive a little bit.

And so you say, Hey, I spoke at the  Microsoft conference, um, the previous week and the apple executives said, yeah, that's good. I guess they showed me this, this incredible advice. They gave me one and it's called. There was, uh, it, he said, and it, it plays so many songs that it's so much better. Then, then there's the iPod and the apple executives, turnarounds, I undoubtedly.

And that was the end of the conversation. And it brings up the point of, should you be focused on your competitors or should you be competing against yourself? And should the paranoid be, how am I actually developing myself as an entrepreneur versus looking over my shoulder? What everyone else is doing around me?

Should I be focused on myself as this apple executives mindset was I'm competing against myself. How do I  make my products better? How do I make my improve my mindset and so forth and moving forward. And it's, it's in his book, Simon Sinek's book, the infinite game. He talks a bit about this, and it's a really interesting concept of the difference between companies that play the infinite game, uh, versus companies a play like the static game.

It's been pure paranoid about something very different and being paranoid about, am I learning? Am I expanding? Am I increasing my capacities? So Colin, is that more important? Doing something like that, like Simon Sinek was advocating versus paying attention. When I was saying before, they're doing a SWAT analysis saying, what are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

What are my competitors doing? What are they doing over here? What are they doing over there? Is there a balance for a, an  entrepreneur? Like what should they be focusing on? Or should it be all about them and expanding their own capacity? Okay. So I don't think there's anything wrong with doing a SWOT analysis.

I'm sorry, like you're going to sit there and you're gonna spend a half an hour. You're gonna figure it out. Your team's gonna figure it out. You're going to try to understand exactly what's going on in your marketplace. Um, look, our biggest enemy more often than not is not our competitors. It is ourselves.

Okay. We are. We have laws, we hold ourselves back and we don't often get out of the way of ourselves to allow our companies to scale. This is a problem. We talked about this on a number of episodes a couple of weeks ago on different, a different show. But the fact of the matter is entrepreneurs fail to scale and they fail to get beyond themselves  because they are holding themselves back and.

I don't know, Michael, I was sort of going in a different direction here, what you're asking, but, um, yeah. It's, it's it's yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. The fact that, uh, one of the things I've noticed about many business, uh, businesses is they'll grow to the capacity capacities of their founder or the grow, the capacities of the entrepreneur.

That's driving. And if that entrepreneur doesn't expand their own capacities and get input into them and develop themselves and everything like that, eventually they'll tap that. Um, and I've seen it in organization after organization, whether it's a, um, a not-for-profit, whether it's for a business or whatever, it just taps up.

It's exactly. Same thing. I want to bring this back to be a bit more personal because we are on the complete entrepreneur. It's in your relationships with your significant others. I  think that that is so true as well. Is what is your capacities, uh, your capacity to expand your relationship? What does that mean to expand your relationship?

Like, I'll look at myself on that. My, my wife, who I've been married for 34 years now. And I remember when I was first going out with her, I thought, oh my gosh, this is the most incredible girl I've ever met in my life. I love her so much and I couldn't possibly love her even more 34 years later or thereabouts.

Um, and, and I look, and I think I was so naive. What I didn't realize that over time is I'm sowing into the relationship continuously. The level of love grows dramatically. Um, and if I bring a level of paranoia into that relationship, that's a way of destroying that. So is that wrong? So in my business relationships, my level of trust and commitment  to say, in my case with PAC logic, we have some, uh, business relationships been 15 years now.

And there's a level of trust. There there's a level of almost comradery. And if I bring suddenly noise into those relationships, am I the being begin to destroy them? As Jeff said earlier on bed, uh, one of the people he worked with had that mindset is that, is that just going to destroy? Well, then we had the SWAT analysis we call on.

You mentioned, um, um, that's a good and healthy thing to do, and we need to be a little bit paranoid. The whole point of a SWOT analysis is almost having an aspect of paranoia. So what is it? The longevity of a business, like you talked about the castle and the moat earlier on Colin. And I actually believe you're right in that.

Yeah. Yeah. We've got the gazelle and the cheetah, but we have the castle in the mode and at some point in time, the  business does grow out. And it puts its roots down and develops those long-term relationships and those long-term relationships that really help it to thrive and not just become a castle, become a mega castle.

So what stops the entrepreneur? Um, from developing from a little house to a castle, with a moat to a mega castle, like w what is that? Is it a mindset thing Colin, you think, or is it lack of paranoia or they bring paranoia to their relationships? They destroy them, or like, what is it that then is, um, uh, undoing many entrepreneurs?

I don't think there's a one simple answer, but I will say this, that there are 28 million small businesses. 99% of businesses are small businesses. 99% of businesses fail to scale. And we spent two weeks on that topic on the cereal out per hour,  which is recorded at startup that club. If you want to listen to these sessions, I mean, but we're really trying to decode this.

We're really trying to figure this stuff out. Um, but I don't think there is one clear answer as to why that is the case. I will say that if I was to point to one thing that might be predominant in all these scenarios, it's the entrepreneur. It is the entrepreneur that fails to get out of their own way.

What made them succeed as a small business does not allow them to succeed as they try to scale to become a bigger company. And there's a lot of different things that go into that. Um, but I think particularly the personality of the individual is probably what's holding them back the most. And if they can come to that realization, if they can recognize that they have these weaknesses, that they have these, these issues that hold them back, I  believe they can actually step through that.

Take the red pill and scale or company. There was a matrix matrix, a matrix. Yeah, let me tell you. Yeah, it's a red of the blue pill for the matrix, the red pill. I can't remember which one's good. Exactly. Do you want to see you say goodbye to everything you've always known. It's almost like, yes. The blue pill is the good one or the bad, probably the matrix movie has got a blue and a red pill.

And that's all I know, but yeah, it's an interesting, interesting question. And this whole issue around. Um, paranoia and uncomfortableness and what's the scaling, the issues and all that sort of thing. And, and how it comes back to the entrepreneur. Olivia, it's great to have you on the stage and, um, here at the complete entrepreneur.

And do you have any thoughts on this  topic? Yes. Thank you. Um, I've actually never thought of. Um, as paranoia, but now I'm like thinking about it. I've had to learn the hard way, um, to start keeping myself accountable with my irrational fears. Um, I'm a single mom and I feel like my, uh, entrepreneurial mindset works very well in my type of family.

Um, and I've had to learn how to recognize irrational fears over positive theory. Uh, when it's an irrational fear is a fear that paralyzes you and it's not healthy, it doesn't help at all. But when it's a positive or healthy fear, it's keeping you safe basically. So throughout the years, I've learned to start analyzing my fears and bringing it down to earth into fact to actually use it to my advantage instead of the fear paralyzing me and not moving forward, basically.

Um, and  also I think the personality. Thing that Colin was talking about is very important too. Like if you get stuck in problems, like you're not going to move forward. So you have to learn somehow how to start solving those problems or things that come your way. Instead of getting stuck to just look for solutions, to be, and be open for those solutions and try things.

And I don't know, like the whole analyzing my fears has helped so much and not getting stuck and actually moving.

Well, let me tell you, you bring up a great point there. Olivia, let me tell you, are you, are you a deer in headlights? That's the question is that you've got that irrational fear does grabs you and that's the next level of paranoia, um, or where you have the mindset of, I know it's the train coming in at the end of the tunnel.

If there's the train's going to run me over or is it just the end of that? And the burst forth as  an entrepreneur, into a fabulous landscape of abundance. Yeah. What is it? And, uh, having that, that mindset of and recognizing is it or irrational fear or is it rational? Like, let me tell you if that is the train coming down to the downtown and you want to make sure you step off the tracks.

Um, and, uh, on the other hand, it's not always the truth. It could be just the end of the tunnel and that's what you've been waiting for it. And as Teresa said earlier, it was like, that's the vision. You've actually been fighting the hallways entrepreneur to get there. You're exhausted. You're running out and you finally achieve your.

And that is it time to reset your vision? Um, and is that an aspect of paranoia itself that you know what I I've got there and now I need to go along and reset. I've got there now. I need to reset. I've got there. Well, one of the things I've  noticed from this conversation that we've been having together today is the whole aspect of it's comes back to the entrepreneur and the capacities of the entrepreneur and the mindset of the entrepreneur.

Here's a question I may throw to you, Jeff. Um, which would be an interesting one. Is that, how do you think that many entrepreneurs or what can entrepreneurs do to expand their mindset? What is it that you found has been useful for you? That's allowed you to break out of the limiting capacity that you inadvertently bring to whatever adventure or enterprise you're involved with?

Hmm. Okay. It's a deep, deep question, Michael, I'll try my best two minutes for this one. Yeah. Um, well I think, you know, obviously, you know, mindset, attitude is important, you know, that, that whole idea of,  of, you know, to Mario Andretti's point being on the edge, I think you have to understand that you're not going to know everything.

Right away, you know, especially if you're starting a new business, especially if you're a first time entrepreneur and you have to be willing to, to go outside of your comfort zone and. Take on new challenges that you've never done before. The good news is in today's world. There's so many resources available to learn, you know, online.

So if someone mentioned something to you and you, you didn't know about it, you can find out by Googling it and almost find a quick tutorial on anything to at least get started. But I also know. You know, you touched on it before not using this term, but I think it's really important. Not only should a, should a entrepreneur be paranoid because only the paranoid survive and not only should be the, they be uncomfortable because, you know, if you're not a little bit nervous, you're not driving fast enough, but they also need to be self-aware and self-awareness  is really important.

And yes. By self-awareness. I mean that you need to come to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, because we all have them. And as an entrepreneur, if you're self-aware and you know, the things that you do very well and contribute very well to the growth of your company because of it. But you also need to know the things that, you know what I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not that guy or that gal, and I need to bring someone on or find someone on my team.

Who's going to be able to do that far better. Uh, than I could ever do it. And that self-awareness is really important, not just individually, but for the company. I think it's important for an entrepreneur to be self-aware about where their company sits in the world. You know, um, if you're not a biotech company out there to cure cancer, you may not.

Act as if you are right. If you're not really saving the world and there's nothing wrong with that, every entrepreneur is saving the world in a way, because you're providing jobs and income for families. And that's, that's a  wonderful service that virtually by definition, every business provides if you're hiring any employees.

So, so you are saving the world a little bit at a time, but you're not saving the world in the way that maybe other companies or industries are so carriers. And carry your company in a way that's appropriate for your place in the world. And I call that corporate self-awareness. So I don't know if I answered your question or came even close, but that's what I've said.

Yeah. Look, Jeff. I think it was really interesting the way you asked that question, but it's also be about being self-aware and it's really developing your emotional intelligence and understanding what makes you, you. To me, the adventure of life is not how much money do I finally I'm making and having my bank, the bench of life is actually discovering things about.

And what, what, you're good at what you're not good at, but it's not just a skill set. It's  the mindset? Like what, what is it about our minds that, uh, we we'd lock out as entrepreneurs from certain behaviors? Well, not other behaviors. What is about the mindset of an entrepreneur that says I'm going to take this risk?

Well, other people weren't, what is it about the mindset of an entrepreneur that pushes us? And it's all these things are really interesting. And this is a sort of thing we discussed in the complete entrepreneur. It's been wonderful having everyone here with us, but before we close things out, This has been a discussion I've thoroughly enjoyed and really appreciate my fellow moderators and also its speakers.

So comes to the stage. It's tackling the issue of paranoia is almost one we could unpack week after week after week. You know, um, it's been paranoid is a state of mind, but one of the things I've found from this conversation,  which has really helped enlighten me is it's all about expanding the capacities of the entrepre.

And, you know, as we expand our own capacities, we're going to expand. Our relationships will deepen our relationships with loved ones will go long and expand the relationships with our business partners in that process, all those sort of things begin to wrap. And around and centered around the capacities of the entrepreneur.

And this is the complete entrepreneur you've been listened to. But before we wrap things up completely, I want to hand it back to Michelle. Michelle, tell us what's going on with startup.club. Oh, there's been a whole lot of really interesting and exciting. Oh, my gosh, you know, things are moving so fast and it's super exciting, you know, it just keeps getting.

Yeah, right. Like it just keeps getting better and better. And for us, we just see so much, you know, opportunities. To work with the  members of the club and bring amazing content, which, you know, that's, that's our mantra. That's our mission around here. So please, you know, visit our website, www.startup.club.

We, you know, do a lot of work around here to record these sessions, to write blog posts, to do transcripts so that they can live. And you have them as reference points as you like. Also, we have an email list. We're working really hard to always get great speakers and keep, you know, keep the train on the track, so to speak.

So please sign up for the email list and when there's really cool, exciting new content or speakers, you'll get an email. So thank you. Yeah. Like, can I, I just want to emphasize that as well, is that, um, we talked about. About the entrepreneurs need to expand. Their incapacity is one of the best ways you can do that as learn from other entrepreneurs.

And that's what startup club is all about.  If you haven't signed up for the email, um, listen, you're not going to get spammed. I can tell you that. Number one, um, I personally have signed up for it. Um, and the reason why I signed up, because I want to expand my own capacity. And it's one of the easiest ways to do that is to learn from others and what a great environment club has provided us to be able to do that.

So this has been the complete entrepreneur. Um, it's a session that, uh, we run every single Thursday at 5:00 PM Eastern time. And we have a great time, really unpacking what it means for the business aspects of an entrepreneur, as well as the personal side of entrepreneurship. And I, once again, I want to thank all my fellow moderators and other people have come to the stage and openly shared their thoughts on the complete entrepreneur today.

But next week, boy, we got a topic for you. We're doing unpacking, managing. Without the answers. How do you provide an  inspirational persona to yourself, your staff, suppliers, and even the bank that you have it all together when you actually need. How do you mention that world? The ambiguity that when you don't have all the answers, because they're just, they're just not there yet.

The business's business is not at that stage. It's going to be a fantastic time. I look forward to seeing you at 5:00 PM Thursday next week Eastern time, and look, have a wonderful week. And may your business has been incredibly successful. God bless have a wonderful week. Thank you.

Question 5

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Accepted Answer

Monday Domains – EP04

 Hey, Rachel, how are you? You don't have to say anything. Hopefully you can record today. Hi Paige. Good morning. I'm good. I've got you recording this morning. Fantastic. I, you know what? I darn, I forgot to put the red dot, but I will tell everybody, and I don't think I can edit my title after I start rats.

All right. All good. If you want to tell us what your title is, um, what you would prefer it to be. We can add that in the editing. Um, but you're right. You can't edit it once the room started. Gotcha. Well, congratulations on all your success with startup club and we'll see you over there this week. And thanks for recording, Rachel.

Thanks so much, Paige.

All right. Welcome everybody to Monday  domains. Uh, my name's Paige Hal and I host Monday domains every Monday. And this was part of domain club and domain club was formed about the same time clubhouse interactions started really picking up in January and we try to make it like a club, like a clubhouse and talk about domain names.

And I think we want to always be welcoming to, uh, everybody and the, the three main constituencies I like to talk to or about are anyone who owns a domain, anyone who's managing a domain name, managing it for their business or for the company they own. Um, you know, what are some of the responsibilities too for owning a domain name?

What are some of the responsibilities for managing your domain name? Um, much like managing real estate or cars or business assets. It's becoming a very valuable asset of your. So we try to provide information, um, for anyone who  owns a domain name. And secondly, we try to be a resource for people that are domain investors.

Um, sometimes they'll call them domainers and sometimes they call it domain investors or digital investors. And that means you're buying more than one domain name that you don't own in your office. So you could be a person who likes to, you know, have your hands in the, in, in different pies. And you may say, you know, I'm going to own that domain for a project that I may do down the road.

Or I may just want to keep the. See a trend coming, um, or, uh, you know, maybe you want to own them for speculate and you either want to own, I'll either a large number of names or maybe a smaller number of names with higher value. So those are domain investors. And then the third group we try to speak to and be part of domain club would be, um, people in the domain name, industry, you might be working at a registry or a registrar or a service provider, um, in the domain name industry.

And this is a  chance where maybe in your community or in your town geographically, there may not be a lot of other domain investors or people you can talk domains with. So we try to use, uh, these talks on clubhouse in domain club, uh, to have a place to talk domains. So in many cases like today, I'll come with the presentation for the first oh 15 or 20 minutes.

And then I'll want to call folks up to either talk about what I talked about. Uh, see if they have questions or mostly draw on the resources that other domain investors have acquired and what they think about certain things. So welcome and they domains. I think we've got a good group here. We are recording today.

So even though you don't see the red dot, if you come up to ask a question or to share your opinion, you will be recorded and we should have those recordings on domain club. This week. So, uh, last week, for those of you that  joined us last week, we talked about domain appraisals, and I talked about the two main places where you can get domains appraised kind of instantly where you just type in your name and you get a number.

