Meet The Disruptors: Justin Crowe of Parting Stone On Disrupting the Deathcare Industry, One Stone at a Time
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
When I first recognized the problem that ashes were uncomfortable to live with and were inhibiting grief for millions of people, I began to look for solutions. My first idea was to create jewelry with the cremated remains inside to allow people to carry the remains of loved ones with them. We created a minimum viable product and even sold a few necklaces, but the experiment was ultimately a failure.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Crowe.
Justin Crowe is the founder of Parting Stone, a death tech startup reinventing the cremation experience by offering a solidified form of remains so families can hold their loved ones again. After he lost his grandfather in 2014, Justin started asking people about their experiences with loss. What he learned inspired him to develop a new form of solidified remains that are beautiful, clean, and memorable so that families can continue to feel a bond with their departed.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I’ve been a creative entrepreneur for much of my career and after I lost my grandfather in 2014, I started asking people about their experiences with loss. It shocked me that for all of the inspiring stories I heard about people’s lives, there were these tragic stories about living with cremated remains.
One person described sweeping up ashes strewn with bone fragments after they accidentally spilled. Another told a horror story about scattering ashes with their family on a windy day. And perhaps most heartbreaking, I spoke with many people who were stowing their loved ones’ cremated remains in closets, basements and even garages, oftentimes for decades.
The discrepancy between the intimacy of our closest relationships and the coldness of our experience of living with their remains was disconcerting. I thought, we don’t accept this type of poor experience in any other part of modern life, so why are we accepting it around one of our most treasured possessions?
The core of these poor experiences was the unfortunate granular form of remains being returned following cremation. So, I set out to develop a new, comfortable, form of solidified remains that would offer families choosing cremation a 100% alternative to ashes.
A few things were important to me for this new form of remains:
Solidified remains should allow people to hold their loved ones again.
They should create community and make it easy, simple and memorable to share remains with friends and family.
They should be beautiful enough for families to want their loved ones at the kitchen table during dinner.
Most importantly, solidified remains should give intention and purpose to remains in order to continue a bond and connection to our departed.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
We’re introducing a completely new category of human remains to an industry that is notoriously stagnant and afraid of change. We all accept that receiving a black plastic box of ash and bone fragments after cremation is “normal,” but it doesn’t have to be anymore.
For the first time ever, there is a positive experience available. Solidified remains offer families and loved ones a way to continue having a connection with their departed. We can hold, share, and proudly display solidified remains, which is a gamechanger, especially at a time when family gatherings are difficult due to COVID-19 restrictions and health concerns.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first recognized the problem that ashes were uncomfortable to live with and were inhibiting grief for millions of people, I began to look for solutions. My first idea was to create jewelry with the cremated remains inside to allow people to carry the remains of loved ones with them. We created a minimum viable product and even sold a few necklaces, but the experiment was ultimately a failure.
What I realized though, was that these few people that we helped still had 10 cups of ashes left over that ended up in their closet. This is when we realized that the problem was not that we needed a better keepsake. The problem was the cremated remains themselves. This gave us our key insight that led us to invent a new form of human and animal remains and eliminate ashes all together.
Cremation urns and keepsakes put a bandage on the problem of ashes being uncomfortable, while solidified remains solve it.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
In our case, disruption is a net positive for all parties. Families want a way to feel comfortable with and close to the remains of their loved ones and not have them hidden in a cold steel urn. Funeral homes want better ways to serve their families remains then in a zip-tied plastic bag of ash. We are indeed disrupting the cremation industry by offering the first alternative to “ashes” in 20,000 years… but no one is losing. We’re building a new market on top of the existing infrastructure.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Early in my career, I was writing for an online art publication. When I started, the editor told me “You can write whatever you want, as long as you’re not wrong.” Although this was a little crass, these boundaries gave me permission to be creative, curious, and take risks… but required me to validate all my ideas in solid research. It also implied that people don’t have to agree with me — even him.
I still think about this advice when I am coming up with new ideas.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Over the last two years, we’ve realized that solidified remains are the beginning of the memorial experience for families. They receive the solidified remains and then they leave one of mom’s stones on a beach, they share her remains with the family, they display her solidified remains in glass containers, or they paint on the stones with her grandchildren. These activities are an essential part of the healing experience that we want to encourage and provide tools to realize. This year, Parting Stone will be creating inspirational ritual guides, products, and customization options to offer a framework for solidified remains memorial experiences. We want to revolutionize the way families grieve through positive experiences and improving the rituals around death is the next step.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
A book that helped shape my thinking how we talk about solidified remains is Play Bigger. The book is about category design and how a business can frame the point of view around a product or service to have more impact. In our case, this book helped us learn how to position solidified remains as a form of remains, rather than a keepsake or product. This point of view has allowed Parting Stone to reach more families and solve a real anxiety in their life. No more uncomfortable ash.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite Life Lesson Quote is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the scene where they are rolling a cart through an impoverished area collecting people’s dead from their homes. One-character attempts to toss a dead man on the cart, but he yells out “I’m not dead!” Over the years, this quote has inspired me to make sure I am living each day fully and continuing to remind people that I am still here, pushing forward, screaming and yelling about it until I can’t anymore.
At the end of the scene, they knock the man out and toss him the cart with the other dead people… I’m an optimist and a realist.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
We believe that a “Death Curious Movement” would have a profound impact on mental health. In the United States, we tend to avoid talking about death, grief, and mortality. This means that when a death occurs, we are often deeply uncomfortable talking about it publicly, and sometimes embarrassed about our internal feelings. This solitude during a challenging time can lead to extreme loneliness, and increased grief. One of the goals of solidified remains is to make human remains comfortable… even desirable… to touch and hold. This is just one small tool to break down anxiety around the idea of death and bring families and communities together heal with compassion and open dialogue.
There are many organizations already perusing similar missions including the End-of-Life Network by Round Glass, Reimagine: End of Life, and Death Cafes. We are big fans of their work.
Be authentic. People use the word ‘authenticity’ a lot — but it’s very important, especially on live video, to come across as a believable, trustworthy source of information that your viewer can use. Being yourself is a strategy that sounds easy — but for many, it’s unfortunately not — and it takes many repetitions to be comfortable being on live video for the world to see.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to InterviewJim Fuhs and Chris Stone, founders of Dealcasters, Livestreaming Amazon Influencers who interview experts and entrepreneurs while training Amazon customers how to overcome the fear of technology, start and flourish in their content creator journeys.
Jim Fuhs of Fuhsion Marketing and Chris Stone of Cast Ahead are the founders of Dealcasters: Livestreaming Amazon Influencers who interview experts and entrepreneurs while training Amazon customers how to overcome the fear of technology and start and flourish in their content creator journeys. In just over a year, Dealcasters have established themselves as a trusted authority not only in the live video and podcasting space but also in the education of the Amazon Influencer program and the development of Influencers already on the platform. They’ve spoken on stages and virtually at PodFest Expo, VidFest Expo, StreamYard Industry Showcase, Agorapulse Agency Summit, Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, Social Media Week Lima and others.
Jim and Chris collaborate as remote live producers and have led, assisted and coordinated production teams with clients such as IBM, StreamYard, United Nations Global Compact, MIT, Toastmasters International, Glasko Smith Kline (GSK), Jamaican Chamber Of Commerce and USABizParty, which has included speakers such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Darren LaCroix and many more.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Chris: I began in the music industry with Sony and have worked with content creators all my life. Being amusician myself, I not only “carried the bag” when it came to creating and broadcasting content — I learned firsthand how to sell, market and make content sound and look the best it can be. Walking out of the music industry and into the podcasting and Livestreaming space with Cast Ahead in 2019 was seamless for me.
Jim and I met at a Podcast Atlanta Meet-up and found that our businesses were very similar. We both worked as producers, editors and marketers for a number of driven entrepreneurs and businesses. Jim and I knew that we wanted to do a show together, but we needed to do something unique that also allowed us to demonstrate our skills as producers, content creators, and editors — all while being able to show our individual personalities.
Jim: I’m a retired Marine LtCol turned Digital Marketing Consultant and like to say I “Do Marketing The Marine Corps Way,” at Fuhsion Marketing where I apply my 20+ years of leadership experience as a Marine Corps Officer to lead others to a successful Content Creator Career. A few months after meeting Chris, I watched a video on YouTube from our good friend Ross Brand about “How To Apply For Amazon Live” and I knew this was our chance to do the show we wanted to make. I was approved in just a few minutes — called Chris — and we spent the next few hours developing Dealcasters Live.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Jim: Our first interview on Dealcasters Live was with Jennifer Watson from The Weather Channel. Because I have many existing relationships with content creators like Jennifer, we were able to secure a big name for our very first interview and Chris and I were excited to “Weather The Storm.” Little did we know, there was about to be a hurricane of technical difficulties right before we went live.
Chris: Jim and I thought we did all of our homework before going live on the platform but couldn’t figure out why we were not able to go live on Amazon as it was giving us error messages while Jennifer sat in the green room (for 45 minutes!). Thank God Jennifer is a wonderful and patient person because we had to figure out that we couldn’t broadcast at 1080p on Amazon! Thankfully, we got everything sorted and Jen delivered like the pro that she is.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Chris: We began Dealcasters with one thing in mind. We wanted to help people get past the “mind-junk” that comes with the fear of technology and sometimes makes great people stop creating or even begin. Our expectations of financial success were minimal, so any gains we’ve seen we consider a gift.
Jim: Givers gain, and we are always looking to give back to the content creator community. One of the greatest things we see periodically during our shows that keeps us motivated is when people tell us that they are starting their podcast or livestream or any other form of content that day with the tips they’ve gotten from watching and interacting on our show.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Jim: On May 26–29, we’re super excited to be able to lead an entire day focused on Amazon Influencer & Liveselling in Orlando at PodFest/VidFest Expo. We’re putting together a plan for that day for Influencers to learn the basics of Amazon Liveselling and equip existing influencers to maximize their efforts and gain greater influence.
Chris: We’re working together with PodFest to put together a list of Influencers, speakers and experts we believe will fill the room with eager entrepreneurs, brands, sellers and content creators ready to be a part of this community.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
Chris: Brands need to build trust to sell products. The more human you can make your brand as an influencer or product, the more likely you will build “know, like, and trust.” People will not buy products from brands they don’t trust as they want to build relationships and feel like they are a part of that brand’s community.
Jim: In today’s world of social media and influencer marketing, people are looking for word of mouth, expert opinion or referral as they make a product buying decision. Brands that market themselves well are becoming a part of the conversation.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
Jim: Building your brand is the most important thing to invest your time and resources in. Dealcasters is not just about getting known, having a cool logo, or showing up on Amazon. Our brand is built based on how people trust us to deliver the honest and transparent information they need to solidify their buying decisions.
Chris: We’ve invested in many top-level descriptive domains from TrueName (the words to the right of the dot on a url) to be memorable, align with our brand, redirect the complicated links we’re given and get found. For instance, dealcasters.live sends someone to our latest Amazon Live show, dealcasters.shop sends them to our Shop Page, and dealcasters.contact to all our contact information. This allows us to speak those words in any social audio platform, virtual or IRL event and not be forgotten. It also presents a trusted and branded link to the viewer or listener instead of some shortened smartlink with slashes and indistinguishable characters. And since each word to the left and right side of the dot counts, using a descriptive domain also name makes it a keyword-rich and effective SEO tactic.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
1) Be consistent. As content creators, marketers and business owners know — consistency is the key. When you think no one is watching or listening — they are. You have to consistently develop content to drive brand awareness (SEO) and show your potential viewers, listeners and customers that you are driven to do the work necessary to be successful. Your viewers see the consistency and dedication. That dedication helps them develop the trust that you aren’t just talking about being dedicated to your craft — you’re doing the work.
2) Be the “go-to” authority. We have been tapped to speak at many events, podcasts, etc., because we take the time and effort necessary to know everything about Amazon Live Influencer Marketing and stay abreast of changes. We constantly experiment with new platform changes, provide information to other communities and are looked at as leaders in the space, which has become a part of our brand.
3) Focus on the viewers (your customers), not yourself. This will help build a community, which will evangelize for you and your brand. We found a way to incorporate Amazon Merch into our live shows and not only sell Dealcasters shirts, hoodies and swag — we have fans and guests that buy our shirts and post themselves wearing them on social media. You cannot buy that kind of branding.
4) Get found. In order for anyone to know you exist — you need to build an awareness strategy. We needed to be known outside of the Amazon Live ecosystem, and since “Live” was a part of our brand, we bought the top-level domain Dealcasters.Live. This not only catapulted our brand, it also put our Amazon Live show as the number one result for “Dealcasters” when searched for.
5) Be authentic. People use the word ‘authenticity’ a lot — but it’s very important, especially on live video, to come across as a believable, trustworthy source of information that your viewer can use. Being yourself is a strategy that sounds easy — but for many, it’s unfortunately not — and it takes many repetitions to be comfortable being on live video for the world to see.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
Jim: We trust and depend on the livestreaming software StreamYard for all of our livestreams on Amazon. Despite StreamYard’s growth, Geige and Dan do a weekly Town Hall to listen to their community, ask them questions and engage with customers. StreamYard’s community group on Facebook is something that the company takes very seriously and is constantly providing help where needed. StreamYard has regular enhancements and makes sure that these updates are rock solid before they are released to the public. We trust this platform for every one of our live streams. A brand can build trust not only by having a great product or service but also by being accessible and listening to their customers. StreamYard is the model for others with respect to that.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
Chris: It’s very different in this world. Brands reach out to many Amazon Live Influencers multiple times every day, and they have no visibility to the number of units that these particular influencers are responsible for. After only a year, we’ve been approached by some of the top brands in tech — just because we were being noticed on the Amazon platform, speaking at various events and consistently amplifying our brand on social media channels. Brands and product sellers see the incredible value of Influencers driving sales online and we’re able to be in the center of one of the biggest platforms in the world doing it. As mentioned earlier, Jim and I measure our success with Dealcasters differently than just sales. We are driven to move creators forward and love to see others succeed, knowing that maybe we had a small part in their success.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Chris: We launched Dealcasters Live only on Amazon initially and then built our social media channels after the fact. By implementing the redirect link dealcasters.live on our social media; we drove traffic to our Amazon show and shop by including a more “trusted” domain (dealcasters.live) into every post, bio, etc. Trust for a brand is as much about the URL as it is about your copy.
Jim: Many times, creators will be on all social media platforms, but most people are smart enough to look at the social proof of whether or not that particular creator or influencer is really engaging with their followers. We don’t treat our social media like a trumpet — we will engage with everyone and are “social” — especially on the platforms we gravitate towards most, like Twitter.
What advice would you give to other marketers or business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
Chris: Invest in your business to create systems and people that do at least some of the work for you. As entrepreneurs, we cannot possibly do everything. We need to tap into others who are more than willing to help us flourish. This will give you the time to spend with family, friends and the things you love outside of your business.
Jim: Schedule your time on social media — you don’t have to be on 24–7. Small scheduled bits of time throughout the day will allow you to keep up without feeling overwhelmed. We are big fans of Lately.ai, which we can upload content to and uses artificial intelligence to craft great social media content we only have to tweak.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 😊
Chris: Our industry mostly requires some sort of gear or gadgetry for creative people to do what they do best. Unfortunately, this gear requires a budget — and while we believe that it doesn’t take a lot of money sometimes to get some sort of starter kit, many people don’t even have the means to acquire that. I would bet that many reading this have a closet full of gear that would be a welcome gift to a creative person in need. That person could change the world if they only had that microphone you haven’t used in three years, or that recording device you’re hanging onto ‘just in case.’ We still see young creators going to libraries to record their podcasts on rented gear.
Jim: I have a heart for children who go hungry. Stopping child hunger is something that is not only sad from a nutritional standpoint, it also affects many things like their ability to learn.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Jim: When I wake up in the morning and sometimes feel uninspired — I think about the quote from Braveheart: “Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” Every day is a gift, and we’ll never wish we had worked more — only lived more.
Chris: I’m a big fan of the “Man In The Arena” speech from Roosevelt, which in summary drives someone to action, and not to sit back and criticize others who are actually doing the work. In the creator world, there is too much comparison and drive to generate social proof as to your worth. Yet others are taking their shots every day and while they are failing at times, they are learning from it and becoming greater. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Chris: There are so many, but I think it may be cool to sit down and break bread with Sting. I know many say that we shouldn’t ‘meet your heroes,’ but Sting has been a tremendous influence on me on the bass guitar, songwriting and musicianship.
Jim: I would love to have breakfast with baseball legend Cal Ripken. His work ethic and what he does in the community have always inspired me.
Making Something From Nothing: Amanda Patterson Riso Of The Call List On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
It always takes longer. It just does. Being the right team with the right solution and the right distribution channel takes a lot of work and some luck with timing. In our case, it was four years and a pandemic that forced brands to connect with their community in a virtual space.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amanda Patterson Riso, Co-Founder & CEO of The Call List.
Amanda started her career in PR for Neiman Marcus, which is where her passion for retail was sparked, though she spent the majority of her career prior to The Call List as a management and strategy consultant within Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.
During her time in consulting, she could live anywhere with an airport nearby and chose New Orleans, which is where the idea for The Call List was hatched. Inspired by a NOLA-based drag artist who performed via FaceTime to friends and fans all over the world, Amanda wanted to create that same engaging experience for brands to interact with their communities. Today, The Call List powers brandable, shoppable, interactive videos on a brand’s eCommerce site.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Sure! I’m a midwestern girl. I grew up in St. Louis playing a lot of sports. During the summer breaks, I embarked on money-making ventures. At 9 or 10 I went door-to-door offering landscaping services (using this term loosely) to a couple of neighbors who gave me and a friend a few bucks to pull weeds and plant annuals they picked up at the grocery store. In high school, I was a lifeguard at a public pool. I identified a more lucrative opportunity to up my hourly wage (and get out of cleaning bathrooms) by offering my services as a private lifeguard for pool parties and swim lessons at peoples’ homes. In school I was constantly creating clubs that would create positive interactions with the community and justify field trips during school hours. I also made the case for efficiency and impact to my teachers in middle school, who negotiated credit for my class participation in place of homework assignments. That one wasn’t too well-received by my otherwise enthusiastically supportive parents.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up” — one of Babe Ruth’s hard-hitting one-liners. I read that and Carol Dweck’s Mindset around the time I was preparing for CNBC’s Power Pitch segment (think Shark Tank lite). I remember one of the judges wished me luck in the green room and I optimistically responded that I didn’t intend on bombing, but would learn something either way.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Mindset is one I recommend to entrepreneurs and young people. Turns out seemingly remarkable children don’t make iconic adults, but those psyched to get smarter tend to win in the end. Becoming aware of the difference between fixed and growth mindset, and separating your ego from your effort will help you stay alive after unavoidable failure.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Play to your strengths, cultivate community and listen. As a consultant at the intersection of business and technology, I had the wherewithal to source the skills needed to build the beta (my co-founder will attest to it being the engineering version of chicken wire and scotch tape). I also just kept talking about it to people who I thought might use it. Eventually, I was introduced to our customer running in-store and digital experience at MAC Cosmetics. In 2018, MAC told us they believed interactive virtual events are the future of digital engagement, but they didn’t want to send their community to yet another platform. We quickly pivoted to powering their ability to host these experiences in their digital space. Ultimately it became obvious that tech resources within brands are pretty strapped. In order to better support our customers, we started creating registration and landing pages for events that live on designated URLs or the brand’s eComm site. Early this year [2022] we are launching DIY site generator tools for people to create these branded interactive spaces themselves in minutes.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
It probably does exist in some form and that is OK. That can be a sign the problem you’re hitting on is big. Define the potential customer group and identify what they are currently doing to scratch the itch. Is it one product or a combination of products? Are they paying for the solution? How much? Can you make a new solution and get it to the person for less than what they are willing to pay? Do you like making it? You’re going to spend most of your time making the thing.
My co-founder, Doug Mackay, and I heard a lot of “this is so obvious, someone else has to be doing it”. We just smiled and moved on. It’s frustrating and discouraging, but the solution-oriented creatives that you wind up collaborating with will just light up your world. Live for those moments and stay open to your idea evolving to something more valuable to customers you aim to support. People have a lot of ideas but rarely act on them.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
It certainly depends on what type of product you’re building. Design programs are sophisticated enough now, that you can create an interactive representation for potential customers to click around and provide feedback. If you’re bootstrapping, hire a capable designer to create a mockup to help you get buy-in and paying customers before building. Our early customers helped us prioritize our roadmap and funded the development of our foundational product.
Highly skilled engineers are hard to come by, especially if you are trying to create something without a template. Develop relationships with folks at startups that have great products and get their recommendations for contract engineering teams. Your product is likely to change as you get it in the hands of customers; if money’s tight, consider hiring contractors on a project basis before building your internal team. Be very specific about the scope of work and deliverables. Without close project management and clearly outlined SOWs, hourly agreements can drain your bank account.
If you’re a tech startup, I highly recommend applying for accelerator and incubator programs. Springboard Capital’s New York Fashion Tech Lab was instrumental in establishing our network of mentors who’ve made warm introductions and greatly influenced our growth.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
It always takes longer. It just does. Being the right team with the right solution and the right distribution channel takes a lot of work and some luck with timing. In our case, it was four years and a pandemic that forced brands to connect with their community in a virtual space.
Accountability is key. When you are attempting things that have never been done before, things will go wrong. Sometimes, like in our case, a global brand will be depending on you to power a virtual conference for thousands of people and someone will forget to load balance the website. It’s a painful lesson, but it is a learning experience, and you must do right by the people you work for and with. Be transparent about what is possible in the moment, create a plan for rectification, and evaluate failure points in your processes. Be honest with the client so they can make time-sensitive decisions with as much information as possible. They may or may not hire you again, but your partner and your team will know that you are trustworthy. I have a lot of admiration for my Co-Founder, Doug Mackay’s ability to communicate with grace and treat all parties with dignity in high-stress situations. He’s solution-oriented and collaborative, which means no time is wasted on pointing fingers.
Be flexible and build a solution-oriented team. If you’re obsessive about a singular idea or vision, you’ll likely fall short of greatness. Your team, your customers and collaborators will take it places you never could on your own. I had a tennis coach who said something that really stuck with me. I was always rushing the net and going for the aggressive kill shot. And mostly beating myself by sending the ball out of play or into the net. Very calmly and playfully, my coach told me to “tickle my partner”. He meant I should enjoy the back and forth of the game, to appreciate my partner’s skill, and identify opportunities to stretch my own ability. Rather than the frustration of forcing opportunity, I started to relax, have fun challenging and being challenged by my opponent. At The Call List, I have the pleasure of working with super-nerds, who are psyched to solve challenges. I believe some of this is innate, but much of it is the culture of recognizing everyone’s value. Team members frequently offer challenges, counterpoints, and suggest new features. Without hesitation, we acknowledge them with a “good thought” or probing questions to better understand and collaborate. Doug and I reward intelligent risks, enjoy teasing out new ideas, and weed out defensiveness.
Selective, but active listening will set you apart. A partner recently said that “The Call List is a swiss army knife” [for virtual events]. We listen to our customers and partner in solving their most pressing digital engagement needs. If the best solution doesn’t fit our company’s mission or falls outside of our focus area, we turn people on to other cool companies. We only listen, however, if the person is willing to pay for the new feature or adjustments — it qualifies the need.
Stay current and inspired. Consider what’s coming next and encourage your team to educate themselves on industry or your customer’s industry-related innovation and challenges. Make time to have experiences outside of your focus. Whatever gives your brain time to relax and make subconscious connections. I’m always finding inspiration from seemingly unlikely sources. My family splits time between Brooklyn and New Orleans, where our friends are of varied persuasions and life is teaming with creativity.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Creativity is boundless. If you’ve got a killer idea for a product, it likely won’t be you’re only one. So before you buy the domain, create your logo, ask your founder friend to strategize with you, reach out to potential investors… take some time to clarify what you’re making, who it’s for, and why you’re the best person or team to provide it. Read pretotype it, get organized by creating a business model canvas, and research every possible competitor. Someone will likely be doing something in the same realm as your idea. Can you do it better or cheaper?
Still pursuing it after those steps, then define your customer and identify your market size. Can this be big? What’s your competitive advantage? Are you the team for the job?
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Is an invention consultant someone who helps you get together your requirements for a patent? If so, I think a good patent or IP attorney would be a better use of funds. If they are there to help think through how to manifest your idea and you have a ton of cash, I guess so? I’m a big fan of building community and believe you can find some great mentors and peers to help guide your path. Make sure you give back to mentors by making introductions to peers, customers or deals they may not otherwise know.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
First, clearly define your goals. If you are interested in a business that funds your lifestyle, I recommend bootstrapping with personal funds or financing with debt. If you hope to raise from investment partners and institutions some considerations: runway with bootstrapping, founder’s gender, network, and (often based on founder’s gender) early traction. Stats and my experience as a female founder show the necessity to bootstrap until you hit certain revenue or traction milestones. If you are targeting a sizable business that needs funds to build and acquire customers, ensure your plan ensures a big return on investment for your financing partners. Investors will need compelling answers to “can this be big?”, “are you the team to do it?”, and “what is your competitive advantage?”. Develop a network of mentors who invest in deals like yours and get direct feedback on the milestones you need to hit for the terms you’d like to secure.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I believe there is enough for everyone. I make time for lending my professional experience to folks looking for a different perspective in problem-solving, extending my network to make connections, and integrate volunteering into my lifestyle. Founder connections have been made in networks like Startup Leadership Program, New York Fashion Tech Lab, Retail X, Graham & Walker’s Project Entrepreneur, among others. My favorite organization to volunteer with in NYC is Sant’Egidio. They cultivate relationships and distribute food, as well as try to meet urgent and long term needs of socially disadvantaged and elderly.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I was just having a conversation with a friend at an agency about the future of experiences in the metaverse. Admittedly, I don’t fully understand how the metaverse is taking shape, but I imagine corners like Snoopverse will be high traffic. If sophisticated producers collaborated with conservationists to create experiences with animals and sealife now extinct within spaces like Snoopverse, it could inspire emotional connection to incredible beauty and life we’ve lost. Couple that with metaverse-based experiences of currently disappearing nature and wildlife. The goal would be to educate, entertain and fund support for conservation and slowing climate change. Think buying a ticket for Snoop’s metapool party and diving into a scene from Blue Planet. Really just a seed of an idea. I’m excited to see how virtual experiences continue to unfold and give people access beyond what’s possible in their physical world.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Snoop Dogg
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Lynda Holt Of Health Service 360: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Courage — this is the number one all-encompassing quality for me, so much so I designed a leadership framework called I CARE around it. When you are courageous as a leader, it doesn’t mean you have no fear, it means you show up anyway, you are real, trustworthy, and prepared to explore the difficult stuff. You are there for your people, courageous enough to listen even if you can’t fix everything and you are prepared to make decisions despite uncertain outcomes. I believe courage is in all of us, but we learn to conform, and not to put ourselves at risk and in the process, we lose a bit of ourselves. Leaders come in all shapes and guises, we need to be brave enough to stand in our own imperfect glory and give our people permission to do the same.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Lynda Holt.
Lynda is a prominent leadership voice, author and change activist in the health care sector. As CEO of Health Service 360, Lynda works with leaders and experts helping them to shape leadership, culture and build healthy workplaces.
Lynda noticed a group of leaders, change activists, and experts who didn’t necessarily fit traditional leadership paths, but made a tangible difference to their bit of the world. She created Brave Scene in 2012, as part of her wider development consultancy. Its purpose — to help these people to lead courageously, to explore what’s possible, and to make their contribution their way.
She spent her early career in frontline emergency care, and has spent most of the pandemic supporting clinicians and health leaders through some of the most challenging times of their careers. She believes most of us don’t even get close to what we are capable of and it’s time to change this, not by working harder or doing more, but by standing in our own imperfect glory. Her message is simple, ‘show up, be brave and do what you believe in’.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I love that expression, backstory — it gives us carte blanche to write our own history in a way that is empowering, rational, and looks like we had a plan, or even a big mission. The reality for many of us, myself included, is that we fly by the seat of our pants, make it up as we go along, and accept that hindsight is a beautiful thing.
I guess as a young child I knew who I was, I was wise — all my friends came to me for advice, I was chill — I didn’t do drama and I was wild — no adventure was too risky (until a few cuts, scrapes and broken bones proved me wrong). I was going to be a teacher, a hippy, maybe the Prime Minister, a photographer, write books, heal people — and I think I’ve done all but one of those things.
I suppose I had a good grounding for embarking on a career in emergency medicine, I loved the fast pace, the fixing, but most of all the people — we often collided at the best and worst moments of their lives. After many years of running emergency departments, leading teams from ward to board as they say in hospitals, I realised I wanted more — my goal of hospital CEO wasn’t going to cut it.
This wasn’t about money, it was about impact. I left the safety of my NHS career and started my own gig, I’d managed massive budgets, hundreds of people — how hard could it be?
20 years on — and by the seat of my pants on more occasions than I’d like to confess, I’ve crafted the company I really wanted to be CEO of, we’re making the difference I want to make, and I get to work with a great team of creative and inspiring people, every day. Much of our work is in the Health Sector as well as with social entrepreneurs and businesses.
Could I use hindsight and write the clever & coherent backstory that got me here — yes absolutely, but the truth is I’ve always crafted my life — and leadership, around the things that matter to me, that excite me and that create the impact I believe in. I guess I’m still doing many of the things that wild little girl did. I’ve bounced over a few bumps and acquired a few cuts & scrapes along the way, but on the whole have a business, and more importantly a social impact, I’m really proud of and I’m no where near done yet.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
You know I used to work in emergency departments, right? Some of my funniest stories are quite unprintable! But you know, I learned early on you can’t take yourself too seriously; we all make mistakes, and we don’t learn what we need to if we are too busy beating ourselves up.
Most of us have some bits of our work we are better at than others, I’ve learned to focus on what I’m really good at and surround myself with great people who are better at the rest of it than me. In my early days I didn’t have that luxury either in my business or in my hospital career.
Reminds me of the time I hid in a store cupboard so the surgeon in charge couldn’t find me. The operating theatre was my worst job, I wasn’t very good at any of it and I hated the hierarchical atmosphere. Most of the surgeons were amazingly talented, some also had the people skills of a rattle snake. On the fateful day in question, I was a lowly runner for the surgeon, who was a big man with a booming voice and a reputation for getting juniors kicked out of theatre. He needed a bag of warmed sterile fluid for irrigation — sounds simple doesn’t it, except these were oversized three litre drip bags — a bit like holding a balloon full of water.
I’m jostling with the bag trying to find the connecting point, he’s yelling at me at the top of his voice, and in a stroke of ‘genius’ I decide to grab the bag as if it were a set of bagpipes, squeezing it tightly under my arm. I snip open the connector and the warmed fluid explodes out like I turned on a hose. You guessed it, the surgeon is right in the firing line, it’s horrifying how far three litres can go, the more I tried to get the bag under control the more slippy it got. There was only one thing for it, drop the bag and run — I was going to get kicked out anyway.
I headed to the store cupboard, mortified with embarrassment, worried he’d think I did it on purpose and fairly confident my career was over. After I’d been there for what seemed like hours, passing things out to people as needed, I heard the booming voice approaching. The surgeon — still damp around the edges, informed me the patient was fine, the op was finished, and I was a liability, which was fair comment really.
He then asked if he was really that scary? I looked him straight in the eye and said no!! He went off down the corridor laughing, leaving me bemused at his response and even more bemused at my own.
The things that stick with you are often those that make you feel shame in some way, and we need to find a way to feel, deal and heal from them. Yes, I was ashamed I’d done something so stupid, and at the same time had I not felt under pressure, that I was doing a bad job and that I (or my career) was under threat, I might have taken a more rational approach to the fluid bag — I could have asked someone for help, I could have asked the surgeon to wait, but fear was driving my actions.
So, as well as surrounding myself with great people, I’ve also learned to meet people where they are. I lead from the premise that people remember how you make them feel. If you make them feel fearful or bad about themselves you won’t get the best of them, you’ll get the guarded, self-protecting or disengaged version.
Being able to connect with people and understand their reality gives you a starting point to embark on a journey, and leadership is certainly a journey.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I’ve had & have many great mentors, role models and guides, each of them has helped shape the leader I’ve become, but if I had to pick just one it would be my dad. He was my rock. I knew he was in my corner regardless, he saw my potential, and he won’t hold back if he disagreed or thought I’d got things wrong. In my early days I worked for him, in his later days he worked for me.
Before I started college, while I was still deciding what I wanted to do, my dad said learn to sell, it will help you whatever career you take. Great idea I say, with no idea what he had in store for me!
At the time he ran a caravan and leisure business, he was short of staff for an exhibition stand, and somehow, I finished up spending a week selling portable loos. Sell the experience, my dad says to us, as he’s getting people to test out the comfort of these glorified buckets in an exhibition hall. He set the team targets, created some competition, both for numbers of loos sold and funniest stories, and we had a great time.
That week taught me a lot –
more than I ever wanted to know about toilet habits.
that if you pay attention to people, and listen, they will show you how to connect with them, lead them or sell to them.
and that you don’t need to be super confident or extrovert to be a great leader.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Reducing suffering by protecting mental wellbeing and keeping people connected with their lives.
In all areas of the business this is our underpinning mission, whether it is in workplaces, for people using heathcare facilities, or individuals on their own journey. I think the way you can deliver on your mission changes as your business evolves and grows, the principle purpose does not.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
Like most businesses, the pandemic has changed us. In early 2020 we watched our work dry up overnight, at the very time our clients needed us the most. When the rug is pulled from under you, I think your job as a leader is to create psychological safety, even if you can’t remove the uncertainty, you can create boundaries around what is in your control, give people a road map and most importantly acknowledge what you & they are feeling.
I’m certainly not saying I got it all right, we are a team, we support each other, and I am really proud of how amazing, flexible and solutions focused my team are. I think some of that comes back to purpose, if you are bought into the bigger mission, you find a way. We took the view we would do what we could, where we could and to some extent we still are.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Honestly, no. Do I get frustrated by lack of progress sometimes? Absolutely. I’ve been in a hurry to make things better most of my life.
As far as motivation goes, it probably depends who you ask, some might say stubbornness, I’d say a combination of courage to tackle the things that don’t feel right and deep satisfaction at seeing someone changed, recognising their own worth and impact.
I also know we need to reduce the suffering caused by poor mental wellbeing, by settling for less than you want to be, and by not feeling you have the agency to make it different. This drives me, if we make it better for one person, they will make it better for someone else and so on.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Great question, I’d say to be courageous, not in a hero, fixer way, but in a real human way. It can be tempting to put on your cape and say I’ve got this, I’ll save you, that helps you feel in control, but people are not stupid. They don’t need or want to be told everything is ok when it’s clearly not. They need to feel connected, that it will get better and that they are contributing or part of something. This means that as a leader, you need to find the courage to be honest, vulnerable and connected too, while at the same time creating hope, providing a road map and enable others to contribute.
In short, be brave enough to show up and real enough to connect.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
It’s tempting to feel that the energy and morale of the team rest with you as the leader, and for sure you can destroy it by your own behaviour, but I don’t think you can entirely fix it, and nor should you take responsibility for it. People are not empty vessels that need to be motivated or inspired. People are full of their own knowledge, ideas, emotions, fears — your job is to pay attention.
Remember what I said about selling portaloos? People will tell you how to help, if you hold the space, listen, and observe. When you’ve done this, you form a collective plan, when people are part of it they don’t need you to engage them.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Honestly, quickly and face to face if possible, or at least by video or phone call. I think when we wait, trying to find the right words — or hoping it might go away, we just build it into something bigger, it occupies space in our heads and reduces productivity. If you are in the wrong or have let someone down apologize, if you can fix it offer solutions, if you can’t make sure you give people time to express their upset.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Yes, it’s tempting to throw planning out the window, or to have multiple contingencies depending on how you operate. The reality is the future is always predictable to some degree, and chances are your bigger vision and your purpose don’t change. Hang on to those, they are your road map. For me, detailed planning has become much more short term. We’ve always used 90 day planning cycles, and continue to do this, you can predict what you need to do for this period, plan for the next month in detail, and the following two in principle — recognising you may need to be flexible.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Stay connected — focus on how you serve your customers and keep your eye on your bigger mission.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
I said right at the beginning we all make mistakes, our job is to recognize them, learn and move on.
Perhaps the biggest is not paying attention to your people, you can’t withdraw, dictate, or expect people to just get on with it. Difficult times require leaders who are visible, both collaborative and decisive, and of course compassionate.
The second is financial, not paying attention to cash flow, dropping prices in desperation, not looking far enough ahead to predict what’s coming.
The third, and perhaps most fatal, is not looking after yourself, you are no good to anyone if you are stressed, ill or burned out.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Stay connected with your clients and market, the more you know the better you will be able to serve. Keep investing in yourself and your team. Pay attention to both cash flow and profit margins and don’t do work for the sake of it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do work that matters to you and your team, or work that has a high fun element, even if it’s not the most profitable. Just be clear about why you are doing what you do.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
I have undoubtedly talked about my top five already. These are the things that underpin great leadership in my view.
Courage — this is the number one all-encompassing quality for me, so much so I designed a leadership framework called I CARE around it. When you are courageous as a leader, it doesn’t mean you have no fear, it means you show up anyway, you are real, trustworthy, and prepared to explore the difficult stuff. You are there for your people, courageous enough to listen even if you can’t fix everything and you are prepared to make decisions despite uncertain outcomes. I believe courage is in all of us, but we learn to conform, and not to put ourselves at risk and in the process, we lose a bit of ourselves. Leaders come in all shapes and guises, we need to be brave enough to stand in our own imperfect glory and give our people permission to do the same.
Courage is a way of being and you get to choose how you show up, who you want to be, if you like. It’s easy to live by our excuses, perceived limitations, and biases, these constrain us as a human and as a leader. I am both conscious and intentional about how I show up — most of the time! I choose courage over conformity, I believe in rocking the boat when some motion is needed and in dropping the anchor in turbulent times. My values and my mindset are my anchor, they are inextricably linked, if I move too far from my values my mindset suffers, I don’t feel great, I make poorer decisions and don’t lead well.
Part of being a courageous leader is looking after yourself, prioritising yourself when you need to and giving others permission to do the same. For me a healthy mindset is one of hope, of realistic optimism, of gratitude and of love. I work to suspend judgement, let go of anger and embrace fear — and just like everyone else, I’m work in progress.
2. Focus on what you can control — sounds simple, but most of us get consumed by all the things that concern us, things we have no control over, from time to time. They can be a great distraction, because we can have an opinion without having to take any action. They can also be incredibly disempowering and bad for your mental wellbeing. By focusing on what you can control — even if this is only your own attitude some days, you get to take action, which builds your confidence, balances your neurochemistry, and gives you a sense of achievement.
I regularly do an exercise with clients, adapted from Steven Covey’s work, I get them to draw two circles one big one and one smaller one. In the first the circle of concern they write down everything that they are concerned about, you can do this as a team exercise or individually. Then I get people to look at their list and move into the smaller circle — their circle of influence, anything they can directly do something about. This is usually only a few things. Lastly, I get them to pick one and decide what they are going to focus on.
This exercise is one of agency, when we are focused on things we have no control over it is easy to feel powerless, insignificant even. Our brains don’t differentiate between what’s real and what we are thinking about. Constantly thinking about stuff we have no control over is a fast track to stress or even anxiety. I strongly recommend you try the circles exercise on yourself and with your team.
3. Stay connected to your mission — I believe that deep inside we all know why we are here and what we have to contribute to the world. This said, we live in a world where fitting in and conformity are often valued over individuality, where people who speak out are seen as trouble-makers, difficult or even whistle blowers.
Well, here’s to the difficult ones, we are the people who move the world forward, we are the ones who challenge assumptions, we are the ones who question the status quo. As a leader, particularly in turbulent times, you absolutely need to know what you stand for, where your red lines are and what you are here to do. This is what gives both the freedom and the courage to act.
People get very hung up about purpose or mission, I see people spending hours trying to craft clever statements, or hooks. The thing is, purpose is a personal and emotional thing, until you really feel it you can’t craft it, and when you lead a mission people who join it will each have their own purpose.
We have a not-for-profit part of our business called #EndPJparalysis, its aim is to reduce preventable harm caused by physical or psychological deconditioning. We do this by sharing best practice, education and research across health and social care. People join the mission for all sorts of reasons, they may have had an older relative who suffered from deconditioning, they may want to protect their own future well-being, they might want to educate others — and this doesn’t matter. What is important is that we all share the desire to enhance well-being and prevent harm by keeping people moving and socially connected.
When you are leading people through uncertainty, lead with the mission and the difference that they and the business are making. There is safety in being part of something bigger than you, this is why so many people spend large parts of their lives trying to fit in. Your job as their leader is to make it safe for people to contribute, to pay attention when they speak out and to keep people connected to the mission.
4. Talk about mental wellbeing — we’re kind of back to courage again. Many leaders talk about compassion and empathy, and for sure that’s important, but after the last couple of years, nobody is untouched by the pandemic, and many people have paid a price in terms of mental wellbeing. It really is time leaders, in workplaces, communities and social circles, stepped up and got brave enough to have honest conversations about mental wellbeing.
Until we can talk openly, accepting our own discomfort and vulnerability, poor mental wellbeing stays hidden, stigma prevails, and people suffer.
None of us have all the answers, none of us can fix every problem people throw at us, but we can make it ok, safe even, to raise things, to talk and to get help if you need it.
I have spent much of the last 18 months hosting safe spaces for people in healthcare, at the front of the Covid response, to decompress, share how they felt and maybe get some relief. Most of the time I couldn’t fix anything and the people coming to those spaces knew that. They mostly needed to off load, sometimes an acknowledgement that it’s ok not to be ok is enough. These also gave me the opportunity to share some of my wisdom around maintaining mental wellbeing. We talked about all sorts — balance, what people did to decompress, staying in touch with lives outside of work, fear, how to stay focused on the impact and good they were doing.
The bottom line is humans feel to heal, emotion is how we make sense of what we experience, if we don’t deal with those feelings we become unwell, physically, mentally or behaviourally — sometimes all three. I believe that as leaders we are obligated to create that space — either directly ourselves, by making services available to our people or by enabling people to access what they need themselves.
When we bring uncomfortable things out in to the open, we take away the dark power attached to them. My one plea to you as a leader, a human even, is don’t leave your people in the dark, shine a light on mental wellbeing, make it ok to talk.
5. Create Hope — as the legend goes, the last thing in Pandora’s box was hope, when she opened the box she unleashed all manner of evil into the world, horrified by what she’d done, and fearful of what might happen next, she slammed it shut trapping hope inside.
I’ve often heard people say “hope is not a strategy” I would disagree, one of the greats things you can do as a leader is embrace hope. Hope helps us to look beyond what is right now, to what might be, what’s possible if you like. Hope builds our confidence in our ability to succeed. It’s a powerful emotion with a real ability to lift people, but if people are going to be inspired or lifted they need to believe you, to trust you and to feel safe with you — which means you have to trust yourself.
Hope is not blind positivity, or unrealistic wish dreams, it’s about getting down to business, selling a vision, involving people, creating something worth holding on to during the turbulence. Martin Luther King is a great example of hope prevailing, he sold the vision, led the people and waited for transformation to happen, stoking it at every opportunity.
As a leader you need to hold the mission or vision, and this is where your road map comes in It helps you both plot and communicate the direction of travel, it enables people to share the vision and most critically to contribute where they can.
For most people hope is not some passive thing, some vague feeling that they want things to be better, it is a powerful and motivational emotion, use it wisely. Most people don’t want to be fixed, or even for someone else to solve all their problems, they want to be heard, to be validated and valuable — these are basic human needs, part of our evolution.
Don’t be like Pandora. Don’t react in fear before you’ve had time to find hope. Good leaders trade in hope.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Oh wow, just one? “Be your own kind of beautiful” in a world where comparison, conformity and conditioning are eroding mental wellbeing, I’m making a stand for the misfits, mavericks and individuals that make up this beautiful thing called humanity. We are all connected, we all have a contribution to make, and we all have greatness within us. My greatness might be different to yours and that’s what makes the world work.
Some people will not respond positively to your ideas or product. It doesn’t mean your baby is ugly. It is important to not take criticism about your product/service or a “no” personally.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason R. Thompson.
For over 25 years, Jason R. Thompson has built and managed national and international diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) programs for Western Governors University, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, Techstars, and Integris Health.
Now an Author, DE&I Coach and Speaker, Jason released a new book, “Diversity and Inclusion Matters” in Dec. 2021. The book shares practical tips on how to implement DE&I practices and perspectives in the workplace and society.
Jason’s award-winning work has also been published in ColoradoBiz magazine, USA Today, Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
Inspired by his personal and professional experience, Jason created CAPE Inclusion, an innovative DE&I platform to collect, analyze, plan and execute business diversity goals. Jason continues to serve as co-founder and senior advisor at CAPE.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this piece. DE&I has become a business imperative and I’m excited to share my experience in creating and building successful corporate DE&I initiatives.
Born in Japan on a military base to an African American father and a Japanese mother, I am the youngest of four children. We moved to Hawaii not long after I was born, though after five years there, we were transferred to the U.S. Air Force base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I lived in Cheyenne until my late 20s.
Growing up in Wyoming was difficult because there were few people with brown skin. My family did not have much money, partly because my parents did not make a lot of money and partly because my dad always made bad decisions with the money we did have.
As someone with dyslexia, I struggled in school, yet went on to graduate from the University of Wyoming with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in sociology. Probably even more unlikely, as a graduate student, I became the first person of color to be the student body president at the University of Wyoming.
The election process was full of tension and heavy with undertones of racism. For example, one of the two candidates I ran against wore a hat with the Confederate flag on it. On the first day I put up my campaign posters, I received a threatening phone call. In addition, it seemed as if the campaign posters were being ripped down within an hour of putting them up. Daily, fellow students would say to me, “You need to put posters up, or people are not going to know you are running for student body president.” What they did not know was I spent the first hour of every morning walking all over campus putting up posters only to have someone seemingly rip them down.
The University advisor to the student government allowed the fraternity brothers of the incumbent student body president to count votes for the primary election. The incumbent’s fraternity brothers decided it was necessary to throw out 10 votes, which meant that I came in 10 votes behind the incumbent. Nonetheless, I still made it to the general election runoff against the incumbent.
As the general election drew nearer, things became even more contentious. I experienced threats of violence, and my campaign posters that included his young son were defaced with insults. These vandalized posters were put on the door of the graduate student office I shared with other graduate students in the Sociology Department and on the door of the Multicultural Resource Center where I worked at the time. My wife, Elizabeth, also worked on campus at that time, and she, too, was threatened by students who supported the incumbent.
The student body presidential election became so charged with tension that the city of Laramie was asked to bring in their official election equipment, and city employees conducted the University voting process. This was the first and only time in the history of the University of Wyoming that a student election required the oversight of professional election staff and equipment.
In the end, I won by a landslide on a predominantly white campus with barely 100 Black students. My life story is one of crossing bridges and overcoming obstacles.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’s not a specific quote, but the poem, “Still I Rise,” by Maya Angelou is one of my favorites. Despite the many setbacks I have experienced in life, I remain resilient. It is the only gift I hope to give my children. I always tell my children they will not be measured by failure, but by how they respond to failure. There is something about the poem and the simple phrase, “Still I Rise,” that gives me strength. Resilience is also a skill every entrepreneur and trailblazer will need because there are many setbacks.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King has had the most impact on me. Because I am dyslexic, books can be very difficult for me to read. I read and reread this letter for strength and wisdom. Whenever I have had to deal with difficult issues, the letter helps me find a solution.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Thinking about a business idea and not immediately acting on the idea can be a good thing. Take the time to really think about starting a business because after the excitement dies down, you must do some hard work.
When starting something new, like a workplace DE&I program or a new business, do not fear hard work and remain resilient.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
I always tell people there is Uber and Lyft…businesses have to compete. Entrepreneurs should do the research, but businesses don’t start simply because no one has done it before. The best businesses execute well. The question you should ask yourself is if you out-execute the competition. Having a novel idea will only last until you have to compete and execute.
The research you do about the industry is not just to be the only one, but to identify if there is an opportunity to do it better.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Be open to learning a lot along the way. Also, get feedback from your audience because you need data to find out what works and what does not.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
For over 25 years, I’ve built and managed national and international DE&I programs for corporations and nonprofit organizations. This work has been so impactful that it’s won awards, media attention, and gave way to the creation of a technology platform (CAPE Inclusion) as well as a new book, Diversity & Inclusion Matters. None of it was easy! My book provides expert guidance and step-by-step instruction for building a successful diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative from scratch.
In addition, I recommend trailblazers consider these five things when starting a something new:
Saving money vs. cheap…for example, some legal items can be done yourself, but if it takes you 20 hours to do something an attorney could do in an hour, you are not saving money.
Beta test. Deep discounts to get beta customers will pay for itself. It is the best way to get feedback on your ideas and product.
Some people will not respond positively to your ideas or product. It doesn’t mean your baby is ugly. It is important to not take criticism about your product/service or a “no” personally.
If you hire your friends, don’t let your friendship be the reason you keep them. Sometimes you have to let your friends go because they cannot do the job.
Family first and enjoy the journey. There is only one “first step” for your child, only one first day of school, and you can’t get that back.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
The first step in deciding to move forward with an idea is to make sure you want to be in that type of business. If you don’t like the work, it doesn’t matter what the idea is as starting a business is a career choice.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I would also always seek out advice but at the end of the day, it is about execution. I have not personally used invention development consultants, but as an author and public speaker, I try to remain humble and seek advice.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Women and people of color get about one percent of venture capital. For many, bootstrapping is the only option and budget resourcing is an ongoing process.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I try to be a good dad. Some would say I spoiled my kids and I hope they are right. I worked hard so they would have a good childhood, great memories and few worries. I spent a lot of time worrying when I grew up about if my family was going to be able to pay the rent. I have used my success to make change where I can, I try to do the right thing, give my kids a good home and be kind. It may not sound like much, but it adds up. If we are all kind, raise good kids and do the right things we will get there.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Let’s take care of our kids, invest in schools and childcare.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would like to sit down with President Barack Obama. He changed the world and will forever be remembered. It is a-once in a lifetime moment to be in his shadow and his presence.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Focus on the Priorities — we all have them and while they may shift during challenging times, they don’t disappear. Realignment of focus and priorities are key to forward movement. It is therefore important that everyone is on the same page and understands the priorities and how to achieve them. By also aligning these priorities with individual work deliverables, it’s easier for teams to see the big picture and how they can contribute to it. everyone in the organization must understand these priorities and how their daily work connects.
Karee Laing is the Principal and Chief Executive Officer of Studio Brand Collective (SBC), a Houston design + digital marketing agency focused on providing results-driven marketing and branding solutions to businesses. A proven leader with a knack for delivering results and growing both volume and profits above expectations, Karee has worked with businesses both small and large. Passionate about marketing and business, Karee also started Karee Laing, Inc. in 2016 — an online platform devoted to providing inspiration, ideas, tools and resources for anyone interested in starting or growing a business. Under her leadership and creative direction, SBC has received over 60 industry awards, and Karee has personally received numerous awards, including being named a Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business Scholar, a 40 Under 40 Honoree by the Houston Business Journal, and a Woman Who Means Business.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
When you first start out, access to capital and resources are always a challenge, well at least unless you are one of the lucky ones to generate seed funding. For me, I bootstrapped the agency so there was no seed money. This meant that I had to be everything — the receptionist, designer, strategist, and marketer. We were on the verge of acquiring our largest project, in fact it was that project that kickstarted us into an agency. The value of that project was $35,000, which at the time to me might as well been $350,000. When I met with the clients, which was a referral, they wanted all these things (marketing, website, logo, collaterals, and content). I said yes, and yes and yes again and then when it was all signed, I looked at my myself on my computer screen and said what the heck am I going to do now? I could complete one, maybe if I worked 14-hour days, I would get to two of these things but definitely not all four — because I could not build a website nor could I design. I had no idea what to do and the following months were indeed stressful. I look back at this and laugh because that was a big risk. Today, it’s a little different — signing projects that are not a good fit for your business causes more stress and fragmentation of your team than anything else will. We accept select projects now and when we accept a project, it’s something that will be in our wheelhouse. And while we veer a little to leave room for growth and new talents, if the project is interesting enough, my measure is always 80%. Can we safely accomplish 80% of this project in our current state? If the answer is yes, then we do it. If the answer is no, then we must pass on the opportunity.
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My mother is definitely an inspiration. She is the furthest from an entrepreneur because as she puts it, “I am not risk tolerant and I have no clue how business owners handle the risk, uncertainty, and stress.” But there is one thing my mom is, and that is resilient. As an immigrant, she worked hard and illegally in the beginning to ensure we were able to get a life with opportunities in the US. I was born and raised for the most part in Jamaica. I came to the US when I was 17 and with my mother’s constant support and sacrifice, I was able to complete college and start a business or two. It’s the unyielding determination and will to thrive that motivates me and shows me how much mindset can affect your life and your achievements.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
I wanted to create a company for the underdogs. I always looked at myself as an underdog. Born in the Caribbean, in a third world country and raised in household that would mimic poverty here in the US, you feel as if you always have to prove yourself. When I was growing up, I always felt like I was not in the “in-crowd” and when I decided to do my own thing, I wanted to show myself and other women that they could do it — without anything, without being the 1st choice or the determined “smart kid”.
When I started the company and even today, my vision is the same — to do great work with great people who are passionate about their craft and to bring value to our clients.
Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
The COVID-19 pandemic hit our industry hard. It has by far been the most challenging business environment I’ve had to lead through since starting the agency. We’ve seen many clients shut their doors, others having to pivot and many that had to take steps back.
During challenging times, the key is to lead with empathy, remembering that we are all humans first, that our personal lives will always affect our professional lives and that the key is communicating with transparency and honesty. It’s critical to understand your team and know how to effectively communicate with each of team. Every person has different motivators, and a leader has to know what those are so you can place them all in perspective.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Absolutely, I think that when tough challenges hit, we have to make a decision and sometimes this decision includes pivoting or finding the exit plan. Really early on in my entrepreneurship journey I hit a roadblock. We were having a hard time making our monthly expenses and financial it was rough. For the first time, I truly considered closing the doors and pivoting. I remember very vividly, sitting in my office, which was at that time still the second bedroom of my townhome and putting it out into the universe that if this was supposed to be the time to exit, then I would make the decision. But if there was a small chance that I could continue the business, then all I needed was a sign and I would follow. The next few weeks were uncertain, but I left no stone unturned, and this was when we saw our biggest break. The largest client we had signed to date. That was the sign I needed to continue going. And today, when I want to give up, I channel action steps — become more intentional with goals and remember to have faith in the dark, uncertain times.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
To lead your team through consistency, resiliency, empathy, and constant communication. To do so, there are several critical characteristics leaders have that allow them to function and lead effectively during challenging times — being able to make tough decisions, situation evaluation, setting the tone for what’s next and what happens and ensuring they stay focused on executing, no matter what.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate, and engage their team?
