🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

There's a lot of noise in the world. There are many different coaches, books, and self-development things telling you what you should or shouldn't do. While some of that might be helpful, sometimes what it does is brings your mind into multiple different directions. There is so much conflicting information that you don't know what to trust or believe. Then you try one thing and it brings you down...

My advice is to just never give up. If you have researched to know that this is a good product that people would buy or even if it's not a consumer product. If it's a business you know that people are going to use or a service that people need, just don't give up. You never know. It might be the tenth time you get knocked down that you get back up again and turn that corner and take off. You can't...

I think it is important to know this is not a one and done. Legal compliance is a continuing thing that will rise with your business. As you scale and grow there will be new issues that will come up. There will be new opportunities to kind of enter into strategic partnerships and those will bring there own separate issues around all of this and what kind of agreement you want to engage with a pote...

I hadn't gotten any attention from VCs. So these who invested in me, some of them as many as seven or eight times, I have to honor those folks, I have to give them a great deal. They have been with me since 2014. Hearing out the idea of what we wanted to go after as a market was easy. Building the tech was harder. We founded in 2014 so we are looking at year seven and just now looking at monetizat...

If the market is telling you something, don't ignore it. You know the story about PayPal and eBay is there was an anomaly where people on eBay were starting to use PayPal. They saw this anomaly in their data and then pursued it. Then PayPal exploded because it became the go-to solution for buying stuff on eBay. But itinually it was just a blip in the data. like what was going on over here with eBa...

Being able to adapt to changes is very important. For us, the pandemic changed people's habits from housing to communication to transportation. This means we had to move fast to serve the people in the housing market. We started in the Bay area and right now we realize people are moving to Austen and Idaho Falls. So we have to figure out how we can help those people. It is challenging for us becau...

In order to make a very successful company, in addition to what I said before with focusing on a bunch of different things marketing, development, and all of those things. You have to have a passion for it, and you have to put in the work for it. If you are just going to say I want to make a trillion dollars on the first day, it's not going to happen you need to put the work in. It's going to be a...

So for me something that was really important was trying to really take it one step at a time. There were a couple of times where I put it down and did not touch for a month at a time. And I do think that why it took so long to finally publish it. But, once I kind of set deadlines for my self, and they were very manageable deadlines. At first I felt like maybe they were too small because they were...

Don't have an entrepreneurial seizure. Don't just do it because you're tired of your job. Look at what it takes to run a business. Look at all the things you have to have in a row. If you need help, talk to Devin. He will help you. If you have a cool idea, talk to Devin. He will help protect you. There is one thing we have been so hypervigilant about that we have locked it down so much that it imp...

You really need to love and be super passionate about whatever your going to do. Because it is going to take away time from other things that you love to do like your family, or another passion whether it is golf or whatever it may be. Your going to have to sacrifice and take away time from something that you love to go and build this. Because most likely you don't have the resources to not be wor...

First is start as soon as possible and don't waste your time. Define your priorities, each day study something new, and don't hesitate to ask. People are open when they ask. If you have a question ask someone and they will responded.

Research first. Do your research, do not jump into something without a deep dive into something that you have interest in. A lot of times these interest come from things that happen to you, and that's great.  Before you go diving into things I have a perfect example to share. I was competing with virtual private networks. So virtual private was a much better play because they were making mone...

I have had those conversations with people who are in that same boat and they say what you are talking about sounds great, I know I need it but I don't have that money. What do you think I should do? And I say you know what keep doing what your doing. Keep working your job and keep trying to set aside a little bit of cash, keep working on your plan, and get yourself in a little bit better financia...

Be confident in yourself and be positive. You never know what will happen in the future. You will definitely have your ups and downs and you will never know where you will find your treasure. Have a plan but always be flexible and always be positive. Never think that something went wrong. Even if something went wrong it is a lesson and you need to study something.

Every entrepreneur needs to develop grit and practice gratitude. What I mean by that is with developing grit there is no easy business. If it was easy everybody would be doing it and nobody would be willing to pay you for it. You are doing something hard and so you are going to have days that are awful. You are going to have days where your partner is depressed and you are depressed and you don't...

Failing is another story but definitely on your own path to your successes whatever it is. It will be rocky and you will have ups and downs and it's hard as hell. So definitely I think perseverance is the number one thing I could advice anyone. I tell that to myself every time it is hard. It was hard when it was Corona like two months ago. So you just wake up and say oh it's this time of life agai...

If you have the chance to do research on an angel, which almost every single time you will. Whether raising money from a restaurateur, ok what type of restaurants do they like? what type of food do they like? Are there talk with them at conferences? Watch those talks, read their white papers, look at what they invested in on crunch space. See if you can learn anything about their family. Do their...

I truly believe that success in creative business comes down to the mindset and the skill set of the leader. And honestly 80% mindset. And so what I have really been focused on is not just tactically what does a business look like, and how you do sales, and marketing, and finances. What's the mindset that helps somebody be good at those things so that they have the desire to go learn how to improv...

You want to go after a key word that is a little bit more niche. There might not be as many people looking for it but it's hyper relevant and it's easy to rank for. You can be the big fish in the little pond an own whatever traffic there is going to those key words. For most small businesses that the direction you want to go.

You never know when your time is up, So spend every moment of your time with something you love. Just find what you love and do it. I have found so many kids that don't like school and I tell them dude find something that you can do after school that you love, even if it is a sport. Because you just never know. I could go to school tomorrow driving and boom a car hits me and I am gone. You just ne...

Grow their network and find a mentor or a coach who can really help guide you. There is no way I would be where I am today had I not worked super hard to find people who had the type of lifestyle, that had the type of businesses that I wanted. And I hunted them down and pursued them and I worked hard to build really great relationships with a handful of really successful entrepreneurs. And that ha...

I can't be in a conversation without talking about LinkedIn to the point where anyone thinking they want to be an entrepreneur at some point or even they are now to leverage LinkedIn. It's the one platform for professional business purposes. Leverage the platform is my biggest thing. Sometimes I get clients who wait until they are at the point of frustration where they may have to close their busi...

Follow your heart, Follow your conviction because you are the person who knows why you started the business in the first place. It's always good to pivot and take in feedback and change. I am not asking you to be ridged but, I think if there is one thing you can be ridged about it is telling people hey I want to follow my conviction, I want to follow my heart so that if I lead a life and fail I ca...

Sustainability is no longer as nice to deal with. It's a transforming industry. People are making their buying decisions based on those practices and it leads to a competitive advantage.

It does not matter how much you know, but how much you are willing to learn. And I think growth mindset along the way. I have seen even among my business partners, It's really understanding that you are not going to have all the right answers but if you are willing to fight for it then that's what is going to make the whole difference. I just look back on where I was when I first started this. I d...