So it was real instant feedback. Um, and that was Esteban. And to summarize my thoughts on Esteban, it's very. Based it's based upon whether the system can correctly parse, meaning break apart your domain name, into the keywords that advertisers may want to advertise for, and then how much they may want to pay for that.

And they use that to divide the value for your name. So this was really popular back in maybe oh 9 2 0 15 0 16, where if you knew that your name might deliver some natural search results or some organic search results in an industry that sold cars, that's maybe a high click industry with a high  volume.

And so those two together Esteban was able to answer the question about. But how much is something worth that can sell cars or insurance or a mortgage leads versus something that might be selling a ringtones or something? You know, there was really maybe high volume, but low price. So I think that's still will, you'll get your most value Esteban keyword names to get some relative basis against.

Uh, of what something may be worth. And I use it to find out if I've totally missed something. Um, if I have a list of a big list of names and you do pay for their premium service, you can put in a list. So, but in general, it's almost guaranteed to be wrong because for a good name, it's almost guaranteed to be too low.

And for a name that's past its prime, uh, meaning that the keyword reason for investing in domain names has really declined. It's probably gonna  overstate the value. So, um, not a lot of folks use it anymore, but it is an instant way to do it. A lot of. Buyers may use it where they may search for domain appraisal online.

They may see a place to get an appraisal type it in and say, Esteban says, this name is only worth a thousand dollars. How come you're asking $8,000. And I think what you can usually say is if you look at the past weeks, actual sales, where what actually people are paid, it's usually in many times, not even close to an estimate number.

So I'll give you that. Second one we looked at was GoDaddy appraisals. And I talked about the GoDaddy instant appraisal system, which they have invented and they use their data to populate. I'm probably doing that for a reason that helps them. So they want to use it to help people buy more names and auction by painting a  picture that her name might be worth a certain amount.

So when they sell it in an expired name, auction, people should feel comfortable paying up to that amount, maybe to buy it. But if people aren't really that experienced in domains and they want to buy names and expired name auctions, that they might use their system to delineate which names are really good versus average.

I think it does a good job at doing that. If you've just got five or 10 minutes to look at a days, expired name auctions, if you're a domain investor on GoDaddy, you know, sorting for GoDaddy appraise value high to low is going to give you in general. 60 to 70 to 80% of the best names available that day.

And especially if you're a quality investor, meaning you're not looking for the hail Mary pass. You're not looking for the needle in a haystack that no one else could find, but you're really buy quality when it's available for sale at its  wholesale price. And you're trying to hold it for a time that an end-user or someone that can really put the name to work needs it, or won't, and they're evaluating with digs and pay based upon how much money they're going to make on their website or their company.

And that that's the essence of domaining is buying a domain name when it happens to be for sale against all the other investors that are looking at it and then holding it until such time as the perfect user or the user that's willing to pay the highest price. So in doing that. It serves a purpose, but I think what go daddy is terrible at is when you do have a retail buyer, you do have someone who wants your name for exactly the purpose it's best suited to do, and you only need to sell, then it's not going to help you decide what should for this name.

Hey, how much should I ask for this name? We think the most amount I can get is because you  only need one buyer to pay that. And I think that a buyer would love you to use the GoDaddy number, which is based upon averages, which is based upon the mean, meaning you take the highs and the lows and the middles, and you lump them all together.

But you know what, when you're selling a domain name, you're, you're selling it special as a unique, one of a kind name. So you don't want to mix it in with everything else and then come up with an average number. So that's what I shared about, uh, Esteban and go daddy. And I'll see if anyone comments either on a back channel.

Or if you want to pop up and, uh, and contribute anything. I'd love to hear what you guys think. Cause I don't have a monopoly on thoughts about this. Hey David Michaels, even though there's not a dot, I am recording. Welcome to Monday domains. Thank you. So, so on this topic about GoDaddy evaluation, I actually tweeted about the weekend.

So gain in.com sold for  $20,000 and I was able to, Hey, ranch, gaining.ca on Saturday morning. And then I quickly checked the go daddy valuation and it said $968 based on a previous sale for getting.com for 2040 $1, which would probably recognize being a GoDaddy auction price. And so what I'm suspecting is that the valuation is that they're using are their prices.

They're generating from auctions and. The, um, they're not end-user prices at all. They're just wholesale at auction. Yeah. I think you're spot on. I think you're exactly spot on. So what, what David shared was that if you think that you're getting, because GoDaddy does do a lot of sale or on their auction platform under buy it now, or offer counter offer, which we might call retail sales.

And we would  like factoring in to the prices that they come up with. I think with David, Sharon is not David. Do you think with the reported sale of Ganey, even though it wasn't on their platform, you think that'll make it into their appraisal system somehow or I'm doubting it? No, they don't. They don't, they don't extract data from named bile.

They only report that we keep that on what they, they sell their own internal field figures. So I guess if it was sold through, after Nick, that would be a different story. I don't think that happened. I think that's, um, great and sold it directly. I think it was spreading this smelled it. Yeah. Now there is kind of David you're probably up on this.

There is kind of a backdoor way to get some sales comps from retail sales on GoDaddy using the appraisal system. Have you ever done that? Well, sometimes it shows it, yeah. Praise the name, like a similar name seal to try to  appraise a different TLD that sames SLD. And it'll give you the number. Yeah. Or sometimes you might put in, you know, Austin plumbers and, and it may say we evaluate Austin plumbers at $1,931.

And then it'll say previous sales and it'll give you like three examples and it usually will take one side of the other. It'll either take an Austin name or a handyman name and say this sold for. 2,400 or 3,100. And I think there are some retail sales in there. And then if you click see more, you can actually, if you have nothing better to see, you can keep typing in your name and, uh, a large sample size of comparable sales.

But the important thing to remember there is those could be anywhere in the last 15 years that that sale occurred. But I think it is some helpful data just to get some comps. 

I think most of us like using a comp that makes our name look great, and we'll avoid using a comp. That doesn't mean our name, make our name look too good. Name bio. Go ahead. I think these comps are great for base wholesale valuations. So if you want to validate your pro portfolio on a wholesale value, not higher sale price, I think that's a great way rate tool.

And, uh, I think. And investors, if you use it, go daddy evaluation to all, to value your port. Yep. And they used to let you do more bulk stuff. Now they'll mostly do it. And if you have names, echo daddy, there's actually a column, uh, that has your GoDaddy appraise value. And if you clicked to download your account with all your data, you can download your numbers and it's a valuable column to have on your own database.

I have it in my spreadsheet and if I  ever want to do some error checking, maybe I'll take the column of my asking. And I'll divide it by the GoDaddy appraisal and then all sort from the ones that show the biggest disparities. And what it'll do is it'll hopefully one, tell me if I've missed inputted a price.

You know, if I wanted to put a, a sale price on a name of 14, 9, 9, 5, and somehow I only put it in there as 1495. Well, maybe it'll show up as having a, you know, a big disparity against the GoDaddy value. And that will point it out to me or it'll just remind me, why do I think I'm selling something for so much more?

Or why do I think I'm selling something for so much, you know, less than the GoDaddy appraisal and, um, it's an effective tool in that regard? Well, I wanted to go to a couple other places that exist out there to get appraisals for domain names, and we really don't have a good number of.  Um, you know, everything I talk about on Monday domains is usually trying to spur on innovation and it could be innovation from people in this room, people listening to this podcast right now, but we could use some more solutions here.

Um, if you think about manipulating data, big data, artificial intelligence, we should be getting better. We should be getting better than something. That's 10 to 15 year and GoDaddy. That's seven to eight years old. Um, we should be getting better and we're really not. So, but I'll tell you what else is out there.

There's a company called name worth out there named worth.com. I have no affiliation, a name worth. I'm not promoting them now, but, um, they do, they do a couple of things really well. And. Well, they do one thing really well. They did one thing. Okay. So if you put your name in there, I think you can do five free names a day, or they have some paid plans to do more, especially if you're trying to  wonder if your names are good, trying to have a third party endorsement for a high price, they are going to give you higher prices in general for a lot of your names.

And I'm just cutting right to the teeth of it. If you want to be able to have an appraisal that's higher than, uh, oh daddy, you might get it from name worth. We also pants and getting a zero. So I've found that I can input completely similar names where that may only have, you know, one little difference in a synonym and one's going to be 14, 9 50, which.

Categories and the other one's going to be zero. So that's my overall warning is you might get a high number, even if your name's not worth it and you might get a zero, but the one thing they do do super well is if you look at name worth and you put in your name and I put in one of my names, I put it in card, bid.com, C a R D B I D.

And I put it in there because  I liked it, but I also get a lot of inquiries on it. So it does seem to be one that resonates with a lot of people and they appraised it and thousand 500. So I'm like, oh man, I love this appraisal system. But the other thing that they do, if you scroll down to the bottom, if anyone's on named worth.com, or if you're listening to this and you go back later, they do a fantastic job of talking about one domain names in general, that they break Nate.

I tears T I E. And there's tier one names and tier two names and tier three names and tier four and tier five. And, and there's always exceptions, but in general, they're starting to talk about the idea that there are truly spectacular domain names. You know, one word, easy to remember brandable high industry into your one.

And that even though you can make some statements about tier one name, I mean, it may apply to tier  2, 3, 4, and five, the thing, and someone can say about a tier four name, oh, there's lots of substitutes. Or I can get something like that whenever I want. And that may be true about a tier four name or name, but you really can't extend that to tier one domain names.

So I think the idea that they introduced this idea of not all domain names are created equal, and there's some pretty clear categories. You can put some names in that are going to affect their values. Again, it doesn't mean always, there's always. So the rules, but in general, especially when you're negotiating or you're, you're doing that jousting.

I'm thinking about those of you in the audience right now that are domain names, sellers, and you're doing this jousting with an interested person, or you've reached somebody via outbound. And they're saying that they can get something for eight bucks. They don't need your name. And of course you love your name, but what can you show them?

You know what I mean, what you can share with them.  And I think this idea that out of the 150 million names that are registered, that your name is in the top one to 2% or top three to 4% of names. I think that sets apart this idea that it's not worth nothing, it's worth something. So I think that tears are really good if your@nameworth.com and you're looking at that.

And then if you go down even further, they quantify the fact that. First, there's the idea of what's the name worse? And then there's an idea of what should I pay for that name and what they do a good job doing? Like on a name, like card bid is they put the highest number on their 19,500. And they really quantify that.

They say this would be to an end-user that was motivated that once to buy the name and all I really need is on person. And what type of number do they think I should put on it to sell to that one person who's kind  of ultimate buyer. And I think what's important about that is that's, you know, in many cases, if you know, you're going to renew a name, you're going to pay eight bucks a year to keep it.

And, and you don't necessarily have to sell it to the first person who comes along. Then they have a thing called the retail level. And so they put on there for card bid 19,050. And they effectively talk about the fact that the price is determined by the buyers need, you know, the buyer is saying, I need it to grow.

And then they have a second category. They call market level, which means you have an end-user and maybe they don't need it right now, but they're a good buyer for the name. They may not be using it right away, but they're an interested buyer and they call that the market level and they would value the same name at $9,000.

So the idea is on a relative basis, you can compare names against each other, but then how much  someone should pay might be based upon how badly they need it. Then they have an investor level. And when they talk about an investor level, they talk about it and it's an investment opportunity. Someone's comparing it against all the other opportunities that might exist.

So they have a lot of maybe, uh, substitutes that they can buy. And then they talk about an industry level. They're down to 2,600, an auction level, which is I've decided to sell it. I want to sell it right now. I want to see who can give me the most money right now in an auction. And they put the value at 1300.

And then lastly, they have this thing called the liquidation level. They put the V $263. So for the same, there it's somewhere between 19,500 and $263. And the fact that most of our marketplaces after Nick say do Dan mixed together  domain names that are held by owners at all these different levels. I think it's what makes buying domain names so confusing for the buyer.

Um, because they're seeing names, not just that are different in quality, but the people are selling them with different motivations. But anyway, what am I finishing? Anyone has any thoughts on that? If they've even read down on the name or thing to the bottom here where it has this, um, you certainly might not want to show this to somebody.

If they're like, well, I put dating, so I wanted for 260 bucks. When you're saying, I think you need this name and I want you to pay 19 five, but if you're new to the business and you're trying to understand the industry, I think this was a really good way to see how different names can be at different prices and how you may see a name on a clubhouse auction go for 250 bucks that someone prices the next day at 19 five.

It doesn't mean they're going to get it the  next day. It means they're pricing it for a retail. So that's my summary on name worth. Anybody want to share if they've used name worth or send me a back channel message. If they have any other thoughts or anything I've missed@nameworth.com,

but at Harvey check my other back channel message. Um,

all right, so that's name worth. So that's another resource that you have to, um, you can do appraisals in bulk. Um, so if you pay for one of their higher plans, you can upload a bunch of them. I think you'll especially notice in bulk that you may upload. Like, I think I did, I did a thousand names there one day for a project I was working on and names that had the same ending, uh, you know,  Boston, something got a $9,000 appraisal and Chicago with the same word, got zero.

So it may not always be consistent when you're doing it in bulk. And so what I did was when I knew that was happening, I filled in the gaps for the same, you know, size cities and use the same high number. Um, but it does give you a value and it gives you another tool to play with. So that is my, uh, my take on name words.

Where else can you go for appraisals? Um, there's a company out there called accurate appraisals.com and accurate appraisals is owned by one of the biggest domain in the business. And he provides a service where for $99. You can get an appraisal certificate for your name. And that appraisal is made up of a valuation estimate from, I think it's three to five industry professionals that are all putting in their  input.

And that number is a combination of those offerings from experienced investors. And it's usually geared toward a number that would be a good number to ask of a retail investor. It's not really a good place for, you know, what should this name, trade aims jet or, you know, I'm, I'm looking to get rid of it this week.

What should I get for it? But it really is. I think used in my, the way I would use is when someone was just like page, I need some point of reference, you know, we like to name, we know it's worth some point of reference and. 'cause a lot of times in domain names, all we have is name and price. You know, it becomes a very short discussion and you really don't have that much to attach to an email or something.

And to the extent that you have anything, and even at a a hundred dollars, if it's a, you know, 10 to $2 million domain name, you know, having at least an appraisal that you can  disclaim and say, I had this buyer, or I have these done quickly for my name. At least it gives you something in a world of nothing.

So that's another source you can go to to one, see if you were right and buying a name that you thought was valuable and, uh, you, you submit it and then you pay your money. And then it takes, I think about a day or two, but sometimes within a day or two, you'll get a reply back in a and a number and an estimate.

Let's see, say no use to have bulk appraisals used to be able to upload your names to say too. And they would put them in columns of worth less than 500, 500 to a thousand, a thousand to 2000, but they got rid of that. They do have paid appraisals. Also. I've never done one there, but they have, I think a $99 service for a paid appraisal.

Um, you can submit your names to a marketplace if they're brandable names  and you could submit them, uh, to brand. Which will determine if they think it's worthy to list on their platform and they'll come back with a price that they think you said, list to that. So that's one way to find out it's not going to be a sale.

It's not going to me. It's going to sell, you're going to have to compete with hundreds of thousands of other domain names. But if you're looking for a third party to say whether your name is worth something you can submit to brand bucket or squad help squad help, you can either submit without a price or you can submit.

We think the price is back and say higher or lower. When I think of other ways to maybe find out and appraise the value of your domain name, um, Haim pros, this one, and you say, oh my gosh, I froze again. Oh, I heard someone said it was terrible, but you can go to name pros and they have a thread for domain appraisals, and you can type in here.

So you think it's worth and  you may get, you know, thoughts all over the board. And there may not be a lot of people that go to name pros anymore to give and to help others. They may just want to take and get names or give me your names for deal or whatever. But to the extent that you can engage some community and have people give you a, you know, a thought of what your name is worth, and that's another place to go and the prices, right?

Because it's free unless you have paid plan on named pros. But, um,

let's see. So that's kind of where, uh, you're going to go with different ways to appraise domain names. And I thought I'd have this little addendum to the list today. And so that's what we've covered. Let's see anybody have any comments and questions on the, uh, other places to appraise domain name? I'm sure that was a riveting and exciting topic, but I think it's good to know.

It's good to have as many resources as you  can. Berea. I'm trying to get you up. Hold on. Let's see. Uh, yeah, this isn't another source, but you mentioned Esteban. And I just want to mention that if you list your names on epic, that you know, that you can do for free, you don't have to move your, your names to epic.