There are several keys to motivating employees during uncertain times: overcommunicate, share updates and plans, being honest and transparent and being present. It’s also key to share wins and share how everyone contributes to the whole and getting out on the other side.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Being direct, forthright, and honest
Sharing next steps and solutions, the way forward and the game plan for surviving the difficult times.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Because that’s who we are. Leaders are change agents; they are those people who are willing to take the big risks when no one else will. Leaders are those who in uncertain times, trust their gut and continue planning the evolution of their company because they know that anything that is stagnant for too long will die. Without evolution your business ceases to be relevant.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
During uncertain times, the inability to make a decision is a decision and sometimes it’s that decision that will cost a company to hemorrhage even more. My guiding principle is, “trust your gut, start with small pieces of the puzzle, empower others to be a part of the bigger decision making and pull the trigger.” We can all become paralyzed by fear and uncertainty, but there are several guarantees when running a business — two of those are fear and uncertainty ☺
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Making decisions when the livelihood of your staff and team are at stake is a big endeavor. I never take lightly the fact that there are livelihoods that depend on my decisions. When running a business in general, there are a few mistakes that can cost you:
Not making a decision
Leaving decisions completely up to team members because this is in their wheelhouse
Not trusting your team
Looking at the next move as something only senior leaders or your management team should be involved with when it should be a company wide discussion.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
During the pandemic and during any tough economic times, marketing and advertising is always the first budget to go. This is nothing new.
When the dust settled, we know we had to be strategic like we’ve always been. There is something to be said about bootstrapping your company with $800 from the beginning, you have to be quite resourceful and resilient in growing that $800 to seven figures. This sort of grit is something you adapt to and in challenging times you depend on your gut and years of being resourceful to figure it out. One strategy we had in place prior to COVID was client diversification. This means we have clients in different industries, of varying sizes and with very different marketing budgets and needs. This diversification is much like investing in the stock market because you never want all your eggs in one basket. And this strategy has worked for us.
We also knew that 20% of our clients drove about 80% of our revenue and so we really focused on servicing that 20%. The focus was how do we make it easier, more efficient, and better for them? How do we add “more” value?
We functioned on half the number of clients and made 80% of the revenue we did prior. These strategies have been key in our survival.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Leading during turbulent times is critical. During these times, there are really only one of two things that can be done — inaction or constant, forward motion. The key is focusing on the latter by reaffirming the organizations vision, unifying teams, communicating relentlessly, and ensuring everyone is still driven towards the same goals. These five things are therefore important when leading during turbulent times:
1) Focus on the Priorities — we all have them and while they may shift during challenging times, they don’t disappear. Realignment of focus and priorities are key to forward movement. It is therefore important that everyone is on the same page and understands the priorities and how to achieve them. By also aligning these priorities with individual work deliverables, it’s easier for teams to see the big picture and how they can contribute to it. everyone in the organization must understand these priorities and how their daily work connects.
2) Realize that this is the new reality — it’s easy as a leader to look at a specific situation in isolation. The idea that it will eventually go away, and things will “go back” to normal is the wrong approach. In learning to pivot, a leader has to also learn to acknowledge how shifts can become opportunities and how these opportunities will allow the organization to thrive and move forward and sometimes in an even bigger way.
3) Lead with humanity and honesty — In times of crisis and uncertainty, one key thing a leader must do is communicate with authority and secure the trust of all involved. To do this, it starts with humanity. It starts with addressing the elephant in the room, acknowledging where the organization is and where it is working to go. It also includes being honest about what it will take to get there and how everyone will be affected. In acknowledging these things, you also give way to creating solutions to work better, more efficiently and with results. No leader can accomplish it all by himself or herself — it takes a team that is on board and willing to be a part of the process.
4) Understand how to channel fear and uncertainty — during challenging times, there is undoubtedly many things to worry about, which causes fear and anxiety. Fear is a natural human emotion, which we’re trained to suppress or ignore. But the fact is the key lies in not only accepting but managing fear and anxiety. In doing so, we are able to propel ourselves and our teams to continuously function and function in a manner that allows then to effectively reach their goals. When teams achieve during turbulent times, it motivates them to accomplish as they see their wins unfolding.
5) Trust the process –in the periods before the uncertain times there was a process that worked for the organization. One that allowed it to thrive and while that process may not be completely usable during challenging times, there should be core baselines that can be modified and adapted to fit the evolution of the current situation. Instead of throwing everything out the window, go back to basics, rework the process and use it.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” — Charles Swindoll
We can see the glass as half empty or half full. Life is truly all about perspective and your mindset. And in my experience, a positive mindset will always win over a negative one. There are always going to be obstacles and setbacks in life, but what determines whether we “win” or “lose” is how we see and react to these life events.
Even the mere definition of “wining” and “losing” is different for each of us. It’s our perspective that truly determines how we live, laugh and love.
How can our readers further follow your work/agency?
Hire people better than you: I know my strengths and weaknesses. If I have a weakness I am not interested in improving, I’ll hire someone for this task. For example, I am terrible at creating graphics and have little interest in this topic, so I hired an excellent designer to help with this.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christopher Liew.
Christopher Liew is the Founder of Wealthawesome.com, where he shares tips on money, travel, career, and business. Chris quit a lucrative 9–5 career in 2019 to start a web publishing business and travel the world. He also consults on Fintech product releases.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, even from a young age. I started my first “business” at the age of eight, by selling candy and chocolates to my classmates in the third grade. I was fortunate to have parents who taught me the importance of money at a very young age. I had a successful career in finance, but I wasn’t satisfied with a desk job. I decided to start an online web publishing and consulting business so I could work from anywhere.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” — Warren Buffett.
I love this quote because it has a lot of layers to it. The someone who plants the tree could have been your mentor, your parents, or yourself. You can plant a tree for someone else, whether it’s a friend, child, or loved one. Whenever I need to motivate myself, I think that by working hard and planting a tree, I’ll be sitting in the shade in the future.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss had a profound effect on me. I read it during a period of my life when I wasn’t happy about my career. It showed me that there were options other than working a 9–5 desk job.
It opened my eyes to the possibilities of the types of things I could do, without having to be pigeonholed into a specific career path. He speaks about launching online businesses, and traveling around the world and working. I have realized this dream about six years after I first read the book, and now have a thriving online business with unlimited traveling freedom.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I’ve done consulting for Fintech companies in the past, so my experience is mostly in software products. I find people really struggle with understanding the tech side if they come from mostly a business background. They also underestimate the cost and complexity of bringing a product to market successfully.
For software products, to overcome the problem I would recommend planning out and budgeting every stage of your operations very carefully, and to get tech consulting help if you are weak in that area. Consider joining an accelerator program also, that can really kick start your project and put you in contact with people that can help build your product.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
It is extremely difficult to come up with an entirely original idea. The good thing is, you don’t have to! Whenever I’m doing research on a new project or product, I see if there are any competitors in the space I’m targeting, usually from an initial internet search.
There always are competitors, so I guess I’ve never come up with an entirely unique idea before. I then see if I can improve on the execution, or target a different niche then the competitors, or come up with a better product. You don’t have to invent a new mousetrap, just make a better one.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
For software products, here are the steps:
Come up with the idea
Plan out how you will build the product
Source a “manufacturer,” or in this case a product team such as an app or web developer, and graphic designer.
Build the product
File a patent or trademark the product
Setup your distribution channel — for a web app, setup a webpage, for a phone app it would be the Apple App store or Google Play store.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Planning becomes procrastination after awhile: I took a long time to land my first few clients, because I wanted to craft the perfect emails and responses. It’s good to know when to stop planning, and start doing.
Saying no: When you start to see success, you’ll get approached a lot with ideas on how to improve your business. Learn what to say no to.
Avoid the shiny object syndrome: I like to chase new ideas, which is ok, but sometimes I would let it interfere with my main business operations. Make sure your biggest money-makers are running smoothly before pursuing the next hot thing.
Hire people better than you: I know my strengths and weaknesses. If I have a weakness I am not interested in improving, I’ll hire someone for this task. For example, I am terrible at creating graphics and have little interest in this topic, so I hired an excellent designer to help with this.
Just start: I tend to overanalyze. I build detailed spreadsheets, come up with complex scenarios, and talk myself out of a lot of good ideas this way. These days, I like to just start which gives me data points that I can use to improve for the future.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Market research: See if there is a demand for your product. You can run surveys, ask your own personal audience, or buy some research reports.
Test the concept on a small-scale: If there’s a cheap and easy way you can test out the business before pushing all your chips into the middle, then try it out. It gives you more data points to work with.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
If you’re starting out, I would say to try other ways to network first before hiring a consultant. Keep costs low and always remember that cash is king. Reach out to people in the industry that you’re trying to invent a product for. There are all sorts of ways to do this without being in person. LinkedIn outreach or even cold emailing can yield a lot of success.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I think both are valid approaches and there are countless examples of success with both approaches. It’s unique to each situation. I would say if you can make your product come to fruition by only bootstrapping, then go that route. You get to maintain control and all of the equity. If it’s a larger project and you need more expertise and capital, then you’ll need to go the VC route.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’ve hired over 20 people and they are my first and foremost priority. It’s a humbling experience when people depend on you and the success of your business for their livelihood. After a few more years of operating my business, I’d like to focus on more charity work in the future.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
So many people are miserable at their jobs. I feel that I’ve inspired many through my writing and content to pursue a career path that provides them with more satisfaction. Whether it’s just earning more money, or wanting to travel and work around the world, I’ve helped many people learn about that path.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Seth Godin is one of my favorite writers. He has a fascinating almost Zen-like approach to business. I’ve read most of his books and would love to be able to chat with him about his insights.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Candace Charee’ of Effortless Manifesting On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Balance your time better. I had a hard time balancing my work life and home life when I first started. I thought it all had to be one right away. I have since learned that things will always get done at the right time.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Candace Caree’.
Candace Charee’ is a manifestation expert, innovative trauma healing coach, and founder of Effortless Manifesting, LLC, where she specializes in helping people, just like you, manifest the lives of their dreams. By fusing practical strategies with the teachings of esteemed manifestation teacher Neville Goddard, she walks her students down the path of elevating to the next level and creating their best lives.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I come from a blended family of 14 siblings! I know that sounds crazy! Family get togethers were fun to say the least!
My parents divorced when I was two. Both of my parents were pretty poor. I remember my dad making us kids sit on the corner and sell oranges and nuts. It was fun for us, but looking back, I now see how he was trying everything to make ends meet. My mother was very poor as well and worked many jobs to take care of us. One time we had no milk and so I added water to my cereal so I could eat. As kids, we don’t fully understand what our parents go through just to put food on our tables.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do but it won’t get you anywhere.”
This quote taught me a lot about choosing to see things differently. Perspective is everything in life, and we can sit back and worry our life away, or we can chose to see the beauty in all things. Worrying, will never get you closer to your goals.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
“The complete reader” by Neville Goddard, changed my life forever! When I first learned about him, I felt like I was breathing air for the first time. All the holes I found in the law of attraction, he cleared up with the law of assumption. I finally understood why so many dreams of mine previously hadn’t materialized. I recommend his work to everyone trying to become conscious creators of their reality.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
YES! I call this inspired action. When we focus on the end desire of our goal, the final product, our vision, the universe will put people and circumstances in our path to help us on our journey. If we are too focus on the day to day tasks and stressing about how something is supposed to happen, we will miss the beauty in the process. I always recommend people look at the big picture, what is it that you want in the end? See this and imagine it complete. Feel it real until your body says “yes thank you! It is done!” After this, you allow these circumstances or bridge of incidents to happen that take you one step closer to your realized vision.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
The beauty about being an individual is that no one can share your story the way you can. No one can speak and create something the exact way you can. YOU are the true product. When I started my company, I too worried that there were other coaches teaching the law of assumption but I had to quickly turn this perspective into motivation to be the most authentic and unique coach in my niche’. And because no one can tell it like I can, it eliminates the need to compare. Everyone is different and special in their own way. I no longer look at competition because we all get to share and connect with others in the way that will bring your tribe directly to you.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
I believe the best way to create a successful business is about authenticity and authority. You must show up for yourself and your audience/customer. I recommend finding the few platforms you can connect the easiest on, such as TikTok, Instagram or Facebook.
Being able to share your story, why your brand is unique to you and how you are inspiring change, will bring about immediate loyal customers. People are loyal to me because I am real. I share my truth and I provide amazing experiences for them via coaching, or my guided meditations and bestselling E-book. It’s always about the customers experience at the end of the day.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Balance your time better. I had a hard time balancing my work life and home life when I first started. I thought it all had to be one right away. I have since learned that things will always get done at the right time.
Don’t judge yourself. I used to judge myself quite a bit when being live on camera and worrying about how I sounded or looked. I got over that pretty quickly as my audience always showed me such love.
Prepare for massive success. I had no idea how quickly my business would grow! I could have used a good tax accountant a long time ago. 😉
Resist the fear of growth. I found myself afraid to achieve my dreams a bit. I’ve had to reprogram some beliefs about being worthy of this success.
Start TikTok earlier. I learned about TikTok from Gary Vee. I sat on this idea to join for several months. I would have started even sooner. TikTok has been the best platform for me to grow quickly and gain new clients and people who want to learn from me. I really love it and recommend every business be on that platform.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
I recommend you envision yourself being successful in this new company. What does it look like? Really map that out and be very detailed in how you want it to look. Then, ask yourself each day what is one thing I can do today to move myself closer to my dreams. Allow these new circumstances to come into your life.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Everyone is going to need something different. The best idea here is to ask yourself what are your limitations and do you have the capital to hire someone else? I say, if you can have someone else take the load off, always chose that idea, as it will give you more time to be creative.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
There is no right or wrong answer here. Take yourself to the end. What do you want? If you need a million dollars for your company, envision yourself receiving this money and celebrate it. See it done and know it’s yours. Let the right opportunity fall into your lap thereafter.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I have helped thousands of people change their limiting beliefs, heal their past and transform their lives. As I continue to grow my business, I intend to help millions.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I believe my current company is doing just that! I am here to guide, transform and heal as many people as will listen. It is only the beginning.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would be honored to have lunch with Tony Robbins. How he has built his company and his live transformational work is inspiring. I see myself touring the country and world, helping others transform and heal at live workshops similar to what Tony has done, but unique to me.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Simply Google or Duck Duck Go your product or service. That’s your first, no cost step. Non-existent? Great! Does it already exist? Don’t stop there — dig deeper. Who is the competition? What are the competitors’ products strengths and weaknesses? What does your idea offer that existing products lack?Feel like you might be on to something? Time to get excited! Although, don’t get too emotional. Don’t allow visions of grandeur to fog your thinking. Think pragmatically. How big can this get? What is the upside? What is the down side? If up is bigger than down, that’s exactly the way to go. Think big.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bruce Clark.
Now at the age of 67, Bruce Clark has learned many hard-earned, valuable lessons as a serial entrepreneur. From those lessons he has built a track record of several successful and varied inventions and start-ups. Without a degree, the product of a broken home, and with little money, Bruce has amassed accomplishments in the varied fields of retail, automotive, safety, finance, and distribution. This includes 2 auto repair facilities, 5 retail stores in the major malls, including the Mall of America, and an In-Home Tutoring Service with 100 certified teachers. His most famous invention is the cupholder. Yes, the cupholder — something that is now found mounted on the seats in most every sport stadium and movie theater in North America. Something that is routinely taken for granted, but did not exist prior to Bruce’s inspiration. From another invention, a safety accessory for ladders used in the construction industry, Bruce continues to enjoy the royalties to this day.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood back story”?
My father was a typical, tightfisted Scotsman. He would save money or avoid spending it anyway he could. When a TV, radio, washing machine, phonograph or lawn mower died, he would never just throw it away. He took apart every nut and bolt from every machine and saved them along with brackets, belts, motors, levers, electrical parts, pumps, widgets, pulleys and gears. Our garage and basement were full of these parts, allowing me to build anything my inventive mind could come up with. An electric toy car made from an old phonograph motor, a motor scooter using an old bicycle frame and lawn mower engine, an airplane glider using wood molding, bed sheet and newspaper, a design for a submarine using an old washing machine door for the window, a spaceship using a washing machine tub. Some were working models and others an immediate failure after realizing my idea was too lofty. Upon building my motor scooter, I gave up after starting it for the test drive, engaging the clutch and going backwards. I had failed to note the direction the engine turned, thereby mounting the engine backward.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Never, Never, Never Give Up! By Winston Churchill
During my invention phase, I faced many brick walls which threatened the vary life of my creations. Many times I felt like giving up. It didn’t seem worth it. The one thing that kept me going was the vision I had of the product being used by the masses or saving lives. I learned to dig under the walls, climb over them, find a way around them, or legally dismantle the wall. Each time breaking through a wall provided more confidence to endure; and it taught me to take a negative and turn it into a positive. As an example, I received a phone call one day from another inventor who claimed I was infringing on his patent. After many discussions with the man denying his claims, I finally turned the case over to my patent attorney. Both attorneys went back and forth denying each others claims and got nowhere. The other inventor finally said, “fine, I’ll await your success in the marketplace, then sue you.” Knowing the costs of fighting patent infringement could start at over $100,000 I asked the man what he wanted. I ended up buying his patent for $10,000. The upside was he couldn’t sue me anymore and my patent protection was even stronger than before.
Is there a particular book, pod cast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Tucker the movie with Jeff Bridges was huge. Harvey McKay’s books including How to Swim with Sharks Without getting Eaten Alive. Shark Tank is about the best show for inventors and entrepreneurs and the importance of doing their homework prior to asking for money.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Finding the right company or people to partner with is key. One example — I was fortunate enough to find a distributor who loved my cupholder invention. They happened to be a large distributor of sport stadium and movie theater seats, sound equipment, projectors and other products in those industries. A perfect match. After showing them my $250.00 prototype, we struck a deal allowing them to have the exclusive rights to sell my idea. In exchange, they gave me an office, warehouse, secretarial assistance and paid for all marketing costs including trade shows and advertising. Not a bad deal considering it had only cost me $250.00 for the prototype. Then and only then did I spend the $55,000 for a mold to make my product. Seemed like a safe bet as I was now like a racehorse jumping out of the gate.
A second key element — know your market. For another invention, we decided to jump into the world of marketing and manufacturing by ourselves. Applying the first key that I mentioned, we found the right companies to make various parts of our safety product and assembled them ourselves. But then we applied this second key — we advertised in national trade magazines applying to our market where we knew what we had created would have value. Sales started coming in almost immediately.
Knowing when to sell is a another key. We had only been manufacturing and marketing our safety product for under a year when we received a call from our #1 distributor, asking for exclusive licensing rights. Considering we were too small of an operation for a giant like Home Depot with over 2,400 stores to properly supply, we decided to license out the product. Even though we received less money via royalties, we never had to spend another penny. Product Liability Insurance alone had cost us $30,000 per year, a cost we no longer had to pay.
There is a long list of other keys to successfully bringing a product to market, but these are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Simply Google or Duck Duck Go your product or service. That’s your first, no cost step. Non-existent? Great! Does it already exist? Don’t stop there — dig deeper. Who is the competition? What are the competitors’ products strengths and weaknesses? What does your idea offer that existing products lack?Feel like you might be on to something? Time to get excited! Although, don’t get too emotional. Don’t allow visions of grandeur to fog your thinking. Think pragmatically. How big can this get? What is the upside? What is the down side? If up is bigger than down, that’s exactly the way to go. Think big.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Build a prototype. Make certain it works. Doesn’t have to be pretty but it does have to be functional. Then shop for a Patent Attorney. Initial consultations are usually free. A patent search can cost $2,500 from the attorney. You can conduct your own patent search for free, at uspto.gov. The search criteria is critical. Search for all aspects, concepts and features of your invention idea. Costing you nothing but time. Although, a patent is too important to search and file yourself. There are many claims to a patent. Each claim has to be specific enough for protection yet broad enough to apply to many other variations. Leave it to the professionals.
Upon noting the components of your prototype, you have to consider the manufacturing process. How can this product be built in massive quantities? Should you get this product into a Home Depot-like monster outlet, you’ll have no choice but to seriously seek manufacturing expertise. Sourcing a good manufacturer, as you say, takes a lot of leg work. I mean a lot. It’s easy to identify the high-end players in a field, but finding the up-and-comers who are willing to grow with you just takes a lot of research; look at adds trade magazines, read your local business periodicals. I’ve known of many inventors making deals with a manufacturer whereby they include manufacturing, warehousing and shipping all for a percentage of sales. No up front costs to you, the inventor. If you find someone who can do the complete job, get at least 2 more estimates from others to keep them honest.
This is more important than you might imagine — Attend trade shows. They’re costly but critical to meeting all the players in your field. From buyers to competitors to distributors and manufacturers. Gather business cards, make appointments and follow-up on every lead to move forward with your dream.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
I wish someone would have told me about not assuming competence. Just because someone is a professional in their field, does not mean they’re competent. I ran into too many pros in their field who caused me time delays, extra money and going in the wrong direction. Don’t ask “Who does this type of work” you may need. Instead ask “who are the top three” in the field you’re seeking. I was working with an injection mold company and their engineers for one of my cupholder designs. They had it down quite well but failed to explain to the third shift the details. Hundreds of the product were produced and delivered with obvious problems. They would fix one problem and another would creep up. Sometimes they couldn’t even get the color right. We finally switched companies twice and ended up with a competent injections molder who was brilliant and never made one mistake.
I wish someone had told me it takes longer and costs more money than I had planned. Had I paid more attention to the details of my business plan, it would have been more accurate. I jumped into things to get the ball rolling too many times, without proper expertise, which cost me extra time and money. I went from believing millions of dollars were just around the corner having to spending thousands more than anticipated. One product was the Ladder Dolly. Wheels for ladders. We worked with insurance companies and safety engineers for large construction companies and sold the product for 4 years upon realizing it couldn’t go much further. It had to be abandoned. Had we done more extensive market research we would have seen its problem. A $5,000 investment in hiring a focus group to comment on our product would have shown us the problem. The focus group should have consisted of construction workers, the people who would actually use our product, to comment. We found out the hard way the construction worker wouldn’t be caught carrying a ladder with wheels. Too often we heard later, their comments; “If you can’t carry a ladder over your shoulders, you shouldn’t be in the business.”
I wish someone had explained to me how to beware of emotions. My first invention, the cupholders for stadium and theater seats, was my baby, my creation. It was a simple hoop which would fold up and down. I was completely mesmerized by where it could lead, to the point of allowing my emotions to cost me 1 year and $50,000 of mistakes. I was warned of the potential of the product not being strong enough for public use. I worked around the potential problem by adding a snap-away feature of the hoop, to alleviate those concerns. Upon our first test market, the theater owner noted how many hoops were snapped off and thrown at the movie screen after each feature. Only then did I realize the folding hoop idea was an absolute flop. A more robust, new design had to be created. A new mold, new advertising campaign and with my tail between my legs, was the order of the day.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
As stated earlier, do a Google search for all aspects of your idea and hire a patent attorney after your own, free patent search at USPTO.gov.
Build a working prototype and consider all the components which have to be manufactured. Seek manufacturers to understand costs involved.
Research. Research. Research. How large is your market? Who are the buyers and why would they purchase your product? How much would the buyer be willing to pay?
Too often people would come to me for opinions about their idea and the market was just too small. No matter the price point, no matter the market size, the work involved and your costs will not be that much different. The key is entering a large market where you can make millions, not just a few hundred thousand dollars.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
The Small Business Administration has a wonderful, FREE service called SCORE. These are retired executives which will help develop a plan and follow you through with your plan. They are very wise and helpful.
We had an idea for a product which I worked for weeks attempting to design such a product. It was clumsy, heavy and expensive concept. I knew it couldn’t work. We hired a design company, paid them $5,000 and they came up with a fantastic, simple and low cost design. They required no intellectual property claims and did a great job thereby their design is still selling very well today.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
As we were on the road to success because our product was selling, we knew in order to get into Home Depot and other large distributors, we realized we were way over our heads and just too small. We needed an investor. We had meetings with a number of Venture Capitalists who all wanted controlling interest of over 50% in our business. We were not willing to give up that much for a measly million dollars as we knew our products potential was much greater. I highly respect the folks on Shark Tank who are willing to take a much less and reasonable amount of ownership, unless they see the inventor is not up to the task. Luckily, we received a call from our #1 distributor one day wanting to license the product, which we eventually, did just that.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
You know, like most people typically do, I’ve helped out others along the way, in different ways. But that is between me and them and God. That said, I am writing a book about my mistakes, experiences, and successes. It’s written for common folks with an idea, little money, and a dream to create a successful invention or business. I hope that this will be a great help to many.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
That everyone in this great country, young and old, immigrant and citizen alike, would believe in the American Dream and pursue their version of it.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Mark Cuban, Patrick Bet-David, Donald Trump, Steve Wozniak, Joe Rogan or Harvey McKay.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Prepare for success. We believe that brands that follow the aforementioned advice will grow exponentially. But exponential curves begin relatively flat as brands establish their purpose, culture, content, and experiences that will ultimately create value. The flat part of the curve can lull a brand to sleep, leaving them unprepared for when the curve bends almost vertically as success kicks in. Brands need to build tools and processes to manage success before it happens or they will be unprepared for scale.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Jeff Rosenblum.
Jeff Rosenblum is a cofounder of Questus, a digital advertising agency that has worked with many of the world’s most influential brands, including American Express, Apple, Capital One, Disney, The NFL, Samsung, Starbucks, Universal, Wyndham and Verizon. Jeff created a groundbreaking documentary about the advertising revolution called The Naked Brand and the book Friction which explained how passion brands are built. Jeff has lectured at some of the world’s top universities, including Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and the London Business School. He has won some of advertising’s most prestigious awards and presented at many of the industry’s largest conferences. Visit https://www.questus.com/exponential.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I happened to be in the right place at the right time and helped pioneer the field of Internet research. I was working at a research company collecting data using traditional techniques when one day I went on a ride on my motorcycle. I didn’t have it because I was cool; I had it because I was broke. But the motorcycle did a great job of removing the distractions of the office. On this ride, I realized that the marketing research industry, and every other industry, was about to be completely disrupted by the Internet. My bosses, Haldane King and Jacob Brown, saw the vision and greenlighted my efforts. I shifted our methodologies online and decreased our typical project timelines from 6 months to 6 days. (Later, others would shift it to 6 hours and then 6 seconds). Although I was still barely 25 years old, I had clients like Microsoft, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Walt Disney, Levi Straus, and Discovery Channel. I gained access to proprietary data showing that an advertising revolution was about to take place. It showed that brands can no longer be built by interrupting people over and over again. That companies were becoming transparent and they needed a bold shift in their strategies that were commensurate with the bold shifts in consumer behavior. Perhaps even more importantly for my own journey, I learned that I’m not just passionate about simply collecting data and presenting market research findings, I wanted to collect data and do something about it. So, I called my college roommate, Jordan, who was a world-class designer selling his paintings to celebrities like Johnny Depp. He also wanted to do something more strategic and complex, so we decided to get together and build an advertising agency based upon the simple concept of blending data and creativity. Neither of us had ever stepped foot in an advertising agency, yet we had been at the forefront of the industry for the past two decades.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
What makes Questus truly stand out is the culture that the team built. I believe we have a team comprised of some of the greatest human beings on planet earth. Not just great advertisers or marketers, but the greatest human beings. They are kind, caring, passionate, collaborative, dedicated, and fun. I am so proud of the way they treat each other and treat our clients. To be candid, I had to learn about culture the hard way. For a long time, I thought that building great culture meant that we needed to build a fun place to work. We had music, booze, and ping pong tables like so many modern companies. And yes, building a fun place to work is a nice component of culture. But more importantly, I needed to learn that culture is about building processes that enable people to do their best work. That means that we focus extraordinarily hard on who we recruit and how we get them to collaborate. I’ve learned that it really comes down to what I call Talent Acquisition and Talent Collaboration. It’s about building processes to hire nothing less than A+ players, which is much easier said than done and requires a documented, methodical approach. And it’s about increasing the collective intelligence of the team by using processes, tools, and positive attitudes to enable each person to collaborate and build synergies.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
A brand is a company’s most important asset. And many people define a brand as a story. And that’s largely because of the legacy model of building brands through 30-second interruptions. But brands aren’t simply stories. They are cognitive shortcuts. We are now exposed to more brands and more information than the human brain could possibly begin to process. The way that we survive and thrive as human beings is we filter out information. So we can only focus in on the points that matter. Great brands provide a cognitive shortcut. It’s about helping people understand what makes a company different and better than the competition. It’s about helping the target audience understand the value systems of the company so people can understand how they want to invest their hard-earned dollars. Attention in evangelism product marketing, on the other hand, is much lower in the sales funnel, and it’s really about helping people clearly understand the features in functionality for a specific product.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
Focus in on empowerment over interruptions. Brands that grow exponentially focus on improving their customers’ lives one small step at a time. They don’t simply rely upon paid media to interrupt the audience while they watch TV or pop-ups on digital media. They create content and experiences that have real meaning in people’s lives. My favorite example is Fender guitar. They faced the challenge that young musicians were gravitating towards computers rather than guitars for making music. So the brand invested in Fender Play, a platform that provides high quality, personalized music lessons. It empowers guitar players to learn how to play better. The platform is much better than typical online music lessons because of the production quality and because it helps each student on a one-to-one basis, enabling guitarists to go on a journey towards better playing. It not only grows the entire category, but it authentically promotes the brand while creating a new revenue stream.
Recognize that modern marketing is a value exchange. People invest their hard-earned time, attention, and dollars in brands. In exchange, they’re looking for value at every touchpoint in the consumer journey. They want to get back more than they are putting in. One great example is Capital One, which is a client of ours. I just got off the phone with their customer service and the quality of the support I received was the best I’ve received in any category that I can remember. They answered promptly, treated me kindly, answered the questions I originally had, and answered new questions that came up throughout the call. That might sound like table stakes, but I think we can all agree that great customer service is a rarity. By receiving more value than I expected, they didn’t simply make me a happy customer. It made me a brand evangelist because now I’m telling my friends, my family, and your readers about how great the Capital One experience was. It’s critical for brands to recognize that each interaction should be treated as a value exchange. When consumers get more than they put in, they shift to brand evangelists. When they get less, they shift to brand detractors.
Leverage the entire purchase journey. Brands can no longer rely upon interruptions via paid media at the beginning of the journey to get people excited about a product. Those interruptions work, but we are asking them to do way too much. We need to understand every step of the consumer journey to ensure that we are providing the exact content that is needed at the exact moment it is needed. An example is Super 8 Hotels, which is also a client of ours. We leveraged the entire consumer journey to help people become aware of their tastefully redesigned rooms. Rather than simply focus on the designs of the room, we emotionally engaged the audience with a compelling story about how people do incredible things on the road. We used emotional content about veterans giving hugs to fight PTSD in a story called The Human Hug Project. That story worked in the beginning of the journey, but then we created content at every granular step that people went through on the accommodation decision process. We provided extensive content that showed the quality of the rooms and the amenities available to guests. We then followed that functional content with targeted promotions to convert prospects into customers. The content was served chronologically on a one-to-one basis, so the story unfolded throughout the purchase journey: Emotional content in the beginning of the journey, functional content in the middle of the journey, and promotions at the end of the journey. For non-impulse categories, people spend hours deciding which brands they want to buy from and recommend. It’s important for brands to create the granular empowering content that is required at every step of the purchase journey.
Focus on culture more than anything. Culture has become a trendy topic in recent years, but most companies seem to think it’s simply about having a bold mission statement or toys like foosball to make the office space fun. My favorite example about culture comes from our own agency, Questus. Frankly, we didn’t fully understand culture for the first decade that we were in business. We always knew how important it is. We invested in toys, games, dinners, drinks, and music to make our agency as fun as possible. But what we’ve learned in recent years is tall of that stuff is only the icing on the cake. What really counts is empowering the team do their best work. Great team members work extraordinarily hard and they want to be put in a position to succeed. They want to do work that they’re proud of. They want to do work that advances their own career. It’s about creating processes and tools to break down silos and get people to most effectively work together. If brands can’t get culture right, no other advice really matters because culture dictates how well organizations can execute upon their strategy.
Prepare for success. We believe that brands that follow the aforementioned advice will grow exponentially. But exponential curves begin relatively flat as brands establish their purpose, culture, content, and experiences that will ultimately create value. The flat part of the curve can lull a brand to sleep, leaving them unprepared for when the curve bends almost vertically as success kicks in. Brands need to build tools and processes to manage success before it happens or they will be unprepared for scale. My favorite success story comes from Rodney Scott, a restauranteur from South Carolina. Rodney grew up in his family’s whole-hog barbecue restaurant, started working at six, did his first all-night cook at eleven, and was working full-time by seventeen. After decades of hard work (the flat part of the curve), his business, Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ , was recognized in a glowing review by The New York Times and then won a regional James Beard award. Investors came along to help him grow exponentially. What he realized is that he needed processes to facilitate that growth. For example, Rodney could simply listen to the fat render off the meat and drip into the fire to understand if it was the right temperature. That’s not a scalable process. He had to break down every part of his business so that he could become a great leader and teach others to do what he knew how to do innately. Rodney now has multiple restaurants, and his brand has become a household name. The big lesson is to prepare for success before it happens. Once the growth curve turns vertical, it’s too late to start building processes and the growth curve can quickly invert.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Social media is absolutely critical for branding efforts because the typical person spends over two hours per day on social media. Brands need to be where their target audience spends time and they need to be there in a way that authentically provides value. It’s important for brands to understand that the algorithms have changed. Social media doesn’t provide the reach that was once promised to marketers. It is now a pay-for-play world, so brands need to not only create great content, but they need to invest in making sure their audience actually sees it. Organic social content is insufficient for meeting brand or revenue goals.
What advice would you give to other marketers or business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
The most important advice that I can give to other marketers and business leaders is surround yourself with world-class human beings. Surround yourself with colleagues who can inspire you every day. Obviously, there are many articles that talk about the importance of mindfulness and rest and work/life balance, and while all of that is important, I’ve found the people are what keep me from feeling burnt out. And to be honest, I’ve never felt burnt out one single day in my entire career. I am truly the least valuable player at our agency. And trying to keep up with the quality of people that we’ve found puts wind in my sales every day.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would like to see focus on empowerment over interruptions. This means brands need to focus on improving people’s lives one small step at a time. While it would certainly be great for every brand to focus in on saving the planet like Patagonia, I’ve learned that people don’t wake up in the morning expecting every brand to hug trees and save the manatees. That would be great, but it’s not actually needed. But if brands can find an authentic way to improve people’s lives every single day, given the power and scale of corporations, we truly could make the world a better place. Some of these efforts may be fairly humble, but collectively they could have a massive impact. It could be as simple as helping people learn how to play guitar, helping people cook a great family meal, helping people get better organized, and helping people be more comfortable, healthier, and happier.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing!” What that means is that we all need to recognize that we have one shot at life, so lean in. Don’t be lazy. Have fun. Treasure relationships. Take care of your friends and family. Do your best. Don’t fear failure. Learn to take a punch and keep going. The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Enjoy the ride!
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
That’s a great question. To be really honest, my favorite breakfast is at a greasy diner with my wife and kids (and dog hiding under the booth). If you could help schedule that for this upcoming weekend, that would be awesome.
The Future Is Now: Ali Asmari of ULC Technologies On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
There are definitely a few pieces of advice I wish I knew before I started, but I’ll narrow it down to the top three. One is that you don’t need to know everything when you start something new, but you need to know how to find the answers to the questions that you have in your career path. This is something that I learned many times along my journey. Additionally, mistakes and failures are part of the growing process and if you are not taking calculated risks or not making any mistakes in the work that you are doing, then you are not pushing yourself to your full potential. Finally, the key to success is hard and work and consistency!
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ali Asmari.
Ali Asmari, PhD, is the Director of Infrastructure Automation & AI at ULC Technologies. Dr. Asmari has an M.S. in Robotics and Automation and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Computer Vision and Machine Learning from Oklahoma State University. Prior to his work at ULC, Dr. Asmari has spent more than fifteen years in the field of robotics, with experience in design and development, Automation and Control, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning and has led projects in diverse sets of industries.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Math and physics have always been two of my favorite topics in school. I used to do math problems in my free time for fun, so studying mechanical engineering in college was to continue pursuing both topics further. During my undergraduate studies, I formed a robotics team with some of my classmates and participated in national and international robotic competitions which led me to pursue control and automation in graduate school. During my M.S. studies, I got more involved in creating autonomous solutions based on heuristic models and decided to pursue that further. So, I focused my Ph.D. studies on computer vision and machine learning algorithms. My experience with different aspects of automation, the mechanical design of machines, control, and automation of systems and programming models to replicate human decision-making processes, equipped me with all the necessary tools to pursue a career in robotics. Since my graduation in 2014, I have been working with different companies to bring robotics to day-to-day operation with a goal of improving operational safety and increasing efficiencies.
Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
At ULC Technologies, our R&D division is working on a portfolio of new technologies made to provide solutions for our customers at utilities, energy companies, and more. This division is made up of skilled engineers and machine learning experts who, in collaboration with our customers, work together to address specific customer needs or problems through the development of custom, innovative technologies.
One of the innovations that I am working on specifically, in collaboration with UK gas network SGN, is the Robotic Roadworks & Excavation System (RRES), RRES is an all-electric system that aims to improve the safety and efficiency of roadworks, minimize road closures and disruption to public transportation and ultimately reduce costs and CO2 emissions. The robotic system combines below-ground sensors, artificial intelligence, soft-touch excavation, and a variety of other bespoke tools to automate the end-to-end excavation process. When working with our utility customers, RRES can be used to scan and identify buried utilities, cut and excavate the road surface, install a fitting on the pipe and then backfill and reinstate the road. Aside from the benefits I mentioned above, this system can also enhance worker safety as it will limit the need for them to enter the excavation site and will minimize the risk of accidental damage, which improves public safety. Additionally, companies who adopt this technology will be able to teach their workforce a new skill set — operating a robot.
My team is also working on other projects that integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of these projects that I am excited about is Asset Identification and Mapping (AIM), which can be used by companies who want to autonomously map out and inspect their infrastructure. Combining machine learning and a vehicle-mounted data collection system, electric companies can generate an interactive database of utility poles and assets, create GIS mapping, and conduct inspections of the overhead electric distribution system. Typically, this would be done manually by workers who would need to visit each pole, inspect the asset, and log the data. AIM improves the quality and efficiency of asset management efforts while lowering costs associated with manual labor, which can be time-consuming. Additionally, the traditional mapping system is subject to human error. Like much of our technologies, the AIM system can be tailored to customers’ needs and developed for new applications.
How do you think this might change the world?
Technology and innovation continue to progress in virtually every industry. In the energy and infrastructure, it’s been a slower adoption, however, our customers are seeing the impact of robotics in helping with job efficiency, worker safety, and reduced cost. As the energy industry continues to shift with the goal of reaching net-zero, I think that using electric-powered automated systems like RRES will be welcomed as an essential tool. We’re also supporting traditional workers in learning a new skill set that will be important because as innovation continues to evolve, so will they.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Robotics and automation are tools at our disposal, and it is up to us to use them wisely to enhance our lives or take them to the dark end and manipulate people and societies with them for profit or other motives. “Black Mirror” is a typical horror movie in which the villains use a technology that was designed to improve human life (as simple as a kitchen knife) and put it to use the way they were not meant to be used and cause people pain and discomfort.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
We’re constantly trying to reach new customers and partners who are looking for a solution to a problem and turn to us to work on that solution that eventually will become business-as-usual. From the start of the business, ULC has had a great relationship with gas utilities in both the U.S. and the UK, which has brought to us opportunities to develop and test new robotics and technologies which eventually have become well-known within the industry. In the case of RRES, our trusted relationship with the UK gas network SGN has provided us the opportunity to work with them on developing an innovative robotic system. Their team has collaborated with us on the entire process and the robot will be heading to the UK in 2022 to begin field trials. It is our collective hope that eventually RRES can be used to assist the gas network, but also to identify other applications for the system as the tools are easily interchangeable.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
While ULC was built on relationships with gas utilities, our R&D business and the addition of skilled engineers and machine learning experts has allowed us to come up with new innovations that can be applied to industries we may have not worked with in the past, and marketing has helped us promote that. For example, we worked with Facebook Connectivity on developing a robot that wraps fiber around power lines, which has the potential to help expand internet access globally. We’ve reached these kinds of customers through award recognition, speaking opportunities, and marketing our work through customer newsletters, social media, and generally by making connections with key leaders in the innovation world.
RRES has been a project that we’ve really focused on in multi-channel marketing. In the spring of 2021, we held a field trial event that was streamed virtually via Zoom to anyone who signed up to attend. Through promotion on social media and email marketing, we had over 100 attendees who were able to see the robot complete the end-to-end roadworks process live. This, combined with proactive media relations efforts before and after the event, led to coverage across robotic and construction-focused trade media outlets in both the U.S. and the UK. As the project continues to progress, we will continue to work with SGN on communications efforts to really showcase the innovation behind RRES.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I have been lucky to have met and worked with amazing people throughout my education and career who taught me and mentored me in their own ways, helping me achieve the goals that I had set for myself. I am grateful for every single person who has touched my life in a specific way, and it all led me to the place that I am right now.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
There are definitely a few pieces of advice I wish I knew before I started, but I’ll narrow it down to the top three. One is that you don’t need to know everything when you start something new, but you need to know how to find the answers to the questions that you have in your career path. This is something that I learned many times along my journey. Additionally, mistakes and failures are part of the growing process and if you are not taking calculated risks or not making any mistakes in the work that you are doing, then you are not pushing yourself to your full potential. Finally, the key to success is hard and work and consistency!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison
I read somewhere that “engineering is precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge”. Although it is not the actual definition of engineering, it is very accurate in depicting an engineer’s day-to-day work. The number of calculated assumptions that an engineer makes throughout a project brings a high level of uncertainty in finding the right solution or the right design on the first try. Therefore, the ones who persist in trying different things over and over are the ones who finally succeed. I can’t remember a project that I have worked on and after completing the design and build of the system everything worked perfectly on the first try. I also can’t remember a problem that I have not been able to solve when I put in the effort and patiently worked through challenges. Unfortunately, you don’t always get an unlimited budget and time to work on a problem until it is completely resolved so sometimes that leads you to give up.
Be confident in your decisions, but don’t be afraid to change your mind. Confidence is key in building a company, but the ability to gather information and make smart decisions is absolutely critical. Many great companies are the result of pivots. While most people think of a company pivot as a large change in vision, important pivots can also happen around engineering, marketing, and messaging.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Sorkin, CEO of Flux Marine.
Ben Sorkin grew up spending summers in upstate New York on Lake George, where his passion for boating and tinkering with engines started from a young age. By 2016, while studying mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, Ben was leading a student project to build an all-electric outboard motor. After spending some time with Tesla and designing electric propulsion systems for the office of Naval Research, Ben hung up the corporate hat and focused everything into Flux Marine to continue development of his electric outboard motor and eventually bring those motors to market. Ben’s design would go on to win the Electric Boat Association of America’s Wye Island Challenge in 2019. Under Ben’s leadership, Flux Marine has received numerous awards and been invited to several accelerator programs. The company received a Catalyst Grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, was part of the 2018 MassChallenge cohort, was honored at the 2020 Rhode Island Business Competition and has received an Innovation Voucher from the RI Commerce Corporation. After five years of development, Flux Marine introduced its all-electric marine outboard motors at the 2021 Newport International Boat Show where the company took home two awards for best new product and best new green product. Ben currently leads the Flux Marine team from the company’s headquarters in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up spending summers in upstate New York on Lake George. I always loved boating and tinkering, so I became the local “fix-it” kid. The history of marine technology and modern engineering innovations excited me, and so I rescued a 1961 fiberglass Glasspar G3 from a barn and restored it along with its antique Merc outboard. I brought it to a handful of boat shows while also using it as a platform for learning and innovation. In college, my passion for boating led me to explore the applicability of e-mobility technologies in the marine world, which resulted in a merger of experience, passion, and ambition into what has become Flux Marine.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Winston Churchill once said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” When going from idea to launch, each successful milestone becomes the most important step, until it is accomplished, and the next milestone comes into focus. For many entrepreneurs, hitting major milestones like a working prototype or funding round can feel monumental, and it should, but when these major milestones are hit, I like to remind myself that these accomplishments don’t signal the end, nor even the beginning of the end. But, as the idea grows into reality, these inflection points may indeed represent the end of the beginning.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Alfred Lansing’s book “Endurance” gives the first-hand account of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition through the Antarctic. As the title suggests, the sheer persistence that Shackleton and his crew demonstrated is an inspiration. From a leadership perspective, Shackleton may have had the ultimate say as the captain, but he recognized the importance of all the men on the team. Ultimately, his commitment to each and every one of them is what made him a true leader. It has been said that, “for scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” The clear takeaway here is that Shackleton inspires survival, and in going from an idea through launch and scaling, the most critical aspect is sheer survival and perseverance.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Smart people generate great ideas. But individuals rarely build companies. I like to say that it takes a village. In order to build a successful business, you must surround yourself with a network of supporters, partners, and employees that can help to fill knowledge gaps, split responsibility, and take pride in being part of something larger.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
If you must look up whether an idea has already been done before, then it hasn’t been done well enough. This generally means there’s an opportunity — Google was not the first, second, or even third search engine.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
In the early stages of taking an idea and running with it, I like to come back to Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany. These first four steps are, customer discovery, customer validation, customer creation, and company building. The importance of talking to customers cannot be understated, as this is the synergy that can turn an idea into a business. Diving into the mechanics of the company and product building aspect, there are a multitude of ways to go about these challenges, and often there is no singular answer that covers all industries. For patents, I think it’s important to read examples of patents but at the end of the day, having a really solid patent attorney is instrumental. As an entrepreneur, your job is to turn your idea into a business, so it’s important to rely on experts in a handful of fields as part of that journey, including patents. To source a good manufacturer, have many conversations and reference checks. Building hardware is not easy, and each conversation you have with a potential manufacturing expert will also help you learn. Distribution is tricky — the easiest path can be to follow your industry’s norms, but sometimes innovation is required to have the greatest impact in product distribution. On the other hand, it can be dangerous to break too many norms in specific industries. In addition to spending time on customer discovery, also spend time having discovery conversations with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. These conversations will help you understand the current white space in your industry and may very well help you shape the direction of your business.
I believe that location is also important, and that building a strong, local network is key. We’ve been lucky to find tremendously valuable partnerships and resources in Rhode Island — from local partners and suppliers like the team at IYRS School of Technology & Trades in Newport, RI who help create the fiberglass housing for our motors, to the support we’ve received from Rhode Island Commerce, which provided us with nearly $50,000 in innovation grants, being able to tap your local network can be hugely helpful for an entrepreneur starting out.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
I’ve received hundreds of helpful hints, tips, and suggestions over the course of my journey. A few of those that I’ve found most helpful (even though some may seem obvious):
Move quickly. Often, response times can seem trivial. A quick email response back, or a follow-up the next day. In business, and especially entrepreneurship, a one-day delay can make all of the difference. Taking quick action has led us to numerous opportunities that have helped shape Flux Marine’s trajectory.
Be confident in your decisions, but don’t be afraid to change your mind. Confidence is key in building a company, but the ability to gather information and make smart decisions is absolutely critical. Many great companies are the result of pivots. While most people think of a company pivot as a large change in vision, important pivots can also happen around engineering, marketing, and messaging.
People are paramount. When my journey started, it seemed like raising money would be the hardest thing, and that if we could do that, everything else would follow. Raising funding is great, but what that allows you to do is start the real work. Great companies are the result of great people, and the time a founder needs to dedicate to building a strong team cannot be underestimated.
Your network is your strongest asset. When you have an idea, and even as that idea grows into a business, talk about it! Tell your friends, family and associates what you’re up to and why you’re doing it. You might find that your passion spreads like wildfire and encourages people in your network to help you in many different ways. There have been so many instrumental people in our venture, for whom their involvement originated over a simple catch-up conversation. Some of our most influential investors, mentors, and partners stem from my network that was built up in the many years before starting Flux Marine.
Illegitimi non carborundum. Not quite Latin, but the caveat holds true. In any journey that has the potential to be disruptive, there will be far more people that say “no,” and only a handful of true early supporters. As you build, the supporters will increase, but so will the naysayers. It may not always be easy, but take this in stride, and don’t let them grind you down.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Market research and customer discovery. Research to see if something similar exists, and if it does, think about why it hasn’t succeeded and what your value proposition is. From there, customer discovery is key. Get out of the building and talk to potential customers about your idea to see if it has legs. This early discovery process will create intrinsic value to your mission and put you in a strong position to build an MVP and scale.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
While I’m sure there are plenty of great invention development consultants, my recommendation is to build a network of individuals that have backgrounds and skill sets applicable to a variety of industries, as well as find opportunities to interact with your intended customers so you can create a knowledge base that helps you refine and explore your ideas.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I would say this often depends on your space and network. Many first-time entrepreneurs can find themselves running in circles chasing venture capital funding just to pitch ideas. Especially for high-risk technologies, I am a fan of bootstrapping early on to produce an MVP and achieve initial customer validation. Doing these two things in a very lean manner will put you in a great position to open doors for venture funding and you’ll be well on your way to building something massive.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’d like to think we are just starting to make the world a better place. At Flux Marine, we are trying to make the world a better place through sustainable innovation. We believe transitioning to a carbon-neutral society is critical, and we are committed to being part of that transition by developing sustainable marine transportation technologies that enable consumers to buy the best products that are also zero-emission, without compromise.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would really encourage the tinkerers and innovators out there to think about how they can develop processes and products that are disruptive, but also sustainable. Convincing consumers to purchase something for the sole reason of it being sustainable is a difficult task. As innovators, we bear a responsibility to develop technologies that can improve the lives of consumers while also catalyzing a shift toward global sustainability.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Jimmy Buffett. The ability to take what you love and turn it into a profession and empire is inspirational, especially when it involves the Earth’s oceans.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
It’s all one big learning process. If there’s one thing you can count on when you’re just starting out, it’s that it won’t be linear. You can try all you want to replicate the processes of successful businesses, but your needs will be unique and you have to be willing to start again from scratch along the way.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marialuisa Garito.
Marialuisa Garito grew up in Italy surrounded by a culture of beauty and quality. When she moved to New York 15 years ago, she had trouble finding that unique European combination at reasonable price points and that is why she founded Affordable Chic, a NYC-based fashion start-up, offering stylish women’s clothing for under $100.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born in a city in southern Italy and then moved to Rome as a teenager. I’ve been a New Yorker since 2008.
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and artists. My father built his highly successful business from the ground up, and my mother was a dedicated art teacher, specifically in sculpture. My family didn’t understand the concept of giving up, but we certainly understood beauty. I know how to roll my sleeves like no one else, and those sleeves never looked cheap, regardless of how much I spent on them.
I grew up watching my mother sew many of her own clothes, as well as mine and my sisters’. I sat alongside her making capes and skirts for my dolls. I know how to check a garment’s cut, and how to assess the quality of a piece of fabric. I know that a cheaply made jacket will never look great on any real person’s shoulders… I know all the dos and don’ts of making clothes.
In Rome, I attended Management Engineering Degree at La Sapienza University. But I’ve always been first and foremost a visual person. I was lucky to be accepted into the highly selective Erasmus exchange program in Madrid and studied for a year at Escuela Politécnica Superior in Madrid, where I became literally obsessed with Pedro Almodovar’s work. His colors, his visions, his creativity, was an intellectual awakening. I transferred to Filmmaking school where my management skills acquired at La Sapienza and my ability to “make beauty happen” through visuals organically merged and led me to a scholarship. I wrote, produced, and directed several short films and earned prestigious industry awards including Best Directing, Best Scriptwriting, and Best Production.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Energy and persistence conquers all things,” -Benjamin Franklin. Time and time again, it’s been proven to me that persistence is the key to success. You don’t have to be the smartest, strongest, or most talented person in the room. If you’re the hardest worker, you will always go further than your peers who quit after the first try.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
It was Pedro Almodovar’s films that really changed the course of my life. I remember watching Volver and being completely engrossed in the aesthetics of it, and I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to the pursuit of beauty. I changed my studies to accommodate that shift in thought. And I think that same idea, that the pursuit of beauty is a worthy one, has absolutely brought me to where I am today. My mission is to bring beautiful clothes to women, because I think all of our lives could be improved by increased access to beautiful things.
As an entrepreneur, the Hard Thing About Hard Things was also pivotal in my understanding of what it means to run a business.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I think there’s a difference between having a good idea and having a calling. I think almost any woman could tell you that great clothes should be available for reasonable prices, but not everybody feels called to make that happen. When something is really calling to you, it’s hard not to respond. That’s where problem solving happens, and you actually can sit down and figure out the steps you have to take to turn a good idea into a reality. I think you need that drive, otherwise there’s nothing pushing you through the challenges of having a business.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
It’s fairly simple to scan the marketplace, but I think what matters more is having a unique angle for your idea. We’re all facing the same problems; we want to save money, enjoy our time with our loved ones, and live healthy lives. Most businesses hinge on one or more of those ideas. But what makes your idea unique, and what ultimately determines a businesses success, is finding the right audience and the right angle. The best place to start there is with yourself. Start paying attention to the brands you care about, and assess whether or not they’re speaking to you. When I started Affordable Chic, it was because there weren’t any brands in the U.S. that were addressing my specific concerns and needs about fashion. I knew that was an opening in the marketplace, and I went for it.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Every business is bound to have a different process. For Affordable Chic, the idea was born out of my feeling that the US market wasn’t meeting the need we have for great clothes at a reasonable price. Once I decided to move on this idea, I had to think through what my business model would be. Then, I had to create a marketing strategy and work to get our name and mission out into the world.
One of the most important steps is creating your website. There are plenty of resources for creating a good direct-to-consumer website online, but we used Shopify. It was perfect for us because it came coded, and the platform is user-friendly.
We don’t have a patent, but we do have a trademark. Getting a trademark is fairly simple and can be done online.
Finding retailers and manufacturers will take time, but it’s all about going to where the business is. For me, it was easy since I live in New York City. I was able to visit the Fashion District and go to trade shows. I also visited LA and would see trade shows there. It’s crucial to build relationships with the designers or retailers you like, because they’ll be an integral part of your business.
It’s all one big learning process. If there’s one thing you can count on when you’re just starting out, it’s that it won’t be linear. You can try all you want to replicate the processes of successful businesses, but your needs will be unique and you have to be willing to start again from scratch along the way.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
I think the biggest thing is actually a myth I’d like to dispel. When we were starting out, I was always told not to focus on branding because it was too expensive. In my opinion, there is no worse advice than telling a new business not to focus on their branding.
