What is Your X-Factor? 

[00:00:00] 

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 [00:01:00] 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 [00:02:00] 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 [00:03:00] 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 [00:04:00] 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 [00:05:00] 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, [00:06:00] 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 [00:07:00] 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 [00:08:00] 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, [00:09:00] 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 [00:10:00] 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 [00:11:00] 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 [00:12:00] 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 [00:13:00] 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, [00:14:00] 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 [00:15:00] 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, [00:16:00] 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 [00:17:00] 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 [00:18:00] 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. [00:19:00] 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 [00:20:00] 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 [00:21:00] 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 [00:22:00] 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 [00:23:00] 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 [00:24:00] 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 [00:25:00] 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 [00:26:00] 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 [00:27:00] 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 [00:28:00] 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 [00:29:00] 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 [00:30:00] 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 [00:31:00] 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 [00:32:00] 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 [00:33:00] 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 [00:34:00] 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 [00:35:00] 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 [00:36:00] 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 [00:37:00] 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 [00:38:00] 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 [00:39:00] 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 [00:40:00] 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 [00:41:00] 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, [00:42:00] 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 [00:43:00] 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 [00:44:00] 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 [00:45:00] 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 [00:46:00] 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 [00:47:00] 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 [00:48:00] 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. [00:49:00] 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 [00:50:00] 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, [00:51:00] 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, [00:52:00] 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 [00:53:00] 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 [00:54:00] 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[00:55:00] 

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, [00:56:00] 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 [00:57:00] 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 [00:58:00] 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 [00:59:00] 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 [01:00:00] 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.