You can just list them there. And when you download your list, they will have a column that shows you automatically all the Esteban, uh, appraisals, fantastic Bria. That's a great resource. And I think it can be used for a lot of things. As she mentioned, you can upload names that you don't have at epic as a registrar.

And you can both check your who is name servers. Sometimes you can check whether they're with the listing prices at say to what, after Nick, and then also get the Esteban appraise value. Um, And you could even take, you know, you didn't have names in different, uh, you know, different  registrars, different marketplaces, and you can list them all there.

Just, I do that for my own convenience just to have them all in one where I can look at them easily and organize them easily. Um, but they don't have to be moved there. So with this, the nice thing to know. Yep. And I do that. Um, and then I will say, if you are trying to manage the names you have there, you do have to kind of click the button that says only search among names at epic.

So if you put your whole portfolio in there and you want to just renew your epic names and you sort them from low to high, you may get a bunch of your other names, but, um, I'll throw out one other hint on Esteban, which is important. A lot of times you're going to put a name into Esteban that you're sure it's horse something.

I mean, that's just because it's one of your names, but you know, you really do think it has some value and it may come back with a zero and. What I learned when I downloaded, you know, four or 5,000 names with Esteban, I got their  higher program where I could submit 500 a day. And then I submitted 500 a day for two weeks.

And I do that about once a year, you get a lot of names that have zero, and what's important to remember is the estimate download to be really valuable because it can give you some search stats. It can give you some CPC numbers, but it can also tell you how esta bot parsed your domain name. So if you submitted orange county life insurance.com, because you thought it would be a good name for someone selling life insurance in orange county, but somehow the computer didn't parse it correctly and they parsed it as orange hill, auntie ice Lindstrom.

Then they would have gone and looked up the search keyword and the Google cost per clicks, based upon that incorrect parsing of Laurens county life Lynn learns Lynch,  and they would have come up with zero. And so what I found that is if I took those names and I went back into the appraisal and I looked at it and I clicked adjust keywords and put in the way it should be parsed correctly, I can actually change my estimate value because I was putting in the correct parsing that again, if it was worthy of it, that that correct parsing would have keyword demand and keyword volume.

So instead of just wondering, I wonder whether they parsed it correctly, if you do the download, or if you look at the details of an estimate appraisal, and you may be looking@itatvaluate.com or other places, then you can see if they parsed the WordPress. To know if they came up with the right appraisal.

So that's kind of a deep dive tip, but, um, it's something I've learned over the years.

All right. Now let's get to the fun part of today's  show. And I do want to ask some folks to come up and share if they want to anyone registering meta domains lightly. I sure am. I love meta domain names. Why do I love meta domain names? Why should I be out there trying to hand register and pick where I think lightning is going to strike domain names with the word meta when everyone's been doing it for the past six months and everyone outside the domain industry.

Read the news on Friday that Facebook's going to be called meta, even though they're really not. And then they think, oh my gosh, we need to buy domain names. No one else would've thought of that and they're buying them. But at the same point, a lot of people are creating companies to succeed in the metaverse and they are naming those meta.

So whether you're buying them to sell to other speculators or to sell the new  companies, what does it look like to buy meta domain names right now? And so what I did was last Thursday, I started running lists of names for the show. And what I found out was between last Thursday and this morning, the list of 500 names that I was going to show everybody this morning is, is missing a hundred names that have been taken just between last Thursday and today.

But what I've done is I put up some available names to begin with Metta, and I put them on the website for Monday domains, which. It's an abbreviation. It's M N D. So like M and M from Monday, M N D. I'll make sure that's correct. 21, which is the year M N D 20 one.com. And what I'm asking folks to do is if you see a name on there, we're going to talk about them.

But if you want to register it, go ahead. But I, we're kind of a  gratuity of $10 a day, just for the fact that maybe I came up with the idea and you could say, oh, I was thinking about that name at the exact same time you were paid. Well, that's fine. But in most cases, if you're getting the idea from this list, uh, honest Abe, who I used to do this for a couple of years where I would put domain name suggestions out, uh, honest, Abe says, check $10 to pay, listing the name.

And you can either do that through PayPal or Zelle or, or the money app. And so if you go to M N D 20 one.com. And then you clicked a black bar there. It says, click here for honor fee domains. And hopefully that's going to take you to put out a spreadsheet. I'm just testing it out right now. There you go.

So I thought we'd talk about some of these today with the idea of the way I look at hand registration domain names is I shouldn't want any of them because in a perfect world, anything of  value should have already been purchased by someone who wants to start that business. And if not by someone who wants to start that business, that a bunch of speculators have been looking at this list for the past two or three weeks or two or three months, and they would have bought everything available.

So what am I doing? Look at this list, being the last one to show up kind of like showing up for a yard sale or garage sale at three 30 in the afternoon, you know, anything great. What have already been paid? So you have to say to yourself, going in everything good should have been taken. And then if you sat back and just said, well, what's my choice.

Then page is I just have to sit there at the computer and, and think up names and then see if they're available and think up names and see if they're available. Well, you're going to find out that everything you want is taken, and then I show you this list and you say to yourself, well, everything that's available, isn't worth anything.

And you throw up your hands and you say, that's it. I knew  this was a racket. I'm not going to do it. But what I say is let's look for exceptions. Let's look for things that somehow have made it through the cracks. No one else has found them either because they weren't searching in that direction. That thought didn't enter their mind.

We're in many cases, they didn't have the patience to go through. Like I did about 34,000 different endings for names to come up with this list of 500. They just thought, well, I'll just buy a couple. Or the other thing that happens in domaining is people get a list of like this. So 400 names that are available and they start looking at them and going, oh, I don't like 'em.

But then they say, oh, that one's pretty good. And then they just say, oh, the simplest thing to do is just buy. So if you buy them all, hopefully you'll send me $4,000 at 10 bucks a day and they just buy them all this hell, look later. So I think that in between that is the fact that domaining is such an interesting business in my opinion,  because there's no place to go to say, what is the best.

Domain name I can buy. Now we do have spinners S P I N N E R S at different registrars. And if you go to GoDaddy and you say, I want to get mega.com or metta.com, sorry, mehta.com. Then it'll give you some suggestions and that's true that the nothing, but I think at the same point, all the registry can do is it can answer the question is a certain name taken or is it not?

And so in general you could think up a great available name, type it in, see it's available. I find myself usually checking the spelling once or twice asking myself if I really want it. And then I would say if you're buying a bunch of names and bulk know what your budget is, whether you're buying 10 or 20 or 50 or a hundred names. 

And as much as it pains me to say it, even in a fast moving space, like Metta, there's something about when you first see it, that all you see in it is the positive. All you see in it is the possibilities. All you see in it is the potential. You're looking at it with rose colored glasses. I dare say, if you're, uh, courting to use an old word, you're looking at a member of the opposite sex or the same sex and you see them, you're, you're, you're, you're seeing them with every great thing about them magnified.

And I think that happens with domain names. I think the farther you go from the first time that you saw a name in some ways, the more rational you're going to be about just how rare and exciting that domain is. And I think a lot of us see this when people inquire about our domain name, sometimes you want to respond with the price really fast and then close the deal.

Because if they get a day to think about it, they may go, ah, it  wasn't that special. But when doing had registrations, if I was doing them with the word, like golf or green or insurance, I would definitely ask myself, how many am I looking to buy. Make the list of all the available names, rank them among the top ones.

Keep searching, keep trying to find more, keep filling my pipeline with more available names so that the best names will rise to the top. And I'll buy the 10 or 20 that I want. But on something like this, that's moving pretty quickly. I did find myself registering some as soon as I saw them, but let's talk and see what we got out there.

And, uh, let's see, who's available to help me talk about some available names and whether or not they'd be good Mehta names to read. Let's see. Let's see if Mike's available. Mike. Doesn't do a lot of Metta, so maybe he's a good person to ask.  I think he does know, find out the second. Let's see who else was out there?

Buying Metta names were going. You're buying Metta names. You looking at men and names, but he is always looking for names. See if he wants to come. Anyone, if anyone else wants to help me evaluate these Mehta names, as I talk about them, come on up. I'd love to get different perspectives. You will be recorded on domain club, but Hey Mike, how are ya?

Have you gotten a Metta bug or what do you think I'm in my car and the wind. Isn't uh, the microphone. I'll give you an input. You got it. Thanks. Re-do how you doing with Metta names? Are you a buyer, a seller or you're on the side? Well, I just picked up a handful of domain four Matta domains, but, um, um, one of the name I like to tell you is Metta cool with a k.com and I think this is going to be a branded name.

dot  com. Is that something that you bought? Yes. Well handled it. Yeah. So what I've done on this list, again, for those of you listening and for those of you listening during the week, it's still up there. It's M N D 21, which stands for Monday domains in the year of 2021. And I put some of the available names were available last week.

And I checked again this morning and what I was doing, I was looking for names and different areas. And the first thing that I think contributes to a good domain name right now, the number one thing that I think contributes to a good domain. Is it linked? I think short names in general are one of the first factors you should look at.

So what I did was out of the names that I was looking at, I went ahead and sorted this list by the length and what you're going to see as a lot of names that are Metta. And then they have three characters after the name. And so this is probably the first 60 names on here. If you're looking at this and I'll read some of them  off for those of you that are driving or listening.

But what I was doing is the first thing I was looking at when I looked at these lists of prospects was I had sorted them low to high to see anything short, because I just think short is so valuable. It's going to be easier to remember. It's going to be easier to type. If you have to spell it to somebody.

The fact that you don't have to respell Metta means you, most of the ones I'm going to share with you have three letters after them means you only really have to share three letters. The second reason I put a lot of these Metta names on this available names list. And again, if you take any of these, you're, you're welcome to it.

But I do ask a $10 kind of bounty or tip, uh, for, for giving you these suggestions is the fact that the three letter domain space is really popular in our business. And a lot of us think about things like initials or short words or what another trend that's happening now is. A word without the vowels and that  you can have a domain name that has the word without the vowels.

And that, that is kind of trendy speak or cyber com speak for it. So some of the ones, the first one I put on here was Mehta two O with the dash. So it's Mehta dash two oh, sale page. That's a terrible name. Well, it's probably why it's still available to be registered. But then again, if you look and you say, are we going to have a time when people are like, well, this is, this is the second version of Metta.

And there are enough of those people going to want to be meta two. Oh, to put a dash in it. I don't know, but I think it's a reasonable, at least prospect. And it gives you an idea of what's available out there. And most of you should say, I don't want that name. I don't want to hold that name for five or 10 years, but if you're trying to buy a hundred or a thousand, maybe that meets your, uh, So what I did with these three letter names, I have some that are just seem to be popular initials for something.

Again, you hear Braden and everyone talking about something that has a lot of  potential users. So I looked at a name like Mehta APS. So it's not apps like a PPS, it's just Mehta APS. So if someone comes up with something, cause that's all you're trying to do, you're trying to pick where lightning is gonna strike.

Someone comes up with something called APS in the metaverse. Then they may go for meta aps.com and that's really what I'm buying. Um, I'm buying the potential that someone may want this name in the future and because they price my investment and only $9. To be able to take a chance that someone may want it in the future, then that's domain investing.

So some other popular three-letter initials after meta that I put on the list were CMX, Mehta, CMX. I liked the exit ticket. Sometimes it means exchange. So you just think about someone creating some type of exchange. And even if it has a longer name, that Metta CMX would be short. When I put on their Metta  DRX I put on their Mehta G and S.

Um, Metta PGX, uh, Metta PRG, you know, is that Metta program? No, but is it kind of three letters that hint at program? Yes. So when I just came up with some different options with three letters after Metta, cause I think the number one reason someone might buy a domain name is length. The first group of the meta plus three letters I came up with were names that were available among all the possible available names.

And you got to remember almost two or 300,000 are taken. Now the first group was ones that had just three letters that seem to make sense. Then I tried to find some pseudo brand doubles where you can say that. In such a way that it almost sounded like a one word name, but it had metal in it. So maybe that's like Metta a G no, that's not metallurgy.

The first one there it's Metta AGY but  again, you take what you can get. Um, Metta Meditech, Matayo mutt tacho. So is that a brandable name while it's only seven letters and it's gotten Metta, um, met Matiko M a T H E K a. So maybe you're looking for a short name to brand your company. You're going to be in the metaverse and I, and maybe you're going to see this on an aftermarket and pay three to 10 grand for it.

Matar, tow Meditech, uh, Metta took Metta to UK. So again, I'm not saying these are great, but this is what's available. And this was how I, Adam was first. I looked for length. Let's see then I went to names that were four letters, Metta plus four letters afterward. And I added some CVC V's to this. And what I mean by that is everyone would love to have a CV, cv.com and you might want to brand your name four letter brand.

And I thought there was some symmetry between  having Mehta at the beginning of a name and then four letters afterward because Metta was a CVC V itself. So I put the names whenever I can find a Metta CV. I put that on the list as a prospect. So metaphor once I could, could I just suggest you could explain what CVC V is in case some people don't know where listening.

A lot of times you can define a name, um, based upon the characters and, and you, if you're searching for names, you can search on a lot of places for CV, CV. And what you mean by that is I want the first letter to be a continent, the next one to be a vowel, the next one to be a continent and the next one to be a Val.

So I think Hulu is probably the best example of this. There was a time when most people couldn't get one word dictionary, domain names. So they wanted to gravitate toward a short word that they could use to describe.  And among all the four-letter words, they decided that this concept of a CV CV would be popular.

And so they went for names that were consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. So some of the other ones on here,

let's see again, you're probably laughing Mehta race. Met us Sodi, Metta OD Metta. So again, you say page, why would I want to buy Mehta Tabi? Well, the only reason you'd want to buy it is if you were going to list it on a brandable marketplace and people were looking for eight word names, begin with Metta, and they had a CVC V pattern or just, they liked the sound of it.

That at least you're showing them something that I think is going to be appealing. Uh, Metta, Tano, Metta, T a N a. And again, this was the biggest change in our industry in the past 10 years where we've gone from people wanting to always call  their names, a logical keyword based name, like meta book or meta metadata or something like that.

Because most of those are usually taken. They go with something that's going to be the name of their company and they want it to be unique. They don't always want it to be a word that can't be trademarked because it means something, but they want a unique word and that that's become a big part of our business.

So I put a lot of on here in the eight letter category. met a VOCA, met, uh, met, uh, what else? I got a Tabi. So anyway, that's why some of those are on there. So if that fits your needs and want to grab a couple, not saying to saying, if you do, at least, if you found it from this list, send me 10 bucks. Um, let's see.

We didn't have too many Mehta dictionary words that were four letters. They were still mostly brandable. We did have some interesting words like Metta NIMS. I found. So you have  homonyms and synonyms and antonyms. Well, maybe you invent N Y M S. So I put that on the list. spelled P H I E Metta feed.com. So again, someone could find this on GoDaddy and get it for a registration fee or they could like it enough that they pay it as a premium.

Um, met a brick without the C. So Metta B R I K. Metta Boyd kind of sounded like a robot or a, an Android or something like that. Uh, Metta Azule is a U L so the color blue in Spanish, I color green in Spanish, I think, or blue-green Metta Zul. Um, so again, that's kind of what you see out there is not, you're not going to see, Hey, is Metta face out there as a meta book out there.

Now it's probably taken people have run the list of all the most popular words and, and, and grabbed the ones that were good. So the only ones you're  going to see on this list are what's left. The Cujo C U G O a metaphor photo is a CVC V. Let me see what else is on here, a man. So you say, well, what's Mehta man.

Be, I don't know. It can be like a command in the metaverse, but again, it made it on here because I thought among the three or the 35,000 and I looked through it, it was just an appealed, you know, I thought it was in the top one to 2% of available Mehta names. Let's say if there's anything else. Great. So then I had some that were Metta plus a dash and then a forward name.

And for me it's gotta be something pretty recognizable. So I got medicase metadata, D O C K Metta, hyphened, doc, and metadata. Anyway, if you go down from there, some of the available names are Metta beams. so like integrity, but meta GRI Metagenics.  You want to invent some beef jerky for the metaverse that's available, metabolic Mehta, Trino, some type of amino acid for the metaverse Metta boggle metabolize with an S Mehta phonics.

Anyway, that's what's on. There are different, uh, words that are available. Uh, I sorted them by length. Uh, was an interesting one, like therapeutics, Mehta, divisor, Metta damping, uh, had some dashboards, Mehta fiction, Mehta dash fiction, a breakout. Metta Metta hairball. There you go. If you've got a cat NFT and you want to call it Metta something that was one of the joke ones I've put on there.

Um, then you get to longer names. It's a little tougher, but Metta Metta in duction, couldn't figure out what that might  mean, but I know induction is kind of a technical word, Mehta, preserves, Metta phalanges, like fingers in the metaverse. You can make NFTs of Hans meta data trader Medis cybernetic. So, anyway, that's what I found.