First of all, branding doesn’t have to be expensive when you start out. Even though it would be great to hire talented branding help, nobody knows your brand better than you do when your business is in the start-up phase. You can take the time to get clear about who you are and what your message is, and then come up with a preliminary strategy to get it out into the world.
You won’t see results from your branding efforts right away, but they’ll come eventually and it will make an enormous difference. No matter what, don’t forsake this piece of your business. It is absolutely worth the investment.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
The first thing is to be clear on who you are and what your mission is. Having a clear understanding of those concepts will guide you through the difficult strategic questions and decisions you’ll have to make down the line.
Then I think every entrepreneur needs a plan for how they’ll spread their mission and raise brand awareness. There are tons of free tools online that can help them with this, and plenty of resources for them to learn. But you have to be committed to learning and doing as much as you can in those early days, otherwise you’re doomed.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I think it depends on your priorities and resources. When you’re just starting out, your resources are probably limited and you need to be strategic about where you use them. The two big resources are time and money. If you have more time and less money, you should probably see how much you can learn on your own about growing a business and marketing an invention and try it out on your own. If you have more money and less time, it might make sense to hire some help. Either way, you shouldn’t go in blind and expect to see results.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Looking for venture capital is really important. You need money to run a business– that’s the ugly truth. If you don’t already have it, you have to find it. Not only will it help with startup costs, but having that extra padding will be crucial to your ability to scale.
The best way to find venture capital is through networking. When you find investors, you’ll need to have a solid pitch. Back to the importance of branding, knowing your “elevator pitch” for your company and refining it is key here.
Be strategic with your network and ask people you know for introductions to others who can help. Go to networking events. Try to make yourself visible in places where investors are looking. And when someone sees you, be ready to show them why they should invest in you.
When it comes to networking and finding investors, you’re selling yourself as much if not more than you’re selling your product.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I think spreading the notion that we can feel good about ourselves without spending exorbitant amounts of money is a good start. People think that quality is synonymous with expensive, and it’s just not true. That mindset comes from greed, and greed is the root of almost all the struggles our society faces. Everything we can do to dismantle greed and show people that good things don’t have to have high price tags is a small step toward a healthier society.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I want to inspire people to break away from the love of logos. Self-expression has gotten so tied up in brands, and I want to empower people (especially women) to step out of that mindset. Your clothing should make a statement about you, not about the brand that made it. I want people to empower themselves, rather than being empowered by logos.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to have lunch with Oprah. She embodies the value of persistence, and she’s incredibly chic, too. She’s empowered, ambitious, and incredibly smart. I couldn’t imagine a better lunch date!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Nothing really matters except how polished and how great the products are to your customers and what will have the most impact on their lives. However, when building your company internally, creating a culture where you accomplish goals together is key to growing your business. In great startups, culture often starts from the top where founders and managers can lead with empathy and create a culture of teamwork. Great founders don’t just build great products — they build great teams that then build great products.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Wayne Chang.
Wayne Chang is a serial entrepreneur and investor, who’s been named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Angel Investors and one of 40 Under 40 by Boston Business Journal. Chang’s ability to meld psychology and strategy has led to magical product and design experiences that have scaled to more than seven billion devices. He cofounded Crashlytics (acquired by Twitter for over $100 million), cocreated Fabric (acquired by Google), and won an Emmy Award as a producer on the environmental documentary Chasing Coral. A college dropout, Wayne has been awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Throughout his career, he’s been involved in over eighty start-ups and twenty-four exits, resulting in over $40 billion of value created. His latest company, Digits, is backed by $32 million from Benchmark and GV and is setting out to revolutionize business finance.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up basically an orphan. Before immigrating from Taiwan, I lived on rural farmland where I had no shoes, wild dogs, and saw real poverty. I arrived in the United States when I was six to stay with relatives but was pretty much left alone. I remember putting down my blankets on the floor each night and picking them up every morning until I ran away when I was 18 years old. It wasn’t until college that I had my own bed.
I would escape by going fully into this toy — an Apple IIe “green screen” computer — and learning everything I could about it. Who knew this toy would be the start of an entire revolution that would change the world?
Side story — I ended up dropping out of college because I had some success with my early startups and projects. About ten years later, UMASS Amherst invited me back to be the commencement speaker and gave me an honorary doctorate — for that little orphan boy, this was extremely validating!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” — Walt Disney.
This quote has always stuck with me from childhood. Where I grew up, it was sink or swim, and I had to imagine my way out and discover the true barriers. With each new phase of my life, I continue to strive to do the impossible.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The writings of Kapil Gupta have given me a new, unencumbered look at the ephemeral state of society. Every decade culture changes — generations change what’s right and wrong, fashion trends go in and out of style. Gupta’s worldview removes all of that and just looks at the static state of the world, not focusing on the comings and goings of society.
There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Getting someone excited about your idea and making them see it as a part of their day-to-day helps translate that idea into reality. For example, if a new idea that you have can impact someone’s workflow, don’t just tell them about the idea, create it for them so it’s easy for them to say, “Oh yes, I want this and can use this as part of my every day.” This includes creating mocks and different parts that make the idea more real to convince individuals to get to that human response level.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Who cares! Ideas don’t always have to be super unique — it’s more about the pervasiveness, distribution and execution of the idea. The number of people your idea can impact is based on the execution in itself. If you’re looking for the uniqueness of the problem, it’s like searching for uniqueness of a meal. It’s more about how well the dish is prepared vs. how unique the dish is.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
All the other stuff is just details. This is the important question: can you get the person on the other side to have a greater than 50% chance of telling someone else about your product? It’s important to hone in on your idea until you get to that point. Everything else — patents, trademarks, distribution — come really easily after you find the fit of the product. If you take those steps prematurely, it’s easier to get bogged down in the motions before you get to a product that people want. Incredible focus is needed to make an incredible product.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Building a company externally is all about the perception of the execution.
2. Building a company internally is all about empathy and teamwork.
3. Chasing profits as a startup is a fool’s errand initially.
4. Work backwards.
5. Do things that don’t scale at first.
Nothing really matters except how polished and how great the products are to your customers and what will have the most impact on their lives. However, when building your company internally, creating a culture where you accomplish goals together is key to growing your business. In great startups, culture often starts from the top where founders and managers can lead with empathy and create a culture of teamwork. Great founders don’t just build great products — they build great teams that then build great products.
When growing your company, chasing profits, returns and ROI as a startup is a fool’s errand initially. First and foremost, the quality of the product matters the most, and revenue and capital are just byproducts of great companies that build those products.
Finding your audience and working backwards is also key here. The first step is finding your audience and then building your product. Write the blog post announcement and then build the feature list from that. Doing this work backwards is much faster and more efficient since you start with the end-goal already in mind.
Finally, premature scaling kills creativity while simultaneously making it harder to move fast. Taking things slow and creating the best possible product needs to be at the forefront of your business rather than worrying about how to mass produce a product. Do the first thing, first.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Finding your audience needs to be the first step ahead of building your product. If you have an idea for something, make sure to test it with whoever you think is going to buy it. You don’t have to build it just yet. First, you can do the paper prototype — something to just show your audience. If you are really passionate, you might even get a designer to make it look more realistic and show it to people. Most likely, they won’t like it on the first pass. But that’s fine! They can offer you feedback, learn from those takeaways and then come back with another version.
If you keep following that process, it’s only a matter of time until you get to a version that will resonate with your audience. Starting with the audience first is a much shorter, more pleasant, and more fun path to startup success.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Personally, I would not recommend using a consultant when starting your company. You are their customer, and they will charge you for their time. For you, finding customers should be your first goal when starting a company. An invention is useless without a customer base, and you don’t need an invention agency to do that for you.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Venture capital is great if you have an idea that has a very large market and you’re looking for scale. Bootstrapping is also great if you have a lifestyle business that provides income to mainly support you and your family or a very small number of people. There are obviously exceptions to both, but those generally hold true.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
This is a hard question — I would like to think that I have used my success to make the world a better place, but that really depends on the perspective. Have I used my success to make the world a better place in terms of innovation and technology? Sure. I am investing in 80+ startups, and we try to make lives easier through these companies. I am also involved in climate change technology and funds, like Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon to help make this world a better place in that way. There are so many ways to make this world a better place that you don’t really need success to do it — you just need the want and drive to accomplish those goals.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
We are at the cusp of a mental health revolution. There is still a stigma as the pandemic roils on and remote work becomes the norm. As human psychology is more understood, mental health should naturally become one of the biggest topics of the century. Most medications, diseases, and issues almost all target or spring from the brain and its neurologies — and why is that? A healthier mental workforce and a better mental health population would be transformative to society.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Sadhguru. His perspective on life and how people go through phases is very spiritual and philosophical. It frees people from what’s institutionally taught. Also, he just seems like a lighthearted fun but deeply insightful person to break bread with!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Build your physical grit: Having physical strength takes mental strength and vice versa. The body wants to quit all the time, but it’s the mind that tells us to keep going. Working out is a good way to test and (for lack of a better term) exercise your mental toughness.
As a part of my series about “Grit: The Most Overlooked Ingredient of Success” I had the pleasure of interviewing Blake Garrett.
Blake is the Founder and CEO of Aceable. Aceable’s mission is to empower people to achieve their goals through delightful and convenient license and training courses. To accomplish this, our team of experts and educators have created an approach to online learning that’s effective, accessible, and engaging. Since founding Aceable in 2012, the company and its family of brands has educated over 13 million customers and has raised more than $100 million dollars. Blake was recently named Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 Central Texas and holds a B.S. in Management with a concentration in Accounting from Boston College.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what events have drawn you to this specific career path?
I grew up in Silicon Valley and my dad worked in startups. So from a young age, I saw people starting companies, bringing people together to form teams, working incredibly hard to solve problems for customers — and ultimately creating companies in which people feel like they get to reach their own dreams.
I “officially” started my career in 2006 as a systems integration consultant for Ernst & Young. While at EY, I developed a passion for education when founding the EY Austin college MAP program that helps high school juniors and seniors get through graduation and into college. I’ve always had a natural curiosity and an inventiveness to solve problems (whether my solutions were any good or not is a different topic.)
I was also blessed with generous parents who had the means to provide whatever education I needed to be successful. Once you have time to turn around in life, you realize that’s an anomaly. With that in mind, I started thinking about how I could be more intentional about helping those who might not have the support systems that I had. After six years at EY, I decided to follow my passion for education and my entrepreneurial instincts to start Aceable. Now, a decade later, Aceable helps millions of people get driver’s licenses to go drive to their first jobs, and those who don’t have college degrees get real estate certifications. I see it as an interesting, more scalable way to help others really achieve their dreams.
Can you share your story about “Grit and Success”? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
In 2012, before even leaving Ernst and Young, I raised about $50,000 from friends. I used that money to go through literally five different business ideas. Eventually, in October of 2012, I left Ernst & Young, but by July of 2013, I still did not have a scalable business. At the time, Aceable was making mobile app trivia games for books and only making about $5 a day. I’d raised about $75,000 total at this point but was down to $2,000 in a bank account and about $50,000 in credit card debt.
Knowing this was make or break, I went to a dinner to raise money. One guy said he would invest if the other guy did at that dinner. The other guy basically told me what I had was a business that was not investable. At the end of that dinner, the investor said, “Hey, you know, you’re not a complete idiot.” He told me the idea of mobile and education, game mechanics and social mechanics that all makes sense and proposed that I just go do it for things that people have to learn. Really, I had two options: listen to his advice or go back to my job back at Ernst & Young.
That dinner was held on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday I got a phone call from the Men’s Health Network (a non-profit in DC) that I pitched that spring to make a trivia game for men’s health topics. There’s only one reason I believe I got that contract: the very first time I talked to the man who ran it, he told me that his favorite place to eat was the Texas Chili Parlor. So I went there, got a bunch of chili, froze it and overnighted it to him and his team. I’m convinced that’s the only reason he bought my trivial trivia app, but if that didn’t happen, I don’t know if this would have continued because I would have been out of money. Talk about grit and luck all colliding at the same time.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
I didn’t want to admit failure, both about myself and in business. Former coworkers thought I was crazy for leaving Ernst & Young. At first, even my mom said, “I don’t know if you should do this”, but I always wanted to be the person that started a business. I also had friends who were financially investing in me that I didn’t want to have to go back to and say, “Hey, I lost your money” or “I didn’t have what it takes.” I would think I would have validated a lot of people’s fears and to me, that’s BS. So thank God I didn’t give up.
So how did Grit lead to your eventual success? How did Grit turn things around?
There’s been unimaginable grit that our staff has exhibited throughout the company’s history.
To sit here and tell you it was easy, just wouldn’t be true. A story that comes to mind is from 2016 (when we already had two years of Aceable under our belt). It wasn’t until we were coming off our Series A that year were we planning to offer real estate education. In March of 2017, we launched our Texas real estate continuing education course, which, to say it nicely, flopped. Despite that hiccup, the Aceable team didn’t give up and launched our Texas Pre-License real estate education. After many hours of hard work and effort, Aceable’s Texas pre-licensing course was approved by the Texas Real Estate Commission, and by the end of March 2018, we had generated more sales in the month than we had in 2017 for our Texas continuing education course. #ExhibitGrit is actually one of Aceable’s company values and we continue to do so. This year, Aceable has expanded its C-suite and board, acquired PrepAgent and AKH, broadened our geographic offerings, and has some exciting news coming down the line in 2022.
Based on your experience, can you share 5 pieces of advice about how one can develop Grit? (Please share a story or example for each)
Build your physical grit: Having physical strength takes mental strength and vice versa. The body wants to quit all the time, but it’s the mind that tells us to keep going. Working out is a good way to test and (for lack of a better term) exercise your mental toughness.
Set your perspective: Challenge yourself to think about what’s actually hard. If you’re doing something hard, someone out there has had to do something much, much, much harder, and probably more frequently. We start companies at the end of the day, not colonizing the moon.
Push a little harder each time: There’s a poem by Kipling called “If” that’s pretty meaningful in my life. There’s a line, “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run” that really resonates and motivates me to just get to the next second. Similar to people in the military or marathon runners, it’s just pushing through to that next second, or taking one more step and focusing on the next most important thing.
Have motivators bigger than yourself: A lot of what I’ve said is not wanting to fail was extrinsically focused. I think the more plates you put in the air or balls in motion — means more and more people depend on you. Having external motivators can help you accomplish some really hard things.
Reframe your thinking: It’s easy to think “why me?” Instead, reframe the narrative and think “what’s next that I can control?” can help you learn the value of grit.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped you when things were tough? Can you share a story about that?
I’m grateful for the selflessness of dozens, if not hundreds of people. However, as I think back to the early days, I’ll never forget a surprise leadership lesson I learned. There was a senior partner of Ernst & Young named Jerry Nemeroff who I worked for in different capacities. I went to him one day to get advice on if I should stay at EY or if I should leave (which was terrifying for obvious reasons). I told him one of the biggest challenges I had was being at this point where I felt I could leave Ernst & Young to start a tech company, but I couldn’t write a line of code and didn’t have an engineer that could help me write code. Jerry just looked at me and said, “Well, I guess we need to find you an engineer.”
That was the most powerful “we” I’ve ever heard in my life; right when I felt like I was doing something that was so isolated to have this person that could have such an adverse reaction to say “we” was a moment of leadership that I’ll never ever forget. I’m so grateful to him for that. Because it gave me belief that not only was it the right decision, but that I wasn’t in it by myself.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Through Aceable, we have been working towards empowering hundreds of millions of people with the education they need to accomplish their life goals. We understand that people are busy and that they need a solution to receive the life-changing education they need to succeed. Additionally, we have actively made donations to organizations that help support important causes such as social justice efforts and local schools. I’m inspired to give back and bring goodness to our local community because that’s what Aceable is all about. We want to help one another succeed.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Aceable will continue to focus on license and certification training with a focus on career enablement. By expanding our course catalog, exceeding student expectations, and delivering engaging content, Aceable will create a scalable platform with a high-quality, engaging, and convenient product experience in multiple career-oriented verticals. Additionally, Aceable is constantly testing new in-course features in order to improve the student experience.
What advice would you give to other executives or founders to help their employees to thrive?
There are three steps to helping employees thrive. First, understand how they define thrive. Second, give a shit! Third, align your actions (not just your words) with helping them achieve their version of thrive.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think my movement would address the same challenge that Aceable does, but on an even larger scale and blow it wide open. Let’s break down the dogma around educational institutions being the required path to career and life success. Let’s create and value, as a society and employers, education that is accessible, affordable, and effective at helping people do the work they love and for which they’ll be fairly compensated.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is “Action expresses priorities” by Gandhi. Another one of Aceable’s core values is #BeAuthentic, in which we state that our team expresses priorities through action. This means that we work hard, but we also expect and trust others to do the same. The reason this resonated with me personally is that for years my words deviated from actions when it came to realizing my dreams. Only when I made sure my actions directly aligned with my stated priorities was I truly able to start achieving my dreams.
I wish someone told me a lot more than just five things actually but if I had to give others advice I would say be open to making mistakes. I found that no matter how much guidance and advice you may take, it is the most helpful to make your own mistake and learn from them. No startup is the same so each one will come with its own unique challenges to face.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adi Gelvan.
Adi Gelvan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Speedb, the next-generation data engine. Leading global software technology companies to outstanding growth by leveraging his 20 years of experience in management, commercialization, and sales. Prior to co-founding Speedb, Adi held positions at SQream, Infinidat, Spot, and XIV.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
“I was born and raised in Israel. After spending over three years as a combat fighter in one of the IDF special forces units, I studied math & computer science and started a career in the IT industry. After a few different management positions, I decided to move into the business sector and started a career in sales for a US corporation. Very soon after, I found myself holding the position of Vice President of Sales in an Israeli startup that was later acquired by a big US corporation. After that point, I couldn’t see myself working in another big corporation again.”
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“‘If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you are probably right.’
Sometimes the gap between an idea and reality is merely the belief. The first step to achieving anything is thinking you can do it. Without that, you will never be able to succeed.”
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
“‘Sapiens: a brief history of humankind’ by Yuval Noah Harari is something interesting I read lately. It is fascinating in the clarity of the story that puts in perspective everything that happened through the history of this earth.“
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
“In my experience, an idea starts with just a thought, then gets a form, and then goes through the “falling in-love with your idea” stage. If we start with rationalizing the idea and putting it through some basic tests like: does it solve a real problem, is this problem prevalent, and is it of value to the potential clients? Do I have an advantage over other people if I do it? If the honest answer to those questions is yes, then you should put on your ‘Belief’ hat and start pursuing it.
We all have ideas every day and sometimes a couple of ideas every day, however not all of them present a solution for an existing prevalent problem. In the case of Speedb, we first tackled a problem that we thought was relevant to just us and tried looking for a solution. When we realized that this is also a problem for many clients we decided to develop our technology to try to solve this problem.”
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
“Fortunately, the internet allows us to search for things very quickly, so finding out whether someone has already done something is easy. The fact that someone has already thought about something should not discourage someone from pursuing his idea if he believes he can do it better. The difference between successful and unsuccessful ideas is usually not the idea but the execution.”
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
“Validate the 3 tests of a good idea:
1. Does it solve a real problem?
2. Is the problem prevalent?
3. Do I have an objective advantage in solving the problem.
If the answers to these questions are positive, you move to the next step. Find a good team to build the product with you: Find people who have complementary skills and that have the same vision as you. Build the product you know will solve your customers’ problems. Talk to the customers during the development and verify that the outcome is as planned.
While developing and designing the product, protect your IP by writing the relevant patents (a good patent lawyer can help).
After the product is ready, find the right design partners to check it. If they are willing to buy it, you are in a good position.
Resellers should be companies who actively sell to your target market and customers and have the right relationship already in place.”
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
“I wish someone told me a lot more than just five things actually but if I had to give others advice I would say be open to making mistakes. I found that no matter how much guidance and advice you may take, it is the most helpful to make your own mistake and learn from them. No startup is the same so each one will come with its own unique challenges to face”
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
“Make sure you know the market you are aspiring to sell to, and that you understand the problem and offerings to this problem very well. Then go through the basic tests of recognizing if it solves a real problem, if the problem is prevalent, and if you have an objective advantage in solving the problem.”
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
“I have never worked with invention development consultants, so I can’t really say anything about it, however, my experience is that listening to people can never hurt as long as you stay loyal to your own truth.”
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
“They each have their benefits depending on what you need for your startup. I don’t think there is one right path to any successful startup. I would go with the path that will put you on the fastest route to get to your goals.”
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
“Probably not as much as I would like to, but I try to help young entrepreneurs by sharing the mistakes that I have made and maybe help them avoid making similar ones themselves.”
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
“They say that every child needs one grown-up to believe in him in order to feel worthy. I believe it’s right for each one of us at every stage of our lives. If everyone would take a young person and believe in him, a lot could be accomplished.”
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
“Probably Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian, and author. He has a fascinating perspective of the world and people in general. I would love to pick his brain and understand his insights further.”
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Dr Jim White Of PHT Investment Group: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Value diversity. It’s not enough that HR adheres to a diverse hiring policy. The company as an entity must then work to create a culture of inclusion and mutual respect. Sexual harassment, racism, and ageism have no place in the workplace… or anywhere else in society, for that matter.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jim White, PhD.
Dr. Jim Whiteis founder and CEO of PHT Investment Group GP LLC, as well as Chairman and CEO of Post Harvest Technologies, Inc. and Growers Ice Company, Inc., and the bestselling author of five books. Throughout his career, he has bought, expanded, and sold 23 companies operating in 44 countries. He holds a B.S. in civil engineering, an MBA, and a doctorate in psychology and organizational behavior. He shares his insights and critical thinking skills in a webcast series, Healing America with Dr. Jim White, in which he explores the many issues and challenges faced by our nation — and how to fix them.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I grew up in a sharecropper cabin in a low-income, rural area of South Carolina, and spent my childhood as an abused and neglected child. At the ripe old age of five, I became head of the household when my parents walked out the door and never came back. I became something of an entrepreneur then: I started collecting and selling empty Coke bottles to feed my younger siblings. It was not a happy childhood.
From that early age, I developed a keen interest in business. How do you make deals? How do you structure them? How do you finance them? Those questions laid the groundwork for my later life.
Still, I dropped out of high school, and then volunteered for Vietnam. The lessons I learned in the military were invaluable.
Afterwards I enrolled at Georgia Tech University on the G.I. Bill, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering, went on to earn my Masters, and eventually my doctorate in Psychology and Organizational Behavior.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
A “funny” thing that happened in Vietnam was not so much a mistake but a realization:
It was all about the haircuts.
I arrived in Vietnam with all the other young recruits. I was a poor Southern high school dropout thrown into a platoon with wealthy, educated, and smart young men. You can imagine it seemed like I was at a serious disadvantage. It was intimidating and I felt inferior.
But at some point it dawned on me that we all had the same haircut.
In other words, it didn’t matter where we came from — how much money our parents had, whether or not we came from big families, whether we were Ivy Leaguers, and so on. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was on an even playing field. The only tools any of us could use to succeed were ones found within: courage, wisdom, honesty, integrity. I discovered I had an innate talent for leadership. For the first time in my life, I was given an opportunity to shine.
Yes, I was dealt a bad hand as a kid. But out of every tragedy one can find an opportunity… that is if you are willing to open your mind to such opportunities. I also believe I was born with the right stuff to overcome any situation. Failure has never been an option for me. I have been knocked down many times. But I get up and up and up every single time. I never quit.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Gene Jackson, owner of a small gas station in Lawrenceville, Ga took me under his wing when I was 14 and taught me how to work on cars. He provided security and a sense of belonging.
J.D. Humphreys gave me a job as a crane operator when I was 18 years old.
Bill Burch, owner of Burch-Lowe in Atlanta, Ga gave me a job after I returned from Vietnam and allowed me to work and go to school at the same time.
Orville Freeman taught me the ins and outs of Washington, DC., and opened my eyes to international business possibilities after I left Ingersoll Rand.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
I could talk for hours about “purpose” in business! To me, business is more than revenue and earnings; it is about driving long term value for all our shareholders and stakeholders. In fact, I’ve written extensively about what I call the Five Ps, that is, the five major elements that together provide a framework for a company’s purpose:
1. Portfolio strategy and products: the products and services our organizations provide, and the “where to play” and “how to play” choices we make to best serve our customers.
2. People and culture: the talent — and the talent management — our firms deploy.
3. Processes and systems: the operational processes we adapt to meet purpose-related targets; the ways we ensure that behavior up and down our value chain is in line with our purpose.
4. Performance metrics: the target metrics and incentives we use to measure what we wish to achieve, how our firms are progressing, and the way we create and distribute incentives to make our organizations’ purpose tangible.
5. Positions and engagement: how we align our external positions and affiliations to be consistent with, and consistently deliver on, the purpose our company has defined.
Each of the dozens of companies I’ve founded, bought or sold have had a unique purpose and vision. For now, let me answer your question with regard to one of my current companies, PHT Investment Group:
Our vision: We will be the leading Private Equity and Opportunity Zone Investment Firm, providing disruptive solutions and delivering competitive returns for our investors and stakeholders.
Our mission: We will deliver predictable, sustainable, long-term value for our investors and stakeholders.
And, let me add our values: We will achieve our vision and mission with passion for excellence, honesty, ethical behavior, and uncompromising integrity.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
Let’s go back to the example of Vietnam for a moment, as so much of my leadership philosophy hearkens back to my military experience.
During my first tour, I volunteered for the most difficult and dangerous assignments because really, I had nothing to lose. I quickly excelled and earned leadership positions because I excelled at those assignments.
I commanded some of the toughest units and learned leadership skills beyond anything I’d ever expected. I learned to lead based on the values of our Founding Fathers, such as Truth, Vision, Respect, Courage, and Tolerance. I learned how to instill determination in my troops to overcome hardships. We worked together as a team, ignoring our differences and working to achieve a common goal.
Nothing in our collective experience is as uncertain or difficult as war. The lessons we learn in wartime can and should help guide us through other times of turbulence.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
When I became a platoon leader, I had to figure out how to make all those boys trust me, so I led them according to principles that were important to me, like honesty. I was straight with them — I said, “I know you don’t want to be here. You can’t control politics, or what Nixon and Johnson are doing. But you can control what you do while you are here. You have a choice: to leave here vertically or in a body bag.”
If I gave up, who would have led those boys through the most treacherous circumstances possible? I didn’t consider giving up then because I felt I owed it to my troops to lead them through. That overwhelming sense of responsibility is what motivated me. Eventually I realized not only that I could lead, but that I should.
Now, I feel a similar responsibility to my team of employees. They look to me for leadership during challenging times — like the pandemic — and I owe it to them to lead to the best of my ability.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
The role of a leader is not just getting people to follow… as we know, there are lots of examples of historical figures like Charles Manson or Jim Jones who led their followers to do terrible things. For me, leadership means setting an example to guide and inspire others so that together we can do the right thing: create a better and more successful enterprise for all.
Leadership is not about gathering personal power, but about looking out for the welfare of all — whether it be a sports team, a business entity, a community, or a country.
The principles are the same. Those principles led to my creation of Circle of Success™, a yearlong management and leadership development process. Over my career I’ve coached nearly 100,000 participants worldwide, including Fortune 500 CEOs, management teams, governments, and trade associations, in what I know best: transformative management and leadership processes.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
There are many strategies I use to motivate and engage my teams. Here are a few:
Singling out and praising individuals in front of the rest of the team.
Clearly and repeatedly communicating the vision and mission of the company so that everyone knows what they are working toward.
A process called multi-voting. Starting with a SWOT analysis (a breakdown indicating the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) of a company, employees are given a forum to vote on what they think are the most important factors in each quadrant. This helps the company drill down on what the most critical points are, and makes participants feel valued and engaged.
Town halls. They shouldn’t be empty exercises. They should be a chance for employees to interact with the CEO and have their concerns heard to improve the work environment.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Honestly. Communicating difficult news — whether it is in a business or personal setting, to colleagues, friends, or family — is best done straightforwardly but with a great deal of empathy and awareness of how the news will affect the individuals involved.
If possible, cushion the blow with a plan of action. For instance, a hospital administrator delivering sobering news about the spread of coronavirus can present a treatment plan. A CEO informing employees of a company closure due to the pandemic can follow with a strategy for future reopening.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
When is the future predictable? Of course, the pandemic has shaken us to our core, but the truth is that we never know what the future will bring… just like the economic collapse of 2008.
I think every good leader plans for a shakeup… just like, for instance, the leader of a law enforcement team plans for every possible contingency during a sting.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
According to the Harvard Business Review, there are actually four principles of enduring business success:
Exploit over explore — exploit existing assets and capabilities before exploring new opportunities.
Diversify the business portfolio — know when to diversify, and maintain a broad base of.
suppliers and customers.
Learn from mistakes — everyone makes mistakes, but don’t repeat past failures!
Approach changes conservatively — don’t make sudden, radical changes, and be methodical in planning and implementation.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Many companies filed Chapter 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Between mandated closures and stay-at-home directives, plus a scourge of unemployment and painful plummets of the stock market, it’s no wonder that so many companies were — and still are — floundering.
Of course, we can’t blame the virus for the entirety of the failures. Many companies were poorly run long before March 2020. I would venture to name American Airlines as a well-known example.
But countless other, smaller businesses made many predictable mistakes. Some have been hanging on so close to the edge — operating without sufficient cash reserves, running the whole business on a credit card — that it almost would be tempting to say “You did it to yourself… it was inevitable.”
These are the companies that should have been operating on a cash flow plan, an outline to reduce costs or increase revenues. For owners and CEOs, it’s not too late to implement a cash plan and make modifications as needed: eliminate unnecessary expenses and implement purchase controls. Sell off assets as needed, especially older inventory, and halt the production of services and products that are not clear moneymakers. Make sure customers can pay, or require pre-payment before delivery of goods or services.
Most importantly, innovate.
Glaring mismanagement aside, in reality Covid is separating those businesses that seized the opportunity to innovate from those that didn’t.
Ask yourself, what opportunities are there in this environment, for additional revenues? Post-Covid, innovation in successful companies may take many forms. Many employees may continue to work remotely. Brick-and-mortar retail stores may stay entirely with online sales. Colleges and universities may continue to stagger classroom attendance. Online learning may skyrocket well into the future.
Importantly, I think many American brands will think twice about offshore manufacturing. The short supply of N95 masks at the beginning of the pandemic was just one lesson we’ve learned the hard way. Reshoring goods, from medical devices and pharmaceuticals to electronics and chemicals, will mean that companies will be forced to innovate in their approach to production. After all, lower electricity, coal, and water costs — along with cheap labor and loose environmental regulations — is why American manufacturing was sent overseas in the first place.
Companies must be open to change. Life is change! Being nimble, adapting to new situations, and keeping an open mindset are crucial. There are lots of business models that went under because they couldn’t adapt to a changing environment — take the Yellow Pages, for example. After five decades they stopped printing in 2019… but the good news is they were able to pivot and become an online entity.
The same is true for scores of newspapers; many have stopped delivering print versions and have reinvented themselves through websites.
And, I’m sad to say that Amazon has put many brick-and-mortar bookstores out of business completely. They just couldn’t compete with the behemoth book seller.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
As I said earlier, I am a firm believer in finding opportunity out of tragedy. I’ll give you an example.
The pandemic has been a shakeup, especially in my industry: agriculture.
The effect of COVID-19 on California’s agricultural industry has been severe and unprecedented. By mid-2020, farmers in California had lost some $2 billion and work on track to lose as much as $8.6 billion. In Monterey County alone, employment dropped forty percent, from an estimated 54,000 workers in April 2019 to 32,400 a year later.
The response to the pandemic, with social distancing requirements, a travel ban, and shelter-in-place orders, hacked away at many of the markets for California’s farmers. The closure of non-essential businesses such as restaurants, retail, sports and entertainment, directly impacted the food service sector and institutional demand plummeted from hotels, hospitals, universities, daycares, schools, and offices. Fresh vegetables either went unharvested in the fields or quickly spoiled after picking.
So, there is opportunity here. That’s why my companies are spearheading an innovative new $250 million facility in California’s Salinas Valley that will be a savior for local farmers. We are redeveloping a 28-acre commercial campus in an infrastructure project to extend the shelf life of produce so that it stays fresh longer and doesn’t go to waste in uncertain times.
Our pre-cooling and cold storage facility will be the most technologically advanced in the nation and will be operational for the 2026 season. It will change the way growers and shippers manage their product, and will benefit retailers and consumers from coast to coast.
My strategy is to identify a need, and then identify a way to fill the need.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
What a turbulent couple of years it has been! As our economy struggles to right itself after the financial blows dealt by the pandemic, I believe it is more important than ever that we business leaders conduct ourselves ethically. I think the five most important things leaders should do to lead effectively in turbulent times are the same five things they should do ALL the time:
Set, communicate, model, and expect all employees to respect the rules set out by the company. Everyone in the company, from top down, must internalize the company values. People will become more driven and more excited about their jobs, and their performance will improve.
CEOs must show integrity. It’s not that different from the lessons taught in kindergarten. Don’t lie; don’t steal; don’t cheat. Conduct yourself with the utmost transparency, relying on values such as trustworthiness, courage, honesty, and wisdom.
Create a company culture of cooperation and teamwork. A certain degree of competition between employees is healthy; but backstabbing and sedition clearly are unacceptable. A company culture of active listening, sharing of ideas, and plentiful praise benefits everyone… and the bottom line.
Value diversity. It’s not enough that HR adheres to a diverse hiring policy. The company as an entity must then work to create a culture of inclusion and mutual respect. Sexual harassment, racism, and ageism have no place in the workplace… or anywhere else in society, for that matter.
Prioritize health and safety protocols. The scourge of the virus is not over. It is unacceptable to be cavalier about COVID-19 risks when a great many workers and their families remain vulnerable.
Creating a workplace environment where employees are both loyal and excited to do their jobs can help carry a company through the bleakest of times. It requires the company leadership to be engaged, attentive, upfront, and to maintain an open channel of communication where employees can safely provide feedback to management.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote?” Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Always stand on principle… even if you stand alone.” Although John Adams said this long ago, it is relevant to the way I strive to conduct myself both as a corporate leader and in my personal relationships.
Avoid all unnecessary confrontation . This can waste a tremendous amount of time and precious resources. Take emotion out of any equation and weigh the facts which will produce the best results.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing George C. Keefe Encasement Guy.
Also known as Encasement Guy, Keefe is a contractor, consultant, coach, lecturer, author, and technical writer. His expertise stems from over 40 years of hands-on worldwide job-site experience with the coatings, painting, specialty contracting, indoor environmental remediation, risk management and specification writing industries. He believes and has consistently proven that not only hazardous materials such as Asbestos, Lead-Based Paint & solid Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) can be safely managed in-place but many other building components including roofing can be restored instead of being removed and replaced.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was raised in a huge three-story older house that needed a lot of work when my large family moved in. I had the opportunity as a kid to see firsthand how making cosmetic alterations with paint had major impact improvements. I also saw how simple changes made huge differences in the overall appearance and feel of a room/ home/ building. These were a great influence in my life and are how they got me in the business that I’ve spent over 50 years in.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the Lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills” “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. Reading this at a young age influenced me and confirmed I was the captain of my vessel and anything that my life produced and the universe delivered was under my control.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Napoleon Hills timeless classic: “Think and Grow Rich”. This timeless classic was given to me by my mother when I was 15. It is a tremendously inspiring book on the common denominators of success; what anyone who succeeds in life does — whether they are aware of it or not.
The two chapters that stood out and greatly impressed me ware Chapter 9 — Persistence and Chapter 10 — The Master mind.
Persistence explains that most people stop and give up before attaining their goals. Sometimes they are very close to that goal and could have reached it if they had just pushed a little further. So if you believe in what you are doing, always push forward.
The Mastermind highlights the notion that what people do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively. It describes how the mind is a transmitting and a receiving station; and that linking minds together is more powerful than the single mind. The simple theory is that 1 mind plus another creates a third mind. 1+1=3
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
There are several theories in conventional wisdom that I was exposed to, such as “to be wildly successful you only need a 10% improvement on an existing idea”. You also need to first decide what your personality is. Are you a person that likes tangible or intangible things? A tangible personality likes to touch, see and feel something physically. An intangible personality likes things such as stocks, bonds, insurance etc. Things that you can’t necessarily touch. Once you determine your personality you need to pick something you like as it is more difficult to truly excel at anything we don’t like. In addition, you may want to look beyond it being a job or career and treat it more like a calling. Starting a business requires much time, patience, focus, and most of all, persistence. It is even more of an uphill climb if you are trying to do it in a field that doesn’t feel good or inspire your passions.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
A simple Google and patent search would be a good start. Although, as previously mentioned, an existing idea with a small tweak, can become extremely successful. Also, not all ideas are executed and promoted in a way that may bring success. All ideas do nothing on their own and always need action behind them. Ideas are often in the universal consciousness. An individual or a team can turn the ideas into something that can be brought to the market, turning them into a success.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
First of all, not all ideas should be patented as patents require funds to file and can be expensive to defend. Also once the patent is granted the idea and its components that may want to be kept secret become part of the public domain. In addition, if you plan on having your idea in the market long term you may not want to expose certain aspects of it. Once you decide if you want or need a patent you want to acquire competent legal advice and overall guidance on the steps to take that make the most sense for what you are looking to protect.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Here I’ve listed 5 and one for a bonus.
Avoid all unnecessary confrontation . This can waste a tremendous amount of time and precious resources. Take emotion out of any equation and weigh the facts which will produce the best results.
Get competent legal advice when needed. In my business life, I’ve paid the most money in legal fees, even more than in taxes. Some, because I didn’t have legal advice and others because I didn’t have competent legal advice.
Pay attention to time spent on all tasks. Don’t confuse activity with accomplishments. Time is a precious commodity. With only a fixed 1440 minutes a day to work with, you need to treat them wisely or opportunities and deadline will slip by.
Stay focused (Follow One Course Until Successful). List in order of priority the 5 most important tasks you want to accomplish and then choose the top two. Focusing on them individually will produce the greatest results in the shortest amount of time. Identify, avoid and eliminate distractions. Any distraction that takes you away from preforming the task at hand is a time waster that can push you further from your goals.
Don’t let the things you can’t do get in the way of the things you can do. Sometimes effort is stymied because there are no resources available to accomplish things that will further your goals. Remember there are always things that can be accomplished and focus on them until other things become available.
*Keep your eye on expenses as a small leak can sink a great ship.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
See if there is a need or void in the market that your idea will fill. Determine if this is something that is worth pursuing. As Arthur Ash succinctly put it: “Start where you are — use what you have — do what you can”. Sometimes not having certain things such as funding for an invention, specific project or goal can paralyze efforts to push forward. I have always gone by the saying: “Don’t let the things you can’t do get in the way of the things you can do”. The most important thing is to get in the game and use what is available to you. One other important item is to have a plan to continue to educate yourself with whatever means available. Study your subject and be armed with the best information for success.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
As with any consultant or expert, they are only as good as their education and proven track record. If you have the funds, an industry expert may be the best way to minimize the time of getting an idea to the market. If not, do your research. The internet has made this easier than before. The point being, if you believe in what you are doing, try not to let anything stop your efforts.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
First, get in the game with whatever legal and ethical means possible. Once you’re in motion and committed, you’ll be able to attract and explore more funding possibilities, whether through sales or outside investments.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’ve been able to produce green products that are used to also turn buildings green by waterproofing and restoring their surfaces. The products are also used to safely seal in place solid toxic materials such as Asbestos, Lead Based paint and Polychlorinated Biphenyl’s (PCBs) that can contribute to Sick Building Syndrome (SBS ) and Building Related Illness (BRI). They are also additionally used to restore large surfaces instead of removing and replacing them: such as with roofing that requires precious natural resources for replacement materials. By restoring, we avoid generating harmful waste that needs to be transported and stored in overflowing landfills which give off tremendous amounts of harmful CO2 emissions grossly contributing to global warming and climate change. My team and I do all this to help better the world as we pass it off to our children.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
The world peace movement with education especially for the world’s youth.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Oprah Winfrey and talk about her philanthropic efforts and also be part of her ongoing effort to help humanity through her Angel and other networks.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Learn from your mistakes. There can be a lot of things that might go wrong while developing your product, so learn from them and evolve yourself.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adit Jain.
Adit is the co-founder and CEO of Leena AI. An IIT-D grad and Y-Combinator alumni, he prides himself on the astute understanding of what HR teams need to deliver a stellar employee experience. Today, with an annual turnover now coming up to $10M, Leena AI has become one of the leading SaaS products in HR Tech.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Well, I was born and brought up in New Delhi, and like any typical kid, I loved all kinds of outdoor activities — cricket, football, badminton — you name it. I was always a very outgoing child, always surrounded by a lot of friends whether engaged in playing games or enjoying my life in general. Studying took a backseat at the time. It was only during my penultimate year in school, when I consciously turned into the exact opposite of what I used to be. I prioritized studying, and for two consecutive years I spent 14–16 hrs. a day just studying. After I completed my school, I took the JEE, one of the most difficult entrance examinations across India, and got into the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi which is in itself a prestigious University in India. From there on the rest is history!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’m an avid believer in Nike’s “Just Do It”. It is both inspiring and motivating. With such simplicity, they’re able to inspire millions across the globe.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
There is a movie by Spielberg, Ready Player One. It’s a sci-fi action-adventure film that predicts a metaverse and showcases what the world is going to be like in 2050. That left a deep impact on me. In the movie, the way the physical environment gets replaced by AI is intriguing, but what fascinated me the most was how people across the globe accepted it. And how slowly, the physicality of it is getting eliminated and taken over by AI.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
From my experience, I would say it’s about the execution. Business owners need to get quick validation. So if you have an idea, first and foremost talk to your audience. Understand their needs, and whether your idea will solve their problems, whether it will act as a solution. In addition to understanding their needs, this will help you get clarity on your target audience, and whether they would be interested in paying for your product or business.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
CrunchBase is a great platform. They have a vast resource of companies, ideas, and potential entrepreneurs — everything from funding details to the solutions these businesses are solving. By going through that, one can get an idea of similar businesses within the same ecosystem.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
The process of filing a patent varies from business to business. For product-based companies, they first need proper validation that their product is going to work. It is more about getting customers first, and then building the product. This, of course, is by ensuring that the customer success is maintained throughout.
In addition, if there are multiple founders, I would say it would be best to divide and conquer, choose your focus areas, and work on that and make the best out of it. For example, for us at Leena AI, I manage everything related to our customers and stakeholders. Mayank, our Head of AI, oversees the development, testing, and deployment of the product, and Anand, our CTO, works on building the company, from talent acquisition to internal communications.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Firstly, sell first, build later. As I’ve previously said, this would help you understand whether you have potential customers who would be willing to buy your product. Otherwise, the time spent developing will be in vain if your target audiences don’t buy the product. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a few SaaS companies making this mistake.
Second, learn from your mistakes. There can be a lot of things that might go wrong while developing your product, so learn from them and evolve yourself.
The third would be to avoid trying to do everything on your own. Hire people. As first-time managers, there is a possibility you might make mistakes in hiring the right talent. Talent acquisition, in itself, is a skill after all. Some first-time managers hire people who are representations of themselves — but this should be the criteria. Instead, you should hire those who complement your skills. Don’t hire replicas of yourself.
Fourth is to be quick in making decisions regarding people. Don’t waste time overthinking about a single candidate. Though it’s an important aspect of your overall business, learn to listen to your intuition. If they are good and competent, hire them. Similarly, you should be able to make the harsh decision to let certain employees go, as difficult as it might be. Finally, you should understand that people are amazing if given the right opportunities. They will scale up themselves, so learn to trust your people — most are innately wired to take the pressure and do exactly what is expected of them. Have faith in them, support them, guide them in the right direction and you’ll see that they will be ready to go above and beyond.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
If you have an idea, first test it. Test it by reaching out to your target audience and understanding their requirements, and whether your product fits. As I’ve mentioned before, this is crucial. Spend some time working on how and what your audience wants, and once you get the validation that your audiences are ready to pay, start building the product.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I would recommend that they start on their own, and maybe down the line hire a consultant if needed. When you start a business, you start with limited funding, and consultants often charge quite a hefty amount of money, given their skills, years of experience, and so on. So, I would say, it’s better to start on your own, and gradually grow your company. There’s also a probability that hiring an outsider early on might bring in biasness, for example, if the consultant’s views are not completely aligned with your views and ideas about your company. Instead, you can look at hiring one after you have reached a particular stage in the growth of your company but hiring someone early on is not advisable.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
There are two components to this — the founder’s aspirations and the industry vertical you are in. Firstly, founders from any verticals, who aspire to keep ownership, will not dilute their companies to venture capitals but keep the bootstrap. And secondly, there are two types of industry verticals — one that has a constant growth factor to themselves, in terms of distribution or customers, usage, and another that is slow. So, for example, if you have a mechanic shop, it is evident that it cannot be venture capital funded. At the end of the day, you need to be the judge of who you are and what you want. On the other hand, if you want to build a company that affects millions of people across the globe, you might have to go towards venture capital funding down the line. The driving force behind your idea is what will help you decide between the two.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
As an entrepreneur myself, I realize the challenges that come with the title. So, one thing I’ve recently started, is to invest back in entrepreneurs and new founders who are developing stellar businesses. In fact, I recently completed my first angel investment a few months back, and the second one is already in the works.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
30-minute meetings! That’s the movement that I would like to vote for. [laughs]
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
It’s rather difficult to choose — with so many incredible leaders across different fields. But one person I would love to have lunch with, someday, is Warren Buffet. I would love to hear his story, first-hand.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Listen to different types of people — I know of one leader who spent 4 hours a week being taught by someone 20 years younger than them about digital technology.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewingAndrew White.
Dr Andrew White directs the Advanced Management and Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School, is an accredited business coach and leads academic research on leadership and transformation.
In his position as Senior Fellow in Management Practice, his academic research focusses on transformational leadership. More specifically, what it means to lead successfully in today’s world, given the risks and opportunities that leaders face. This research is demonstrated in articles that he has written in publications such as Harvard Business Review, and via his podcast series and LinkedIn Newsletter, entitled Leadership2050.
As a business coach, he works with 80 global leaders every year, guiding them on how they can transcend the modern challenges of delivering sustainable high performance. His top accreditations include the qualification of Professional Executive Coach from the Association of Coaching. His private coaching company Transcend.Space has worked with senior executives at Unilever and Gulf International Bank.
He is also a certified meditation teacher and has developed a toolkit of meditations tailored to the different situations leaders face. Andrew lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, a palliative care doctor, and two adult daughters.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I never thought I would end up in academia at one of the top universities in the world. At school, I battled dyslexia and because there wasn’t the same awareness as there is now, it affected my grades. Luckily I had academic parents who tutored me through. It wasn’t until I got a laptop in my second year of university, which freed me from my own handwriting that I had a breakthrough and my grades went from Cs to As.
I had always been interested in leadership, innovation and change, so when I saw an advert for a scholarship to study a doctorate in this, I quickly applied. I had intended to go into management consultancy or venture capital when i graduated but there was a recession at the time, so I continued in academia. I moved onto Said Business School at the University of Oxford in 2006, where I focussed on the subject that fascinated me — the development of leaders and the intersection of research and practice.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I was once hosting a group of senior leaders from the Middle East for a leadership development programme. We needed them to walk from one venue to another and despite checking the weather, there was a lot of unforecasted rain! I was very anxious about the whole event being a success and worried about them getting very wet. As I began to apologise — they started to laugh at me. ‘We love the rain’ they said, and it was at this point I realised they saw weather very differently from me. That is a lesson that when working with people, especially those from different cultures, make no assumptions and be aware of bias!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Many people have a particular person or mentor in their lives who instantly springs to mind when they’re asked that question. Often it’s a parent or a particularly good teacher or friend.
But it’s different for me and that’s because of the nature of my work, which is about successful leaders themselves. So rather than just having one shining example, I have many, some of whom are business titans. They include Unilever CEO Alan Jope, CEO and Founder of the Plastic Bank, David Katz and Founder and CEO of the Clean Air Fund Jane Burston. These are all speakers on my Leadership2050 podcast series.
Each and every successful business leader I talk to, I also learn from. It’s their success, their approach to life and the satisfaction they derive from what they do that educates me and drives me to find out even more about what I can do to make my own business grow.
I am grateful to each and every one of them for their knowledge and insight that drives me to find out more about what it means to be a 21st century leader.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
It’s true that the most successful businesses are created by — and grow fastest — by those who have a clear goal of not only what they wish to achieve but who provide a benefit to wider society.
Of course financial profit is a strong motivation. But when this is allied with the knowledge that what you’re doing also benefits society and the environment, your interest and motivation is enhanced further. As such, those who are motivated the most put in the greatest effort, which in turns leads to greater success. This is what I see the participants of the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Programme that I direct at the Said Business School, University of Oxford focus on.
It’s a virtuous circle and also forms the backbone of what I try to achieve for my clients and therefore, as a matter of course, for my own business.
My focus has always been to help business leaders operate more effectively and for a wider environmental and social purpose than solely financial reasons. That vision and goal hasn’t changed but what I have learned is that only those businesses who adapt to these new requirements placed upon them will survive, let alone thrive.
Knowing that what started out as a vision for my business has solidified into an absolute requirement for its survival, provides all the purpose my clients and I need!
In conclusion, the purpose for my company www.transcend.space is ‘to work with leaders to facilitate them to understand and transcend their individual and strategic edges’.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
In every difficult or uncertain time I have experienced, or witnessed other leaders experience, relating with self and others has been at the core of getting through it.
This was particularly true when addressing the challenge of digital transformation. In my experience, this was moving into digital learning interventions that sit alongside face-to-face ones. I learnt a few things from this experience including; don’t make too many assumptions about what life will be like in the new world, recognise that the boundary of the organisation may need to shift (what you do internally as opposed to being outsourced), the need to give time for people to come to terms with any change that is being implemented, adjust policies and processes that may no longer be fit for the job and above all listen, listen and listen again to your own assumptions and the views of others.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
I have never considered giving up but I have known some business titans thinking of giving up — something that not only surprised me, but that would shock most people.
This happens when a business has grown purely as a profit-making machine. The bosses have been focused solely on their balance sheet and keeping their investors on board. Then, having achieved that goal, they discover they don’t know how to adapt to the new reality of doing business — where society, the environment and policymakers are making new demands either by increasing regulation of media pressure to do something worthwhile.
All of a sudden these captains of industry find they’re out of their depth and the “business as usual” model that has sustained them to date, is not fit for the future. There is also an increasingly common phenomenon of leaders and whole populations of employees desiring purposeful work, which is greater than profit, shareholders and focus on something greater than themselves.
My job is to point them in the direction they want to go in and give them the tools to adapt to this new reality. My LinkedIn Newsletter Leadership2050 focuses on this
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
We are only a little way into a new industrial revolution — where businesses have to benefit society and protect the environment as well as satisfy investors.
So the most critical role of a business leader is to both recognise this fact and know how to deal with it successfully.
Those who embrace these new challenges and inspire their colleagues and shareholders to do likewise — rather than merely cope with them — are destined to be the business champions of tomorrow.
At the heart of this process is asking difficult questions, not being afraid of uncomfortable answers and making radical decisions (before the decisions are forced on you). Some questions that I have found very helpful are: ‘what do you see always being discussed, but never resolved,’ and, ‘what are you not discussing that you need to talk about?’
This is why I set up Transcend.space my coaching business.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
The aim is to get their team to embrace change rather than fear it.
This should, with the right attitude, be an inspiring and enjoyable process. After all, doing the same thing day in, day out, is anything but enjoyable or motivating.
Perhaps the most effective way of bringing colleagues on this journey is by giving them the knowledge and training they need to be ready for it and the knowledge to cope with regulatory change affecting their particular business sector. Employees will recognise the value of working for a business that does this and staff retention and satisfaction will be the tangible results.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
It’s true that as pressure to protect the environment and society mounts, so too will the amount of legislation and regulation heaped upon businesses to make them comply.
The most effective method to deal with this is to be proactive rather than merely reactive to change. What every business leader knows is that demands upon them to reduce waste, carbon emissions and unacceptable business practises are in the pipeline. So why wait to tackle them until the last moment?
My role is to impress this reality upon them, help them be mentally prepared and recognise the huge advantages and profitability of being a leader rather than a follower in the years ahead.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
The most common mistake, and one which happens depressingly often, is for the CEO to keep blinkers on and hope that whatever is producing the difficulty will simply go away. At the very least, this will be a learning opportunity wasted.
Allied to this, is when the rest of the senior management team fail to take the appropriate action — either because they lack the motivation or, more commonly, fear bringing the situation to the CEO’s attention.
Similarly, the board’s failure to either be aware or to raise the need for action with the executive team is another common theme.
There is a unifying thread to all of these: poor communication and the lack of timely action result in poor staff confidence and motivation.
Keeping senior managers informed, breaking down any silo mentality and reducing the negative aspects of hierarchy are all fundamental to overcoming difficult times and eventually profiting from the lessons they can provide.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
No business can control the wider economic environment — either in good times or bad. But what it can and must do is to make itself as aware as possible to what the future might hold and what opportunities and dangers might emerge if those predictions materialise.
The best strategy is to develop a keen awareness of the direction of travel of the wider economy and to identify how consumer pressures and regulatory change might most affect your sector.
This will provide the window of opportunity to prepare for both opportunities and challenges. Those most prepared will be those that maintain the best performance in lean times as well as outperform their peers in better times.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Listen to different types of people — I know of one leader who spent 4 hours a week being taught by someone 20 years younger than them about digital technology.
Find ‘points of leverage’ — bringing transformation to life can change the energy from anxiety to excitement. Planning the ‘emotion critical path’ can be a critical enabler of success. A ‘big bang’ approach to transformation can be very risky.
Transformation begins with the self not others — several leaders I know have invested considerable time in preparing themselves to lead a transformation before it takes place. At its core, this means going from knowing to not knowing.
Make bold ‘trajectory decisions’ — divesting and acquiring business is part of this. Also, deciding not to sell certain products because they don’t align with your purpose, as CVS Pharmacy, the US healthcare retailer, did with tobacco in 2014, can also be part of the solution.
Learn to live with uncertainty — the vision you have at the beginning of a transformational project may change — review the vision as you undertake the journey.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
‘When you lose touch with inner stillness you lose touch yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world’ — Eckhart Tolle in Stillness Speaks. This is one of the most profound books I have ever read. The quote brings into focus the importance of meditation. Meditation is a practice that helps me stay calm, focused, make better decisions and generally live a more purposeful and happy life!
Making Something From Nothing: Chris Gabrelcik Of Lubrication Specialties On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Take time to enjoy it. Don’t be too uptight. As my business grew, every quarter was a new frontier. I always stressed about what was going to happen next, and looking back, I wish I could have taken more time to live in the present moment and enjoy what was happening instead of focusing on the next month or quarter.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Gabrelcik.
Chris Gabrelcik, founder and CEO of Lubrication Specialties, Inc. (LSI), is one of a select few in the entire world that holds both titles of Certified Lubrication Specialist (CLS) and Oil Management Analyst (OMA). He is also a member of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE), and Association of Diesel Specialists (ADS). He attends annual STLE and ADS conferences to remain informed on the latest scientific advances and studies available to the industry. He began Lubrication Specialties, Inc. in 1997, and since the development of Hot Shot’s Secret THE ORIGINAL STICTION ELIMINATOR in 2004, his company has grown rapidly and continues to do so as he strives to bring forward the highest quality products possible to his customers. Lubrication Specialties, Inc. is a proud member of the Better Business Bureau.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up in a steel mill town — Youngstown, Ohio — during a time when all the mills closed. The area was very depressed and is to this day because most families there depended on steel for income. When the mills closed, it created a chain reaction causing all the other businesses to close, which caused the area to become a bit scrappy and rough around the edges. There was a lot of crime, drugs, and alcohol abuse that plagued the area. I was one of seven children and we all depended on each other to get through. Despite these challenges, there were people in our community from every country because Youngstown is truly a melting pot, and that allowed me to learn from and meet people from different backgrounds to hear their stories. I’d say my experience growing up in Youngstown helped to shape my entrepreneurial spirit.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’d probably be “You don’t have to be smart. Just follow smart people.” I didn’t have a formal education, so I learned to follow successful people. My theory was that I didn’t need the level of success they had achieved — I only needed a portion of it, so at every phase of business development or difficulty I reached, I would (and still do) look at the people successful in that arena. When my challenge was marketing, I looked at companies like mine but bigger and followed their lead, but with my twist. When business development became a roadblock, I looked at larger companies with several business units and copied their system. I wanted to work smarter, not harder, and it makes more sense to tweak a successful system than to put time and energy into inventing a new one.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The first ten years I was in business I was the only employee. Eventually, I needed to hire some people to help. When we had five employees, I became frustrated because it seemed like we could never do anything right, but then it occurred to me that I had never managed anyone before.
I had no training in management, and knew I needed to become savvier, so I read the book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lecioni. It felt like he had a camera in my office and wrote the book about me. After reading it, I sat down with everybody on my team and put the book on the table and said ‘This is going to fix all our problems’. They were as excited as I was, and it did fix our problems, at least for a while.
As the company started gaining steam I started to think “this could be big… I better figure out how to run a company.” In that moment, I decided to read “Good to Great” by Jim Colllins. That book opened my eyes to business and figuring out my purpose and vision; to be honest, I hadn’t really thought about these things before then because I was mostly just trying to survive week to week. Most of my education comes from reading books, and as the company grows, I pinpoint my biggest challenges and then find a book that addresses it.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I always try move my business ideas forward with the least amount of overhead and in the most efficient way possible. I am never really sure whether it will work, so I find ways to build on minimum investment. For instance, if we have an idea for a new product, I don’t budget thousands of dollars for a roll-out. Instead, we talk about it on forums and gauge the interest level for the idea or product. Then, if people are receptive, we move it through development and make an e-commerce offering. As it picks up steam, we offer it to dealers and finally retail.
If we want to try a new advertising venue, we run a few tests first and analyze the results. Then, based on what we find, we either back out or double down. Taking an idea to market takes a lot of analysis and willingness to experiment. It might not be the original idea, but rather a variation of the first idea. You’ll never know unless you get it started!
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
I always start with internet searches. Then, I start talking to people in the industry to see if they have ever heard of the idea and typically get connected with a longer list of stakeholders to keep having these conversations. I also rely on forums to survey people about upcoming innovations because they provide a great wealth of information. Usually if it’s out there, someone will tell you.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
After you think of an idea you need to tweak it; the first idea is not usually the final product. Start looking around at similar products and see what is good and bad about them, then improve yours accordingly and vet it out.
Then, talk to people that would be a likely user of the product to gather insights. If you get a lot of excitement, you’re on the right track. Once you get to a point where you want to patent an idea, do it! It might be time consuming, but it is doable. If all looks good, then it is time to contact a patent attorney. If you find a patent on the product while you’re searching, it’s not a deal killer — you can always try contacting the person or company to see if you can license it. The patent attorney you hire will do all the heavy lifting.
Finding a company to build it can be more challenging, but start small. Small companies are more willing to work with you and be flexible. The price will be higher, but that can be adjusted later as you scale up.
Another way to vet ideas with your target audiences is to visit trade shows because you will find a wealth of information there. Typically, there are manufacturers looking for business and you can get an idea on cost of goods. You can usually find 5 to 10 companies ready to give you a quote and let you know lead time and minimums, and then you have something concrete to work with, including a general idea of what your startup costs are going to be. For instance, you should know roughly what it will cost you for a patent, what it will cost for your initial run of widgets, how much product inventory that will give you, and how long it will take you to create that inventory.
Next, start on a website, start working Facebook, online forums, ebay, and Amazon. Start looking for influencers on YouTube. Find someone who will try your product and talk about it, because these are all inexpensive ways to enter the market. The goal is to build a market.
Consumers and retailers do not want to buy a product that nobody knows about. In my early days, I went to retailers and they told me “we don’t market products, our job is to be a place for people to pick them up.” So, you have to establish a track record first and — luckily — the internet makes that possible for anyone.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Take pictures. This is something I never thought about doing because I was always working on the next steps. Now that we have manufacturing, blending, R&D, marketing, sales, international sales etc. people want to see pictures of the days I was working out of a 30x 40 pole barn, and frankly, I’d love to have the memories to reference to really celebrate how far we’ve come.
Hire good partners. Early on, I was selling my first product for two years before I ever thought about a patent. By the time I called an attorney, he told me it was too late, and in hindsight, I lost out on a lot of revenue.
As the company grows your role is going to change. When I started, I was knowledgeable about lubricants and sales; that’s what I loved. Then, as we grew, my role shifted into management. Then, eventually involved cash flow management and understanding accounting. Then, I added marketing and distribution to the mix. Finally, I’m in a spot now where my role is about building a corporation — as opposed to a small business. I wish someone had explained that to me early on so I could have been proactive instead of reactive about my training and could have been looking forward to how I could build a good foundation for the next stage.
Balance your time. It always feels like everything is mission critical in a startup business, so you’re always working hard. I spent way too much time working and not enough time with my family because it always felt like the business could turn at any time and I want to be prepared for whatever came at me — not just because I want the business to succeed, but because I feel the pressure of supporting a lot of people’s livelihoods. Looking back, I realize most of our business hiccups would have been fine had I had enjoyed dinner with my family instead of working into the night to fix an issue that could’ve waited until tomorrow. Sometimes the urgency is just a fake narrative in your own head.
Take time to enjoy it. Don’t be too uptight. As my business grew, every quarter was a new frontier. I always stressed about what was going to happen next, and looking back, I wish I could have taken more time to live in the present moment and enjoy what was happening instead of focusing on the next month or quarter.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Research! Look for competitors, similar products, companies in the same space, and all the information you can find to benchmark your idea. Then, start thinking about what the initial investment would be. “Can I afford it?”, then ‘What is the potential market?”, and “Am I risking 5k to possibly get 500k or is it 10k?”
Pretty soon, the idea will incubate and make more sense or less, informing your next steps. Usually after a few weeks, I am either really excited about an idea or I wonder what the heck I was thinking.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I have never used one of those consultants; it simply has never occurred to me. Typically, when I or someone on the team has a new idea, we survey our stakeholders and just keep working on things until the idea makes sense or fails. This is the benefit of having a reliable and smart team surrounding you.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I have always bootstrapped all my businesses because the whole VC world was out of my comfort zone. I don’t think it’s bad, I just was not familiar with it. I have talked to other business owners that use VC, and they seem to scale up much faster than I did, but they also spent a lot more time raising money instead of building their business. Honestly, I think as a business owner you must gauge what you’re comfortable with and what your business needs and then choose from there.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We work on building products that solve problems and save people money. Our most recent idea that we’re bringing to life is called Tire Hog. It is a 100% mobile machine that breaks down the tires in a continuous process using various levels of microwaveable power along a conveyor belt, ultimately allowing for reclamation of high-quality end products at a rapid rate.
It’s currently still in the engineering phases right now, but once it is up and running — assuming 240 workdays per year — it is projected to recycle 288,000 tires, producing 1,440 tons of carbon, 763.2 tons of oil, and 676.8 tons of natural gas per year. This is equivalent to a total annual revenue of over $2.15 million for buyers. Over 300 million tires a year are scrapped and put into landfills with no concrete recycling solution in sight. As the U.S. is continuing to head toward an escalating climate crisis, the need for a tire recycling solution is pressing.
One way or another, all our businesses and products reduce greenhouse gas in a significant way, so I’d like to think we’re helping reduce the carbon footprint wholistically.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Wider access to education. It’s important that students learn how to think. Thinking well and understanding possibilities is what drives innovation, and innovation drives progress and growth for all of us.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
Charles Koch. I read his book and I am fascinated at the way he scaled up his father’s business. He put a system in place to make business units successful. I also learned from his idea of “good profit.” Good ideas and good businesses should thrive because they are good, not because they are subsidized.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Meet The Disruptors: Devin Calloway and Danielle Dao Of Eco Farm Holdings PBC On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Make your dreams a reality -You have the chance to make your dreams a reality, don’t talk about it do it. The only way to prove yourself is to actually do it and not talk about it. I have been dreaming big since I was a kid and I realized after receiving this advice how important action is over words. I developed an appetite for getting my hands dirty and learning whatever I had to in order to get the job done. Making things happen when you are running your own business requires deep and wide subject matter expertise where you must be the technician, manager, and entrepreneur all at the same time.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewingDevin Calloway and Danielle Dao, Founders and Co-CEOs of Eco Farm Holdings PBC.
Devin Calloway is the Founder, co-CEO, CTO and President of Eco Farm Holdings PBC leading the company’s technology, finance, manufacturing, veganic cultivation and supply chain functions. Calloway brings over 16 years of cannabis industry and advocacy experience as well as 20 years in web development, UI/UX, ERP and Information Architecture bringing a unique perspective to technology operations in the cannabis industry. Prior to founding Eco Farm, Calloway founded Ajnag.com, the first web and mobile cannabis locator app directing users to legal cannabis resources.
As Founder and co-CEO of Eco Farm Holdings PBC & Thrive Society, Danielle Dao leverages over 20 years of experience in the cannabis industry to manage Eco Farm & Thrive Societies’ enterprise including: finance, operations, distribution, procurement & sales, cultivation, quality control and manufacturing. Dao is considered a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in cannabis, and brings over 10 years of expertise in supply chain relationships.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Danielle Dao: Born and raised in the South, I grew up in a community that valued pharmaceuticals as remedies for physical and mental health and wellness needs. After witnessing those close to me suffer from addiction and mental illness with no option for alternative medicine, I began to seek out a deeper understanding of some of those other options out there. I started studying wholistic living and herbology at age 18, and came across considering cannabis as medicine, bringing my purpose more into focus. The untapped potential and healing benefits of cannabis led me to California to live and learn amongst the best cannabis farmers in the world. My love for sustainable living and alternative healing grew over the years and allowed me to travel the world studying with sustainability mentors and leaders and world renown Permaculture experts who taught me to understand herbs and plants healing properties, body & energy modalities as medicine, regenerative farming & soil building techniques, and more. I have been in the Cannabis industry all of my adult life and this plant truly was the catalyst for my quest in helping heal the earth. I will continue to dedicate my life to revealing the untapped power, wisdom & healing potential that this plant offers our society and our planet.
Devin Calloway: Technology and cannabis have been my life’s work and passion. Growing up just outside New York City in Norwalk, CT in an Interracial household (my mother is German and my father is Black), there were a number of experiences in life and my upbringing that stimulated my curiosity and interest in the cannabis plant. I was first introduced to the benefits of cannabis when I was 8 years old by my father, who was a rock n’ roller and cannabis user and diagnosed with the autoimmune and connective tissue disease, Lupus when I was 6. He used cannabis to alleviate his severe muscle & joint pain and when he was no longer able to smoke due to the disease attacking his lungs, and without access to infused cannabis medicine to help with his disease progression, he was forced to rely on toxic prescription medications. As a result of contradicting school programs like DARE and “Just Say No,” I started my own research to find out cannabis was a powerful plant that could benefit society in more ways than one. In high school I became interested in tech and cybersecurity doing freelance web design and web development, and after college, as a self-taught web developer, studying UI / UX Design, server configuration, cybersecurity, database management, implementation of content management systems, and information architecture, I moved to California to pursue my passion to legally cultivate cannabis and enter the industry. In 2006,I launched the first cannabis locator site called Ajnag.com, and then in 2009 the first “Cannabis App” to be approved by the Apple App store that debuted at the first cannabis expo in Los Angeles (and the country), THC Expo.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Danielle Dao: Having a long history in the industry, I understand the legacy cannabis culture very deeply, as well as the supply chain in California. Cannabis is a very complicated fragmented agricultural supply chain with decades of “bad habits” ingrained in the ways people do business. There are also major disadvantages to being in cannabis due to overregulation; our industry is significantly more scrutinized than any other high-risk industry. This barrier to entry — this overregulation — has created a supply chain obstacle course with stop signs at every corner resulting in extreme market inefficiencies, and forcing many farms to shut down. We’ve had to adapt or fail and this applies to all farms: This is the driving force in our managed cannabis services model. We are effectively disrupting the industry with a fully managed digital & plant route to market for all farms — all while continuously adapting to changing regulations, overtaxation, and not being classified as “agriculture” continues to cripple thousands of operators.
Eco Farm & Thrive Society have created a “farm to shelf” business model that is not only tech enabled, but works with each supply chain partner to optimize their business and success. Our tech and business model provides an opportunity for us to scale globally and to standardize cannabis transactions; product value & grading standards; sustainable growing practices; and quality control for consistency and scalability across all brands, stores and consumers. We thrive to set an example and to disrupt “traditional agriculture” standards and show the industry that sustainable farming is possible at scale — without pesticide contamination and residues such as metals and other contaminants all while conserving water. This is very much possible and has always been our way of life as cannabis farmers. While there are various CPG fulfillment options downstream through tech-enabled distributors, there are really no companies addressing the upstream supply chain working directly with cultivators to synchronize strategies, collect data, refine fair trade practices, and plan for the future of the local operators’ success. Our managed services model was borne from this…to bring our community of farmers together — sharing in the risk to ensure our success. We are farmers as well. Our business model provides a path to standardization and scale, while setting “best practices” for the entire industry.
Devin Calloway: The metaphor I like to use in describing our market disruption is the autonomous superhighway or perhaps more aptly, a driver-assisted cannabis superhighway. The Internet along with the most advanced application integration has driven global B2B e-commerce communications and supply chain linkage to new and extraordinary levels of logistical efficiency and cost reduction. While the global supply chain superhighways are currently experiencing significant roadwork as I like to say, due to the pandemic, in normal times however these global routes-to-market are extremely efficient — much to the benefit of upstream suppliers and consumers. Meanwhile the cannabis supply chain is operating literally on dirt roads. Imagine if you were traveling a supply chain of bumpy dirt roads with stop signs and tolls at every turn; this is what we have basically in California, a logistical nightmare. It is our mission at Eco Farm & Thrive Society through the digital marketplace and managed cannabis services model to build the first cannabis farm-assisted superhighway across California, and then across the country. We are transforming dirt roads into a cannabis superhighway, and I don’t like to use technical jargon, but we are doing this through data aggregation; data segregation; digital threading; digital twinning; AI; digital process automation; IOT (Internet of Things/ Internet of Transparency) and of course deeply integrating this with the plant-touching side of the business.
In summary, we are empowering, integrating and normalizing the upstream-to-midstream cannabis supply chain that has otherwise been highly fragmented, inefficient and challenging to consistently bring product to market. Our team has nearly two decades of subject matter expertise in the cannabis industry to help simplify and remove complexities to operate in this challenging environment by bridging the gap between technology and the plant! Ultimately, we’re helping cultivators, distributors and manufacturers make data driven decisions on how to more effectively manage their supply chain, to increase value, market resilience, and profit.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Danielle Dao: Many years ago, I had an indoor medical grow room where I worked every evening feeding, pruning, spraying and tending to the garden. One evening, when I was stepping over a pot, I grabbed the chain holding the lights above my plants and electrocuted myself all the way down to my bare feet standing in the puddles of water. Lesson learned: Wear rubber boots around low hanging electricity!
Devin Calloway: Hmmm… most of my mistakes when I was first starting out were not funny but expensive! When we first opened our extraction lab at Eco Farm, we were on a tight budget and did not have proper equipment for the volume we were producing. I was working in the lab with a co-worker all day rushing to get an order ready. For a bit of context, Decarboxylation is the process of converting THCa to THC by removing the carboxylic acid from the carbon chain. So — I would transfer the THCa oil into mason jars out of our Falling Film Evaporator and would then place the oil in a low temp freezer to cool the oil and stop the decarb process (I would leave the lid loosely opened to allow C02 bubbles to escape). I went to pull a jar out of the freezer to see if it had cooled and opened the lid not realizing the lid had been closed and fully pressurized. The hot crude oil exploded into my face and ears, luckily, I had been wearing protective goggles and my dreadlocks were wrapped in my hat! My co-worker was dumbfounded! From that point on, I vowed that I would never rush a process in the lab and took the steps to build proper decarb equipment. Always remember to use protective eyewear in the laboratory!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Danielle Dao: James Beatty & Chiah Rodrigues (owners of Arcanna and Mendo Generations) have been huge mentors for my love for cannabis and as stewards of the earth living a very low carbon footprint. I was introduced to them from a friend many years ago, and they took me in as an apprentice. They live off grid in a beautiful two-story home deep in the mountains of Mendicino. I worked their land for many years, and lived a new definition of homesteading. I will never forget the Fall season with them. We would harvest tomatoes, squash, medicinal herbs, cannabis, flowers, vegetables of all sorts, all planted together in the same soil, and growing together throughout the year. We would spend days tincturing, canning, and making an abundance of food for all the helpers on the land. Chiah would make salves, and medicines of all sorts to give away as gifts, and to keep for the next year to treat ailments for their friends and family. They are both foundational healers and medicine plant carriers, who walk gently on the planet with care and integrity.
Devin Calloway: My Uncle Pete Vogt had the biggest impact on how I help run our company today. Pete bought me my first computer, has over 25 years of cybersecurity/tech experience, and truly stimulated my passion for tech, innovation, and big idea thinking. I remember him bringing me for a field trip into his first cybersecurity job in New York City. At the time, no one really knew what cybersecurity was (it was secretive, illusive, and I was fascinated that my cool Uncle Pete worked in it). Following that introduction, I wrote my first research paper on the network security layer and paradigm in 7th grade. From then on, I fell in love with technology, web development, and became a full on geek! I’m so grateful to have had Pete as an advisor of the company for the last 2 years where he has been a driving influence in cultivating the managed cannabis services model (MCSP) and our customer and farm success programs.
One of my early cannabis mentors is Jeff Jones, an original California medical cannabis advocate and pioneer and Founder / Executive Director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, one of the first dispensaries in the US and first supreme court case to test the cooperative model now taught in law schools. I worked for Jeff as a patient intake coordinator at the Patient ID Center in LA (2008). Jeff sparked my realization about the importance of advocacy, activism, education and leading by intention and action.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Danielle Dao: I would have to say that Proposition 64 is both a positive and negative disruption for the legacy operators in the CA industry. On the positive side, legalization offered us a way to continue our careers as cannabis farmers, and allow us to participate in the benefits of “coming out of the shadows” and stepping forward to be a voice of wisdom and mastery in our field while continuing to take care of our land. This was a positive disruption and gave us hope that we would no longer hide, feel shame, fear or paranoia for our life choices. On the contrary, Prop 64 was a huge negative disruption. The emergency regulations mysteriously allowed for large uncapped grows while the original law voted on specified one-acre caps for five years after Prop 64 came into effect. There was also an unbalanced application of permits by municipalities. This, combined with over taxation, ever changing CEQA requirements, and having high barriers to entry than any other agricultural product, our legacy cannabis farmers are a dying breed.
Devin Calloway: Disruption is not so positive when it has an adverse effect on an industry often stimulated by an unforeseen event or condition. What we are currently experiencing with the impact of COVID-19 and the near collapse of the global supply chain system is an example of negative disruption. However, that negative disruption is now creating positive disruption through the development of innovative supply chain technologies that are creating efficiencies using AI / Machine Learning to manage and route logistics as well as through government investment. This is an example of turning a negative into positive or taking a crisis to make a change.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Danielle Dao: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Fast forward to the last 5–6 years of CA cannabis legalizations, these words of advice stand truer now than ever. It is an uphill battle with insurmountable roadblocks, but as leaders, it is our duty to continue to strengthen our industry with innovation and hope.
Devin Calloway: It often takes a crisis to make a change. I feel that we’re experiencing this right now within humanity, the environment, the economy, and the cannabis industry. From shifts in focus in our industry to paradigm shifts in human consciousness driven by the age of digital information and integration, cannabis is becoming more widely (mainstream) accepted and helping adopt new ways of doing things.
Make your dreams a reality -You have the chance to make your dreams a reality, don’t talk about it do it. The only way to prove yourself is to actually do it and not talk about it. I have been dreaming big since I was a kid and I realized after receiving this advice how important action is over words. I developed an appetite for getting my hands dirty and learning whatever I had to in order to get the job done. Making things happen when you are running your own business requires deep and wide subject matter expertise where you must be the technician, manager, and entrepreneur all at the same time.
There are 3 types of people 1. People that watch things happen 2. People that make things happen. 3. People that say damn what just happened?You want to be a person who makes things happen! This advice has been a reality throughout my career. For the last 16 years in California cannabis, I have witnessed many early operators remain stuck in the comfort of the status quo and their renegade bad habit past, where they have “watched” the new industry unfold often resisting regulation, best business practices, and technology, some so much to the point where any and all opportunity has fully passed them by and are now saying “damn what just happened?” Innovation and disruption does not happen by watching or waiting, it happens through implementing, testing, failing, being challenged, learning and then adapting to create a product or service that replaces the old habits to efficiently solve real problems. It only occurs when you make things happen!
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Danielle Dao: By using our company voice to advocate for systemic change, and business as a force for good, we will continue to strive to be a cutting-edge leader in the space, and advocate for change in the industry and for education and give back to people who need alternative healthcare.
Devin Calloway: We are close to launching our proprietary and federated upstream supply chain technology solution that will empower cultivators, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers in other markets looking to solve the same upstream route to market problem we are experiencing in California. We are also excited to release our AI powered dynamic pricing intelligence platform in 2022. We feel it has the opportunity to help normalize and stabilize wholesale commodity cannabis prices and enable true market making opportunities. We are also focusing energy on strategic supply chain partnerships with leading cannabis FinTech, Analytical Lab Testing, IoT and midstream and downstream platforms to further strengthen our integration from farm to shelf.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
Danielle Dao: Harvard Business Review series is great for entrepreneurs and all people who strive to excel is their roles and to relate to their own business in a more balanced way. The series discusses boundaries around burnout, focus, team dynamics, innovation, strategy and inequality. The episodes have first hand stories & experiences from some of the most well know entrepreneurs in the world, and also discusses current topics such as COVID, and how it has impacted the work force, and the disruption of how to create a new normal since the pandemic.
Devin Calloway: Grit — The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. Angela Duckworth’s in depth research on successful individuals and her analysis on defining Grit and how it is a critical variable for excellence and success was truly inspiring. I have not been able to survive and continue along this journey if it weren’t for my passion for the plant and its power to help humanity and our planet combined with having pure grit. I was lucky to have learned this from my parents. Duckworth’s book validated my experience and that I was on the right path pursuing my passion. There have been days when you wake up and the pain and suffering is so excruciating when it feels like nothing is falling into place and you just want to quit and run away. This is the proverbial beating, the bending and snapping, falling over, but always learning, evolving, and finding ways to stay in love with cannabis and technology. The outcome is shooting back up towards the sun with richer flavor, higher potency, and more resilience than ever!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Danielle Dao:“Always laugh when you can; it is cheap medicine” Lord Byron. Without a sense of humor about this mission, I would not be standing today! There are so many things to laugh about, the good times and the hard times. But laughter is and always will be my best medicine!
Devin Calloway: I have two life quotes that are relevant to me in my life at this moment in time. The first is “You can try to tell me what you want to believe. I won’t deny, there’s someone trying to be — So let it go and let your freedom fly. Now the pace will get much faster. So throw away that ball and chain. For to be the master blaster. You know the fire needs the flame. You run the distance.” This is an excerpt from father’s Song “Run the Distance” and has been my mantra from my teenage to adult years. It has gotten me through some of my most challenging life experiences and taught me to listen to the higher power of the universe, be free, pursue my passion that lights my fire, and realize my true potential to Run the Distance.
The second is “There are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time―longer than most people imagine….you’ve got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people….Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it…it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love―staying in love.” — Angela Duckworth. It has been a long arduous, painstaking but exhilarating and evolutionary journey over the last 16 years working in California cannabis, I would not have been able to maintain the stamina if I didn’t have a passion and love for the plant. Along the way I have had to solve some very challenging and dynamic problems, from financial, technological, regulatory, legal, operational, and engineering. As long as I am breathing, I am always looking for solutions that support my loyalty to humanity, the plant and all of our stakeholders.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Danielle Dao: I would love to see the Cannabis legacy industry setting new standards to inspire and implement solutions for mainstream agriculture to adopt so they may begin to correct their wrongdoings and give heed to the environmental crisis we all face. If other farming industries implemented sustainable biodiverse growing practices, water conservation, and regenerating the top soil of their land, we may be able to expedite the healing of the earth, and bring balance back into our bodies and planet.
Devin Calloway: I am grateful to be living that movement with my work in cannabis and technology! I believe cannabis is the most powerful plant on this planet, it is truly a Super Crop. Cannabis has the extraordinary ability to sustain life from food, medicine, fiber, fuel and culture, and most beautifully, the plant brings people together from all socio-economic backgrounds. It has helped me personally heal and grow, cultivate some of my most positive life changing experiences, and connect me with truly unique, compassionate, colorful, and brilliant individuals. I plan to continue on this path and do my part to use cannabis as a force for good and bring the plant to the people through technology and good old fashion farming!
How can our readers follow you online?
Danielle Dao: You can follow me on Instagram at @devi.dao.thrivesociety or add me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-dao/. I look forward to speaking with anyone that would like to connect and discuss this incredible industry!
The Future Is Now: Tugce Bulut Of Streetbees On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Take your board on a journey. As a founder, you’re answerable to your board, but you have to be honest with them. In the early days, we wouldn’t share our challenges and missteps with our board — instead, we shared snazzy marketing presentations that made things look rosier than they were. Over time I learned that this just doesn’t work! It’s better to be honest and to be clear about where you need to improve. Not only does this build trust but means you can get help and support with those challenges from highly experienced people. If anything, it’s better to overcommunicate than paint an overly rosy picture.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewingTugce Bulut.
Tugce is the Founder and CEO of Streetbees, the world’s first human intelligence platform. She is passionate about the power of data and the positive change it can bring to the world. She is a published author and Master’s graduate from Cambridge, specializing in poverty alleviation and global living standards. Before founding Streetbees, she spent six years as a strategy consultant advising technology and consumer companies to accelerate growth in international markets.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I am passionate about the power of data and the positive change it can bring to the world. At Cambridge University, I specialized in poverty alleviation and global living standards. After that, I spent six years as a strategy consultant advising technology and consumer companies on how to accelerate growth in international markets.
In this role, I helped the world’s largest companies launch products in new markets. But one issue kept cropping up; I just couldn’t find trustworthy data. Existing market research solutions simply weren’t good enough. The over reliance on multiple-choice questions to deliver quantified results limits what consumers can say — and just reinforced long-held preconceptions, missing out on novel and innovative ideas.
So in 2015, I founded Streetbees — with a dream to build the world’s intelligence platform, providing data about the lives of real people, in real time.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I think it was really right at the start of my career when I was working on my PhD on mechanisms of poverty alleviation. I did quite a lot of travelling as part of my work, particularly in places like India where I visited a lot of factories to understand working practices, conditions, and salaries. While I was there, I stayed with some amazing host families which gave me a real insight into the lives of people working in factories used by major brands. It was a real eye opener to walk into these buildings where a thousand people were working so hard and it really put my mind towards thinking how brands can be part of the process of equalizing development in countries around the world. It really helped kick off the idea for Streetbees because it helped me understand how when brands understand people in developing nations, it can help drive huge levels of investment and have a massive impact at an economic and social level.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
It’s all about our machine learning, really. Our advances in NLP in particular, linked with “transformer architectures” are now enabling neural AI to learn the semantic structure of text. This is now being bridged with image to text and text to image breakthroughs which is huge when our data collection is all about free text and photos of people living their lives as consumers. Our technical moat is our data, we have a rich dataset containing images and text (including brands). Using this we can basically train our models so that our proprietary data leads to unique ML predictions that effectively have learnt the semantics of our bees’ (that’s what we call the people who use our app) relationships with the brands we serve.
How do you think this might change the world?
For me, it’s about unlocking investment in developing countries and using technology to create new opportunities for businesses that ultimately benefit those countries. These advancements in machine learning and AI enable Streetbees to offer global consumer brands incredible intelligence about consumers around the world so they can meet the needs of those consumers. This, in turn, helps to drive investment in developing countries around the world. The tech itself is an enabler, rather than the change itself.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I think the big concerns with most AI-driven solutions are around trust and diversity. We have 4.5 million people around the world sharing their lives with us. Sometimes this is something as simple as taking a photo of what they’re eating and who they’re with, which is pretty straightforward. However, people also share a lot more detail around their feelings, their personal situations, and their fears which is clearly more sensitive information. We use machine learning to take people’s words and understand how a combination of context and emotion has driven the choices they’ve made around their purchase and consumption behavior. It is critical that we — and any business collecting sensitive information like this — do everything in our power to ensure that specifics are not shared. On the diversity front, businesses like our must ensure we’re not building in any bias — conscious or unconscious — into our machine learning. We deliberately ensure that our programmers are a diverse group to ensure we don’t simply replicate the sort of single line of thought that has dominated in many businesses for years.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
It was less of a tipping point and more of a build up as I realized, when working as a consultant, that the data I needed to make the right decisions just wasn’t out there. In talking to my co-founder, we established that the problem was the two things were missing. First, huge swathes of people around the world weren’t included in most market and consumer research data and second, the data that was being collected was done using tick boxes and recall so it wasn’t accurate enough. I guess if there was a tipping point, it came when we thought about the fact that everyone has a mobile phone now and that there must be a way to capture the real moments of purchase and consumption through that channel. Ultimately, we ended up selling the idea to a leading brand before we had the technology fully in place to support it, so there was a heck of a development cycle at the start!
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
Consumers are changing faster than ever before and demand products that are tailored to their exact needs, or they will switch. As a result, established consumer brands need to stay as close to their consumers as small local brands can and that requires a new approach to market research and consumer insights. Our in-the-moment collection of individuals’ thoughts as they consume or buy products levels the playing field for brands that can’t be stood next to a consumer but at a quant scale that makes business decisions and million-dollar investments possible.
Our technology is already leading global brands to make key strategic decisions, launch new products or improve localized messaging. For widespread adoption, we need to share what our technology makes possible and for the market research world to full embrace in-the-moment multimedia intelligence gathered in consumers’ own words. That migration is already underway and for early adopters the competitive advantage is clear so I don’t expect it to take more than a couple of years.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
It shouldn’t be innovative, but we do encourage our prospects to sign up and use our app — nothing explains how flexible and rich the solution is like completing a survey on nighttime skin care or a family dinner occasion. With Streetbees GO we also have fantastic country and category specific dashboards and so a large proportion of our marketing shows the product at work uncovering growth opportunities and answering the common business questions consumer brands face.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I owe a lot to Paul Ahern who really kickstarted my career. When I completed my PhD, it was in the wake of the financial crash, and no one was hiring. I applied for maybe 50 jobs, and Paul was the guy who took a chance on me and brought me into the Parthenon Group. Once I was there, he was an amazing mentor and really understood what made me tick. That meant he brought me up through the business quickly and gave me direct exposure to clients much earlier than would have happened normally. On top of that, he was an extraordinary salesperson and really taught me how to brings clients along on a journey.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
That’s a big question! There are a few ways I could answer, but I think really my focus is on my role in the UK start up scene. Streetbees is several years into its life now, and I really love working to help support and inspire the next generation of startups — particularly those in the tech industry and those founded by women. I have to admit that I hate writing, but I love public speaking and it’s always a joy to speak to groups of entrepreneurs and help them to move forward. This week I was hosting a dinner to help some B2B founders connect and to keep building that community. I think it’s really important that founders — and especially women — take some responsibility to pave the way and support those that follow them. And if I can help people to sidestep some of the potholes that I experienced, so much the better!
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
When it comes to pitching to investors, trust your gut. You have got to have a connection with your investors and if it’s not there, you need to put serious thought into walking away after the pitch. As a relatively young, female founder in the tech industry, it was clear on occasion that the room full of middle-aged men I was pitching to just wasn’t going to take me seriously — even if they did choose to back Streetbees. Investors are long-term partners, so the trust and connection has got to be a two-way street.
Take your board on a journey. As a founder, you’re answerable to your board, but you have to be honest with them. In the early days, we wouldn’t share our challenges and missteps with our board — instead, we shared snazzy marketing presentations that made things look rosier than they were. Over time I learned that this just doesn’t work! It’s better to be honest and to be clear about where you need to improve. Not only does this build trust but means you can get help and support with those challenges from highly experienced people. If anything, it’s better to overcommunicate than paint an overly rosy picture.
Not all sales are good sales. To be frank, in the early days we would sell anything to anyone as long as it closed a deal. I think our low point was a project for a beer company who sent us 50 cases of beer (which we had to lug up to the office ourselves!) for a tasting evening. We had people tasting the beer and filling in surveys on the Streetbees app. It was miles from the machine-learning, high scale, SaaS business we’d envisaged but we lacked the ability to qualify out potential clients. It took us two or three (maybe four) more years before we really learned that lesson and now we are much better at concentrating on working with the right brands, on a recurring revenue basis. The lesson is that you can’t let short term customer wins dictate your product roadmap — tempting though it is sometimes!
Organizational design is critical. In the early days of a startup, you’re growing so fast that you’re effectively backfilling roles all the time. We grew from 10 people to 50 in six months and everyone was reporting into either me or my co-founder, Oli, which just wasn’t working. I think we really woke up to the scale of the problem when we lost 10 people in two months — that’s 20% of the workforce in a matter of weeks. It seems crazy, but it was only then that we realized we needed another layer of management. Founders can’t do it all and you actually need to plan your long-term organizational structure much further ahead than you think in order to be able to implement each phase of it when you’re ready.
HR is an independent function. This is related to the previous point and again, we learned this later than I’d have liked! Startups are incredibly fast-paced, vibrant businesses and founders are always going to be caught up in the business of meeting customer needs and growing the organization. You absolutely have to have an independent HR function that looks after you people. In the early days, we had no onboarding program at all, and we probably let some people down because we just weren’t looking after them properly. Equally, if someone wasn’t working out, we didn’t have those conversations and things just dragged on which was bad for everyone. A really professional HR team may seem like a luxury when you’re moving at a hundred miles an hour, but it really is an investment that pays off.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I don’t know if it’s a movement, as such, but I am really interested in the idea of helping people keep their relationships healthy. I think there’s an incredible amount of focus on meeting people — just look at the huge array of dating apps which cater to every personal preference. But it feels like once people are in a relationship, that’s it. You find your own way though, and it either works or it doesn’t. Maybe if things go off the rails, you might get counselling, but there’s a lot of ground between swiping right and a therapist. I am really curious about the idea of an app that helps couple to keep their relationship on track — more of a preventative approach that would ultimately keep people happier for longer.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There’s a quote from Jeff Bezos that really resonates with me; “When you think about the things that you will regret when you’re 80, they’re almost always the things that you did not do. They’re acts of omission. Very rarely are you going to regret something that you did that failed and didn’t work.” He’s talked in the past about the fact he was in a great job, earning a lot of money when the idea and opportunity to start Amazon came up. And the thing that pushed him to make the leap, which was a huge risk, was the thought of what he’d look back on and regret when he was older. It was that thinking that led me to risk founding Streetbees and which guides a lot of my thinking on a daily basis.
Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Show me the money! Kidding, of course. I’d just focus on what we do and our vision which supports the whole value chain for helping brands to grow. We have a community of over 4.5 million consumers around the world who share incredibly rich details of their lives with us in a really engaged, honest way, at the moment of purchase or consumption. We take unstructured data and use cutting edge machine learning to understand real purchase drivers and then make available in an always-on format to uncover growth opportunities that simply couldn’t be found with traditional market insight. Simple as that!
Employees are truly the most important part of your business. We have had ones that stole from us, ones that have gone above and beyond and I’m always surprised by the ones that did each.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alexis Schulze.
Alexis Schulze, Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer.
As co-founder and chief visionary officer of Nékter Juice Bar, Alexis Schulze leads the award-winning company’s research and development efforts, creating menu items to nourish America’s increasing appetite for plant-based, functional, and nutrient-rich foods that support various lifestyles and diet preferences. A certified health coach with a passion for integrative nutrition, Alexis has been at the forefront of developing accessible and healthier for you fast-casual alternatives.
With over 20 years of experience working with children in both preschool and elementary school settings and holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Child and Adolescent Development, Schulze combined her education, expertise, and passion into a children’s book, Sneaky Spinach, with plans to author more. Alexis is a well-known face of the brand, often participating in speaking engagements and social media narrated videos on the power of nutrition and plant-based health.
Schulze is also the founder of Sojourn Foundation, a nonprofit connecting people through mission-driven trips that focus on working with children in developing countries in an effort to shift perspective, encourage personal growth, and positively contribute as global citizens. Schulze is available to speak on nonprofit creation and leadership, philosophy of philanthropy, and global cultural competence.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was raised in a very small AZ town by a single mother. My father passed away when I was 5. It wasn’t always easy but I’ve found that all the adversity provided strength and growth. I always wanted to be a teacher and put myself through college.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There are so many! I think the one that resonates the most is “We rise by lifting others,” by Robert Ingersoll. As I learned to be a Boss in this company I created, the best moments were helping others rise and grow. Including other small businesses that we have grown with.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I’ve read so many. Power of Now by Eckartt Tolle really helped me claim my power. A few others by Brene Brown as well. So much of being a boss is knowing your worth and having the self awareness to know when to stick to your guns/listen to intuition and when to listen to the experts.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Well, I think sometimes the ignorance of what we didn’t know was probably helpful. Haha! Honestly, we started without really too much knowledge and had to learn a lot as we went. The biggest thing I think was just having people with passion behind what you’re doing. It helped that our menu had integrity and our customers created better lifestyles because of what we provided.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Sometimes it’s not about the idea as much as it is the way you present it. Juicing had been around when we started, but we made it mainstream by creating menu items that tasted good but were also healthy. We brought the juice bar to the mainstream.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
When you start out small you certainly have to work harder to find distributors, etc. We honestly googled and made calls till we found ones. As we grew this got easier and we were able to negotiate prices and a lot of aspects were done by experts at that point. Getting in a supply chain person and then being sent samples etc. all of that was definitely out of our league but we did it.
What are your “3 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Employees are truly the most important part of your business. We have had ones that stole from us, ones that have gone above and beyond and I’m always surprised by the ones that did each.
2. In order to be a boss you have to know how to lead. Knowing how to lead is hard when you question yourself. Work on yourself. I had to find my confidence during the process of growing a company. I had a new marketing assistant who asked how I stayed soft in a business that requires you to be hard. I think I’m still trying to figure that one out, but I do know that we need both and need to spend more time valuing the soft side of business. The good stuff comes from there and sometimes gets lost in the chase of power and money. I really sound like a hippie juice bar owner I know. Haha!
3. Integrity doesn’t always lead to financial success. I think as we have grown there have been many people coming in with ideas to change the way we do certain things all in the name of money. I’ve had to fight and sometimes pick my battles to maintain that integrity but it’s always worth it.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
For us it was looping in all of our friends to try the juices and smoothies. Having input from trusted friends is important. Oftentimes we are too involved to be objective. Getting a good lawyer is a good step to make sure you are protected and know all that needs to happen. Make sure it comes from a place of passion and interest- I believe that gets you farther than trying to make money from something. Of course that’s the goal of a business but coming from a place of providing something people need or that will help others has such a better starting point. Then the money will follow.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I suppose it really depends on the invention. I am sure we would’ve done great with help, but not everyone can afford that when starting out — there are so many costs associated. Sometimes it’s good to go for it, and sometimes it’s important to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I think it comes to personal position and abilities. I think having accountability and experts make hiring a venture capital partner worthwhile, but if you can self fund or do a private equity raise to get the ball rolling it is probably a lot easier to take on help later. For us, we had to use our own until we had some solid proof of concept. Probably depends on the type of business but for us we didn’t have a lot of collateral for banks with juicers and blenders.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I would like to think I have already. I started a non- profit to help children in developing countries. I volunteer in orphanages in Mexico. And I have mentored quite a few women in business because not many people understand the extra dynamics of being a woman in the business world so it helps to have mentors and support systems. I’d love to expand all of that as time goes on.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
More support specific to women in business. A lot of things I’ve attended have been networking oriented and I’d love to see more support and vulnerability within that space.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I think Reese Witherspoon has done a fantastic job of supporting women and telling their stories. I’d love to find a way to support women more and tell my own story. The more we are willing to share and be vulnerable with the hard parts the more we can encourage others to do the same. It’s powerful and she’s really making an impact.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Things are going to take at least twice as long as you expect. No matter how much planning you do, things are going to take twice as long as you expect, because there are other people and processes involved. There might be a freeze on cargo ships, blackouts in the country you are doing manufacturing in, errors in the final product, etc. and you can’t rationally expect all these things, but you can build in buffer time.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. JJ Richardson.
Dr. Richardson hails from the sunshine state of Florida, but spent most of his adult life in Melbourne, Australia. He has a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and is a world expert in nanomaterials for biotechnology applications. His research has allowed him to live in 7 countries and visit and present in many more, which provides a more global context for solving problems and translating research. He is one of the most cited scientists under the age of 35, has won pitch competitions, founded numerous companies, and launched his most recent venture, SWIFF — deodorant for your clothes, with his wife.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I had a fairly idyllic upbringing in Florida, enjoying the sunshine and playing sports, but was always drawn to complex scientific questions. This led me to pursue a degree in philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge, and then expand towards practical studies in various engineering disciplines. I met a beautiful Australian, moved to Melbourne, Australia to be with her, and that has led to any number of adventures ranging from teaching breakdancing in East Timor to seeing ancient rock formation in the Outback. I always wanted to have a positive impact on society, and luckily science offers many routes to contribute, and so for the last 10 years I have been a scientist working in the field of nanotechnology for biotech applications.
More recently, my family and I moved to Japan to wait out the COVID pandemic, which gave me time to conduct some great research on antimicrobial materials and spin out a company with my wife, SWIFF. SWIFF is pretty incredible, but a completely new class of product, so we just call it “deodorant for clothing” as it means you don’t need to spread chemicals all over your armpits to still smell fresh at the end of the day. Its cutting-edge nanotech research, but put into a minimalist product so it has the smallest environmental impact possible, uses natural and organic ingredients (we actually only use 2 ingredients) that are sustainable and renewable, and is incredibly accessible to users. Being able to offer safer alternatives to consumers has partially fulfilled my childhood dream of contributing to society, but we still have a long way to go before we have touched the lives of everyone.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I have two favorite life lesson quotes that come from some of the most capable people I know. The first is from my mother-in-law. She migrated to Australia around the age of 30 and has worked any number of jobs, and she once told me “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. You pay bananas and you get King Kong!” It’s a strange quote out of context but was used to convey the importance of valuing your time and your skills, and if you’re the King Kong of your field, don’t settle for peanuts. And if you’re an employer trying to pay people peanuts to do a job, expect to get monkeys.
The other quote was by an uncle that did everything from missile design, to medicine, to creating one of the most useful medical software systems out there. He had lots of great advice, but the key one that always stuck with me was “don’t quit your day job”. Of course, this assumes you have a day job and are getting fairly compensated (as per the quote above), but to me this quote reinforces that the grass may seem greener in a new venture, but until you can support your family with that venture, collect your pay check and build your venture on the side. Once its big enough that it can hire you, then you should quit your day job. And if your company can run independently, guess what, you get 2 paychecks, even better!
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I love reading, and probably one of the most influential books for me is Dune, and the related books in that universe. What resonated most with me was the intergenerational focus on cause and effect and how humanity still tends to think in years rather than centuries. As a scientist, the system currently incentivizes small incremental work and hype, but I believe we need to take a longer-term view of the work we are doing. I have used this generational viewpoint to stop myself from pursuing projects that lack real meaning. Foundation is another book (and series) that really tries to tease apart how humanity can shift over millennia and I recommend these two books to people interested in thinking about how life might be 100, 1000, or 10,000 years from now.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
The first step of any idea is to articulate exactly what the idea is and check of the 5 W’s. Write your idea down, then ask some questions about it. Let’s say you want to invent a flying car? Great, articulate the specifics: what will the car actually do, how will it fly, where will it go, who will use it, why will they use it instead of other transport options, how many passengers should it take, etc. After this stage, you should be able to hold a 5 min conversation with a non-expert on the values of your idea and answer some basic questions that they might ask about it.
You should then be able to use the 5 W’s to build various hypotheses and test them with internet searches, market research, or the good old-fashioned “sniff test”. Does your belief on who will use them pan out to being realistic? From there you can check the economics, will those people have the money and desire to buy your flying car? If not, is there someone else interested? Do the current laws of physics and state of materials science allow for your car to actually be energy efficient? If not, how do you redesign or what breakthroughs are needed? Maybe there is a better niche product you can target that will later enable your full-fledged dream of flying cars. Musk does this with rockets and slowly getting to Mars. He’s not going straight for it, but rather building useful technologies that can eventually grow to him visiting Mars (maybe).
In other words, start putting things into writing as soon as possible so you can start progressing your idea bit by bit. Get data and evidence for every claim you have, as our brains are great at fooling us into thinking we have a great idea because the details are hazy. Nut out those detail and if your idea survives, you can start getting excited.
DON’T rely on what other people tell you about your idea, do your own research and investigation.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
First, I’d like to say that even if your idea already has been created, you can improve upon the currently existing product. Can you find issues it doesn’t fix? Is it too expensive? There are lots of questions you can start asking even if someone has already created your idea. In fact, being second to market can offer plenty of advantages, as seemingly the other people have already proven there is in fact a market worth targeting (but don’t forget to verify that hypothesis, too). They also probably have information on their website that can help you cultivate your idea.
But an easy way to see if your idea has been created is to do some internet searches for keywords. You can even call up Google Patents (which is free to use), and do some searches for existing patents. Just always remember that even if you find something similar to your idea, track down if it’s actually been commercialized and is on the market. If it isn’t on the market but a patent or news article exists about it, try to figure out why it failed by searching for the company that owned the patent or created the product. Maybe their patent has also lapsed, that means they probably couldn’t turn a profit. If it does exist, go back to step 1 and see how you can beat them out.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
These are the real questions every entrepreneur should ask when hashing out the details of their idea. In terms of a patent, don’t file a patent first, file a provisional place holder when you really need to. This will buy you 12 months of protection at a very affordable price, after which you can decide if you want to pay for the full patent application or not. You’ll also have 12 months to think about which countries you should file your patent in (every country has its own costs). Another tip regarding patents is that you don’t need to file them until you’re really ready to talk about your idea publicly. if you’re doing your own market research, hold off on filing any applications until you are ready to start marketing, manufacturing or pitching VCs.
Currently, manufacturing is easier than ever. You can use Alibaba to find a product related to yours and then start messaging suppliers of that tangential product. With a bit of digging, you’ll be able to find out who are the middlemen, and who are the manufacturers. My tip for plastic products is ask what colors they can manufacture in, if they don’t say “any color” and specify just black or white, then you’re talking to a middleman. Then collect samples from any manufacturers you’re interested in. Test the feel, durability, etc. as those things will likely translate into your product, too. If their samples feel or look cheap, your manufactured product will probably feel or look cheap. Also, do some math, often a small run of 100 units might cost the same or even more than a normal run of 10,000, figure out your costs, shipping, and storage, and get quotes dor way more and way less than you really need.
Retailers can be harder to find, and the advice I have heard recently is avoid retail until you are big enough that you can survive it. They will squeeze your margins unless you already have validated your target MSRP, and you can end up losing money even at a high volume of sales. Additionally, if you aren’t protected with patents and trademarks, they can just do an off-label production of your product and cut you out when your contract is up. Ecommerce is easier than ever, so first explore the interest of your product online and then make the retailers come to you.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Things are going to take at least twice as long as you expect.
No matter how much planning you do, things are going to take twice as long as you expect, because there are other people and processes involved. There might be a freeze on cargo ships, blackouts in the country you are doing manufacturing in, errors in the final product, etc. and you can’t rationally expect all these things, but you can build in buffer time.
I gave myself big buffers in our first SWIFF manufacturing run, but even so, I missed my self-imposed ship date. This happened because the international shipper we used to mail our empty bottles to the filling facility we use in the US, didn’t include the street address of the fillers, just the street name. So the bottles were delivered to a random address on the same huge street, and it took a lot of time and phone calls to figure out where they were and to get them to where they needed to be. Other people will make errors, get sick, have emergencies, and your project will only be priority number 1 for yourself. So double whatever timelines you have to be sure there is plenty of buffer for mistakes and world events.
2. A brand can be even more important than a product.
As a scientist, I tend to think the product and its functioning are the most important things for a company, however I’ve learned that the brand and the marketing are often as important, if not more so. So when designing a product, figure out a target market and think about how those customers should engage with your company, your product, and you, and that will help inform your brand strategy.
Luckily, my wife works for a branding agency (CourtneyKimStudios) and helped turn my science breakthrough on antimicrobial coatings into a modern and approachable gender-neutral brand focused on stopping odors. The before and after pictures of the website and product design astounded me and made me a true believer in building a brand. In my view, this added as much value to SWIFF as the incredible science I put into it. Of course, part of your brand is delivering the best product and customer experience imaginable, so you always need to have a great product!
3. Be across every aspect of your company, don’t rely on others till you know what you need to rely on them for.
Founders or inventors should try to learn as much about the various aspects of the business they are trying to build. Everyone you ask to do something for you will want equity or money (or both), so be sure you know what you want and need, before asking. Design creep, website optimization, ads, etc. can all eat up time and money, so try to hash out the details beforehand. Asking general questions to prospective hires or freelancers is a great way to fill in gaps in your knowledge before deciding on what to spend money on. I had plenty of offers from people willing to be distributors, or to help out with design aspects, or even offering themselves as potential hires, but I didn’t want to commit until I really knew what those things would entail. Once I knew what it entailed, my wife and I could decide if it added tangible value to SWIFF at that time.
For example, I found that I could not do design and branding myself, thankfully my wife and her colleagues could. I also determined that, while I could do an okay job at online marketing, it was going to be too much for me on top of everything else, and that an expert could add a lot of value in that specific space. So once we understood exactly what ad creation and monitoring would entail and how to judge an ads expert from an ads amateur, we went ahead and hired one.
4. Your friends and family might cheer you on, but they’re not your target consumer.
Regardless of how supportive your friends or family might be, they’re biased and probably don’t want to make you feel bad. They also probably don’t want to actually buy your product either. So when trying to find out if people will be willing to buy your product, sure give some to friends and family, but also find strangers on Discord or Reddit to try your product and give advice.
I ended up sending samples of SWIFF to some random strangers on the Reddit in the ‘natural beauty’ sub to get feedback. The testing went so well that we were confident that real customers would love our product, and that our current instructions were clear enough for strangers to use. In terms of friends and family, about 50% of the people we gave samples to sent us any feedback, while 100% of the strangers that were interested sent us incredible feedback.
5. Your biggest supporters might come from unlikely places.
This relates to the point above, but you never know who will become your biggest fan. And since you don’t know this, you should try to talk to different people and communities about what you are doing. I found an outpouring of support on Reddit and some Facebook groups, and it was rarely the people that I thought would be most interested. So find some passionate people that can help test and improve your product, and keep them in the loop, they’ll become your biggest cheerleaders.
Specifically, I first invented SWIFF as an antimicrobial coating for face masks, it was only later after talking to customers that regularly try cutting-edge masks that I realized there was no real market for this. People who cared about great masks already had the best ones, and people that didn’t care about great masks didn’t want to spend any extra money on anything mask related. That’s when I started exploring SWIFF for clothes and other materials and found that it protected against odors, and subsequently that this is a huge market (valued at well over $40 Billion USD annually. These new conversations made me realize that people want new safer, natural products for preventing odors and that traditional deodorants and so called “natural” deodorants were just not hitting the spot. That’s how SWIFF was really born.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Start writing things down and make a plan of what needs to be done to make it a physical reality. Then, create a more general plan on what the company that would sell this product will look like. Break the invention process down into specific categories so that you can try to design an MVP that is feasible, economical, and reproducibly does what it is supposed to do. Talk to people in any target consumer groups that might exist to see if there is a real pain point that your product solves, or if you just think it solves the problem. Handmake a prototype if you need, combine off-the-shelf components, and start testing it yourself as you mull over the design steps. Whatever frustrates you about your product design will be sure to frustrate costumers.
In other words, the first step should be to turn that idea into a reality, even if just on paper. Just attempting that will fill in lots of knowledge gaps and pave the way for deciding whether to pursue it or not. There are also incredibly free online resources for business plan templates, customer interviews, product/market fit, and use those until you understand why the templates exist and how to think about the whole translation process.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I strongly recommend striking out on your own, especially if this is your first invention. People will take your money and do what you ask, but if you don’t fully understand what needs to be done to make your invention a real product (not just a physical item, but something people will pay for), it’s just money down the drain. It’s easy to think you can just hire someone to make your idea a reality The other reason you should start by yourself, is that going through the creation process will give you lots of additional experience relevant to making a real product. This will let you understand the pain points of your customer even better and let you shape the product and company to fit what it needs to do.