So if you're wondering what you're missing out on by not going to hand register Mehta names, that's what's left and it could confirm for you that you shouldn't try it either. Or could have you say, Hey, I like a couple of those or. You might be able to sit there and say, huh, that reminds me of another way to go look at them.

Uh, and maybe that'll help you. So when searching late in the game, I think you want to be tougher on yourself, but at the same point, you can maybe find something in here that, you know, we've seen meadow names flipping a month, and I know there's some of you that are like, don't say that page, people going to think you can buy domains and sell them within a month.

But if I  had my choice in domain investing between investing and what I've been doing for the last 15 years, that's based upon logic and predictability and has been well with. And our industry is relevant to maybe four to 5% of the public. And you tell me that 10 to 20% of the public is interested in Mehta now, and this is the first chance they're going to have to interact.

Yeah. I want to have some names in the space, you know what I mean? And I think that hopefully one day we'll do a better job of marketing as an industry, so that every worthwhile category of category, domain names of geo domain names have vanity domain names. We'll have lots of interested buyers excited about buying them.

But right now I'm trying to learn what I can from this, you know, once in a decade, demand for domain names around Metta  to see what it looks like when the public comes calling, what are they trying to buy? And right now my conclusion, and I'll wrap up with this. Most people that have never been a domain investor come in and still think like a Cybersquatter.

And as much as people say domainers or cybersquatters, and I don't believe much of the domain name industry is anymore. For some reason, when people hear about domain names, even if they've complained about cybersquatters for years, the first thing they're going to do is try to buy Metta McDonald's or medical Coca-Cola or Metta, NFL, and say, man, one day, they're going to have to buy it from me.

And that's just me studying human behavior. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. That seems to be what they want to do. But hopefully, also companies want to build in the metaverse. They want to get some names on board and hopefully I'll keep selling them. So  that is Monday domaining with Metta domains.

Berea or my crew, David, how did I do, was I too pessimistic there or awesome. Can I ask a quick question? Did you use any tools in compiling this list for this list? I used expired domains and I searched among names that have been deleted and not reregistered. And the reason I did that is because I've already searched the top 20,000 dictionary words, and I've already searched my list for animals and for colors and for sports and all that type of stuff.

And so what I wanted to get a look at is just the idea that at some point in time, cause you got to remember the men of the word Mehta has been popular before now. Um, and, and even metaverse the, the Metta trademark that Facebook bought was from a Canadian company that got it in 2017. So I looked and I said, maybe someone bought a Metta  name in 2016 and dropped it in 2017.

So no one was looking for it then, but what I also have to tell myself is for the last three years, nobody wanted this name for registration fee. So in this case I used expired domains. I looked in, um, deleted names in.com. And then I'll give you page house pro tip for searching meta domain names and expired domains.

I can put in stars with Metta. And then as I started to get words that were contributing too much junk to my search, I can also say, but don't give me names that start with. And it's true that I'm going to miss out on Metta and then anything that starts with L but at least I was able to throw out everything that was metal finishing or metal, this or metal that, and then I found that I wanted to get rid of Metta physical  and metabolic, and I could slowly get rid of those words.

So that most of what I was looking at over time, I think I got rid of Mettery. I put that on exclude. That's a city in Louisiana, so I wasn't having to look at those over and over again. So that's what I used in this case for you. And, you know, paid TV is really helpful when you exclude the metal, because that's very true.

And I have some metal domain names and only like two meta domain names. But if you thought you might be missing something immediately after that search, what you can also do is then. Just names that start with metal, because then it's very easy to scan quickly, you know, list of, of a lot of names. If the first whatever is, is very similar.

So you can make sure that you don't miss out on anything. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And you can even put the filter for only give me names and English words. So you'll only  get metal. Plus something in English, you know what I mean? Uh, but it's funny. I actually, I don't know if I registered anything, but I was seeing some, um, metaphysical names that I kind of liked.

You know what I mean? You kind of stumble across something when you're looking for Metta, but I saw some metaphysical and some metabolic names that I was interested in and. That also happens to me. I search a lot for names, Indian ology, and I find myself having a lot of names ending in technology. You know, I'm looking for like a brandable, like domain ology, you know what I mean?

But because I, I do that. I see a lot of names with technology at the end, so it doesn't matter how you find it, but I liked that. Tip my thing. No, of course in 13 or 14 months from now, when people don't get the 10,000 hundred thousand dollars million dollars that they're asking for their hand registration that they just got yesterday and they drop it to save 10 bucks, then you'll be able to  pick it up, reprice it reasonably and sell it.

You know, I really think that's accurate. And um, because we have this arbitrary length of a registration being one year, you get a abnormal sense of where the line is. I call it like the bath water line of what's what's registrable and what's not because especially in the first year that term hits everything that's registered even after a month, if the owner knows they're not going to renew it, it's still going to show up as registered for a year.

So it's kind of like going to a concert and you've got a lot of people that bought good tickets that aren't going to show up and, and you have to buy seats farther away thinking that all those seats in front of  you are going to be in demand. You know what I mean? And after the first year you see that a lot of those people didn't renew.

I, he didn't show up and you're like, wow, I could be sitting way up there, you know? Um, but, uh, so yeah, it's really interesting. Uh, How that one year time period works. And if you think that name has legs than waiting for that first year is not a bad strategy. Another of a, just a, another tip when you're in the filters in a expired domains that, uh, that net, um, I mean, probably most people know this, but not everybody.

Um, on the bottom, right. There is a, you can ask for just available names. Also, if you want to see like 200 at once, you can switch it to 200 per page. Um, you can choose the length of the names if you only want it up to a certain number of letters. Uh, things like that. Just like mention that.

Yeah, absolutely. So. For a  while I was searching without hyphens or digits. And then I realized, no, if I could buy Metta 90 three.com, I would probably do it. You know, um, there might be some number patterns that I wanted to look at. And then I, I accidentally lost my windows, so I had to reset it. And then I was seeing some dash names that I thought would make the prospect list too.

Um, and so for every absolute, when you say I'm knocked in to look for one thing, there's always a time. You know, that may not, that may not be true. So two weeks ago we did the same thing and I put up some names that were available at say two at the time. And if you go to the MND 21 link, um, it takes you, if you click the little black box, it says, go to page house $10 honor names.

I did leave up, uh, in the Google spreadsheet that you see the list from two weeks ago too. And I haven't checked to see,  but I did put on that one before at the same time, you're looking for hand registration names. You should also be scouring the marketplaces for maybe things under 500 or under a thousand dollars.

And what's funny was on that day, I told myself, you also have to look at your names and are they listed for buy it now and adjust those. And I tried to adjust a name I had at squatting. And they wouldn't, I didn't, I asked for the re evaluation and they didn't get back to me in time. And it actually did sell, uh, for a PR.

I mean, I got the money. I'm happy to get a sale, but before you do anything, trying to get new names, it just reminded me to take care of my own knit. And first look at my, buy it now. And what I would have done in hindsight is when I asked for reconsideration at squad health for the price I would have, I should have changed it to make offer.

You can take your squad, help Dame and take the  fixed price off. And I should have done that. I should have changed the fixed price to, um, make offer while I was asking for the reconsideration. So, um, again, I'm glad to have a sale. I would love to have the sale four months ago of this name, because it began with Metta.

I've owned it for three or four years, but, uh, boy in today's March and I. Probably could have got more from the same buyer, but anyway, that's what I've learned about men and names. See if we have any other questions or comments?

Question 6

TRANSCRIPT: SE.Club – EP34: Why Do Only 1% Break Through?  (10/29/21)

Accepted Answer

We run this show every week and we've done it now for a boat. I don't know, seven months now. And we have dozens of episodes that have been recorded, really phenomenal episodes that you can check out. And I'm just going to pin a link at the top of the room.

 Www.startup.club, if you haven't already done so you can actually join the mailing list, but you can check out if you go there and you click on recordings and you click on the serial entrepreneur hour, you can see the 20 or so or 30 recordings that we've done. We've covered topics, everything from exiting your business to scaling your business.

 We've had speakers like Fern, Harnish, and Patrick Theon, and we've had serial entrepreneurs come on and speak and talk to us because this show is all about what does it take for an entrepreneur to start scale, exit, and repeat that process over and over and over again. What is that secret formula? You know, is it dumb luck?

 Is it skilled or is there some formula that exists out there that we can learn that help increase our chances of starting scaling and exiting a business? Well, that's what the show is all about. Uh, today's episode, we are doing an open mic today. So if you're in the audience, say guy got to get you on stage.

 He's our co-host today, guys. Thank you for coming in. Sorry about the. Um, we're talking about today. Why entrepreneurs fail to scale? There are 28 million small businesses in the United States. 99% of small businesses are small and do not scale to become larger businesses. Now, why is that? Why is it that only 1% breakthrough?

 And, uh, we have guy Cooper here today as well, who is a consultant, a sales consultant. And we've, he's joined us on a number of, uh, episodes over the last few weeks. And he's helped us out. He was the one who came up with the idea of this topic about three or four weeks ago. If you're a serial entrepreneur, you're in the audience, time to raise your hand, time to come up here and tell us your theory as to why you think.

 Small businesses fail to scale. They failed to become big businesses. And let me tell you this I've run about a dozen businesses in my lifetime and the small ones are just as much work as the larger ones. In fact, I would argue they're arguably more work involved for the entrepreneur because you don't have the leadership team around you to help, um, help lift some of the work that you need to do, uh, in, in these companies.

 So small business can be very, very. All right today, our lead moderator is Michelle van Tilburg. I'm calling C Campbell and we have Jeffrey sass. Take it away, Michelle. Thank you so much, you know, I'm particularly excited about this topic. It can be a real challenge that actually will, could just bankrupt you if you're unable to scale.

 So I I'm challenging, um, those in the. To think of scaling on many different, in many different facets. It could be failure, for example, to be able to raise more funding or initial funding, pasture, initial prototype. So it could be you failed to scale because you cannot raise capital. Cannot bring in and convince new investors.

 Failing to scale may be that you're unable to acquire more customers in a cost effective manner. So in other words, your lifetime value of your customers, um, does not, it's not less, I'm sorry. It's not more than your acquisition costs. That could be another area. That could prevent you from scaling. Um, additionally, it could be employees you're unable to attract and hire the right customers.

 It could be your executive staff, maybe your CEO or your, you know, your C-level team, whatever you might not even go that fancy with titles as you're scaling, but maybe you don't have the right talent to move you to the next level or. It could be, you can't get, you know, and these times we're having a lot of these, um, um, issues.

 It could be that you can't, you can't get inventory or it's too expensive, the inventory, and you can't sell it at an, at a means that people will convert and buy. So there's a lot of different facets to scale. It's not just, oh, I, you know, don't have enough money and I can't grow enough. You have to really look at all the components, human and non-human to really be able to scale and get that formula.

 Right. But before we start and before, um, folks in the audience speak are more people here on the stage. Uh, please remember that we are recording the session. So when you do come to the stage, you are consenting to speak. All right. You know, Jeff, I know that you've run lots of new businesses it's successful and you know, maybe otherwise, right.

 It happens to all of us. Um, I'd love to hear a story that you have first. Yeah. Uh, thanks. Uh, thanks, Michelle. And just as a, as a reminder, we are recording this show. So if you do participate, you are, um, you are giving us permission to record you and I give you permission to record me. Um, yeah. You know, scaling, you mentioned, you know, all the different ways you can fail to scale.

 And I think, you know, one of the key things and, and, you know, Uh, Colin talks about it a lot is, is also to scale a business. You have to understand processes and for a startup, you know, getting to that stage where you start to. Develop processes, um, is sometimes difficult because, you know, in the early days you were a handful of people, sometimes it's just you and your founder, as it was with, um, a couple of the companies that I started you, um, everyone's doing everything and you kind of just more reactive than proactive.

 And when it gets time to really scale your business, it's time to kind of step back, look at what you're doing and what's working how you are acquiring customers. How are you growing your revenue and how can you. Back into a process for that, so that it can be scaled so that you can add staff to it and they can repeat what you know, already works so that you can scale it.

 So I think, you know, stepping back from the craziness of getting launched and figuring out what aspects of the business you can turn into, uh, processes. Is really important. And, and, um, and it's hard, you know, sometimes on the sales side too, you know, it's really interesting depending on your business or product.

 I remember once going to talking to a company many years ago, um, that we were interested in, in partnering with and the CEO of that company had broken down his sales process. To such a granular level. It was really, really impressive. Like he knew exactly. He said, if we want to grow our revenue by X, here's all I need to do.

 I hire three more salespeople because I know if they make this number of calls a day, talk to this many people, they're going to get this much revenue. And he had it exactly broken down to a science. And I was always very impressed and quite frankly, never able to replicate. Uh, a sales process as accurately and as detailed as he had.

 So thinking about your processes is really important, um, when it comes to scaling your business, I'm Jeffrey and I'm done. Yes. Interesting. I think we should, uh, I know like last week we kicked it off with like the personality of the entrepreneur dive, remember that, but this time Jeff sort sorta kicked it off with processes and systems.

 So what are the types of processes and systems that startups can use to scale their business? That they often don't use. Um, maybe guy, you could come up with something there. I will say that when, uh, I was at, um, Hostopia, uh, we began to implement goal setting. I brought in a CEO coach and before that the wheels were coming off the bus, we had, you know, everyone was going in different directions.

 And then we, we began to implement, um, two days of strategic planning, 90 days of execution. And, uh, goal setting three to five measurable goals per person, per executive. Um, and then three to five measurable goals for the, for the company for that quarter. And what that did is it really brought everyone into alignment.

 And I thought that like that for us was probably a game changer because I think as entrepreneurs, when we start our businesses, we really, you know, we have a lot of energy. We have a lot of, we have, you know, what it takes to get that business to a certain. But then you start to get to a point and things just start to break.

 We had 600 employees and the wheels were falling off the bus. And until I brought in a CEO coach and implemented a number of systems, um, we weren't able to move forward. And, uh, so it's very critical to do that. And I think goal setting. So maybe we could just, just go around and, and, um, Michelle or a guy or George, if you have a thought about, you know, what kind of systems you can implement to help scale your business.

 Collin, I love that as far as the goal setting and just hearing the, uh, the numbers on how that really enhanced their company and have to process. So for me, I was in a very, I had an auto service. And so I was in a very antagonistic, um, type of company where it's not like you're going to get baked goods or going to get a nice new pair of shoes.

 Nobody really wants to come and get their vehicle repaired. So when they came in my door, um, they came in, um, I was the bad guy at some level because it's like, you know, you're going to try to rip me off. Is this surface? Not that it'd be. Expected or are you going to meet my needs or not? So what am I saying?

 Um, uh, I'm sorry, my phone rang and I lost my train of thought. Give me a second. Yeah, we did lose it for a second. So just repeat that. Yep. Yep. Um, so for me in that, the initial process was how do I, how do I intake client? And, and so two things, one, you know, I set up an intake process for my clients. And that's part of why I'm doing what I do now, where I was able to license that process, uh, and AAA and other companies or whatever, but that was successful.

 But what I didn't do well, and what you just stayed at Collin is I didn't set up good processes with my people. You know, I onboarded my clients, but I didn't own board people or know how to retain people. Well, and I want to just talk about that. It's worked as far as the intake for the client. So, um, because people came in the door.

 Necessarily partnered in the process. They didn't know whether we were a good guy or bad guy, so to speak. Um, I had a form that you would fill out, like being a doctor. So I had an intake form where you had to fill out, you know, what's, what's the concern that you put your vehicle in. And then how long have you lived with that concern?

 And I asked a number of questions from there. And in that intake process, what would happen is we immediately became a partner with our client where they wrote out and, and we, we had the pastor and I taught my people. We had the pasta. You don't have to understand. You don't have to know what's wrong. All we want you to do is to say, you know, what type of concern that you have and when you do that, you know, we're going to move to understand it.

 So now we're, we're sad, sad, last side-by-side side. We can to really move to understand our client. Our clients love that process. And, you know, as I said, in other, uh, yesterday on the show with, with us sharing. One bottom feeders came in. What's a bottom feeder, a bottom theater, some the cook point criminal ICAN artists that that wants to get over.

 They want something for nothing. So this, this process weeded out the bottom feeders. And let me just share that little nugget. So in the first question, You know, why'd you bring your car in? The second question is how long have you lived with these concerns? Well, if what you said is I bought my client for a check engine light, and then you said, I had this problem for a year then automatically my team would know that you're probably coming in and our state in Maryland for a missions.