In terms of SWIFF, one unsolicited recommendation we received from those around us was to design a custom bottle shape, geometry, etc. rather than using an off-the-shelf design. However, designing new injection molds can be challenging and expensive, and there was sure to be things we would forget to do or features that were nice to have but not critical that we would try to squeeze in. So instead of sinking 5 figures into just the design stage of the product, we got some commercial bottles and tested those. Turns out we found one that was more than good enough, still gave us a unique feel, and greatly reduced our start-up costs. Had we used a design firm we probably would have had an over-engineered bottle that would have cost our whole budget and the additional features we would have added might not have improved the user experience, but were guaranteed to increase the cost.
All that being said, if your product is very technical, intricate, or needs to meet regulations, you need an expert. If you’re not the expert, ask yourself if you’re right to be starting this endeavor, and if you are the right person, find an expert to join, or if it’s cheaper, outsource to them to meet your aims.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
This is the question for the ages and comes down to personal preference and depends on the type of product being developed. I lean towards bootstrapping, because if it is your own money, you tend to be more careful with it and make sure it adds real value to you project. VC money is widely available and at favorable terms currently, but it’s possible to get lazy when you have excess money you HAVE to spend. There are plenty of paper unicorns that are not profitable, but used investor money to pump up valuations because they had to, and that’s an easy trap to fall into. But if you have a product that needs a huge user base to be profitable (make sure it can actually be profitable though), or is highly regulated, such as medical devices, then you should strongly consider investor funding early on so you can grow rapidly. Investors will also have some knowledge for tricky subjects that can help, so try to make sure they are strategically placed to aid you the most. Also consider whether you
For SWIFF, we have avoided taking outside money, even though plenty has been offered, as my wife and I wanted full ownership. We also wanted to have the last say on how to run the business, what angles to go after, etc. and did not want to have pressure from investors if we decided to have a slow month while we travelled or moved countries. Finally, we wanted to learn valuable lessons along the way, and excess money can smooth out critical learning points that might come back to bite you. In the future, if we think that VC money will help, we will definitely consider it, and since we have sales we are in a much more valuable position to negotiate than the design stage.
In other words, the easiest way to decide whether you should bootstrap or go for VC funding is to ask the question, what is the minimum amount of money I need to reach the next milestone. If you have that money, and can risk it, then go for it because every additional user you get on your own boosts your valuation, so if you do need to get outside money later, it will be worth more to you and dilute your ownership less. You’ll also be in a better position to recognize which VCs will strategically benefit your company the most.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’m really lucky that my day job involves discovering new knowledge and training the next generation of fantastic researchers. So I am thankful that I am making the world a better place and have products on the market that are improving lives around the world. In terms of SWIFF, my wife and I took a lifestyle approach which has resulted in the first product anywhere, that protects clothes from odors and lasts through multiple washes. Having people thank us for allowing them to control their body odors in a safe way has been really rewarding. Smelling fresh might seem small in the grand scheme of things, but that confidence boost can go a long way in making the world a happier and healthier place. And helping people avoid contact with synthetic chemicals, aerosols, fragrances and the like, improves health, so I like to think we’re making the world a better place on a few fronts.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would want to inspire a movement that takes a longer-term approach to products in everyday life, because there are a lot of little things that damage our environment, our health, and even our offspring’s health through epigenetic changes. I’d like products to be a bit cleaner, with more oversight during the manufacturing process so we can avoid issues like the recent finding that many commercial deodorants have benzene in them. A return to nature, but with strong scientific underpinnings is my dream and something I’m working towards slowly with my research and with my company, SWIFF.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
There are some awesome and inspirational people out there that I would love to meet and some I’m happy to just watch from afar (like Keanu Reeves). There are some comedians I’d love to meet face-to-face to hear about their life experiences and learn their approach to oration. But two people I’d really be interested in meeting and talking with are Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Cuban.
Nassim, because I love his thoughts on black swan events, randomness, and philosophy and think there are some interesting parallels with how science progresses and major discoveries occur. And because my background in philosophy would let us talk about a broad range of topics, I feel like we could have a rewarding chat over lunch.
I’d also like to have lunch with Mark too, because he’s seen so much in business and life that I feel like a lunch with him would teach me as much as an MBA. In particular, his thoughts on consumer products, retail, and everything involved with that would be invaluable to me. I also like his thoughts on the value of a philosophy degree and definitely validate his idea that a degree in philosophy is worthwhile, and maybe I could teach him some tips for scientific feasibility when considering what biotechs to invest in.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Victoria Gates-Fleming Of Day One Agency: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Lead by example: As a leader, it’s important that your actions match your words. This helps to build trust and respect with your colleagues and boost morale.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Victoria Gates-Fleming.
Victoria is Vice President of Digital Strategy & Creative Insights at Day One, a creative agency based in LA, New York and Chicago. Day One is a multi-award-winning agency whose clients include Chipotle, American Express, and Ferrara. She specializes in digital and social strategy with experience across integrated and social-specific campaigns. Her work has spanned sectors including technology, fashion, consumer lifestyle, travel, healthcare, professional services and not-for-profit.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I have always loved art and creativity. I studied History of Art at university but I always knew I wanted to get into marketing or advertising. I was fascinated by great advertising campaigns and how they make people feel and or can change behavior.
After a brief stint client side in a marketing role for my first job in London, I moved agency-side. I was always interested in pursuing agency life — perhaps the opportunity to be surrounded by the greatest, sharpest, most creative minds and the chance to work on lots of different clients. In my roles, I was able to work with a variety of clients in a wide range of sectors from healthcare and travel to lifestyle and technology. I loved learning about new industries, communities and audiences.
In 2018, my husband got a job in Los Angeles and we decided to make the move. I was nervous at the time to quit my job and move to a new country, but excited by the prospect of replacing the rain of London for palm trees and blue skies. We moved to LA in November that year and by the following spring I was interviewing with Day One. The talent and creativity at Day One is so inspiring and I feel lucky to work with some of the best in the business!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
It definitely wasn’t funny at the time, but 10+ years ago I was working on a big campaign that culminated with a nine-foot bronze statue being revealed in central London. The unveiling of the statue was a huge event with hundreds of notable attendees, including people who had flown from as far as New Zealand to be there. One of my many responsibilities in my role as a junior marketing coordinator was helping with the printed schedule (or booklets) so that everyone knew what was happening when. This included speeches and a flypast by a Spitfire and a Hurricane (aircraft used by The Royal Air Force during World War II).
The booklets were meant to be handed out as people arrived, but, the issue was, I had sent them all to the wrong destination (a hotel with the same name that was 20 minutes away). I jumped right in a taxi with a few colleagues to go and collect the boxes and they were handed out later that evening. People were a little confused, but needless to say, I’ve never made a mistake like that again and to this day I still triple check every address!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I’ve been lucky to have a number of amazing cheerleaders throughout my career so far. I have one person who springs to mind though who really pushed me professionally to believe in myself and what I am capable of. Not only was he really inspiring and motivational, but he pushed me out of my depth and made me realize all that I could do. I think that’s such a crucial hallmark of a great manager — giving people confidence in their own ability and opportunities to shine. When someone believes in you, you believe in yourself more.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Day One is more than just a name, it’s a commitment. The philosophy is bringing the same energy and enthusiasm to every project, every single day. Our culture has always been at the core of everything we do — It’s what makes Day One, Day One. A lot of agencies talk about making content, but we believe stories are what actually break through, and we’ve built our entire creative process around them. Day One offers a highly collaborative environment where smart and passionate people come together to solve creative communications challenges. We proudly say that we are a creative communications agency that is built for the next 24 hours and the next 10 years.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
When COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic last March, I was in Chicago on a work trip and I remember watching the news in my hotel room. I hadn’t been feeling very well, I was pregnant and I had no idea what this meant for us (my colleagues, my family, etc). From that moment onwards, I never returned to the office as I flew back to LA and we started working remotely. There was no rule book for how to work or manage a team during such uncertain times. Despite the unpredictability of the situation and the fact that no one had the answers, here are a couple of things we did at Day One:
Be human first: We were collectively going through such a challenging and confusing global event that changed absolutely everything. We were suddenly locked in our houses and Zoom screens, with many separated from family. It was important to acknowledge the difficulties and give people the space or breaks they needed. During the pandemic, we introduced a great new initiative at the agency — Fresh Thinking Mornings — dedicated meeting-free time each week for people to spend it however they wanted (working out, reading, journaling, catching up on emails etc.)
Don’t take anyone for granted: I made it a priority to check in with as many people as I could (virtually, of course) and ensure that everyone felt their contributions were valued. It is important to make sure everyone feels valued and recognized, whatever you’re going through. I always say thank you.
Share vulnerabilities: When we went into a lockdown no one really had the answers, despite wishing we did. Creating a safe space for people to share their feelings was so important. I also learned that showing vulnerability as a leader is okay, too. Most importantly, we had to show that we are all in this together.
Stay optimistic: Think about what is in your control and what is out of your control. Find ways to spark moments of positivity and channel good vibes. Focus on strengths and solutions. We kept an eye on the big picture and actively sought opportunities to celebrate team wins — big and small. We regularly took time to reflect together and acknowledge how far we had come.
Lead by example: As a leader, it’s important that your actions match your words. This helps to build trust and respect with your colleagues and boost morale.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
This last year has been the most challenging year of my life. Working and living through a pandemic, learning to look after a new baby and dealing with the collective uncertainty we have all faced are some of those challenges. I honestly couldn’t have done any of it without the support of my husband. He gives me motivation (and coffee) daily and pushes me forward.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Being compassionate and leading with empathy.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Positive energy goes a long way. Leaders must also lead by example, not be afraid to get their hands dirty and get to work on the task at hand. But it’s also important to set boundaries and encourage people to switch off, rest and restore. We’ve collectively been through this seismic event and it’s important to acknowledge that, but find ways to move forward.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Difficult news is always going to be hard to hear and hard to say, but sympathizing and empathizing with everyone is crucial. Where possible, help find solutions and give people an actionable next step.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Everyone has been shaken by events of the past two years. We have learned that the only constant is change — and you have to embrace that. When the path ahead is unclear, you have to plan to the best of your ability. Finding ways to put one foot in front of the other and keep teams motivated. It’s important for leaders to be humble and conscious that things outside your control can mean your course needs to change. Leaders must take a flexible approach to planning, being adaptable is so important.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Be kind.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Like many other companies, we had to reinvent how we connected with each other and the work, as our business was growing at rapid speed. We not only advanced together as an agency but also individually, by encouraging creative, career and personal growth. We navigated the uncertain world around us, and deepened our relationships with clients, leading to significant agency growth over the past year. But beyond our growth, this ongoing time of worldly uncertainty sharpened our mission to move the world by stopping it in its scroll with stories that earn a place in culture, connect with our people and clients and become ever more agile. And most importantly we will emerge as more empathetic leaders for our colleagues, clients and communities.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
I think I have covered most of these in an earlier question, but to reiterate: be human first, don’t take anyone for granted, share vulnerabilities, stay optimistic and lead by example.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou. This ties back to the focus of this conversation as well as my role as a leader. I try to look at all of life’s decisions through this lens.
How can our readers further follow your work?
You can see all the fun things we are up to at Day One at www.d1a.com or on Instagram at @dayoneagency.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
…Making time to share your knowledge, skills, and approaches with those around you is critical. Startup founders are unable to scale as a result of this.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Anne Cheng.
Anne is the founder of Supercharge Lab, a Cognitive Artificial Intelligence company that optimizes business outcomes through psychological profiling, helping companies reduce wastes of time, effort, and money. Anne is a serial entrepreneur who has previously exited two startups and has consulted for both large enterprises and startups through her previous work as the founder of Southeast Asian angel fund, Start Up Nation.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born into a working-class family, and we were never too rich. While my mother came from a family of more “have’s” than have-not’s, I felt judged by society’s image of success. I wanted to be better, smarter, prettier, richer than the rest. I was not.
I did not do as well in school and almost flunked out just before entering college. At college, I almost dropped out because of my ego and argued with my dean, and claiming trauma, never turned up for classes.
I started off in a call center, then got a job in private banking business development, where I knew nothing, did nothing, and failed terribly. It all changed when the financial crisis swung by and everyone, at the first sense of trouble, jumped ship. I stayed behind and tried to save the lives of many (and will be remembered as either the hero or the villain of the mess of 2008).
I’ve had my fair share of setbacks. Much more than accomplishments. But I did learn to accept my truth as long as I practiced.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Live Your Truth” is my favorite life lesson quote.
To live my truth, I must be accepting of failure. Living my truth means admitting that I don’t know much, but that I’m prepared to try, fail, and learn. Telling it like it is — and being kind to the people I encounter and engage with — is living my truth.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I would have to say ‘Dead Poets Society’ — A group of guys from a private prep school meet their new English teacher in this film. The teacher encourages the boys to value their individuality, think for themselves, and pursue their interests. This takes them down a path of self-discovery that runs against to the conservative institution’s rigorous ethos.
In this film, Robert Keating, the said teacher, whispers to the boys in an iconic scene, “Carpe diem. Seize the day.” The boys take risks, discover their passion, and learn the value of independent thought thanks to the teacher’s encouragement and leadership.
Leadership entails empowering people to realize their full potential. You can set them on a path to discovering their true abilities. You can inspire them to reach for higher goals than they think are achievable. You can motivate them to pursue their goals, and one of the most essential lessons you can teach them is to embrace the concept of “carpe diem,” or “seize the day.”
Seizing the day to me is really about never letting a day go by without being a better version of yourself. It’s also inspiring to learn more about what seizing the day means to everyone else.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
“Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, and vision with action can change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
The first step is to take the concept and validate it with customers. I’ve mentioned in several previous interviews that a lot of people throw good money after a solution that doesn’t quite have a real “problem”. The lack of a market need for their product is one of the leading causes of business failure. It’s an uphill battle to build a business if no one wants your product or service.
After you have built confidence in the market need for your solution, the next step is really to build the basis of your business — deliver the solution, drive extreme customer satisfaction through excellence in the customer experience, then drive outcomes every step of the way — whether it’s in product development, early customer adoption, and then scaling the business up.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
You can do so much research, and of course, every good idea has already been done. But the reality is that innovation comes in different forms — many people take an idea that has been done and make it better. You can have incremental innovation, transformational innovation, and even disruptive innovation.
But as I mentioned in the last answer, validation is critical for your idea. If you can’t find anyone who’s going to give you the buy-in that you need, then perhaps you need to go back to the drawing board and work at your idea from a different angle.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
After your idea has been validated, you’ll need to consider how to get your solution to the customer with as little friction as possible. While I’m not an IP lawyer, nor an expert at manufacturing or product distribution, I have created businesses across different cultures and situations, and the one piece of advice I would give is to reduce the steps, friction, and time required to getting your ideal customer to experience the benefits of your solution.
It’s easy to find resources on the internet on how to get your product into your customers’ hands. But the one thing I wish someone had told me was the importance of reducing friction in every process.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Being a leader involves understanding that the people doing the task will be your greatest source of inspiration. Their frustrations are a rich source of knowledge. We must continue to learn and unlearn, as well as let go of our preconceived assumptions.
Embrace the discomfort. This is something which I will admit that I do not do well. I wish I knew everything. I wish I knew what was next. I wish… But on the other side of discomfort is growth. Learning through neurodiversity, from pain and from our failures, we get better.
The weakest link in a chain determines its overall strength. If you want a high-performing organization, you must have a high-performing team. It’s critical to bring the proper folks along for the voyage. Too many times, I’ve made poor decisions, believing that I could coach individuals to succeed and also failing to fire quickly enough. In terms of productivity, misunderstanding, and other toxic behaviors that can become reputational hazards for the organization, the weakest link(s) often drag the performance of everyone else in the firm down.
Making time to share your knowledge, skills, and approaches with those around you is critical. Startup founders are unable to scale as a result of this.
The significance of ‘checking-out’ in order to avoid burnout. It may seem tough to do a digital detox, but get creative and protect your personal time and space. Turn your phone off for an hour, then two, and gradually increase it.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
I would start with the end in mind. Imagine first, how your customer will feel, think, and act when interacting with your solution. Understand exactly the steps required to get the product into the desired state, such that you can have the desired outcome — work backwards, plan, and derive your strategy from stepping into the shoes of your ideal customer and immersing yourself into the emotional, mental, and psychological (or even physical) effects that you want to trigger through the interaction with your product.
Only by starting with your customer in mind can you truly start to build the solution. Then, validate that someone would pay you to feel the way you want them to feel with the product you want them to buy. The rest isn’t rocket science — it’s just building a product-based business.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I’ve always been the kind of entrepreneur who gets my hands dirty — but that is not to say that consultants aren’t useful. The biggest need for an aspiring entrepreneur though, is really to find someone who has bought in to the vision of the company — not someone who is with you because they are being paid to do so. A mentor would be a good starting point to help you find your feet and lead you through the vagaries of being an entrepreneur.
I would hire a consultant if I were not a first-time entrepreneur, someone who can not only be a strategic sounding board, but someone who can help accelerate outcomes to get the product to market quickly.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
There is not one right answer to this — fundraising can really suck the life out of you and divert important management resources away from important organic growth. That said, fundraising can really propel your startup to greater heights in a shorter amount of time. It is really a question of your company’s needs, stage, and particular (financial) situation that will help you get to your answer. Having a mentor who is a professional investor can help you cut through the noise and decide if fundraising is the right thing for you.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Our purpose is to always assist people in acting, thinking, and doing better. While this remark is broad and general, we have always worked to develop solutions that allow our clients to spend more time interacting as people.
That said, I am a backer of entrepreneurs and small enterprises, as well as an advocate for the ethical use of AI. Supercharge Lab has given me the opportunity to explore how technology might be applied to causes that I care about, such as mental health awareness and assistive/rehabilitative technologies.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
That’s a tough one because I’m passionate about so many causes. I believe the one thing the human race needs more of is a better understanding of one another, so teaching people to listen with more empathy and less judgement could be a good idea.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to have a private breakfast with Michelle Obama. Her passion is with people, and it would be cool to collaborate with her about making the world a better place.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Erin Engelke Of Calm Waters: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Surround yourself with a support system. I am a strong advocate for executive coaching, especially as a CEO. Leadership can be a very lonely place! You need a safe space to talk openly about the challenges you’re facing as a leader without pushing it onto your team, and an executive coach is one of the best ways to receive that kind of confidential support. I participate in an executive coaching group every month and they have guided me through countless challenging workplace experiences.
As a part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Erin Engelke.
Erin Engelke, APR is the Executive Director for Calm Waters Center for Children & Families, a nonprofit grief center located in Oklahoma City that serves children and families who have experienced loss due to death, divorce or other significant loss, providing free support groups and other services. She is also a certified trainer, public speaker and executive coach for Strata Leadership.
Prior to Calm Waters, Erin served in executive nonprofit leadership roles for Sunbeam Family Services, Feed the Children and World Neighbors. She has traveled extensively around the world, including Guatemala, Albania, and Peru and has a heart for seeing children and families thrive no matter where they live.
Her deepest passion is empowering other working parents to resist the pull to achieve work-life balance, instead seeking a fulfilled life. Her expertise and real-life perspectives have been heard on stages across Oklahoma, including as a TEDx presenter in 2014 and keynote speaker for the Junior League of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City Working Mom Summit and other leadership conferences. She is a writer, blogger and founder of www.beautyinthebusyness.com.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I began my career in corporate and agency PR and marketing, with every intent of rising the corporate ladder, but four years in, discovered my skills and experience could best be utilized in supporting the leadership efforts of the nonprofit sector. Little did I know how much I would fall in love with the nonprofit community! Over the past 16 years, I’ve led and managed teams at four notable charities — World Neighbors, Feed the Children, Sunbeam Family Services and now at Calm Waters Center for Children & Families where I serve as the agency’s youngest Executive Director. In all four of these roles, I stepped in at a time when change was greatly needed and when strong leadership was needed. I excel at building a team from the ground up — quickly identifying what needs to be done, rallying a staff to help execute a strategy and making positive change happen. I love seeing my teams succeed! My success is their success. Most of all, I get such joy out of witnessing the change that can happen because of a powerful mission.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I can’t say I’ve made a funniest mistake, but I’ve certainly made some embarrassing ones! The most notable are the times I have called interns by the wrong names or forgotten a staff person’s work anniversary date. In other words, it’s the times my brain is so full that I forget things!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I have three! For starters, my mother taught me the value of hard work and how to step outside of my comfort zone, even when I didn’t think I could do it. She continues to be a wonderful example of what it means to be a mother and servant leader. As I began my career, I was privileged to work under the first female CEO of World Neighbors. She took a chance on me, seeing more potential in me than I even realized existed, and promoted me to Vice President of Marketing & Communications when I was 26 years old and 7 months pregnant with my first child. Her boldness, tenacity and strong leadership was an inspiration to me and the impetus for me to pour into the lives of other young potential leaders. Later in my career, I worked for another CEO whose leadership style was unlike any other. He believed in the Southwest Airlines methodology — if you invest in your employees, they will provide the highest quality of customer service to their clients. He genuinely cared about me, my family, and my long term dreams, wanting to help see them come to fruition, even if it meant I no longer worked for him. I credit him for teaching me the value of true servant leadership and consider him a life-long mentor and friend.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Calm Waters was founded because of a 9 year old boy who desperately needed mental health support after the sudden death of his father. There were no resources available within Oklahoma City and consequently, Calm Waters was born! Our original mission was to provide grief support groups for children but the agency quickly realized what a tremendous need there was for support groups for adults struggling with loss due to death and divorce. Today, our purpose and mission has never wavered and nearly 30 years later, we have served 60,000 grieving children, teens and adults.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
I can’t think of a CEO or leader today who wouldn’t consider the global pandemic an uncertain and difficult time. It has been incredibly challenging and anxiety provoking! I have made it my goal to be the calm in this storm, however, to ensure my team had certainty in something. We made the decision early on in the pandemic to close our offices and work from home, which was hugely challenging for my staff whose work is dependent upon being around people. I established a regular routine for all of us, beginning with a team Zoom meeting every single morning at 9am, giving us the opportunity to connect, talk about our priorities for the day and share our stressors. To this day, my team credits that daily connection with the reason they were able to still thrive while we were separated.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
I not once considered giving up! I am incredibly driven to see my staff succeed and our clients served and those two priorities drive my motivation every single day. I’m sustained by ensuring I am in a good place mentally and physically so that means I take time off when I need it, workout every day and lean on my executive coach and/or therapist for mental health support.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Serving as a leader is a tremendous honor but also one that comes with heavy responsibility. We are called to set the vision for our companies, inspire and motivate staff, ensure financial sustainability, communicate effectively, and serve as the key representative within the community. In essence, be all things to all people! In order to inspire those around us, leaders must convey confidence in themselves and their teams, positively communicate (even in the challenging times!) and above all, genuinely care about their staff and their lives beyond the workplace. At the end of the day, each of us wants to feel valued and appreciated, not just be viewed as a means to an end. For me, I strive to be confident in who I am and my purpose while showing humility and kindness to those around me. I find that confidence breeds huge amounts of respect and motivates others to join you, whether that’s in leading your team, making decisions, or building relationships with clients, shareholders or donors.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Begin with empathy! Listen to your team members, ask about their lives outside of the workplace and genuinely care about their wellbeing. When employees know their leader wants the best for them and will support their professional goals and dreams, they are more likely to work harder, be loyal to your mission and go above and beyond for your clients/customers. I love to give surprise gifts or write a personal note of encouragement for my staff. I laugh with them too! Work doesn’t have to be a boring, stiff environment. Get out of your office and engage with your employees. Making the culture enjoyable and fun will drive employees to come back every day with a positive, can-do attitude!
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
As leaders, we will have to share unfortunate or difficult information which is why it is paramount to have built trust and respect with your team before that becomes a necessity. Providing as much transparency as possible is critical. There will likely be confidential information that cannot be shared, but being honest about what you can and cannot share will ensure your staff and/or clients can trust you.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
A plan is just a guide! But every leader MUST have a plan, beginning with what they know in that moment of time. With COVID, our team still had to provide services to our clients which meant rewriting all of our service delivery plans….a huge endeavor! We didn’t know how long we would need to offer our services a different way but we were prepared to shift to a different model again when the time was appropriate.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Remain true to why you exist. Your mission and purpose should never waiver, especially during the valleys of leadership.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Caring more about the bottom line and less about the people you are there to serve or help.
Hiding information or not being honest and transparent about decisions being made within the business or organization.
Avoiding crucial conversations with staff, causing mistrust and chaos among the team. You have to discuss hard things. Read the book Crucial Conversations to learn how!
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
I am bold and aggressive when I am faced with challenges, especially financial ones. I believe every challenge is simply a problem to be solved and I attack it with that perspective in mind, seeking solutions from my team, peers and board members to help.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Ensure YOU are in a good place first. You can’t effectively take care of your team or lead your business/organization if you are struggling, personally or professionally. For me, I make sure I build into my schedule time to work out — usually a run or a lifting session at the gym. I also am diligent to take time off when I need it, and when I am off, modeling for my staff that time off is important and ensuring I set boundaries with that time off — not checking email or working from home.
Be clear about where you want your organization/business to go. It is your responsibility to set the vision and create as much certainty as possible for your team. Each year, I host an offsite strategic planning session with my executive team where we talk openly about what goals we have for the agency in the coming year. We dig deep into how we can improve while also celebrating the successes to date. Once the plan is complete, I schedule quarterly strategic plan review meetings to ensure our plan doesn’t gather dust on the shelf! We make modifications to the plan, as needed, during those meetings.
Be the calm in the storm…manage challenges without losing it or creating more chaos for your team. Uncertainty from a leader breeds more uncertainty with our staff! And while we may not always have the answers all the time, the way we react always sets the tone for our culture and the way our organization or business will react to customers or clients.
Spend time with your team and support them. Say hi to them first thing in the morning! Know about their families. Ask about their children. I’ll never forget the experience I had years ago, reporting directly to the CEO of a nonprofit. We traveled regularly and spent a lot of time together due to my role. Not one time did he ever ask about my husband or my children. In fact, I don’t think he even knew how many children I had. It was discouraging and disappointing and I lost a lot of respect for him over the years. His behavior demonstrated that I was simply someone there to benefit him…that my life outside of work didn’t matter. I vowed to never treat one of my own staff in the same way.
Surround yourself with a support system. I am a strong advocate for executive coaching, especially as a CEO. Leadership can be a very lonely place! You need a safe space to talk openly about the challenges you’re facing as a leader without pushing it onto your team, and an executive coach is one of the best ways to receive that kind of confidential support. I participate in an executive coaching group every month and they have guided me through countless challenging workplace experiences.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
As we especially know from the last two years, life has a way of presenting unexpected challenges, some of which you don’t always think you can tackle. But in most every instance, you CAN accomplish far more than you could ever imagine. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
Find your own voice. It’s hard to not be swayed by other brands and what they are doing that works. I can point to Wendy’s as an example — its social media is phenomenal right now — but that definitely won’t work for everyone! For us, we use our imagery as a tool to express ourselves. We’ve been really leaning into new ways to photograph our product, pulling in location, models, time of day to tell a new story. It’s where we’re most comfortable and authentic — when we are showing beauty.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Steve Delfino.
Steve Delfino, vice president of corporate marketing and product management at Teknion — a leading international designer and manufacturer of office systems and furniture products — has years of experience under his belt as it relates to the formula for workplace happiness. Delfino is responsible for keeping a constant pulse on the business environment and ensuring that Teknion’s product portfolio proactively responds to changing needs in the workplace. He oversees the introduction of new products and enhancements to existing lines, including pricing and marketing.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I wish I could tell you it was a master plan I had! Like a lot of people, I just followed opportunities and interests, and I couldn’t be happier with where it has led me.
I have always loved design, and that’s what drew me into this industry. The levels of complexity — working with architects, designers, c-suite executives, and brokers; it’s a daily challenge and totally invigorating. My education is in psychology and marketing, so being able to dig into understanding a company’s work style, its business vision, and helping to visually articulate its culture is amazingly fulfilling.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Let’s just say I’ve learned to rely on advice from legal people when naming products, and to check Urban Dictionary as well as Webster’s before making any final decisions. Honestly, though, I love mistakes. If I go a week without feeling like I messed something up, I don’t think I’m doing my job right. We need to take chances and risks if we want to feel challenged — both personally and as a company.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Well, I’m totally biased, but I think our culture and people make us incredibly special. It starts with David (Felberg, Teknion’s CEO) who is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. This is a family business, and you can feel that throughout the organization — we take it personally, and we care very deeply about our products and impact.
Something I think we overlook a lot is that Teknion was one of the first companies to really question our impact on the environment. I was personally a little late to the game, and to be totally frank, the first value I saw was it being “good for business and sales”. My thinking was small and short sighted there. Today, we don’t have a product meeting or start a program without a design for the environment (DFE) discussion. It’s never forced, or needs to be a line item on an agenda: it has completely permeated our culture. We are always working to balance the cost implications, the impact to shape and material, and maintaining the priority of beauty and function above all else.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We have a new, really exciting product that’s all about collaboration and reconfiguration. It’s inspired by the challenges of the past two years, and how our behaviors have evolved drastically, including our increased expectations of our environments. We are always looking at how we can make peoples’ working lives better. Those solutions were around fixed spaces and panel heights, and storage, etc. Now we’ve entered this new world where work is no longer a place — it’s an activity and it can happen anywhere and anytime. So how do you support that behavior change from a product side? These are the things that get me excited every day.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
Brand is about you. Your values, your culture, your people.
Product is your solution to your clients’ problems.
I always think about it like this — a conversation starts with your brand (why do we want to keep talking, what’s connecting us, where are you going in the future and does it align with where I want to go?) and then you talk about your product as it relates to the things you’ve learned in the conversation about brand.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
It used to be that we led with products first. The brand itself didn’t used to be deeply important to clients. As we think more about the choices we make and the companies that we work with, branding has taken over in importance — this “softer side” of business has become the conversation leader. (ie. Do our values align, and are you someone I want to do business with.)
Overall questions that any client wants answers to before they partner with you:
Who are you?
What do you care about?
How can you solve my problem?
The first two questions can only be answered by a clear and authentic brand.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
1. Understand customer behavior — it’s easy to get in the habit of staying in your bubble, and then you begin to design and market for a smaller and smaller audience. My most valuable lessons have been learned in the field, talking to architects and designers about their challenges — not through formal focus groups, but open questions. “What problems are you having trouble solving?” “Where is time and money wasted throughout the process?”
This seems so basic, but it’s too easy to get away from.
2. Focus on a unique value proposition — we have to remember it’s not who we think we are, it’s who our clients think we are. And
3. Keep following up — ask past clients about where we succeeded, look for patterns in their answers, and then you’ll find what’s truly valuable in the eyes that matter: the clients.
4. For Teknion specifically, we sell to design, and because of that everything we do reinforces design. We need to speak to what our clients like, and reflect their values and priorities in each step we take.
5.Find your own voice. It’s hard to not be swayed by other brands and what they are doing that works. I can point to Wendy’s as an example — its social media is phenomenal right now — but that definitely won’t work for everyone! For us, we use our imagery as a tool to express ourselves. We’ve been really leaning into new ways to photograph our product, pulling in location, models, time of day to tell a new story. It’s where we’re most comfortable and authentic — when we are showing beauty.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
Adidas. The company has never wavered from who it is — never chasing people or trends. It doesn’t overmarket. I mean, Adidas has basically had the same strong logo since the 1950’s. Can you imagine doing something so well the first time, AND having it past the test of time and still work? Amazing.
They know exactly who they are and who their clients are. I look to Adidas a lot when I’m trying to remember how important it is to stay true to your company, and not try to wedge yourself in somewhere you don’t belong. You’re not going to see Adidas trying to sign athletes out of high school because there’s no feeling of any opportunistic marketing from them.
The “celebrity” I most associate with Adidas is Run DMC (maybe just me? I’m a huge fan, my kids are cringing right now…) — but that really shows how ahead of the game they were; seeing that intersection of fashion, sports, and music decades before anyone else did.
Anyway, I could go on about this for ages. I wear a size 10 and I like the court classics. Just in case Adidas is reading.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
First measure of success is how the internal people feel about it. Before you go to market, you’ve got to make sure the visuals and language are gaining traction with employees — do they feel inspired? Are they more excited than they were yesterday? Are they proud to be a part of this company? If you can resonate with your folks, you know you’re telling the right story.
If there’s interaction and engagement with brands on social media — even negative! — you know you’re sparking thought and conversation. We want to be part of that community, not just a post and run.
And last I’d say loyalty, do people begin to value the brand more than the product. Is it an Adidas or is it a sneaker?
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Social media is selling when you are not in the room. It’s a way to capture people’s imaginations when they’re not looking for you. Through social media, if you’re doing it well, you’re creating a relationship. It can be very personal — you’re part of someone’s every day. I hate to admit this, but I start my day looking at TikTok. It’s my routine, and it’s a privilege to be able to be part of someone’s routine. We take that seriously.
What advice would you give to other marketers or business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
Measure different things. Not the number of meetings you take. How about the number of steps you take? Recognize that a conversation at the coffee machine is equally valuable as one that’s been scheduled for a few months. I think we need to understand there’s a huge difference between a packed calendar and a productive day.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think a real focus on mental wellbeing would bring us some good. The importance of genuine human connections — the value of this has really been shown as we’ve lost our easy access to it recently.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“The world doesn’t need another boring blue suit. Be you.”
I was given that advice by someone I won’t mention because she’ll hold it over me forever, and my career took off.
Be authentic in all things, even if you feel like you’re going to make a mistake. When I stopped trying to be what others expected and I listened to my own voice, and valued my own questions, I felt much more connected to the work.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Barack Obama. I felt connected to him since his 2004 DNC speech that offered such hope for unity. His calm, cool leadership through incredibly stressful events is a lesson to us all. I’ll give you my cell number if you can ask him to text me so we can hang out.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
LinkedIn is where I like to share my thoughts about the industry and what we’re doing at Teknion. I’m not giving you my Instagram — no one needs that much hockey, cocktails, dinners and kid content.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Making Something From Nothing: Victoria Reid Of EventWell Collective On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
It’s not going to be perfect. When it comes to my work, I am a perfectionist to a fault. I was slow in setting up my websites. I spent too much time examining the colors, fonts, and questioning if I was offering the right services. What was worse was I was paying a virtual assistant to help me. Until I could give her the information she needed, she could not move forward. This impacted her financially. The advice I tell myself continuously is it won’t be perfect. Do the best you can and make adjustments along the way.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Victoria Reid.
Victoria Reid, CMP, CMM, RYT, is an event expert and founder of EventWell Collective™. Known as the Logistical Gangsta, Victoria has thrived in the meeting and event industry for 20 years fueled by her love of creating something from nothing. Her speciality is curating experiences that attendees walk away from as better human beings, feeling informed, educated, and motivated. Through EventWell Collective™, organizers are able to incorporate wellness, inclusivity, and sustainability into their events, through movement, healthy food options, limited waste, cultural diversity, and more. As a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) who holds an International Certificate in Meeting Management (CMM), Victoria combines the goals of events with the well-being of those attending to deliver an unconventional experience where everyone feels seen, heard, and nourished. Victoria has a bachelors in communication and is the director of education for the Kentucky Bluegrass Chapter of Meeting Professionals International. She focuses on her own wellbeing as a registered yoga teacher (RYT) who also loves hiking, cycling, and tennis. Victoria views traveling as an important part of her personal growth and has trekked Kilimanjaro, Machu Picchu, and is currently training for the Himalayas. When she’s not hard at work, you can find her spending time with her family, putting her motorcycle and sailing licenses to use.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I loved my childhood. It was spent pretending and creating. I can remember being four years old, taking my record player out to the garage, wearing a poofy slip and pretending to be a ballerina. My mother recognized my love for physical movement and enrolled me in dance. It was then that I discovered a love for tap. Even though I was shy, I loved to perform and am the same way today. I dislike being in the spotlight, but once I share knowledge with others, I feel fulfilled.
I was a Girl Scout. There I found friendship, autonomy to create things to earn badges, business skills, and discovered nature. There are two particular lessons I learned that have stayed with me, communication and love of nature. First, selling cookies taught me how to sell at a very young age and helped me come out of my shell. During cookie season, my father would walk with me from neighbor to neighbor allowing me to pull my little red wagon up to their porch. He would stand at the end of the driveway, give me a little loving encouragement and allow me to sell on my own. I had comfort knowing he was standing behind me. This experience helped break me out of my shyness. To this day, I believe this single act of support gave me the confidence to connect with others. The second lesson learned was a deep appreciation for nature. This was my first experience walking in the woods. At the time I didn’t know why I loved it, I just did. As I’ve grown older that love has strengthened and grown deeper. As a business person who spends a lot of time working in the field of wellness and well-being, I now know why there is a strong bond. The relationship between wellness and nature satisfies our wonder, it reduces stress, and helps us to be happier. This love of nature has helped me explore different areas of the world, spending eight days on Kilimanjaro, a week trekking Machu Picchu, and soon to spend three weeks trekking Nepal. My love of nature and all of the benefits I can contribute to my time spent in Girl Scouts.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My life lesson learned quote is, “If you come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution. The solution doesn’t have to be the right one, just bring me a solution.”
Yesterday I was sharing with my son-in-law this lesson I learned from my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Bottom. My classmates appointed me to ask Mrs. Bottom if we could have a band play at our special year-end event. When I got up to Mrs. Bottom’s desk, my shyness came out and I asked something like, we want to change the party. I never mentioned adding the band. It was then that she said, “If you come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution. The solution doesn’t have to be the right one, just bring me a solution.”
This one very short, poignantconversation, shifted my thinking to well… making me think! Not only did she give me permission to solve a problem, she genuinely wanted to hear my solution. From that moment on, I began to seek solutions for everything. This is more than likely why my life’s path took me down the road of an event strategist. I feed off creating something from nothing, solving problems, and creating alternative approaches to the status quo.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
While traveling through an airport, I stopped to look for something, anything, that would help me to understand what was wrong with me. Stress, long hours, travel away from home, and a demanding job as an event professional left me drained and thinking something was wrong with me.
In that bookstore I discovered a gift — Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. As I read the book, the stories and supporting facts made sense. I literally have coffee stains dripped down the pages and wrote next to them, “coffee stains were worth it.” My book is marked and marred with my personal insights and stains. It resonated with me so strongly, I have gifted it to several people whom I felt needed to read it.
The reasons I feel so strongly about McKeown’s book is it helped me reposition my thinking about life, family career, and personal well-being. It was instrumental in me paring down my life to focus on what is essential and ultimately led me to establish my own events company that incorporates well-being. The book is filled with stories and insights on how to determine what is important in life. It’s when we select what is important that we can begin to live our lives to the fullest.
The last two pages of the book, the section titled, “The Essential Life: Living a Life That Really Matters,” really drove home the preceding pages in an incredibly powerful story about a father’s loss of his three-year old daughter. While the father was putting together a video of her, he realized that he had recorded her in places where they had taken her — experiences, vacations, out to eat, etc. But what he had not done was to record just her up close — her essence. Reading this poignant story brought about a strong awareness within myself that we need to choose what is essential. Sometimes there isn’t an opportunity to do it over.
There were two learnings McKeown discovered from this. I can wholeheartedly identify with them. The first was that family is everything. Without them nothing else matters. Period. The second lesson is one that I have spent the last 20 years hanging onto — our time on this earth is limited. I am in my third quarter of life, and providing there isn’t another plan, I have few more years of quality life left. As you read this you might be thinking, this is morbid. I agree. But the bottom line is we don’t know when the story of our lives will conclude. So, it’s in our best interest to look at every aspect of our lives to determine what is essential.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I tell people all the time, it’s okay to make pickle ice cream. Someone is going to love it.
I was teaching yoga at an international conference. During a down dog, my two passions collided, yoga and events. For the last 20 years, I have been planning major events for corporations, entrepreneurs, and organizations. After experiencing extreme burnout, I gave up my career in events to focus on my personal well-being and became a yoga instructor. It was in that down dog that I began to see the event world from a different lens, one that incorporates wellness into events. When we acknowledge the uniqueness of each individual participating in an event, from dietary preferences and restrictions, physical movement, religious observances, how they take in information, etc., engagement is boosted and each person leaves feeling seen, heard, and happy.
At first, the concept of integrating wellness into events was not received well. In fact, I was told several times that it won’t work. I didn’t listen to them. I had witnessed time and time again, when wellness was considered during an event and when it was not. For example, at one event there was a panel of five unknown individuals who were asked to take the stage. What I did not know was that one of the panelists lived in a larger body. When that individual got to the chair on stage, they were unable to sit in it. What was heartbreaking was the other panelists decided to sit, leaving this person to stand during the presentation. My heart broke then and continues to do so today. What drives me today is my convection to design events that allows participants to feel equal and included.
The advice I would share with someone who faces challenges with getting your new ideas up and running, have a knowledge about what you are doing, define your niche, do market research, and be flexible.
Have a solid understanding of what you want to accomplish or get to know someone who has expertise in the field. As a veteran of both events and well-being, I knew I had a solid knowledge of both to explore the possibility further.
What helped me foundationally, was to define my niche. If you have an idea for a product or service, define what makes your product special, how you will solve a problem, and what your specific market will be. My advice is to write it, test it, and refine it. I’ve rewritten my niche statement five times. It’s evolution has helped me shape my product and market. It helped me find my voice to tell my story. The more I speak and refine it, the clearer the solutions are for the problems I am trying to solve and who I am helping.
Do market research — continuously. Using my initial niche statement, I started having conversations with colleagues in the events arena and those with a wellness background. I conducted research with total strangers who were willing to have conversations with me. What I learned was people want to help and if you approach it as a conversation versus using the term “market research” they will be more open to sharing their opinion.
Be flexible to change your original idea to one that the market needs. A colleague offered me advice that was given to him — sell to the market. I have pivoted and shifted from my original idea more than once. Being flexible has allowed me to shape my offering that solves more problems and serves more.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
If you have an idea that will solve a problem, no matter how far out there it might be, search the internet to see if it already exists. If the product exists, approach the problem from different angles. You may discover that with modifications you have a sellable offering.
When I had the idea to offer well-being in events, I thought “WOW! I’ve come-up with a unique idea that nobody else is offering.” I was wrong! In searching the internet, the majority of event companies offer their clients wellness. I learned that my idea was not unique. I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea. Instead, I began to look deeper into the problems I was trying to solve.
What I learned is that other event companies were able to offer wellness activations; e.g. yoga, mindfulness, etc. What I found is that there was an opportunity to incorporate pillars of wellness beyond the physical. When I began to look at wellness in events from a 30,000-foot view, I could see that to truly offer wellness and consider the attendees well-being, I needed to design events that included the social, mental, physical, values/spiritual, and environmental aspects too. To expand this further, I want to educate others on how to include wellness in their events.
If you know there is a problem that your service or product will solve, don’t be afraid to research it. Other than time, it will cost nothing to do the research.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
The businesses I have launched are services. The internet will be my “store”. I am happy to outline the considerations and steps I took to start them for your readers. The journey to get where I am today was not clear or easy. Sharing my frustration with an accountability partner, she said “You want a road map to tell you where to go. There isn’t one. You are BUILDING the map as you go along.” In some areas, I have put the cart before the horse. I have awakened in the middle of the nights, with an oh sh*t moment thinking you haven’t thought about XYZ! Frustrating and unclear as it is, there are wonderful people who have offered to share their resources, which has made me move forward.
In infancy it was important for me to define my niche and do market research. This resulted in me dividing the offerings into two entities. EventWell Consulting™ offers consulting and soon education. EventWell Collective™ offers event design. This division makes a clearer and cleaner customer experience.
After the niches were defined, everything else came about simultaneously and rapidly. I would love to share a step one, step two, but that wasn’t my journey. The other elements of my journey included, legal, insurance, websites, financial, marketing, and public relations.
Legal. When I had enough information to make the businesses viable, the entities were filed with the state, I protected my intellectual property. Contracts are a consideration if you plan to do businesses with others, this includes the website.
Insurance. I needed insurance coverage for the experiences I offer and to be hired to teach yoga.
Websites. Building websites has been interesting. What I was told is that your website is your brochure. Tell people who you are, what solutions you offer, and how to reach you.
Financial. If you don’t have a solid understanding of bookkeeping or taxes, hire someone! Talking to my accountant was one of the first things I did.
Marketing & Public Relations. One of my core values is connection. I cannot express how much I enjoy meeting people. The top marketing effort I use is word of mouth. My networking net is always growing. Holding a Certification Meeting Management, being a Certified Meeting Professional, and serving on the board for the local Meeting Professionals International has helped with my marketing efforts. Industry partners have been great in helping me share my story and introduce me to people I may be able to help or work with.
There are other marketing and Public Relations efforts I use; e.g. Social Media, Drip Campaigns, Writing, and Speaking, but 1:1 connection is at the top of the list.
My recommendation if you are beginning is find out what resources are available to you. Find a mentor who can help guide you along the way. Find your advocates. They will be your cheerleaders and help spread the good news about your business. Set realistic goals. Most importantly — give yourself grace!
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Plan on taking detours. It isn’t a straight path, be flexible. I mentioned earlier that I had pivoted several times before getting where I am today. Initially, the plan was to help event professionals deal with stress and the unpredictability of events. That evolved into helping event organizers learn how to incorporate wellness into their events and consider an attendees’ well-being which led to requests to do yoga and 5k fun runs at events, which has led to requests to help design events that include wellness. The paths are straighter than in the beginning, but I’m willing to adjust when needed.
Expect to work long hours. Initially I thought it would be great to set my own hours. It is great, but when I’m off having an afternoon lunch or playing tennis, I have to work at night to keep the train on the track. What I did not fully grasp was that I am now responsible for the business side. There are two websites to maintain, social media calendars, content creation, continuous marketing, and marketing research. To top it off, I serve on a board, and teach yoga at a local studio. I was wearing rose colored glasses thinking that being in business for myself would give me the freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted to. What I love about it is I have the freedom to make the choice to play when I want to and work when I want to. If I work hard, I get to play hard later.
It takes time to build a book. My background was in corporate events. Now I am planning events for others. From planning stages to execution, the income can take months and the timing fluctuates. This morning, I was working with a client who has an upcoming summer event. I’ll receive deposits along the way, but the final payment will be in the summer. You need a lot of events in the pipeline to receive a steady income.
It’s okay to hear ‘no’. Working in the corporate world for years, I developed a tolerance to being told no. What I did not expect was the sting when someone rejected something that I created. Recently I had a client who wanted my planning services and did not want to incorporate wellness into their event. In fact, they didn’t want to hear my wellness ideas. Ouch! I try to take these painful situations to look for the opportunities to adjust to grow.
It’s not going to be perfect. When it comes to my work, I am a perfectionist to a fault. I was slow in setting up my websites. I spent too much time examining the colors, fonts, and questioning if I was offering the right services. What was worse was I was paying a virtual assistant to help me. Until I could give her the information she needed, she could not move forward. This impacted her financially. The advice I tell myself continuously is it won’t be perfect. Do the best you can and make adjustments along the way.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
The first few steps would be to define what problem you are solving and who you are providing with a solution. With this information, you can form your niche statement. Next, do your research to see if the product exists. When you determine you have that next great idea, conduct market research. Have conversations with colleagues and strangers. What’s interesting is those who help with the research will be your advocates in the future. Seek advice if you do not have a background in business start-up. In the long run, it will save you time and money.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
If your idea is for a product that would need to be manufactured, and you have no manufacturing background or knowledge on how to design it, then I would recommend hiring a consultant. They would be able to help you with prototype, patent, license, and help you get it ready for market. This is similar for any idea you have where you don’t have the skill set.
If the finances are available to hire someone to help you, whether it’s a product or a service, hire a firm to help. Comparatively, if you have the knowledge, resources, and time, then I recommend trying to do it yourself. If you find the development stage isn’t going well, you can always hire someone later.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I think it depends on the business and the situation. I’m a smaller company that has and will continue to use bootstrapping as my financial strategy. If I were a larger company, I would consider venture capital. Before going that route, I would have to look at the variables before deciding. For example, loss of some control, how much risk I’d be willing to expose the company to, and growth size.
To decide to bootstrap or go with VC would depend on several factors. For example, development cost to get up and running is something to consider. If the market opportunity is there, a small piece would be worth it. If my skills are not being used because of operations, I would consider VC to hire people to manage that aspect.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
It’s difficult think of this as a success. I consider it a continuous journey. All the time I share in a light-hearted tone that — I design events for life. However, I am passionate about the statement.
How do I use this success to make the world a better place? I use it to include the human experience in events. Events as we know them are great, but they can be better. I want every single human that attends one of my events to feel included and equal. It’s when we begin to look at the needs of the individuals who participate in events, that we can feel confident that they will leave seen, heard, and happy.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I never thought of myself as an inspiration, but I do want to inspire a movement. As stated in the preceding question, I want the events industry to begin to look for ways to incorporate the pillars of wellness into events, not just serving smoothies for breakfast or doing a fun run in the mornings. Those are great, but it’s expanding our programs to include the social, physical, mental, values/spirituality, and environmental pillars into our events that will matter more. When we do, we will see boosted engagement, attendees feeling cared for, and a richer return on our investments.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to have a coffee with Mel Robbins. She is upfront, candid, and works with people to reposition their current thinking. Her goal is simple — to send your audience back into the world with actionable tools and confidence to fully step into the leaders, collaborators, and changemakers your company strives to create. There are times that my confidence isn’t what it should be. I can only image sitting across the table from her and her laying truth bombs on me. Her candor leaves you wanting more. Love her!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Agile Businesses: Ismail Amla Of NCR Corporation On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
…I think probably the biggest mistake is reveling in the success, because if you don’t think there’s any need to change, then you’re headed in the wrong direction. If there’s no burning platform, there is a problem. Whether your business is doing well or not, you should be ready to change and be disrupted. The second point is, once you recognize the early signs, how quickly do you react? Getting attached to strategies and not wanting to unlearn and relearn is something I’ve seen time and time again. Lastly, you must be able to communicate a burning platform for change. You must be able to mobilize the whole workforce to do things differently.
As a part of my series about the “How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ismail Amla.
Ismail serves as the Executive Vice President responsible for the strategic direction and execution of NCR’s Global Professional Services business. His team is made up of a global network of NCR technologists who deliver technology strategy consulting for the banking, retail and hospitality sectors and technology implementation services covering platform integration, data analytics, AI, cloud, security, and customer experience.
Prior to his role at NCR, Ismail served as Chief Growth Officer for Capita, headquartered out of the UK.
Ismail has also served as Managing Partner for IBM’s Global Business Services in North America, CEO for Capco North America and a senior Partner for Accenture, where he was a member of the Accenture UK leadership team.
Ismail is a non-executive board member for Network Rail and UK Sports and has co-authored a book, “From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation.”
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your back story and how you got started?
My parents immigrated from India to the UK, and they came to work in the cotton mills in the sixties. There was no history of anyone doing higher education, so they were pure economic migrants. I happened to be pretty good at math and the pivotal moment for me in getting started was in 1986. The first computer came out as a math computer in the UK and it was actually sold by the BBC, if you can believe it. My father who knew nothing about computer programing, or anything other than cotton mills at that stage, decided to buy me a computer. That was the start of me getting into programing technology, which then resulted in all sorts of fun things throughout my career.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? And can you tell us what lessons or takeaways you learned from that?
Early into my career I would often end up at parties or events. I remember my first job with Logica. They had asked me around the first Christmas party whether I had any preference around food. I just wanted to fit in. I didn’t want to really make a big deal about the fact that there were many things I wouldn’t eat out and said, “anything vegetarian would be great.” I turned up and they’d given me chicken. It was a good early lesson about being clear in your communications and authentic and comfortable with who you are. This of course, took me a lot longer than a couple of years to get right. It was one of the stories that will stay with me, probably forever.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are today? And can you share a story?
I go back to my father, who when he came over from India, was one of the few English speakers in the immigrant community. He became the de facto community relationship officer. He’d be working the night shift at the cotton mill, and then during the day, there’d be all different languages. He acted as the liaison to the local council and communicated on everyone’s behalf so they were heard.
That was a big lesson for me. The inclusivity of his network was something that stayed with me to this day. It came full circle on a night in 2010. I was working at Accenture, and I got an opportunity to move to a small startup company called Capital which asked me to move to the US. I actually turned down the opportunity to move to the US. I remember telling my parents about it and saying, “You know, why would I move to be uncomfortable? I’ve got a great job at Accenture, et cetera, et cetera. My father was appalled that I was not taking the risks for potential, because it was something I had always wanted to do. I dreamed of working in the US. He reminded me of all my dreams and aspirations and taking risks. That was nearly 15 years ago, and it is something that has been reinforced consistently in my life.
Extensive research suggests that purpose driven businesses are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision and what was its purpose?
I’ve been at NCR since late summer 2021. They’ve been around 140 years. If you look back at the history of our founder, John Patterson and when he created the business, it becomes clear that he essentially created the business to enable commerce via cash registers. That was the core of the business at the time, and it was pivotal to enabling commerce. As NCR has grown and developed across the world with different offerings, I still think it has a purpose around enabling commerce. However, I think it’s gone beyond just that, and evolved into changing the way the world lives and works in the sectors we operate. Whether it is in retail, in hospitality or banking, I believe NCR sees itself as somebody who wants to create better outcomes for all the impacted stakeholders in those communities.
Can you tell our readers a bit about what your business does? How do you help people?
At NCRwe serve our customers by making sure they get access to services in the most efficient way. We are always striving to help people have better experiences. If you think about our ATMs, which traditionally allow people to get access to cash, the way we roll out our ATMs and our ITMs, interactive teller machines, is that we don’t just provide services to get cash but provide ways to conduct financial transactions from your teller, or your kiosk. A large focus for us is helping the underbanked. If you think about how many people are excluded from being able to benefit from many modern-day financial service offerings, it’s astounding. What we do is enable anyone to not only get cash, but deposit cash. You can also do all sorts of financial services from these teller machines. A big focus for us right now is around financial services inclusion. In retail and hospitality our major focus is also on helping our customers to best serve their consumers. The data we have really steps up the sort of things we can do in ways we’d never imagined before.
Which technical innovation has encroached or disrupted your industry? Can you explain why this has been disruptive?
An areaI’ve written a lot about is thinking about technology in all aspects, whether it’s sensors, whether it’s networks, whether it’s a speed of computer, whether it’s the size of computers, cost of computers; whatever it might be. The coming together of all these things, at the same time, has created the disruption. It’s not just one technology, it is the convergence of technology. Coming out of that, is this idea that data is available everywhere we never imagined. Everything is a sensor. Everything we can imagine, including ourselves, are sensors that the computing power must make sense of in all that data cloud computing, which allows us to store all of that data and have access to it everywhere, whenever we want it. We now have insights and all of that is captured by new experiences in what we’re beginning to call the metaverse. What it all means is that we now have the systems needed to make sense of the data and action it. Disruption is everywhere, and we are only beginning to see the tip of it across all sectors.
What did you do to pivot as a result of this disruption?