 Right. Um, so, you know, so why did you come in now? Because if you, if you've had this for a year and you're bringing it now, You know, why is that we're going to really dive in and dig there. So we make sure we're on the same page in that process. So this process really weeded out what I would call the bottom feeders really onboarded our clients.

 But, but with that, I didn't do that so well. And taking care of my people. I had a plan on how my people were, my team was going to take care of my client and this, but not how I took care of my people. And I ended. Up in that process because I didn't have solid processes in the beginning to include myself much burnout in that process.

 So I've gotten, I've done speeding. It's almost like, I don't know if you've ever read the E-Myth and anyone here in the audience. I mean, it was thinking about systems and scaling. Um, they almost put processes and systems over people and I don't think you'd ever put anything over people. I think, you know, people are your keys.

 Yeah, the core team around you, but more often than not, when somebody leaves your organization, if you don't have the right processes and handoff to the new person who takes on that role, the whole organization can just suffer. And when you start, you know, it's one thing when you have 10 employees, it's another thing when you get to a hundred, it's another thing we get taught that.

 And so the E-Myth really talks a lot about building systems and putting them in place so that you don't rely on those people as much. Don't get me wrong. People are definitely your number one asset in any organization. Any thoughts on that? Um, Lee, Joe, we asked you to come on stage to, I saw you in the audience.

 It was very interesting. I don't know if you want to add any thoughts to that, or if you have any, any other reasons why you think entrepreneurs failed?

 If I'm pronouncing your name, right? I'm sorry. you're on mute or Linda.

 Yeah, I I'm just gonna, you know, dive into what we're saying a little bit more here. In terms of processes and people, um, you know, I'm not sure if anyone in the audience has studied is called the capability maturity model. I think it's out of Carnegie Mellon, but they do an amazing job of breaking it down because the processes and the people that you need, oftentimes in the initial stages, Is much different than it is in stage 2, 3, 4 0 5.

 So I think one of the key things here is processes take a while to develop some sometimes. Obviously, you don't want it to get shoved to the back. It should be in the forefront, but I think it's important to realize where you are and, you know, see people so to speak at the right position at the table as you grow that comanage those more complex processes.

 Um, one thing that I've experienced and even I tried to push when I was younger at companies is to kind of go from like zero to five. And skipping all those in between steps. Like I would have these great ideas about these very sophisticated systems and processes, but I quickly realized, like that was the wrong thing for the organization.

 You know, we didn't know that we were going down the wrong path and B we didn't, you know, we didn't have, you know, the skillset to develop nor the money to develop those kinds of more, um, you know, heavy automation kind of backend systems or processes. So I think as important as a startup. And I know this happens to people like myself and probably people that are, you know, technical and analytical.

 Like you kind of want to skip a bunch of steps, but sometimes you do call and I would have to say, have to throw a little bit of manpower in there and do it yourself a bit and really learn what it is you need and make sure that you're putting your resources. Right. That's another thing, are you managing your resources correctly?

 Because you can build the best darn processes ever. But if it's not really moving the company forward, then you've just wasted a lot of valuable resources, money, time, and people, I don't know college. Yeah. And, um, yeah, the other one that I was thinking about the other key one is, is leading indicators or leading KPIs, key performance indicators.

 You know, a lot of us don't have those actually set up in our company and, and it takes probably about a 15. You know, sit down 15 minutes with your team, figure out what are those leading indicators guy? I think you talked about Jeff, you talked about that sales process and how, you know, X number of phone calls per day.

 So is that a leading indicator? We know that we have to hit a hundred phone calls per day or 10 meetings per day, or, um, we know we have to hit an average user, uh, average cost of acquisition. You know, especially if you get into a recurring revenue businesses, understanding your cost of acquisition, that's a popular leading indicator because then you know exactly what it costs to acquire that customer.

 And then how much, uh, money you invest will get you to X. So these KPIs, they can also, there's like without KPIs, you're flying blind. You're a plane in the, in the fog with no radar. And, uh, as a company. If you have great KPIs, you can actually begin to sense the problems or understand where issues are going to occur before they occur.

 So I think that's part of the systems as well, probably even in the startup phase. KPIs are important. Any other thoughts from a team here? Anyone on stage Linda? Yes. Hi. Um, to both your point, Colin and Michelle. Um, in my experience in a startup I worked out with before was that we're acquiring customers.

 Too quickly. And then we didn't have the, um, the technical team to implement and develop the projects on time, which then meant there was an issue with billing. So, um, then scaling became a problem because yes, you've got these customers, but because you can't deliver what they need in time, they, they, they then can't pay you on time.

 At the same time the company wanted to open international offices. Now it means that you've got, you know, staff in different places at a project for not being, um, coordinated effectively. So that is my experience with the issue of, uh,

 Yeah, that's a great point, Linda, because sometimes if you scale one aspect of your business too soon, it can actually prevent you from scaling the overall business. So too many customers too soon, when you don't have the resources or the infrastructure to support them can actually prevent you from scaling your business.

 So, so, um, really. Important to understand how all of the pieces and all the levers fit together so that, you know, if you're going to move one lever up, is it going to cause problems in another area of your business? And you have to manage scaling across the whole enterprise and make sure that you can scale, um, not only your, your customers and your revenue, but the infrastructure you need to support them.

 Sorry. I spoke over Cornyn. Yeah. That caused a problem for me because I was in charge of business development. So I thought I was doing a fantastic job, getting all these new clients, but then everyone is now upset because we can't provide what we were supposed to provide, um, is a good position to be in.

 But, um, not for a long time, because then they complaints are mute now. So Colin can continue with what he was about to say. I was going to say that, um, I'm in, I'm involved in a company. Gigs for less and they have one 800 programmers and it's an outsourcing company and we've been doing it now for almost 20 years.

 The CEO and my business partner, um, insists on not hiring Linda and BD. You know, he really does not want to hire salespeople. He really wants a controlled growth and he's done very well. Um, and he's done it through relationships and delivering quality services versus what I've done in other companies where I'm not saying we don't do those things as well, but I, but I have hired salespeople at Hostopia.

 It was all, you get a sales team of about 10 people. And, uh, so I, it really is interesting that you bring that up. Like, can you grow too fast? And can that actually hurt that cannot actually hurt your ability to ultimately scale and build sustainable. Yeah, I would say you can, you can actually grow yourself to failure, right?

 Because if you're a demand, for example, also outpaces your, um, supply. You could be in a world. And get a horrible reputation before you even get off the ground or you build this fantastic product, but you didn't take time, you know, to see if he could actually produce it or any legal issues. There's a lot of way Sprite to like grow yourself to failure.

 But Linda, it makes me feel like, you know, you're bringing up a good point here, like communication. Within those departments. And gosh, I remember at the beginning of my career, working for big companies, you know, fortune 500 companies, like we always were trying to address this problem of silos, but it's such a dangerous thing as, as you described so correctly, Linda, when the, you know, business development.

 Was not fully in the loop with whatever your dev team or your R and D team like that's wow. That kids that could just like bring a company down to its knees. So we always like to say, you know, when you're having these important meetings and it doesn't even have to be a super important meeting, but ongoing meetings, like who needs to be setting up the table.

 And when I say, who needs to be sitting at the table, I'm not talking about the people. Who is representing each of those functional areas and them understanding that they're there for, you know, obviously their input, but they're there to also go back and prepare and communicate to the team if they don't do that, you know, you're just could possibly be looking at an epic failure.

 Yeah, I agree. And I think for me that was a learning experience because I wasn't not yet. And then also then the experience helped me because it then taught me to ask the right questions. So in my subsequent role, heading up business development, I was able to ask the manufacturing team, the R and D department, if we had a sufficient amount of product so that if we want to contract, we had sufficient material, but also the relevant team to, um, to do the project, uh, integration.

 So once I, once I was able to ask those questions, then the problem went away because ultimately customers do want, I mean, companies do want customers because they want to grow, but it's just a case of making sure that, um, everything, everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. So R and D manufacturing, sales, and finance.

 So once you can do that, then, um, yeah, things a bit.

 Well, I know someone had mentioned earlier about, I think we, they feel like we covered systems really well. Um, but if you fail to hire the right people or for that matter, if you fail to fire the people who aren't capable of handling that position anymore, that can also block you. I mean, the reality is you're a small business.

 These are people you've known from the beginning, and they've helped to get you to where you are today, but they may not be able to help get you to where you need to be. I know Jack Walch, I love his one of his lines. When he says hire people with runway and runway doesn't mean you go and hire someone working at a fortune 1000 company and bring them into a company with, you know, 10, a million dollars of revenue.

 In fact, I find that's actually a formula for disaster. Uh, I believe that you really do have to think in terms of scaling and zeros or expanding a 10 X and hiring people who, for instance, if you're at a million dollar company and you want to be a $10 million company hire people, who've run $10 million companies.

 You know, don't hire people who are running billion dollar companies, because there's a really different set of experiences and talents needed to achieve success. At each of the different levels, it's really is much more of a do it yourself environment, these small businesses, even the ones like we have tremendous talent within our organization here at dock, when we did.club, we had Michelle was running it.

 And Jeff was CMO when I was coming to join the parties here and there. But no I'm teasing, but th but the reality is it was a lot of do it yourself. And so when you hire the right people, You have to think about the size of the company and the experiences they've had. And it's very hard to terminate people who just aren't cutting it anymore, you know?

 And anyone else have experience in firing having to fire someone to scale your company, your smell? I don't know if you've had an experience like that or a guy you want to chip in here. Linda.

 So one of the things that I, uh, Learned how to do the hard way. I mean, the really hard way is the not really hire people to necessarily do a job, but to hire them, to manage a set of tasks and to, to lay out, you know, what are the measures of performance on those tasks as it comes to, you know, having people under the employ and hiring and firing you're managing these tasks and.

 Even when you're hired the day that you can't manage these tasks, it's not personal. Um, I have to have somebody to manage these tasks. And so, you know, from that, I got that principle from the military, the military moves into something. They call the leaders in intent where they actually, uh, it's a three-step process where they'll tell their, they stay deployed, uh, share with their team, why they're doing something they're sharing.

 Well, first off they have the tasks that they're doing, why they're doing it and what the end state should look like in that process. Um, and that's kind of baked in, you know, the job descriptions. That's big in the policies and procedures. 'cause that's back then people know the tasks that they're managing.

 So everybody's managing some level of something and then you can't do it that we have to find somebody to, uh, to actually get that done. So that really helped me to be able to terminate people, uh, or have them terminate themselves for not being at a man as though that set of tasks. But it also really helped where teams could actually go in and they could completely exceed your expectations in that process.

 And with that. Because they were aligned with the process that we were moving in front of beginning and throughout the organization. Um, we could, you know, we knew what we stood and they agreed with where we stood. Right. And we had clarity in that. And anytime we didn't, we could come back to the table and talk about that clarity.

 So we got, we got a chance to get everything we could out of all we had in that process, giving your best friend from college, your, your wife or your spouse. Who's helped you at all along the way, doing the bookkeeping. And now you need a CPA. Is that, how far are you that ruthless guy? Collins. You broke up.

 I didn't hear it. I didn't hear the beginning of what you said. I'm sorry. All you heard is, are you, were that ruthless guy? No, I said you're your best call? You're talking about, you know, your best friend from college or your spouse, who's doing your bookkeeping and now you need a CPA because you want to do, you know, raise money or whatever, you know, are you that ruthless?

 Would you actually take, uh, the people around you that you're that close to in order to scale your business? No, you know, um, but what I learned and again, the very, very hard way, because in the beginning it was some level of guys where the highway, um, what I learned. That, you know, what's, what's, what's in the way, what is the friction point?

 And, you know, as a leader, leading my people, I had to learn to listen. I had to learn to be able to listen, but you have to set up the rules of engagement for that listening. Right. So, you know, what's. In the way, what is the friction, but before we get there, you know, this is not a complaining session. We're not going to complain.

 We're going to take action. So what's working and what's not working and not working as well as you like. And I let my people kind of share some of that. So we could get to where, you know, what's in our way. And if I found that. Any of the leadership team and even with my clients, um, you know, if the leadership team is in the way or whatever's in the way at the end of the day, what, what, when did they get to the bottom of, is what is that?

 Because then we go to, how do we get in shape so that we can go forward? Because you talked about KPIs earlier, Colin and love KPIs, but usually KPIs, you know, the top four KPIs are profitablity. Revenue growth, uh, client retention of some store or satisfaction, but they're all tied to lag measures. It's all time after the fact, the lead measures in that process as is dialing in and finding out, you know, are there any encumbrances with your people?

 Are there any friction points with your people and with your leadership? Um, and if there is. The bottom of that, because if we can and move to get a shape, now we can go forward, get on the same page and flow. So I would say, no, I'm not, I'm not that ruthless. Uh, but you know, once we dial that in, we're going to hold people to a standard.

 Um, and yeah, we're going to have, we're going to give them an opportunity to, to really, uh, uh, show that they can't hand manage those tasks.

 Anyone else want his smell? I'm not sort of like pronouncing your name, right? Ishmael is not. Can you help us with your pronunciation? And, uh, do you have, um, you know, a thought about how or why entrepreneurs fail to scale?

 Uh, Eastland? Yes, sir. You right coding and whoa.

 Uh, for a ruin in blue house, interesting room. And I got my two right away with these home. Uh, can you speak a little louder to your phone? We're having a hard time hearing you. Okay.

 Um, no, we're not hearing you

 now. It's very broken up. Yeah. We'll have to get you just to see if you can't get into a better, a better location. Um, yeah, so I, I also remember reading Jim Collins book. I love Jim Collins. He did. So many cool things in that book. Good to great. And he talked about getting the right people on the bus, in the right positions.

 And you know, when you begin to grow, you have, everyone's got core skills and talents that if they applied those core in the area, that that they're the best at, you could get the most out of your team. But more often than not, we don't have the right people in the right spots. And I think just sort of identifying, standing back and identifying, you know, what are the positions we need to have today?

 Where, what are those positions going to be? Um, 10 times our size and how do we fill those positions with the people that we have today and the talents we have today, and then who do we have to bring in from the outside? And I just thought that Jim Collins did a great job of summarizing getting the right people on the bus.

 Any other thoughts from the team? Well, a colony, what he talks about too is not just getting the right people on the bus, but getting the right people on the right seat on the bus. So you might have the right people, but you may need to move them around into different roles to really maximize their opportunity to scale the business.

 But it's interesting. One thing that I was thinking about w w when everyone was talking, isn't. You know, we talked earlier with Linda about how you can hurt scaling the business by getting too many customers too soon. But another way that companies often fail to sale is fail to scale. Excuse me, especially if you're in the software or software as a service or any kind of a service businesses by taking.

 Too big a client too soon. And then shifting all the focus of your energy into satisfying that client. If you take on a very big client too soon, who's paying you a lot of money and is responsible for a big chunk of your revenue. The inclination is to S to change. Product and change your vision to satisfy that company.

 So all of a sudden your, your client who's, who's paying you. Lots of money is saying, well, you know, we'd like it better. If the software did this and could you add this feature for us? And you could you do this for us? And all of a sudden. You lose sight of your original vision for your product and you start modifying it, changing it for the needs of this large customer, which may be in fact particular to that customer and not something that you need for your product for everyone else.

 And that can actually hurt your ability to scale the company. Not only from lack of focus, but from. Basically ruining your product because you've made it more or less custom for a particular use case of a particular large client, but that not may not serve the larger and broader customer base that you need to really scale your business.

 So there are a lot of complexities in making sure not only the hire the right people, but that you bring on the right customers at the early stages of your business.

 Yeah, I just wanted to make a quick point to your, to your point about the bad people on the bus. So you asked earlier about firing people. I haven't fired anyone, but I've had to effect the fire myself from a startup and leave because we had many talented people, but the one in the right seat. So I knew that we weren't going to be able to be functional or flourish as a business.

 So. I left the business. I find myself in that scenario. That's fascinating. You know, so go ahead, Michelle. Yeah, I, I commend you Linda. Like, that's hard to do you, you, you know, you really checked your ego, so I commend you for that. That, that took a lot of guts. Yeah. Because you know, I like to get things done.

 I like completion. So. There is no point me being in this space, if we can't, uh, work as a collective, because then you end up going one in stock holes, it becomes toxic and a blame game. I don't like toxic environments. I like things happy and carefree. So, um, it was better for me to leave with my dignity intact.

 Did you find the company did better after you left or worse? I'm just curious. No, they lost it. Um, maybe like less than a year. And then they just, um, yeah. Stop trading.