I look for the disruption, to be honest with you. I love to get engaged with businesses and organizations who are helping clients deal with disruption. It is something I am naturally very attracted to because I feel we are in a period of change. This fourth industrial revolution we all talk about is where there will be a huge amount of creation around how the world lives and works. I didn’t want to observe it. I wanted to be part of it. Since the beginning of my career, I have always looked for a community to get engaged in related to the creation of new services with disruptive technologies.
Was there a specific AHA moment that gave you the idea to start this new path? If yes, we’d love to hear the story.
I think it was institutionalized for me when I was at CSC Computer Sciences, and they decided to create a startup which was going to do all of the innovation work with new innovative clients. They asked me to run it. I was a very young, 33-year-old and a very new vice president going into running this business. This is just when the internet was crossing the chasm from being slow and kludgy to being something that might become really operationalized. We worked with a lot of clients creating new experiences and new web platforms. I think that was my ‘AHA’ moment because I realized how big the thinking was from some of our clients and how impactful the technology could be. It was probably the pivotal moment when I realized that new technologies and the impact they have on changing the world, was here to stay.
How are things going with this new direction?
In 2007, we saw convergence really come to life. This was the period in which the first iPhone came together. If you look at the number of technology companies that were launched then and became part of our everyday life, 2007 was a big moment that had a steady trajectory until COVID hit. In times of crisis, innovation suddenly gets accelerated. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said in five months of the pandemic, we’ve done 20 years of acceleration of innovation. In my last role at Capita, we had 20,000 people sitting in call centers at Microsoft and we had been talking about whether those call center agents could be working from home for about 20 years because the technology was there. However, nobody was quite comfortable with the idea. The clients weren’t comfortable, the people weren’t comfortable. We weren’t comfortable. Would we trust the people? Would the technology work? On March 8th, everybody was sent home. There were 20,000 people who were suddenly working on call centers from home. It quickly became the way to work, and it was created by a burning platform. Now everybody sees the potential of how things could be done differently. I think the pandemic really accelerated a golden period of change.
Can you share the most interesting story that’s happened to you since you started this pivot?
I joined startup companies and I moved from the UK to the USA. My kids became Americans. This is a life changing philosophy for me. I wrote a book on change and innovation called ‘From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation.’ It really sums up the major pivots of my life as well as describes my life’s passion. I’m also now on the Board of UK Sport, which is an organization that looks after elite athletes and identifies how data and technology can drive innovation and performance in sports. I’m also on the board of Network Rail, which is investing billions in creating the national infrastructure for the UK. Looking into the future with technology is going to be absolutely monumental in deciding what the future transportation infrastructure looks like.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during a disruptive period?
I think getting your teams comfortable with being curious, with being resilient and having a growth mindset is vital. I think getting teams to be in a place where they are looking through change with a lens of opportunity rather than a lens of risk is so important. It’s probably in my mind, the most comfortable way to get through periods of disruption. Somebody very wise said the change we are going through right now is probably the slowest pace of change we will go through for the rest of our lives. When you change the meaning of disruptive periods, the ability to deal with change must become a critical competency. To me, curiosity, resilience, and growth mindset are key fundamentals to deal with that.
When the future seemed so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
I’ll start with the mindset. It must focus on what success looks like and how to deal with failure. I think teams must possess the ability to learn from failure and the ability to have resilience with ups and downs. Then there is the building of confidence through small wins. Uncertain times seem overwhelming but breaking that down into bite-sized chunks of what you can do and where you can get a win is important. That, of course, breeds confidence, and the ability to jump off that confidence and do things in an agile way. Agility is really important to success both today and in the future.
Is there a number one principle that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Unlearning old rules pertaining to agility and mindset. I think those are the things that will allow organizations that are going through this sort of change to reinvent themselves. When you see them stop doing things, or doing things differently, you’re seeing them change the metabolism of the company. I think those would be the big ones for me.
Can you share three or four of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make when faced with a disruptive technology? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
I think probably the biggest mistake is reveling in the success, because if you don’t think there’s any need to change, then you’re headed in the wrong direction. If there’s no burning platform, there is a problem. Whether your business is doing well or not, you should be ready to change and be disrupted. The second point is, once you recognize the early signs, how quickly do you react? Getting attached to strategies and not wanting to unlearn and relearn is something I’ve seen time and time again. Lastly, you must be able to communicate a burning platform for change. You must be able to mobilize the whole workforce to do things differently.
Here’s the primary question of our discussion based on your experience and success. What are the five most important things business leaders should do to pivot and stay relevant in the face of disruptive technologies? Please share a story or an example for each.
I would start with the burning platform, which is the most important thing to winning the hearts and minds of organizations. To go back to the purpose-driven question I talked about earlier, it’s all about being able to tell your community, your employees, your ecosystem, your clients about why you need to change. I think we’ve had lots of organizations doing this well, but lots of organizations also doing it badly. One brilliant success story is Satya Nadella. He took on Microsoft in 2014 and now it’s the most valuable company in the world. But, if you looked at them when he took the job, he spent a lot of time communicating to engineers about why they had to unlearn and let go of a lot of what they were famous for. He also focused on explaining why the company’s empathy was going to be so important and why emotional intelligence was going to be so important in driving everything forward.
The second important thing a business leader can do is to create a learning culture, a culture where you get comfortable with unlearning and relearning and doing things differently. The third thing is look at the company’s pace and metabolism of how long it takes to invent. That speaks again to how agile you are and how quickly you’re going to work when you’re presented with issues. The final thing is leadership styles today must be different and responsive to the needs of employees, customers, and the market. I think hierarchical and control command and control focus leadership styles are out of date. I think there are great examples all over the place. If you look at Marc Benioff at Salesforce, and what he’s doing with his people and his clients in service to the community is a wonderful example. I think today we need a more servant leadership style rather than command control.
Can you please give us your favorite life lesson quote and can you share how that was relevant to you and your life?
The quote is, “Diversity is a fact, and inclusion is an act.” Later in my career, I became aware of the responsibility I have to encourage diversity. It is very easy to get depressed once you start looking around at gender, or ethnicity, or other sorts of representation. If you look at my corporate world, what really makes this come to life for me is it takes several acts of inclusivity to truly step toward more diversity. Instead of getting depressed and really down about how much work needs to be done, I think you can get quite encouraged. Quiet, powerful acts of inclusivity quickly puts an organization on the road to getting proper diversity representation. Everyone can easily be a part of this change if they want to.
How can our readers further follow your work?
We aregoing to have an NCR Institute, which is going to be launched in the first quarter of next year. I think a lot of the thought leadership will be sitting on NCR.com. I can also be reached on Twitter at @ismailamla and on LinkedIn at: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ismail-amla-b981891
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Know how what you do fits into the bigger picture. One of the (several) times I was retrenched (as I said, happens often in the mining industry) on my way out the door I had a chat with one of the Executives and I asked him what I could do better. He said “Renee, you’re a really good environmental manager — you know all about environmental issues, and you’re good at what you do. But you need to learn more about how what you do fits into the business. You need to know how environmental management fits in with finance, business growth, risk, return on investment, people management, expansion. Go and learn that.” It was such great advice, and it has been so valuable to me.
As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Renee Grogan, Chief Sustainability Officer and Co-Founder at Impossible Mining.
Renee is a sustainability expert with 16 years’ industry experience in the mining industry. She started her career in the desert of Western Australia and has since worked throughout Australasia, the Pacific, the United States, Africa and parts of Europe. Following a decade in terrestrial mining, Renee transitioned into the controversial seabed mining world. Since 2014 Renee has worked as a consultant, providing advice to financial institutions and funds, resources companies, intergovernmental agencies such as the World Bank and European Commission, and non-government organizations such as The Pew Charitable Trusts. Renee now serves as the Chief Sustainability Officer and Co-Founder at Impossible Mining, which is a supporter of BetterEV.org.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I started my career as a guileless conservationist who wanted to save the world, working in government on conservation policy. I took a conservation job in the desert of Western Australia, and when the contract finished, I found myself without a job, and surrounded by gold mines (literally). So I decided to try and bring my conservation-focus to the mining industry. In the early 2000’s, that was a pretty naïve idea. I spent fifteen years in the mining industry, constantly having reinforced to me the idea that sustainability and environmental performance were things that a mining company would always do as little of as possible — the bare minimum to satisfy the regulator and any other squeaky-wheel stakeholders. Throughout this time, I never gave up on the idea that such a dinosaur-like industry could be turned on its head — and taught that sustainability could be just as profitable as the “rape and pillage” approach.
In 2016 after being retrenched (an inevitability in an industry at the mercy of commodity cycles), I began consulting — to mining companies, policy makers, NGOs — sharing my learnings from 15 years on the inside. At the same time, I started to keep watch for a company that believed what I did — that sustainability could be even more profitable than traditional mining. It took five years, but in mid-2021 I found that company.
Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
What an extraordinary question! I couldn’t even decide my most interesting story from this week! You know what…how about I leave that to you to decide — at the end of this interview, I wonder what you’ll think was the most interesting story.
But if you insist….once, when I was working on a mine site in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, I was called out to catch a deadly snake (all part of the job) that had become stuck in an open drain. The water was hazardous (hyper-saline), the snake was both dangerous and quite cranky, and the crowd of onlookers was immense. To get the snake out, I had to get in the drain with it, and then put the snake bag on the ground next to it and encourage it to get in. It was a very interesting exercise in stress management, animal behaviour, and how to block out the noise of 30 blokes watching and taking bets on how long it would take me to get bitten. I learnt a bit that day.
Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?
Three things spring to mind.
The first is balance — I find that if there is balance, everything is okay. That applies to life in general, but also my work. A balance between hard work and rest, chocolate and vegetables, profit and meaning, water and wine. The principle is universal. As soon as you lose the balance, you’re in trouble.
The second is that every job, every situation, is a learning opportunity. I’ve had some pretty crappy jobs — spraying cactus in the desert, trying to get dirty old coal miners to care about the environment — jobs that were full of physical, mental and emotional challenges. But each one of them taught me many lessons — sometimes I didn’t appreciate the lesson until a decade down the track, but I think trying actively to seek out the lessons in everything my career throws at me, and not being above doing seemingly menial jobs along the way, has really helped my career.
The third thing is a combination of two seemingly opposing principles — firstly of immense “self-care”, and secondly that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Being a young female in the mining industry I was subjected to abuse, harassment and bullying. Many of the things that are considered criminal acts today (or even back then) were things I put up with on a daily basis. I did some extremely physically challenging jobs, always knowing I was being watched to see when I would fail. I was on the Mines Rescue team, and was a part of some operations in underground mines that were scary, dangerous, and confronting. I try to see the positive in challenging experiences, but I also acknowledge the toll these experiences can take, and I look after myself accordingly — I take holidays and rests unapologetically, and I am not afraid to tell a superior that my plate is overloaded, and I actually can’t do the task they just gave me right now. I think keeping the precarious balance between those two concepts is immensely valuable.
Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?
The big idea is to disrupt the Electric Vehicle supply chain and make it sustainable — not greenwashed, not what the mining industry considers “best practice” right now, but truly sustainable. Through BetterEV.org we have set the bar for the mining industry to deliver Responsible Metals to the EV market. BetterEV defines Responsible Metals as metals that are mined and refined in a way that:
avoids widespread habitat destruction,
eliminates toxic waste,
maximizes circularity,
avoids water scarcity,
protects safety and human rights,
avoids displacing indigenous people or communities and
is carbon neutral.
That’s a mammoth undertaking — we know that. But imagine driving an EV that met those criteria. You’d feel pretty damn good, wouldn’t you?
We want BetterEV to be as recognisable as “Fair Trade” and “Organic”, with an independent certification process so that consumers can trust in the brand, and be proud to drive a BetterEV. We want new technology, new mindsets, new investments, to drive never-before seen innovation in the mining industry, so that in a decade, when half the world is driving an EV, the only EV you can buy is a BetterEV.
At Impossible Mining, we are aiming to deliver Responsible Metals to the EV market in a two-step process — first by developing autonomous robotic technology to mine battery metals from the seabed in a way that protects the ecosystem, avoids serious harm, and avoids polluting the seawater. Second, we are using naturally occurring bacteria to “breathe” the metal out of rock — with no toxic chemicals, no toxic waste and tailings, and no reliance on freshwater. We are passionately proud of our ambition to be the first mining company to deliver Responsible Metals to the EV market — to help car manufacturers realise the BetterEV dream.
How do you think this will change the world?
By showing that Responsible Metals are profitable, we can pave the way for global production of BetterEVs. When we show that delivering Responsible Metals is economically beneficial, there will be no excuse for mining companies to continue with the destructive, damaging methods of the past. When consumers can confidently say they drive a BetterEV, in the way they can confidently wear “Fair Trade” clothing today, we will have created the biggest sustainable market on the planet. And in time, as we apply the same Responsible Metals principles to the mining industry as a whole, and also the metal recycling industry, we will come to a point where all metals, in everything we consume as a human race, are Responsible Metals.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?
The first thing is the scale of innovation needed to transform the industry. At Impossible Mining we are aiming to show that Responsible Metals are firstly possible, and also profitable. A BetterEV must be an affordable EV — and this will only come with scale. Secondly, it involves a mammoth overhaul of attitudes — we need to kick the status quo to the side. If you ask any traditional mining executive today whether it’s possible to only mine Responsible Metals, most of them would answer an emphatic “NO”. We need to break free of this way of thinking. With innovation, technological advancements, and a new mindset, it is possible to make BetterEVs the reality.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?
For me personally, and I think also for the team at Impossible Mining, it was the concept that seabed mining might be needed to provide metals for the EV market, and that this new frontier of mining was potentially using technology that causes serious environmental harm as its foundation. I couldn’t bear the thought that mining of the seabed might follow the same rules as the terrestrial mining world — the ultimate rule that you need to destroy some areas in order to access metals. That’s what I couldn’t accept — that was the ‘stake in the ground’ moment for me. By flipping the conversation and saying “we need to transition from EVs to BetterEVs — using Responsible Metals” — you change the conversation away from a list of things that shouldn’t be allowed, to a definition of success. I think saying “seabed mining should be banned” is not the answer, because I would add lots of other things to that list — mining of rainforests, mining on traditional lands, mining where communities are displaced. Instead, BetterEV.org defines success. It’s not a list of things not to do — it’s a vision of a sustainable future. It’s a new mindset, and I’m incredibly passionate about making it a reality.
What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?
We need investment and uptake. We need mining companies, battery and car manufacturers to invest in the transition to BetterEVs, and we need consumers to start demanding BetterEVs. Those two things together will create the momentum we need to transition the world to BetterEVs.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
There’s more than one way to boil an egg. When you come up against a brick wall, it’s really beneficial to maintain enough perspective to stand back and think about whether there’s another way to achieve your goal. I once told a boss in mining that I needed to alert the Executive to an environmental issue. He told me that the Executive wouldn’t be interested in my environmental issue, and I had to think of another way to present the problem. I was so angry and frustrated, and I wasted a lot of time and energy sitting in that anger and frustration. After much coaching, my boss convinced me to capitalise the issue — to put a dollar value on the environmental problem. That went against my principles- I thought the Executive should care about the environment — but the reality was that they didn’t, and by putting a dollar value on the problem I was able to get their support, and to fix the environmental problem.
No-one will define your worth for you — you have to do that yourself. As a female in the mining industry, I was always paid less than my male peers. Only when I became a consultant, and I set my own daily charge out rate, did I understand that if I valued myself highly, others would too.
There will always be setbacks — be okay with that. Don’t spend too much emotional energy on them, and don’t let them define you. That’s the essence of resilience. This also feeds into the concept of “self-care”, because in my experience, we are more susceptible to falling in a heap over a setback when we are not taking care of ourselves.
It’s all about relationships. Work on them. Be empathetic and authentic. Keep some energy and time for relationships, because maintaining and building relationships takes both time and energy, and if you don’t allocate it, you won’t have it. Whenever I have managed people, I have always found that being available, empathetic and authentic mattered the most. If you have to have a tough conversation, it’s better to do it from a strong foundation. I once had to ask a truck driver in a big gold mine to explain an incident to me in which he had caused a large oil spill. I knew that the information he put on the incident report was not correct — and I also knew that he was unlikely to admit that. So I had a think about what I knew about him, his workplace, the time of day the incident happened, the type of truck he was driving, and I said “Righto, mate. If I can guess what happened in one guess, will you tell me if I’m right?” Because he knew me, and I had invested in building a relationship with his team, he agreed. And because I knew him, I guessed right. I made sure he wasn’t penalised for misleading me, and he respected me — for guessing right, but also for playing as one of the team.
Know how what you do fits into the bigger picture. One of the (several) times I was retrenched (as I said, happens often in the mining industry) on my way out the door I had a chat with one of the Executives and I asked him what I could do better. He said “Renee, you’re a really good environmental manager — you know all about environmental issues, and you’re good at what you do. But you need to learn more about how what you do fits into the business. You need to know how environmental management fits in with finance, business growth, risk, return on investment, people management, expansion. Go and learn that.” It was such great advice, and it has been so valuable to me.
Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?
Sheesh. I’m not sure I’m really qualified to answer this! A few mantras or statements that really help me are:
You’re okay. Tomorrow is a new day. Whatever setback you had today, mourn it — go for a run, eat a brownie, whatever you need to do, then learn from it and move on.
Learn. Learn. Learn. Learn. Every day, from everyone. Never miss an opportunity to learn, but also cut yourself a break — lessons aren’t failures.
Make a plan. Your plan might change every week, or every year, but if you don’t have a plan you’re letting external forces determine your journey. That’s not cool.
Look after yourself. Treat yourself with respect, and be kind to yourself.
Be empathetic. Everyone you meet is struggling with something. That jerk in your office might be going through a terrible divorce, or have depression, or be carrying around the scar of an abusive childhood. You don’t need to love everyone, but try not to hate anyone.
Balance. Always keep the balance. Some wine, some water. Some hard work, some rest. Some growth, some relaxation. Some money, some meaning.
Back yourself. Back your beliefs, your skills, your experience, your personality, your very presence on the planet. Own it, make yourself proud. When you back yourself, others will back you too. And when you have a dream to change the world, back that.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
To the VCs, I would say: Look how big the mining industry is, and how much we rely on metals. Then look how big the EV market will be in ten years. Then look at how consumers feel about ESG and sustainability. Put these three issues together and you have an opportunity of galactic proportions. BetterEV is a long play — it’s not possible today — but it’s what we are working on at Impossible Mining, and in ten years’ time it has the potential to be the entire EV market, because that’s what consumers want, and what the planet needs. Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?
To Tesla, BMW, Volksagen, Rolls Royce, I would say: Let’s do this.
Have good counsel around you. These are people who have a track record of taking ideas and creating successful businesses. Gather their opinions. This doesn’t mean if they say it’s a bad idea to not pursue it. It’s just a way to gauge a small sample of people who have your best interests in mind that may see issues or problems that you don’t see. Sometimes these people will even want to get involved and help you bring your idea to fruition, so now you have even more resources than you did before.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cody Harvey.
Cody Harvey is an American entrepreneur and visionary behind a plethora of market-disrupting technologies, most recently, Breakout Audio. Cody has revolutionized the way industries such as finance, entertainment, blockchain, SaaS and non-profits operate in order to maximize impact and increase the bottom line. Cody has proudly shown the business world more efficient ways to accomplish its goals. Cody’s latest startup, Breakout, is a new free social audio app that will let users not only connect and share without censorship, but also own and sell their own data.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Absolutely. I grew up in a small midwestern town in Indiana. My school was literally surrounded by cornfields. I was pretty active in sports and enjoyed anything that had to do with outdoors. Growing up, I saw most people around me struggle financially and sweat over bills and unexpected life expenses. I was really close with my family and knew when I got older that I wanted to figure out a way to make sure my family was NEVER in that position again. I think that experience shaped me as an entrepreneur and gave me the drive I still have today.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can GET hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. — That’s how winning is done!”
Watching movies growing up was one of my favorite pastimes with my father. This quote is from one of the Rocky movies. Everybody, at some point, has circumstances in their life when they either figure out how to overcome or succumb to the struggle. My life has been a series of struggles I’ve had to figure out how to overcome each one. Every day is a gift. And if you still have air in your lungs, you still have an opportunity to win.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Braveheart is probably that movie for me. William Wallace, after losing everything he loved, continued fighting for his freedom up until his execution. There was no quit in him. He was sold out for his convictions and sacrificed his life for what he believed in. I admire that.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Great question. Good ideas are still only ideas if they aren’t executed and put into action. Sometimes even putting them into action leads to failure. I see this happen all the time. Here’s a list of things to do in order to go from idea to reality.
Have good counsel around you. These are people who have a track record of taking ideas and creating successful businesses. Gather their opinions. This doesn’t mean if they say it’s a bad idea to not pursue it. It’s just a way to gauge a small sample of people who have your best interests in mind that may see issues or problems that you don’t see. Sometimes these people will even want to get involved and help you bring your idea to fruition, so now you have even more resources than you did before.
Start small, but just start. You’ll never know how something is going to be received in the marketplace if you don’t put it out there. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice and see what happens. However, you can reduce your financial and time risk by starting small and seeing how well people gravitate towards your idea. Maybe you have a clothing line idea. Don’t go and buy 1,000 hoodies and 1,000 hats. Instead, buy 10 of each and determine the market response.
Write everything about your idea down. Typically one idea leads to a million ideas. Ways to market, who to partner with, price points, ways to innovate and so on. No idea is perfect at first, but over time you can refine your idea so it has the highest probability of success. This takes discipline and writing everything down. What gets measured gets improved and writing things down helps you go back and measure everything. It also keeps momentum going so you don’t get distracted and allows you to see it all the way through.
Understand if you’re a creator or maintainer. Maybe you’re great at coming up with ideas, but not so much on the execution side. Most people are not good at both — and that’s okay. Find someone who is great at executing and bring them into your idea. A small piece of a large pie is better than a large piece of a small pie.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
I actually get excited when someone else has already thought of it. It’s validation that it’s a good idea. Even if they’ve executed the idea I still get excited. The market is huge, so even if an idea is already in existence I can still grow a business from it. In fact, it makes it easier to find my would-be customers. Today it’s pretty easy to find out if an idea has been created by searching for it online. You can even leverage Google and other search engines and see just how many people are searching the search term around your idea, which will help you gauge the market demand.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Sure.
Write your idea down. Everything about it.
Build an MVP (minimum viable product).
Build an online presence and community for your idea.
Test your idea and gather feedback from your community. Try to make your idea their idea as much as possible. They’ll be your biggest champions and ultimately decide whether or not your idea is successful or not.
Fund your idea with either your own money or investors’ money and take it to the next level.
Use your funding to hire great legal advisers who can assist with trademarks and patents. Unless you’re an expert in this field, it’s best to outsource it to someone who does it on a daily basis.
Interview multiple manufacturers. Look for these things: Quality, communication and price. I put price last because although you want the best deal you NEVER want to sacrifice quality. I also included communication because you want to work with someone who is going to be able to adjust to the demand of your product. This requires good ongoing communication.
Build up demand through your community for the product and create strategic alliances that will add value to your idea.
Start small. It’s easier to get small shops and influencers to push your product at first unless you have certain connections. However, once there’s demand, the larger players will come. They want to make money so if you can prove they will — they’ll jump on board.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Nobody is going to care more about your idea than you do in the beginning. I was putting in 16+ hour days for the first year of my first tech start up. Many people dismissed the idea and I really had to continue to believe in myself.
Be willing to travel to meet people face to face. You’ll get things done much faster this way and develop authentic relationships that will pay off. I’ve traveled as far as China, Japan, India, Guyana for some of my one-on-one meetings — and I’m thankful that I chose to do so.
Hire slow and fire fast. Be careful who you bring on board. They are a direct reflection of you and your idea. I made the mistake early on of just bringing anyone on that wanted to help. This was a mistake and now I have certain standards and values I look for when bringing someone into any of my company ecosystems.
Marketing is crucial. You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you won’t get very far. I was always afraid of spending marketing dollars as I feared losing money. Now we spend millions of dollars on ads just to be seen. As long as you have a good product and decent marketing you’ll be fine.
Reinvest back into your business. I see a lot of young entrepreneurs make money and then spend that money on themselves. If you’re trying to grow a business you have to treat it like a child. It needs to be nourished. We are constantly reinvesting back into product development, masterminds, our employees — and so much more.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Write it down.
Research to determine market demand for it.
Find the right people to help you bring it to fruition.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
You have to be careful hiring consultants. They aren’t all created equal. Personally, I like seeing how far I can get with something with just myself and my core team. However, I do think there are times when you need to hire the right person or team to help you get it to the next level. If you get far enough in the process sometimes you can incentivize someone with the right skill set to join your team. This comes down to having something tangible and being able to properly cast the vision of the company or idea.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
It depends on where you’re personally at in life. Someone with less financial responsibilities can bootstrap an idea with little risk. Someone that has a family and a mortgage might not be in that position — and should seek out venture capital. I think it comes down to a person’s appetite for risk and their particular season of life.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I believe that people are the greatest asset for investment. People, if given the right resources, will come up with new creative ideas that can greatly impact the world. I’ve tried to reinvest into those around me and even some people I barely know in order that may might have a chance at bring their ideas to life and make the world a better place.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Great question. I believe people should be free. Truly free. Free to express themselves how they choose, free to say what they want to say, free from poverty, persecution, dictatorship the list goes on. There’s so much division in our world today that rises from one persons world view being that others should not have the same freedom as them. I despise that. Everyone is valuable, deserves to be free and deserves to be heard. That is why I started Breakout.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Wow, there’s a lot of people I admire and respect. I would say either Richard Branson, Gary Vaynerchuk, or Robert Herjavec.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Mark Walser of Incenter Appraisal Management On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Identify the team members who can make a continued positive impact on your organization. Invest in them, promote them and reward them. At the same time, don’t be too quick to downsize people who seem more difficult, but if the situation continues, then exit them as fast as you can.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Walser.
Mark Walser is President of Incenter Appraisal Management, a national provider of best-in-class valuations, inspections and data products for lenders throughout the country. Since he joined the company in October 2020, he and his team have launched two industry innovations — 24-Hour Fast Pay for appraisers, and RemoteVal™ remote appraisal inspection technology, intended to address the twin challenges of a home appraiser shortage and valuation backlogs. On a daily basis, he is responsible for overseeing and managing all facets of the company and its offerings. He holds a B.S. in Management and Accounting from San Diego State University and California State University.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
My family is from India, and we immigrated to the U.S. when I was five, settling in Southern California.
As the son of immigrants, I grew up with a deep appreciation for the unlimited opportunities America affords us. If you choose to work hard, and take hold of what this country gives you, there is almost nothing you can’t achieve here. That’s rare to non-existent anywhere else in the world and often overlooked in many of today’s conversations.
In California, I was lucky to be surrounded by entrepreneurs who embraced this philosophy and were rocket riding the dot-com boom. Coming out of high school and college, I fell in with a startup that developed the first wireless email and mobile service applications for handheld devices. They taught me about business, technology and how to create an enormous market from the ground up.
From there, I worked at a real estate technology company, which developed the first mobile wireless app to search the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Moving forward, I pivoted to the mortgage and appraisal management industries, which are known for their resistance to change. I’m excited that we’re making a big impact with appraisals, which have been slow to evolve.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Jim Elliot, a missionary in the early 20th century, said, ”He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep in order to gain which he cannot lose.”
His words taught me to look to the future and what was practical, and not just possible. In business, you have to know when to cut your losses and attack a problem differently to develop a solution that the market will embrace.
His words also remind me to value the personal experiences that are most important. I may not be able to take my family to Italy every six months, but I can play basketball with my son or a board game with my daughter as often as possible — you can’t get that time back.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I love Raymond Feist’s Riftwar Saga series. It offers multiple worlds, magic, technology, philosophy, parallel universes, and dragons. It’s so well developed and I also like the multi-generational aspect of his timelines and novels. I started reading those in high school and the series continued into my early 30s. I like immersive reading experiences like that.
For movies, The Matrix was a game changer. And…now that Meta is coming into our future, perhaps it’s a foretelling?
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Going back to Jim Elliot:
It’s important to take both a creative and practical approach. Start by assessing the problem you want to solve.
For example, there is no industry that hasn’t been affected by COVID-19. When the pandemic began, it could have paralyzed the appraisal, mortgage and real estate professions, but solution providers like us overcame that.
At the beginning, home sellers didn’t want to let appraisers in, and appraisers who were in higher risk categories didn’t want to inspect homes until they were safely vaccinated. These problems helped drive our invention of RemoteVal, which enables appraisers to conduct thorough, compliant appraisal inspections for many kinds of home loans without ever leaving their home offices.
They simply take control of a homeowner’s smartphone camera, direct them where to point it, and remotely snap geographically verified time-stamped images and closeups. The solution also has built-in digital measuring capabilities — an industry first — allowing for real-time calculation of square footage/gross living area (GLA).
We did a technical sprint to create a solution that may change our whole industry. It took a team of dedicated people, with a clear plan, dedication to execution and capital.
We also needed the right attitude. We looked at the technologies that were powering up other industries, and thought of ways to incorporate the functionality we liked best. We saw the possibilities and not the obstacles and RemoteVal was the result.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo, there’s a difference between “knowing the path and walking the path.”
I apply that here.
It’s important to check with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to see what’s out there before you start, and protect your own intellectual property.
Remember, too, that just because someone else may have thought of an idea doesn’t mean you can’t create and execute a better version with a unique technology twist.
It took just a few years for Myspace to beat Yahoo as the most visited site in the mid 2000’s after it was founded in 2003, and it was dominant until 2008 when Facebook came along and beat it. Each organization offered something different that resonated with their key audiences and made a better experience. Things move fast and you have to move with them.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Our process is slightly different because we’re making a B2B technology available to appraisers and inspectors.
First and foremost, find a good attorney to obtain the necessary patents. At Incenter, we have a strong legal team who helped us obtain good outside counsel.
Create relationships with several manufacturers or software partners, and determine which have the most flexibility and bandwidth.
Ensure that these partners will align with your business model. Might they be amenable to a pay-per-use arrangement? If so, that may empower you to avoid a massive engineering investment. I like to do that on transactional models like ours, and build the cost into the consumer pricing.
Know your business and identify the right channels, partners and customers who can help advance it. Our customers are mortgage lenders. When one of their borrowers is buying a new home or refinancing, they contact us for an appraisal. Our appraisers then become our brand ambassadors. We treat them as partners, not vendors, because we want to make the best experience happen for our ultimate customer, the mortgage lender.
Also, consider making your technology or innovation available via licensing to competitors. By doing so, you may be able to penetrate the industry in a much shorter time, and in a more frictionless way.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Your success depends on your organizational dynamics — understand the politics and players, especially in larger companies. Your ability to navigate them in a smart way will have a big impact on your long-term success. Incenter Appraisal Management is part of Incenter LLC, a family of 11 companies whose solutions help mortgage lenders improve performance. Although we work very well together, I’ve needed to be aware of every firm’s capabilities so that we can innovate together, and promote each other’s services.
Identify your sponsors and your influencers–the people who will support your initiatives and potentially even fight battles for you. That way you can focus on building your new product or service and not worry about internal issues.
Know where all of your costs are. Sometimes it’s not as simple as a P&L, especially if you are part of a larger organization that shares resources. Otherwise, you could be surprised four to five months into a project. I’ve found that you need to ask the right questions from the very beginning to get at those other charges and work them into your plan.
Identify more efficient ways of doing things and push to implement those processes. Don’t be afraid to advocate for them with conviction. That doesn’t mean don’t listen to the experiences of others, but make your team question their process and defend it.
Identify the team members who can make a continued positive impact on your organization. Invest in them, promote them and reward them. At the same time, don’t be too quick to downsize people who seem more difficult, but if the situation continues, then exit them as fast as you can.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
First: Do your research: Is anything in the market close to your product?
Second: Protect your own intellectual property and start executing.
Third: Be smart about marketing; build on what your stakeholders are telling you. For example, when we piloted RemoteVal, lenders and appraisers kept volunteering that it was a gamechanger. We could see their eyes light up, and that inspired us to press onward.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I haven’t needed to work with these consultants, so I can’t give you a full answer. We began creating RemoteVal as soon as we had a validated market. We identified a gap and then found a way to fill it.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Bootstrapping is definitely my personal preference.I believe in having a viable business, and then using some proceeds to fund additional growth and taking strategic investments that actually help you achieve your market success.
When I joined Incenter Appraisal Management in 2020, the organization was already successful and had the funding to create RemoteVal. We really just had to focus on the business and delivering it, not raising capital to fund an “idea”.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I define success as having a societal as well as a business impact.
My family and I personally invest in organizations that provide food, education and opportunity to people in developing countries.
At work, I also feel an obligation to help the people who are up and coming become better leaders. I’m proud that in a male dominated industry, the majority of Incenter Appraisal Management’s leadership team are women. Being able to mentor them, learn from them and prepare them to take over the business is part of making the world a better place.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I believe in the quote attributed to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
Or put another way, as President John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “Ask not what America can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
I’ve always felt that despite the hardships that people experience, what they achieve is in their own hands. Learn to feed yourself, and gratefully accept any mentoring, guidance or constructive criticism along the way. Absorb the lessons of failure and try again. You’ll live a much more productive and satisfying life than by coveting unearned privilege. Don’t ever blame your lack of success on the “system”; more often than not, it’s the mirror you have to look into and then learn from.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would enjoy having lunch with Kevin O’Leary. I like what he posts on LinkedIn, and his ability to balance the cold, hard truth with a level of relatability in the real world.
Create editorial authority. Your brand is bigger than your product. And the modern consumer wants more than a brand to like, they want a brand like them. They want to engage with brands that share similar beliefs and stand for something globally. What stories and content can your brand authentically take part in? If your brand was a magazine, what stories would you publish? Dame, who I mentioned earlier, leverages a strong authority around demystifying sexual health and empowers women every day with content and stories on their blog.
Brentos Fernandez leads brand process as the Head of Creative at Listen. He began his career in communications over fifteen years ago as an Art Director, creating content-driven campaigns and advertising for global brands Jeep, Target and Marlboro. Working as a Creative Director, Brentos led creative teams at Leo Burnett, DDB and Barkley advertising agencies — working across strategy, visual design, interactive and social media.
Always drawn to the culture of a brand, Brentos has helped shape creative strategy and positioning for iconic brands like Ball, and Spirit Airlines. Of note, his brand work on Wingstop positioned the fast-casual restaurant for an impressive IPO, helping the cult-status chicken wing joint to expand their footprint and scale consistently.
If he’s not working, you’ll find him at a live music event or creating art with his 12-year-old son.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I’ve been a lifelong listener. Since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed hearing stories in music; stories about places I’d never been, cultures different than my own. From Curtis Mayfield and a look into the civil rights of the ’60s and ’70s to contemporary hip-hop from the coasts, this was quite a different environment than growing up in the rural heartland. I turned this passion for stories into visual art, record covers, posters and eventually brand things, like logos and websites. My career has always been connected to music and building communities around an idea. Some call it ‘brand,’ but I think of it more as creating culture and content around a company, to make it relevant in a modern, social media-driven world.
I left the ad world to become a creative capitalist at Listen, where we back consumer-obsessed founders and build value through brand and creativity.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you started? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The biggest lesson from early on: remember who your audience is. I’ve always been a maker. So when the company I just started working at, ad agency Leo Burnett, asked its employees to make something to celebrate Leo’s birthday, I jumped at the opportunity to flex my skills. I spent 36 hours creating a whole microsite and music video. I packaged it in a pop-up book on one of those tiny CDs (this was 2003). So, I turned it in; a few senior art directors were in awe of the effort. Later that morning, I got a call at my desk thinking of accolades… but no. The person had jammed their computer with my micro cd and asked for a different format. In the end, I discovered my message had been lost in translation because I hadn’t thought through the audience and their tech prowess. It was a lesson in right-sizing (😏 heh) tech, user experience and message delivery.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Listen is built upon a single idea. Brands that listen to their consumers win. My background in advertising and brand building for giant companies taught me that it’s harder to innovate at a behemoth brand than create a relevant brand from the ground up. That’s because a young brand must listen to their consumer or they won’t be a business for long. At Listen, we help our consumer-obsessed founders create noise and activity in the market, which helps grow their audience and establish credibility in the world. Our brands aren’t just companies. They are communities of true believers that help guide the business to ongoing success.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
New investments are always fun because we’re just digging into their audiences and becoming experts in a particular field. We’re in the early re-branding stages with The Cumin Club, a 5-minute meal kit for authentic Indian cuisines. The flavors are really amazing, and the meals are super easy to make. The founders have built a platform that sources authentic ingredients and recipes from the many regions of India. All without the preservatives and blanding that is usually the case with Indian dishes in America. We see The Cumin Club as a champion for Indians living abroad, celebrating the incredible diversity of the Indian sub-continent and its food culture.
In contrast, we’re also working with the sexual wellness brand Dame to further refine its brand and expression in the world. For the past year or so, we’ve gone deep on ‘the pleasure gap’ (women are far less pleasured during sex than their male counterparts) and helped Al and her team raise brand awareness after a successful lawsuit against the Manhattan Transit Authority. Resulting in us running advertising in trains about the importance of female sexuality and getting in touch with yourself.
Never a dull moment in championing shifts in culture and building brands that meet consumers there.
Let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between branding and advertising? Can you explain?
Let’s start with Brand. Brand is more than a logo or catchy tv spot. Brand is a memory created by the sum of all the experiences a consumer has with a company. When you have a great brand, you have a lot of ways for the consumer to remember you. Great brands put content into the world that engages their community and allows them to participate beyond just buying a product or service.
Brand-ing is more superficial and helps ensure consistent delivery of your message. Think of this as a set of rules. The branding of Target is the Bullseye and that specific shade of red that wraps everything. The Target Brand is a company that brought forth the idea that great design is for all. Everything the brand does is to make you remember that quality and affordability can be equals, from their designer partnerships to their elevated in-house products, even their tv ads-turned-music videos — all of which speak to this idea.
Advertising’s role in Brand is about making noise. How does your brand tell folks that you’re different than the other guy? And “Hey! Come see me!” Advertising may have changed over the years, from jingles to one-for-one missions to thumb-stopping product demos in your feed, but one thing has remained consistent. Advertising is about broadcasting a message to potential consumers.
We’ve seen a shift with modern brands; more consumer participation in that message. The community helps drive awareness as much or more as the company broadcasts.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
When you build a great brand, it future proofs your business. We often think of Brand as a lens by which a company makes decisions. When a crisis emerges, or your competitor knocks off your product, brand is that difference-maker. Brand helps early-stage companies manage a pivot, and later-stage companies drive value at IPO or create renewed excitement as more and more features are launched. Marketing and advertising are part of the brand, but sometimes, advertising and marketing can get off-tune without a strong, purposeful brand idea. A great brand is an orchestra, playing along in harmony of tactics.
Can you share five strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
Listen to your customer. Feedback is a gift. Sometimes, we shy away from opinions that are out of line with our assumptions. As a brand, you must validate your intuitions and hear what’s working or not. Know who your customers are (and who they aren’t). One of our investments, Slumberkins, a social, emotional learning platform for kids, uses a private Facebook group to pull insights and test new product ideas before launch.
Fail your way to success. I learned very quickly that this idea connects design and business. In design, you are constantly testing small decisions to see what happens if… In business, every decision feels precious. That’s the thing. They aren’t. And if one failure tanks your company, you waited too long to test it. How might you create a safe place to fail? Is that a prototype sent to select early adopters? Or maybe a monthly internal meeting for moonshot ideas based on a hunch. Factor our investment in fitness focused meal kits leveraged this construct in every growth stage. From the early days of showing up at gyms to find consumers to give honest feedback on meals to Mike, the CEO, making weekly calls to consumers who’ve canceled their subscription. It’s essential to understand what you can learn when your brand has missed the mark.
Have an enemy. I’m a nice dude. I guess because I’m a Libra and all the right planets were in place for pleasing people. I love this aspect in human relationships, but in Brand, you NEED to have enemies. You need to know what you are fighting for and who you’re against. I use this exercise in our workshops with new investments to understand the passion behind an idea. We live in an era with a plethora of choices. And if your brand tries to be all things to all people. You’ll fail. Our investment, OROS, a future-forward outdoor company, finds its enemy in the traditional puffer jacket. The team uses NASA-backed science to rethink how to keep warm in the elements.
Create editorial authority. Your brand is bigger than your product. And the modern consumer wants more than a brand to like, they want a brand like them. They want to engage with brands that share similar beliefs and stand for something globally. What stories and content can your brand authentically take part in? If your brand was a magazine, what stories would you publish? Dame, who I mentioned earlier, leverages a strong authority around demystifying sexual health and empowers women every day with content and stories on their blog.
Get credit for your idea. ‘Get credit’ means make sure your consumer knows what your idea is and never miss an opportunity to bring a tactic back to it. When you find that core, purpose-driven brand idea, it’s your job to prove it to the world. A social post turns into a movement if it’s led with a sharp idea borne from the brand.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand? What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
Every year at Listen, we write down our top 5 brands and why. Then we share them as a group. It’s always a fun exercise as we usually see how our picks mirror our personalities. So, it’s no surprise that one of my favorite brands is and will always be IKEA. Sure, there are the haters, but IKEA has built an epic community around access to living better through design. From stupid simple space saving products to their Space10 innovation lab fostering new thinking for future problems, they’ve done an amazing job in creating a belief system around the brand. There is no shortage of cheap furniture shops but few that put clever, human-centric design at the core of their offering. The page that I steal from IKEA is the focus on relationship building with the customer. What does the customer need, how do you meet them and what can be eliminated? When you pull it back to the essentials, you can find simple, value-add ideas along the way to plus-up the experience (meatballs!?). In the end, everyone might not love IKEA, but the brand has cemented a firm place in the world’s mind for making everyday living a bit more sensible.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of brand-building? Is it similar, is it different?
There are a number of brand scorecard ideas out there. At Listen, we receive hundreds of business pitches a year, and part of our process is a brand evaluation that looks at some of the more qualitative and creative aspects of a company. We get excited about companies that have found their consumer and whose consumers are already rallying behind a need or want. While quantitative sales are important to business building, tapping into consumer mindshare is where brand building exists. A successful year of brand building means you’re succeeding in your consumer’s understanding of what the brand stands for and they are able to tell the world what makes your brand special. This starts as a tribe of true believers and when successful, grows into an almost zeitgeist movement that defines the culture around your brand.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Social media (and emerging media) is critical as consumers are their own media channels. While display and outreach to consumers on social media are table stakes, the real magic is stoking the conversation around your brand in the channels where your consumers are already. No one goes looking for ads but sharing what you love helps people define their personal brand. This gives your customers a chance to participate beyond the product. This participation is key in brand building, and I’m not talking about likes and follows. Who’s hacking your product features to better suit their needs? What subReddit is sharing honest reviews and recommendations with potential new customers?
What advice would you give to other business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
What can you do to make fewer decisions every day? If you put robust frameworks in place and empower creative thinkers (everyone can be creative), you set yourself up for less decisions but more of a hive-mind. The lens in which you make decisions should live within the company culture and not with a single gatekeeper. It’s simple advice but often tough to implement. It doesn’t mean you are hands-off, it just means everyone knows how to make the best decisions. And bonus points, it feels great when your empowered co-worker makes a decision you would have made. Win, win.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Everyone is creative. Not a new idea by any means, but now more than ever, we need our kids to be creative thinkers, not memory banks. One of our investments, Codeverse, a kid’s coding platform, is a champion of this very idea. It’s a fact that the jobs available for your children probably don’t exist yet. So how do we prepare for an uncertain world? With strong skills in creative thinking and problem-solving.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“You are only as original as your sources are obscure” or something like that. This quote hit me like a brick when my painting instructor said it to me. For me, I understood the freedom that it lets you have as a thinker and creator. Sometimes the blank page is scary but understanding how to build a new idea from past experiences gives you a superpower. Virgil Abloh was the king of this.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have lunch or breakfast? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Seth Godin. We keep ‘What Does it Sound Like When You Change Your Mind’ on the coffee table at Listen. Each day I open a spread for passers-by. I love Seth’s way with words.
Making Something From Nothing: Jessica Snapp of Buen Camino Jewelry On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
It’s okay that you’re “not ready” yet to launch your business, just do it! Your business is going to change and evolve so much, and you’ll learn and adjust as you go. Stop waiting for everything to be perfect to launch your business.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Snapp.
Jessica Snapp is a California based jewelry designer specializing in silver, stones, and enamel. She works full time as a teacher and is growing her small business in the evenings and on weekends. Originally from New York, Jessica has a deep passion for travel and adventure, as shown in her collections. Jessica’s jewelry is made using only ethically sourced stones, mostly recycled silver, and believes that creating a quality piece that will last forever is crucial. Her belief is that jewelry collects stories and should be passed down as an heirloom with a memory.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up in upstate New York with three brothers. Growing up in a small town felt like a very safe and secure little bubble. I appreciated it when I was younger, but knew I wanted to travel when I got older and move around a lot as an adult. I was always an artistic child. My hobbies and interests were always something where I could express myself creatively like playing piano, watercoloring, crochet, beading. Having creative outlets as a child really helped shape the person I am today.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There’s a poem by Mother Teresa that I actually have hanging up in my studio. It’s called “Anyway” and is all about how things might fall apart or not come together the way you want them, but to “do it anyway.” I remind myself of this poem whenever I get overwhelmed or stressed out and think, what’s the point? It’s about how people and life can sometimes disappoint you, but you should still choose to do good things anyway. A few stanzas are:
“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
“What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.”
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I love the book “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharpe. I’ve listened to it on audiotape a few times as I work in my studio. I find it very inspiring and she shares advice on how she and other artists live an inspired, creative life. I find I implement something new into my routine every time I listen to it. It takes time to really create a habit, so I’m patient with myself but I try my best!
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
The jewelry business is a very saturated market. I had to think about the ways my business would be different. Because I work with mostly enamel, I’ve niched down quite a bit, but I had to think of ways where my business would stand out from the huge sea of other enamelists and silversmiths. How will my work do something different or tell a different story from other jewelry designers? Take your idea and start thinking about strategy. Who is your ideal customer and how will you reach them?
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
In my industry, it’s hard to really be totally original. It’s almost a sure thing that it’s been created before. The difference between someone else having the idea and your idea is what you personally put into it! I create my own personal twists to my work so that the style stands out from the crowd. This is important, especially if you are in a very competitive market.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
For me as a jewelry designer, I start with a sketch. From there, I take my time to prototype and try out different ways of creating the item. I find this step so important to really go slowly to ensure I’m using the best techniques and materials for that particular piece of jewelry. Once I’ve completed that part, I consider whether or not it will be a one of a kind piece, small batch, or for production. If it’s for mass production, I have to consider certain elements for whether it can be cast for multiples. I have to decide what I am capable of doing with the piece and what I can outsource if I go that direction.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
It’s okay that you’re “not ready” yet to launch your business, just do it! Your business is going to change and evolve so much, and you’ll learn and adjust as you go. Stop waiting for everything to be perfect to launch your business.
Create systems and structures so you can work smarter not harder. As a person with a full time job, some side jobs, planning a wedding, and running a business, there’s no way I could do everything I need to do with all of this going on if I didn’t do some trial and error to figure out what works! For example, I’m a morning person. I wake up at 5am everyday because I have energy and my mind feels sharp and rested. This is the perfect time to work in my studio. At the end of the day when I’m tired, I curl up on the couch, tea in hand, pajamas on, and do anything on the laptop that needs to get done for my business. I’ll edit photos, respond to emails, write blogs… anything that can be done in a comfy position!
Outsource what you can. It may seem counterintuitive to spend money you don’t quite have yet, but if you start to delegate parts of the business to people that have more talent in that area (bookkeeping and photos for me!), then you’ll actually be propelling your business forward faster. This goes along with what I said early about working smarter not harder!
Take the time to really develop your brand. This includes having a clear “ideal customer avatar.” You’re not marketing to everyone; really take the time when you’re first starting out to figure out who you’re speaking to. You’ll go much further than if you’re talking to just anyone who likes jewelry, for example. Niching down and developing your brand is one of the most important steps which many people tend to skip at first.
Invest in yourself at the beginning. Learn from the professionals who are at the place where you want to go. And be annoying! Ask them loads of questions, pick their brains so you can learn everything you need to know. Find programs or mentors who can help you build your business and help set you up for success.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
I always recommend doing your research. Seek out the help of professionals and industry experts. Also, be sure you’re sticking to a reasonable timeline. When I first started, my timeline was way too idealistic and things felt rushed. Then I would give myself a more appropriate amount of time and I’d be so much more successful.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I believe in the power of working with people who know more than you. You have so much to gain from working with people with experience, that for me and what I’ve learned in my own business, don’t be afraid to seek help in the beginning.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
That really depends on where you hope to scale your business. I’m not planning on scaling my business to multiple 7 figures. For me, my definition of success is to be making enough to live a comfortable life with a steady stream of income coming from the business. So for me, bootstrapping was the way to go. It’s possible that might change in five years and I want to become a household name. Then I would need to totally shift my business plan to scale to that level and venture capital would be the best option.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I have a collection called “Jewels that Give Back.” I plan to continue adding to this collection, and spreading the messages of the organizations that they help!
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
As a person who has to juggle a lot, I can’t stress enough the importance of caring for mental health. I think this is all too common in our constantly on the go American culture, and people don’t rest until they eventually crash and burn. I think a movement for people to take their mental health more seriously and have job regulations in place to ensure a better quality of life would be amazing for our society! Giving people adequate time off, mandatory maternity and paternity leave, mental health days treated the same as sick days, liveable wages… These are some pretty huge changes but what a difference this would make in the lives of Americans if we could do this!
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would probably cry tears of joy to have even just a moment of Gary Vaynerchuk! He is my business hero and such an inspiring leader in the entrepreneurial world. He has a wealth of knowledge and is very generous sharing what he knows and his views through his social media and podcast! I also really admire Jasmine Star who sings his praises regularly! Much like Gary, she shares her knowledge and insights constantly and I have really grown as an entrepreneur from both of them.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
A leader should be decisive in order to achieve the goals and to execute the company’s plans. It is critical that a decisive leader trusts their instincts. It is rare for a decisive leader to change course, after they have been well informed of the particular goal they have to achieve.
As owner of Elegant Occasions, JoAnn Gregoli began her career as a corporate event planner 30 years ago. The business has afforded her the opportunity to raise her six children and set her hours, so she can live up to the term “super mom.”Her company expanded into the destination field about 20 years ago, specializing in Europe and the Caribbean.
She loves the logistical challenges of destination weddings, paired with creating weddings that are memorable. She loves taking the empty canvas of a space and painting the vision of the client’s dreams with lighting, flowers, decor, and more,” she says. She enjoys taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary.
She is an accredited travel advisor and expert and has a pulse on what is trending and where weddings will happen around the world. She has travel the world extensively and produces events that are indigenous to the region where the wedding or event is being held.
Her passion finds herself spearheading many philanthropic endeavors. On 9/11 she was able to reproduce over 200 weddings who were affected by the loss of the World Trade Center.. Most recently she has been producing masks for Front Line Heroes in the United States and founded the Front Line Sewing Angels, who produced over 65,000 masks nationwide for those in need.
She is the co — author of the Knots Guide to Destination Weddings. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Today Show, CBS Morning Show and TLC Whose Wedding is it Anyway!
She has worked on many celebrity and high-profile weddings around the world.
Thank you so much for your time! Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
One of my first mistakes that I made was at a wedding in Italy. A client retained us to plan this wedding and commission the services of a jazz trio. In the United States, we think more of the blues jazz which includes piano, bass and drums and saxophone, but in Italy they interpreted jazz as New Orleans Dixieland jazz which uses different instruments with more trombones , banjo and drums. We had to locate and hire backup musicians while the event was underway. Translation and interpretation are issues to consider when you are dealing with other countries you can never assume they understand what you are actually referencing. You must educate yourself in the culture in which you plan on working. Problems occur all the time in the event industry and the key to a good leader is to anticipate the problem before it arises and have a back-up plan in place. Always ask for samples of things so you can avoid these mistakes, never assume they simply understand your concept or vision.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are two people in my career who were my mentors and they guided me every step of the way. One person was the late Cele Lalli, Editor in Chief of Modern Bride magazine. She was a friend who would literally guide me as I was working out my strategies for advertising and exposure. But another person who was my mentor is Carly Roney founder of The Knot, the famous online wedding platform. She has been a true visionary who had a pulse on what is trending and what the event world was going to evolve into. I so appreciate her foresight and determination in making a change in the way weddings are planned. I owe my career in Destination weddings to this woman who was a good friend. She was the one responsible for asking me to co- write a book for the the Knots Guide to Destination Weddings.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
When I started my business over 30 years ago, it was born out of necessity to help colleagues at work with planning their own weddings, while I was working for a Public Relations Marketing agency. My vision at the time was to create a company where couples could receive assistance in planning their weddings locally. However, it quickly morphed into planning destination weddings and I found that my knowledge of the world of destinations was profoundly helpful for my couples. It was also very helpful that my mom was a travel agent.. I wanted it to be a personal concierge to these couples providing valuable guidance and assistance in planning their destination weddings.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
During the pandemic we had to shift our focus quickly and start to replan and postpone most of our events, however, we found a need that was not met in the world of providing PPE for clinics, hospitals and shelters. I knew that my leadership qualities would allow me to help as many people as I could. I was able to mobilize a small army of sewers to help make as many masks and caps as they could for as many people in need. We created the Sewing Angels, a non profit organization that assisted with supplying PPE for those who were in desperate need.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
My drive comes from my mantra that failure is not an option. I never ever consider giving up. I always try to just find another option. As a planner we always have to have an A-plan, a B-plan, and C-Plan. We find a way to get the job by being creative in our thinking. A good leader anticipates the problem before it arises and finds the solution. My motivation was to protect my children at the time. My son was in law enforcement and my daughter was in the medical field and both had informed me of their own PPE shortages. That need to protect them as a mother drove my desire to keep moving forward and help others. I knew that I had to remain busy during the pandemic but more importantly I knew I had to help those who needed protection. My drive is sustained by the love of my career. I have always found that if you find your passion in life you will never fail and that drive will sustain you through the difficult times
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
The most critical role of a leader during challenging times is to be bold in your choices and make tough decisions but keep moving forward. Getting into the trenches and working alongside your team is what a good leader should do. Fear is a normal response to the unknown. If you are afraid your employees and customers will sense your fear. The secret is to take time and address your employees fears and concerns and move forward together. The role of a leader is to be that problem solver for your employees and customers. As FDR stated “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”. It is important to move through the fear and face the challenges head on.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
The best way to motivate your team is to inspire them and encourage them. Showing gratitude for their efforts and work is key to good morale. If you have to stay positive and continue to show them you are with them during difficult times they will stand by your side during tough times. It is important to lift each up and support each other during good times and more importantly during difficult times.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Communicating early and often to your team is the key to delivering difficult news and it should be done in person (if possible) and not via a text message or email. You should respect your customers and employees. Let them know that they are a priority and are kept in mind with every decision you make as a leader. This means much more than a check-in email once a week. It means keeping everyone in the conversation, it means maintaining trust, and it means showing your appreciation by taking them out to lunch and acknowledging their efforts for a job well done.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
During uncertain times, it is critical to remember why you do what you do. Turn to your company’s foundation and its mission statement. No matter what service you provide, a good leader keeps their employees focused on the mission and how it serves others. A leader should create a sense of unity that makes it easier to push through the uncertain times. Staying focused on the overall goal is what defines the final outcome.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
During difficult times companies should focus on their employees and customers.