 The idea of firing, firing yourself is interesting too, because in some respects, that's what delegation is all about. Right. Um, you know, one of the big challenges a startup founder has early on is, is learning to let go and to delegate. And you can't scale scale your business. If you're not willing to let go and delegate, cause you can't do everything yourself and you have to be self-aware and fire yourself from the things that you really aren't the right person to be doing or the best person to be doing and delegate those tasks to someone else and learning how to delegate delegate well is really a super power for an entrepreneur.

 Because if you want to really scale your business, You need to be able to let go of things and, and assign those things, those responsibilities to others, and then trust them, uh, and guide them to do their job so that you can grow the company. So you got to fire yourself, if not completely from you, have, you have to fire yourself from the things that you really shouldn't be doing.

 That's interesting. But then if you fire yourself and they screw up, You know, then you've made a, I guess that's the challenge. That's the real challenge. We talked a lot about that last week. It's it's recorded by the way, where if you begin to delegate responsibilities and your team members, um, don't always do what you want them to do, whether it's right.

 Or even if it's wrong. Giving them enough rope giving them enough room to be able to manage that position, manage that responsibility allows you to step up a level so that you're not always getting into it because one week, cause that is what happens when we start a business. We, the entrepreneur is the dominant individual who is dictating almost every aspect of that business from day one, controlling.

 And the more that entrepreneurs learn to let go, the more their ability to scale the company increases. And I just think that the most challenging part of that is when you, um, you hire a person to run a division or an area of your business, and they're doing something you don't agree with is to step back and let them continue to do that.

 And sometimes even fail at that and understand that now, obviously they can not. Make a mistake that would take the company down. So there's a balance between that, that, that in that equation, any thought, any thoughts from the team here around that? Well, I think, um, you know, a gentleman that I hired to be CEO of a company that I co-founded when, when the board said, you know, the founders had to step aside and we needed to bring in a real senior manager here, he always had a saying, which I think is relevant, Collin, to what you're talking about.

 Inspect what you expect. So, you know, even though you might delegate responsibilities to someone else, if you're the CEO or the founder of the company or the principal shareholder. Oh, the chairman of the board, you know, the buck is going to start. With you. So just because you've handed off responsibilities to someone doesn't mean you, you brush your hands completely of it.

 You want to inspect what they're doing from time to time. You want to guide them and be a coach and a mentor and a leader to ensure them and help them have the success. So, so you can't just hand things off when you delegate and go lock yourself in a closet and not pay attention to it. You still need to always inspect what you expect from the people that you delegate.

 Jeffrey. I love that inspect what you expect. Patrick Lensioni has written a book, the five dysfunctions of a CEO he's written many, all of them are pretty dynamic, but in the five dysfunctions of a CEO, if we just kind of reverse engineer what he did there, he kind of gave us the secret on what, what happens if you have an inattention to results.

 Then you probably have some avoidance and accountability somewhere. And if you have that avoidance and accountability, then you probably have a lack of commitment somewhere. And if that's the case, there's a fear of conflict. I've been able to deal with and get to the root concerns and why something is taking place.

 And if that's the case, then there's possibly an absence of trust and trust. It's basically character and competence. Are you competent enough to do what you say you're going to do? And you do have the character to do that. And I've seen that just all over. Where we're, there's an inattention of assaults.

 Usually. Um, the accountability is either not established well enough or maybe there's not enough accountability there. Um, but I, and I, and I, I think that goes hand in hand with Jim Collins' book. Good to great, you know, what the right people on the bus and the people in the right seats on the bus as well.

 Um, is those five dysfunctions there? Yeah, that's another great book. Thanks for reminding us of that one too guy. Um, at this time we have about 15 minutes left of this session. We'd like to reset the room just to reminder, this show is being recorded. So if you have spoken or you come on stage or giving consent, On other news, we have a newly redesigned website@wwstartup.club.

 Um, we've, we're been working really hard back here at headquarters to get all of this amazing content posted to the site. We post the recording. Um, we do blog posts and we're in the process of also posting the transcripts. So, um, please take advantage of that. Um, there's lots of great shows, lots of great, um, information.

 We have also began to launch the serial entrepreneur podcasts so you can check us out. The first six episodes are loaded on Spotify and Amazon, and we're working on our. So, if you want to also be notified of cool events going on or a great content that might be of interest to you, make sure that you sign up for our email list when you visit WW startup.club.

 Thanks so much. And, um, back to you, let's go back to Jeff. Okay. Pack to Jeff. Um, no, I think we've covered a lot of stuff both last week. And this week, you know, in terms of the many, many reasons why, uh, entrepreneurs fail to scale, their companies failed to scale. Um, you know, we talked about processes, we talked about people.

 Um, we talked about customers, which is really interesting, cause I think a lot of times people do. I think in those terms and really, um, the business model is another important thing to think about, which we really haven't talked about is really understanding and finding the right business model is, is going to be an issue.

 Part of whether you succeed or fail in trying to scale, because sometimes, you know, the business model could be the thing that's, that's holding you back from scaling and there've been many companies, you know, a great example is the, a company comm.com. So you probably have heard their commercials. You probably familiar with the app.

 It's a meditation app. Um, when they first launched, they. The model was they had a freemium, a free version of the app, and then they upgraded you to an annual fee. So it was something like 10 or $15 for the year. So you would pay one time, 10 or 15 bucks, and then you could use the app for a whole year. Um, and they were having a hard time scaling their revenue, which, which prevented them from scaling the business on that basis because not enough people, um, were.

 Paying the 10, $10 a year or $15 a year. And even if it was a lot of people, it wasn't enough money to let them grow the business the way they wanted to. And then they had the idea to change their business model and they shifted to a monthly subscription instead of an annual subscription. And literally went from $10 a year.

 To $10 a month. Now, when you're sitting in the boardroom discussing that kind of a shift in the business model, it might sound scary. It's like, oh my gosh, we're going to multiply the cost of our app by 12. Um, aren't we going to lose all of our current subscribers and everyone else, but what they found out actually was the opposite happened as soon as they switched to a monthly fee of $10 a month.

 Not only did the revenue grow, but the number of subscribers in downloads grew dramatically because it turns out consumer behavior. There's more trucks. In paying a monthly fee for something because you have this sense that, okay, I can cancel if I don't like it. So I'll start paying the monthly fee. And if I don't like it, I can cancel versus paying one time upfront, even though it's less money psychologically consumers think, well, I don't want to buy that if I don't know if I like it first, so I'm not going to buy it.

 So people would rather pay more. On a month to month basis knowing they could cancel them, pay less upfront for something. They're not sure if they're going to like, so they had a dramatic success story by changing their business model. And now they're a unicorn and they've done extremely well. And if they hadn't changed their business model, I probably wouldn't be talking to talking about them right now.

 So the business model is another thing that can have significant impact in whether you succeed or failing and scaling your business. You know, I've, I've known you for so long and I've never heard that story. That's so cool. So I love it. I love it. Just the way they redesigned that they pivoted a little bit to help them scale their business by going monthly versus annual.

 Now I do often hear, um, that the number one complaint of a lot of entrepreneurs who fail to scale is that they, they, they just can't raise the money. They need money to scale. And that is something we haven't really, you know, beat around here. Maybe, you know, I don't know if, um, guy or, or doctor a, B Seca, and another name is tough to pronounce him.

 Maybe if you have something else as well, doctor, um, maybe you have another thought as to why you think entrepreneurs fail to scale, but, uh, you know, raising money can sometimes be what blocks, great concepts from. Yeah. Hi. Um, I wish you again, uh, I've been, um, eh, startup company founder in, uh, about, uh, Biotronics, uh um, completely, um, it's a policy-making in India, so that's for me, what I experienced is a lot of challenge comes.

 Uh, we do, uh, Phew, phew, um, per page or, or for example, MBBS, but somehow the policies to take over, um, those things to, to scaling it up and developing. And there's lack of support from the administrator. You propose a administrative site. So that's how we. The plants never convert properly. So this is one, one thing, major hurdle from my startup.

 I being, uh, being, uh, uh, involved in, in a lot of, uh, gadget, um, innovation apart from that, um, what, what also, where we see, um, a couple of innovations, we also retracted from our sites because of our, um, uh, uh, because of our. Thinking like we, we didn't, um, consider many of the factors, which probably any of it or, or not possible to scale it up.

 So in board ways, I see, um, I see some challenges to, to scale some products. Um, but I think, um, the major, which for me it affects is the policies, uh, which cannot, um, allow the, the ideas to, to, to, to, to, to become more, um, you know, feasible for going to the, to the, to the, scaling it up or to convert it to a real product in the market.

 Thanks. And I think that's a great point is we don't even, we never even thought about that. You know, is the environment that you're in the country or in the regulations that you face. Like these are things that we, you know, we haven't even be considered, could be an issue. And how do you get around that?

 You know, how do you get around in India? Do you, do you, do you, um, try to launch these products in another country or is, or, or any techniques you've used Dr. Ivy to try to get around. To be very precise. Um, we've been converted, uh, um, this, this hustle of, uh, of coronavirus tasting by creating a hand held device, which can perform the, the RT lamb, probably, um, some of who are here or listening, they may know about it.

 The, the problem we found what to scale it off is, um, the, the state from, from the governing bodies to carry forward to the next level where the needle, big amount of, uh, you know, the major amount of scaling strategy. And that is not been so much smoother for a startup company, which is like from my company, like is pretty young and it is a pandemic born, right.

 W we are like, literally I am also working remotely. I am insecurity in Germany. So I think, um, that should be more smooth to giving them an opportunity to go. And the second innovation, what we are also facing challenge that is air purifier, which is pretty much medicated and it has been nanoparticle infused in the filters.

 That's like, I, we, we very recently discovered that there is no such facility where you can test devices. They are building it. So these are the two major things. I found it from the administrator sites. So I'd mentioned a say that these are the things we'd probably, uh, you know, could have been established Reiki, long bag, or there should have been proper channels.

 A young startup can easily pass to one, deliver the product, which is pretty much needed for the society. Appreciate that. Appreciate that doctor. Um, I know we're running low on time, uh, and I just want to talk a little bit about money. Um, I brought that up earlier. I do believe it's never been a better time in history to raise money for your startup to scale it.

 Uh, we have so many different methods from venture capital. Uh, in the United States here, and you talk to a regulation environment, doctor in the United States here, we have, um, a pretty favorable legislation around regulation, crowdfunding regulate regulation. CF, you can Google that and you can raise up to $5 million.

 Um, there's a private placement memorandum, reg D, where you get sophisticated investors. That's my favorite form of financing. Uh, because you don't have what's called liquidation preference. Um, everybody takes the same risk when they make that investments. Um, there's a new, uh, uh, model called reggae plus as well, which we're looking at for two of our companies in our portfolio here, we're looking at, um, using that particular, using those where you can raise up to $75 million.

 They also call those mini mini IPOs, you know, You know, back in the day when I was, I ran two public companies, they were smaller public companies and we were able to raise $30 million on one of them. Uh, you could never, you know, never do that today in the U S with all of the regulation, Sarbanes, Oxley, and all the, you know, all the challenges associated with that.

 Uh, there's Kickstarter campaigns. There are there's government funding and, and that's something not to underestimate when it comes to money. Is government funding. Um, especially in the S the SBA loans in the United States, um, that, that can, that can really help your business. There's just, I've never seen so much money being available for entrepreneurs and startups.

 I, I do believe that if you are struggling to raise money for your startup to scale, That you really need to get a board of advisors, a group of people around you to help you do that. And I know Michelle, we only have two minutes left. I can tee up next week's topic, but is there anything else, you know, Linda Guy or Jeff or Michelle you want to talk about here?

 Well, I think we covered quite a bit and this is quite a bit more we can talk about. It's a pretty rich topic. When you think of all the different ways you can fail to scale or succeed in scaling your business. So. I enjoyed the discussion and thank everyone for participating and Linda, I know you're going to say something.

 Yeah, just quickly. I won't take too long cause you're about to close, but I was going to say that that you've a lot of money around, but there is slight challenges where, for example, in energy projects where there's a component of fossil fuels in it or natural gas, for example, because the whole, um, renewable energy concept is being widely.

 So under a slightly apprehensive to put their money in projects that are not deemed, um, green F what I am seeing right now, especially for projects in emerging economies. Um, so yeah, that is the challenge. Although I guess here in the UK to us, the, that these countries were industrialized on fossil fuels, you know, gas and all of these different.

 But now that's a challenge for emerging markets because we're being told that gas is not so good for the environment. And we need to look at solar and everything else, which is we know sustainable, but that's a topic for another day. Yeah. And I hadn't even thought about that. I mean, I've, I know from a, you know, launching new technology businesses that, you know, when I was launching these businesses, Startups like the banks would run, the investors would run.

 They, they were, they were afraid of what I was doing. Something called the, this thing called the internet. It's really going to be big guys. Trust me. No, no, no, no. We, we want to invest in oil and gas. I'm coming from a Canadian perspective here now. It's like, okay, we'll and gas no more. We want to invest in solar and all the new technologies.

 It's very interesting how that has changed. And the mindset has changed around that. Um, but we are out of time. And if you haven't already done. So please check out that link on the top of the screen startup.club, and I'm telling you we've got about 30 or 40 episodes of this show, serial entrepreneur hour.

 And they are incredible. If you listen to them, you will get an MBA in entrepreneurship and it will be will help start your company because we are sharing serial entrepreneurs are sharing. Their secrets of how they do it over and over again, starting scaling, exiting, and repeating that process to next week's topic is something very similar.

 It was brought up last week by check it's called the X factor. So those companies that fail to scale more often than not, don't have an X factor, the ones that do have an X factor. They make it look easy. Domino's 30 minutes or free national car rental. Just walk in the aisle, take the car and go. These are companies that redesign the re-engineered their organizations to give them an edge to win in the marketplace against their competitors.

 What's your X factor. If you don't have one already, let's help you find one next Friday, two o'clock Eastern. Thank you for joining us on the serial entrepreneur.

Question 7

Read the Transcript to the Audio: Ep19 Become a Better Speaker by Using ‘The Bounce’ Technique

Accepted Answer

TRANSCRIPT: Coach Yu: EP19 Become a Better Speaker by Using ‘The Bounce’ Technique (10.28.21)

 Hello, Dennis. Hello, Jeffrey. And everybody here. I have a modified you so welcome Dennis. You to the coach. You show, how are you? Jeffrey and all my friends. We're doing great. We're happy to have you here. And I saw the title of the topic for tonight and, and, um, I'm very excited to figure out what the bounce is.

 I thought that would get people's attention. You know, clubhouse has been a place to hang out for entrepreneurs and public speakers, coaches, people who want to share their message. And I've always wondered for the last 30 some years. What is it about. Professional public speakers, or when you see someone on TV and they give a great speech and they deliver that emotional impact, what is it that they're doing?

 And there's a technique called the bounce that I wanted to share here, and also be able to practice with other folks who are willing to raise their hand because we're in clubhouse here. Now, before we get to. By sharing examples of then having you guys come up and practice and get critiques. I want to know, are you interested in speaking more, whether it's webinars presentations with clients or teaching, or maybe you are an author speaker, coach, instructor, that kind of thing.

 This is not to bring you on stage. This is using the hand raise button merely as a voting. So we're not going to bring you on stage. If you raise your hand, just hit the hand, raise button in the bottom so that we know that this is a topic that you're interested in to be able to communicate powerfully.

 And clearly how many people want to hit that? Henry, we're going to clear the hand raise button and just a second. This is just for voting to see where you guys are. So let's leave it open just for a few more seconds and see who's interested. Okay. So Jeffrey clear that. So turn that off and then turn it back on.

 And let's ask another question. Who is a public speaker? So you have given. You have spoken in Toastmasters. You've given a presentation, you've run a zoom call. You run a clubhouse room, right? Raise your hand. If that's the case for you just want to get a sense, we've got to put 112 of us in here. A hundred, some, some of us folks here, or maybe you just, you don't want to raise your hand.

 Okay. Either way. All right, that's cool. So we can turn that off and turn that back on Mr. Jeffrey. Who's our amazing moderator. CMO pets.com. A lot of people ask me, how do you speak clearly on stage? How do you tell a story? How do you do this? One minute video thing you guys have probably heard about the one minute video.

 I think that's kind of funny because in clubhouse we're doing audio, but it's not video, but either way, the mechanics are the same of being able to tell a story and you maybe have heard of the components, the three components of a one minute video. When I was, which sets the tone for a particular moment in time, I believe that which has giving the meaning behind the story that just happened.

 And I am, which is who you are, your job. While you started a company, you know what product you have to sell your role, that kind of thing. So if you follow that three-part framework, it might be, I went on a bike ride. Buddy mark yesterday evening. And when it got dark, we nearly got in the car accident because we were on a motorcycle and just one little swerve could have been the end of Dennis without me knowing it.