Relationships should always come first and people come first. If companies do not show commitment to their employees, partners, and customers when things are tough, how can you expect those same people will believe that the company will be there for them when things are going well if you are not there for them during hard times. During difficult and turbulent times you must show dedication to your entire team and continue to build trust amongst your customers and employees.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Common mistakes made by other businesses are they do not adapt to changing times and stay with the same program. Business needs to change with the times and adapt and know what the new customers need and want. Also, avoiding new social media platforms. I have met many business owners who tell me that Instagram is irrelevant, you have to know what the current client base is using to select their vendors.
Not asking for referrals or asking for reviews. This is a world driven by social media and group acceptance. You need to have current reviews and current referrals out front at all times and they should be current.
Not being honest to yourself or the situation. Be honest with your team and make them aware of what is happening. It is better to let the team know from you personally the situation at hand so they feel like you care about their feelings and them personally.
Not learning and staying relevant. It is important to attend conferences and classes that can enhance your business. Knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have the more power you have over acquiring new business.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
It is important to continue to grow and foster relationships with past clients and forge new connections during turbulent times. Networking with innovators and collaborators during the turbulent times is paramount in surviving during these tough times.
Consider pulling back on certain aspects of the business, but do not panic. You should pause certain spending obligations but do not pull the plug completely.
Out of sight out of mind, you must remain in the public eye and not pushing your social media content or staying quiet is not a good idea at all. Invest in content marketing across all your social media platforms. Hire a professional content strategist who will be able to plan your social media content calendar.
Take this time to polish your company image and get back to what your original vision was when starting the company. Take inventory of your company and get a reality check. Work on getting back your passion, passion is what drives a successful company.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
A business leader should be grateful and should express their gratitude for those who work with them. They should acknowledge a job well done and send out a small letter of appreciation. Showing gratitude goes a long way with an employee.
A leader should be decisive in order to achieve the goals and to execute the company’s plans. It is critical that a decisive leader trusts their instincts. It is rare for a decisive leader to change course, after they have been well informed of the particular goal they have to achieve.
A leader should be ethical.. A good leader adheres to a certain set of core values and principles. These principles are made up of the following trust, respect, integrity, fairness, honesty and transparency. An ethical leader is aware of not wanting to hurt another person by either their words or actions.
A leader should be flexible and have the ability to adapt and change as the needs arise. They can revise their plans and overcome challenges all the while maintaining their composure. They know how to manage a crisis without losing their control of their emotions.
A leader should be confident in their decisions. People who are confident have better working relationships and are more motivated. These people are open to risks and think for themselves, they do not doubt their decisions but stand firm in their final determination.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Life isn’t about the number of ups and downs you experience but how you deal with them”
Life is full of challenges and difficulties and we have to have the strength to endure those times. My Dad would always remind me that lIfe is a series of ups and downs and none of them are permanent. My life has not been easy, it has been a constant struggle, from my relationships to my finances and my health. I had to endure the highest of highs and lowest of lows but keeping my faith and praying for strength if what got me through those darkest hours. Learning to overcome challenges is difficult but it made me a much stronger person in the end. I found that challenges and difficulties that I have faced have made me a stronger person and more compassionate for others.
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Brian Hartzer of Westpac Banking Group: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Communicate constantly, in many ways: Don’t rely on a monthly email or a quarterly town hall to get your message out. Find ways to connect with people at all levels, find and leverage influencers in the culture, and use “symbolic acts” to create stories that employees tell each other throughout the company — for example, handing out chocolates in the lobby on a big day, sending hand-written notes to teams who achieve something important, or ringing up front line employees to congratulate them on a major career milestone.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Hartzer.
Brian Hartzer, author of THE LEADERSHIP STAR: A Practical Guide to Building Engagement, is an experienced executive and leadership mentor who served as CEO of the Westpac Banking Group from 2015 to 2019. Earlier, he spent 15 years in senior executive roles at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and ANZ Banking Group. Hartzer has also worked as a financial services strategy consultant at First Manhattan Consulting Group in New York, San Francisco, and Melbourne. He is currently an advisor and investor to Quantium, a leading data-science company, and several Sydney-based start-ups. Hartzer, who graduated from Princeton University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst, holds dual U.S. and Australian citizenship. He currently resides in Sydney, Australia.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I grew up in Connecticut and got interested in banking while in 10th grade — we had to write our first term paper on something in the news, and at the time the front page of the New York Times was all about the LDC (Lesser-Developed Country) debt crisis. A neighbour was a senior executive at Citibank and he took the time to explain to what was happening, which formed the basis of my paper. He was passionate about the fact that the loans had been to help poor countries rise out of poverty, and I was hooked by the idea that banks could be a force for good in the world.
After studying European History at University, I joined First Manhattan Consulting Group in New York, which specialised in banking strategy. In 1994 I was sent to Melbourne, Australia on a project, and after a two-year stint back in San Francisco I was recruited by my Australian client (ANZ Bank) to join as head of their credit card business. I found I enjoyed leading a business rather than being an advisor, and got deeper satisfaction out of helping other people be successful — rather than being the “smart guy” consultant in the corner.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
My first experience as a manager did not go well. I was managing a gelati shop during a summer break, and distinctly remember a young woman I’d hired screaming “you’re a terrible manager!” in my face, throwing her apron on the ground, and storming out.
So my takeaway was that I wasn’t really cut out for management — hence my career in consulting.
The positive of this experience though was that I developed a real appreciation for the craft of management, and recognised that you need to work at if you want to engage people.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My first boss at ANZ had been my consulting client, and he went out on a limb to offer me a job managing a business with over 1000 staff — when I’d never really managed more than a large consulting team before. He obviously saw some potential that I didn’t see — and it changed my life.
I’m eternally grateful for his confidence in me, and have tried to repay it over the years by taking risks on people as well. Some of these have gone on to run significant businesses, and that’s given me immense satisfaction and pride over the years.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
At Westpac we were fortunate to have a clear purpose that dated all the way back to its founding in 1817. Westpac was founded as The Bank of New South Wales — Australia’s first bank, and oldest company. It was specifically charged by the Governor of New South Wales with helping to develop a private economy in what was then a military-run colony.
As CEO I was able to point to that original purpose in explaining that we were a service business — that we existed to help our customers to thrive — and that if we did a good job at that then we would be successful, and our shareholders would be successful.
This resonated well with our people, and I’m convinced that this clarity of purpose was an important contributor to our ability to attract, retain, and motivate people.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
In 2009 I was hired as part of the ‘clean-up crew’ at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) after it was bailed out by the UK government in the Global Financial Crisis. My role covered the UK Retail bank, Coutts (the private banking division), and Ulster Bank (Ireland). That meant that I inherited over 50,000 people, many of whom had lost their life savings — since the previous CEO had encouraged them to invest in RBS shares, which were nearly worthless. On top of that, many thousands of them were now facing the prospect of losing their jobs, and negative stories about the bank or the industry were a daily occurrence.
Rebuilding a motivated workforce in that environment was a huge challenge. To do that, we went back to basics and focused on the important role our people played in helping their customers get through difficult times and reinforced the important long-term role that the bank needed to play in the economic recovery of the nation. And while we were transparent about the need to cut costs and transform the business, we continuously acknowledged the uncertainty and did everything we could to be supportive and caring towards people who were affected.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
To add intensity to this management challenge, my marriage broke up shortly after I started the role at RBS, and my four young children returned to Australia with their mother. Plus, I broke my leg quite badly in a bike accident.
While it was a terribly stressful time both personally and professionally, I discovered — thankfully — that I was resilient.
As Winston Churchill reportedly said, “When you’re going through hell, keep going!”
I got up every morning, put my suit on, and went to work, motivated by the idea of helping to give my people a brighter future, and stimulated by the intellectual and competitive challenges that such a big turnaround brought with it.
Longer term, as difficult as that period was, it was a great confidence builder in that I knew that, having gotten through that period, I could get through anything.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
To stay calm and maintain perspective. Sometimes crisis requires fast decisions or personnel changes, and the willingness to use gut instinct rather than waiting for all the data. But more often it’s about the ability to see a problem from multiple angles, to identify what’s truly important and what’s “noise”, to source a diversity of views to develop and assess options, and to coordinate a thoughtful and comprehensive response to the underlying issues.
When you’ve worked in an organisation for a long time, it’s easy to get emotionally attached or defensive about the current position. But an effective leader needs to be able to separate their own biases, face the brutal reality, and think objectively about what needs to be done
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
To build a truly engaged team, leaders need to do five things, consistently. They need to demonstrate Care for their employees as individual human beings. They need to provide Context — the why, or sense of purpose, and how each individual contributes to that purpose. People also need Clarity on what’s expected of them, what good looks like, and what great looks like. Then leaders need to Clear the way for their employees — knocking over the barriers that get in the way of their people’s success and often lead to demotivation. Finally, they need to Celebrate — to recognise people’s achievement in ways that reinforce a genuine emotional connection and create a culture of appreciation — not just top down from the leader, but generally among peers, teammates, and across organisational boundaries.
But if I had to pick one thing to boost morale, I’d focus on Care — if people feel that their boss genuinely cares about them as an individual and is willing to take action to help them thrive, then that goes a long way.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
With a combination of transparency and empathy.
Transparency is about sharing the facts, and providing context. For example, “as you know we’ve all been working hard to launch product X, but the reality is that the testing now shows it isn’t going to work and we’re going to cancel the project.”
Empathy is about acknowledging the impact of that news on the individual, and highlighting what will be done to support people who are affected. For example, “With the project cancelled I recognise this creates uncertainty for those of you on this project, whose roles may be affected, and I know that’s going to be upsetting for some of you. My commitment is that we will work with each of you over the next month to explore your options from here and will keep you updated on the timing of any decisions that affect you.”
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
I like to think in terms of long-term and short term.
Long term, it’s important to have a view on the forces affecting your industry and how that is likely to shake out over 3–5 years, what your strategy is to deal with that, and then to update that view periodically.
In the shorter term, it’s about deciding what are the big levers that will move you towards that longer term future, while preserving some budget and resource flexibility to respond to immediate opportunities or issues as they pop up.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Understand how value is created in your business over time, and don’t sacrifice on investing in the things that drive that value.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Typically it’s too much short-term thinking or focus on current-period financial results that damages you in the long term. That often manifests in excessive cost cuts that undermine the ability to serve customers (thereby damaging morale), failing to invest in technology systems, hitting customers with uncompetitive price increases that lead to attrition, or flip-flopping on strategy.
In difficult times the key issue for leaders is often about setting priorities and balancing short- and long-term objectives. To get this right, it’s important to be clear on the fundamentals of your business — what drives customer satisfaction, what creates value, etc. — and make sure you don’t neglect this, while accelerating decisions that can improve long-term productivity. It also helps to distinguish between the things that are urgent — i.e., those things that will help you meet your targets, or allow you to create competitive advantage — vs. those things which are nice to have — i.e., they will create value but it doesn’t really matter if they happen now or next year.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Often the best way to grow is to double-down on your core business — simplifying products, reducing costs, and getting closer to existing customers. In a difficult economy everyone is looking for ways to get through it, so rather than trying to create some new magic solution, you can find ways to create win-win with existing clients — for example, by helping them reduce their costs you may be able to gain a greater share of their business and thereby increase your own revenue.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Care about people — genuinely care about each individual. Strive to find, hire, and nurture people will world class skills, who share similar values. Take an interest in them as people, show them through your actions that you want them to succeed, and they will support you through thick and thin.
Increase self-awareness: Take the time to understand what you’re about, what your values are, what motivates you, what your goals are, and how your own experiences and emotional scars affect the way you interact with other people. In my first 360 degree feedback session my colleagues said I wasn’t very collaborative, which surprised me. I subsequently realised — and, with help from my coach, addressed — that my insecurity about whether I was up to the job meant that I was so focused on my own role that I didn’t have time to be generous with others.
Get into the detail: As we get more senior, there’s a lot of pressure to delegate and to empower people. All well and good, but if you’re not careful you miss out on what’s really going on, and you miss the opportunity to knock over barriers and to teach the people who work for you how they need to be approaching projects and problems in ways that benefit from your experience. At RBS I once discovered that we had over 1000 people devoted to an operational process that wasn’t needed at all — simply because no other senior manager had “opened the folder” to look closely at what people were actually doing as a consequence of an outdated policy.
Stay calm, and stay centred: Separate how you see yourself from how your career is going. Many ambitious people (myself included) fall into the trap of thinking that they’re great when things are going well, and they’re terrible when things are going badly. The truth is that there’s a lot of randomness in life and in business, and you shouldn’t link your sense of self to things that are outside your control. My personal mantra is “all I can do is all I can do, and it will be what it will be.” Have I worked hard, to the best of my ability? Have I put the organisation’s interests ahead of my own? Have I lived up to my personal values, and treated people well? If so, then the outcome will be what it is, and I’ll be ok regardless.
Communicate constantly, in many ways: Don’t rely on a monthly email or a quarterly town hall to get your message out. Find ways to connect with people at all levels, find and leverage influencers in the culture, and use “symbolic acts” to create stories that employees tell each other throughout the company — for example, handing out chocolates in the lobby on a big day, sending hand-written notes to teams who achieve something important, or ringing up front line employees to congratulate them on a major career milestone.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Tell them how much you care, before you tell them how much you know”.
Having been through a bunch of ups and downs both personally and professionally, it’s the relationships with people that you build that make it worthwhile and help you through the tough times.
This quote reminds me that genuine human connection is emotional, not intellectual.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I’ve recently published a book, The Leadership Star: A practical guide to building engagement, which is the book I wish I’d had when I was starting out. It’s available as paperback, audiobook, and Kindle in all the usual places. There’s also a website www.theleadershipstar.com where you can sign up and receive a free downloadable chapter.
The Future Is Now: Dan O’Toole of DRONEDEK On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Be deliberate: Like a lot of people, in my younger days, I might have gone down a few roads before giving my ideas the full thought and exploration they needed to succeed. I still like to act fast, but it’s like that old “twice measured, once cut” cliché: it’s good to do some solid thinking before leaping into just about anything, but especially a business idea.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewingDan O’Toole, DRONEDEK CEO/FOUNDER.
Dan O’Toole is a serial entrepreneur and business leader who is among the first in the United States to secure patents for a smart mailbox designed to securely accept packages delivered by drone.
DRONEDEK holds a First-Position Patent Portfolio for the next-generation mailbox of autonomous and drone delivery. Two issued US Utility Patents, two additional utility patents are under examination now and two PCT’s. In all 111 patent claims already awarded or filed for.
Dan is a Ball State University graduate and lives in Carmel, Ind. with his family. He is also CEO/Managing Broker at StrikerRealtyGroup.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I’ve always been someone who is ready to take a risk because I’ve seen too many times when someone has a great idea, and they think about it. They ponder. They might talk to other people about it. Then, they get distracted and before they know it, someone else has taken that same idea to market. I really believe that any great idea you have is being conceived by at least 10 other people at the same time it occurs to you. So, I like to act on ideas I think have merit.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I’d have to say beating Amazon and the United States Postal Service by days in filing my patent for the DRONEDEK smart mailbox. I’ve been beaten before, so I intentionally worked fast and hard to get my idea to the patent office. It was awesome to see that I’d made it — and I’d gotten their faster than these massive organizations that have dozens of people who must be paid to do what I had done virtually on my own.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
Sure. We see DRONEDEK as the next utility — like power or water or telecommunications. That’s because the DRONDEK mailbox is more than just a receptacle. It’s a charger for drones and possibly other devices. It’s an emergency alarm. It’s an app-driven receptacle for mail or packages — even fast food and prescription drugs — that for the first time will keep those parcels safe from thieves. The traditional mailbox hasn’t been improved since it was introduced in 1858. DRONEDEK takes the mailbox to a whole new level and as people and businesses continue to
rely on e-commerce, a better way to receive and store those purchases is going to be an essential part of our lives. Our smart mailboxes are going to be as commonplace as smart phones, and it won’t take long for that to happen once we’re in the field — starting Q2 2022. It will help people because thousands of parcels are stolen every year from people’s porches or yards. There’s just no safe way right now for parcels to be left for folks who aren’t home or at work to take delivery. We stop that. Also, drone delivery will be faster and less environmentally harmful. It’s going to revolutionize parcel delivery.
How do you think this might change the world?
I’ve already kind of answered that above but let me give you a scenario. Think about food delivery. Right now, you can order food and it’ll arrive by a Door Dash or Uber driver and you will have to go to the door to get it. With DRONEDEK, you can order food — hot or cold — and have it delivered and we’ll keep it hot or cold for you. Same with prescription medicine or anything with a temperature control need. It will be there — and ready — when you are. Or think about business. You have an important, time-sensitive document that you need to get signed or delivered. Too often, those kinds of documents are left on a desk or in a bin somewhere and they’re retrieved — if they’re still there — when a staffer has time to get to it. With DRONEDEK, you not only have secure delivery, our app will alert you that you have a package, so you don’t have to wonder if it’s here yet.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Wow. You went dark. Let me think about that a bit. We don’t control what’s delivered anymore than USPS or FedEx does now, so I guess there could be some application for, oh, let’s say a hit man or a kidnapper to give proof of some crime to someone, but we prefer to think of the good things that’ll be delivered. Seriously, though, we don’t see a downside to improving parcel delivery. We’re building some serious security into the app and the devices as a preventative measure, but time will tell. Like anything else, we’ll adapt and improve as time goes on and cyber criminals try to impede things.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
Sure. I was driving home one day when I noticed a drone in the distance. It was a long drive, and I got to thinking about what that drone was doing and if it was delivering something important. Then I thought, “where will that thing be left?” And would be just left on a porch or a doorstep. Then I thought of how there had to be a better, more secure way to receive whatever the drones would bring. And that led to DRONEDEK. As soon as I got home, I started sketching it out because, as I said before, I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking along these lines. Turns out, I beat USPS and Amazon by mere days when I filed for my patent on the device.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
Well, capital is always great for an entrepreneur. We hope to place a production order for as much as $50 million next year, and we’ll need a way to pay for that as we roll out the product. We have a number of communities excited about being a pilot project for us, but we’ll want more of those. We also need the FAA to relax some regulation so we can actually get drone delivery going in this country.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
We’re scrappy! We’ll do a lot. We’ve done a number of things including some demonstration project where we delivered burritos and hot wings. We’ve fired up our social media platforms and we’re trying to getting more attention, though we’ve been fortunate to have been cited by a number of traditional media outlets. We were in New York recently talking with investors and we tried to get on FOX Business by standing outside in the cold when the weather report was given. We got on the show, but they asked us not to talk about DRONEDEK so we didn’t. But we hope to be on the couch one day talking about it. Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank shot a video endorsement for us, and we used that to propel a lot of activity on WeFunder. If you have an idea, let us know. We’ll probably do it.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
This is a long and growing list. My wife, Stacy O’Toole, has always supported me through our 33-year marriage on virtually every risk I’ve taken. That support has been the difference in many of the paths that I’ve taken. My parents have always supported me, both emotionally and when I needed it, they have borrowed money to help me fund situational needs. My children have rallied around all of my craziness, including the great and the wild and absurd. The DRONEDEK Team has been all hands on deck and have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me as we evolve on our journey of a lifetime. Our investor community is really our family. The support, energy and love that we engage with everyday has been a constant form of validation and momentum for this new paradigm that we are creating!
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We like to think that we’re a good corporate citizen, so we support a number of local initiatives, including public safety, youth organizations and the like. We also work hard to ensure a company culture that encourages our team to bring their authentic selves to work and to our projects — we all come from different life experiences, have our own approaches to politics, but we respect each other’s views. It may sound a little Pollyannaish, but we see our team, including our investors, as family, and I think that makes a difference — especially in these days of the Great Resignation and burn-out.
We’re really proud of our initiative that we call “From Within.” With nearly 5000 investors, we always want to give back. We know where they live, what they do and if they would like to be considered in any opportunities that DRONEDEK may have. If yes, then we always want to give back to those that have given so generously to us.
We also work hard to ensure a company culture that encourages our team to bring their authentic selves to work and to our projects — we all come from different life experiences, have our own approaches to politics, but we respect each other’s views. It may sound a little Pollyannaish, but we see our team, including our investors, as family, and I think that makes a difference — especially in these days of the Great Resignation and burn-out.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Be deliberate: Like a lot of people, in my younger days, I might have gone down a few roads before giving my ideas the full thought and exploration they needed to succeed. I still like to act fast, but it’s like that old “twice measured, once cut” cliché: it’s good to do some solid thinking before leaping into just about anything, but especially a business idea.
2. Think ahead and look at the big picture
3. Make sure you have enough capital
4. Don’t’ give up. It will be hard, but persistence pays
5. Believe in yourself and not what others say
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I was in true control of the world, I’d find a way to get people back to the middle when it comes to this political partisanship that’s stopping good people from working well together. I don’t want to come off as political at all. I think it’s important to be aware of and involved to an extent in politics, but we need to remember how we all are supposed to come together for the good of the country once the elections are over. I honestly have no idea how to get that kind of thing started, but I do wish we could. We can achieve so much positive movement when we work together. I want to get back to that.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Persistence pays” is pretty much my motto for life. I also don’t take “no” for an answer, which is kind of the same thing as being persistent. I adopted that kind of philosophy after I had some ideas prior to DRONEDEK, and I didn’t act quickly enough on them. Sony and General Motors both beat me on ideas, which kind of goes to show you that I do occasionally have good ideas.
The idea Sony also had was for a customizable remote control that enables you to easily watch several programs almost at once. The idea came to me because I like to bet on football, which means I watch a few games at the same time, so flipping between channels quickly is helpful for that. Sony patented it a month ahead of me. The GM one was a medical device, and they beat me by 2–3 months. That idea was for colostomy bags, which many people have to have because of issues with their health. They collect waste and have to emptied regularly. One kind of colostomy bag is opaque so you can’t see thru it but it’s hard to install. Transparent ones are easier to install but less aesthetically pleasing. My idea was to add a window over the area where it connects to the body but be opaque everywhere else. I had worldwide companies interested in it, but I got beaten to the patent office and lost that opportunity.
Now I’m back with DRONEDEK, and I’m feeling really good about working so hard and so fast. The business world really is a race. It wasn’t my time then. But now it is.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
DRONEDEK is the funnel to the last mile. Today in Fort Wayne, Indiana, alone, UPS will deliver to 8,000 more locations then they did just one year ago. The stress on last mile logistics can only be solved through autonomy. The largest companies in the world ($1T market caps) realize this and are moving fast to change delivery so and It’s just a matter of time before drone delivery will be a major part of the supply chain and used by all the major carriers. Market size is expected to reach $18.65 Billion by 2028, according to latest analysis by Emergen Research.
Despite all this focus, few people are thinking about where those drone/autonomous device-delivered packages will end up. DRONEDEK is focused on that and has five revenue streams that represent what may be the largest market opportunity in the world today.
DRONEDEK’s smart mailbox solves the last inch of the last mile of package delivery with its smart mailbox, which offers an app-controlled, climate-controlled and secure receptacle. DRONEDEK smart mailboxes will be used by consumers as well as businesses, with the first roll-out coming in Q2 2022.
We have raised nearly $7 million in cash and tax incentives already and are primed to raise more to support out plans for a $50 million production order in 2022. Momentum is building and we’re set to break out next year.
Losing trust, spending too much of your working capital, and not being led by illusions rather than by facts. It all comes back to trust — difficult times are not the time to panic and throw your fundamentals out the window.
Kati Eismann is Global Marketing Director for all the Adam Hall Group’s marketing activities, from online and brand marketing to customer relationship management, and campaigns and advertising. Kati has gathered professional experience in A&R and marketing positions at Warner, Universal, and Virgin; marketing, sales, and brand building expertise in the fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle sectors at Eastpak and Endemol; and managerial roles as Founder, Managing Director at Idols & Brands and Client Service Director at Mindshare.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I got started in the industry early — I left school to follow my passion for music at the age of 19 when I was offered a job as a music promoter in a brand new agency for rock and darkwave music. I didn’t know anything about my job, so I jumped into the cold water and learned how to swim in the music biz. That learning process launched a journey of over a decade through the music business as a product manager and A&R for rock & pop music. When the digital revolution hit the markets, music piracy hurt the art and the business of music, and the big labels weren’t able to react fast enough. I decided to move into the fashion business, an industry that followed comparable marketing strategies and practices and hadn’t been altered as severely by digitalization yet. As I entered my forties, I found I was missing my passion for life, and I wanted to come back to music. So I came back to one of the premier global players in the entertainment and event technology industry — and here I am. At Adam Hall, I found my professional harbour, and it couldn’t be better.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I have to go way back in my history to answer that. At the young age of 20, when I was just starting out at a Warner Music label, I was on the team responsible for the music comeback of 80s German superstar Nena. When I was a teenager, no one else eclipsed her in my mind as a pop idol.
When I started working with her, no one believed that the brilliant, successful Nena would ever come back as a star. Magazines, TV stations, and radio weren’t reporting about her any longer, and nobody booked her for concerts. She taught me everything. She has such a strong personality and brilliant mind that I was brought to the edge of my knowledge at least once a day. I never dared to say, “no,” or to admit to not knowing something, as I so wanted to prove that I am good at what I do. I failed very often, but I never gave up.
It wasn’t the most fun experience — it was serious business. I learned in those young years that if you want it, if you listen to people, if you push yourself to the right level, you can make it — and it is ok to say no. The most important thing in the early years is to try as much as possible to learn your real passion that you can turn into a professional life.And by the way — Nena did come back and sold multi platinum, award-winning albums like she’d never been gone. There’s a lot to learn from her story.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Starting at such a young age, I dedicate my early learning to two personalities: Boris Rogosch was the marketing director at the label at that time, and he gave me weekly 1:1 sessions to force me to ask him any questions I needed answers for. Boris was aligned with one of the few female superwomen in the business at that time as well — Rita Flügge-Timm. She is my all time idol, business wise. She modeled how to be brave, bold, and different, and how to fight for success. Plus, they taught me the underappreciated lesson of how to accept failure when a project is too far gone. Without these two, my career would never have gone so far.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Adam Hall was founded in 1975 as a manufacturer of high-quality, robust flight case fittings. Over time, our scope has evolved to include everything under the sun when it comes to event technology, from lighting to sound systems, and still, our flight cases. One of our most recent major milestones has been establishing Adam Hall North America Inc. in 2018. At the end of the day, our goal is to amplify emotions by providing our world-class event technology with a personal touch.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
When I started at Adam Hall almost two years ago now, we were in a hard lock down. I had to get to know the global team of 30 in a 100% remote manner. So I started. I just started with many digital team meetings and weekly 1:1 and sprints. I try to keep it very personal and mix it with, let’s say, an 80/20 serious/fun mix. Nevertheless, the interpersonal relationships can still get lost, so we give lots of options to still meet in person, both within the team or in smaller groups or one-to-ones. You need to be very focused in digital meetings since the amount of time spent in meetings has increased so much. I ask my team to only meet on-camera and to come on time and always prepared. For fun, we have established a casual breakfast coffee twice a week — just 15 mins of talking nonsense — that you would also do in the coffee kitchen. Another example is a monthly fun Friday where we celebrate the upcoming weekend with a beer and a game — laughs are guaranteed. I try to establish a meeting-free Friday every two weeks to give room for thinking — sometimes it’s hard to keep free, but it’s worth it.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Super short answer: no. I always see light at the end of any tunnel. Life taught me that. Giving up is not worth it.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
A leader must drop the mid- & long-term view on business goals while markets are changing under special circumstances.Trying to project years into the future based on a glimpse into the crystal ball is not a good choice to guarantee success for a business. You need to work with facts and look back through business history — no crises happen for the first time, and many parallels have been already written in the past.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
I might use a quote that my team gave me in a Christmas greeting card: “You are the tower of strength for us.” So despite such a hard crisis — stay honest, transparent, and work on the potential.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Think before you act and communicate. Do it in the most honest way possible. Explain the reason behind it, and don’t leave people behind. Communication is key.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
When the future is unpredictable, look to the past for guidance. There’s no need to panic or try to reinvent the wheel when there are lessons to be learned from history.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Trust. Trust internally. Trust in your products. Trust in your partners. Trust in the essential foundations that your business is made of.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Losing trust, spending too much of your working capital, and not being led by illusions rather than by facts. It all comes back to trust — difficult times are not the time to panic and throw your fundamentals out the window.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
It’s helpful to work with experienced minds who have best-in-class analytic skills that can help map out the future. It’s also important to always stay agile so you can adapt when and where it makes sense to do so.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Trust: trust in yourself, your team, and your business.
Check the facts and figures: don’t hypothesize or plan without having a firm understanding of the facts.
Tap into experience: use the knowledge of those wiser than you to inform your actions — you don’t have to go it alone.
Stay focused: identify your strongest business opportunities, and then pursue them to the best of your ability.
Let go: a crisis can always strike, even if the chances are small. Again, trust in your planning and your business and in your ability to navigate out.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Confucius said: those who want to be happy in the long run need to change very often. My business career has always had ups and downs — sometimes super downs. Still, failure is the most important learning process one can go through — it leads to change and growth.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I am on LinkedIn, and you can follow the Adam Hall Group’s work on our website.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Tend to your energy. If you’re thinking of leading a company, you must have some serious self-belief! And that’s a good thing, but you’re not a machine. We all have a tendency to use ourselves on our best days as a marker for what we can get done, but that’s not realistic. You’re a sum of your good days and your bad, and your business will ebb and flow with your energy.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alice Ojeda.
Alice lives in Cardiff where she runs my business called Authentic House. Alice has a passion for telling stories about ways we can protect the planet, and making them possible too. Through Authentic House, Alice was a member of Red Bull’s first Social Innovation programme in the UK and is working on a Community Land Trust to buy and manage land sustainably. Alice has a background in literature and language and is half Peruvian which has always made her curious to explore different perspectives and ways to live.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born in London to my English mother and my father who’d only recently emigrated from Peru. We moved all over England until we settled in Cardiff when I was 5.
One thing my family shared with me was a love of nature, books and an ambition to do something positive in the world. Growing up with parents from two different cultures gave me a unique perspective, but was also hard in many ways.
When I had the chance to study languages and literature in Edinburgh, I took it! It was a way to explore and leave the intensity of home. I spent 7 years studying and working in Scotland, before moving home to Wales again.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Bill Withers said, ‘You can’t get to wonderful without passing through alright.’ I read this first on a double page in David Hieatt’s brilliant book Purpose. It really touched me.
We live in a world nowadays where you only ever get to see the finished product or ‘overnight success.’ Often, you don’t get to see the years of hard work, mistakes and plain endurance that go into making anything worthwhile.
I’ve accepted now that I’m on my own journey. I’m alright; I’m learning, and I’m happy with that.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Just a few weeks ago, I read Untamed by Glennon Doyle. When I read the part about trusting your inner ‘knowing’, I stopped in my tracks.
As a woman, I think we’re conditioned to feel safer checking for the opinions of others about our lives instead of looking inwards to trust our own intuition and take risks. And yet, when I’ve trusted myself, that’s when I’ve made my boldest and best moves!
I’ve changed already and made some hard decisions. These included moving our complete website to a new platform for the second time in a year to be certain it would function well for Christmas, bringing a puppy into our family, and now pivoting Authentic House to step away from our original product and explore a new offering.
Sometimes it makes me feel scared to move so fast, but then I remember how right these decisions feel to me and how good the results have been.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I think the problem can be that we’re caught up in our idea.
I’d say, start with a purpose. The world can be improved in so many ways. How will your product or service do it?
Then go with an idea. It might even turn out to be a bad idea, but the act of starting creates its own momentum.
When I began Authentic House, I knew I wanted to help people protect the planet. That was the purpose.
My idea was to start with a directory of all the architects, builders and makers who could help create an eco-friendly home. I interviewed so many people! And it turned out the idea wasn’t great — there was no way anyone would pay for it.
What had come from starting though, was getting to meet inspiring people and see the products that were out there. I saw some of the first plastic-free products back in 2018 when they were something new and so different from the throwaway plastic supplies we often use.
I could see the potential in them and linked it to an idea for a subscription box — a service I’d used in the past and loved. From there, I had a better idea and the foundations of a business to pivot into it.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Look your idea up on the internet. It’s the best way to see if something like it exists.
That said, if there is another idea like yours, and you think you could bring something new and unique to it, I think you can still go ahead. When I started my eco-friendly subscription box, it was a brand new idea and there was nothing like it out there. That said, 2 weeks after I began, a competitor brand started too.
As we’re all inspired by similar things and live in a similar context, there’s a zeitgeist around ideas. Even if your idea is unique, it won’t be for long. What makes your idea have staying power and become the idea is stamina. If you have the belief, just keep going. You’ll be surprised at how old competitors fall away — although you’ll have new ones too of course!
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
I think the best way to create a product from an idea is to start with the resources you have.
When I began my eco-friendly subscription box, I was effectively putting my business ‘out there’ and slowly I began to build a network and credibility simply for showing up consistently.
A year or so in, I realised Authentic House needed to have its own product range as this would give me more creative control over the products we sold and would add more value to our brand. I asked around with craftspeople I knew, and some I’d heard of. A few said no, but I ended up with two very skilled people helping me.
From there, it was a case of building relationships even more. I gained another three craftspeople to help me and, over time, they trusted me more and offered to create more unique products. This meant I could play a greater role in formulating new products and coming up with ideas my customers wanted.
In terms of finding a retailer, we sell wholesale and my best advice is to build your brand and let them come! I’ve experimented at the start with contacting retailers online and ‘pounding the pavements’ as my mentor put it. My best results have simply come from growing our presence on Instagram and our own website which has attracted retailers wanting to work with us. It also means you’re that much closer to your customers.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Tend to your energy. If you’re thinking of leading a company, you must have some serious self-belief! And that’s a good thing, but you’re not a machine. We all have a tendency to use ourselves on our best days as a marker for what we can get done, but that’s not realistic. You’re a sum of your good days and your bad, and your business will ebb and flow with your energy.
Get a mentor. When you start, there are lots of programmes for new businesses that give you a mentor — and maybe even some grant money. A good mentor is worth more than any money and will build you as a person in a way that can change your life. I’ve been helped by mentors from The Prince’s Trust, Natwest and Red Bull — they’re there if you know where to look!
Network. By this, I don’t mean making the rounds of a room with a beer in hand — although I’ve tried that many times! Social media is a brilliant place to network with people in your niche and beyond. For my business, Instagram works best for me. I spend time every day engaging with the accounts I follow which has helped me build connections with fellow businesses, customers, journalists and event organisers.
Become a fan. Who inspires you? If you draw a blank, you’re not looking! As you network, you’ll start to discover some very wise people. Read their posts, their books and listen to their podcasts. This way, you can benefit from mentors you’ve never even met before. If the person offers coaching, don’t be afraid to pay for it! One hour with an expert has worked wonders for my business — but be cautious. Test the waters and don’t overcommit either as there are many false promises out there too.
Keep going. There’s a remarkable gift that comes with simply staying put and working on what you love. More people will find out about you. You’ll be asked to speak. Magazines will feature you. You will learn and become a wiser, braver person who will create a better, more purposeful business. Believe in yourself.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Ask yourself, would you use it?
If the answer’s yes, go forward. You need to be passionate about your idea to keep cherishing it through all the knocks and obstacles.
And don’t listen to naysayers. There are plenty of people who will doubt your idea because it doesn’t fit with the vision they have of you. Your idea is very fragile at the start, so protect it.
Take a page and in the top right, write your idea. Draw a line diagonally back to the bottom left. That’s where you are right now. Starting from the top, work out the steps downwards back to where you are. Now you have an action plan.
On the way, if your idea doesn’t seem to be working, don’t be afraid to let it go. Close your eyes and see how the idea feels within your body. If it feels good, persevere! If it feels fearful, go back to your original purpose and see how you might pivot. It can be painful at the time, but you’ll be proud telling the story of it later on.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I think it’s important to know what you have to bring.
If you know your skills and know there are other skills you need, search for the right person to help you. Finding someone passionate and committed to join your team is harder than hiring a consultant, but I think it could be more worthwhile in the long run. That said, be very careful about who you share your business with! If you need help and a consultant seems like the best option, maybe it is.
If you’re starting with an idea but you have no qualifications and it’s a new industry to you, I’d recommend going it alone or with friends before hiring anyone to help. When I started Authentic House, I had a background in marketing, but no retail, product or business management experience. There were mistakes I had to make and falls I had to take to learn and become the person I am now. Don’t hire your way out of that process, or you’ll miss this valuable time.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
The best lesson I’ve been taught is to ask yourself — am I passionate about working this business into the way I live my life, or do I want to sell my business eventually?
If you answered yes to the first, you might want to bootstrap. It takes longer, but you’ll have complete ownership of your business at the end. It’s what I’ve chosen for Authentic House.
If it was yes to the second, look for venture capital. It’s a difficult process, but you’ll benefit from much faster growth. The one cost is that you’ll lose complete control over your business and will be more tied to the bottom line.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I created Authentic House because I wanted to help more people protect the planet. By starting out with this purpose at the heart of my business, I’ve been able to contribute in the way I’d like as it grows.
All our products are alternatives to single-use plastic and have helped over 3,000 families reduce their waste and become more eco-conscious. I share the ways I’m learning about sustainable living on our social media and weekly emails, simply showing up for the conversation about how we can do better.
After our first year, I realised I also wanted Authentic House to contribute to repairing the harm done to the natural world, in that way adding a macro element to the micro of everyday changes. We now plant a tree for every order and have planted 3,384 native, protected trees across the world to date. It’s equivalent to nearly 7 square kilometres reforested.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
At the moment I’m interested in land and who owns it. There’s a crazy statistic that in England, you only have access to 5% of the land! (The Book of Trespass, Nick Hayes) A lot of it is tied up in large estates — it’s the same here in Wales.
With a couple of friends, I’ve begun a new idea for a Community Land Trust called Recommon. Our plan is to buy some land and build affordable eco homes on it with room for people, nature, workspaces and growing.
If anyone is interested, I’d love to hear from you! You can find our project on Instagram @recommonuk.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to talk to David Hieatt who I mentioned at the very beginning of this interview! I saw him speak once at the very start of my business before I even knew who he was. His words are incredibly powerful and I come back to them again and again.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Disrupting is a good thing when the frameworks we’re using no longer fit the world we’re living in. Here’s an easy example:The 8-hour workday.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Redler.
Matt Redler is the CEO at Panther. There, he’s working on building the economic infrastructure for the remote world. Through remote work, Matt believes that talent across the world — no matter where they are — can get access to great work opportunities. And that people can start living lives with more agency to be where they’re happiest. Prior to Panther, Matt founded Chefit, a personal chef startup. Matt is passionate about speech and debate and boxing.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Panther was born out of two realizations. One, you should be able to hire the best talent for any given position. And, two, that the best talent is global.
I realized this when I was working on a startup called Chefit. My co-founder, Vasil, and I had put together an incredible international team. Then, the pandemic hit. We had to call it quits at Chefit and that meant we had a talented team of international people who were desperately looking for work.
In the following weeks, Vasil and I played startup matchmakers, trying to get work for the brilliant people we’d been working with. But we quickly realized that most businesses don’t have the infrastructure to hire internationally. It requires lots of time, and money, to do so.
At that point, the idea became clear: There needed to be an easy way for businesses to hire great talent globally. And that’s what led to Panther being started. We’re on a mission to empower a world where talent has no borders.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
At Panther, we’re building the economic infrastructure for the future of work — that future being a remote one.
Here’s why that’s disruptive:
For decades we’ve been working in offices from 9 to 5 and hiring in the cities that our businesses were located in. Because of labor and tax laws, it was really damn expensive to hire in other countries.
So even though the best talent lives all over the globe — not just in your city — it was almost impossible to reach that talent.
But with Panther, we’ve built an infrastructure that lets businesses hire almost anywhere in the world in just a couple of clicks. People don’t need to worry about being legally-compliant or setting up subsidiaries. Teams can focus on finding and working with the best talent, wherever that talent is.
This is disruptive to the way we’ve traditionally viewed work. And in a world where people can work from anywhere, teammates get more agency to live their life the way they want. We can lose strict working hours and synchronous communication to let people have more freedom and flexibility.
And, of course, happier people get more done. So it’s a win-win-win, and we’re building the infrastructure for that world.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The biggest mistake I made was working on a business called SZN Pass. It was a subscription-based product for live events. You pay one monthly fee, you go to as many live events as you want (like concerts).
Long story short: People said they wanted to buy it, I built it, and nobody bought it.
Lesson learned: There’s a difference between what people tell you and what they’ll actually pay for.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
The mentor I’ve had that stands out the most is my now-best friend, Aaron Froug. Aaron taught me a key principle: That people make decisions with emotions but justify those decisions with logic.
This has changed the way I think about relationships and problem-solving. For example, I now say things like “I feel”, because it’s something that can’t be refuted. Understanding why people make the choices they do is a huge part of building good relationships.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disrupting is a good thing when the frameworks we’re using no longer fit the world we’re living in. Here’s an easy example:The 8-hour workday.
In the United States, the 8-hour workday was mandated in the 1800s to help prevent people — almost all of them doing manual labor — from being overworked. There was no science on productivity or employee agency involved in that decision. It was a simple labor protection.
But, more than 100 years later, we’re using that framework in a completely different context. And this is an example where it’s good to be disruptive. Where it’s good to understand that, no, 8 hours is not the optimal time for all workers.
With remote work, you can give employees the agency to work when it’s best for them — and you can stop focusing on vanity metrics like hours worked.
This goes further. We can recognize outdated frameworks in things like local hiring (you can now hire globally) and synchronous communication (some of the best teams work asynchronously).
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
First: Build something people want. That’s the most important piece of advice I’ve learned on my journey. And it’s been personal to me — this is something I didn’t fully realize when I was first working on my first startup.
It was called SZN Pass. It was going to be like the MoviePass for live events: Pay a fee every month and go to as many of these events as you want.
I got really motivated for SZN Pass from an online survey where I asked about 1,000 people if it’s something they’d pay for. About 70% of people said yes, which was crazy. It felt like a huge green light.
So I spent 10 months building this thing. And when I launched, nobody — literally, nobody — opened up their wallets for it.
Which leads to the second point…
Second:Asking people if they want something is not the same as asking them to pay for it.
I had so many people saying they wanted SZN Pass, but nobody actually paid for it in the end. And that’s because there’s a huge difference between someone telling you they want something and actually paying for that thing.
When you build a product, you want to have a painkiller — not a vitamin. Panther is the first serious painkiller I’ve ever worked on. It’s solving a hair-on-fire problem and that’s the type of problem that people will open their wallets for.
Third:Team is everything.
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. But having a team of people who are motivated, people that you trust, is key for our success.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We’re building for the future of work at Panther. Not a future where people just outsource work to lower-cost countries, but a future where people hire globally because that’s where they can find the best talent.
And we’ve got a lot of things in the works as we build towards that. Most recently, we’ve been working on a contractor platform. It’s a platform that’ll let anyone hire contractors, almost anywhere in the world, in a couple of clicks.
You’ll be compliant wherever you hire and you can pay all your contractors in one click, in the local currency of their choice.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
The Manager’s Handbook by Alex Maccaw. He’s the founder of Clearbit and this book has some of the best pieces of advice on managing a team that you’ll find anywhere.
The best piece of advice in that book: The idea of Radical Candor, an idea from a book that Kim Scott wrote. It focuses on giving people clear, concise, and humble feedback about their work. A key principle of Radical Candor is building a relationship with people first. They’ll be more likely to take your words to heart if you’ve put in effort to know them outside of giving feedback.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Life’s short, have fun.
In context for Panther, you also want your teammates to have fun. Nobody’s doing great work if they’re feeling down and don’t have the time to get out there and enjoy the world.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Remote work is the movement we’re building Panther for. And it’s not just about people being able to work from their bedrooms — that’s not the big picture.
The future of work is really a place where talented people, all across the world, can get hired by any company.
It brings great work to places that historically haven’t had great work. It means teams will be more diverse than they’ve ever been. It means that people have the agency to live their lives the way they want instead of tying their entire existence to a cubicle.
It’ll take time, but that’s where we’re headed. And we’re building Panther to be the economic infrastructure for that world of remote work.
How can our readers follow you online?
The best place to follow me is on Twitter. That’s where I post most often about the future of work. You can also find me on LinkedIn here.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Dr Mike Wasilisin of MoveU On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Being disruptive is currently considered a noble cause to start a business and a great way to attract others to work for that mission. Personally, I feel that anyone with passion and pursuit should give it a shot if the cause to be disruptive at least does no harm. If a company or industry is meant to withstand the test of time, then it shall remain standing.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing, Dr. Mike Wasilisin.
Founder and CEO of MoveU, Dr. Mike Wasilisin, is best recognized as the crazy doctor who is here to help “Fix. Yo Shit.” Before becoming a viral sensation and head of MoveU, he spent most of his early career attempting to understand the gap in information people seemed to miss when focusing on bettering their health via fitness. After working for countless years as a Chiropractor, Mike soon realized the gap lay within typical jargon used within the fitness world, which hindered the way mobility training was presented. He soon ditched his practice and took the leap to launch his own fitness content platform, MoveU, with the intent to properly educate and explain exercises in precise detail to those from all walks of life seeking enhanced mobility. Now, Dr. Mike Wasilisin is on a mission to empower every human being to take care of their own body and fix their own pain through proper body movement and a champion mindset.
The program’s rapid success has quickly garnered the attention of thousands including the likes of Trever Noah and Gwenith Paltrow to name a few. Most recently, MoveU & Dr. Mike were voted as one of the Top Innovators in Fitness for Men’s Health. Check out this recent Men’s Health interview (also appears in print) here.
Wasilisin’s approach is the next wave of mobility training, something he calls mindful movement, since it focuses on the intricacies of basic stretches. And he’s already garnered 15,000 paying subscribers, and growing, on the MoveU site. They provide fun, simple exercises and education videos so that everyone can feel empowered, motivated and not get discouraged by programs that do not cater to the root cause of their issues.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
In the year 2000, I delivered pizzas as a part-time job, and every Friday night, I would deliver pizza to a local chiropractor. He had a really nice house, truck and always had beautiful women over his house. One day I got fired from my pizza job and walked into his office, and he hired me. He took me under his wing for six years and taught me the chiropractic profession. At the same time, I completed my bachelor’s degree in psychology from Kent State University while earning my prerequisites to be a sports psychologist, which I later changed to prerequisites to become a chiropractor. 2006 I got accepted into Palmer chiropractic College, went all in, and moved and committed to earning my doctorate degree in chiropractic. In 2009 I graduated and took an opportunity to work at any sports chiropractic clinic that was associated with the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, California. I was the captain of my golf team in chiropractic school and fell in love with the biomechanics of the golf swing and Rotary sports and enjoyed working with athletes’ injuries.
I started building my practice in San Diego, and in 2012 I had a great opportunity to become an instructor of kinesiology at California State University to instruct pre-physical therapy students on manual therapy techniques. This was one of the most memorable days of my life because I discovered one of my deepest loves in life, educating. I taught for a couple of years while continuing to build my chiropractic practice.
Eventually, I lost motivation to build my private practice as the lifestyle of being a chiropractor didn’t suit me. I sought more freedom in my life, and to make a bigger impact as I’ve always known I would. During the timeframe, I started other businesses that never took off, including massage devices, an online dating company, and even a beef jerky company where we ate all of the profits.
I was frustrated with my profession and the healthcare industry as a whole, as I believe both industries were so focused on symptom relief that nobody was helping people address the root cause of their issues. I thought the solution was to leave the industry, but I was wrong.
In 2015 I started creating consistent social media videos on Instagram, and the videos took off. A few months later, there was a viral hit of one of my favorite stretches. It was a stretch that I’ve actually never seen anybody else teach. After that, I was certain that the path to impacting the masses was through social media and online education. I committed to going all in and being fully digital in one year. Surprisingly, everything happened nearly perfectly, and I was able to sell my chiropractic practice and incorporate a company called moveU, empowering people to take control of their bodies and fix their pain through mental and physical exercises.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
It’s difficult for me to say that my work is disruptive because I didn’t set out to be disruptive. I set out to create freedom in my own life and teach the world what I believe was the truth about their bodies and the possibility of overcoming pain and limitations without the need for experts in surgeries and drugs.
I think what made my initial success was a video dynamic that had not been previously seen on social media. In a fun, entertaining, and simple way, I taught people how to properly move their bodies and had one of my prior students demonstrate the movements.
I think what makes it hard for us “professionals” to stick their necks out is the fear that they’ll be excised from their community. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in education and tend to get protective over the degree and the licensure because it took so long to achieve it that one doesn’t necessarily want to take risks to lose it, or two not be respecting the community. I feel like I became institutionalized to act a certain way in being a professional, and that didn’t represent who I am as a person. Fortunately, the feedback I received from our growing audience motivated me to continue being more myself and put myself out there in wild and entertaining ways that may not be acceptable to the profession.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you started? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
What comes to mind was my launch plans for MoveU. The initial business plan was to create a single online program to be a start to finish guide to help people overcome back pain. At the time, we had maybe a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and an email list of a couple of thousand people. The goal was to create an email campaign to enroll people in this online program. I have my sights set high. I told the team that I expected we would generate about $100,000 in revenue from this campaign. The emails all went out, and we proceeded to generate 800 bucks.
I learned that the brand wasn’t established or credible enough to enroll people in the program just from an email or a website. I had to get in front of the people who needed me and share my story, and share their possibilities with them, along with the plan to their success.
The first webinar proceeded to enroll zero people. I was terrified and remembered drinking tequila before the webinar started to calm down for the seven people who were attending. The second webinar enrolled exactly one person, and by my reaction, you would have thought that I had just won the lottery for $100 million. I ran two webinars per week for a year and a half, and after hundreds if not thousands of people enrolled in the program, we switched the business model to being purely driven from website enrollments and took a break from live webinars.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I have 3 mentors; a Business Mentor, an Entrepreneur mentor, and a Lifestyle mentor.
My business mentor’s name is Jim Mcloughlin. I sublet an office from him in 2013, and he began helping me understand business. He’s helped me better my skills in operations, taxes, HR, legal, payroll, budgeting, hiring, firing, and whatever else has come up over the years.
My entrepreneur mentor is Shayne, and his wife was a patient of mine, and then he became a patient as well. He sensed I had big goals, took me under his wing, and helped me formulate my plan to create an exit MoveU. He set the bar for big business growth in the tech industry and has given me a vision of the size and impact MoveU can be and has connected me with key growth resources.
My lifestyle mentor is Dave George. He’s obsessed with hunting ruffed grouse (an upland bird) in the Wisconsin forest in the fall. When October hits, you better believe you’ll find him walking trails near his cabin nearly every day of the week for months. He hunts birds through December or January and then back to work. Now that he sold the company he co-founded 15 years ago, I’m going to incriminate him to his past employees and team… Dave was not working in October, November, or December! Whatever he did or said to you was all smoke-in-mirrors! That’s why I love Davey, his passions and hobbies are prioritized in his calendar annually, and there ain’t no exceptions!
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Being disruptive is currently considered a noble cause to start a business and a great way to attract others to work for that mission. Personally, I feel that anyone with passion and pursuit should give it a shot if the cause to be disruptive at least does no harm. If a company or industry is meant to withstand the test of time, then it shall remain standing.
I’ve always had a great admiration for the disruptors and the entrepreneurs and inventors that have stood out over the last couple hundred years. They seem to be the ones that push so hard against the grain that a noticeable societal change occurs. I personally don’t see any downside to attempting to disrupt. However, that could be the inner rebel in me that doesn’t like the rules.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Products, technology, and more entertainment!
Physical Products: Until now, MoveU has taught people how to fix their bodies and take control of their pain mostly through bodyweight or gym exercises. We have within us already everything we need to live a strong and pain-free life. However, physical products can speed up progress, create buzz, and simplify complexity. So, you’ll be seeing at least one product launched in 2022
Technology: Aside from social media videos, we offer online programs; Total body, lower back, core, hip, pelvic floor, shoulder, and neck. I plan to integrate these videos into the technology we created to deliver results faster than online programs. I believe there will be a day where your phone will scan your posture and take into account your age, sex, demographics, symptoms, etc, and precisely drop you into video trainings exactly for you, in the perfect order for you — ultimately helping you recover at lightning speed. And I’m not talking about symptom relief. Usually, symptom relief is lightning speed. I’m talking about permanently making changes to your body in the fastest amount of time possible.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I do. In 2015 I was on a liveaboard spearfishing trip in the Sea of Cortez, hunting for tuna and grouper. Spearfishing consists of the equivalent of an underwater bow and arrow and the ability for the spearo to hold his breath and kick deep down into the ocean on a breath of air, with no oxygen tanks. Many people ask how long I can hold my breath, and my best time is 5minutes and 30 seconds.
So I was on the spearfishing trip diving and struggled with my career. You see, when I left my chiropractic practice for trips, not only would I have to pay for the trip, but I would lose money from patients that I would not see because I was gone and still had to pay my rent and overhead costs. Then, you come back from the trip, and things are slow because people lose their routines when you’re gone. It was like a triple-sided sword.
My best friend claims he gave me the book, yet I cannot fully give him credit because I don’t recall where I got it from, yet in my hands, on the trip, I had a book called Endurance — Shackleton’s incredible voyage. The book is a true story of an explorer in 1912 to set out to be the first to traverse the entire continent of Antarctica on foot. His mission went incredibly wrong before they even hit land, and he, plus his crew of 29 people, survived for 2 1/2 years in Antarctica living on the ice, sailing in dinghies through some of the most treacherous seas in the world, and scaling over mountains never been done before to return back to their departure point 2 1/2 years later. The story is incredibly well-documented and my favorite adventure book I’ve ever read.
After the trip, things changed. I gained confidence in my own ability to lead my team and myself to new levels in my career. From that book, MoveU was born.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
From the book Mastery by Robert Greene, “You want to learn as many skills as possible, following the direction that circumstances lead you, but only if they are related to your deepest interests. You value the process of self-discovery and enjoy making things of the highest quality. You avoid the trap of following one set career path. You are not sure where all of this will lead, but you were taking full advantage of the openness of information. You see what type of work suits you and avoid what doesn’t at all costs. You move by trial and error. This is your 20s.”
I would’ve paid $1 million to be able to read and embrace this quote in my early 20s or late teens. I was trained to think that what I’m supposed to do after high school is go to college and get a degree and then pick the job I’m going to stay in for the next 40 years of my life. So there was a lot of unnecessary stress early on and poor decisions resulting from me jumping the gun on career decisions. This quote would’ve slowed things down. It would’ve made my 20s more of a game of accumulating different skills rather than sticking with one set career path.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked with over 15,000 patients one-on-one. I have worked with tens of thousands of people online and entertained and educated millions. Along this path, there’s one thing that I’m certain of enough. If every person on this planet understood the mechanics of their body, the number of surgeries, disabilities, opioid addictions, and people living their life limited in pain would be reduced to a fraction of a percent of what it is now. And I believe that I have the charisma and personality to spread this idea and how to do it.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can find me @moveu on Instagram and www.moveu.com. We’re also MoveU on Facebook.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you so much for the personal opportunity to dive to depths that I have never been. I hope my story can fire others’ career paths and maybe help some people believe in themselves once again.
Meet The Disruptors: Dr Gerald Horn Of Breinfuel On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Accept it. Change is necessary because choice is necessary. We’re born into a world where we must make fundamental choices every minute of every day. Essentially, choices are outside of our being, and we have to find a way to make choices that work best for us based on our current life situations.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Gerald Horn.
Dr. Gerald Horn is the Founder of Breinfuel — the cerebral, better-for-you beverage designed to fuel the brain to respond with focus, alertness, and productivity. Currently the Medical Director at LasikPlus Chicago, Dr. Gerald Horn’s background lies in ophthalmology, pharmaceutical science and disruptive drug development. Having committed his career to maximizing the health benefits of modern science and medicine, Dr. Horn among other pharmaceutical discoveries invented an eye-whitening drop licensed to a major pharmaceutical company that in one year became the industry leader and #1 doctor recommended. He also developed a disruptive eye drop “Liquid Vision” (PRX) to temporarily restore reading vision without glasses or contact lenses. Dr.Horn is an innovator in the ophthalmic drug development space, a four-time founder and pharmaceutical Chief Scientific Officer, and holder of over 80 patents.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
America gave my family a chance. My parents immigrated to the United States in 1950 from Poland. My mom named me Gerald because it would look good on my office door when I became a doctor. My sophomore year at Northwestern I told my mom that I had decided to become a lawyer and after pulling out all the stops, she could not change my mind. Or so I thought. I decided I would just take the MCAT test, and next thing I knew I was going to medical school.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
To me, being disruptive is not a goal. It just means not being afraid to be wrong and not having any interest in making another version of someone else’s idea.
I think the future of health and nutrition breakthroughs will come increasingly from Consumer-Packaged Goods/Food and Bev products, and my product is a prime example. I developed Breinfuel, a different way to experience caffeine, initially for myself during long surgery days. I sought a solution using my science background and was able to look at caffeine as a molecule, reflect how it has been historically used by humanity, and apply it differently to Breinfuel. I believe the key behind Breinfuel, nutrition, aging, and health is preventing and reducing OXIDATIVE STRESS.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Fairly early in my pharmaceutical explorations, I developed a nasal spray that would not cause rebound congestion. Coincidentally, I had read a news blurb about how NASA just awarded a grant to a company that reconstructed the motion sickness drug, Scopolamine into a nasal spray. I ended up purchasing the spray and looked at data on doses. The dose would be two sprays in a single nostril for the equivalent to my version. A few weeks later, I went to a Halloween party dressed up as a devil, forgetting all about the nasal spray. After the party, my wife mentioned her nose was really congested and she couldn’t sleep. She was willing to try the new Scopolamine nasal spray, so we tried the combination. A few hours later, we woke up a bit disoriented and did not feel great. Out of an abundance of caution, we went to the emergency room. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m still dressed as a devil with red skin and ears looking look like I came from some wild all-night party. It turns out I neglected to notice that the dose was two sprays in only one nostril, and we took it in both — double the dose. We were fine, but it was a lesson learned and quite the spectacle in the ER.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I have been really lucky in life when it comes to mentors. My freshman biology teacher, Mr. Bernardi, deserves a shout-out. He inspired my generation to change the world through his passion for biology and excitement around new inventions and disruptions in the space. Mr. Bernardi was the one who sparked my interest in biology at such a young age.
World-renowned Ophthalmologist Dr. Lee Nordan is another one of my mentors. I first met Dr. Nordan as a young aspiring ophthalmologist when I saw him seated by himself, grabbing a quick bite at a meeting. I walked up to him and candidly shared my frustration in a 60-second pitch about how none of the strategics at the convention were interested in Luminesse, the eye whitening drop I invented. From there, we hit it off like two parts of the same brain. Dr. Nordan believed in Luminesse, and we did a phase 3 study to corroborate the benefits. Eventually, we got the product licensed.
Last but certainly not least, my mom and dad have always been incredible mentors. They gave my sister and me unconditional love, melded by my mother’s survival instincts and father’s strong moral code.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Being disruptive means thinking outside the box and coming up with new, completely unique ideas. There is no better example of a disruptive thinker than the most disruptive thinker of all time — Albert Einstein. He was the first theoretical physicist to conceptualize space and time as a continuum and a tangible building block of humanity. From there, Einstein presented his findings as an equation: E=mc2. While his physics equation describing the interchangeable relationship between energy and mass disrupted the world of physics and created a fundamental understanding of the science, his discovery also laid out the building blocks for atomic bombs and other deadly weapons. His findings that atoms can be triggered by fission or fusion were later incorporated into the making of atomic bombs, which tragically ended WWII, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Additionally, Tokamaks and stellarators are fusion reactors in their infancy that show greatly increasing promise and could one day solve our energy problems for billions of years.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
The first I probably heard at home:
“Small lies are not worth telling — and big lies are too big.”
My parents taught me this basic lesson, particularly my father. One day my father came home quite upset after he went through a toll booth without change and owed the tollway authority $0.25. When he called the Illinois Tollway Authority and explained his situation, they expressed appreciation for his honesty, and I admired it. This seemingly minor instance has certainly stuck with me and made me realize what an amazing, straightforward, and honest father I was lucky enough to have.
The second is not exactly advice, but maybe more powerful than any advice I’ve heard:
“Hair will grow on the palm of my hands before you amount to anything.”
Ouch! This was said to me by my high school AP Biology teacher. He knew I was just going through the motions without putting in any extra effort and tried to galvanize me–and it worked. I realized why he said it, what he meant, and what he was trying to accomplish. This was a wake-up call. We are NOT our potential — we are only today’s reality. Ever since high school, that moment has stayed with me and has inspired me to go all out no matter what. Life flies by and there is only a nanosecond to possibly make a positive impact. Don’t waste it!
I’ve heard the third phrase said many different ways, but my version is: “The only constant is change.”
First, accept it. Change is necessary because choice is necessary. We’re born into a world where we must make fundamental choices every minute of every day. Essentially, choices are outside of our being, and we have to find a way to make choices that work best for us based on our current life situations. As we gain life experiences and learn more about ourselves, our choices will most likely change. At first, change can be uncomfortable, but without it, we become physical and mental sedentary fossils and do not evolve into vibrant human beings. The day we stop embracing change, we get old. I only half-joke that the year I stop learning something as a Lasik surgeon is the year the field starts passing me by. My daughter jokes that every day is my first day of life. I expect change every day and find that almost anything is possible if you’re open to it, and that revitalizes me.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I am very fortunate that my glass is more than half full. I have a great family. I have great grandchildren, and I have children — adults now — both in fantastic relationships, one about to get married. I learn from them now. I have pharmaceutical projects, some of which are potentially far reaching and could make a significant impact. And most fun, I’m writing a book on how to live longer with a greater quality of life, avoiding health land mines exploding almost literally “in our soup” as a serious metaphor. I should have added “Man plans, god laughs…” If I drop tomorrow that book won’t sell. Since it will take me years to write — I’m a horrible writer — the time I take working on it will prove or disprove it!
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast’s first interview with Paul Stamets has deeply resonated with me.
My son Colton turned me onto it. Paul is one of the great mycologists on this planet, and in my opinion, he is one of the most articulate and intelligent people I’ve ever had the privilege to listen to. Joe is a great interviewer. Most of my thoughts on the architecture of our brains, and what we can do to reconnect the ‘circuits’ as we get older came from Paul’s insights in that podcast episode.
Additionally, a book I recently read that had a significant impact is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
Harari’s work is articulated beautifully in Sapiens, where he analyzes the entire history of humanity and documents his findings as powerful, new insights.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“You only succeed if you fail.”
You have to fall down to learn to walk. You have to dust yourself off, get up, learn from it, and try again. You have to believe you can walk. You have to believe you will walk. You have to experience rejection over and over until it morphs, and there is no such thing as rejection. Just obstacles to overcome.
I believed I had a product that would make a difference, and that was Luminesse. The first time I brought it to pharma companies, I failed. The second, third, and fourth times I failed. But that last time, I succeeded. I was pitching Luminesse to a famous expert in the field with a room full of 13 people sitting at a round table. I asked everyone to put the product in their left eye, and then we all looked around the table. After all those years of failure, I saw an eerie yet beautiful sight — a roomful of pearly white left eyes. And Dr. Abelson — that was his name — looked around and said, “I’ve been thinking of this for 20 years. I used to call it ‘Twinkle!’”
Don’t ever give up on something you believe in.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
There is one thing I have come to believe has indeed been life changing for me.
There are people I have come across in everyday life, and among them are many that will transform my life in some way, whether it be large or small, only if I recognize who they are and engage with them.
It’s as if God or a higher power will place you before people who can change your life, but you have to strip yourself of ego and leave all preconceived notions behind. This individual may be from a completely different walk of life than you, with other priorities and experiences. If you make a real effort to connect with people, you may find yourself shocked by how many casual daily interactions expose you to “spiritual connectivity.” You might even live an amazingly exceptionally full life and feel connected to the universe in the most powerful way. Every day will become scrubbed, refreshed, and baggage free — waking up like it’s your first day!
Mr Gabriel Brakha Of VITALSURANCE: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
You can create realistic expectations while weighing the best-case scenarios against the worst-case scenarios.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Gabriel Brakha.
Gabriel Brakha is a multilingual, results-driven, and accomplished senior-level executive with over 20 years of experience in international marketing and business development in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. As the Owner of VITALSURANCE, a global health and life insurance agency based in South Florida, Gabriel possesses expertise in negotiations of key accounts, strong competitive analysis, cross-cultural communication, and exceptional teamwork skills. He has been recognized for establishing multi-channel distribution networks that have resulted in significant revenue growth. He’s also fluent in English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and conversational Portuguese.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I consider myself an international citizen because I lived in eight countries worldwide and was always interested in other cultures. I also traveled for business to many countries in LATAM and eventually found myself working in insurance and helping agents and clients. Now I’m based in South Florida but spend each day offering services to clients globally.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
When I started offering FLORIDA BLUE or BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD insurance plans, I started explaining the history of FLORIDA BLUE to each client, which was a mistake because it’s a well-known brand. The clients requesting these plans simply asked to register based on its positive reputation, without needing a history lesson or background story of the business. The lesson is that it is not required to over-explain certain details about a company or product with massive brand recognition.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There were several managers from previous jobs that believed in me, especially because of my ethical practices. My knowledge of other cultures also helped me acquire more clients.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
The vision of our agency was to acquire 25 insurance consultants. Currently we have 50 insurance consultants, and each one contributes an invaluable element to our business.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
We care about our team and constantly set up conference calls and Zoom meetings. I personally try to call each agent and speak to them for 20 minutes or more about business and other topics, as well. We want our team to feel comfortable engaging with us, and it’s important for me to let our agents know that we care about their well-being.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
As a human being, you are tempted to give up on certain people on the team, but it’s important to react in a mature way and examine all possibilities from a business perspective. Overall, understanding the differences in people sustains my drive and keeps me motivated.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
The most important role is to calm down and make the team feel more relaxed to reduce stress.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Believe it or not, jokes are always welcome during conference calls while sharing interesting news about the business.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Always relay a bit of good news before delivering challenging news.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
You can create realistic expectations while weighing the best-case scenarios against the worst-case scenarios.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Stay calm, focus, and understand that making a mistake is not the end of the world.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
The most common mistake is not returning phone calls to clients. We return all phone calls the same day they’re received. Other professionals fail to explain how products work in detail. The third mistake is not listening to the specific needs of the client, or selling a good product that doesn’t necessarily align with the needs of the employer or individual.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
This is a trial-and-error process. For instance, our firm may invest in non-effective marketing efforts and therefore need to adjust our approach, or change our strategy to obtain successful results.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
The leader must communicate with the clients and agents within the company. It is important to share information several times in order to make sure the information is being received clearly and effectively. During turbulent times, like the beginning of COVID-19, our insurance carriers did the utmost to help clients with hardship cases. We made sure the members and agents knew about our procedures during this time. The second thing is to work with alternative products to maximize client satisfaction during these times. The third thing is to encourage the agents to join conference calls and participate in new trainings to be able to deliver great messages to their clients. The fourth thing is to thank your clients for staying loyal during these turbulent times and express your appreciation for their business. The fifth thing is to email important tips periodically addressing the insurance policies to ensure an open line of communication.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson is to always tell the truth about your services and products; honesty and integrity will take you a long way. One of our agents that departed amicably contacted us a few months later to partner with her clinic she represents. She always appreciated the fair ethical treatment she received while working with us as an agent.
The Future Is Now: Dr Rahul Kushwah Of Predictmedix On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Tenacity — Although you need the skillset to launch your startup, what you need even more is determination and confidence to move forward. You need to become the person who is ready to accept challenges daily with the determination that you will overcome it.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rahul Kushwah.
Dr. Rahul Kushwah is an accomplished biomedical scientist and the COO, Interim CEO and Co-founder of Predictmedix (CSE: PMED) (OTCQB: PMEDF). He has a proven track record in translational research with several peer-reviewed publications along with superior communication skills with over 50 medical and scientific presentations. Prior to launching Predictmedix, Dr. Kushwah held appointments as a Federal Government Scientist, Research Officer within the Human Health Therapeutics branch of National Research Council of Canada along with Professorship within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He completed his doctoral research at the University of Toronto and the world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children and was also one of the 23 worldwide recipients in 2012 of the prestigious Banting Fellowship for health research awarded by the Government of Canada.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
During my academic career in the medical research world, one of the things that I got to see firsthand was that the problems being researched upon within the academic/medical community were most of the times not the ones that had an association with immediate world problems. Furthermore, as much as there is the talk on translational research or research cooperation among different fields, it rarely happens. The advancements in data science / machine learning / artificial intelligence / neural networks have been profound over the past decade, but they have not made their way into core medical research.
My aim was to bridge the gap amongst healthcare, medicine and AI, while ensuring that there are real world problems being solved. This laid the foundations of Predictmedix, where the first product that we worked on is an impairment detection solution which uses data captured using multispectral imaging to identify if someone is showing signs of cannabis or alcohol impairment without the need for any biological fluids. We have been able to extend this further by offering a solution that can identify individuals exhibiting signs of infectious disease, such as COVID-19, and are also developing a similar solution to identify the earliest signs of mental illness.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I suppose the most interesting story must be the one where I made the switch from being a biomedical scientist at the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada to becoming an entrepreneur. During my tenure as a biomedical scientist with the NRC, I was leading a team that was focused on developing immunotherapy-based treatments for cancer and at the same time, I was able to gain funding for practically all the projects that I was leading. It was a unique juncture as several of the projects that I was leading also had industrial partners and we were also working with multi-disciplinary teams.
I was quick to realize that although in the medical research community we have had several breakthroughs over the years, unfortunately over 99 percent of them have not translated into discoveries that impact healthcare. It was at that stage that I knew that I wanted to do something that could make a difference to the real world, outside of a lab setting. I wanted to extend myself beyond the world of publishing research articles in peer-reviewed medical journals to developing solutions which help people. I was not completely clear on what I wanted to do but I did know that I wanted to do something that has a real impact on the world. A few weeks later, I was visiting my parents back in Toronto and a mutual friend introduced me to Sheldon Kales, who is also a founder of Predictmedix — and the rest is history.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
At Predictmedix, our mandate is to offer AI-driven technologies that solve the issues plaguing the world. The three issues that do carry immense burden globally are impairment, infectious disease (considering the COVID-19 landscape) and mental health. We have developed our technology stations — which we call Safe Entry Stations — to look like metal detectors, but are designed to screen for signs/symptoms of infectious disease and also for signs of cannabis or alcohol impairment. Additionally, we are expanding the utility of our Safe Entry Stations towards turning them into a medical device that can be used at hospital triage centers to monitor vital parameters of all the patients that are coming into the facility. The Safe Entry Stations are comprised of a host of multispectral cameras, sensors and edge computers that deploy our AI algorithms and as individuals come and stand in front of the station, within 2–3 seconds, the screening is complete and the output is given in the form of a red or a green light. Red light indicates that the individual has been flagged as exhibiting symptoms of infectious disease or impairment (depending on which algorithm has been deployed) and green light indicates that they are good to go.
Our technology has been successfully deployed at Fortune 500 companies, major office towers, industrial settings and major North American events such as Super Bowl Parties in Tampa Bay (where we had extensive press coverage including validation which was covered by Fox News), Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austin and Palm Tree music festival at the Hamptons. Our technology has screened thousands of individuals at these live events and also has identified individuals that that were COVID-19 positive upon administering a COVID-19 test. Furthermore, we are working towards taking this technology a step further to turn it into a medical device, which can be used in a healthcare setting to monitor vitals of patients along with presence/absence of symptoms associated with infectious disease.
Our technology to screen impairment can be deployed over the same safe entry stations and without a need for biological fluid, and can screen to identify individuals exhibiting signs of cannabis or alcohol impairment within seconds. Current solutions for measuring impairment are based on the use of breathalyzers, which cannot be used on a mass scale and at the same time there is a lack of a similar technology to monitor cannabis impairment. We are currently working on initiating trials in North America.
The other vertical that we are working on pertains to mental health. Currently, the diagnosis of mental health disorders is quite subjective, and we aim to eliminate the subjectivity by identifying physiological patterns using multispectral imaging that can be used to identify earliest signs of depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s.
How do you think this might change the world?
The disruption that has been brought on to the global economy due to COVID-19 is unprecedented and unlike anything that the majority of the people have seen before. This does indeed highlight the need for enhanced measures to ensure safe environments can be created that limit the spread of infections. If I could draw a parallel, then that would be the unfortunate events that unfolded on 9/11 as the world changed immediately after and metal detectors became commonplace. Similarly, safe entry stations will eventually become an integral part of any facility’s safety measures as these can be used to screen for individuals demonstrating symptoms of infectious disease or impairment.
The pandemic has also placed an extraordinary amount of strain on the healthcare system with a focus on remote health. As we work towards turning our safe entry station technology into a triage solution for healthcare, we are confident that these stations can eventually replace the initial consultation with the triage nurse that usually happens in hospitals. So pandemic or not, we envision these stations to be placed at the point of entry into hospitals and as patients come in, the stations screen for their vital signs, presence of symptoms and this information is sent immediately to the healthcare practitioners.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
The one that we deal with all the time is that people perceive our technology as being a big brother that is monitoring people, tracking them, etc. However, it is important to understand that we are not using any personal identifiers or any face recognition, instead the AI is analyzing the data captured from multispectral cameras and corelating it with underlying physiology of whether it is impairment or infectious disease. Additionally, there is no data storage at all on our systems and it is only the log of actual events which we have access to (i.e. at 12:00pm, there was a green light). This completely limits any possibility of our technology acting as a big brother as even in a setting where someone hacks into our technology, they will not be able to find any personal data.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
Being the creature of that habit humans are, at times it appears that we are hardwired to perform incremental developments over technologies that exist. There are breathalyzers for monitoring alcohol impairment and since there are breathalyzers for alcohol, we of course need to have breathalyzers for cannabis even though numerous studies have clearly indicated that measurement of THC levels in the breath cannot be used to identify impairment as it is only the THC that causes the blood brain barrier which causes impairment.
Nevertheless, we have companies out there that are developing breathalyzers to measure THC levels. The previous multi-disciplinary research that I carried out as a biomedical scientist really helped me to think outside the box to come up with ideas that could potentially be explored to identify impairment without the need for biological samples. This laid the foundation of our technology where we are using multispectral imaging to capture physiological changes that associate with varying degrees of impairment caused when an individual consumes alcohol or cannabis. We have been able to identify multiple features that correlate specifically with cannabis or alcohol impairment, and this has formed the basis of our technology. It is the same rationale that has been used by us to develop our technology for infectious disease symptom screening, which we are taking a step further to develop into a medical device designed as a triage solution for healthcare setting.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
First and foremost, it is about people understanding the technology as it may come across as being too sci-fi since we are talking about structures that look like metal detectors but are able to identify impairment and/or signs of infectious disease. We have had several cases where skeptics of our technology became fans of it once they saw it live in action, so really, it’s about showing the world how it works and how it can be used to create safe environments — which can also lead to massive cost savings.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
We have partnered with organizations all over the world including major defense companies, drug testing companies and technology integrators. We have also achieved CE compliance for the EU and ISO13485 certification for our safe entry stations. This helps in eliminating the barrier to entry, especially in the EU and Middle Eastern markets. We are also currently in the process of bringing onboard senior account managers for key global markets where we see a massive opportunity for our technology.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I would say that it has to be my dad, Rajendra Kushwah. He is a CPA with an accounting practice in Toronto and as long as I can remember, he has always encouraged me to follow my dreams as long as the dreams are not about money. He has a strong belief that if you give your 100 percent and excel at what you do — the monetary success will follow you.
Prior to starting my undergraduate studies, I got accepted into some of the top North American Engineering Universities with fellowships covering my entire tuition. However, prior to starting my studies, I had a change of heart as I became extremely intrigued by genetic engineering and how it can pave the path to eliminating diseases (albeit, Jurassic Park — the movie, being the reason to what pushed me into biomedical sciences). I told my dad about it and immediately his take was that as long as I am sure that I want to go in that direction and am willing to give it my 100 percent then I should go for it. This became the premise of my biomedical career where I went on to become a Banting Fellow and eventually a scientist, research officer at the Human Health Therapeutics branch of the National Research Council of Canada with a cross-appointment at the University of Ottawa. It was the multi-disciplinary work I was involved in along with parallel developments that I saw happening in AI that paved the way towards the birth of Predictmedix and made me take the leap from being a biomedical scientist to becoming an entrepreneur.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
One aspect that we take immense pride in is that we are offering solutions to problems that carry a huge burden on the society along with healthcare. Accidents due to impairment not only lead to economic loss but there is the loss of lives which impacts families, and similarly we have all seen the impact of COVID-19 with over 5 million reported lives lost on a global scale.
Furthermore, when we talk about mental health, there are lives that are lost because a diagnosis is not made on time due to the lack of objective tools to do so. Our technologies — whether its screening for impairment, infectious disease symptoms or mental health disorders — have the potential to create safe environments and more importantly save hundreds and thousands of lives, which is the biggest impact we can bring to this world.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
Partnerships — As an entrepreneur, it is not feasible to take care of everything by yourself or have your team members do the same. It is critical to forge partnerships with organizations and corporations that share a similar mandate and can be of assistance growing together. For instance, at Predictmedix, we have partnered with several top medical institutes all over the world that are playing a critical role in not only providing us with the clinical data that we need to improve our technology, but also in performing third-party validation, which is critical for business growth and technology certification in healthcare.
Shared success — The growth of any startup is not the success of an individual or a founder, but it is the success shared amongst all the team members who were willing to take the risk to come onboard early and work towards the same vision. The team needs to be comprised of individuals that can work together. As the company grows, the onus falls upon the entrepreneur to ensure that the success is shared among all the team members.
Learn to use the soft skills gained from previous work experiences and education — I started off as a biomedical scientist and now I am a founder of a tech company, which although is in healthcare, a majority of it is based on machine learning, AI and neural networks. I am not applying my expertise in immunology or stem cells but what I am applying at Predictmedix is my ability as a researcher to work with multi-disciplinary teams to solve problems, to critically assess data and come up with solutions to problems that are in healthcare.
Tenacity — Although you need the skillset to launch your startup, what you need even more is determination and confidence to move forward. You need to become the person who is ready to accept challenges daily with the determination that you will overcome it.
Enjoy the journey — The growth of a startup is a roller coaster ride and one must learn to enjoy it. On any given day you have no idea on what it will bring, it could be a new contract, a new partnership, a new idea, a frustrated customer or perhaps glitches with the product. You need to be able to extract the most out of it and at the end of the day be grateful, confident and happy at how things panned out and how you addressed it. Even more important it is to make sure that when you wake up next morning, you do not dread the day but instead look forward to how it will unfold. The growth of a startup has its ups and downs, but one must learn how to enjoy the journey.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I am a strong believer in giving back to society and laying the foundation where the future generation can be better educated, more -informed, and make better decisions that can improve the state of humanity and our planet. I have come across numerous teenagers that are passionate about making a difference but not knowing where to start. I think this remains a problem with the overall education system whereby greater emphasis is placed on repetitive tasks rather than original and objective thinking. Although the education system cannot be reformed overnight, I personally think that on a global level, it needs to have a certain portion of schoolwork (let us say 20 percent of the GPA) devoted to coming up with projects that are not about educational excellence but about making a difference to the world by trying to solve the problems that plague the world.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
H.P. Lovecraft had a very famous quote: “I am a student of life, and don’t want to miss any experience.” This is something I have believed in all throughout my life. If one needs to grow as an individual or perhaps even as an entrepreneur, then it is important to learn continuously. Every day as an entrepreneur ends up being a learning experience and every person you come across imparts you with a viewpoint that in itself becomes a learning experience.
As entrepreneurs, we at times become so focused and engrossed in what we are doing that we cannot think outside the box. In order to succeed as an entrepreneur, it is critical that we understand how others perceive it. Moreover, as we understand perception of others, we should learn from it as it gives us an opportunity as an entrepreneur to tweak our idea/product/pitch further to ensure that ultimately the end user can understand the value proposition that we hope for them to understand.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Health and safety issues in workplaces around the world result in billions of dollars in lost productivity with the primary issues being impairment, infectious disease (such as influenza, COVID-19) and mental health. At Predictmedix, we have developed AI-powered Safe Entry Stations, which look like metal detectors and can scan individuals within 2 seconds for signs of impairment or signs and symptoms of infectious disease with the cost being only a few cents for each scan.
Our solution for infectious disease screening has been commercialized with contracts executed with major corporations as well as some of the most prominent global live events. Additionally, our technology has received CE compliance for Europe and ISO13485 certification and we are currently working towards taking our solution further to become a medical device that can be used in health care setting to measure vitals and symptoms of patients that are coming into the facility. We are currently onboarding beta partners for our impairment solution and at the same time are working on a technology using multispectral cameras that can identify the earliest signs of mental illnesses and thereby eliminate the subjectivity that normally is involved in diagnosis of mental health disorders.
Don’t compare yourself to what you see in the news. Those “megarounds” you hear about only represent the 1% stories, the ones people like to talk about. The reality is that the other 99% are ordinary founders, who struggle just like me or you.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Patricia Recarte Iguaz.
Pati Recarte Iguaz is the CEO and founder of KADO. Previously, she held leadership positions in early-stage European startups, leading their corporate strategy and expansion efforts. Pati started her career as an M&A Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley in London.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I have always been a bit of a nerdy girl. I never played with dolls, and I used to love (and still do!) puzzles and science games. I was very attracted to anything space related and wanted to be an astronaut or space engineer. However, due to a mix of the traditional Spanish culture and my family being very involved in the legal sector, I was persuaded that a career in law was the best for a woman. This led me to studying Law and Economics, but I soon discovered that it wasn’t for me. I still finished my studies, but soon after I started working in investment banking in London. Being very numbers driven, I really enjoyed it, but was still very attracted to the tech ecosystem. I slowly started pivoting in the right direction, working for several startups in London and Barcelona, before I finally decided to move to the US to start writing my own story!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I asked for strength, and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for courage, and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I believe entrepreneurs are not born, but are made, as we all face different life situations that build our personas. Having to confront difficulties and to get out of my comfort zone has helped me build the character I needed to get to where I am today. Even now as a founder, I continue to face many challenges, many of which I fail, but help me grow.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, impacted me on two levels. On the personal level, I also come from a very traditional family — lawyers -where entrepreneurship has never been embraced. From the moment I decided not to take on a professional career in law and work in investment banking, to when I started working for tech startups that were not break even, to starting my own technology business, all of these have been key milestones in my life that may have been a bit difficult for most of my family members to understand.
On the business level, the knowledge that even Nike, being where it is now, also went through big struggles at the beginning, both with fundraising and initial growth, gives me hope for my company and its success.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
There are two key aspects to take into consideration. The first is to do your research and build your business plan. Who are your competitors? How big is the market? Try to draft a first P&L and to lay down potential costs and how you expect to generate revenue. Don’t be afraid of thinking you may be wrong in your projections. The truth is, you are probably 99% wrong, but it’s still good to get an initial sense. Feel free to ask different people from different backgrounds to help you out with figuring out the cost base. The second is simple, and ironically also the Nike slogan: just do it. You need to really MAKE THE MOVE. In my case, I resigned from the startup I was working at in Barcelona and signed a rental in NYC! There was no going back, and I needed that push to get to where I am today.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Research is important, and it will help you know about what is out there. However, something many people fail to do is understand how you can be better than the competition and how you can find your differentiating factor and add additional value to your users or clients. There is a very high chance that someone else has done something similar or in the same lines of what you are planning to build, so my suggestion would be to either find a niche that has specific needs within your vertical, improve what is already out there, whether at the product level or operationally, or find your “twist” or a key differentiating factor or advantage, such as specific features or patents.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
My case is that of a B2B SaaS, so this may only be applicable to certain companies.
Start by doing your research. Interview people from your potential target market and try to find their pain points.
Build your initial P&L with expected costs and needed resources, as this will help calculate financing needs.
If you can, build a very simplistic prototype that you can test out with your interviewees, use to confirm hypotheses and better shape your product roadmap, which will help you learn to prioritize what is important.
Once you have a better idea and understanding of your MVP and costs, you will come to the point where you need to find initial funding. If you are short on money, you can try to find a good external agency to properly design and develop the MVP of the product. However, I recommend building an internal team, as they will better align with your vision and really work hard towards the same goals.
Find a lawyer or mediator for trademark/patent registrations. You don’t need a big law firm to do so; there are many smaller and affordable law firms that specialize in doing the paperwork, like Rapacke.
Ensure you have a registered company. If you are after VC money, it has to be a Delaware C-Corp and you will need to find a local registered agent (Harvard business services is a common one).
Then just go on to production! Try to get an MVP to market as fast as possible, as this is key for testing.
Start generating relevant content from the very beginning, as this will help either with SEO or with building a community if you are after end customers.
Try to launch small test campaigns with a basic landing to generate expectation and a waiting list.
As soon as you get your MVP to market, test, test, test!
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Be very careful when engaging with UX/UI agencies. Many introduce themselves as real UX researchers, but the reality is that they limit themselves to UI work. This entails having very nice screens which nobody understands how to use.
Your first employees are key and you need to make sure they are purely aligned with your vision and fully understand what it means to work in a startup. The learning curve is very steep and it’s a tough process! I made the mistake of hiring someone too quickly, and it ended up negatively impacting the team.
Rejection will be part of the day-to-day, so it’s best to start growing a thicker skin. It may be discouraging at first, but everyone goes through the same turmoil!
Don’t compare yourself to what you see in the news. Those “megarounds” you hear about only represent the 1% stories, the ones people like to talk about. The reality is that the other 99% are ordinary founders, who struggle just like me or you.
It’s OK to make mistakes! People don’t expect you to be perfect. Initially, I really feared failure; later on, I learned it is all about testing, failing, gathering feedback and improving your product or workflow.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Research is the first key step, both at the competitor and market level: understand what is out there, how you can differentiate yourself from the competition and how big the market is. Then try to better understand your potential customers or users by interviewing them. They will help you shape your product. Finally, start with a prototype to test your hypothesis and ensure you are working in the right direction!
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I always believe that starting on your own is the best way to go. As a founder, it is key to be absolutely aware of the problem, customer needs and market; and the only way to do so is by being completely involved from research to execution. In my case, beyond research, I even went to coding school for a few months so that I could fully understand the state of technology, what my competitors were doing, and be able to speak directly to my engineers.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
It depends on several factors. The first is your own set of skills; can you cover everything that is needed on your own? Do you need very specific technical skills which require hiring talent? If you feel you are fully capable of controlling most of the verticals, from ops, to marketing, to sales, to tech, try to bootstrap as much as you can!
The next is speed of development. Would you rather take development at your own pace or really try to speed up? If you want hyper growth, then VC is for you; however, consider the caveats.
That brings us to the next point: are you ready to share the decision making process or involve others in your board? That will be a common request by VCs, and you will have to frequently update them with reports, KPIs, board meetings and involve them in all major aspects, even in hiring of key personnel.
Last thing to consider is: are you tackling a huge market and do you plan to become a unicorn? If your idea is to become the next multi-billion dollar company, then you will need VC money. Your shareholding will dilute, but it will just be a smaller piece of a considerably bigger pie.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’ve had several leadership roles at different startups. I have served as a mentor to many of my employees, being an example of hard work and resilience and reminding them that achievements never come easy!). I still have old friends and mentees that come to me to ask me questions about career moves, whether they should start their own projects and how, and I always try to guide them as best I can.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
One of my objectives in life is to narrow the gender gap. There are more and more women in entrepreneurship, but it is still difficult to find them in tech! I would love to inspire other women to get out of their comfort zone and to not be afraid of undertaking new challenges and of making that compatible with family life. I’m 28, got married 2 years ago despite crazy working hours, and hope to have kids soon… and I am not planning to quit my startup!
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble). She is such a great example of a hard-core full-time mother and entrepreneur, leading a massive company that for sure has endured lots of stressful moments!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Meet The Disruptors: Joseph Burton Of TeleSign On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t be frustrated, be curious. Almost everyone we meet is smart and cares. Never forget that. If you can’t imagine why someone thinks what they think, they almost certainly have their reasons. Open your mind and heart and learn something.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joseph Burton.
Joseph Burton is the CEO of TeleSign. Before TeleSign, he served as CEO of Plantronics (now Poly) from 2016 to 2020, after joining the company in 2011 as Chief Technical officer, and then Chief Commercial Officer. Burton specializes in digital transformation, growth acceleration, corporate strategy and go-to-market, and has extensive expertise in technology and product development. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems and completed the Stanford Executive program at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA).
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Boy, where to start? I grew up in a construction family in rural Ohio: shoveling asphalt, driving a truck, and overhauling diesel engines. For some reason, I always wanted to be a professor and was using my GI bill to get a history degree when I took a programming course.
It’s obvious now, but at the time we were all discovering the power of software. And while I loved history — and still read a lot of it to this day — I quickly found that creating software that democratized knowledge became my true passion.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Disruption is an interesting concept and I think a lot of companies lose their focus. The point of most technology should be to NOT disrupt people. The point is to let people work, live, and learn in a way that is simple and natural to them. The goal of most technology companies should be to make something disruptively easier, less expensive, and more accessible to everyone…all while keeping it simple and natural to use.
At TeleSign, we disrupt problems, not people. We make relationships and engagements between companies and consumers simpler and safer. Less login questions, less hassles accessing your favorite online services when you travel, easier communications — all while we work in the background to make it much safer.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I was responsible for “modernizing” a 10-year-old business software suite, so it would be faster, easier to maintain, would run on modern hardware, etc. I took the original product specification and spent a year ensuring that every feature was fully copied in the new version. And we fixed a lot of bugs that were in the older version. Sounds good, right?
Wrong! The users found my new version to be completely unusable, and I was confused. Eventually, I visited real users to see how they were actually using the software. Almost every bug I fixed had become an undocumented, mission critical feature over the years.
I never built another system without constantly talking to real users throughout the process to ensure I was making their lives easier.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I have been blessed with a lot of great mentors and role models: my parents, coaches, several great supervisors, and others.
One stands out these days: at my second job as an software architect, the CTO was just amazing. He understood technology, but more importantly, he understood people and was intensely curious. He interacted with such empathy and used technology to solve challenges people were having. He inspired me to think about people, not technology as much as possible.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
As mentioned above, I am not in favor of disruption of people unless the new solution is truly better in pretty much every way. In many cases, the new system eventually becomes truly superior but only after a painful cycle of hype and disillusionment. A great example that I was involved with was the movement of global telephone systems from the old-fashioned phone lines that ran to every business and home, to voice calling being delivered over internet technology, which is the norm today.
From the beginning, the technology was touted as superior in every way, but it wasn’t. For years, it was less reliable, poorer quality and the user experience was a bit different than old telephones for no valid reason. It was cheaper, so the people that operated the systems liked it, but it was worse for the consumers that actually used it.
Years later, once many systems were upgraded and lots of bugs were fixed, it became truly better than the old system it disrupted, but the industry took the end-users through a painful transition that perhaps could have been avoided.
I am a big advocate of long beta releases and voluntary opt-in, so people are not disrupted without their permission.
Can you share three of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Maybe not words, but I can do three phrases:
Don’t be frustrated, be curious.
Almost everyone we meet is smart and cares. Never forget that. If you can’t imagine why someone thinks what they think, they almost certainly have their reasons. Open your mind and heart and learn something.
2. If you want it bad, you get it bad.
Making unreasonable demands of people does not lead to good results. It leads to teams that are disengaged and perform poorly. Inspiring people to do their best and be part of the conversation is great leadership that leads to great results.
3. Let every idea be good for five minutes.
Have an open mind and heart to the ideas of others by genuinely listening and considering the input of others. It leads to better solutions and stronger relationships.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
While I have my own ideas, I try to facilitate and accelerate the ideas of others. The terrific team at TeleSign has some exciting ideas for connecting, protecting, and defending people and businesses on the internet. I’ll be here helping, coaching, and cheering them on — and maybe pursuing a few ideas of my own!
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I read and listen to books and podcasts all the time, rotating between three categories: business/science/societal topics, history/biographies, and Sci-Fi. Staying in the first category, one of my favorites is “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, this is a fascinating read and reveals deep insight into many of the ways the human mind works. I gained some perspective about when to slow down and think a little slower and more deliberately.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
If by “movement”, you mean a habit that I would love everyone to adopt, here’s one of mine: every time I encounter something I would like to know more about, I quickly put it on a list I have been keeping for years. Every day, I try to go into the list, pick two things, and quickly learn a bit about them. It can be a fast search, reading an article, or much deeper research. Even with skipping a few days here and there, every year I know a little more about 500–700 things. This is an easy and enjoyable activity…and it’s something that’s simple to add to everyday life.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Your people are your brand ambassadors. Whether a customer is talking with a head of sales, someone in customer service or, like us, a lawyer as part of a service, each and every person needs to reflect the brand you are creating. To build a genuine brand, the humans within the business need to represent it.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Jess Saumarez, Head of Marketing at Stephenson Law.
Jess Saumarez is an entrepreneurial digital marketing expert with a colourful career, having previously co-founded two businesses: LUX Rewards and Hedira. As Head of Marketing for Stephenson Law, Jess is a branding expert, and has honed in on a particular ability to connect consumers with brands that are trusted, authentic, and ultimately: human.
Her most recent work has been within the world of law, a notoriously stuffy and archaic industry in much need of an overhaul. Her work within this field has resulted in a litany of awards for the business, including a cult following rarely seen within the industry. From individuals clambering for branded hoodies, to public declarations of fandom, the business has thrived under Jess’s ability to bring the four walls of a business to life.
In her time Jess has broken down the barriers between consumers and law and has managed the impossible: showcasing corporate lawyers as human, trustworthy, and reliable. In doing so, the business has become a multi-million pound company within just four years in addition to acting as the legal partner to countless household names. When asked her secret, Jess’s response is the same every time: build the brand and the rest will follow.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I’ve never been a cog in a machine. Whenever I had the opportunity to break outside of a mold and build a new idea from the ground up, I would grab it with both hands.
This is perhaps why after leaving university I dove head-first into the startup world and joined the team at LUX Rewards. We were a team of two based in Bristol, offering diners reward points for their spend. Although I would touch most areas of the business, it was the creative marketing that really interested me. How could I build an addictive brand for customers, a trustworthy brand for the partnered restaurants, and a seemingly “large” brand for companies like PwC who wanted to offer rewards to their staff?
After scaling LUX Rewards I set out building a consumer app that was closer to my heart: Hedira. I wanted to help people care for their houseplants, whilst helping plant retailers reconnect with their customers. It was a different yet similar challenge: Hedira had two main target markets, and the brand had to appeal to both B2B and B2C customers.
This startup experience gave me a solid foundation to work with brands who want to appeal to various audiences and scale their audience visibility. It was a natural fit for me to dive headfirst into the world of marketing, working with creative and ambitious founders and CEOs. Cue working with Stephenson Law — a forward-thinking entrepreneurial legal services provider.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Back before we had a CRM in place, I would reach out to partners and individuals to invite them to events or rope them into being in our marketing communications. I thought it would be a great idea to tell people that I had “hand-picked” them to be part of a marketing video, and that the video would be exclusive to them… I then forgot to put people into BCC and sent the email out to close to 100 individuals on my hit list — they could all see each other’s emails (that sinking feeling was not ok). No one answered, and my email address was put on the spam hitlist.
It did teach me several things:
I will have better conversations with people and a return on my efforts if I stick to personalized communications. Had I taken 10 people on that list, and really taken the time to communicate with them on their level, then I could have made better relationships with them.
Always check your CC and BCC…
Invest in a CRM to properly segment your marketing audiences.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Considering the legal industry is full of very dull corporate brands, Stephenson Law stands out quite a lot. We avoid using legal jargon, talk about topics that most competitors would run a mile away from (such as National Orgasm Day) and invest heavily in our approach to talking to clients in a human way.
We have gained quite a reputation for working with emerging tech companies (it’s our bread and butter!) and so it seemed only right that whilst our clients were building NFTs, we should explore and innovate in that area too. We wanted to explore whether there was an appetite to buy utility tokens that offered the owner legal time with our experts, and demonstrate how forward thinking we were.
For the grand majority of our audiences, our project was commended, but we quickly saw negative comments online from legal professionals saying we were “attention seekers” and “hipster flip flop wearers.” Needless to say, we ruffled some feathers.
As a brand we’re ok with that. We’re ok that some people don’t understand what we do or criticize our approach to innovating within our industry. People are scared of change, they don’t like things they don’t understand, and that’s what many of our clients experience too. We stand out because we mirror our clients in our entrepreneurial approach, and aren’t afraid of disrupting something that needs to change.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m currently working on the rebrand and relaunch of our website. We want it to look like anything but a law firm’s website, and give visitors the information they need in order to make a decision to work with us.
It will help people because we’re not focusing our content on how great we are and what we can do: We are focusing on the problems our clients are experiencing. By helping our visitors navigate legal complexities in their business, we are building up trust, a community, and a positive brand image and can focus our marketing efforts.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
Brand marketing, in a nutshell, is getting people to like you. It builds up your brand equity (a key selling factor for any company looking to exit), makes an audience trust you and therefore shortens the buying decision making process. It is also proven to increase the average spend of a customer, and allows businesses to launch new products and services quicker. It’s the glue that makes customers stay loyal to your company, and forgive you for any mistakes that you may make. It’s worth mentioning here that it also helps improve the employer brand of a company. Brand marketing is the long-term strategy of any business and needs to be built into any marketing activity a team does.
Product marketing is then a direct marketing or sales activity. It’s making audiences aware of the products and services your company offers, and the main aim will be to get audiences to perform an action. This activity needs to be hyper-targeted, in my experience, to be successful. Any product marketing campaign needs to have an integrated approach, always with an eye on the funnel and every action a customer needs to make in order to make a purchase: From seeing and clicking on a social post, all the way down to committing to a purchase.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
A brand is the personality and voice of any company. By investing into building a brand, you’re investing into an audience recognizing and associating a certain feeling towards you. That’s why it is so important to create brand guidelines that your teams (not just the marketing team) need to read and be familiar with, as a brand will serve as a basis of your company culture.
There are many tools out there that have made it easy to create marketing materials, for example Canva offering incredible looking templates with various colours and fonts, but I would implore any marketer not to fall into the trap of using “what looks best” for one particular campaign. Consistency is key when it comes to brand marketing: Your colours, fonts, spelling, language and illustrations or photography style all contribute towards your brand, and if you want to build on it, you need to commit to a set guideline in your communications.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
1) Create a brand book with clearly defined brand guidelines and stick to them. Consistency, again, is key.
2) Your brand isn’t solely expressed in your visual assets: Your brand is also your company voice! Social media has given companies the ability to personify their brand and interact online like a person would.
3) Make sure that your brand is felt at every touchpoint during a customer journey. It’s no use investing in a brand that stops as soon as marketing hands over to sales: It needs to be experienced when your customers are using your product or service, and even post-sale.
4) If you are a “bold” and “exciting” company, should you really be using soft pastels in your brand palette? If you are positioning your company as a thought-leader and educator, is your website optimized to allow visitors to find resources? Whichever pillar you decide to build your brand on, make sure that it is reflected heavily in whatever platform or content type you’re using.
5) Your people are your brand ambassadors. Whether a customer is talking with a head of sales, someone in customer service or, like us, a lawyer as part of a service, each and every person needs to reflect the brand you are creating. To build a genuine brand, the humans within the business need to represent it.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
I’m currently enjoying the branding of dating app Thursday (previously HoneyPot). From the get-go they wanted to position themselves as a down-to-earth, cheeky brand that is fed up with dating apps and being single. They show themselves as the dating app alternative for those that are too busy with “dating admin”, which is why their messaging is short and concise, their staff shout out about their dating lives, they use GIFs wherever possible and their advertising campaigns are bold and different.
What impresses me is that back when they were Honeypot they stopped and really listened to their users and analyzed their behavioral data. They noticed some key trends and decided to hone in on them for the purpose of their brand and to set themselves apart. Insights such as:
Getting a date is traditionally hard and full of admin.
People want to meet face to face as soon as possible.
Thursday was the most popular day in London to go for a date.
Moral of the story? Analyse how your customers are behaving both with your product/service and outside of your company. It could provide you with some great branding tips and even a potential pivot!
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
There are several metrics marketing teams can use to measure the success of a brand building campaign:
1) Awareness: Often coined a vanity metric when it comes to product advertising, however as far as a brand building campaign is concerned, awareness allows a team to see how many eyes are seeing your campaign and becoming aware of your company.
2) Brand sentiment: This is sometimes hard to monitor because it is not always a quantitative metric. Brand sentiment analysis allows you to see how people feel about your brand and is often categorized into three segments: Positive, neutral and negative.
3) Mentions: Are people talking about you online? Referring your brand to their connections? Using you as a case study? This will tell you how the public sees your brand.
4) Net promoter score: This is more for your current customers or clients. It will show you how willing your customers are to refer you to someone else, therefore providing your marketing team with a list of brand advocators (and areas of detractors that need to be improved on).
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Social media gives a business the opportunity to personify their brand — emphasis on the “social” in social media! The platforms can allow teams to bring their brand to life and chat with their audiences as though they were a person. This has become apparent on Twitter, where a report indicated that 64% of Twitter customers would rather message a social channel for customer support rather than call a business.
In addition, social media allows a brand to be visible in communities it would otherwise not be present: By removing geographical barriers, social media allows brands to seek areas of opportunity in niche communities and gain a reputation in that space.
What advice would you give to other marketers or business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
Surround yourself with good people. I’m extremely fortunate that at Stephenson Law we have fostered a culture of clear communication and understanding. When a team is built on trust, you have the power to change and influence your workload because people will recognise that you are doing it for a good reason.
I would also say that you need to allow yourself the time and space to be constantly learning. Marketing is changing all the time, and so are most industries. In order to thrive as a marketer, you need to be on the pulse of any new changes within your space, and be open to adopt new technologies. It’s way harder for a marketing leader to start from scratch once a new technology has been adopted by the competition for over a year.
Finally, to avoid burnout I know I need to give myself the space to be creative, which is something I have seen time and time again amongst marketing professionals. Marketing can constitute a lot of analysis, campaign building and technical builds, and generally content creation gets left to the rest of the team as you become a leader in your space. Although this is a natural progression for most marketing leaders, I have had so many conversations with individuals who would be willing to take a pay cut just to rekindle with the “hands on creative” side of marketing. My answer to this would be to make sure that, every now and then when the inspiration comes to you, work with your content creation team on a project that allows you to use your creativity. Another answer would be to make sure that your creativity is expressed through activities outside of the workplace.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’m a big believer that education systems should rethink how students are allowed to learn. When I was 15, I was told by my teachers that I would achieve Ds at my GCSEs and therefore promptly asked to leave the school so that I wouldn’t bring down the school average (I went on to get straight As) and when I was at university I saw students who received the very best grades but who were unable to excel in the “real world” of management. We need a real shift in how we determine who’s “intelligent” or not and value individuals who think outside of the box and creatively. Being different in our current curriculum is seen as a negative, which can have a lasting negative impact on children as they grow up.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Life is the best teacher — so go live it!
My university degree was all about working for big multinational companies — therefore it didn’t come as a surprise that many of the people secured graduate schemes before they’d even finished the course. I quickly decided that I needed to find out more about the working world before committing to a career for three years so I worked in a startup whilst saving to go off traveling. I had absolutely no regrets that by the time I got back from my travels (whilst my peers were 2 years into a career) I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to become and what “good” looked like for me in a job. I never would have been where I am today without taking my time and living a varied life.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Sheryl Sandberg — she’s so inspirational and I absolutely loved her book!
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’d like to keep up with what we’re doing at Stephenson Law you can also find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Be bold and proud — Don’t apologize or cower when changing the world. There is no higher calling than making dents in the universe. Continue to work hard and forge the path for change.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Carson.
With more than three decades of leadership in healthcare marketing and business development, Scott Carson continues to be a visionary. He is passionate about disrupting the industry’s trajectory by focusing on bringing efficiency to supply chains through true transparency and trust.
As part of the team that built Ebay’s healthcare marketplace, he was also the founder of US Medical, Inc, the first online distributor of new and pre-owned capital medical equipment. Named as a 2x finalist to Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Carson’s other awards span over three decades, including the Entrepreneur Hot 100, The Inc. 500, as well as being named a Micro-Enterprise Hall of Fame recipient and has been featured at the “Great Entrepreneur Speaker Series.”
Known for taking healthcare companies from small to extraordinary, his reputation, drive, and business acumen are well-known in healthcare and beyond. His most recent company, mrp.io, empowers aesthetic professionals to run their practices more profitably and efficiently.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born in Glendale, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. My father was an LA Mad Man, and my mother was immersed in the California arts and music scene in the ’60s. While in California, my mother showed me all that the beautiful state had to offer. I spent much of my time at museums, beaches, going to the Dodgers and Rams games, etc. My summers, however, were spent in the mountains of Colorado (where my parents were raised) fishing, hiking, and watching my father and grandfather drink snakebite medicine. My love for nature was developed in my youth through those experiences and ultimately led me to operate Powered by MRP out of Park City, UT. I have raised four wonderful children here with my beautiful wife and couldn’t be happier.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I can’t pick between my two favorites, so I’ll share both.
“Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
In moments of defeat, you may feel desperately alone. You may not see the reasons you needed to learn that lesson. Defeats are simply lessons for the next obstacle. No matter how difficult the situation you are in — it’s always been my truth. When you fail, it’s simply that you needed to be redirected or taught something new.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Patrick Henry Hansen’s book “The DNA Selling Method.” Nothing matters more to customers than solving their problems. This book helped teach me that you can change the world when you solve a customer’s problem with your matched solution.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
While good ideas are the start of a business, I believe it’s the work ethic and determination that translate into the success of a business. Grit and grind 24/7 is bound to set you apart from other good ideas and businesses, so just keep at it.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
There are very few original ideas out there nowadays. I think the research should fall in taking an idea or concept and repositioning it to fit the puzzle or solve a problem in an ever changing and emerging world.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Much of this process is learning how not to micromanage. Employees and team members will come to a company with skills you desire and skills to refine. The environment of taking an idea to execution needs to be to micro-coach through the good and bad. I have found this to be true for any contractor and vendor. To get a rocket off of its launch pad, the one leading needs to be the coach and show leadership, and be a fully vested player in the game.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. It is so, so hard — No one prepared me for how difficult it would be. All the obstacles you would face from staffing to implementation.
2. Don’t quit. Ever. — The reward of creating something that is so much bigger than you outweighs any difficulty I’ve faced when starting Powered by MRP.
3. There are haters everywhere- often right next to you. — Everything that is happening outside of your control is just noise. Stay humble and focused.
4. Be nice always — Kindness is the best policy for just about everything. A smile or kind words can go so far in the world of business.
5. Be bold and proud — Don’t apologize or cower when changing the world. There is no higher calling than making dents in the universe. Continue to work hard and forge the path for change.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Plan or map the process out as far as you can. Don’t focus so much on the logistics of the business plan but create a road map. Sticky Notes have created some of my best business plans or ideas for myself and my company. It gives you a space to dump your ideas down, and the details can get sorted out later.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Consultants should be used like designated hitters in baseball. When you have a short- or medium-term need, put them in the game to change the trajectory. They may strike out, but once in a while, they will hit a home run. Most often, though, they will get you on a base which is exactly what you want.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
From my personal experience, I believe bootstrapping is always the way to go. Protect your equity like it’s your heart.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
There is no other way to use success, in my opinion, than to change lives and make the world a better place. At MRP, we are modifying and creating a fair market for physicians to access biomedical energy-based devices at GPO- level pricing to lower physicians’ overhead costs. This in turn is generating more access to care for patients which has always been the goal of Powered by MRP. The healthcare supply chains are riddled with huge profit margins driven by a lack of transparency and greed. We want to change all of that. We have a life-changing philosophy at our core by increasing access to patient care.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I believe what we are doing at Powered by MRP is just that — the start of a movement. Our mission is to change the way products and services are distributed in healthcare clinics. Our marketplace provides a space for ethical business practices to transpire and open and honest conversations about products and devices. This enables patients to receive the best energy-based device experience possible. MRP is dedicated to lowering the cost for clinicians and increasing the quality and access to healthcare for all.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Rather than spend my time with someone who has already proven to be successful, I would rather sit down with a new founder. Listening and helping create a path for change is an essential way of giving back once you’ve proven to be successful at something. I hope to continue to do just that!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