 And I think back to one of my good friends that I started a software company with. Who died in a motorcycle injury and the same kind of way. And it made me realize how life was so short. And I believe that you never know. Your time may come. So enjoy every moment that you have with your friends. Maybe you had a negative encounter with a coworker.

 Try to leave that on a good note, because you never know when that, that could have been the last moment that you talk to them. I'm Dennis Yu. I'm the founder of blitz metrics and I'm here to create a million. So you can see, I just demonstrated those three parts when I was. So, when I was at Starbucks this morning, when I went to Disneyland for the first time, when I tried the mocha frappuccino at Starbucks, and I keep using Starbucks as an example, probably doesn't a late afternoon.

 I'm thinking of a cap about caffeine, but it could be any kind of moment, but just one moment, which is a win, will you then communicate a story? The story has some kind of emotional. Output some something you want to feel because of that story, you realize something. And then because from that, the bigger picture, the meaning is I believe that I believe that veterans should be able to have a piece of the land that they serve and the government offers.

 Assistance to veterans. Did you know that you have these particular benefits available to you? You fought for your country. 87% of veterans don't even know that the government will secure that loan for them with no money down, right. Things like that. So you tell a story that then extrapolates to a larger thing that you believe, which then leads to a call to action.

 Those are the three parts of a widespread. Now a powerful why, and ideally it should be a cell phone, video, selfie style. You can film it any way. You can do a zoom on your laptop with a webcam, but the powerful story is the one that includes the bounce. Now what is the bounce? The bounce is when you show empathy back to the audience.

 So if I go on and on about, so this is how not. And I'll tell you everything I'm saying is a true story. I ran D one cross-country for SMU two weeks ago, I was in Dallas with the athletic director and the folks who run the human performance lab, helping people get stronger and win more with mental training.

 And I remember back to the days when I was an athlete, I ran D one cross-country and ran a 31 minute 10 K, and I did this and I did that. And it was very difficult. We trained a lot. We worked out, we ate a lot of food. We got up in the morning and six to do morning runs. Blahblahblahblahblah about me and what I did and what I'm thinking, but it doesn't involve you.

 It doesn't create empathy back to the user. So the bounce is a technique to throw that feeling of emotion back to whatever you're experiencing in that story, you throw it back to the user and it's by using the word. Not coach you, you not Dennis, you, you, but the word you, so I could say when my co-founder Chris Rummel died in a tragic motorcycle accident, I was devastate.

 Because I put all my hopes and dreams in the software company, and there's no way we get back to the code. I didn't feel like I wanted to even try again because we worked so hard to build this piece of software that was going to help athletes everywhere, get a virtual coach. That was the program that we worked on this.

 So that's, that's setting the story. Right. So there's, there's my story. All true. But then how do I get you to feel empathy? It's incorporating the word you, so how do I incorporate the word you, I could. I was devastated. You know, when you have that feeling in your gut or ever experience that feeling when you knew something bad was going to happen, or how would you feel if that, or imagine if you, as I'm trying to use the word you in different ways, there's so many different ways you can be creative and using the word you.

 And at first it's a little bit. Because you're focusing on telling the story while then trying to incorporate the bounce smoothly, but you'll notice the best speakers, the ones that are most dynamic and most powerful. Literally use this as an explicit technique to be able to create empathy and emotion and identification, especially the people that are selling personal development and trying to get your money so that you can be.

 And happy, healthy, wealthy, and all that kind of stuff. They use this technique explicitly. So listen to, when you hear people tell what's called the heroes. Where they talk about how they were poor and they were struggling and they couldn't pay rent. So they lived in their car and they got fired and they were about to commit suicide.

 And they were in their bathtub. They're about to give up, you know, like Tony Robbins, these kinds of stories, right? They tell all these stories. Brendon Burchard tells a story. He got in a car accident. And from that car accident, it was dark outside. But you looked up at the moon. And, you know, when the moon is so big, it feels like it's daytime because it illuminates the whole sky.

 And it was, then I realized that there was a purpose for my life. Right. You see, that's how it's done some kind of scene transitional sentence that uses the word you. Okay. Throws the emotion back to them. So they tell a story about some kind of fear or pleasure or excitement or anxiety or celebration or some kind of story.

 There's different ways. You can tell a story that pack an emotional punch, and then they get the punch back to them. You use the bounce, which is using the word use. Multiple times even you don't have to do it just once the pros you'll notice, go back and forth fluidly between telling the story and using the word use.

 So you don't even realize that they're doing it. And if you were new and not that good or not that natural, like me, I'm not a natural storyteller. I have to intentionally do this. So I don't use it as many times. As I probably should, but you'll notice the pros listen to how often they use the word you at the moment of when they deliver the emotional punch in the story.

 So I want to open up the clubhouse room here to the audience and who wants to practice telling a story in 15 seconds and using the bounce. And I just want to remind everyone, if you come up on stage, we are recording this show. So if you come up to practice your bounds, you are giving us permission to record you.

 Uh, and you can find recordings of the coach. You show, uh, over@startup.club, which is the website for. Club and you can sign up for our mailing list there to keep informed of this and other great shows and rooms happening here on start-up club. So now I'll pass it back to you, Mr. You, thank you, Jeffrey.

 And any of you in the audience that would like to practice. Public speaking, storytelling skills hit the hand raise button and the bottom center. It's a little bit scary, especially because there's a bunch of people. Actually. There's not even a lot of people in this room and nobody can see you anyway.

 Nobody's going to judge, you hit the hand raise button and I will coach you through it. We can go sentence at a time if you're a little bit scared or if you're thinking, oh, I kind of want to raise my hand, but I'm afraid I'm going to sound dumb or I don't have a good story to tell that's what. The reason why we're here is we all want to become better at communicating.

 It's not just Toastmasters where we're learning to speak on table topics and eliminate ums and AHS. This is about the next level where you want to be able to communicate with emotional impact. Okay. Hit that hand, raise button in the bottom. Jeffrey's going to let you up and we'll start doing some practicing.

 What do you guys.

 Okay. So we have, um, I hope I pronounce it correctly. Whiny, whiny. Um, welcome. Yeah. Yes. Whaney, uh, I'm feeling very nervous now to share, to share something. I'm trying to remember what you say. Um, okay. Okay. So, Wayne, do you have a story to think about one moment in time? Not 15 different things, but one particular moment, the movie camera is pointed at you and you're telling a story of something that happened.

 What is that? Yes. Okay. So when I was in boarding school, I faced a lot of trauma where I had a child die, quite close to. And this made me realize, you know, at that time, I didn't know. But later on in life, I began to realize how life could be so short, which made me change even my career, because I didn't have anyone to comfort me.

 And you can just imagine how hard that would be for a child to go through. And now when I see a child. Somebody's parent has passed away. I get this feeling that I just want to give them a hug because you know, that's something that I really wanted for myself when I was in little girl. Wow. Whaney that was pro you've done this before.

 Haven't you never, no,

 that was good. You did that several times. You incorporated the bounce. Did you guys notice that. You did a great job. Do you think Jeffrey? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, you, you, you hooked us in, certainly by saying that when you're very young, you witnessed someone pass away another child and, um, you know, you brought us into it and then circled around how, how that had an impact on your life and what you're doing today.

 So I thought you did a very good job. You shouldn't be nervous and it's a very noble cause that you're working towards, based on your own experience. And Wayne's your story. Nobody can tell your story better than you, and when your story. Of some kind of distress or fear. I could kind of feel that in your voice, but I'm wondering if partly that was nervousness or partly you're accessing that moment.

 Cause you remembering what it felt like to watch somebody die in front of you. All the people can sense that. And so because you unlock that emotion when you did the bounce. That helped us feel it even better. Did you intentionally use the bounce there or did it just come naturally because you did it a couple of times there.

 That was great. I was in, in that moment, I was actually in that boarding school and yes, I was there. Great job. You want to try another one? Do you have another moment? Just one moment in time. Green third, so much right now, maybe I would just, okay, well how about hanging out? Okay. As we bring on other people, then maybe you can help and you could advise, or maybe when you have another story, you can share that.

 Yeah. So glad you're here. Thank you. Kudos. Duany for being so brave. Yeah. Raise your hand if you'd like to, to come up and as well. And I think, you know, it's interesting Dennis, because we're here in clubhouse, it's an audio platform and, and we could hear. The quavering in the voice, we could hear the emotion.

 And I think part of the reason why we can experience so many powerful discussions here in clubhouse is because of that, you know, the written word, especially now when people are doing things, short texts and using emojis and this and that, it's really hard sometimes to capture the true context and emotion that someone's trying to convey.

 But when you hear someone, you know, um, you really get a sense of. The emotion and passion behind what they're saying and it, and it helps you sniff out an authentic story versus a rehearsed story. And I think one of the things that was powerful when he, when you were speaking is it did not feel like it was rehearsed.

 It felt like you were in the moment and telling us this fresh and from your heart. And that's very true. Yeah. Also, she had an ideals story. This is what we call a signature story. Not every story needs to be something that is so earth shattering and momentous that it reframes your life and childhood and what you do.

 And she was able to connect that to what she does professionally. So don't think that the only stories that you can tell are ones that are at the tragic level of life and death. It could be simple things. For example this morning, my friend Jeremy pinged me asking, where is the intro chapter to his book on event marketing.

 And I felt guilty because I know I've pushed the thing off for three or four weeks, and I've been wanting to get around to it. But I haven't done that. And I just beat myself up thinking I'm leaving this guy hanging. I told him, I'd write the foreword to his book. You know, when you have that project that you push off and it's just lingering the back of your head, you know, you need to get it done, but you don't do it.

 I felt that kind of guilt. And then I realized all of us have these little things that we need to break through and sometimes we just need to get it done. And that's why. I now keep a list of three things I want to do each day. I write a list of those items and I check them off on the list, cross them out.

 It feels so good to get those things done. You see that? That's just a simple thing. Like getting one thing done. I access, you know, I said, here's what the situation was. I said, how I felt about it, just like Wayne. He did. And I used the bounce a way to incorporate the word you there's many different ways to incorporate the word you in telling the story.

 And you'll find the most powerful storytellers do this. And when they tell that story, not only do they have the bounce in order to have the bounce, this emotional reflection, back to the audience, to be powerful, you have to build up a story, not embellish a story, not exaggerate the story, but you have to build up a few facts about the story that helped people feel and see what's going on.

 So if we were to point the movie camera there, we could actually see it. Now contrast these two scenes scene a is. When I was in high school, I worked lots of different, random sorts of jobs because I wanted to make money and buy a pair of air Jordans. That was the thing to be popular. And I pulled weeds.

 I did transcription. I had a paper route. I started websites, all these different things to try to make a little bit of extra cash so I can buy a pair of air Jordans. Right. That's one story. That's a exhibit B. My very first job was in palace Verdes estates make you $4 and 25 cents an hour. Pulling weeds for this old woman in the back of her yard.

 I was pulling weeds. I got blisters on my hand and she was out there watching me. She was too cheap to hire a real landscaper or get equipment. So there I was as a 14 year old pulling weeds with my bare hands doing the best I could. I was exhausted after three and a half hours. I didn't have enough water.

 It was hot outside. And eventually I decided I'm never going to be a gardener. And which of them had a particular scene that you could see a or B.

 B because you focused on just a few details on one particular scene. So the movie camera, you could see me in the field, pulling the weeds. The old lady get mad at me, me being frustrated, being paid $4 25 cents an hour, which granted that was 1988, something like that. Versus if you say when I was in school or when I first got married or when I started my business or that's, that could be an intro, but it has to focus on one particular scene on a Thursday afternoon.

 This thing happened when Sally called me and said that she was, you know, my client called and said how unhappy she was. I told her this, right. You can see a particular moment in time. So be careful of generalizations about college or business or learning, but focus on one moment, one scene from that one scene, you develop something that happened, some kind of challenge.

 Usually it's some kind of failure or some kind of shock, something that happened that caused you to feel a certain way. It could be a positive thing. It could be when I won the. Regional spelling bee in California to represent California and the national spelling bee in 1988. True story. I was so excited.

 I was going to Washington DC for the scripts, Howard national spelling bee with my parents, with a bunch of kids from all over the United States who were super smart. And we got to. DC. And we toured the Smithsonian, the Washington monument. We toured all sorts of places around DC. You could see kind of in your eye, you could see the scene, like a movie scene of me going around to these different places.

 Versus if I said I was a good Asian in high school and I studied a little. In fact, I studied so hard. I worked on the weekends too, because we had Chinese school on Saturdays. That's what Chinese parents like to do. And I was just working all the time and I didn't have any friends. And you know, that's not as powerful as isolating one moment in time.

 Right? One moment in time is at the spelling bee. I remember stepping out on the stage and there were 50 TV cameras pointing at me. The lights were bright in my face. And the announcer was clear on the other side of the stage, I could barely hear him. And he told me the word that I had dispelled. I was so scared.

 I was trembling. I could barely hear him. The lights were in my face, but I asked him to repeat the word and it was, then I heard the word, I spelled it correctly and I was able to not die because in the squid games, you all die, you know, whatever it might be. Right. You could, you could envision the scene.

 So learn how to focus on a specific detail that allows you then access the emotion that then allows you to do the bounce. So that's a lot of things to remember, but the more practice you have, the better you get at it. And even I'm still a novice, even, I'm still learning all the time. How to tell stories.

 All right, who wants to practice? I promise you you'll feel so good once you do. You overcome that? Uh, public speaking because when the show is over, you might think, ah, dang it. I should raise my hand, but I didn't want it to, cause I thought maybe somebody else would raise their hand. I was afraid of looking dumb or something like that.

 Hey, Jeffrey, you want to give it a shot? Okay. Well I can, um, I'll yeah, I'll tell a story. Um, I have, I have three kids, two boys, but I have one daughter. And if anyone's ever, if you have ever, you know, witnessed the birth of a child, you know that one of the first things you do is you sort of count their fingers and toes.

 You want to make sure that that beautiful child has all their fingers and toes. And when my beautiful daughter, Olivia was born sure enough, she had all her fingers and toes. I was very happy when Olivia was about two and a half years old. I had left her with my in-laws at the time too. Um, cause we were going to be going away.

 Um, my wife at the time and I were coming down to Florida where I live now, cause I was changing jobs and I had to come down to look for a place to live and then we're going to come back. So I was taking the boys with me cause they were older, but Olivia is the youngest was going to stay with her grandparents.

 And um, you know, it's probably the first time we left her alone when we weren't with her. So as you know, If you're a parent, that's a stressful time to begin. And it was the Friday afternoon before we were leaving for Florida that Saturday morning. And I got a frantic call about four in the afternoon. I was at my office.

 I got a frantic call from my mother-in-law and she screaming hysterical over the phone. And I couldn't really understand what she's saying. She's going her finger, her finger Olivia's finger, her finger. And I said, you know, mom, what, what what's going on? Her finger, her finger. It's blood everywhere. And she's mommy's all right, stay there.

 I'm leaving right now. I'm coming to coming to you. And they lived in Queens. I was working in Manhattan and I rush out, get in my car, drive through the traffic, get to Manhattan. And I, I show up at their home and there's a note on the door, went to the hospital and they told me which hospital was. So I get back in the car and I rush over to the hospital and, and you know how stressful this could be when you, you're not really sure what's going on.

 And this was a number of years ago. So there were no cell phones. I had to just rely on that note on the door and then head to the hot. So I show up to the emergency room and I get there and I see my daughters there and my mother-in-law and my daughter's got her hand all wrapped up and I arrived just at the moment that the doctor was going to see her.

 So I literally still don't really know what's going on and I just follow my daughter or carry her into, see the doctor and the doctor unwraps the bandage that my mother-in-law put in her finger and reveals her bloody hands. And he takes a look at it at her finger and he notices that the top of her finger is missing and he looks at me and granted, I just arrived.

 He looks at me and says, where's the rest of her finger. I don't know, I just got here and I turned to my mother-in-law and I, and you know, she's hysterical. And I find out that my daughter fell while she was holding a stepladder and the stepladder closed and sliced the top of her finger off, you know, from just, just above the nail.

 So the doctor looks me right in the eye and you know, that look when someone is dead serious, you know how they look you in the eye and you know how that feels the see right through. You have to find the finger literally. So that's what he said to me. So. I run off, get back in my car again, drive back to my in-law's house.

 Now, now that I know what had happened, I went right into the kitchen and sure enough, there's a stepladder on the floor and I examined the step ladder and I find the tip of my daughter's finger stuck to the side of the step ladder, like a piece of chicken. I mean, literally like a piece of chicken with a fingernail.

 So. Like most of you, I watch a lot of TV, so I figured, okay, I got to put it on ice. So I grab a Dixie cup off the counter, open up the freezer, pour some, put some ice cubes in the Dixie cup and carefully place. The tip of my daughter's finger into that Dixie cup and run outside and trip and fall and spill the contents of that Dixie cup, including my daughter's fingertip into the gutter.

 This is in Queens, New York, the gutters full of leaves and dirt. So now, now I'm struggling. Brushing aside, leaves picking up and brushing off ice cubes with my mouth and trying to find it. I find that dirty tip of the finger. I said, whatever the doctor will deal with it, put it back in the cup. Some ice cubes rushed back to the hospital, bring in the dirty tip of the finger.

 The doctors, you know, cleans it off with all the antiseptics and everything. And then I sat with my daughter, Olivia in my lap for two and a half hours. While the hand surgeon that they brought in from another hospital, literally sewed the tip of her finger. Back on. And I just sat there and held her and she was a champion.

 I am someone who don't like the sight of blood. So it was pretty tough. But you know, when it's, you know, when it's your child you'll do anything and you'll do things that you wouldn't normally do. Normally I wouldn't want to watch surgery right in front of me with someone sitting in my lap, but I did.

 It's my daughter, he sewed the tip of her finger back on said he wasn't sure if it would take or not. We'd have to wait and see. And I'm happy to say that today. My daughter, Olivia is 30 years old and just like when she was born, she has all her fingers and toes. And, um, you wouldn't know that she had lost that tip at that time.

 Wow. Masterpiece. So if you looked at her hand now, could you tell if you. If you look really carefully, you can see a very thin line, but it doesn't, it almost doesn't even look like a scar, just a very thin line. But other than that, no, there's no nothing. No. So that tip of the finger still has all sensations.

 Yeah, like normal. She was very, she, she was very lucky. You know, they brought in a hand surgeon from long island Jewish hospital, which is one of the best hospitals in New York. And he, you know, knew what he was doing. And despite my, my spill into the gutter, I think the ice cubes and the fast action and retrieving that, uh, tip of the finger with the nail intact, it worked out.

 And, um, she said, no problem since. Well, you guys can hear Jeffrey story. You could feel the excitement, the anticipation, the find, you know, when you know, when he looks you in the face and it gives you that look, all right, go back and get the finger. You can see him frantically driving back and forth between the hospital and the house.

 You're just with them every step of the way. And I know I was thinking, gee, what's going to happen next. Is he going to find the finger? Is the finger going to go down the drain? Like the clown with the balloon or whatever? It's the third. You're gonna be able to sew it back on. What's the, mother-in-law going to say, you know what you're wondering, what's going to happen next, just like in any kind of show.

 And so that's the hallmark of a good story. And Jeffrey, you used the balance, I think seven times. Did I count that correctly? I wasn't, I wasn't keeping track. You almost use it too many times, but it was good. And the way that you used it most commonly was you said, you know, and you know, is okay, just be sure that you don't say, you know, so often that it becomes like the word, like, or a filler, because a lot of younger adults will say, blah, blah, blah.

 You know, you know, you know, Which has sort of a fake empathy because they're not really bouncing it. They're just saying the word, you know? So you, instead of saying, you know, you could say like that, look when the doctor gives you, when you know you eat or the look your, your mom gives you when you've misbehaved.

 Yeah, that makes the like, is an easier word, but it's, but be careful about saying like, because like could be a valley, like when the valley girls, like, when they're saying like, you know, like when they don't know how to speak very clearly and like everything ends and the end of a sentence, like, it's a question, but like, it's not actually a question, you know?

 And when like the end, the voice goes up at the end of the sentence, you know, like that kind of thing. So like, you know, work really well as analogies to bridge into using the bounce when there's possible. Good, good feedback then it's I appreciate that. Cause I, I do tend to say even when I'm not telling a story like that, I notice I tend to say, you know, too much, so that's a good, good feedback.

 Thank you. Yup. Fantastic. You did great. I would grade you 95 out of a hundred. Well, thank you, Louis. You lose five, lose three points. Four. I think I counted four ohms and the bounce wasn't quite it. Wasn't perfect, but it was very, very good. Right. So if you can change your inflection just a little bit, when you deliver the bounce, it's going to carry more emotional impact, especially it's okay to pause too, because when you pause for a second or two, that lets people think about it, it really sinks in what happened.

 Such as the doctor unwrapped Olivia's towel or whatever, it was around a bandage around the arm and realized that she was missing the tip of her finger. And so you pause there for a second or two, and then you deliver a bounce. Right. And I was scared what the doctor would say, you know, when there's silence and.

 You know, they're going to say something bad, like that kind of thing. Right. So that was really good. I mean, 95. Fantastic. Thank you, Dennis. Okay. We have 'cause, you know, you talked as a parent as well, so somehow then I just felt really connected to your story. And it was elegant too. And that you started with being born, counting all the fingers and toes, and you ended with all the fingers and toes.

 So I was wondering where you're going with that because I thought, why is he putting in so much effort in a preamble, on fingers and toes? And then later it's like, oh, okay. I can see why you did that. That's good. It's a nice way to loop back around. Yes. You saw what I did there. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. We have Sophina up next Placentia.

 I am super hero. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? Good. Glad you're here. You ready? Thanks for having me. I'm like totally nervous. Oh, that's great. That means it's exciting. You want to reframe nervousness into excitement? Think of it. Safina. Like you're getting a gift. Like it's a present and you're going to open the present and inside is some kind of, it could be money.

 It could be something that you like your favorite food. So you want to reframe. That energy from fear into excitement. Okay. Absolutely. I'm going to, I'm going to try. All right, let's do it. What's your story? So, uh, the other day I had a mentor asked me why is it that I do what I do? I'm a nonprofit consultant and, um, all the answers I was giving her.

 Was just surface stuff, because I love working with nonprofits or mission-based businesses, or I love helping people. And she was just like, yeah, why don't you, why don't you come back? Because it doesn't sound like you have the, um, the conviction behind those stories that tell me that that's really your why.

 And so I sat in my room and. Everything was off in my room. Uh, there was no noise and I just sat and I was trying to think about, all right, why, why do I do what I do? And then this memory popped into my head when I was around 19. I remember walking into this restaurant, uh, right behind this gentleman who.

 Didn't have a shirt, didn't have any shoes or slippers. And he was barefoot. Um, he had black shorts on and he had this, uh, he had about shoulder length, grungy, grayish, white hair. So as I walked into the restaurant right behind him, um, I was thinking to myself, I think this guy is homeless. Um, clearly. No one could look as grungy as him and like be okay.

 And so when we were in this takeout restaurant, uh, there were three of us there. I was right behind this gentleman and there was one person in front of him. Um, the person in front of him finally had done their order and left. So now it was this gentleman's turn. And I kept thinking about how, um, Well, that's awesome.

 You know, that this guy, um, this guy can be served. Um, and so when he got up to the counter, the cashier immediately took a look at him and said, I'm sorry. No shoes, no shirt, no service needs. And when I heard that my ears maybe parked up and I looked at her and I couldn't see the guy's face because I was behind him, but I could see his shoulders kind of slump.

 And I could hear him say to the lady,

 my mom is hungry. I just need a sandwich. I can. Well, he said it with a type of accent, uh, that I wasn't familiar with. And the lady again, the cashier again says, sorry, no shoes, no shirt, no service. You need to leave. And so I could hear the gentlemen again, say, please, my mom, I can pay. So then the cashier yells to the kitchen and says, I think we have a problem.

 When this burly gentlemen emerges and says what's going on and I can hear the cashier. Tell this burly gentlemen, um, he's got no shoes, no shirt. We can't serve him. He needs to leave. So the Burley gentleman again, and addresses this, um, this gentleman in front of me and says, Rhonda, you gotta leave.

 Otherwise we can call the cops, no shoes, no shirt, no service. And. I remember the gentleman taking a step back again, reiterating, please. I can pay. And the cashier and the cook both said get outta here. And so he began to leave and I felt anger. I felt hurt or this gentleman. And so.

 And in addition to that shock. And so as soon as the gentlemen started heading for the door, um, the cashier looked at me and said, what can I help you with? I looked at her, I turned towards the gentleman that was exiting and I followed him out. I followed him out of the restaurant and caught him on the opposite side of the restaurant doors.

 And I asked him, excuse me, What would you like? What, what do you need? What do you, what would you like? And he goes anything. My mom is hungry. I compare. And so he held up his hand and in his hand he had crinkled dollar bills and I told him, don't worry about it. Just, you know, our issue, allergic to anything I can, I'll pay for it.

 I'll get her something to eat. And he goes just anything. So I said, okay. I walked back into the restaurant and I go up to the cashier. Um, and I ordered two plate lunches and a sandwich for myself. And so the cashier asked me, are you ordering for the gentleman that just left? And I told her, what does that matter?

 And she told me, well, you can't do that. If he doesn't have shoes or shirt there's no, we can't service him. And I told her. Pretty pretty angrily. Like that shouldn't matter because he's not ordering. I am. And clearly I have a shirt, I have shoes. And so you should be able to take my order of which I'm going to pay for.

 And so she calls behind again to the kitchen and says, I think we have a problem. So again, this burly gentleman comes out and says, what's going on? And the cashier says, she's trying to order for the gentlemen that. Told me, uh, asked to leave. And so the Burley gentlemen told me, oh, you cannot do that. And I shocked.

 I was just utterly shocked. I looked at both of them and I asked them, is this restaurant owned by the nonprofit, just a few doors down. And they both looked at me and said yes. And I was like, oh, okay. Um, doesn't that nonprofit serve homeless people. And they both looked at me and said yes. And I said, okay, so what does it matter if he has low shoes, no shirt.

 Um, if that, if that's who you're trying to serve. And so I guess a little bit peeved, because I started answering them, asking them questions. They told me it's none of my business I should leave. And so even more pissed, I ended up letting them know that I was a boarder. I was a director on the board of directors for this organization.

 And it just also so happened that my mom was the executive director and that I would be discussing with her on what just transport. And so I was beginning to walk out where they had stopped me and said, we are, we apologize. We are so sorry. And then the, they proceeded to take my order. And of course I'm mad, but I wanted to feed this gentleman.

 And so they took my order. I paid for, I paid for it. I went outside and I gave the gentlemen his order and. The look on his face was what got me though most when I gave him the food, I've never S I was 19 at the time. I never seen a grown man on the verge of tears and looked so helpless. And when he accepted the food, he said, I can pay and try to give me again, the crumpled dollar bills that was in his, that was in his hand.

 And they sort of, don't worry about it. She'd your mom. When you're done, make sure you eat this food when you are done, come back, go to the door right across the parking lot and ask for this person, um, because this person can help. You can help you in your mom, make sure that you get fed tomorrow. And so he goes, okay.

 Okay. I will. And that's when I realized that it was because of that moment.

 I I embedded this belief system, even unconscious to me until I had this exercise, that the reason why I do the things that I do in my non-profit consultancy business is because I firmly believe that if we are in a position to help people, we should. Wow. Sophina that is powerful. Was that in Hawaii?

 'cause he said Brauda some of the phrases. I thought that some of the specifics that you mentioned were powerful. And the way that you almost took on the voice of the manager or the, you know, the guy, the burly guy, or the cashier saying, look, I said, no shoes, no shirt, no service brought up. Right. We can't serve you.

 And we could picture what happened there. Think about isolating, just those details. Just a few of those key details in the story. I think you took 11 minutes. I bet you, you could tell the story in 90 seconds, just as. I was trying to, but I was also on the verge of tears. Yes. Because you're accessing the emotion.

 That's what happens. So when it's, when it's an authentic story and you're feeling the story and you're remembering that often it will cause people to slow down and we've done this on stage with hundreds of people and people will come up and volunteer. Like we see here one time, some guy who is really big and buff looked like a real tough guy.

 I spoke to the first time in his life instead that he was abused by his stepfather sexually molested. And he'd never mentioned that he held it in this whole time for 32 years. And just broke out in tears and we've seen people talk about their mother dying of cancer. We've seen people talk about all kinds.

 It doesn't have to be negative horrific situations, but when you access that emotion, you have to be able to access it, but still be able to keep enough composure to tell your story, like you sell assault with whiny. Wayne. She was able to access her story, but you could still feel the emotion come through.

 So it's kind of a balance. So you did a great job. We could tell it was real. We could feel what was going on scene by scene. See about speeding. It doesn't mean that you have to talk faster, but pick some of the key details. So you don't have to have every little piece of dialogue. Right? What are some of the key moments, right?

 That was fantastic. Good job. Yeah. The only thing I would add too, I agree with everything Dennis said is, is, you know, sort of the punchline to the story was the fact that, that you knew the restaurant was associated with the. Nonprofit and that you had an association with the nonprofit. So that's kind of like the, the aha the surprise moment of the story.

 So I think you can lead to that better. So I think one way you could shorten it to, I don't know that you needed to start with the introduction about your mentor asking you if you knew what your, why was, and that's why you remembered. I mean, I think you can dive right into this particular story right away, because this story on its own is powerful.

 And you have that kind of gotcha moment at the end. Um, when you reveal, you know, your connection to the non. Yeah, fantastic. Hero's journey by the way. That's great because we're rooting for the old man and his mom to be able to eat we're rooting for you. And when you mentioned, well, that non-profit, that owns this restaurant, I'm a director, then you can see everyone's kind of cheering like yeah, yeah.

 Then they apologized and said how sorry they were and you know, happily ever after. So that's, that's a great payoff. Like Jeffrey said, if you can start with that scene of, I was standing in line at the restaurant, this old man in front of me with salt and pepper, gray hair clearly looked homeless. Tried to order if you start there.

 I think the rest of it will flow because you don't have to say that the why is important until the very end. So when you can, if you do the three-part sequence of a one minute story, when I was, so when I was in line at the restaurant, all this happened, and then you reveal that it's owned by the non-profit two doors down and don't you serve the homeless.

 That's an only then is when you can say, I believe that. Right. That's the, that's the story is what unlocks your, why? So you don't want it, if you tell your why first, or if you talk about your why before telling the story you are, you're not allowing the audience to come to the conclusion themselves. So the story is what delivers the power, which then has the emotion, which then allow, then you include the bounce.

 And then you can say, I believe that, right? So when you have the story that has the emotion. That then balances that to the audience. Then when you make a statement about it, I believe that it's important to have a why and you know, or whatever is to be morally consistent to help people. Right. It's all the sort of moral conclusions that you have then the final piece is I am.

 I am Sophina and I help nonprofits on lock their why to better serve their community. Right. Then when you deliver that punch at the end, it carries so much power because you're stacking, stacking, stacking all the way through you. See that? I understand now. Okay. Yeah. So that's three parts of telling a powerful why video of which the bounce is the piece in the middle that allows other people to feel that way.

 So any nonprofit that you consult for, you want to help them tell stories and to be able to create empathy, they have to help. Feel the same way, which increases donations and participation and advocacy and more people coming to the silent auction and you know, all the kinds of things that nonprofits are trying to do.

 Right. So nonprofits have to be experts at storytelling and that's what you helped them do. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for, and this I'm sorry. This is recorded, right? Like I, I want to go back through and like, I I'm taking my own notes, but I really want to go back to. Yep. Next week, next week it'll be posted.

 Usually it takes about a week for them to show up on start-up dot club. So if you go to startup.club and you'll find the coach, you show, you'll be able to find the recording for this show and also past episodes of the coach you show for. Wonderful. I appreciate it. Thank you. Awesome. And ladies gentlemen, every week we meet Thursday 5:00 PM Pacific, a new top.

 That will teach and practice. I love teaching from things that I've learned that I practice and have you guys practice it well as well. That's why it's the coach new show because it's coaching you get it. And as part of started that club, so happy. That they host this so happy that Jeffrey's here every week.

 He's the COO of a big company. He's very successful, very humble yet. He's making time and I'm glad that you guys are making time and I'm excited to see you guys every week. I want to see more participation from you because that's how you're going to grow. Don't just listen to this. Radio show, right? The whole point of clubhouse is that we can participate.

 And if you're reading this on the blog or you're listening to this on startup.club, that's great too, but there's nothing better than building real connections live together in person. And with that, thank you so much, everybody. Jeffrey, take us out. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, everyone. This has been another great episode of the coach you show.

 And as I mentioned, visit startup.club for recording. Sign up for our mailing lists. And Dennis will be here every Thursday evening at 5:00 PM. Pacific 8:00 PM. Eastern time for coaching you on the coach you show. Thanks everyone. Thank you, Dennis. Have a good night. Everybody love you all.

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